Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

In the 1990s, Simon Bikindi was Rwanda’s most popular musician – a United Nations official even dubbed him the “Rwandan Michael Jackson.” A sometime wedding singer, Bikindi’s lyrics often told of love stories and his country’s beautiful landscape.

But Bikindi’s music could also be dangerous. Over the three months in which almost a million Tutsis were massacred during the Rwandan Civil War, the country’s Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines repeatedly broadcast the singer’s violent, inflammatory songs. In 2008, Bikindi, an ethnic Hutu, was convicted for his role in inciting war crimes.

The Bikindi story is but one of the case studies covered in “Wars, Diaspora and Music” – a University of Toronto course in the Faculty of Arts & Science that explores the important role that music often plays in ethnic conflicts, wars, exile and displacement.

“We look at how music can be a weapon – as military music and propaganda,” says course creator Anna Shternshis, the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.

“But we also look at songs created by people under duress – songs about love and the reclamation of humanity, when everything has been destroyed.”

Shternshis says she conceived of “Wars, Diaspora & Music” while working on Yiddish Glory, the Grammy-nominated album of Holocaust-era Yiddish songs she assembled with Russian performer Psoy Korolenko.

Anna Shternshis is the director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and is the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Yiddish Glory is part of the course’s syllabus, along with music from many other conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries. That includes music from Rwanda, Korea, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Palestine.

“I decided to take this course as I had never heard of anything like it,” says Anjali Joshi-Dave, who is in her third year as a member of Trinity College. “Although I do not play any musical instruments, I adore music and was interested to see its connection to violence and diasporas from an academic perspective.”

Gabriella Batikian is a fourth-year member of Victoria College. A member of the Armenian diaspora, she grew up listening to a wealth of music from her heritage – much of which was produced around the time of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

She says the course helped her contextualize such music, as well as that from other countries.

“We do a deep analysis of the lyrics that we’re studying,” Batikian says. “And it’s really interesting to learn how music can be used for good and for bad. We’ve learned how it can be used as a propaganda tool and to incite violence. But at the same time, music is also used to comfort survivors of war. That’s the main thing – discovering the power that music truly holds.”

War invariably involves displacement – hence its connection to diasporic communities longing for home. To this end, students learn about initiatives such as the U.S.-based Refugee Orchestra Project.

Shternshis is a scholar of refugee experience and a supporter of refugees in Toronto.

“In class, we’ve discussed what kind of music is created in refugee camps,” she says. “Listening to music like this becomes a way of learning what people really care about. And I think that when students examine events in future, they will count music among the sources they use to try and make sense of them.”

By studying music produced within different conflict environments, Shternshis has drawn several unique insights. She notes, for example, that the closer a musician is to conflict, the less “martial” the music becomes. That includes war songs in which soldiers sing about their loved ones back home, or joke about inferior army food.

“A lot of soldiers also learn to play a musical instrument, because they desperately need the emotional break,” she says.

Hearts of Pine by Joshua D. Pilzer (Oxford University Press)

The course also features a unit on Hearts of Pine, a book by Joshua Pilzer, an associate professor in the Faculty of Music. The book explores how Korean women used song as a means of coping with trauma while forced into sexual enslavement during the Second World War.

“When people live through sexual violence in war, very few songs describe the violence itself,” says Shternshis, noting it was a phenomenon she noticed when interviewing Holocaust survivors who were also musicians. “They sing about everything else but that.”

Shternshis has been teaching “Wars, Diaspora & Music” since 2018 and changes the syllabus every year to incorporate music from the world’s current wars. “I keep hoping that this will become a historical course,” she says ruefully. “But it is always contemporary.”

Last year, for example, she monitored music – emerging in real time on social media – created during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year, she and her students are keeping watch on music from the Israel–Hamas war with the help of a student translator.

While it is painful to engage with contemporaneous pain, Shternshis says it’s a valuable way of recording experiences and emotions that are easily forgotten with the passage of time.

What unites the music studied in the course is its enormous power – both to incite killing, as in the case of Rwanda’s Bikindi, but also to provide healing.

Shternshis says the latter may ultimately be stronger than the former.

“If a person who lives under extreme duress is able to enjoy music, that often gives them incredible strength to move on,” Shternshis says, adding that her course offers a glimpse of the human spirit at its most threatened – and most triumphant.

“We are asking: What are the things that people are saying, or singing, or even laughing about in conditions that are not designed for life at all?”

