| Intro | Canadian poet |
| A.K.A. | Ida Massey, Ida Maza |
| Was |
Poet Writer |
| From |
Canada Russia |
| Type | Literature |
| Gender | female |
| Birth | 9 July 1893 |
| Death |
13 June 1962, Montreal (aged 68 years) |
Ida Maze (July 9, 1893- June 13, 1962), also known as Ida Maza and Ida Massey, was a Canadian Yiddish language poet born in Belarus. Her home in Montreal became a literary salon and she became a maternal figure to Canadian Yiddish language authors.
Maze was born Ida Zhukovsky in Ogli (or Ugli), a village south of Minsk, one of seven children of Shimon Zukofsky, an innkeeper, and Musha Govezniansky. She was also related to Yiddish author Mendele Mokher Seforim. She had about a year of cheder education but was otherwise self-taught.
She, her parents, and one sister emigrated to New York and settled in Montreal the following year. In 1912, she married Alexander Massey (born Ellie-Gershon Maze, c. 1893–1961), a travelling salesman of men’s clothing accessories and relative of Zionist leader Jacob Mazeh. They had three sons, Bernard (c. 1913–1923), Israel (1918–1962) and Irving Massey (b. 1924).
She began to write in 1928 in reaction to the death of her eldest son Bernard and these poems made up her first collection, A Mame (“A Mother,” 1931). Most of her work would be about or for children. She went on to publish Lider far kinder (“Songs for Children”, 1936), Naye lider (“New Songs”, 1941), and Vakhsn mayne kinderlech (“My Children Grow”, 1954). A novel based on her childhood memories, Dineh: Autobiografishe dertseylung (“Dina: An Autobiographical Story”, 1970), was published posthumously. She published poems in a number of journals and anthologies, including Yidish amerike (“Yiddish America”, edited by Noah Steinberg, 1929) and The Golden Peacock (edited by Joseph Leftwich, 1939). She also co-edited the journal Heftn (1935-1937).
Maze was at the center of Montreal’s Yiddish language artistic community, both through the salon at her home and through reading groups and other programs she ran at the Jewish Public Library. She assisted others in the Jewish community with their literary work, finding employment, or arranging visas and permits. One of those writers she assisted was a teenage Miriam Waddington, who later recalled “She gave herself entirely and attentively to the poem; she fed the spiritual hunger and yearning of these oddly assorted Yiddish writers whenever they needed her.”