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Rabbis & Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930.

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Rabbis & Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930. By Ira Robinson. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007. xi + 166 pp.

In recent years we evidence a welcome rise in scholarly interest in eastern European Orthodox rabbis and preachers who settled in North America during the mass immigration era and between the two World Wars. The impact of these rabbis on their communities as well as on the wider Jewish community varied, and those who left manuscripts and published materials enable us to document their outlook on the challenges they and their communities faced. But while Jeffrey Gurock, Charles Liebman, Abraham Karp, and others discuss rabbis and preachers on the American scene, the Canadian scene remained a scholarly terra incognita. In this sense, Ira Robinson's book is a welcome addition.

The book, which is based upon previously published articles and lectures, consists of eight chapters. Following a preface, the first chapter, essentially an introduction, primarily discusses the importance of studying the immigrant rabbinate and the reasons for prior neglect of this topic. Chapters two to four are devoted to the biographies and activities of Rabbis Hirsch Cohen, Simon Glazer, and Yudel Rosenberg. The following three chapters focus on the local kosher meat market, its main players (slaughterers, butchers, and rabbis), and the issues and forces...

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