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Dov Noy : Toronto Yiddish Folklore Recordings

Dov Noy (1920–2013), also known as Dov Neuman, was a pioneering Israeli folklorist and ethnologist whose academic work shaped the field of Jewish folklore and played a crucial role in preserving the cultural traditions of Jewish communities, particularly those of eastern Europe. Born on 20 October 1920 in Kolomyia, Galicia, Poland (now Ukraine), Noy’s early years were marked by the vibrant Jewish cultural life of interwar Poland. His formative experiences in this environment would influence his lifelong commitment to documenting and preserving Jewish folk traditions. With the rise of Nazi occupation, Noy lost all of his family during the Holocaust, except for his brother, Meir Noy (1922–1998), who was an Israeli musicologist and composer.

In 1938, Noy emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where his academic career began to take shape. He studied Talmud, Jewish history, and Bible studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the Second World War, Noy interrupted his studies to join the Corps of Royal Engineers of the British Army as a volunteer. He returned to the same university after the war and earned his master’s degree in 1946. Following his graduation, Noy started to work as an instructor in the Cyprus internment camps until the camp’s liberation. For the next three years, he served as editor of Davar Le’yeladim, one of the leading children’s weeklies in Israel.

Noy’s academic path was deeply influenced by the cultural revival of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and by the broader intellectual currents of the time. In Palestine, Noy realized that Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe and the Middle East brought valuable stories with them, mostly in Yiddish and Arabic. However, as their children spoke Hebrew, passing on their rich folktale tradition became difficult. Noy understood the urgency of preserving these stories and was drawn to the study of Jewish folklore and ethnology, fields that offered a means of documenting and preserving the folklore traditions of Jewish communities scattered across Europe and beyond.

Noy attended Indiana University studying folklore under Stith Thompson. In 1954, he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on the motif-index of Talmudic-Midrashic tales, which was later included into Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.

Noy’s scholarly work focused on analyzing and preserving the diverse oral traditions of Jewish communities. Noy began his teaching career in 1955 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and continued to lecture all over the world, particularly on folk narrative and Jewish folklore. Also in 1955, he founded the Israel Folktale Archives, which is one of the most important resources for the study and preservation of Jewish folklore. In 2004, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literary research.

As a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in the early 1970s, Noy embarked on a pioneering project to record the folk songs and oral histories of Jewish immigrants in Canada, particularly those from eastern Europe. The Dov Noy: Toronto Yiddish Folklore Recordings fonds housed at the Ontario Jewish Archives consists of over 200 sound recordings that were made as part of this project—a remarkable effort to capture and preserve the memories of a community whose cultural practices were rapidly fading. During his time at the University of Toronto, Noy worked closely with local Jewish residents, most of whom were residents at Baycrest’s Jewish Home for the Aged. These sound recordings provide a vivid snapshot of the lives and experiences of Toronto’s Jewish community.

Noy’s work was rooted in the belief that folklore is a vital expression of the collective memory and identity of a community. His work has inspired generations of scholars and has been instrumental in ensuring that the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish people, especially in the diaspora, continues to be appreciated and studied today.

Archivist Notes

In an era before digital technology and easily accessible recording devices, the preservation of folklores, particularly those told in Yiddish, required an enormous amount of effort, foresight, and collaboration. The Dov Noy collection offers a unique window into the lives of Jewish immigrants in Toronto and their rich Yiddish folk traditions. This collection is important not only for its content, but also for the way it exemplifies the intersection of academic scholarship and community engagement. In addition, by making these materials accessible to the public, the Dov Noy collection ensures that these voices and their stories will continue to resonate with future generations. In many ways, the Dov Noy collection speaks to the power of memory and the importance of storytelling, not only as a means of preserving history, but also as a way of shaping identity and fostering connection.

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