Canada's Jews: In Time, Space and Spirit 9781618110275

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Canada's Jews In Time, Space and Spirit

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Jews in Space and Time

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Canada's Jews In Time, Space and Spirit

EDITED

Boston 2013

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BY I RA

ROBINSON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A bibliographic record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-93484-386-4 (cloth) Book design by Adell Medovoy Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com First Edition 2013

Cover image: Sam Borenstein, Composition in Blue and Red, ca. 1949, reproduced courtesy of Joyce and Erin Borenstein.

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To the memory of David Rome (1910-1996) and Abraham Arnold (1922-2011), who broke new ground in the field of Canadian Jewish Studies

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Contents

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2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Preface Section I: In Time: Canada’s Jews and Their History Jews and New France By Pierre Anctil Struggles and Successes: The Beginnings of Jewish Life in Canada in the Eighteenth Century By Maxine Jacobson The Golden Century?: Jews in Nineteenth-Century British North America By Steven Lapidus East European Jewish Migration and its Impact: Farming Colonies across Canada By Howard Gontovnick Communities and Conflicts: East European Jewish Immigrants in Ontario and Quebec from the Late 1800s through the 1930s By Ruth Frager In Search of Unity: Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Canadian Jewish Congress to 1945 By Jack Lipinsky

Post-War Canadian Jewry By Frank Bialystok

Section II: In Space: Jews in Contemporary Canada 8. The Jews of Canada: A Demographic Profile By Randall Schnoor 9. The Politics of Canadian Jewish Life By Harold Waller 10. Atlantic Canada By Ira Robinson 11. Jewish Life in Montreal By Morton Weinfeld 12. Sephardi Jews in Montreal By Yolande Cohen 13. Steps Forward and Steps Backward: Toronto Jewry at the Beginning of the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century By Michael Brown 14. Jewish Life in Ontario Outside of the Metropolis By Ellen Scheinberg —7—

9 12 13 21 29 39 52 75 93 120 121 133 149 152 168 184 215

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15. Winnipeg

By Ira Robinson 16. Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the North By Debbie Shocter 17. Vancouver By Cyril Leonoff and Cynthia Ramsay

Section III: In Spirit: The Religious and Cultural Expressions of Canadian Jews 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

241 245 263 276

Orthodox Judaism By Ira Robinson

Hasidim in Canada By William Shaffir Reform Judaism in Canada By Richard Menkis Conservative Judaism, and its Challengers From the Left (Reconstructionism and Renewal) and Right By Richard Menkis Yiddish By Rebecca Margolis Jews in English Literature By Alex Hart Jews in French Literature By Chantal Ringuet Jews in Canadian Art By Loren Lerner and Suzanne Rackover Canadian Jewish Studies since 1999: The State of the Field By David Koffman General Bibliography

277 282 294 308 343 361 412 422 451 469

Glossary

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Contributors

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Index 483



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Preface

This book has been many years in the making, and there are a number of people who have had a hand in its creation. Speaking, however briefly, of the people and experiences that shaped this book will, I think, help the reader make some sense of how it came to be and why it is structured the way it is. I came to Canada from the United States thirty-two years ago with a better-than-average knowledge of things Canadian—for a non-Canadian, that is. In other words, I knew little and understood less. However, I had two factors in my favor. First of all, one of the major areas of my scholarly interest and publication was the Jewish community of the United States. This sensitized me, however imperfectly, to the possibilities of research on Jewish communities elsewhere in North America, and hence to the possibility that there might be something of interest in the study of the Canadian Jewish community. The second was that I knew the languages—English, French, Yiddish, and Hebrew—necessary to read the documents in which the history of the Canadian Jewish community had been written. Even then, however, I am not sure that I would have gone in the scholarly direction I did were it not for the intervention of two special men who gently but firmly directed me toward the relatively new and developing field of Canadian Jewish studies. This volume is dedicated to them. Their memory is a blessing. One of them was David Rome (19101996), who from his post in the Canadian Jewish Congress Archives did much to assemble the raw material out of which the serious study of the Canadian Jewish community could be built. With his typical indirect direction, Rome recruited me and drew me in to the Archives and its activities. David Rome, therefore, had a hand in the launching of my scholarly interest in Canadian Jewry, which has borne considerable fruit so far. The other was Abraham Arnold (1922-2011), who was largely responsible for reviving the Canadian Jewish Historical Society in the early 1990s and for the launch of a new journal dedicated to the study of Canadian Jewry in all its variety, Canadian Jewish Studies. In one of his trips to Montreal to drum up support for this cause, he invited me to help in his task, and this invitation led me to take a part in the organiza—9—

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tional support system for Canadian Jewish studies that has continued to function, in various ways, until the present. The volume that you are about to read was originally the suggestion of Igor Nemirovsky, director of Academic Studies Press, who asked me whether I would be interested in preparing a volume for a series of books he contemplated entitled “Jews in Time and Space.” He has given me wide latitude in preparing this volume, and it is my hope and conviction that the finished product will not fall short of his vision. I want to also thank the editors at Academic Studies Press, Sara Libby Epstein and Sharona Vedol, whose work with the manuscript in its various stages has done so much to improve its quality. As I began to conceptualize the way this volume would come into being, I proceeded from several governing assumptions. The first of them was that I alone could not begin to do justice to the complexity of the Canadian Jewish community. In general, contemporary scholars have come to the realization that the best way to present a complex whole is not to have any one scholar to go it alone, but rather to let specialists in different fields and periods deal with the subjects and issues they know best. My long-term association with the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and its journal has brought me into contact with some of the best scholars engaged in the study of this field. Directly or indirectly, all of them have nourished the vision that resulted in this book. Many of them appear in this volume. Like Mark Twain’s character Tom Sawyer, who persuaded his friends that whitewashing a fence was a lot of fun, I have persuaded them that helping me to complete this task of mine would be worth their while. I gave the contributors relatively little initial direction, other than to tell each one that the finished article should summarize the current “state of the art” on the assigned topic. The contributors have responded with verve and imagination. It is to be expected that styles and approaches differ between authors and articles. As the editor, I have generally tried to let the scholars say what they wish to say in the way they deem best. I do not think that conformity for its own sake would well serve this book and its readers. My editorial hand, beyond ordinary copy-editing, was largely involved with avoiding, or at least reducing, the inevitable overlap between articles. The articles written by Chantal Ringuet and Yolande Cohen were originally written in French and translated into English by myself. This book is structured in three parts. The first deals in seven chap— 10 —

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ters with Canadian Jews and their history from earliest times to the post-World War II period. The second looks at Jews in contemporary Canada. After two initial chapters on the general demographics and politics of contemporary Canadian Jewry, seven additional chapters in this section speak to the contemporary experience of Jewish life across Canada. The third section, with its nine chapters, discusses Judaism in Canada as well as Canada’s Jewish languages, literatures, and cultures. Taken as a whole, this book thus constitutes a comprehensive, if necessarily imperfect, portrait of Canadian Jewry in time, space, and spirit. As such, it can be utilized as a textbook for courses in Canadian Jewish studies to supplement the excellent histories and readers currently available, and can also be used as a reference book. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and readers of both Canadian and Jewish studies. Its readers will benefit not merely from the articles themselves, but also from the suggestions for further reading appended to each article. Those publications which made their appearance in more than one article were placed in a general bibliography at the end of the volume. A glossary of foreign language terms is also found at the end of the volume. Chapter 20 is a revised version of Richard Menkis’ article, “Both Peripheral and Central: Towards a History of Reform Judaism in Canada,” which appeared in CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly 51, 4 (2004), pp. 24 – 36. It is reprinted with permission. Ira Robinson Montreal, August 28, 2012

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I Jews and New France

Following the first voyage of the French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534, the French crown began to establish permanent settlements in North America, first in Acadia in 1604, and then in the St. Lawrence Valley in modern-day Quebec in 1608. The main goal of the French explorers and colonizers Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Du Gua de Monts, and of their sponsors in Paris, was to control the major waterways leading to the Great Lakes, in the hope that they would prove to be a passage to the Orient and its fabled riches. When this proved elusive, fur trade with the Amerindians became, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the most lucrative activity of the French colony then known as New France or Canada. This gave a strategic value to those colonies situated along the major river route leading to the interior of the continent, where fur producing animals could be found in abundance. The French had colonial ambitions in many parts of the world. Colonies and outposts were opened by the French crown in not only North America, but also in India, Africa, the West Indies and South America. The colonies du Canada, however, were the only ones situated so far north that a plantation economy based on slavery could not be sustained. The best that could be hoped for in the St. Lawrence Valley was a form of subsistence economy in which the habitant was expected to produce by himself what was needed to survive the harsh winter conditions. This distinguished Canada from Guadeloupe, Martinique and other West Indies islands where rum, sugar, and cotton could be profitably exported to the European market in return for finished commodities. This also almost guaranteed that the population of New France would grow at a very slow pace for most of the seventeenth century. The mercantile companies active in New France for most of the century often yielded little profit and were mostly a drain on the resources of the French state. Thus, when a young Louis XIV became king in 1661 there were no more than 2,500 French people in the colony. The history of New France in its first sixty years was influenced by a series of political decisions made by the royal administration in Paris — 13 —

