TORONTO — This month, Yiddish readers of The CJN will come to know a revamped Yiddish column, as the paper’s new Yiddish Vinkel editor, Gerry Kane, puts his stamp on the page.
Gerry Kane
Taking over from the late Alek Silver, – who ran the paper’s bi-weekly Yiddish Vinkel from 2000 until he passed away last April – Kane said while he had deep respect for Silver’s editorial legacy, he intends to move the column in new directions and make it one that looks toward the future of the Yiddish language.
Kane, 74, said that while the Jewish community needs to work to ensure the Yiddish “links in the chain of Jewish continuity don’t get rusty,” he hopes that under his direction, the column will make the community more aware of what it stands to lose by ignoring the language’s “treasures.”
With regard to charting a new course, Kane said he has two main objectives: the first is to continue to provide something useful to the “traditional” Yiddish Vinkel reader; the second, and perhaps more crucial, goal is to engage younger readers.
“I want to broaden the scope of topics touched upon in the subject matter,” he said, adding that in its previous incarnation, the column tended to focus on Yiddishkeit in the past, with an emphasis on Europe. He intends to change this.
“I want to touch on subjects more pertinent to Jews who live in North America,” Kane said. “I’m in contact with some of our younger academics in Canada and the U.S.”
Speaking to that point, Kane said he also hopes to reach day schools that teach Yiddish in communities across the country, and to encourage teachers and students to read the column and write to him with ideas and stories.
“I want the Vinkel to be folkish and reach everyone,” he said. “I want it to be something where people have entry to it. I don’t want it locked. I want it active, not passive.”
Born “into a culture of Yiddish” in Toronto and raised primarily by his Yiddish-speaking mother – his father died while he was still a child – Kane said he learned to appreciate the language by listening to her and her friends speak, and by hearing it spoken as daily parlance in the Jewish community on all matter of subjects, including literary topics.
“I used to listen to the young women working on Spadina Avenue, reading Cyrano de Bergerac and other works… and discussing it together, in Yiddish,” he said. “I was in love with the language.”
Now retired to take care of his ailing wife, Kane has spent most of his career in advertising, working in the creative departments of the firms McConnell (now defunct) and MacLaren McCann.
He’s a graduate of Ryerson University’s radio and television program and holds a degree in English literature from Sir George William University (now Concordia University) in Montreal.
For the last five years, he worked as a senior communications consultant to the Ontario government.
Kane has also lectured in Canada and the United States on the subject of Yiddish literature.
He said he’s happy to have this new challenge to get Yiddish back out into the secular Jewish community, but he realizes the language might ultimately be preserved by others.
“Yiddish is disappearing,” he said. “It is quickly becoming a language of study on the university level. The Orthodox [community] will, I think, in the end, save Yiddish. They look at it in a very utilitarian way. They have their schools, produce books, and now they’re even writing poetry and novels. In that sense [the language] is modernizing and reflecting the taste of its users. It is a fusion language.”
The new Yiddish Vinkel column begins on Aug. 20.