Shulamis Yelin (April 12, 1913 – June 24, 2002) was a Canadian

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

writer and educator. Born 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 ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

to parents who had emigrated from

Chernobyl Chernobyl, officially called Chornobyl, is a partially abandoned city in Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. It is located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to the north of Kyiv and to the southwest of Gomel in neighbouring Belarus. ...

, Yelin was an alumna of

Macdonald College The Macdonald Campus of McGill University (commonly referred to as the 'Mac Campus' or simply 'Mac') houses McGill's Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (FAES), which includes the Institute of Parasitology, the School of Human Nutri ...

, from which she graduated in 1932; she then studied at Columbia Union Teachers College before completing an MA at the

University of Montreal A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

in 1961. At varying times during her career she taught students at every level, from early childhood to university. In 1941 she established the first day school

kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...

at the J. Peretz School, and from 1953 until 1954 she was assistant principal of the Young Israel Day School. During the 1960s she taught English at the

Hebrew University in Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. It is the second-ol ...

. She was among the founders of the Reconstructionist synagogue in Montreal. As a writer Yelin won a number of awards for her work, which reflected her experiences growing up in Montreal's Jewish community and the ''

yiddishkeit Yiddishkeit, also spelled Yiddishkayt (, i.e. "a Jewish way of life"), is a term that can refer broadly to Judaism or specifically to forms of Orthodox Judaism when used particularly by religious and Orthodox Ashkenazi. In a more general sense, it ...

'' by which she had been surrounded from childhood. Her poetry collection ''Seeded in Sinai'' was published in 1975; other works include ''Shulamis: Stories from a Montreal Childhood'' (1983) and ''Au soleil de ma nuit'' (1985). She also developed a syllabus, ''The Jew in Canada: 1760 - 1960'', for use in Canadian schools, and she was a frequent guest on Canadian radio and television programs. She suffered for much of her career from mental illness, a condition documented in the book ''Demonic to Divine: The Double Life of Shulamis Yelin'', which was published in 2014. She participated in

Dial-A-Poem Montreal Dial-A-Poem Montreal was a phone-based service started in 1985 by Fortner Anderson, who was inspired by John Giorno's Dial-A-Poem and wanted to expand poetry beyond the limits of print.Michael Farber. "A line of poetry just a dial away." ''The Gaz ...

from 1985 to 1987.Anne Cimon. "Dial a Poem." ''Cross Canada Writer's Quarterly: The Canadian Writer's Magazine'', Volume 8, No. 2. 1986. p. 31.

Works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yelin, Shulamis 1913 births 2002 deaths Jewish Canadian writers Canadian women short story writers Canadian women poets 20th-century Canadian short story writers 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian women writers Poets from Montreal McGill University Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences alumni Université de Montréal alumni Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Canadian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Canadian Reconstructionist Jews