The "Malestrom" at Christie Pits: Jewish Masculinity and the Toronto Riot of 1933
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40141Abstract
The night of August 16, 1933 witnessed one of the most brutal riots in Canadian history. When Nazi sympathizers waved a swastika flag at a baseball game in Toronto’s Christie Pits park, Jewish players and spectators retaliated. For the next six hours, thousands of Jewish and gentile teenage boys attacked each other with unprecedented ferocity. As the issue of Jewish masculinity at Christie Pits has gone largely unexplored, two questions arise for the gender historian: to what extent did gender play a role in the actions of the Jewish rioters?; and how has gender shaped the way the riot is remembered in the Jewish community? This article argues that Jewish masculinity helped shape both the character and collective memory of the riot through the “macho-mensch” model, which highlighted the attributes of male physicality, ethics, and Jewish identity, and which excluded the role and commemoration of women.
References
Arnold Ages, "Busy Canadian Jewish Academics are Writing," Jewish Western Bulletin, 17 September 1987, 18.
Benjamin G. Sack, History of the Jews in Canada: From the Earliest Beginnings to the Present Day (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1945), Israel Medres, Between the Wars: Canadian Jews in Transition (Montreal: 1964).
Beth S. Wenger, "American Jewish Immigrants and the Invention of Europe," in Ira Robinson, Naftali S. Cohn, and Lorenzo Ditommaso, eds. History, Memory, and Jewish Identity (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016), 178.
Brianna Goldberg, "A Riot's Lasting Legacy," National Post, 16 August 2008, A10.
Calvin Goldscheider, "Macro and Micro Insights into Contemporary Jewish Identities: Europe, Israel, and the United States," in Robinson, Cohn, and Ditommaso, History, Memory, and Jewish Identity, 296-97.
Cecilia Morgan, Commemorating Canada: History, Heritage, and Memory: 1850s-1990s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 87, 163-64.
Christina Burr and Carol A. Reader, "Fanny 'Bobbie' Rosenfeld: A 'Modern Woman' of Sport and Journalism in Twentieth Century Canada," Sports History Review, 44 (2013): 120-143. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.44.2.120
Cyril H. Levitt and William Shaffir, The Riot at Christie Pits (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1987).
Cyril Levitt and William Shaffir, "The Swastika as Dramatic Symbol: A Case-Study of Ethnic Violence in Canada," 77-96, in Robert J. Bryn, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds. The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 92.
Danny Rosenberg, "Athletics in the Ward and Beyond: Neighborhoods, Jews, and Sport in Toronto, 1900-1939," in Ralph C. Wilcox et al., eds. Sporting Dystopias: The Making and Meanings of Urban Sport Culture (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), 148.
Erna Paris, Jews: An Account of Their Experience in Canada (Toronto: MacMillan of Canada, 1980).
Gerald R. Gems, "Jews, Sport, and the Construction of an American Identity," in Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (Leidan, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 87.
Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Niagara Falls, NY: Stoddart Pub, 1998), 198-99.
Hyman, Gender and Assimilation, 137-38; Joyce Antler, You Never Call You Never Writel: A History of the Jewish Mother (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007): 25-26.
Jack Kugelmass, "Why Sports?," in idem, ed. Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 4.
Jack Kugelmass, ed., Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).
Jack Lipinsky, Imposing Their Will: an Organizational History of Jewish Toronto, 1933-1948 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press, 2011). 43-44.
James Opp and John C. Walsh, eds. Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010).
Jeffrey S. Gurock, Constant Challenge: Sports and American Judaism (London: Toby Press, 2017).
Jeffrey S. Gurock, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
Joanne Cohen, "A gentle, gay Moses," Daily Xtra, 1 October 2003, 2, http://www.dailyxtra.com/toronto/gentle-gay-moses-55243.
Judy M. Torrance, Public Violence in Canada, 1867-1982 (Kingston and Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press, 1986), 96, 97.
Karen X. Tulchinsky, The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2004), 35.
Lita Rose Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf: Fascist Movements in Canada in the Thirties (North York, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975).
Michael Brenner and Gideon Reuveni, eds., Emancipation through Muscles: Jews and Sports in Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
Michael Brenner, "Introduction: Why Jews and Sports," in Michael Brenner and Gideon Reuveni, eds., Emancipation through Muscles: Jews and Sports in Europe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 3.
Mike Silver, Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing (New York: Lyons Press, 2016), 199, 264.
Monda Halpern, Alice in Shandenland: Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015), 107-109.
Morton Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else...But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 325.
Morton Weinfeld, Review, The Canadian Journal of Sociology 14.2 (Spring 1989): 239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3341299
Nathan Abrams, "Muscles, Mimicry, Menschlikyat, and Madagascar: Jews, Sport, and Nature in US Cinema," in Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (Lejdan, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 124-26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004284494_009
Nathan Abrams, "The Jew in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics on Film," in Leonard J. Greenspoon, ed. Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2012), 53-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wq5xt.8
Nicole Neatby and Peter Hodgins "Introduction," in idem, eds. Settling and Unsettling Memories: Essays in Canadian Public History (Toronto: 2012), 5.
Ontario Sports Hall of Fame, Sammy Luftspring, http://oshof.ca/index.php/honoured-members/item/90-sammyluftspring.
Paula E. Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 137-8.
Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin, eds., Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014).
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, Searching for My Brothers: Jewish Men in a Gentile World (New York: Perigee Trade, 2000).
Rebecca T. Alpert. "The Macho-Mensch: Modelling American Jewish Masculinity and the Heroes of Baseball," in Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin, eds. Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (Leidan, The Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 108-109.
Richard Menkis and Harold Troper, More than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics (Toronto: 2015), 34-42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442620513
Rosie DiManno, "Remembering the Christie Pits Riot," The Toronto Star, 10 August 2013, 1.
Rosie DiManno, "Remembering the Riot of Christie Pits," The Toronto Star, 10 August 2013, A2.
Sammy Luftspring with Brian Swarbrick, Call Me Sammy (Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice Hall of Canada, 1975), 85.
Stephen A. Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979).
Stephen H. Norwood, "American Jewish Muscle': Forging a New Masculinity in the Streets and in the Ring, 1890-1940," Modern Judaism 29, 2 (May 2009): 184-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjp006
Steven Hayward, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2005).
Stuart E. Rosenberg, The Jewish Community in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 1971).
Todd Samuel Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (London and New York: Routledge Jewish Studies Series, 2007), 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203961865
Warren Rosenberg, Legacy of Rage: Jewish Masculinity, Violence, and Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 1, 2.
“Nineteenth-Century Collective Violence: Toward a North American Context," Labour/Le Travail 39 (Spring 1997): 29-30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/25144105
“The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky," Quill and Quire, 2, http://www.quillandquire.com/review/the-five-books-of-moses-lapinsky/.
"Streetfighter Baby Yak was Boxing Champ," The Canadian Jewish News, 29 January 1987, 31.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Canadian Jewish Studies/ Études juives canadiennes is a journal dedicated to the open exchange of information; therefore the author agrees that the work published in the journal be made available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerrcial-No Derivative Woks 4.0 Unported License. The publisher (Association for Canadian Jewish Studies / Association des études juives canadiennes) recognizes the author's intellectual property rights. The author grants the publisher first serial publication rights and the non-exclusive right to mount, preserve and distribute the intellectual property. The journal is digitized and published on the open access website http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cjs/index.