Curator focuses on personal objects and stories to share Holocaust survivors' experiences

siddiq22 — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 20:00:35 +0000

Curator focuses on personal objects and stories to share Holocaust survivors' experiences

siddiq22 Mon, 07/10/2023 - 16:00

Cutline

Sara-Jane Vigneault graduated from the University of Toronto in 2021 with a master's degree in history (supplied image)

David Goldberg

Topic

Our Community

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Alumni

Centre for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies

Humanities

Subheadline

For U of T alumna Sara-Jane Vigneault, museums can play a crucial role in the battle against misinformation

A teddy bear belonging to Holocaust survivor Marianne Constantine is one of the many donated objects University of Toronto alum Sara-Jane Vigneault has handled as a curator at the Montreal Holocaust Museum since earning her master’s degree in history through the Centre for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies (CERES) at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the collaborative graduate program in Jewish studies.

“What I appreciate most about this job is meeting survivors and families and working with them to tell their stories,” says Vigneault, who graduated in 2021. “I’ll never take this for granted, because it’s a privilege to be there for them.”

Vigneault notes that museums can play a crucial role in the battle against misinformation, whitewashing and conspiracy theories. A recent survey found that nearly a third of North American teens think the Holocaust is an exaggerated or fabricated event.

“We need to continue creating spaces to analyze the personal experiences of communities targeted during the Holocaust. I also believe it is necessary to offer dialogue with other genocides and conflicts,” Vigneault says.

These are important times of growth for Holocaust museums in Canada, with expansion of the Montreal Holocaust Museum and recent opening of the new Toronto Holocaust Museum, whose chief curator, Rachel Libman, is also an alum of U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science and has collaborated closely with Vigneault.

Although not Jewish, Vigneault was particularly attentive to questions about the Holocaust and its legacies while pursuing her coursework in the faculty's Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and CERES.

Her master’s project focused on Irène Némirovsky, author of Suite Française, and Némirovsky's daughters’ experiences of the war through their writings. Vigneault’s thesis, Filling and Bridging the Gaps: Two Daughters’ Paths to Retrieve, Uncover and Recollect their Mother from Beyond Obliteration considers Élisabeth Gille’s and Denise Epstein-Dauplé’s coping processes as they pieced together the memories of a mother that Vichy France seized from them.

Vigneault considers literature as a site of continuity between Némirovsky – who was arrested as a stateless Jew and killed in Auschwitz – and her daughters.

“I wanted to see how literature enabled them to reconnect and work through traumatic experiences,” says Vigneault, who contacted Némirovsky’s grandson as part of her research. She interviewed him and obtained permission to access crucial archives.

“Sara-Jane frames the narrative theoretically and analytically yet always keeps sight of Némirovsky and her daughters as people – individual women with personalities, feelings, fears and needs. It is not easy to write history in this way,” says Vigneault's thesis supervisor Doris Bergen, the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies in U of T's department of history.

Vigneault's research took her to Hungary's Living Memorial, where she explored the politics of memory and interviewed Holocaust survivors, scholars and activists (supplied image)

“She tackled enormous questions about the nature of historical research, the limits and possibilities of the archives and the responsibility of a scholar to the people – living and dead – who are our sources and our subjects.”

Experiential learning also bolstered Vigneault’s U of T experience, including a research trip to Budapest, Hungary, where she worked on the politics of memory. There she interviewed scholars, survivors and activists about the Living Memorial, a counter-memorial created in response to the Hungarian government’s refusal to acknowledge the country’s role in the Holocaust.

Vigneault is currently pursuing her PhD in history at the University of Cambridge. She works on intimate contacts between French colonial soldiers and European women during the First and Second World Wars and investigates how French authorities tried to control racialized soldiers’ proximity to white women and maintain colonial borders.

For Vigneault, her work as a researcher and at the museum serves to bring forward the stories of marginalized groups and encourages people to reflect on their individual and collective roles and learn from history.

At the Montreal Holocaust Museum, Vigneault pursues that work alongside Jewish survivors like Marianne Constantine, who survived the Holocaust in Hungary with her mother and grandmother, only to be separated from them after the war. She reunited with her parents in Canada in 1952.

As a child, Constantine’s one constant was the teddy bear she kept throughout the ordeal – the same teddy bear she entrusted to Vigneault and the museum more than 75 years later.

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‘We all need to be changemakers’: U of T marks International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

mattimar — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 18:47:37 +0000

‘We all need to be changemakers’: U of T marks International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

mattimar Tue, 03/21/2023 - 14:47

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From left: panel members Pardeep Singh Nagra, Hiren Mistry, Umberin Najeeb and Anna Shternshis (photo by Polina Teif)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Anti-Racism & Cultural Diversity Office

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

IDERD

Alumni

Equity

Meric Gertler

Members of the University of Toronto community gathered in-person and online Tuesday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD).

Presented by U of T’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office, the event held at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy comprised panel and community discussions, and was attended by students, staff, faculty and alumni from the three campuses. It was also available via livestream.

