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Prof. Randal F. Schnoor - 2024 Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award Winner
We are proud to announce that Professor Randal F. Schnoor has been named as the winner of the 2024 Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award by the Association of Canadian Jewish Studies. The award will be bestowed at the ACJS annual conference in June 2024 in Montreal as part of this year's Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The award was established in 2001 to recognize the significant contribution by an individual, institution, or group to Canadian Jewish Studies.
Dr. Schnoor (PhD 2003, McGill University), a sociologist, has been teaching Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at York University since 2004. He specializes in the qualitative study of contemporary Canadian Jewish life. He has published sociological works on Jewish identity, Jewish day schools, Hasidic Jews, and LGBTQ Jews, among other contemporary topics. His most recent work is a co-edited book (with Robert Brym), The Ever-Dying People?: Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective (University of Toronto Press, 2023). Recent courses he has taught at York's Department of Humanities and for our Jewish Studies undergraduate program include, “Contemporary Jewish Life in North America,” and “Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval Spain."
Dr. Schnoor is not only a prolific scholar - one who has published both micro- and macro-sociological studies of Canadian Jews - he's a devoted colleague. Schnoor served as President of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies for nine years. He is known as a committed and passionate educator, both in the classroom and in his courageous and important work with Jewish and Muslim students at York. Professor Schnoor's deep commitments to both the theory and practice of Canadian Jewish Studies has been a boon to the field as a whole.
For the last few years, Dr. Schnoor has been teaching a course at York entitled "Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Canada." Under difficult circumstances, Professor Schnoor's course has succeeded in fostering a healthy environment for honest and respectful discussion between Jews and Muslims, one of the few places in the country where such engagement and learning has continued to happen. In the Fall of 2023, upon the start of the Israel / Hamas war, he helped revitalize York's only Israel/Palestine student dialogue group, BRIDGING THE GAP, which had laid dormant since the onset of the COVID pandemic. The dialogue group is now thriving under Dr. Schnoor's stewardship and mentorship. He works closely with an executive of six students (Jewish/Israeli/Palestinian/Arab) to design programming and establish safe spaces for genuine dialogue on the York campus. The group and its leaders are touring and advising university campuses across the continent.
Again and on behalf of all of us at the Centre, congratulations Professor Schnoor on this well-deserved honour.
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