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determining who would be given monopoly access to the colony and on what terms. When Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, began his long career in the service of France in 1624, he sought to use the overseas colonies as an instrument of French power. In 1627 he founded la Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France, of which he was a shareholder, for the purpose of exploiting the riches of the colony and structuring its development as a French enclave in North America. In exchange for proprietary rights over all the land in Canada, and direct supervision of all economic activity taking place within its yet-unsurveyed boundaries, the Compagnie had to cover the costs of establishing a Catholic clergy in the colony and seeing to the well being of its inhabitants. One of Richelieu’s key long term policies in all of his work involved limiting the military and economic power of Protestants. For this reason, in 1627 he specifically forbade non-Catholics from immigrating to French colonies. This measure, aimed mostly at keeping the wealthy Protestant merchants of La Rochelle and other Atlantic ports from profiting from the fur trade of the St. Lawrence Valley, perforce included Jews. In New France itself though, this decree hardly affected the embattled colonists, who were trying to gain a foothold on the continent amid very unfavourable conditions. In that decade the European settlers in the St. Lawrence Valley numbered less than 300. Richelieu’s decision would, however, have significant long term consequences. It left a lasting imprint on the religious identity of French-Canadians, who created a society shaped nearly exclusively by Catholicism. It also meant that no public Protestant or Jewish place of worship could exist in New France. Likewise, the colony would never accept public expression of Protestantism or Judaism. Whereas the English and Dutch colonies to the south did acquire small Jewish populations in the seventeenth century and witnessed the founding of Jewish religious institutions, New France never harboured visible Protestant or Jewish communities in any form whatsoever. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the absence of Judaic communal structures in Quebec and Montreal necessarily reflected a particularly hostile state of mind on the part of Quebec’s inhabitants vis-à-vis Jews: their exclusion was essentially a matter of a doctrinal and political pronouncement by the French authorities. With very few exceptions, ignorance and indifference were the local responses to the official absence of Jews in New France. While the French colony of Canada remained relatively untouched — 14 —

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by religious conflict in 1627, Catholic France was rapidly moving in the direction of a major confrontation with its Protestant minority. The legal status of the Protestant Huguenots in the kingdom, following the Wars of Religion of the previous century, had been settled by the Edict of Nantes, signed in 1598 by Henri IV, a Protestant who had converted to Catholicism to ensure his accension to the throne. Protestants were allowed freedom of conscience and offered a number of guarantees concerning their civil status. However, these concessions were gradually eroded in the seventeenth century under pressure from the Catholic clergy and from those determined to unify the kingdom under one faith. The climate of persecution and distrust against non-Catholics, which became systemic under Louis XIV, extended to the small Jewish population of France, which unlike the Protestant population did not possess any form of legal protection. The attacks on Protestants culminated in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV, and the promulgation of the Edict of Fontainebleau, whose punitive and repressive approach openly aimed at eradicating Protestantism in France. Protestants were forbidden to assemble to celebrate their faith, pastors were banned from residing in the kingdom, and all Protestant children had to be educated in the Catholic faith. These radical measures convinced between a quarter and a third of the Huguenots to abandon their country, many emigrating abroad. It is reasonable to assume that the Jewish population of the kingdom would have felt threatened by the clearly expressed hostility of the authorities to non-Catholics. This raises the question of the situation of the Jews in France at the time of the founding of New France. There had been several expulsions of Jews from the territory of France during the Middle Ages, the last major one taking place in 1394. This banishment officially lasted well into the modern era, and was renewed as late as 1615. Essentially, Jews practicing their religion remained legally only in lands under direct papal authority, such as Avignon, Carpentras, and Cavaillon. Meanwhile, some Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century had found refuge in the south-west of France, living officially as “New Christians,” mostly settling around the regional capital of Bordeaux. Some of them eventually established a formal Jewish community. Anxious to attract foreign capital to the kingdom, the French authorities granted special privileges to these newcomers from the south and allowed them to prosper unmolested. — 15 —

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On the eve of the French Revolution of 1789 there were some 40,000 Jews in all of France, including the territories of Alsace, which became officially part of the kingdom only with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and Lorraine, which was annexed in 1766. In these two provinces there were possibly up to 25,000 Ashkenazi Jews in the 1780s. In the mid-eighteenth century, Paris had perhaps 5,000 to 6,000 Jews, mostly newcomers whose status remained uncertain until the Revolution. Bordeaux had a community of some 2,500 Sephardim and Bayonne an equal number, almost all of them immigrants from Spain or Portugal and their descendants. While the south Atlantic region of France had fewer Jews, and harboured mostly communities without deep historical roots in the country, the wealth and influence of these newer communities was much greater than that of the more established Jewish centers of Strasbourg and Metz. Bordeaux Jews had acquired commercial privileges, of which they took full advantage, and were able to participate freely in the Atlantic trade with a status equivalent to that of French merchants and ship-owners. They were the only Jews in the kingdom at that time in a position to gain access to the French colonies in North America. While their financial and economic resources were abundant and their skills as merchants well adapted to international trade, they would nonetheless contribute little to the population of Quebec. However, the Bordeaux and Bayonne Jewish communities did develop a significant relationship with New France. When Denis Vaugeois began doing research on this subject, he was led to explore the Bordeaux community archives, where he found clear evidence of the involvement of the Jewish merchant Abraham Gradis (1699-1780) in the affairs of New France. Proof of the arrival of Jews to the ports of New France remains sketchy and inconclusive. There would definitively have been no interest on the part of Jews, other than official converts to the Catholic faith, in declaring themselves of Jewish origins, or even in alluding to a recent Jewish past. There is also no likelihood that people conscious of their Jewish origins would wish to attract the attention of the authorities in New France by opening houses of worship, consecrating cemeteries, or practicing public forms of Judaic ritual. We cannot, however, conclude from this lack of evidence that New France did not harbour persons conscious of their Jewish origins. Until 1664 and the creation of the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales by Louis XIV, the local government — 16 —

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of New France was so precarious and disorganised that little effective control was exercised over the identity of new arrivals. Although this situation later improved, the immensity of the territory and the paucity of state control within its boundaries would have made it easy for secret Jews to somehow “disappear from sight.” For people of Jewish origins who were already used to living publicly as Christians in France, Spain, or Portugal, crossing the Atlantic safely, rather than convincing the authorities upon landing to allow them to join the colony as tradesmen and artisans, was probably the greatest danger they faced. In a short article published in 2003 in La voix sépharade,1, Jean-Marie Gélinas, a Québécois with a Catholic heritage, explains how he retraced the origins of his family name in the region of Aquitaine, and more precisely in the city of Saintes, situated about sixty miles from the Atlantic seacoast. Much to his surprise, he discovered that one ancestor, then bearing the name Gellineau, had arrived in Quebec around 1660 with a definite non-Catholic background. Originally the family name was spelled Jullineau, a local distortion of the surname “Juif Élie.” This led Gélinas to discover that in the middle of the seventeenth century Saintes harboured a small Jewish community, and that the first person to bear his name in North America had explicit ancestral ties to Judaism. Not all people with Jewish pasts made it past the official controls, however. In the summer of 1738, a sailor named Jacques Lafargue was found to be a Jewish woman, Esther Brandeau, in disguise. It is difficult to ascertain exactly what her purpose was when she arrived in Quebec City, and why she left her home region of La Rochelle for America. Hers is the only recorded case of a Jewish person actually reaching New France and being officially considered a Jew by Governor Gilles Hocquart and by the king’s representatives in Versailles. The young woman was sent to the Hôpital general de Québec, administered by the Augustine sisters, where she was instructed in the Catholic faith in the hope that she would eventually convert. When this hope did not materialize, she was sent back to France the following year at the king’s expense. The Brandeau affair does not preclude the possibility that a certain number of Jews may have landed incognito in New France and prospered there by avoiding all mention of their religious origins. If their descendants were raised as Christians, as was the case with Gellineau 1

Jean-Marc Gélinas, “Un secret bien gardé,” La voix sépharade 33: 2 (December 2003): 32-33. — 17 —

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from Saintes, much of their Judaic heritage would have been quickly erased in the almost unanimously Catholic context of French Canada. Detailed study of the genealogies and places of origin of the French settlers in New France would likely yield more evidence, but rarely have researchers examined the documents with this possibility in mind. A debate has developed in modern Canadian historiography as to the exact role played by Abraham Gradis in the events leading to the successful British siege of Quebec in the summer of 1759, and the fall of New France. Was Gradis a faithful and courageous supplier of the French colony before its demise, or had he simply been one of a number of profiteers taking advantage of political connections and the desperate situation of France in North America? One thing is certain; Gradis began trading in Quebec in 1748, when his Bordeaux compatriot François Bigot was named Intendant de la Nouvelle-France, a position which guaranteed him a virtual monopoly on trade entering the French sphere of influence in North America. Gradually Bigot and Gradis came to control the flow of merchandise reaching Quebec from the port of Bordeaux, including food, spirits, and arms vital to the colony’s defence, all transported on Gradis-owned vessels. Given the untenable military situation of Quebec after the start of the Seven Years War in Europe, the crown even offered after 1756 to cover all costs incurred by Gradis in the shipping of soldiers and their supplies to the St. Lawrence Valley, including the risk of enemy vessels intercepting his ships and losses due to seafaring conditions. These exceptionally advantageous circumstances for the house of Gradis came to an end with the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which took place on September 13, 1759. Four years later, France ceded its North American possessions to the British crown, with the exception of the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Bigot was thrown into the Bastille in 1761 for his part in the alleged political corruption that had characterized the last years of French rule in Quebec, and bankruptcy awaited many local merchants who had no choice but to remain in the colony after the change of regime. Gradis himself easily survived the ruination of his lucrative enterprises in New France and continued after 1763 supplying other French colonies, thanks to his connection with the duc de Choiseul. To the house of Gradis, commerce with les colonies du Canada was but one episode in a series of international ventures which brought great prosperity to themselves and to the Bordeaux Jewish community. — 18 —

