Office Hours:

Tuesday: 11:00-12:00
Thursday 11:00-12:00 (by appointment, on zoom)

Work in Progress

Narrators and Readers of the Canadian Jewish Past: A Study of Ethnic Identities and Historical Memory

New approaches to the study of the “liberation” of survivors of the Holocaust.

Primary Sources for the Study of Canadian Jewish History (with Pierre Anctil)

Research Interests

• Modern Jewish history
• Canada
• Ethnicity, historiography and historical memory
• Antisemitism
• Responses to the Holocaust
• Public History

Books

P. Anctil and R. Menkis, eds. In a “Land of Hope”: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923. Toronto: Champlain Society/University of Toronto Press, 2023.

R. Menkis and H. Troper. More than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

D. Arbel; P.C. Burns; J.R.C. Cousland; R. Menkis; D. Neufeld. Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond. Studies in Honor of Professor Paul G. Mosca. : Bloomsbury, 2015.

R. Menkis; N. Ravvin. The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader. Calgary: Red Deer Press, 2004.

Articles/ Book Chapters

R. Menkis and H. Troper, “Canadian Jewry since the Second World War,” in R. Brym and R. Schnoor, eds, The Ever-Dying People? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023, pp. 13-28.

R. Menkis,  s.v. “[Reception of Bible in] North America. Judaism. Canada, ”  Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 21. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2023, pp. 804-812.

R. Menkis,  “Foreword,” in Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Toronto: New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, 2023, pp. ix-xii. (also in audio format, read by author)

R. Menkis,  “In from the Margins?  Museums and Narratives of the Canadian Jewish Experience,” in D.S. Koffman, ed. In No Better Home? Jews, Canada and the sense of BelongingToronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021, pp. 177-187.

R. Menkis,  “The Gerald K. Stone Collection and Catalog: An Appreciation”, In Gerald K.  Stone, Catalog of the Gerald K. Stone Collection of Judaica: A Bibliographical Resource for Canadian Jewish Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press,  2020. Pp. xv-xxvii. (On book-collecting and cultural history)

R. Menkis, “‘There were cries of joy, some of sorrow’: Canadian Jewish soldiers and early encounters with survivors”, Canadian Jewish Studies, vol. 27, pp. 125-138, 2019.

R. Menkis, “Two Travellers and Two Canadian Jewish Wests”, American Jewish History, vol. 101, no. 1, pp. 109-132, 2018.

R. Menkis, “Identities, Communities, and the Infrastructures of History: Creating Canadian Jewish Archives in the 1930s and 1970s”, in History, Memory and Jewish Identity, ed. by Ira Robinson, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2015, pp. 233-256.

R. Menkis, “Conservative Judaism and its challengers from the left (Reconstructionism and Renewal) and the right”, in Canada’s Jews in Time, Space and Spirit. Ed. Ira Robinson., Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013, pp. 308-341.

R. Menkis and Troper, H., “Racial Laws vs. Olympic Aspirations in the Anglo-Canadian Press of Fall 1935”, in Nazi Germany, Canadian Responses: Confronting Antisemitism in the Shadow of War, R. L. Klein Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012, pp. 46-77.

R. Menkis, “Jewish Communal Identity at the Crossroads: Early Jewish Responses to Canadian Multiculturalism, 1963-1965”, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 40, pp. 283-292, 2011.

R. Menkis, “‘The voice of the minister heard in words of exhortation and instruction’: Abraham de Sola and the Jewish sermon in Victorian Montreal, and beyond”, Jewish History, vol. 23, pp. 117-147, 2009.

R. Menkis and Robinson, I., “Sermon and society in the Canadian Jewish experience”, Jewish History, vol. 23, pp. 101-105, 2009.

R. Menkis and Troper, H., “Jews and Canadian Sports, 1900-1950: A Review of the Literature”, The Scribe, vol. 29, pp. 45-58, 2009.

R. Menkis, “‘But you can’t see the Fear that People Lived Through’: Canadian Jewish Chaplains and Canadian Encounters with Dutch Survivors”, American Jewish Archives Journal, vol. 60, no. 1-2, pp. 24-50, 2008.

