For the past 10 years, Cohen, a 91��ɫ lecturer and performer who specializes in Judeo-Spanish Sephardic songs, has been sorting and writing liner notes for Lomax’s Spanish recordings, made in 1952. Now she has received the first from the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center to prepare for publication his fieldwork diary of that year, a treasure trove of notes, photographs, local festival programs and other ephemera. Cohen believes the Spanish diary will be the first full diary of Lomax's to be published.

Right: Judith R. Cohen in 2009 in Riga, Latvia, where she gave a concert

Cohen travels to Spain to do her own fieldwork and research, and give concerts. While there, when she has time, she visits the villages Lomax recorded in. Half a century later, she has recorded and interviewed many of the same singers and musicians – or their children and grandchildren – Lomax did. This fellowship "is an opportunity to put all that work together," says Cohen.

was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist who recorded thousands of folk songs and interviewed thousands of singers in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy and Spain. In the 1950s, he was based in London where he edited the 18-volume Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. He died in 2002, at the age of 86.

Until recently, Lomax's recordings, films, photographs, manuscripts and research have been housed in the Association for Cultural Equity in New 91��ɫ City, overseen by his daughter, anthropologist Anna Lomax Wood. When Cohen visited the centre around 2000 to research Lomax’s Spanish recordings, Lomax Wood invited her to edit his Spanish collection. The Lomax archive is now housed in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

As editor of Lomax’s Spanish recordings, Cohen has written detailed notes – often with colleagues in each region of Spain – for CD collections of his recordings of dance tunes and ballads from Spanish regions – Aragón and València, Basque Country, Extremadura, Galicia, Ibiza and Formentera, and Mallorca – during the Franco regime. The , which sometimes run to 40 and 50 pages, are available on the Association for Cultural Equity website.

Meanwhile, more CDs of Lomax's Spanish recordings, edited by Cohen, are in the works. One on Asturias is coming out this month. And she's finished most of the notes and translations for CDs on of his recordings in Murcia, Castilla-Leon, La Mancha, Andalusia and Cantabria.

Cohen grew up in Montreal and became interested in traditional music while hitchhiking through the Balkans, Spain and elsewhere in the early 1970s. The English grad returned home and promptly earned an undergraduate degree in music, a master’s degree in medieval studies (her thesis was on women musicians in Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities in medieval Spain), a doctorate in ethnomusicology (her dissertation explored Judeo-Spanish song in Sephardic communities in Toronto and Montreal), and a teaching degree. One of the first scholars to specialize in the traditional music of the Sephardic diaspora (Spanish Jews expelled from Spain in 1492), Cohen traces her own roots not to Spain, but to Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania and Latvia.

In 1990, Cohen began teaching at 91��ɫ. She has taught music history, Renaissance and medieval ensembles, world music surveys and the world music chorus. She continues to carry out fieldwork in traditional music of Sephardic Jews around the Mediterranean and of Crypto-Jewish communities (Jews who resisted expulsion by hiding their religious identities) along the Portugal-Spain border.

Fluent in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and adept at several others, Cohen is also an accomplished musician who performs medieval music, as well as traditional Spanish, Portuguese, Sephardic, Balkan, Yiddish and French-Canadian songs. She sings with her daughter, flamenco singer and dancer Tamar Ilana Cohen Adams, and plays traditional hand percussion as well as the vielle (medieval fiddle), the oud (Middle Eastern lute) and recorders.

She has published many articles and book chapters, and recorded several CDs of Sephardic, medieval and related music. This summer, besides her work at the Library of Congress, she will be giving papers and concerts at conferences in Portugal, England, California, Newfoundland and Washington, DC.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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She was recommended by Ruth Klein, national director of B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights and executive director of the National Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (NTF), and Adam Fuerstenberg, Professor Emeritus at Ryerson University and former director of the Holocaust Centre of Toronto. Fuerstenberg is assisting Sapoznik with a book project, Holocaust by Bullets, which looks at the mass murder of Jews in Berezne during World War II. Sapoznik has been invited to make a presentation about her research to a coming meeting of the NTF in Toronto later this year.

“I’m incredibly humbled and honoured and I look forward to the opportunity,” said Sapoznik, who had just returned from an international conference in Sierra Leone, Africa, on forced marriage in conflict situations.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Webber, who retired from 91��ɫ in July, dedicated his career to serving the University and its students. Educated at Harvard and Yale universities, he was a founder of the CCGES and taught at 91��ɫ for 38 years.

