Field Notes

City, Writer, Conference: A Chava Rosenfarb Conference in Łódź, Poland, October 2023

By Norman Ravvin
June 1, 2024

"If you have not been to Łódź you cannot imagine its texture, the strange uniqueness of its streetscape." In October 2023, the writer and literary scholar Norman Ravvin traveled to Łódź, Poland, to participate in a conference celebrating the postwar Canadian Yiddish-language poet and novelist Chava Rosenfarb, who was born in the city one hundred years earlier. Ravvin reflects on the conference, set amid Łódź's "Year of Chava Rosenfarb" marking the centenary of her birth, Rosenfarb's lasting imprint on Łódź's urban environment, and the legacy of her work in the context of Poland's ongoing post-Communist Jewish revival. 

Click here to read the essay

***

Pro-Palestinian Encampments in Canada: Who are the Supporters and Opponents?

By Robert Brym and Jack Jedwab
May 31, 2024 [Updated September 28, 2024]

The existence of pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses in Canada is supported by just over 16 percent of the country’s adults, according to a Leger poll conducted in May 2024. Robert Brym, a University of Toronto sociologist, and Jack Jebwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, dive into the data and analyze the demographics and ideological underpinnings of the university encampment movement in Canada.

Click here to read the report

***

Jews and Israel 2024 Survey: Ten Further Insights

By Robert Brym
May 30, 2024

“Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions,” published in the spring 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, attracted considerable attention, particularly in Canada’s Jewish community. Some readers of sociologist Robert Brym's report on the survey asked follow-up questions of sufficiently general interest to require answers in a public forum. 

Brym has selected ten questions that he found especially intriguing. Each question is followed by a reply based mainly on secondary analysis of the 2024 data. 

Click here to read Brym's analysis