People around the world have observed IDERD since it was established by the United Nations to denounce apartheid and honour the lives of 69 peaceful demonstrators killed when police opened fire on a crowd of protestors in South Africa on March 21, 1960.

U of T President Meric Gertler said IDERD is an opportunity to reflect on the university’s current approach and to determine where improvement is still needed.

He noted that there’s been a “long history of equity work at the University of Toronto, which is a key part of our institutional-led campaign to eliminate racism and advance inclusive excellence,” and that anti-racism working groups across the three campuses have made tangible progress in addressing racial and religious discrimination in teaching and learning, student experience, faculty and staff recruitment and engagement, and community-based research.

“We know that the entire university community is collectively responsible for addressing all forms of racism and that every member must participate to achieve the deep and lasting change that is needed,” President Gertler said.

U of T President Meric Gertler said the university community is collectively responsible for addressing all forms of racism (photo by Polina Teif)

The event also featured remarks by Nouman Ashraf, an associate professor, teaching stream, at the Rotman School of Management, a panel discussion moderated by Leigh Naturkach, the executive director of the Mosaic Institute and a steel pan performance by Devindra Ramoutar, and a closed session community discussion focused on the themes of faith and racial discrimination.

Members of the public panel included: physician Umberin Najeeb, associate professor and vice-chair of culture and inclusion in the department of medicine at Temerty Faculty of Medicine; Anna Shternshis, director of Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish studies, Pardeep Singh Nagra, human rights and equity adviser at the Halton District School Board: and Hiren Mistry, vice-principal at White Oaks Secondary School.

They discussed their personal and professional experiences with racial and religious discrimination – and how that has shaped their work. Panel members also emphasized the importance of addressing intersectionality, understanding one’s own implicit bias and being an active listener as ways to address discrimination and racism in education and in society.

Najeeb said she remains hopeful in her equity, diversity, and inclusion work because of the changes she’s seen throughout her career.

“In medical education, we never used to speak about faith,” she says, noting that the Temerty Faculty of Medicine now asks students if they require religious accommodations during their studies. “My program never asked me that. I didn’t know I could get days off for religious celebrations like Eid.”

While Najeeb said the work can sometimes be exhausting, she said she is encouraged by the conversations that are now taking place.

“We can all only stay hopeful if positive changes continue to happen,” Najeeb said. “We all need to be changemakers.”

‘Putting people front and centre’: Historian Anna Shternshis keeps Holocaust survivors' stories alive

siddiq22 — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:36:02 +0000

‘Putting people front and centre’: Historian Anna Shternshis keeps Holocaust survivors' stories alive

siddiq22 Fri, 01/27/2023 - 11:36

Cutline

Anna Shternshis, director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, explores Jewish history through the long-lost songs of Holocaust survivors (photo by Jaclyn Shapiro)

Topic

Music

Research

For University of Toronto historian Anna Shternshis, understanding the past means connecting with people’s stories – or, in the case of her research, their songs.

Shternshis, director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish Studies in the department of Germanic languages and literatures in the Faculty of Arts & Science, examines Jewish culture in Russia and the Soviet Union through oral history and Yiddish culture, music and theatre.

Her 2018 project Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of WWII, highlights forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union. Shternshis collaborated with Russian songwriter and performer Psoy Korolenko to contextualize archival material, bringing together a global ensemble of musicians to produce a Grammy Award-nominated album. The resulting songs reveal how Jews fought against fascism, tried against all odds to save their families and expressed themselves through music.

Shternshis, who serves as special adviser on community engagement to the dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, has continued this work, most recently collaborating with the BBC for a radio documentary exploring the long-lost wartime songs of survivors who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Central Asia.

She spoke to Josslyn Johnstone at the Faculty of Arts & Science and Tabassum Siddiqui at U of T News prior to the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust about how survivors’ stories still resonate today.

How does International Holocaust Remembrance Day help us better understand history – and learn from the past?

Having one day of the year when we talk about an issue is not enough, but I think it’s important to have that time when we’re reminded to think about what happens to a group of people, often a minority. if they're not protected by law and by society's understanding of justice. At least there is one day when we talk about what happened to Jews in Europe – and it’s especially important in the context of university education because this is our chance to rigorously address the issue with our community of students and faculty. If not us, then who else could talk about this in a way that’s relevant? It’s important and it offers a chance to see the complexity of history by putting vulnerable individuals front and centre.

What are you trying to learn and convey about Jewish history through your research?

I’m studying how people experienced violence during the Second World War, and how they made sense of it during the war itself. I’m looking at the songs they created to document what was going on and express what they were feeling. Specifically, I’m interested in the history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and my focus is on people who rarely get to tell that story in their own voice. For many, music was the only way to document what was going on with them – and to leave a message for the future, which many of them did not expect to see

Anna Shternshis, top, with Yiddish Glory collaborator Psoy Korolenko (photo and design by Dan Rosenberg)

What have survivors told you about why music was a vehicle for expressing what they had been through?

