GERALD (GERRY) ARTHUR KANE
1935-2026
Gerry Kane, a lifelong Yiddishist
By Vivian Felsen
Gerry Kane and I were “family”. His mother’s sister was married to my father’s brother. In recent years, Gerry and I had been in constant touch. Whenever I had to compose an article for a Yiddish publication, or to introduce a speaker in the days before COVID when people still attended Yiddish lectures in person at the Workmen’s Circle, or later when the Committee for Yiddish lectures were moved online, I would consult Gerry who was always prepared to make suggestions and corrections. He was always interested in what I was translating. But often we called each other just to talk.
In an article he wrote for the Canadian Jewish News, when he took over responsibility for its Yiddish column, Gerry described himself as having been “born into a culture of Yiddish”. Born in Toronto, he was raised primarily by his Yiddish-speaking mother. His father had died leaving her with two young children. Although Gerry had attended the secular Morris Winchevsky Yiddish School in Toronto, he told me that he learned his love for Yiddish literature and Yiddish writers from his mother. She had belonged to a reading circle, a leyenkrayz that often met in her home. Gerry used to sneak out of bed to sit on the stairs and listen to their discussions. He fell in love with the great Yiddish writers, whose works he eventually collected and read, and about whom he gave wonderful lectures including for the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. Gerry Kane had a huge collection of Yiddish books. When sadly he had to part with most of these books in his final years, he kept his beloved sets of Sholem Aleichem and Peretz, and also the work of Melekh Ravitch whose leksikon he had recently been reading.
Gerry spent most of his working career as the creative director and president of some of Canada’s largest advertising agencies after graduating from Ryerson University’s radio and television arts program. Having earned a degree in English literature from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, he also worked as a senior communications consultant to the Ontario government. But he always remained devoted to Yiddish. He served as the Chair of the Yiddish Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and later the chair of the Toronto UJA Committee for Yiddish. He was the person responsible for bringing me onto the Toronto Committee for Yiddish. But more importantly, he was responsible for the creation of the committee. He recently had described to me how one day on Bathurst Street, he had run into the writer Simcha Simchovitch, an active Labour Zionist and member of the Yiddish-speaking Borochov Center, talking to Sam Lifschitz, a former Communist and Founder of the New Fraternal Jewish Association. Gerry suggested that they should join forces around their love of Yiddish, and that was how the Toronto Yiddish Committee was formed.
Gerry took over the Yiddish column in the Canadian Jewish News bi-weekly Yiddish Vinkl when the late Alek Silver passed away in 2000. “The Jewish community,” he wrote, “needs to work to ensure that the Yiddish links in the chain of Jewish continuity don’t get rusty.” In one of his last columns, Gerry wrote: “The Orthodox will, I think, in the end, save Yiddish. They have their schools, they produce books, and now they’re even writing poetry and novels. In that sense [the language] is modernizing and reflecting the taste of its users. It is a fusion language.” The challenge, as he saw it, was to get Yiddish back into the secular Jewish community.
In recent years, when it became more difficult for Gerry and I to meet, we spoke at least once a week. His passing is a huge loss for me personally. I will continue to miss him.
To read the obituary and for details about the memorial scheduled for August 27, please click here.