At the reception, Webber received a model car as a gift from BMW Canada to mark his retirement.

Left: Christian Feilmeier, VP finance & administration, BMW Canada; Professor Mark Webber; and Sabine Sparwasser, consul general of Germany in Toronto

“Such a turnout is strong testimony to the impact Mark has had not just on institutions, but also on people and their lives,” said , current CCGES director. In addition to a crowd of 91��ɫ faculty, the reception was attended by Sabine Sparwasser, consul general, Federal Republic of Germany and Marek Ciesielczuk, consul general, Republic of Poland.

In 1995, Webber was presented with the Officer’s Cross of the , the German equivalent to the Order of Canada, for his work in fostering German-Canadian and Jewish-Gentile understanding.

He was a key figure in creating the Ontario/Baden-Württemberg Student Exchange Program. For nine years he served as its academic coordinator. It is the largest single student exchange arrangement in Canada.

His legacy includes the Mark & Gail Appel Program in Holocaust and Antiracism Education, which he initiated with his colleague Michael Brown. This project brings together Canadian university students and fellow students from Germany and Poland to explore how best to counter racism through teaching about the Holocaust.

Right: Mark Webber with Professor Michael Brown

"With Mark's departure, 91��ɫ loses one of the people who care most passionately about it and who have worked to build an institution that was different from others: a place where scholarship was harnessed in the service of teaching; a place dedicated to the humanities but no less to the humane; a place where principles counted for much but never more than individuals; a place where people of all backgrounds would always feel comfortable and be eager to learn,” said Brown.

Funds are now being raised to create an award in Webber’s honour. Arrangement for gifts to the fund can be made by calling the 91��ɫ Foundation ������416-650-8210.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The book is a compilation of essays based upon papers delivered at a centenary retrospective at 91��ɫ in 2008 organized by the book’s editors, 91��ɫ history Professor , and Kalman Weiser, Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in the Departments of History and Humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Weiser says there were two major nationalist movements on the rise in the late-19th century among Jews. One, later known as Zionism, supported the creation of a Jewish nation-state in the area of Palestine; the other advocated the idea of diaspora nationalism, which argued that Jews constituted a nation and deserved recognition as such wherever they lived. This second one proposed that a geographical homeland wasn’t necessary and Jews – and other nationalities – could live as a nationality in multinational or multi-ethnic states. “The Austro-Hungarian Empire was relatively liberal in comparison with the Russian Empire. It extended language rights to groups such as the Italians, the Poles etc. – so why couldn’t this apply to the Jews?” he says.

The next question, continues Weiser, was if such rights were to be extended, what would be the official language of the Jews? There were two options – Hebrew and Yiddish.

Left: Joshua Fogel

Weiser says that, at this time, the vast majority of Jews used Yiddish as their primary language, the language of commerce and everyday life. By contrast, he says, the speaking of Hebrew was far less common; it was the literary prestige language and the language of liturgy, but the spoken language of extremely few. He likens the relationship between the two to that between Latin and vernacular languages in Western Europe prior to the modern era.

He states that a leading Yiddish activist of the era, Nathan Birnbaum (who also coined the term Zionism), convened a group of Jewish artists, writers and intellectuals to debate the issues in Czernowitz, a multi-ethnic, urban centre, now in the Ukraine, with a politically and culturally active Jewish population. “The 1908 Czernowitz conference was held to discuss the political status of Yiddish, to raise its prestige and legal status and consider the methods needed to standardize it and promote it,” Weiser says. He claims the conference didn’t reach a clear resolution as the debate became bogged down in arguments over whether Yiddish was a national language or the national language of the Jews. He says it ended with a compromise, asserting that Yiddish is a national language.

Czernowitz at 100, the conference organized by Fogel and Weiser at 91��ɫ, assembled academics from across North America, Europe and Israel with the goal of assessing intellectually the original conference and considering the ramifications of it over the course of the subsequent century. It differed from the 1908 conference in several ways. Foremost, the agenda was different. While there were some debates, the goal was not to resurrect the fundamental argument. Participants primarily looked back at the 1908 conference with the critical eyes of scholarship and considered what had been achieved. They also spoke the lingua franca of English rather than Yiddish and, rather than artists and writers, the 2008 conference involved scholars. Weiser does note that the host cities have a lot in common – Toronto, like Czernowitz of 1908, is cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multilingual.