In the archives that they found in Kyiv years ago, there were no stories – just songs. Survivors were terrified of telling those stories right after the war because the Soviet governmen ttreated anyone who survived the war and German occupation with suspicion, especially Jews. Survivors who had lived through hell were now afraid to go to jail for surviving. The only thing they could do was to sing because authorship of a song was not immediately attributed to them – they could just say they heard it somewhere. So, they told that story through music. History and memory are not always telling the same story.

Have you found common threads within the music they created?

In these songs, there are a lot of calls for justice; there’s also a lot of humour – they’re making fun of things that terrify us, like death or starvation. There was a sense that a lot of the people who were writing these songs would not see tomorrow. Many of these sentiments become less relevant after the war – and that’s why these songs are almost always forgotten, because people begin to worry about other things. But they give us a sense of what mattered to people there at that time.

You’re continuing your research into the songs of Holocaust survivors by looking at what happened in Central Asia during the war. Why is that region significant?

This past fall, I went to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with BBC Radio producer Michael Rossi – who had done a story a few years ago on my previous work – and British singer Alice Zawadzki, whose family were Polish citizens in Kazakhstan during the war. We wanted to explore the angle of those Muslim lands rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. So, she was tracing her grandmother and I was tracing the songs. And when we got there, she sang some of those songs and some of the local musicians performed with her as well. We used photographs from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to see where people had gone during that time. The story is incredible – 1.4 million Soviet Jews and around 250,000 Polish Jews survived the war there. And there are a lot of descendants of those people living in Toronto today.

But when we got there, one of the takeaways for me was how the memory and knowledge of that story was just not there. We thought it would be a source of pride – that history of saving all these refugees. But because there are almost no Jews left in the region, the story is just gone. So, it felt really special to bring the songs there and sing them to remind ourselves that just because history is forgotten doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. And in today’s world, where so many refugees are fleeing and countries are once again arguing about whether they should welcome people, it was important to go there and remember how these small countries with no resources still rescued all these Jewish families that were not welcome anywhere else in the world.

Anna Shternshis, left, and Alice Zawadzki in Bukhara, Uzbekistan during their research for a new BBC radio documentary (photo courtesy of Anna Shternshis)

Why is doing this work important to you?

I teach diaspora studies and the students and I often discuss what it’s like to be asked the question, “Where are you from?” This question rarely comes out of curiosity, but most often out of the need to assert difference or even a distrust. My research draws attention to experiences of violence among people who are “not from here,” or treated as strangers even in their own land. It is challenging to look at people as people, as opposed to just talking about numbers, processes and resources, but I argue that such an approach is crucial for understanding both the past and the present. My work is clearly connected to my personal family history as well – through my journeys, I got a little closer to understanding what my ancestors went through.

How can telling the stories of survivors help create a more equitable and inclusive society?

I think a lot about that. Racism often comes from a point of view of fear – and it’s hard to be afraid of someone who you’ve met and had a conversation with, or to see that person as a source of potential danger. Almost all mass violence happens preventively: “We’re going to kill those people so that they don’t kill us.” It’s much harder to believe those kinds of statements if you actually begin to understand the other person. Obviously, my work does not have direct policy implications, but I do think in-depth learning of those refugee experiences really helps, including talking about the history of the Holocaust and antisemitism.

Listen to Yiddish Glory on the BBC Radio 3

‘A win for everyone’: U of T receives green light to proceed with Centre for Civilizations, Cultures & Cities

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:44:52 +0000

‘A win for everyone’: U of T receives green light to proceed with Centre for Civilizations, Cultures & Cities

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 09/07/2021 - 10:44

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A fifth-floor recital hall in the proposed Centre for Civilizations, Cultures & Cities building at 90 Queen's Park will include stunning views of the downtown skyline (Images courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with architects-Alliance)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Institute of Islamic Studies

School of Cities

Cities

Faculty of Law

Faculty of Music

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

St. George

The University of Toronto is welcoming the outcome of a formal mediation process led by the Ontario Land Tribunal that has resulted in the approval of a revised rezoning envelope for the new Centre for Civilizations, Cultures & Cities (CCC) building located at 90 Queen’s Park on the St. George campus.

Once constructed, the building will house U of T’s School of Cities, department of history, department of Near and Middle Eastern civilizations, Institute of Islamic Studies and an arm of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies – all in the Faculty of Arts & Science. It will also include spaces for the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Music, including a world-class music recital hall.

“We are pleased with the result of this settlement hearing process, which saw all parties make compromises in the interest of achieving a positive resolution. That’s a win for the university, the community and the city,” said Christine Burke, U of T’s assistant vice-president, university planning.

