Dr. Koffman was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant (PEG) for a project titled “Life and Literature of Jews from the Former Soviet Union: Amplifying New Voices in Canada.” The project involves a multi-disciplinary scholarly symposium about the lives and literature of Canadian Jews from the Former Soviet Union; a writers’ workshop for Canadian-Ukrainian-Russian-East Slavic Jewish novelists, poets and playwrights writing in a variety of languages; and the start of an archival collection to help document the experiences of these Jews’ efforts to leave the Soviet Union and their experiences with immigration. This PEG is a collaboration between York’s Israel & Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, the Ontario Jewish Archives, Dr. Olga Stein, and Dr. David Koffman.
Dr. Koffman said he “hopes this PEG will kickstart a wider conversation in Canada and the global Jewish Diaspora about the unique and diverse community of Canadian Jews from the Former Soviet Union. The impact of the projects associated with this PEG grant will be felt, first and foremost and hopefully with deep appreciation, by the Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking Jewish community in Canada. This partnership is just one of the ways that York University – in particular its Department of History and its Libraries – is taking the lead in archives and oral histories of minority communities in Canada.”
Dr. Koffman is the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry; he serves as the editor-in-chief of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, and is the associate director of York’s Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies.