''Der Keneder Adler'' () was

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

's leading

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

from 1907 until 1977. Founded in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

by Hirsch Wolofsky, the ''Adler'' underpinned Yiddish cultural activity in the city for much of the 20th century.

History

After losing his fruit store on St. Lawrence Boulevard to a fire, Hirsch Wolofsky founded the Eagle Publishing Company with the insurance money salvaged from the disaster. Within a month, the publishing company had established functional offices and housed Canada's first Yiddish

linotype machine The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing which is manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for one-time use. Li ...

. The ''Keneder Adler'' published its first issue on 30 August 1907. While newspaper's status was precarious during its early years, appearing only biweekly after the fourth edition, the ''Adler'' began publishing daily as of October 1908. The paper was funded by Mortimer B. Davis when it struggled again financially during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. The ''Adler'' would have to pay Davis off after he sought to control the ''Keneder Adler'' editorial policy. In 1918, the ''Adler'' published its edition of the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

, which became known as the ''Montrealer Shas'' ('The Montreal Talmud') and raised the newspaper's prestige. The ''Adler'' served as a literary forum for Montreal's emerging Yiddish

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

, as both a promoter of Yiddish literature and culture (through the efforts of J. I. Segal, in particular) and as a

book publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

and

distributor A distributor is an electric and mechanical device used in the ignition system of older spark-ignition engines. The distributor's main function is to route electricity from the ignition coil to each spark plug at the correct time. Design ...

. A. A. Roback served as editor of ''Der Keneder Adler'' from 1908 to 1912, and Reuben Brainin as editor from 1912 to 1915, before departing for New York after a disagreement with Wolofsky. A. M. Klein maintained close ties with the paper, and authored the ''Adler'' English page from 1938 to 1941. Israel Medres's regular columns, ''"Di vokh in kanade"'' ('This Week in Canada') and ''"Bilder in gerikht-zal"'' ('Pictures in a Courtroom'), presented readers with accessible discussions of contemporary

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and legal matters. After Wolofksy's death in 1949, the ''Adler'' was run by his son Max. The newspaper ceased publication in 1977, after unsuccessful reincarnations as a weekly and as a bilingual English–Yiddish publication.

History

Notes

References

Further reading