Sites of the Early Jewish Left in Canada with Ester Reiter
By the 1920s, Kensington Market was home to most of Toronto’s Jewish population and Spadina Avenue was where many Jewish immigrants had found jobs in the garment industry. Working hard under difficult conditions, it was also on Spadina where Jews gathered and organized to build the kind of world they wanted to live in, a socialist world without hate and without exploitation. This included activities that fed the soul — singing, sports, music, theatre — as well as organizing unions, housewives protests and May Day marches. It was up to them to build a better world. Ester Reiter will talk about the Kensington Market sites that served as hubs for these cultural and political activities and the significant contributions made toward realizing these aspirational goals.
Ester Reiter is a senior scholar at York University. Her book, A Future Without Hate or Need: the promise of the Jewish left in Canada, brings to life the rich and multi-layered lives of a dissident political community, their shared experiences and community-building cultural projects, as they attempted to weave together their identity as Jews with their internationalist class politics. Books will be available for purchase at this event.