The 90 Queen’s Park site was acquired by U of T in 2009. Located near the intersection of Bloor Street and Queen’s Park, the site acts as a key gateway to the St. George campus while linking iconic buildings and structures in the area such as the Royal Ontario Museum, Edward Johnson Building, Falconer Hall and Flavelle House.

Although City Planning and Heritage Preservation Services staff reports supportive of and recommending approval of the project at both the Heritage Preservation Board and at Community Council, members of the community expressed concerns with the proposal and the project was ultimately deferred at the meeting of the Toronto and East York Community Council on Oct. 15, 2020 pending completion of a future Queen's Park cultural heritage landscape study. The university appealed to the Ontario Lands Tribunal in October 2020.

The parties involved – the university, city and Queen’s Park Heritage Precinct Coalition, a non-profit that represents several local resident associations – agreed to engage in formal mediation earlier this year.

The result is a revised building envelope that redistributes the building’s massing to respond to community concerns about the way the building interfaces with its surroundings, while still offering the same amount of collaborative space for U of T students and researchers, civic leaders and members of the public interested in city-building and diversity.

Among the adjustments made to the building design were setting its average height to 33.6 metres across its three roofs, a reduction of more than five metres from the original proposal. The tallest portion of the building to the north of the site will now have a height of 35 metres, with the shortest north-east portion standing at 18 metres tall to sync with the ROM’s east wing.

The revised massing design was accepted by city council and approved by the Ontario Land Tribunal with the consent of all parties, clearing the way for the project to proceed.

“Thanks to this positive outcome, we can now kickstart the detailed design of 90 Queen’s Park and ask our architects to get back to the drawing board, so that we can move into construction as soon as possible,” Burke said. “The need for this space is critical to meet the space demands of the faculty and the university.”

Evelyn Casquenette, senior planner at U of T, said that it was important that the revised design continue to conserve the 19^th-century Falconer Hall building. While the westernmost wing of Falconer Hall will be removed, “one of the many positives with the new design is that more breathing room has been provided around Falconer Hall, so there will be more space between the CCC and Falconer,” Casquenette said.

She added the proposal will also make for more prominent framing of Falconer Hall from along Queen’s Park, while the building’s restored heritage west wall will be visible from inside the CCC building lobby to the south and from a new courtyard space between the two buildings on the north.

Casquenette noted that the revised massing did not alter the fifth-floor music recital hall’s stunning views of the downtown skyline – calling it a “spectacular space” for the community at large to enjoy once the building is constructed. There is another event space on the eighth floor that will be linked to a green roof terrace that will similarly showcase views of the city and U of T.

The redesign also maintains original plans for a sizeable north plaza and outdoor café to welcome members of the public.

Construction on the project, which is expected to take approximately three years, is scheduled to begin in early 2023.

“90 Queen’s Park is such an important project for U of T, so we’re delighted to be able to move ahead and work hard to create a special place on campus where the university and city connect and interact,” Burke said.

“We look forward to sharing the designs of the project as it evolves and takes shape.”

90 Queen’s Park: ‘An incredible new gateway to the campus’

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:08:13 +0000

90 Queen’s Park: ‘An incredible new gateway to the campus’

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 07/14/2020 - 20:08

Cutline

(all renderings by Diller Scofidio + Renfro)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Islamic Studies

School of Cities

Faculty of Art & Science

Faculty of Law

Faculty of Music

Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations

ROM

The University of Toronto and members of the public are taking part in a virtual community consultation organized by the City of Toronto for the new building planned for 90 Queen’s Park.

The site was acquired by U of T in 2009 and is envisioned as a major centre of scholarship in urban issues, as well as a city landmark and key gateway to the St. George campus. Located on the site of Falconer Hall and the former McLaughlin Planetarium, it is adjacent to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

The university hopes to obtain approval for the building in September and begin construction in the spring of 2021 on what would be a three-year project.

The building will be home to U of T’s new School of Cities as well as the departments of History, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, the Institute of Islamic Studies and an arm of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. It will include spaces for the Faculty of Music, Faculty of Law and the ROM. A public plaza, outdoor café and 250-seat recital hall are also among the designs for the building.

Since 2010, there have been many community meetings and workshops over U of T’s plans for the site, with resulting refinements and improvements. Ahead of the latest consultations, U of T News spoke to Assistant Vice-President, University Planning, Operations and Real Estate Partnerships Christine Burke, about the building, its envisioned impact on Toronto and the importance of the community engagement.

Tuesday’s virtual consultation follows over a decade of community meetings and consultations. Why has U of T placed so much importance on consulting with the city and community members on this particular project?

