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In mid-1930, the Yiddish novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, and world traveller Leib Malach visited Montreal to attend the dedication of a new home for the Jewish Public Library. He then sent the Buenos Aires Yiddish daily Di Prese a three-part travelogue devoted to: Social, cultural, and linguistic conditions in Montreal and the Province of Quebec; the Jewish School Question in Montreal; and Yiddish culture in Montreal. By making implicit comparisons between the two deeply Catholic, but very different societies of Argentina and Quebec, Malach's travelogue held up a mirror to his intended readership in South America. Quebec's proximity to the United States and Canada's status as a British Dominion suggested one point of contrast with Argentina. The long-festering Jewish School Question crystallized the colliding issues of religious confession, public policy, and provincial and internal Jewish community politics in Quebec, which lacked obvious parallels in Argentina. Descriptions of the Yiddish cultural milieu of Montreal offered oblique comparisons with conditions prevailing in the larger Yiddish-speaking community of Buenos Aires. This essay thus attempts to situate Malach's Montreal travelogue within the frameworks of Canadian and Latin American Jewish Studies, along with transnational Yiddish Studies.En 1930, le romancier, dramaturge, poète, journaliste et globe-trotter yiddish LeibMalach s'est rendu à Montréal pour assister à l'inauguration de la nouvelle bibliothèque publique juive. Il a ensuite envoyé au quotidien yiddish Di Prese de Buenos Aires un récit de voyage en trois parties consacrées aux conditions sociales, culturelles et linguistiques à Montréal et dans la province de Québec, à la question des écoles juives à Montréal, et à la culture yiddish à Montréal. En établissant des comparaisons implicites entre les deux sociétés profondément catholiques, mais très différentes, de l'Argentine et du Québec, le carnet de voyage de Malach tendait un miroir à ses lecteurs d'Amérique du Sud. La proximité ...

In August 1930 the Polish-Jewish painter Maurycy
Minkowski arrived in Buenos Aires for a well-publicized but commercially
unsuccessful exhibition of his artworks. Minkowski's exhibition
coincided with the onset of the Great Depression, a military uprising,
and a roundup of Jewish procurers associated with the Sociedad Zwi
Migdal. Both before and after his accidental death (and "celebrity
funeral") in November 1930, his patrons--who included the ambassador
from Poland and prominent Jewish cultural figures--denounced what they
regarded as the philistinism of Jewish parvenus in Argentina. As memory
of the artist lapsed into obscurity, his supporters established the
Museo Minkowski, housing it in the Argentine Jewish community building
(AMIA). The salvage of this collection from the ruins of the AMIA,
following the July 1994 terrorist bombing, has set the stage for the
rehabilitation of this neglected artist's reputation.

Seyfer haprenumerantn , by Berl Kagan, is a work of great utility for anyone interested in European Yiddish toponymy, Jewish genealogy, and the history of Hebrew printing and publishing. While Kagan's primary purpose is to document popular support of rabbinic literature in Europe and North Africa from the late 18th century until World War II, his book also comes closer than any other to serving as a gazetteer of Yiddish place-names. A total of 8,767 place-names are listed, mostly in Yiddish (or Yiddish transcriptions from other languages), with a separate section for Judeo-Arabic. As such, Seyfer haprenumerantn represents by far the largest published compilation of Yiddish toponyms in existence.