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The demographic contribution of people of Jewish origin who may have settled in New France remained at best marginal at this time, and traces of their existence have all but disappeared. It should also be noted that none of the Gradis settled permanently in New France, and that their connection with North America was quickly forgotten. This leaves only one person who dared declare a Jewish origin to Quebec’s French authorities: Esther Brandeau. Because she appears to have confronted the intendant as a person of the Jewish faith and as a defiant woman originally dressed as a man, Esther Brandeau is remembered to this day as a heroine. Although we know next to nothing about her motives, and regardless of the fact that she was not heard of again after 1739, this young women has captured the imagination of later generations. Many novels have been written about Esther Brandeau in the recent past both in French and in English,2 and she may well represent today the most tangible and lasting Jewish heritage of the period. Pierre Anctil

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See Pierre Lasry, Une juive en Nouvelle-France (Montréal: Les Éditions du CIDIHCA, 2000); Sharon E. MacKay, Esther (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2004). See also Joe King’s interpretation of Esther Brandeau in From the Ghetto to the Main: the Story of the Jews of Montreal (Montreal: The Montreal Jewish Publication Society, 2001), 9-12. — 19 —

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For Further Study Anctil, Pierre. “La présence juive au Québec avant 1850: portrait d’une communauté en émergence.” L’Ancêtre, 30 (printemps 2004): 197-203. Ducharme, Nathalie. “Fortune critique d’Esther Brandeau, une aventurière en Nouvelle-France.” Communication présentée au Congrès de l’ACFAS, Montréal, colloque Défis et curiosités de l’archive», 14 mai 2004, www.unites.uqam. ca/arche/alaq/publications/pdf/DUCHARME_article_Brandeau_NouvelleFrance_Alaq.pdf. Accessed September 2009. ------. “Esther Brandeau, le parcours fascinant de la première juive à résider en Nouvelle-France.” Tolerance.ca, www.tolerance.ca. Accessed September 2009) Greer, Allan. The People of New France. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Menkis, Richard. “Patriarchs and Patricians: The Gradis Family of Eighteenth Century Bordeaux.” In East and West: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870, edited by Frances Malino and David Sorkin, 11-45. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991. ------. “Historiography, Myth and Group Relations:  Jewish and Non-Jewish Québécois on Jews and New France.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 23: 2 (1991): 24-38. Moogk, Peter N. La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada: A Cultural History. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2000. Tisdel, Gaston. “Esther Brandeau.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, vol. II, www.biographi.ca. Accessed September 2009. Vaugeois, Denis. Les Juifs et la Nouvelle-France. Trois-Rivières: Les Éditions BoréalExpress, 1968.

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II Struggles and Successes: The Beginnings of Jewish Life in Canada in the Eighteenth Century

The historical connection of Jews with Canada dates back to the struggle for dominance between the English and French which culminated on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. The British defeat of the French facilitated the appearance of openly professing Jews in Canada, pioneers seeking economic gain and ultimately gaining something almost unprecedented in that era—a measure of political and social equality. The first recorded Jewish settlement in what is now Canada came into being in Halifax in the 1750s. Montreal, however, was the first Jewish community in Canada to achieve institutional permanence, though in the eighteenth century it remained relatively small. There are a number of questions to be addressed regarding the beginning of the Canadian Jewish community. Which Jews came to this new land in the eighteenth century? Why did they come? Where did they settle? What were the challenges they faced? Most early Jewish Canadians came either directly from England or from other British North American colonies, and they tended to be unmarried young men. Many of them attained success and rose to prominence in the colonies. Less is known of the lives of Jewish women in this era. Some of the men went to England to marry Jewish women; others found Jewish wives in New York, Newport, and Philadelphia. Still others married local, non-Jewish women. They often had large families; the sons generally entered the family business, and girls were married off young. The women’s work was primarily running the home and bearing and raising children, though there are instances of women working outside the home, such as the story of Phoebe David, a young widow with five children, who carried on her late husband’s business. Halifax did not possess an organized Jewish community in the eighteenth century, though a record of the Assembly of Nova Scotia (November 2, 1758) speaks of a Jewish burying ground that was apparently never used. Nevertheless, nearly from its inception, the city attracted numerous Jewish merchants to whom the governor gave grants of — 21 —

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land. A Jewish colonist named Israel Abrahams manufactured potash at Fort Cumberland and petitioned the Board of Trade in 1752 to grant him a monopoly in this business. He was also important in the textile, glass, and soap industries. There are records of a number of other Jewish mechants and businessmen in this era: Isaac Levi got permission to mine coal in Cape Breton. Samuel Jacobs, who was mentioned above, engaged in the liquor trade. Nathan Nathans also came in 1751, and with his family ran a mackerel fishery. Isaac DaCosta, an English Jew of Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese origin, owned land and financed the settlement of six other families. In Halifax, Jews were shopkeepers and traders, and even played a part in the public life of the colony as jurors. Samuel Hart, who is of no relation to Aaron Philip Hart and Ezekiel Hart of Quebec, was elected in 1793 to the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly for Liverpool and took his oath of office “on the true faith of a Christian.” Because only Christians belonging to the Church of England were eligible for office in Nova Scotia, he was baptised an Anglican in the year he was elected.. Hart held this seat for six years, and assumed it fourteen years before the election of Ezekiel Hart of Quebec, who is usually consided the first Jew elected to public office in the British Empire. Samuel Hart is thus presumed to be the first Jew to be a member of the legislative assembly or parliament in any country under British rule. After the American Revolution, trade with New England diminished and the Jewish population of Halifax dwindled. Some Jews continued to come to Nova Scotia, but most did not stay for long, and many of those who remained did not stay Jewish. By 1820, Jews had basically disappeared from Nova Scotia, and there is little evidence of any Jews living there until the last quarter of the century. The acquisition of Quebec and its environs by the British Empire in the 1750s stimulated a need for experienced merchants and traders to begin to develop the country, and a number of Jews arrived as merchants and traders, supplying goods to the British army and the new settlers. Though not all of these traders stayed, those who did adjusted to the new environment and fit readily into British colonial society and commerce. They were resourceful, courageous, and adventurous, and able to endure and cope with the often hazardous frontier conditions, poor communications, and vast distances. They included Aaron Hart, a lieutenant in the English army, who came to Montreal with General Jeffrey Amherst in 1760. Among the other Jews coming with Amherst — 22 —

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were Emmanuel de Cordova, Hananiel Garcia, and Isaac Miramer. Most of these Jews did not conceal their religion, but rather presented themselves as Jews and sought to retain their identity. Most carried on the Jewish tradition as best they could in the absence of established Jewish institutions. Many of their families became entwined, many times over, through marriage. There were, however, also Jews whose immersion in a non-Jewish environment led to assimilation and conversion. Jacob de Maurera is an example of this group. De Maurera was a sergeant major in the commissariat branch of the British army, and was given a grant of land upon reaching Canada in about 1760. He changed his name to Jacob Maurer after marrying in 1768 in Montreal’s Christ Church. Nathan Levy of Halifax became a Christian in 1732 and settled in Lunenberg. John Franks married a Christian soon after he arrived in Halifax, though he himself remained a professing Jew. Samuel Jacobs, one of the earliest Jewish residents of Montreal, also intermarried while still maintaining his affiliation with the Jewish community, and was buried in Montreal’s first Jewish cemetery. Jewish fur traders spent lengthy periods at remote outposts, and some are known to have taken Indian wives. Alexander Schomberg, a naval commander of Jewish origins in the invading British army, took part in the attack on Quebec during the initial conflict. He was knighted for his role as commander of the frigate HMS Diana, which covered the landing of the British forces under Wolfe at Quebec. However, in order to pursue his naval career and obtain a commission, he had been baptized as an Anglican. By contemporary European standards, England was remarkably tolerant and open to Jews, but they were often made even more welcome in the British colonies, in which European populations were small and every individual was needed to contribute to commerce, trade, and manufacturing. In order to further the colonies’ developments, Jews were allowed considerable economic and civil equality with other English settlers. In fact, the granting of civil and political rights to Jews in the land that would be called Canada came much earlier than it did in England, and in many cases earlier than it did in the United States. The Plantation Act of 1740 shows how British legislation impacted Jews in the North American colonies. The Act’s purpose was to naturalize Protestants and others, including Jews, who settled in any British colony in America. The Act was understood to allow Jews in the colo— 23 —

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nies the right to amend the state oaths to conform to the requirements of the Jewish religion. This by implication allowed Jews to assume full political rights in the colonies, although problems persisted due to the ambiguous wording of the Act, and there was reluctance in some colonies to naturalize Jews. By virtue of the Plantation Act, a commission in Quebec created a “state oath for persons of the Jewish persuasion,” under which John Franks was appointed Surveyor of Chimneys for the towns of Quebec, Montreal, and Trois Rivières in 1768. Eleazer Levy of Montreal likewise received an imperial commission as a notary in 1766. The authorities in England erased the words “in Christ” from his appointment, and he thus became the first Jewish notary in North America. The first fifty years of Jewish Canadian history and activity were centered in Montreal, Quebec City, and Trois Rivières, where Aaron Hart settled, although there were also Jews in Sorel, Verchères, St Antoine de Padoue, Rivière du Loup, Yamachiche, and Berthierville. Following the British conquest of Quebec, Jewish merchants moved there from Halifax, Albany, New York, and Philadelphia. Approximately a dozen Jews came to Montreal. They include Levy Solomons, Ezekiel Solomons, Manuel Gomez, Simon Levy and Fernandez da Fonseca. Those who first settled in Quebec City included Andrew Hays, David Salesby Franks, Jacob Franks, Meyer Solomons, Elias Seixas, Moses Hart, and Abraham Franks. Jews were not only involved with the fur trade, upon which Montreal’s commercial prosperity would rest, but were to be found in all commercial capacities; many diversified to protect themselves. By 1768 enough Jews had settled in Montreal to establish a synagogue, Shearith Israel (the Remnant of Israel). This was the first synagogue established on Canadian soil, and it was the only one for seventyfive years. The synagogue moved nine years later, in 1777, to Notre Dame Street, near the present-day court house, on land donated by David David. The synagogue’s founding documents reflected some of the authoritarian ways of the Old World: the founders retained extraordinary autocratic powers over the rest of the community, and original synagogue members and their sons got preferential voting rights. Levy Solomons was its first parnass, elected in 1778. Uriah Judah was the gabbay, and Ezekiel Solomons, Samuel Judah, and Andrew Hays constituted the first junta or government. The synagogue was presented with two Torah scrolls by the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London. The synagogue — 24 —