We always consult broadly on our projects, but this one in particular has far exceeded what is typical for consultation on a project in the City of Toronto. At the university level, because this site has been in conception all the way since 1997 and then in our 2011 Campus Master Plan, there has been significant consultation both by the city as well as ourselves even before hiring architects.

There have been several U of T-hosted consultation meetings held in advance of making the secondary plan application for the St. George campus in 2016, over five city-hosted consultation meetings as well as five additional city-led meetings, including Community Council and Council in 2017-18 on the secondary plan for the St. George campus, and this is one of the development sites covered in the secondary plan. But more specifically on this project, we’ve had two Community Liaison Committee meetings in advance of submitting a development application in February 2019, a public, joint city and U of T design review panel meeting and the city has hosted a community consultation.

We’ve also had four additional working group meetings led by the local city councillor, and those included resident associations and other members of the public that are outside the typical radius reached during consultations.

So this project in particular has had a significant amount of consultation, and we think that’s important at this gateway location. We have modified our plans significantly through this engagement, and we are pleased with how the design of the building and its significant public realm component has evolved. Tuesday’s further consultation is an opportunity for us to present all the changes and once again participate in public dialogue and clear up any misinformation.

Does this project involve a heritage district and are there plans for demolition of any heritage buildings?

There has been some community discussion about an existing Queen’s Park heritage district, but there is no such district. This site is not located within a heritage conservation district.

However, we acknowledge that the site is critical given its proximity to key open spaces like Philosopher’s Walk as well as many heritage buildings like Falconer Hall, the ROM and being across the street from the buildings at Victoria University.

We have heritage consultants who are working closely with us to ensure that the approach to the site is appropriate. One of the ways we’ve done that is, for example, the proposed building exposes the southern façade of the east wing of the ROM and allows the ROM heritage façade to remain clearly visible.

We’re also cantilevering a very small portion over the rear part of Falconer Hall, which is one of our heritage buildings, so that it really maintains the prominence of Falconer Hall on Queen’s Park. The former Planetarium, which is not listed on the heritage register or designated, and determined to not be suitable for reuse, is being removed to make way for the large public plaza and new entrance/café.

It’s true that the site is a complex one and has a significant number of heritage structures in its vicinity. There has been a lot of discussion with city heritage staff along the way and there has been special care taken to make sure that this is done right and we are working hard to blend the old and new in a thoughtful design.

What measures are being taken to ensure that the building is in step with the surrounding neighbourhood from an aesthetic standpoint?

Design excellence is important to the University in all of its capital projects. We play a key role in Toronto in terms of being a city builder so we take design excellence to heart.

This is a prominent site in the city in the Bloor Street Cultural Corridor, so we felt that meant we needed to find the right architects for the project because it will be a landmark building. We engaged Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with Architects Alliance as the local firm, a firm of international renown, whose projects have included reimagining the High Line in New York City and several buildings at Columbia University.

For this project, because of its integration with heritage and contemporary architecture, we were really looking for a firm that would be able to provide a calibre of design that would be unexpected but beautiful, have a presence and perform, at this key gateway to the campus.

That doesn’t mean it would detract from its heritage context but rather try to find a design solution that would both engage the city as well as contextually fit in its very unique landscape. With this project we have integration of a historic building with a brand new building and a critical role to play along the street, to engage and welcome in the city.

How has the design of the building changed since the first proposal?

We have altered the design of the building significantly to both incorporate city and community feedback as well as ensure that aesthetic elements better respond to its surroundings.

The height of the building has been reduced significantly over the years in response to community and city feedback and meets the test in terms of protection of the Ontario Legislative Assembly, so that is definitely something we’ve been mindful of in terms of determining the height. The height and overall massing and siting also follow a number of important planning and urban design principles. More recently, in response to feedback, we have further reduced the height of the building to 38.7 metres (plus mechanical penthouse), increased the amount of Falconer Hall to be retained, reduced the overhang of our recital hall over our heritage building, and further reduced program size including classrooms to bring the overall size of the building down by approximately 20 per cent of the original building application.

As well, we have increased the amount of landscaped area. The building now has a very large courtyard and fully exposes the southern façade of the east wing of the ROM. This courtyard becomes the primary entrance to the building. The public realm will be enhanced – there’s going to be a lot of soft as well as hard landscaping, a café to draw people in and for the public and university community to co-mingle. In previous iterations, that realm was smaller.

What’s going to happen to the trees currently in the area?

There has been some concern raised that all the trees on the site are being removed, but that’s not accurate. There are four mature trees in front of Flavelle House and these are being protected in the plans. These include two of the largest mature oak trees near the site boundary that is being protected.

While some trees will need to be removed to facilitate construction, only two of these are mature and in good health. All others are either not mature and/or are diseased and infested, or stunted in their growth right next to the foundation wall of the historic house.

