The Third Solitude: A.M. Klein’s Jewish Montreal, 1910-1950

From the beginning, the world of Montreal Jewry of A.M. Klein’s era, from about 1910 to 1950, formed a kind of "third solitude" between the dominant French and English solitudes. Although united by certain common concerns — for example, the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the plight of Jewish refugees — and by a common language, Yiddish, the community was an extremely varied one politically, economically, and culturally. Much of its vitality arose from the tensions between different interests: capitalist factory owners and socialist workers; Zionists and anti-Zionists; orthodoxy and secularism. By the end of this period the community came to assume a certain order and structure, adapting to, as well as contributing to, the social development of Montreal.