Oral History Projects

Mosaic of Montreal rabbis

Thanks to a collaboration with colleagues at Concordia University and the Université de Montréal, this project is now part of an expanded undertaking, Life Stories of Rabbis and Imams in 21st-century Montreal. The project is funded by the Brian Bronfman Family Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Concordia Institute of Canadian Jewish Studies.

Palestinian Canadian Life Stories

As postdoctoral Research Associate at Concordia University's Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling I created a pilot project of Palestinian Canadian Life Stories.

Together with the five interviewees and curator Monica Patterson we created a website launch/exhibit. The original exhibit is no longer available but two of the interviewees

have made their interviews available here, along with some audio from the website launch. 

Quebec's Intangible Religious Heritage

Type "sharon gubbay helfer", with quotation marks, in the search box on the home page "Accueil" and click "RECHERCHER" to see my work on a fascinating project, about Québec's "Intangible religious heritage".

Ontario's Small Jewish Communities

I was oral historian for this wonderful project. I video-recorded all or part of the stories preserved for the eleven communities presented here andalso wrote the text for the communities of Peterborough, Cornwall, Kingston, Niagara Falls and Owen Sound.

Pioneers of Jewish - Christian Dialogue in  Quebec

The interview with Victor Goldbloom shown here was part of a two-year postdoctoral research project I created at the Université de Montréal under the direction of Patrice Brodeur and funded by the Government of Québec. The project is an Oral History of Pioneers of Jewish-Christian dialogue in Québec, and the interviews are all archived as part of my Dialogue Collection at the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives (formerly CJC National Archives)