We are abiding by the city’s requirements for replacement trees that will be planted at a rate of 3:1, in fact we are exceeding this requirement with the addition of 31 new trees in total. As well, we have worked with a city arborist, and the tree proposal that we have in place has been approved by Toronto Urban Forestry, so we have their full support on the proposal.

Taking a step back, why did the university decide to demolish the McLaughlin Planetarium?

The planetarium hasn’t been operated as a planetarium since 1995 and it closed due to declining attendance and interest years before it was purchased by the university. While there has previously been private sector interest in redeveloping the site, the sale to the university was heralded at the time in anticipation of institutional use, and the opportunity to remain connected to the ROM. The university’s astrophysics group is now leading the effort to plan for a planetarium experience in the heart of the St. George campus.

In terms of the building’s removal, the university made a lot of effort to look at adaptively reusing the building. We reached out to external consultants for their opinions as well and concluded that there were technical difficulties in altering the structure for other purposes.

When you consider demolishing a building, there is interest from the city to consider whether it is a heritage building. Our heritage consultants – ERA Architects – conducted a heritage impact assessment as part of the application and concluded that the planetarium is not a significant cultural heritage resource and it is not appropriate for designation. Conserving Falconer Hall, and the heritage fabric around Flavelle House and the ROM has been at the forefront of the design thinking.

There are some interesting ideas happening around potentially having some kind of commemoration in the area where the planetarium sits today. But the benefits to the public realm that are happening with the building’s removal and opening up the plaza to the ROM and displaying the heritage of Falconer Hall and the ROM have also been key considerations.

What do you see as the future for the new building?

It’s a really fascinating juxtaposition of programs that are being planned for the building – as well as cultural elements such as the music recital hall to engage the city.

What’s so interesting is it will be a place that draws together researchers, students, journalists, city planners and civic leaders from the university and around the world and be a place to explore – with the School of Cities in particular – and think about cities. For example, we can look at how Toronto has drawn people from around the world and from different backgrounds, how we’ve worked together to address challenges and inspire the cities of tomorrow when it comes to city planning and cultural diversity.

So it’s not just about what’s happening inside the building. Its location right at the edge of where the campus meets the city and in the cultural corridor, adjacent to the ROM and near the provincial legislature, makes it an incredible new gateway to the campus.

As with other gateway projects at the edges of our campus, such as the Daniels School of Architecture and the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre, this is an opportunity to interact and connect with the city, and the design reflects that. We want this to be a building where the University and city connect with each other, and we will continue to work hard to ensure that we achieve that.

Note: Further changes have been made to the building’s envelope as part of formal mediation process

'Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II' performed for the first time in Israel: New York Times

perry.king — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 04:00:00 +0000

'Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II' performed for the first time in Israel: New York Times

perry.king Wed, 07/17/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

U of T's Anna Shternshis, in Tel Aviv earlier this month for the first Israeli performance of Yiddish Glory (photo by Riva Nur)

Topic

Global

Humanities

Yiddish songs written by Soviet Jews during the Second World War that were discovered in Ukraine by a University of Toronto professor have been performed for the first time in Israel.

The New York Times reports that songs from the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II – a compilation sparked by the research of Professor Anna Shternshis, the director of U of T's Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies – were performed in Tel Aviv earlier this month. Shternshis worked with Russian singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko and other musicians to adapt handwritten songs about the Holocaust and Jewish resistance to fascism.

“The people who sang these songs all dreamt of Israel, but nearly none got to see it created,” Shternshis told the Associated Press, in a story published by the New York Times. “They couldn’t make it, but their music made it.”

The project is an effort to resurrect the Yiddish language. Many of the world’s Yiddish speakers perished in the Holocaust and survivors often refrained from speaking it publicly again because of anti-Semitism.

Unprecedented survey of Jews in Canada finds 'exceptional cohesion,' highlights paths for programming and education

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 19:47:05 +0000

Unprecedented survey of Jews in Canada finds 'exceptional cohesion,' highlights paths for programming and education

noreen.rasbach Tue, 03/12/2019 - 15:47

Cutline

From left to right: Keith Neuman, executive director of the Environics Institute; Rhonda Lenton, president and vice-chancellor of York University; and U of T Professor Robert Brym (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Breaking Research

Division of University Advancement

Research & Innovation

Sociology

In a few years, Canada’s Jewish population may exceed 400,000, making it the largest Jewish community outside of Israel and the United States.

And yet, the Canadian Jewish community is one of the least studied in the world – until now.

A new survey published today captures the identity, priorities, attitudes and values of Jews across Canada, and the results show a remarkably cohesive community overall, albeit one with its own internal divisions and associations between culture, religion and politics.

Conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, in partnership with Robert Brym, S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science, and Professor Rhonda Lenton, a sociologist who is president and vice-chancellor of York University, the study surveyed a representative sample of 2,335 Jews in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver, where 84 per cent of Canada’s Jews live.

Among many other things, “the survey indicates the general orientation that respondents have toward being Jewish – what they consider essential or important to being Jewish,” says Brym.

A copy of the 92-page report on the survey is available on the Environics Institute website.

The survey asked respondents to answer questions about participation in Jewish cultural traditions, belief in God or a universal spirit, marriage and the upbringing of children, prevalence of discrimination and harassment, political ideologies, association with Israel, participation in Jewish education, connection to local Jewish communities, knowledge of Hebrew and more.

Community is close-knit

A key finding of the survey is that the Canadian Jewish community is exceptionally cohesive compared to other Jewish communities outside of Israel.

“More secularized elements of Jewish communities are assimilating to the cultures of their country of residence at a fairly rapid rate,” says Brym. “The Canadian data suggests there is a vibrant community here that’s retained its cohesion pretty remarkably, much more so than in the U.S. or Russia, for example.”

Lenton’s speech at an event marking the release of the survey echoed this sentiment: “While analysts often claim that the non-religious Jewish diaspora is dissipating,” she says, “Canadian Jewry seems to be doing a good job of bucking the trend.”

While Lenton credits a strong institutional framework maintained by Canadian Jewish communities for what she and Brym call this “Canadian exceptionalism,” she also points to the influence of historical and political forces like the role of Canadian public policy in fostering the growth of ethnic institutions.

Moreover, because of the United States’ anti-colonial war and the strong American patriotism it produced, American Jews “developed a stronger national identity than Canadians did,” says Lenton. Therefore, American Jews were more hesitant to adopt the ideals of Zionism – the belief in the development of a Jewish state in what is now Israel – than Canadian Jews.

These and related factors “helped the Canadian Jewish community develop a stronger identity over the last century,” says Brym.

The future of Canada's Jewish community

A striking finding of the survey, says Brym, is that “Jews are three times more likely than non-Jews to think that Jews often experience discrimination.

“When most people think about discrimination, they think about groups that are underprivileged or have lower socioeconomic status,” explains Brym.

“But the Jewish population is very highly educated. So we’re a privileged group, and most people think, ‘If you’re privileged, how can you be discriminated against?’ But when Jews think of discrimination, they think of being snubbed and being criticized; they think of vandalism of Jewish property like graveyards and synagogues. They have in mind criticism for expressing support for the existence of the Jewish state.”

Brym highlights the need for education and changing public discourse about discrimination, particularly at a moment when we see an alarming rise in white nationalism and reported hate crimes in the U.S. and Canada against not only Jews, but other historically oppressed groups.

“It’s a matter of public policy,” he says. “What are we doing in the school system to teach kids about different kinds of discrimination?”

Pointing to potential future directions for the Canadian Jewish community, the survey found that the younger generation of Jews in Canada identifies more strongly with aspects of Jewish culture and community than strict religious observance and allegiance to Israel.

Brym thinks this is an important finding for community leaders and those who run programming and activities for younger Jews in Canada.

“If religion is not the principal focus for many younger people, and if Israel is less the focus, we have to ask: What kinds of activities need to be emphasized for a younger generation if we want to keep the community cohesive?”

Survey harnessed multi-institutional collaboration

“I’ve wanted to do this project for decades,” says Brym, who often discussed it with Lenton – the two are married. After meeting Michael Adams, founder and president of the Environics Research Group, at the annual S.D. Clark Symposium at U of T in 2016, serious discussions began. Soon, Keith Neuman, the Environics Institute’s executive director, joined the research team.

The survey was supported by Brym’s and Lenton’s research funds and donations from the Jewish communities of Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, as well as U of T’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and Office of Advancement. In-kind support was provided by the Environics Institute, Brym, Lenton and York University’s Communications & Public Affairs Division.

Brym predicts the survey is only the start of more research, analysis and collaboration.

While the survey provides a useful description of Jews in Canada – their opinions, and associations between those opinions and other characteristics – there has not yet been sustained inquiry into why certain associations exist or how multiple causes could be influencing associations. Brym intends to tackle these and related questions over the next year.

“The principal investigators, social scientists from other universities and PhD students from U of T are going to be writing a series of academic articles on this survey,” he says.

New U of T building to create a cultural and intellectual gateway between university and city

Romi Levine — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 05:00:00 +0000

New U of T building to create a cultural and intellectual gateway between university and city

Romi Levine Thu, 02/21/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

A rendering of the new U of T building located at 90 Queen's Park (rendering by bloomimages, courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro)

Romi Levine

Topic

Archeology

School of Cities

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Faculty of Law