Going Out into the World: the “Strategic Approach” of Jewish Members of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, 1900-1939

Magdalene Klassen

doi:10.25071/1916-0925.40143

Auteurs-es

Magdalene Klassen

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40143

Résumé

L’Ordre impérial des filles de l’Empire fut une association patriotique féminine non sectaire ayant pour mandat d’affermir le caractère britannique du Canada. Durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres, les membres de l’Ordre se sont consacrés au « devenir-canadien » des immigrants non-britanniques. Bien que l’Ordre ait été constitué d’une majorité de femmes anglo-protestantes, de nombreuses femmes juives issues de la haute bourgeoisie y ont été admises. Ces femmes ont incarné, au sein de l’Ordre, une approche humanitaire à caractère « stratégique ». Le présent article sera consacré aux activités d’Irene Wolff et de Rosetta Joseph, deux sœurs juives ayant chacune adhéré à un chapitre non-confessionnel de l’Ordre, et aux activités de Grace Aguilar, chapitre judéo-montréalais de l’Ordre. En devenant membres de l’Ordre, ces femmes juives d’élite ont cherché à établir, entre juifs et non-juifs, un sentiment de fraternité impériale susceptible d’influencer la conception que se faisaient les anglo-Canadiens de leurs concitoyens juifs et des politiques nationales adoptées à leur égard. L’étude de la participation de ces femmes aux activités de l’Ordre permet de mesurer le potentiel et les limites d’une approche à tendance conservatrice de la politique de la respectabilité. Une fois la période de l’entre-deux-guerres entamée, l’idée de la suprématie britannique qui avait sous-tendu le mandat de l’Ordre s’est mis, graduellement, à tomber dans la désuétude et le caractère de la vie juive canadienne, sous l’impact de profonds changements démographiques, à se transformer de manière irréversible.

Références

ADCJA, Folder 17, Box 9, Series D, PO220, Joseph and Wolff Family Col lection, Rosetta Elkin, letter to Annette Wolff, September 1983.

ADCJA, Folder 17, Box 9, Series D, PO220, Joseph and Wolff Family Collection, Annette Wolff, Obituary for Rosetta Joseph (draft), 1979.

ADCJA, Folder 17, Box 9, Series D, PO220, Joseph and Wolff Family Collection, Stadacona IODE celebrates 80th Anniversary, 5 November, 1980.

ADJCA, Folder 1 Box 3 Series B, PO220, The Joseph and Wolff Family Collection, 64.

ADJCA, Folder 14, Box 5, Series B, PO220, Irene Wolff, Untitled Text. Wolff is alluding to a sermon by British Rabbi Joseph Morris.

ADJCA, Joseph and Wolff Family Collection, Irene Wolff, letter to Jack Rich, 6 September, 1933.

Adele Perry, "Women, Gender, and Empire," in Canada and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 232.

Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865- (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Arthur Hart, The Jew in Canada (Montreal: Jewish Publications, 1926), 250.

B.G. Sack, Canadian Jews-Early in This Century (Montreal: National Archives, Cana dian Jewish Congres, 1975), 22.

Bernard Figler, Lillian and Archie Freiman: Biographies (Montreal: Northern Print and Lithographing Co., 1962), 72.

Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867 1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970).

Clare Midgely, Gender and Im perialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).

David Fraser, "Honorary Protestants": The Jewish School Question in Montreal, 1867-1997 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442630499

Elkin, Letter to A. Wolff; ADCJA, Folder 17, Box 9, Series D, PO220, Joseph and Wolff Family Collection, JIAS Vocational Bursary Pamphlet.

Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 166. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691207285

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 191.

Faith Rogow, Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women, 1893-1993 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 133.

Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Hanover: University Press of New England [for] Brandeis University Press, 1993), 13.

Henry Felix Srebrnik, Creating the Chupah: The Zionist Movement and the Drive for Jewish Communal Unity in Canada, 1898-1921 (Brigh ton: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 176.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, "African-Amer ican Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17, no. 2 (1992): 261–62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/494730

Irene Wolff, letter to Jack Rich; from an article in the Jewish Times, 9 July, 1909, qtd in David Rome, The Immigration Story II: Jacob's Oppo nents (Montreal: National Archives, Canadian Jewish Congress, 1986), 45.