Right: Kalman Weiser

, which evolved from the conference, considers the successes and failures of the 1908 conference and reflects on what can be learned from Czernowitz to promote the harmonious coexistence of ethnocultural groups in multi-ethnic environments.

What did the attendees discuss and conclude? Weiser says they noted a complete reversal in language practice. Yiddish is used today for everyday life chiefly among Hasidic Jews while Hebrew, the holy language, has also become an everyday language for millions regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic background. He says conference participants also considered what other nationalities could learn about their languages and national identities. Finally, they looked at what lessons could be learned from campaigns for national minority rights in multi-ethnic settings.

Though specializing in East Asian history, Fogel admits to a longstanding interest in Yiddish and Jewish history. “Issues of language and identity in multi-ethnic contexts remain as relevant today as they were a century ago," he says. "With the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, to say nothing of many other regional hot spots around the world, linguistic nationalism is still a vital force in the forging of identities.”

Weiser’s forthcoming book, Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland (University of Toronto Press, 2010), deals with one of the participants in the 1908 Czernowitz conference, Prylucki. It focuses on the rise and fall of Yiddish culture and Jewish nationalism in Eastern Europe, including the 1908 Czernowitz conference.

Submitted by David Wallace, communications coordinator, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

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Professors Caitlin Fisher, David Hood, Joel Katz, Steve Mason, Wendy Taylor and Peer Zumbansen will continue their respective research in digital culture, cell physiology, health psychology, Greco-Roman cultural interaction, experimental particle physics, and transnational economic governance and legal theory.

With the renewals, 91��ɫ maintains its total of 28 research chairs. “Federal research investments are crucial to attracting and retaining the world's best researchers,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation. “The Canada Research Chairs program allows us to sustain 91��ɫ’s globally competitive research across health, the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Our researchers’ findings help improve the quality of life, economic, and social well-being of Canadians and people around the world.”

Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Digital Culture and film professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts, investigates the future of narrative, interactive storytelling, and interactive cinema in the emerging area of virtual reality research. Her research develops techniques and narrative strategies for use in augmented reality (AR) environments, which is increasingly important for Canada's culture and entertainment industries as AR and associated technologies like smart phones become more commonplace.

Left: Caitlin Fisher

Under her direction, 91��ɫ’s AR Lab, part of the in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts, is conducting research at the forefront of art and science collaborations. The lab makes use of both established and emerging technologies to produce innovative research methods, expressive tools for artists and award-winning content that challenges cinematic and literary conventions while enhancing the ways in which people interact with their physical environment and with each other.

David Hood, CRC in Cell Physiology and kinesiology & health science professor in the Faculty of Health, is an internationally-recognized authority in muscle health, exercise and mitochondria. His publications have expanded on the important role that mitochondria play in muscle, and the beneficial effect of exercise in enhancing energy production, preventing cell death and attenuating disease processes.

Right: David Hood

Hood operates one of the world’s most advanced laboratories in the cellular physiology of mitochondria. In January 2010, he became the first director of the newly opened 91��ɫ Muscle Health Research Centre (MHRC), which is unique in Canada. The MHRC integrates research in mitochondria with biomedical research across the University.

Joel Katz, CRC in Health Psychology and psychology professor in the Faculty of Health, is a world-class researcher in the study of pain. His research has significant impact on the way pain is understood and managed in both preventative and rehabilitative medicine.

Left: Joel Katz

His major accomplishments include using a preventative approach to advance the treatment of acute post-operative pain, increasing our understanding of neonatal pain and how to manage it, identifying factors that predict the transition of acute to chronic pain, and discovering previously unrecognized gender differences in the experience of pain. Katz is coordinator of the 91��ɫ health psychology Graduate Diploma Program, the only program in Canada offering specialized training in health psychology leading to a diploma.

Steve Mason, CRC in Greco-Roman Cultural Interaction and history professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, explores issues of cultural identity among the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean under Hellenistic and Roman rule (200 BCE to 300 CE). He focuses on Judea and the Jewish Mediterranean diaspora in the context of other diasporas.

