Parchment: Contemporary Canadian Jewish Writing, 1995-96

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

This is the fourth year for this annual collection of Jewish-Canadian
writing, and this year’s incarnation is markedly better than last
year’s. The anthology gets off to an excellent beginning with
“Palmerston Memoirs” by Malca Litovitz, a realistic story about a
young orthodox rabbi who is both extraordinary (because of his religious
calling and his learning) and ordinary (in that he has hobbies, and he
feels the need for love and romance just as any other man would); and
the collection also ends well, with “Coffee with Cary Fagan at the
Kalendar Cafe,” an interview conducted by Tilda Shalof and Malca
Litovitz. In between, Parchment has its ups and downs. The high points
include “The Jews of Perth” by Murray Pomerance, a realistic tale of
middle-class manners, and “po LI tics/po e tics” by Mick Burrs, a
political poem linking contemporary ethnic cleansing to the Nazi
Holocaust.

I look forward to next year’s version and hope it represents an equal
step up in quality.