The life of Mordechai Richler

 Mordecai Richler was a Canadian author and screenwriter. He was born in Montreal, on the 27th of January 1931 in the Mile End, a neighborhood where a lot of immigrant Jewish familys would settle in, which became an important setting in his novels. He’s the son of Moses Isaac Richler, a scrap yard dealer. His mother, Lily, was the daughter of Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg, a well-respected rabbi in Poland and Canada. Lily published an autobiography called The Errand Runner : Memoirs of a Rabbi's daughter in 1981, in which she describes Mordecai's birth and upbringing. Mordecai graduated from Baron Byng High School, and then enrolled himself in Sir George Williams College which became Concordia University. He didn't finish his studies and decided to move to Paris at age 19.

After a brief return to Canada in 1952, Mordecai Richler moved to London in 1954, where he published 7 out of his 10 novels, as well as a lot of journalistic articles. In 1972, after worrying about being so far away from his roots, he moved back to Montreal, where he wrote a lot about the Anglophone community of Montreal, especially about his neighborhood.

In 1954, in London, Richler married a non-jewish French-Canadian divorcee named Catherine Boudreau. The day before his wedding, he met and fell in love with another non-jewish girl named Florence Wood, who later married Richler's close friend Stanley Mann. A couple of years later, they both divorced their spouse and married each other. Richler then adopted Florence's child Daniel, and they had four other children together : Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma.

In 1990, Mordecai Richler received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and in 2001, he was made Companion of the Order of Canada.

Richler doesn't hesitate to critic all the spheres of  society. His humoristic portrayal of the Jews of his neighborhood had him called antisemitic in his own community.

Mordecai Richler died of cancer on the 3rd of July 2001, at age 70.

Links : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai_Richler, https://www.juifsdici.ca/mordecai-richler/ (photo)