R. Menkis and Troper, H., “From College St. to Culig St. and back: The Jewish Experience on a Toronto Street”, in College Street: Toronto’s Renaissance Strip, D. de Klerck and Paida, C. Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2006, pp. 62 – 77.

R. Menkis, “Abraham de Sola, a Jewish Publisher in Victorian Montreal”, 2005, pp. 372-374.

R. Menkis, “Both Peripheral and Central: Towards a History of Reform Judaism in Canada”, CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 24-36, 2004.

R. Menkis, “‘In this great, happy and enlightened Colony:’ Abraham de Sola on Jews, Judaism and Emancipation in Victorian Montreal”, in L’antisémitisme éclairé: Inclusion et exclusion depuis l’époque des Lumières jusqu’à l’affaire Dreyfus. Inclusion and Exclusion: Perceptions of Jews from the Enlightenment to the Dreyfus Affair, I. Y. Zinguer and Bloom, S. W. E.J. Brill, 2003, pp. 313-331.

R. Menkis, “Negotiating Ethnicity, Regionalism and Historiography: Arthur A. Chiel and The Jews in Manitoba: A Social History”, Canadian Jewish Studies/Etudes juives canadiennes, vol. 10, pp. 1-31, 2002.

R. Menkis, “Antisemitism in the Evolving Nation: From New France to 1950”, in Immigration to Integration : A Canadian Jewish Yearbook for the Millennium, R. Klein and Diamond, F. Toronto: Bnai Brith in partnership with Canadian Millennium Partnership Program, 2001, pp. 31 – 51.

R. Menkis, “A Threefold Transformation: Jewish Studies, Canadian Universities and the Canadian Jewish Community”, in A Guide to the Study of Jewish Civilization in Canadian Universities, M. Brown Jerusalem and Toronto: International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization and the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, 1998, pp. 43-69.

R. Menkis, “A Missionary Sermon to the Jews in mid-nineteenth century Montreal: Text and Contexts”, in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, vol. 1 and 2, B. Walfish Oxford: Haifa University and University Press of New England, 1993, pp. 333 – 349.

R. Menkis and Ungerleider, C. S., “Family and ethnicity”, Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. 25, p. 5, 1993.

R. Menkis, “Antisemitism and anti-Judaism in pre-Confederation Canada”, in Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, A. T. Davies Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier U. Press, 1992, pp. 11-38.

R. Menkis, “Historiography, Myth and Group Relations: Jewish and Non-Jewish Quebecois on Jews and New France”, Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes Ethniques au Canada, vol. 23, pp. 24-38, 1991.

R. Menkis, “Patriarchs and Patricians: The Gradis Family of Eighteenth Century Bordeaux”, in From East and West: Profiles of Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870, F. Malino and Sorkin, D. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, pp. 11-45.

Editorial work on special issues of journals

M. Brown, Menkis, R., Schlesinger, B., and Schonfeld, S., “Jews and Judaism in Canada: A Bibliography of Published Works since 1965, Special Issue of Canadian Jewish Studies”, Canadian Jewish Studies, vol. 7-8. Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, Montreal, 2000.

R. Menkis and Draper, P., “New Perspectives on Canada, the Holocaust and Survivors, Special issue of Canadian Jewish Studies”, Canadian Jewish Studies, vol. 4-5. Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, Montreal, 1997.

Reference materials

Divisional co-editor, with Harold Troper, of all entries on Canada in the Second Edition Encyclopaedia Judaica (app. 240 articles), and author or co-author of 25 entries.

Public History

R. Menkis and Tessler, R., co-authors and curators, “Canada Responds to the Holocaust, 1944-1945”. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, 2016-7.

R. Menkis and Troper, H., co-authors and curators“More than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics”. Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, 2009-10.

2023 Dean of Arts Award

2022 Life Fellow of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

2018 Louis Rosenberg Distinguished Service Award, Awarded by Association for Canadian Jewish Studies

2018. Switzer-Cooperstock Award for Best Essay on an aspect of the Western Canadian Jewish Experience, Awarded by Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

I am no longer accepting graduate students.