Eva Dessen, Jewish educator and former executive director of Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East (CPPME), died of lymphoma July 2 at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, following a five-month illness. She was 87.
A native of Lodz, Poland who arrived in Toronto at age four, she attended Central High School of Commerce and became a bookkeeper, but “her hunger for knowledge would not let go,” said Dessen’s brother Rabbi Benjamin Friedberg in a eulogy.As a high school student, Dessen worked to contribute to the household income, putting money aside only to buy a few classical records, he said. She was the oldest of five children whose father worked as a milkman before opening a store on Queen Street.
It wasn’t until Dessen was in her mid-30s, with children of her own, that she enrolled in a course at the University of Toronto to begin studying for her BA. More than a decade later, she completed her PhD in medieval Jewish commentaries.
As a lecturer at York University, she taught biblical Hebrew.
Dessen loved to teach, her brother said, recalling that Dessen spent hours preparing lectures for the informal study group Chug Tanach (Bible Circle) that she was involved in.
Rabbi Friedberg said his sister lived “a life of vigour, activity, intelligence and achievement… She was larger than life.”
He recalled the discipline that underscored her physical fitness routines – walking, tennis and aquafitness – as well as her academic pursuits.
As well, he spoke of his sister’s warmth and hospitality. “What a heart,” he said. “Her home was everyone’s home… Whoever she met became part of her extended family.”
Dessen’s daughter Serena told The CJN that her mother made friends wherever she went. “She truly loved most people, and hated any kind of conflict.”
As executive director of CPPME – a multifaith organization of university professors who studied the place of Israel in the Middle East – from its early days in the mid-1970s, Dessen raised funds, published and edited the organization’s magazine, The Focus; and led tours to Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
She also facilitated “the most wonderful cultural events – dinner parties in her house, social events – and she would serve wonderful meals, with Beethoven playing in the background,” said political scientist David Goldberg, who took over from from Dessen as CPPME’s executive director in 1987.
Goldberg remembers his predecessor as a friend and adviser who was “very young in spirit and very young in body. She kept herself in superb condition, and her mind was extraordinarily sharp.”`
Dessen built CPPME, which was disbanded after the 1991 Madrid peace conference, “from virtually nothing,” Goldberg said. If it were still functioning, he added, “I would suggest to you, without exaggeration, that the level and intensity of anti-Israel activism would not be as high.”
CPPME and Canadian Academic Friends for Peace in the Middle East (also now defunct), facilitated exchange programs for Canadian academics to go to Israel, and provided a presence of Israeli academics on campus, Goldberg said.
“Eva recognized that these academics were being underutilized… CPPME effectively adopted these academics.”
Dessen and her husband Harold – who died in 2002 after 59 years of marriage – were supporters of Associated Hebrew Schools, where Dessen taught kindergarten before returning to university. An alumna of the school’s cheder before it became a Jewish day school, Dessen was a life member of the school’s board of directors. AHS honoured the couple at its 2001 annual meeting with a lifetime achievement award.
Dessen leaves her daughters Serena Dessen and Susan Pearl, two grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, siblings Lillian Lerman, Rabbi Benjamin Friedberg, Sally Zerker and Pearl Hermant, and friend Wilf Rovan.