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records were in English, though Hebrew dates were also to be found in the minutes. This conbination indicates that English was the language of use, but that some members had a degree of Jewish knowledge. The new congregation did not have knowledgeable religious leadership, and so its members sent their religious questions to the Chief Rabbi in London, Dr Raphael Meldola, on whom they depended for religious guidance and religious personnel. Jacob Raphael Cohen arrived from England to serve as shochet (ritual slaughterer), cantor, teacher, and reader. However, he had a prolonged dispute with the congregation over remuneration and left in 1782. His post remained vacant until 1839. Though the members of Shearith Israel included many Ashkenazim from Germany, England, and Central Europe, they adopted the tradition and the rituals of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London. This tradition was part of the Jewish culture that they shared with congregations throughout the British North American colonies. More than a quarter of the members of the Montreal synagogue had non-Jewish wives, and some of their children were baptized as Christians. Thus, though Ezekiel Solomons intermarried and all his children were baptized, he still served in a key capacity in the synagogue. When his son died in 1778, the synagogue gave him permission to bury the child according to Jewish law, though he had not been circumcised. Synagogue records show that it was agreed that this would not constitute a precedent. Nonetheless, the incident demonstrates the conflicting aspects of Jewish life in eighteenth-century Montreal. Some Montreal Jews rose to prominent positions. David David, who was born in 1764 and was the first Jewish baby born in Montreal, is associated with almost every economic enterprise, philanthropic cause, and social event of importance in the city. He became a landowner, fur trader, and merchant. He was one of the founders of the Bank of Montreal and one of the first “life governors” of the Montreal General Hospital in the early 1800s. Many other Jews were among the merchants who established trading posts in Indian territories. Ezekiel Solomons was one of two nonFrench traders at Fort Michilimackinac in the fall of 1761. He lost all his furs and goods when he was captured by local tribes during the Pontiac Rebellion of 1763. However, he got back into business a few years later and by 1770 was again a dominant figure in the fur business. Levy Solomons was a cousin and associate of Ezekiel Solomons who came from — 25 —

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Albany and settled in Montreal at the time of the British conquest. Levy Solomons also lost everything at Michilimackinac. A few years later, he, his father-in-law Abraham Franks, a resident of Quebec City, and Jacob Franks, reentered the business, establishing a trading post at Michilimackinac and becoming prominent Hudson Bay traders. The most successful of Canada’s early Jewish settlers was Aaron Hart (1724-1800), who came from New York to supply the British army and lived in Trois Rivières from 1762 until his death. Samuel Judah, a close relative of his, also settled in Trois Rivières but later moved to Montreal, then New York. Aaron Hart was a commissary officer when Montreal surrendered to British forces in 1760, and became involved in the fur trade, shipping, the commission business, real estate, and liquor. He also established the second post office in all of Canada, opening it in his home in 1763, and became the first Jewish office holder in the new British Colony of Quebec when he received an appointment as postmaster of Trois Rivières. In fact, he controlled most of the business in Trois Rivières. He single-handedly developed the fur trade in Trois Rivières and became a very wealthy landowner, acquiring the title of Seigneur de Becancour, and he befriended Henry Craig, Governor General of Canada. Hart joined other lower Canada businessmen in a joint expression of views on public affairs. He worked for the regulation of coinage, measures and weights, proper registration and preservation of deeds and mortgages, and adequate bankruptcy laws, and also proposed new local courts with the power to recover petty debts. Hart, a generous donor to many causes, included the Catholic Church in his philanthropy, which earned him the name “Pope of Canada.” His prominent public status did not, however, deter his commitment to his Jewish heritage. He did not intermarry, and in 1768 he sailed back to London to marry his cousin Dorothea. He practiced the Jewish religion as far as it was possible to do so, and sent four of his sons to the United States to get a Jewish education. Similarly, Henry Joseph of Berthier, where for years he was the only Jew, devised a Hebrew calendar to enable him to keep track of the Sabbath and Holy Days. His wife, Rachel Joseph, taught their children to listen to her husband when he recited his prayers. Henry Joseph had come to Canada because of his uncle, Aaron Hart. He settled in Berthier, outside of Montreal, but eventually moved to Montreal and joined the Shearith Israel Congregation. He traded on the — 26 —

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Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River and established one of the largest chains of trading posts in Canada, which extended to the northwest. He also owned, operated, and chartered many ships for traffic between Canada and England, contributing greatly to the establishment of trade relations with England. During the American Revolution, when American forces occupied Montreal for a time in 1776, David Salesby Franks and Levy Solomons were sympathetic to the American invaders and were forced by the British to leave the colony when the Americans retreated.. Most Jews in Montreal were not prepared to side openly with the Americans, even though Aaron Hart and Samuel Jacobs, among others, sold goods to the American army. In the end, only David Salisbury Franks left to join the Americans; Levy Solomons was allowed to return. After the American Revolution, British loyalists, some of them Jewish, arrived in Canada seeking refuge and free land under the British flag. This is when Samuel Hart, who was mentioned above, moved from his hometown of Philadelphia to Halifax in 1785. At least two other loyalists, Jacob Louzada from New Jersey and Abram Florentine from New York, had arrived in Halifax in 1783. A few other Jewish loyalists may have lived in Saint John shortly after it was founded in the 1780s. Rachel Myers, a widow, and her sons went to New Brunswick, where they received land as loyalists, but returned to the United States after four years. Names of loyalist settlers in the Eastern Townships of Quebec who may be Jewish include Isaac Fridenberg, Herman Valentine, Aaron Boner, David Huffman, Abraham Snyder and John Jacobs. At this time, with the American Revolution won, there was a heightened demand for constitutional self government in the British North American colonies. Numerous petitions were sent that eventually achieved the desired result. Jews were prominent among the citizens who demanded an elected House of Assembly. On the first petition forwarded to London, Eleazer Levy and Aaron Hart were among the signatories pleading for a constitution based on free and liberal principles. Samuel Jacobs, Levy Solomons, and Ezekiel Solomons also signed petitions with the same request. The 1784 petition for a free elected assembly was signed by hundreds of Canadians including at least twelve Jews, an astonishing number considering their numbers in the colony. The Jewish signatures included Aaron Hart, Jacob Kuhn, a police commissioner in Montreal, Moses Hart, Ezekiel Hart, David David and Levy — 27 —

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Solomons. These petitions were partly responsible for the success of the Constitutional Act of 1791, which divided Upper and Lower Canada and provided for an elected assembly in both provinces. There were no explicit restrictions or disabilities for Jews in the Act: for example, one could vote taking a secular oath. The real test of this act, the election of Ezekiel Hart to the Lower Canada Assembly, would come in 1807. Maxine Jacobson

For Further Study Brown, Michael. “The Beginning of Jewish Emancipation in Canada: The Hart Affair.” Michael 10 (1986): 31-38. Corre, Alan D. “The Record of the Reverend Jacob Raphael Cohen.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 59: 1 (September, 1969): 23-81. Marcus, Jacob R. The Colonial American Jew, 1492-1776. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Marcus, Jacob R., ed. The Jew in the American World. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Rome, David, ed. On The Early Harts, Part 1 and Part 2. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Archives, 1980. ------. On the Jews of Lower Canada and 1837-1838. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1983. ------. The Early Jewish Presence in Canada. Montreal: Bronfman Collection of Jewish Canadiana at the Jewish Public Library, 1971. Rosenberg, Louis. “Two Centuries of Jewish life in Canada,” American Jewish Year Book, Vol. 62 (Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961), 28-49.

