Abraham Moses Klein (14 February 1909 – 20 August 1972) was a Canadian poet, journalist, novelist, short story writer and lawyer.
Klein attended Baron Byng High School, an institution that would later be immortalized in Mordecai Richler's novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Klein's first submission of a poem to the Scott and Smith-edited magazine, The McGill Fortnightly Review, was rejected based on its author's refusal to alter the word "soul," which the editors felt was out of step with the modernist principles they espoused.
Despite his growing literary interests, Klein's early poetry of the 1920s and 1930s was largely concerned with Jewish themes, including the history of Jews in Western society ("Design for Mediaeval Tapestry"), the importance of religion as a mediating force in modern society ("Heirloom"), and tributes to important figures in Jewish culture ("Out of the Pulver and the Polished Lens," about the philosopher Spinoza).
Although the book sold poorly, many of its poems would later become standard selections in anthologies of Canadian literature and posthumous collections of Klein's work.
Poems such as "Polish Village," "Meditation Upon Survival," and "Elegy" were thoroughly contemporary accounts of persecution and suffering with which Klein, despite his relative safety in Canada, deeply sympathized.
A lengthy elegy at the end of the book, "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape," reflected Klein's indignation at the general indifference of the Canadian public to its own literature.
Klein's mission to Israel in 1949 on behalf of The Canadian Jewish Chronicle inspired his last major work and only complete novel, The Second Scroll.
Taking cues equally from James Joyce, the Torah and Talmud, and the events of recent history, Klein structured his novel as a series of five chapters, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, each of which corresponds to one of the five books of the Pentateuch.
The story's narrator, an unnamed character based loosely on Klein himself, goes in search of his long-lost uncle, Melech Davidson, a Holocaust survivor who drifts to Rome and then Casablanca before immigrating to Israel.
He was editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle from 1932 until 1955, a periodical to which he also contributed articles on such subjects as the rise of Nazism in Germany, the social position of Jews in Canada, and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
[5] The Canadian Encyclopedia states that "Klein has rightly been called the 'first contributor of authentic Jewish poetry to the English language.'
A play inspired by the poems and life of Klein was produced by Tableau D'Hôte Theatre and presented at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montréal in February 2009.