Irene Wolff, “The Jewish Woman in the Home," in The Jewish Library, ed. Leo Jung, vol. 3 (New York: The Jewish Library Publishing Co., 1934), 20.

Irving Abella and Harold Troper, "The Line Must Be Drawn Somewhere': Canada and Jewish Refugees, 1933–9," The Canadian Historical Review 60, no. 2 (1979), 181. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/CHR-060-02-04

Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933 1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983).

James J. Conolly, The Triumph of Ethnic Pro gressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 62.

Jessica Schlagerl, “The Ten sions of Global Imperial Community: Canada's Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire," in Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts, ed. Diana Bry don and William D Coleman (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 203.

Jewish Public Library Archives, Fonds 1074. Ometz Collection, Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, 1948–1991.

Julia Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London: Leicester University Press, 2000).

Katie Pickles, Female Impe rialism and National Identity: The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719063909.001.0001

Library and Archives Canada, MG28 I 17 32, "1.0.D.E. and Immigration," Canada: An Illus trated Weekly Journal, 21 December, 1929.

Library and Archives Canada, MG28 I 1732, Rosetta Joseph, "Annual Report," Minutes of the Fortieth Annual Meeting, IODE, 1939-1940. 1940. 138.

Linda Gordon Kuzmack, Woman's Cause: The Jewish Woman's Movement in England and the United States, 1881-1933 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990).

Mabel Burns McKinley, Canadian Heroines of Pioneer Days (Toronto: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1929).

Magdalene Klassen / Going Out into the World: the "Strategic Approach of Jewish Members of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, 1900-1939, 62.

Malcolm Stern, "Americans of Jewish De scent," American Jewish Archives, accessed August 6, 2018, http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/fajf/pdfs/stern_p138.pdf.

Mary McCune, The Whole Wide World, without Limits: International Relief, Gender Politics, and American Jewish Women, 1893-1930 (De troit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), 3.

Nancy M. Sheehan, “Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Practice: The IODE and the Schools in Canada, 1900-1945," Historical Studies in Education, 1990, 315.

Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Rep resentation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 14.

Paula J. Draper and Janice B. Karlinsky, "Abraham's Daughters: Women, Charity, and Power in the Canadian Jewish Community," in A Nation of Immigrants: Women, Workers, and Communities in Canadian History, 1840s-1960s, ed. Paula Draper, Franca lacov etta, and Robert Ventresca (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 191.

Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249503.001.0001

Prospect and Retrospect (Toronto: 10DE Na tional Education Committee, 1920), 3.

Rebecca Margolis, Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Cultural Life in Montreal, 1905 1945 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011), 124.

Robert A. Yelle, "Moses' Veil: Secularization as Christian Myth," in After Secular Law, ed. Robert A. Yelle, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, and Mateo Taussig-Rubbo (Stanford: Stanford Law Books, 2011), 24.

Roderick MacLeod and Poutanen, Mary Anne, "Daughters of the Empire, Soldiers of the Soil: Protestant School Boards, Patriotism, and War," in Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801 1998 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004), 223–43.

Rome, David, Early Anti-Semitism: Across the Dominion, vol. 5 (Montreal: National Archives, Canadian Jewish Congress, 1983), 94.

Rosetta Elkin, A Quebecker Looks at Life: The Diary of Irene Joseph Wolff, (Montreal: Private Printing, 1994).

Simon Belkin, Through Narrow Gates: A Review of Jewish Immigration, Colonization and Immigrant Aid Work in Canada (1840 1940) (Montreal: Eagle Publishing Co., 1966), 97.

Suzanne Morton, Wisdom, Justice and Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B. Wisdom, 1884-1975 (University of Toronto Press, 2014), 54. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442666450

Tulchinsky, Taking Root; Ira Robinson, Canada's Jews: In Time, Space and Spirit (Brighton: Academic Studies, 2013).

Val Marie Johnson, "Protection, Virtue, and the 'Power to Detain': The Moral Citizenship of Jewish Women in New York City, 1890-1920," Journal of Urban History 31, no. 5 (2005): 655–84. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144205275980

"History of Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield," Gov.uk, accessed April 10, 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/benjamin-disraeli-the-earl-of-beaconsfield.