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III The Golden Century?: Jews in Nineteenth-Century British North America

Irving Abella has written, “If there was a golden age of Canadian Jewry, one could make a strong case for the period before Confederation, particularly the 1830s and 1840s.”1 Other historians agree with Abella that Canadian Jewry experienced a golden era a century and a half ago, when the Jewish community counted fewer than three thousand souls, a mere one percent of its twenty-first century population. This era, lasting until the 1880s, when thousands of eastern European emigrants fleeing pogroms and political injustice would dramatically change the face of Canadian Jewry, was considered an idyllic time. Gerald Tulchinsky notes that for Canadian Jews this period was marked by an abundance of trade, a dearth of antisemitism, and frequent exchanges and interactions with Christian compatriots. The prevailing mood was hopeful and optimistic.2 B. G. Sack concurs: As conditions favorable to settlement gradually developed, the Jews became more and more acclimatized to the country. They fitted readily into the genteel social and economic pattern. Accordingly, many of those who adopted Canada as their home in the early years of that era not only attained a measure of success but rose to positions of great prominence in the colony. They were warmly received by the community at large, including the more influential circles, as citizens of the most desirable type. Canada needed their ability and initiative. Nor did they fail to justify the confidence placed in them.3

1 2 3

Irving Abella, A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1990), 37. Gerald Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 21. Benjamin G. Sack, History of the Jews in Canada: From the Earliest Beginnings to the Present Day, Vol. 1, (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1945), 57. — 29 —

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In the nineteenth century, and, indeed until the dawn of the twentieth century it is not really possible to speak of a “Canadian” Jewry as such. During the nineteenth century, for example, most significant Jewish contacts for individual Canadian Jews were English or American Jews, because in Canada, until considerably after Confederation, north-south axes were easier to maintain than east-west ones. This left Canadian Jews with no national organization or feeling until the twentieth century, when advances in communication and travel significantly altered the social map of North America. Beginnings Jews began to arrive in the territory that would become Canada by the mid-eighteenth century. Many of the earliest settlers came to Canada to supply the British army, and most would return home or assimilate into the local population, leaving few or no traces. The roots of a Jewish community in lower Canada are often associated with the arrival of Aaron Hart in 1759 or 1760. Hart arrived in Quebec and moved on to Trois-Rivières—already a thriving centre of the fur trade—contributing to that city’s economic and political expansion. The Hart family name assumed political importance during the nineteenth century, when Aaron’s son, Ezekiel (1770—1843), won a by-election for a seat in the Lower Canada Legislative Assembly in 1807. Appearing at the swearing-in ceremony in January, 1808, Hart placed his hand on his head as a symbolic manifestation of the traditional Jewish head-covering and replaced the word Christian with Jew in the oath. This act was deemed to disqualify him from taking his seat in the Assembly. Re-elected in the next provincial election in 1809, he used the word “Christian” in his oath instead of changing it to “Jewish” as he had previously, thinking this would be sufficient to circumvent the problem of religious identification. However, the Assembly again rejected his oath, claiming that a Jew cannot swear “on the true faith of a Christian,” as that would be fraudulent. Debate centers on the degree of antisemitism manifested in the Hart affair. Tensions in the Assembly at that time were focussed on French-English relations, and there was interest in reducing pro-English support among the francophone element in the Assembly. This suggests that Hart may have been rejected more as an Anglophone than as a Jew, although antisemitic canards and accusations were not — 30 —

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absent from this debate, even on the English side. The final resolution of this issue would only come some twenty years later with the efforts of Ezekiel’s son, Adolphus Mordecai, and nephew, Aaron Philip Hart. The latter petitioned to grant Jews equal political rights in lower Canada, a reality that came into law as the “Act to declare Persons professing the Jewish religion entitled to all the Rights and Privileges of the Other Subjects of His Majesty in this Province,” in June of 1832, long before Jews would hold such rights in the mother country (a national act to this effect was not passed until 1858). There is also some evidence that despite Hart’s travails with the Legislative Assembly, and the disdain most Jews, identifying strongly with England, felt for the nationalist 1837 rebellion, some of the most significant plans of the Rebellion of the Patriotes were drawn up in the home of Ezekiel Hart, who sided with Louis-Joseph Papineau, leader of the Patriotes, and was also a supporter of the 1832 bill for religious equality. In Montreal, Jews founded Canada’s first synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel, in 1768, within a decade of their arrival. Although the original Sephardi founders would be largely replaced in the nineteenth century by Ashkenazi Jews, the synagogue retained its name and Sephardi customs. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, there were no organized Ashkenazi synagogues in North America until well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, there was a certain aristocratic cachet to Sephardi customs, further ensuring the retention of the Sephardi rite. Third, remaining Sephardi meant that the Montreal congregation could rely on larger, more established synagogues, such as Shearith Israel in New York, Mikve Israel in Philadelphia, and, of course, the large Sephardi synagogues in London for financial support and guidance. The new Montreal synagogue was highly structured and hierarchical. The social style of the congregation was aristocratic and conservative, and its religious expression was Orthodox. The synagogue set itself up as a kehillah, and enacted strict rules determining behaviour and conduct in the synagogue. The founding members, calling themselves the junta, were endowed with autocratic powers over the others, including a double-vote, the power to command any member to appear before them, and the power to impose fines for a missed meeting or mitzvah. Further, anyone entering town and not joining the synagogue within twenty days was to be permanently excluded. To reinforce the hierarchy, members of the oligarchic junta were entitled to honorifics such as — 31 —

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“Gentlemen of Mahamad” (Council of Elders). The Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ most renowned spiritual leader in Canada in the nineteenth century was Abraham de Sola (1825-1882), a scion of Sephardi rabbinic leaders. He arrived in Montreal in 1847 and served as minister of the congregation for thirty-five years. Additionally, he held a professorship in Hebrew and Oriental literature at McGill University, and involved himself in the general intellectual and scientific life of Montreal. A defender of Orthodoxy, he founded a Sunday Hebrew school, as well as the Montreal Hebrew Philanthropic Society (1847), which was eventually renamed the Baron de Hirsch Society. His wife was the daughter of Aaron Hart’s nephew Henry Joseph, who had staunchly maintained his traditional life despite living in Berthier, remote from organized Jewish life. Upon Abraham de Sola’s demise, his son, Meldola, took over as rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, while another son, Clarence, aside from serving as Belgian Consul at Montreal, was the founder and president of the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada, the first national organization of Canadian Jewry. The arrival of Abraham de Sola coincided with another important event in the burgeoning Montreal community: the establishment of an Ashkenazi congregation.4 With the continual arrival of immigrants from England, Germany, Poland, and Russia in Montreal, it was clear by the 1840s that Shearith Israel had become too small to accommodate the newcomers. Moreover, these Ashkenazi immigrants wanted to pray according to their own customs. An Ashkenazi synagogue, called the Congregation of English, German and Polish Jews, was thus created. Ethnic differences, among other sources of tension, seem to have also impacted on the decision to create a new synagogue. A letter to Dr. Aaron Hart, president of Shearith Israel in 1847, describes some Ashkenazi synagogue attendees as “mere seat-holders” and “German and Polish Jews having no knowledge of the Portuguese language, prayers, customs of service, nor have they contributed financially.”5 Moreover, the dearth of a prayer leader and a shochet at the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation contributed to the perceived need for another synagogue. 4

5

Although Shaar Hashomayim was the second congregation in Montreal, the second synagogue in Canada was built in Trois-Rivières, possibly by Aaron Hart before his death in 1800. The synagogue was maintained by family members until it was destroyed by fire in 1860. Wilfred Shuchat, The Gate of Heaven: The Story of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim of Montreal, 1846—1996 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens Press, 2000), 18. — 32 —

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The building of the new congregation, which would ultimately be named Shaar Hashomayim, was seen by some in Shearith Israel as a threat to the power and hegemony of the older congregation, and evoked such animosity that, although invited, Abraham de Sola boycotted the official corner-stone laying of the new synagogue in 1859. During this period, the growth of philanthropic societies reflected the presence of material need among the Jewish population. At the same time, however, many in the community were financially comfortable. For example, David David was a founder of the Bank of Montreal; Moses Judah Hayes, Montreal’s police chief, also owned the local waterworks company; Jesse Joseph, considered Montreal’s richest Jew, was president of the Montreal Gas Company, while his son, Jacob Henry Joseph, owned the first telegraph company in Canada. The majority of Montreal Jews were engaged in commercial pursuits (as many as 63% in 1871), including the jewellery making, tobacco manufacturing, and textile industries, reflecting the middle-class orientation of a community which remained fairly small. In 1841, there were only 154 Jews in all of Canada; 354 in 1851, and 1195 in 1861. Upper Canada Montreal did not constitute the only Jewish community in Canada at that time. A permanent settlement of Jews in York, which would be renamed Toronto in 1834, began with Arthur Wellington Hart (a grandson of Aaron Hart), who arrived in 1832. He was followed by several itinerant merchants seeking their fortune, few of whom settled permanently in Toronto. By 1848—a year before land was consecrated for a Jewish cemetery in 1849—Toronto still counted only twenty-seven Jewish heads of household, and until 1856, the Toronto Jews held services in a private home. The Toronto Hebrew Congregation (founded in 1856 and renamed Holy Blossom in 1871) was the first synagogue in Toronto to achieve permanence. There were other settlements by Jews in smaller towns across Ontario, often started by peddlers or tradesmen. Herman Levy of Germany settled in Hamilton in 1857; the Anshe Sholom synagogue there was erected in 1863. Hamilton would also boast a short-lived branch of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. In 1859, Alexander Vineberg settled in Cornwall in eastern Ontario, and Henry Jacobs and Michael Michaels founded Canada’s first cigar factory in — 33 —

