Professor Deidre Butler of the Religion program in the College of Humanities took students on a field trip to Jewish Montreal Nov 13, 2016. Students took a walking tour of the Plateau neighbourhood with the Museum of Jewish Montreal where they learned about immigrant and labour history, explored Jewish Outremont with Professor Steven Lapidus gaining a better understanding of the explosive growth of that community and the political and social struggles it faces, visited the Holocaust Museum to appreciate the painful history of the Shoah and the ways in which Montreal (as one of the largest communities of Holocaust survivors in the world) has publicly remembered the Holocaust, learned more about kosher food and Jewish food culture, and were welcomed to Canada’s oldest Jewish institution (1768), the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, by Rabbi Orenstein. The course explores Judaism as a lived tradition in contemporary and historical contexts.
The following blogs were developed by her students in her RELI 2110A introduction to Judaism course.