Late in the summer of 1957, a rabbi, his wife, and their four kids left Winnipeg to move to Tuckahoe, a village just north of New York City. This isn’t the beginning of a joke, I promise. Before he left, the rabbi spoke with an elderly congregant, who joked with him in Yiddish, “Rebbi, fun unz iz noch kainer nit avec a laybedikei! Roughly translated, “No rabbi ever left us alive!”
The rabbi moved to Winnipeg as neither a total foreigner nor a native. Born to a northeastern Pennsylvanian Jewish family in 1920, he went to rabbinical school at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, where he met his wife, a student at New York University. After having one kid in New York, the rabbi received offers to serve as the director of three different Hillel organizations. One of these organizations in Puerto Rico, another was in Berkeley, and the last option was Winnipeg, his wife’s hometown. In 1949, the family moved to Winnipeg so the rabbi could take up the job at the University of Manitoba.
The rabbi had first been to Winnipeg in the summer of 1945, and “liked very much” what he saw of the Jewish community there. In 1950, he was involved in the founding of the University of Manitoba’s Department of Judaic Studies, in which he was the only instructor. In the eight years he lived in Winnipeg, and for a few years afterwards, he produced a series of popular histories on the Jews of Manitoba, and two slim academic volumes on related topics. The first publication was a book of short essays on subjects ranging from Benjamin Disraeli to the history of the Rosh Pina synagogue in Winnipeg’s north end, a congregation where he served as rabbi. The second was a more substantial history entitled The Jews in Manitoba: A Social History. It was the first history of the community, and was issued by University of Toronto Press “under the auspices of The Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba” a few years after the rabbi had departed Winnipeg for warmer climes. The book has been criticized for minimizing some important aspects of the history of the Jewish community in Manitoba, such as anti-Semitism and left-wing political involvement, but it was still the first of its kind.
The rabbi became a minor celebrity in Winnipeg. He was young, involved, and interested in the Jewish community. His wife was involved too, helping to organize events, and aiding him in his scholarly work (in the acknowledgments of his shorter book of essays he refers to her as his “severest critic”). She had moved to Winnipeg from a small town in what was then Poland when she was four years-old. She grew up in the Winnipeg Jewish community, went to school there, and eventually left on a scholarship to New York, wanting to broaden her horizons.
After eight years back in Winnipeg the rabbi’s wife felt the need to broaden her horizons again, and so did the rabbi. So they left. It was unusual, since, as the old congregant’s joke suggests, Winnipeg’s Jewish community was a community of lifers. Nonetheless, they headed south. Their kids would return to Winnipeg for summer camp, the family would visit and stay in touch with friends and family there, but they left.
The rabbi died of a heart attack in 1983. His name was Arthur Chiel, Art for short. I never met the guy, but he was my grandpa.
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Last time I visited Winnipeg, I was so young that I barely remember it. I was there for the Bar Mitzvah of someone I hadn’t met before and haven’t met since, though I do remember his Bar Mitzvah seeming very long. I vaguely remember a rainy day at a hotel, where a babysitter with a broken arm took care of me, and we were allowed to order pizza. I remember being very excited about the pizza, so at least I know some things don’t change much.
Despite my long removal from Winnipeg, I do know a handful of members of the Winnipeg Jewish community, stretching across a couple of generations. None of them live in Winnipeg, but they keep in touch with each other. My grandma Kinneret has a best friend, Alisa, who also went to nyu on a scholarship and now lives in Toronto. Alisa’s son, Etan, who is one of my dad’s best friends, also lives here. Etan is married to Judy, another Winnipegger.
In case it seems as if I’m drawing too strong an inference from a case of family and friends keeping in touch, let me tell you another anecdote. Recently, I was speaking to a psychiatrist who practices in Toronto. He has lived here for many years, and has also spent time in New York, but he’s originally from Winnipeg and he’s Jewish. I spoke to him about Winnipeg, and he explained to me that there are actually quite a few Jewish psychiatrists from Winnipeg in Toronto, who make sure to keep in touch with one another and have done so for some time. They have a name for their group: the Winnipeg Mafia.
It isn’t as though every community in Winnipeg is this way. Mark Kingwell, the U of T philosophy professor, spent his junior high and high school years in Winnipeg. As a military brat, Kingwell may not necessarily have been best situated to be part of an established community in the city — most military postings are only a few years. Kingwell lived there though, once for a year and then for seven years. He went to a Catholic high school, and that school and the Catholic community became the centrepoint of his experiences. After high school, he left Winnipeg for Toronto to do his undergraduate degree at U of T. He’s in touch with almost nobody from his high school years in Winnipeg, though he does note that he tends to find that upon meeting Winnipeggers, there’s “an instant connection.”
***
There’s a tension among most of the expatriate Winnipeg Jews I know. They got out of Winnipeg physically, but in some sense they’re still there emotionally. This emotional connection is maintained amongst them by staying in touch. Some of them ardently reject the physical Winnipeg — the most cited reasons seem to be the winter and the mosquitoes. But sometimes the reasons seem superficial. As a friend of family friends (who isn’t Jewish, but still lives in Winnipeg) said to me at a dinner not too long ago, they seem to be masking something deeper. Regardless of whether or not they have strong feelings about Winnipeg, they stay there. Etan, who’s lived in Toronto for 44 years, through university and law school, work, and having two kids, still considers himself a Winnipegger. Judy told me about a group of people who used to exist in Toronto — a sort of Winnipeg club — who would gather to talk about Winnipeg and its goings on. I’ve read stories, few and far between though they may be, of similar organizations existing in LA and elsewhere.
Whether the tension will exist in future generations is a mystery to me. When my grandma left Winnipeg to study in New York, it was a big deal. At the time, she felt the city had grown too small for her. It was very isolated back then, and traveling wasn’t the norm. Most people who went to university went to the University of Manitoba. She had to get a scholarship from the community to go to New York. She and Alisa both claim the same story about the moment they were inspired to go for the scholarship — but I’ll let them work out for themselves whose story it actually is.
Today the case is not the same. Some members of younger generations love the city, and staying there doesn’t preclude traveling or living elsewhere for a while. Sean, whose Bar Mitzvah was the reason for my last trip to Winnipeg, came to Ontario for university, but has since moved back to Winnipeg and started practicing as a doctor. His sister Sara lives in Toronto, where she’s doing a master’s degree in urban planning. When I asked her whether she would consider moving back to Winnipeg she seemed unsure (most of her family still lives there). The connection between her and her Winnipegger expatriate friends seems the same as in other generations, though. She said that in many ways they’re simply very different people, and don’t necessarily see each other very often, but they’re united by their Winnipeg connection.
The best explanation of why this widely-sown community exists was offered by my grandma. For her particular generation, one full of immigrant kids, the Jewish community in Winnipeg offered nourishment, a place to grow in a new home. For some, it was too small after a while: Winnipeg felt isolated, provincial, and far from the rest of the world. The city may not be so provincial anymore, but it may still not be enough. And just as the sense of lacking is there in younger generations, so too is the nourishment, even if it’s harder to find. It’s there in later generations too, whether in fond (or not so fond) memories of summer camps, or the promise of a friend in a far-flung city whose couch you can crash on. The nourishment moved, but it kept its centre.
***
For the real evidence of this gestalt Winnipeg, look to dinner conversation. When I sit with my dad and his friends when he’s in town, there is a process I notice over and over. They catch up on what the same people are doing in a way that isn’t methodical but feels meticulous. They shoot the shit about parts of the past and sometimes go over the same damn stories. I’m always on the periphery of it, and usually end up sitting in silence through a lot of it, but it’s always an interesting communion to watch. It goes on through dinner, and on into dessert, and sometimes beyond that. Eventually there’s silence, but it’s comfortable.