Right: Steve Mason

The most important literary sources for these questions are 30 surviving volumes by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 - c. 100 CE), and Mason is at the forefront of research into these works. He leads an international team of 14 scholars in supplying Josephus with a new translation and the first comprehensive . He has published five books and many articles on related subjects while editing and co-authoring another seven. He manages the popular online database, , and is completing a volume on the fateful Judean-Roman War of 66 to 74 CE.

, CRC in Experimental Particle Physics and physics professor in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, studies the high-energy particle collisions at the and at the accelerator. Her research aims to understand matter’s smallest indivisible components and the forces of interaction between them. Taylor is recognized by her peers as an expert in b-quark physics analysis and particle detector electronics development.

Left: Wendy Taylor

Her primary analysis found the first evidence of spontaneous matter-antimatter transitions of B0s mesons, composite particles that contain both a b-quark and an anti-s quark. She contributed to developing a new calorimeter trigger, which allows high-rate data collection. She is now developing low-noise radiation-hard readout electronics for a new particle detector and algorithms to search for the Higgs boson, the particle believed to be responsible for why matter in the universe has mass.

, CRC in Transnational Economic Governance & Legal Theory and professor in Osgoode Hall Law School, explores globalization’s impact on national political economies, concentrating on changing forms of production and on the politics of privatization and deregulation.

Right: Peer Zumbansen

Zumbansen's research is advancing the development of both a comparative and methodological perspective of globalization on national political economies. His work also explores broader questions concerning political sovereignty and the changing relationship between the state and the market, particularly in the European Union, Canada and the United States. Widely published in both German and English, Zumbansen is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the .

Gary Goodyear, minister of state (science & technology), announced the nationwide renewals in Ottawa on March 26. “Our government is investing in science and technology to create jobs, strengthen the economy and improve Canadians’ quality of life,” said Goodyear. “The Canada Research Chairs program is helping our universities develop and attract talented people, strengthening our capacity for leading-edge research, while creating jobs and economic opportunities for Canadians now and in the future."

The CRC program attracts the best talent from Canada and around the world, helping universities achieve research excellence in natural sciences and engineering, health sciences and social sciences and humanities.

For more information, visit the Web site.

By Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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Golda Koschitzky, 91��ɫ benefactor and honorary degree recipient, has died. She was 102.

On Nov. 5, 1999, 91��ɫ presented the philanthropist and Jewish education innovator with an honorary doctor of laws. Over 90 years old at the time, she had supported the establishment of a professorship then a Chair in Jewish Teacher Education at 91��ɫ through the Israel Koschitzky Family Charitable Foundation, named for her husband. The Chair was the first of its kind in North America at a public university and was created to respond to a growing demand for teachers of Hebrew and Jewish studies in Canada and beyond.

Right: Golda Koschitzky received an honorary doctor of laws in 1999. Photo courtesy of Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, ASC06177.

In 2008, 91��ɫ’s Centre for Jewish Studies was renamed the Israel & Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies. The dedication followed another generous gift from the Koschitzky family in honour of the 100th birthday of the Koschitzky family matriarch and the 50th anniversary of 91��ɫ in 2009. The centre conducts cutting-edge research in a range of Jewish studies and offers one of the largest university-level programs in Jewish studies outside Israel.

"91��ɫ has lost a great friend with Golda Koschitzky's passing," said President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. "Her vision and generosity have helped put 91��ɫ at the forefront of Jewish studies, and her legacy will endure through the Israel & Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at 91��ɫ."

Professor Michael Brown, director of 91��ɫ's Centre for Jewish Studies in 1999 when Golda Koschitzky received her honorary degree, said she and her family have provided leadership and support for local, national and international organizations, including the United Jewish Appeal/Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto.

"Having endured physical hardship in Nazi-occupied Europe, the Koschitzky family arrived in Canada at the end of the Second World War penniless, but determined to succeed and help others around them,” Brown said at the time. "Through their devotion to family and traditional Judaism, through their commitment to education, and through their participation in the commercial and cultural life of Canada, they became role models for members of the Jewish community as well as for newcomers to Canada of all backgrounds.”

Right: Golda Koschitzky, seated, with, from left, Saul, Mira, Julia and Henry Koschitzky

Golda Koschitzky leaves sons Saul and Henry, daughters-in-law Mira and Julia, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Shiva will be observed at the home of Saul and Mira Koschitzky, 4 Coreydale Court, North 91��ɫ, through Sunday morning.

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