Synopsis
Includes a facsimile of the title page of the first publication of Goodman's book: Collected writings by Yoysef Gudman (Khayim Tshernov), published by Art and Literature Society, Winnipeg, Canada, 1919.
About the Author
JOSEPH J. GOODMAN wrote poems about love and heartbreak, stories telling of the difficulties of life, essays about the Canadian prairies and reflections about how life should be lived. Raised in a Russian shtetl, Goodman immigrated to the United States in the late 19th century and settled in the prairie provinces of Canada at the beginning of the 20th century. He was able to converse with the Slavic immigrants who were important to the construction of the transcontinental railroads and was appointed Naturalization Commissioner for Western Canada. He traveled widely and wrote for both English and Yiddish newspapers. Sensitive to the difficulties of immigrants, he describes the struggles of pioneering Jewish settlers in Canadian prairie homesteads and towns. The range of feelings and observations in Collected Writings reveals Goodman's keen eye for life as he laments cultural changes and social inequalities. Joseph Goodman was also dedicated to the Jewish people and the Zionist cause and became one of the best known and admired Jews in Western Canada. Joseph Goodman's Collected Writings is both a historical document and a personal testament.
It's always gratifying when lost works of literature are rediscovered, translated, annotated, and made accessible to new generations. This book gives voice to a remarkable person at a remarkable time and place, and goes a long way toward furthering our understanding of both Jewish and Canadian history.
--Aaron Lansky
President, Yiddish Book Center
Author of Outwitting History
JOSEPH J. GOODMAN was born Leyb Chernoff in Konotop, Russia, present day Ukraine, about 1863. He was one, and possibly the oldest, of fifteen children born to Isaac and Rose Cohen Chernoff. He was raised in Tsarist Russia, in an area designated as the Pale of Settlement. Circumstances prior to his emigration are unclear, but his writings display evidence of a rich, traditional, Orthodox Jewish education.
Joseph Goodman immigrated to New York between 1882 and 1891. His parents and six siblings, all bearing the name of Chernoff, immigrated to the United States in 1891, first settling in Philadelphia and then in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Only Joseph changed his name and went to Canada. There are two different family accounts about how Louis Chernoff became Joseph J. Goodman; he took the name of a neighbor's dead son and fl ed in order to escape the military draft; he was a revolutionary, was arrested and sent to Siberia, escaped, made his way to a Mediterranean Port, where he immigrated on the passport of a dead man Joseph J. Goodman.
When Joseph Goodman left Russia he was old enough to have seen how impoverished the Jewish population was, and he became an activist in Jewish causes. As a newspaper writer and a philanthropist, he became one of the best known and admired Jews in Western Canada. His remarkable work is presented in this collection for the first time in English translation.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