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Dundas, Ontario. Just north of Cornwall was another significant but short-lived Jewish community. In 1857, Noah Freidman, who had emigrated from Poland, his brother-in-law Harris Kellert, and a few other pioneering souls engaged in trade in the area of Lancaster, though they left for Montreal around the turn-of-the-century, where they became influential in Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim. The first Jew to arrive in Ottawa, Moses Bilsky, first came in 1857, left soon after, and returned to settle permanently in Ottawa only in 1867. London counted three Jews in 1861 and some thirty more ten years later. Land for burial was purchased in 1899, as was the first synagogue. Many of Ontario’s early Jewish settlers, immigrants from Germany, were engaged in the jewellery and “fancy goods” business. Others were well represented in trade to the United States, peddling, and textiles. However, with very few exceptions Jews were not represented in the major industries of the era. Western Canada and the Maritimes Jews were hardly limited to central and eastern Canada in this era. In 1860, the second-largest Jewish community in British North America was to be found in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Many people came to the west coast of Canada from California in search of gold during the mid-nineteenth century. The first Jews in Victoria arrived in 1858. By 1860, they had obtained land for a cemetery, and in 1863 they established a synagogue named Congregation Emanu-El, which was called the “first synagogue in Her Majesty’s Pacific Possessions.” The synagogue’s construction and dedication in Victoria was an interfaith affair, with a considerable proportion of funds emanating from the non-Jewish community. An English-born Jew from Victoria, Henry Nathan, was elected to British Columbia’s Legislature in 1870, and became Canada’s first Jewish member of the House of Commons, sitting in Parliament in 1871 and again from 1872 until 1874. Vancouver’s Jewish community would develop with the city itself in the 1880s, by which time Congregation Emanu-El was functioning. Jewish fur traders appear in Manitoba in the 1870s, with the first permanent settlers in 1877. By 1881, there were thirty-three Jewish families in the entire province, twenty-one of them in the capital. The first synagogue in Winnipeg appeared the following year. Although Jewish — 34 —

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farmers and homesteaders settled in Saskatchewan in the late 1870s, the major trend in Jewish homesteading only occurred later, once the Canadian Pacific Railway connected eastern and western Canada. The Alberta Jewish community, too, only began taking shape at the end of the nineteenth century. With the exception of the original few Jewish settlers of the mid-eighteenth century, the permanent settlement of Jews in Nova Scotia only took place after the 1880s. The same is true of Newfoundland. The earliest permanent settlement in the Maritime Provinces was Saint John, New Brunswick, where the first Jews arrived in 1858. Although small in numbers, the community was very traditional, importing kosher meat from Boston. In fact, during a delivery crisis, the community went meatless until a new supply of kosher meat could be acquired. A cemetery was consecrated in 1880. Conclusion How can we assess this foundational and formative period of Canadian Jewish history? Was this indeed a golden era, the highest peak of acceptance and productivity for Canadian Jewry? Certainly, the lot of Jews in Canada in this era seemed idyllic, especially in comparison to the contemporaneous situations of many Jews elsewhere, especially those living in Russia. Although it was peaceful and prosperous, however, “golden” may be too powerful an adjective for this period. It is nonetheless possible to assert that the small, largely acculturated Jewish community did not overtly clash with the English-Canadian elite. The French-Canadians, seeking above all to maintain their own unique identity, did not seem to constitute a real factor in the development of the Jewish community in this era. The Jewish community was mainly composed of people of similar social and economic backgrounds, many if not most of whom benefitted greatly from their social standing. This would not be the case, of course, with the newer immigrants arriving after 1881 with their own cultural baggage, languages, values, and communal strategies. They would clash with both the established Canadian Jews and the larger Canadian society. The spectacular rise in Jewish population after the 1880s also brought with it poverty and social discord. Activism, dissent, and debate were far more characteristic of the newly arrived eastern Europeans than they — 35 —

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were among the long-established, genteel Canadian Jews. Is it a coincidence that Canadian antisemitism rose dramatically as Jews begin to settle across the land in far more significant numbers than ever before? Was the previous century a golden one because it predated an unprecedented explosion in both the Jewish population and Jewish political activism? Between 1881 and 1931, the Jewish population in Canada grew remarkably, from 2,400 to 155,766. Polite English conservatism gave way to socialist and labour upheavals. Thus, perhaps the utopian view of the earlier century is based on Jewish conformity to the English Canadian ideal of that era: well-organized, tightly-controlled, relatively small, and—perhaps even more importantly—anglophilic. For much of this era, the British roots of many of Canada’s Jewish settlers, and a deep reverence for England, led many Canadian Jews to identify with the British Empire. The lack of a significant German Jewish wave of immigration into Canada—unlike the situation in the United States, where many German immigrants leaned toward Reform—resulted in religious homogeneity and conservatism, with Orthodoxy predominant. The first Reform synagogue in Canada, Temple Emanu-El in Montreal, was only established in 1882. Contemporaries concurred with the optimistic depiction of Canada prior to the 1880s. Thus Abraham de Sola referred to Canada as “this great, happy and enlightened colony.”6 Commenting on the social mobility of Montreal’s Jewish elite, Tulchinsky observes that De Sola’s son Clarence was probably typical of this group. He attended the balls and dances, socializing with members of the Anglo-Saxon elite. His diaries carry no references to antisemitism in any of his activities. In school, sports, and in genteel social groups, he enjoyed good relations with all.7 Perhaps the observations of another contemporary observer may 6

Cited from Richard Menkis “‘In this great, happy and enlightened Colony’: Abraham de Sola on Jews, Judaism and Emancipation in Victorian Montreal,” in L’antisémitisme éclairé: Inclusion et exclusion depuis l’époque des Lumières jusqu’à l’affaire Dreyfus. Inclusion and Exclusion: Perceptions of Jews from the Enlightenment to the Dreyfus Affair, ed. Ilana Y. Zinguer and Sam W. Bloom, 313-331 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).  7 Tulchinsky, Journey, 73. — 36 —

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serve to modify somewhat the optimism of other commentators. Writing about Montreal in 1884, at the beginning of that rapid demographic growth that was to be an important element in the growth of tensions between the Canadian Jewish community and the larger Canadian society, new immigrant Yosef Bernstein noted that emigration to Canada was not a panacea for antisemitism. Indeed, he argued that low levels of antisemitism in Canada were probably due to the small size of the community. Referring to the increasing number of antisemitic incidents in the late nineteenth century, he wrote: Praise be to the Most High God, the enemy quickly realized that his words did not penetrate the hearts of the inhabitants of [this] country and he had none who heeded him because the number of Jews in this land is still quite small, and they can find no excuse to attack them as [occurs] in other lands. Because of this, the hope of this anti-Semite was dashed, and just as it came, so it went away. Who among us, however, can guarantee that [the anti-Semite’s] dashed hope will remain so, even after the number of Jews in the land multiplies? We, the inhabitants of the lands of America, cannot lie to ourselves and assert that we have established a covenant with the gentiles; that the rod of punishment will not reach us when it passes.8 Bernstein’s comment foreshadowed a deterioration in social harmony as Canada and its Jewish community underwent seismic changes, and immigration, demographic expansion, and ethnic diversity challenged Canadian Jewish serenity. For the Jewish community, the arrival of thousands of eastern European immigrants would forever alter the face of Canadian Jewry. Steven Lapidus

8 Bernstein, The Jews in Canada, 6. — 37 —

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For Further Study Bernstein, Y. E. The Jews in Canada (North America): An Eastern European View of the Montreal Jewish Community in 1884. Canadian Jewish Studies Chapbook Series No. 1, tr. Ira Robinson. Montreal: Hungry I Books, 2004. Menkis, Richard. “Antisemitism in the Evolving Nation: From New France to 1950.” In From Immigration to Integration—The Canadian Jewish Experience: A Millennium Edition, ed. Ruth Klein and Frank Dimant. Toronto: Institute for International Affairs, B’nai B’rith, Canada, 2001. Rome, David. On the Jews of Lower Canada and 1837-38, Part 1. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress National Archives, 1983.

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IV East European Jewish Migration and its Impact: Farming Colonies across Canada

Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, living conditions for Jews throughout eastern Europe were difficult and showed no signs of improvement; in fact, the situation was getting worse. With a history of socioeconomic repression and political limitations throughout this region, it was no surprise that a large number of Jews began leaving. As stories from relatives and friends who had settled in North America stirred the masses, more and more people packed their belongings, organized their families, and made their way west. Since many of the emigrants were quite poor and occupationally limited, North America held great promise. With little hope on the horizon for the amelioration of declining economic and social conditions, and the proliferation of antisemitism, what began as a slow stream of people quickly increased into a fast-flowing river of thousands. In Russia, it was no secret that “confusion reigned throughout ... and the reactionary government used Jews as scapegoats encouraging the illusion that through their control of commerce, industry and much land they were responsible for the misfortunes of the nation.”1 The leadership of Russia and other eastern European countries created this illusion as a distraction from the country’s actual social and economic problems. As long as the leadership and the people were preoccupied with the Jews, the actual conditions and policies that fuelled the difficult economic situation could continue. For a considerable time, Jews, having no real choice, had made necessary adjustments and lived within the restrictive environment of eastern Europe. As socio-economic conditions deteriorated, the fear of violent physical assaults on Jewish settlements (pogroms) increased more and more in Russia in the late 1880s. At that point, many Jews tried by whatever means possible to emigrate. As Gerald Tulchinsky writes, 1

Cyril E. Leonoff, “The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada,” Western States Jewish History (1984):1. — 39 —

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“Poverty and perceptions of better economic opportunities in America remained the forces that propelled many Jews from the Old World to the New.”2 Once the opportunity for emigration became more accessible, its advantages far outweighed the reasons for remaining for many people. From Eastern Europe to the Farms of North America “Agriculture became a prominent issue in the Jewish world from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth,” according to Jonathan Dekel-Chen and Israel Bartal.3 In the 1880s, there was a growing movement to establish Jewish farming colonies as a means of improving the Jews’ condition socially and economically. Two movements, Hibbat Zion and Am Olam, separate in origins but unified by a desire for change, shared an agenda of settling Jews on the land. Unfortunately both were plagued by logistical problems, little experience, poor soil quality, and a lack of necessary equipment. Thus, most of these early projects eventually failed. Though these groups were unsuccessful, they had attempted to “foster the revival of the Jewish people ... on a sound productive basis.”4 The question remained, considering the number of problems that hampered the survival of these colonies, of what kind of agricultural future might be possible for Jews, even with additional assistance. There was considerable discussion of this issue in the nineteenth century by Jewish community leaders in North America. Michael Heilprin (d.1888) expressed confidence that agriculture could be a means of integrating Jewish immigrants in North America. In comparison to simply “dumping” people into large urban centres with no jobs or funds on which to survive, creating immigrant placement programs such as farming colonies could be more productive, without placing an additional burden on the local society. With the growing number of East European Jews flowing into North America in the 1890s, such a program 2 3 4

Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking Root: Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto, Lester Publishing, 1992), 109. Jonathan Dekel-Chen and Israel Bartal, “Jewish Agrarianization,” Jewish History 21 (2007): 239247. Ran Aaronson, “The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Agriculture in Palestine,” Agricultural History 69:3 (1995): 438. — 40 —

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of controlled integration would have two main benefits. The first and most important would be that it would place immigrants in a form of employment that would lead to their active participation in society. Secondly, Jewish farmers would help dispel the mythic perception of Jews as either bankers or vagabonds, neither of whom engaged in productive physical labor. In the 1870s, the expansion of the railroad spurred an important wave of immigration to Canada that coincided with the beginnings of eastern European migration. Joseph Kage felt that these first immigrants from eastern Europe to Canada were quite different from the post-1880s Jewish settlers in their cultural outlook and economic position; they seemed to be under pressure as they searched for “better economic opportunity and improved social status.”5 Some had occupational backgrounds as artisans, small merchants, and clerical workers. There was also a considerable proportion without specific occupational skills. In any case, many Jewish immigrants who would become involved with the farming colonies had little if any actual agricultural experience. In the 1890s, the number of Jews migrating to Canada began to increase as social and economic conditions across eastern Europe continued to deteriorate. At that time, a few Jewish philanthropic organizations such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Mansion House Committee (London), and the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society of Montreal6 became pioneers in the effort to help Jews emigrate to North and South America. The financial support and philosophical approach of the German-Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch set the stage for the events to follow. Concerned about his less fortunate brethren, Baron de Hirsch was a fervent believer in the idea that farming was the best option to help settle as many immigrant Jews as possible. It is clear that the Baron had been influenced by the idea of productivization, which argued that antisemitism would decline, or even disappear, if Jews became engaged in manual labour, producing tangible goods, instead of seeking mercantile and financial occupations, or having no means of sustenance. Thus, productivization was a strategy that many hoped would be the basis for the successful integration of the growing immigrant population. In the 5 6

Joseph Kage, With Faith and Thanksgiving (Montreal: The Eagle Publishing Co., 1962), 29. The YMHBS would eventually become the Jewish Colonization Association in Canada. — 41 —

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end, most support groups pursued the goal of self-sufficiency for Jewish immigrants. For Baron de Hirsch, it was important to help people to become productive who might “otherwise become paupers ...” and help them to join society as participating members.7 Jewish Farmers: The Early Years At the onset of the wave of eastern European Jewish immigration in the nineteenth century, farming emerged as an option in both the United States and Canada. In Montreal, the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society were early proponents of farming colonies for newly-arrived immigrants. Jewish organizations on both sides of the Atlantic contributed to the emergence of the Jewish Emigration Aid Society, with the goal of providing the emigrants with food, lodgings, medical aid, jobs, and in some cases transportation to parts of Canada or the United States. Canada in particular became a goal for this movement because of a governmental incentive program. In 1872, the Canadian government passed the Dominion Lands Act, which gave people an opportunity to acquire 160 acres of unoccupied land in the West for a nominal charge of ten dollars. As part of this arrangement, settlers were required to build a home, cultivate a reasonable part of the land, and reside on the premises for at least three years to complete acquiring ownership of it. Enthusiastic about this project and its potential, Alexander Galt, Canada’s High Commissioner in England at the time, struggled to convince Candian Prime Minister John A. MacDonald of the advantages of offering this opportunity to Jewish immigrants. Galt felt that controlling the type and quantity of incoming immigrants would be in Canada’s favour. Moreover, Galt argued that giving support to Jewish refugees in particular would place Canada in a positive light in the eyes of the European financial elite, many of whom were Jewish. In May of 1884, the first group of Jewish immigrants attempted to set up a farming colony in Western Canada. In the district known as Assiniboia, in what is today the province of Saskatchewan, twenty-seven Jewish families started out in the Moosomin colony. With supporting 7

Theodore Norman, An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 1. — 42 —

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funds from the Mansion House Committee in England and occasional assistance from the Jewish community in Winnipeg, these settlers began building homes, planting crops, and keeping some livestock. For a number of reasons, including difficult weather conditions, poor soil, and inexperience, many settlers lost hope and began to leave after two years. Although some people (including former residents) tried to rejuvenate the colony the following year, calling it New Jerusalem, this second effort faced the same troublesome circumstances. Two years later, in 1889, a major fire devastated the community and destroyed any chance of continuing the colony. Another pioneering attempt was inspired by the efforts of the English businessman Herman Landau. In 1886, Landau was eager to establish a colony of Jewish farmers in Canada’s west. Dissatisfied with the pace of philanthropic efforts, Landau selected a group of Russian Jews he believed to be more competent than previous immigrants and assisted them in relocating to an area known as Wapella. At the beginning, since the area was heavily forested, many settlers used the wood they cut down for both heating and building. Timber became a lucrative business venture as settlers used whatever means necessary to continue their homestead in that area. The majority of them worked their farms, cultivating wheat, barley, and oats and raising livestock, but weather conditions made success difficult. Despite these challenges, the Wapella community lasted longer than other such ventures and became one of the oldest Jewish farming colonies in Western Canada. Landau believed with considerable enthusiasm that the idea of Jewish farming colonies had serious merit and would prove helpful for relocating Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, there was one stumbling block: financial support. In 1887, on a trip to Paris to convey his sympathies to the Baron de Hirsch and his wife on the loss of their child, Landau used the opportunity to promote his project. Landau suggested that the Baron and his wife consider adopting as their “children” the many impoverished Jews in need of assistance in leaving eastern Europe. When Landau returned to England, an exchange of correspondence between the two men discussed what dependable agencies could become involved in such an undertaking. Arthur Cheil suggests that a financial project in which the Baron was involved left him with considerable land holdings in Argentina, and that that the Baron thus favoured Argentina as a prime location for Jewish settlement because of his personal inter— 43 —

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ests.8 The Israeli scholar Haim Avni, however, disputes this.9 Nonetheless, from 1890 onward the settlement of immigrant Jews in Canada took on a new priority with the assistance of the Baron de Hirsch and the agencies he funded. For the Baron, contributing to Jewish charities around the world became a full-time passion after 1890. He had a philosophy on which he based his philanthropic behaviour: in the American Review of July 1891 he wrote, “... my efforts shall show that the Jews have not lost the agricultural qualities that their forefathers possessed. I shall try to make for them a new home in different lands, where, as free farmers, on their own soil, they can make themselves useful to the country.”10 The Baron expressed a willingness to utilize his great wealth on behalf of his “companions in faith with the possibility of finding a new existence, primarily as farmers, and also as handicraftsmen....”11 He supported Jewish relief efforts through the Alliance Israëlite Universelle in Paris and the Mansion House Committee in London. Beginning with a few early donations to American relief organizations and the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society in Montreal, Baron de Hirsch set the stage for what was to become the Jewish Colonization Association. As the number of Jewish immigrants flowing into Canada increased, so did tensions in certain parts of the country. In 1887, a meeting of local residents in the Wapella region indicated that they were upset with the good will granted to the immigrant Jews by the railway. Responding to what it considered special privileges for the new residents, the group stated that “our honourable friends the Government are unaware of the injury done to us by reserving sections in ... this distinct for the settlement of Jews. Not only are Jews a most undesirable class of settlers but they are keeping a number of desirable settlers out....”12 The phrase, “most undesirable class” indicates that the issue was more than just the favouritism shown by the railway. In 1891, the premier of the Province of Manitoba, Thomas Greenway, visited England to promote Canada and encourage European farmers 8 Arthur A. Cheil, The Jews of Manitoba (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 48. 9 Personal correspondence with Haim Avni, September 12, 2009. 10 Edgardo E. Zablotsky, “Philanthropy vs Unproductive Charity: The Case of Baron Maurice de Hirsch,” http://ssrn.com/abract=1013671. May 2004. 11 Samuel Joseph, History of the Baron de Hirsch Fund (Fairfield: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1978), 10. 12 Leonoff, “The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada,” 10. — 44 —

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(including Jews) to migrate to his province. In response to this effort, Professor Goldwin Smith of Toronto, known for his anti-Jewish rhetoric, sent a letter to the Manitoba Free Press in which he wrote, referring to the Jewish settlers, that “these people, besides their want of agricultural aptitude, are as a rule, not producers of native labour. It is on this account and from hatred of their financial practices, not on account of their religion, that the people of Europe, and especially the peasantry, began rising against them.”13 Whether or not Goldwin Smith’s remarks were a true indication of the Canadian attitude toward Jews is uncertain. However, it is quite possible that they represented an undercurrent of public opinion in areas of Jewish settlement. Jewish Farmers: Success & Failure By the 1930s, attitudes in Canada toward Jewish farmers were mixed, after years of major failures and minor successes. Louis Rosenberg writes that an impression had been created that these farming projects were futile and “artificial attempts by the Jewish Colonization Association to divert Jews to agriculture.”14 He goes on to clarify that the JCA was a supporting organization, rather than a political entity that had a goal of actually colonizing a region. Even though the organization had been behind a couple of early attempts at creating independent Jewish farming colonies, its long-term role was mainly to become a source of “extended financial, moral and educational assistance with the object of building up self-reliant, self sustaining Jewish farming communities.”15 In the period between 1900 and the mid-1920s, Jewish (as well as non-Jewish) farmers began to see more successes than failures. “From the beginning of the twentieth century Jewish farm settlements in Canada showed steady progress and reached their peak at the time of World War I.”16 Settlements with a considerable number of Jewish farmers began to flourish, mainly in the western part of Canada, with the expansion of the railroad. With the assistance of Jewish philanthropic agencies such as the JCA, individual families were able to acquire loans 13 Cheil, The Jews of Manitoba, 49-50. 14 Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of Jews in Canada in the 1930’s (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 216. 15 Ibid., 218 16 Leonoff, “The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada,” 74 — 45 —

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to maintain their farms or expand into new farming or related ventures. As these farmers progressed, it was clear that growth emanated from an adjustment in these farmers’ activities. Early on, most Jewish farmers had tried to raise crops such as wheat, oats, barley, or tobacco. Slowly, there had been a shift toward more lucrative options, such as raising livestock. Due to the limited growing season in Canada, considerable effort was put into developing other options for the farm. With a growing population, poultry and dairy cows became more profitable. In a JCA monthly memorandum from the 1920s, the author confirmed that “farmers who devoted a greater amount of time to raising poultry, seemed to be a developing a new industry with less troublesome consequences.”17 Many followed this advice. According to Louis Rosenberg, “The average size of the Jewish farm in Western Canada ... increased from 192.9 acres in 1911 to 418.8 acres in 1931.”18 This trend clearly mirrors an increase in the average Saskatchewan farm’s size in these years,as found in contemporary reports. These reports also confirm that there were increasing numbers of livestock on both Jewish and non-Jewish farms. According to progress reports from this period, many Jewish farmers began with small numbers of animals, such as horses, chickens, sheep, and cows. Over time, certain livestock such as chickens, sheep, and cows became more profitable and plentiful. Horses were used for farm work and transportation, while the other animals provided a source of food and occasionally generated revenue via sales to local residents. In Sainte Sophie, Quebec, during the 1920s, JCA data indicates that there was a growing movement to expand the poultry business. In the years that followed, poultry and eggs became a larger part of the Canadian diet. Also during this time, some Jewish farmers began raising hogs, even though there was some opposition to raising hogs on Jewish farms for religious reasons. Rosenberg felt that this area of farming was insignificant and that only a “very few Jewish farmers have made a success in this branch of farming.”19 In the years that followed, however, the hog industry became more profitable, resulting in a steady growth in the number of Jewish farmers becoming involved. As more and more eastern European Jewish immigrants arrived in 17 Howard Gontovnick, “From Colony to Community, Ste Sophie, Quebec,” Canadian Jewish Studies 9 (2001): 190-209. 18 Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews, 239. 19 Ibid., 243. — 46 —

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Canada after World War I, many settled on farms across the country. There were a few in the Maritime Provinces and a greater number in Quebec and Ontario. However, the majority settled in places like Bender Hamlet and New Hirsch in Manitoba, Lipton, Montefiore, and Edenbridge in Saskatchewan, and along the Red River in Rumsey, Alberta. Some thought of these places as “Jewish farming colonies.” However, in actuality most were simply areas settled by Jews acting as either farmers or local businessmen. It would thus be a misrepresentation to speak of the number of “Jewish settlements” founded in Canada. There were only a few true Jewish farming colonies created specifically for that purpose, including Hirsch and Lipton. Other communities, like Trochu, Alberta, and Edenbridge, in Saskatchewan, and Sainte Sophie in Quebec, were towns where Jews settled as farmers simply because other Jews lived nearby. In other words, when Jews wished to set up a small farm, their decisions were often influenced by the proximity of other Jews with whom they could share the services, both religious and secular, that they needed in order to flourish as Jews. Since the so-called “farming colonies” in Canada were communities rather than organized settlements, the role of Jewish farmers takes on greater historical significance. Although for some Jewish philanthropic organizations (such as the JCA) Canada may have started out as a destination similar to Argentina, it was the consequences of the early failures and lack of organization that influenced the formation of independent Jewish settlements across the country. In actuality, although a very small number of organized and officially funded settlements were founded prior to 1900, the majority of Jews who ventured into agriculture in Canada did so on their own initiative, and most often with only minor assistance from Jewish organizations. In other words, the “farming colonies” were less an organized creation and more an act of resourcefulness by Jews who attempted to reinvent their lives as Canadian farmers or rural business people. Jewish Farmers: Changes & New Directions In the 1930s, Louis Rosenberg wrote, “As long as the majority of Jewish farmers in Canada are concentrated in the Western Provinces and exposed to the vagaries of drought, grasshoppers, and world wheat prices, the continued progress of the Jewish farm population of Canada as a — 47 —

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whole will remain subject to violent fluctuations.”20 Rosenberg was a realist with experience in farming and business. Reflecting on this same era in a 2007 interview, Cyril Leonoff, noted historian of Jewish farmers in Canada, stated, “It wasn’t until the period when farming became large scale and highly mechanized, when the family farm would begin to disappear.”21 The new age of farming required less manual labour, at the same time as modern equipment expanded the potential of the farm. These changes eventually affected many Jewish farming families across the country, many of whom worried about whether their children would have a future on the farm, and whether they would marry outside their religion. These concerns led many families to encourage their daughters to travel to the cities to find work in factories. As for the boys, there was also a movement toward the cities for them, in search of better jobs or in some cases additional education. In their new locations, these younger people also had the opportunity to meet other young Jews in greater numbers. These trends sowed the seeds of disintegration among the Jewish farmers as the upcoming generations found their futures elsewhere and slowly moved away. As the number of Jewish immigrants entering Canada began to decrease substantially from 1930 onward, so did the number of Jewish farmers across Canada. The movement of young Jews reflected this new situation, in which the demands of the war placed a strain on the economy and redirected industry. Whether farmers were Jewish or Gentile, the mechanization of agriculture and the opportunities of other professions contributed to the reorientation of the younger generations. In time, once-active communities of Jewish farmers faded away. Beyond changes in agriculture and farm life, the Canadian Jewish community as a whole was restructuring. The trend was toward life in the large cities, where work was plentiful and social and cultural opportunities diverse. If Jews in Canada were to flourish and move forward, life in the city seemed the best solution.

20 Ibid., 225. 21 Howard Gontovnick, “Canadian Jewish Studies Award 2007. An Interview with Cyril E. Leonoff,” ACJS Bulletin, 21:2 (fall 2007): 1. — 48 —

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Reflections From 1890 until 1950, the Canadian government presented Canada as a land open to new settlers, and extended “a hearty welcome to those who choose to come to these shores.”22 Responding to the offer of free land in western Canada, many Jews struggled to make their own way, while others required and received some financial assistance. Canada, like the United States, became a testing ground for a project to establish poor and uneducated eastern European Jews in “Jewish farming colonies.” In essence, the farming colony constituted a model for establishing Jewish newcomers in Canada. Many of the immigrants considered it one of the better options for keeping the immigrant family together. Some thought of farming as an opportunity for successful self-employment in the new world. Others believed that living in close proximity to each other would provide the Jewish farmers opportunities to live as a Jewish community. At the same time, it was considered important to establish eastern European Jews as farmers because they “served the community well from a public relations point of view,” becoming some of the first immigrants, along with the Mennonites, to settle on farms in the prairies.23 Thus, the perception of these immigrants as contributing to the building of Canada was a victory for those who worried about the image of Jews and believed in the necessity of the productivization of Jews. As the number of Jewish immigrants arriving in Canada increased between 1900 and 1930, many felt it important to present them in a positive light. Working and productive Jewish immigrants would be perceived as adding to the growth of the country. Given the strength of antisemitism in this era, it’s no surprise that productivization influenced the actions of Jewish immigrant placement programs. In this context, farming seemed to be the occupation that best demonstrated how Jews were contributing to their new homeland both physically and economically. Any criticism for accepting so many immigrants into Canada could be countered by invoking the importance of building the Canadian western frontier. Over the years, Jewish farmers from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba contributed to the emergence of Canada as a major producer 22 Simon Belkin, Through Narrow Gates: A Review of Jewish Immigration, Colonization & immigrant Aid Work in Canada (1840-1940) (Montreal: The Eagle Publishing Co., 1966), 78. 23 Ibid., 85. — 49 —

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of grain and an innovator in systems of harvesting. In later generations, their activities contributed to the emergence of agricultural colleges and helped to introduce many innovations of modern agriculture. At many levels, Jews were also in the vanguard of farming cooperatives that offered support for marketing, distribution, and the growth of farm production. With the transformation of agriculture and the growth of farm size, the remaining Jewish farmers across Canada only occasionally called on the JCA for support. In 1931, plans emerged for an agricultural settlement in the Niagara Peninsula. Only in 1948 was land purchased, and a year later twenty refugee families settled in the area. Farmers in this region expanded their operations into the dairy and poultry industry, as well as the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. In Quebec, a strong community of Jewish farmers in the village of Sainte Sophie also became prominent in the poultry industry as producers of broilers (chickens for consumption) and eggs, and also raised and sold hogs. Today there are very few, if any, Jewish farmers left in Canada. Although as Cyril Leonoff wrote, “the dream of a mass Jewish agriculture movement in Canada was never realized,” Jewish farmers played an important role in the history of the Jewish community in Canada.24 The creation of these early Jewish farming communities across Canada likely encouraged a number of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe to settle in Canada—even though the United States may have been their initial choice. As for the role of farms and “farming settlements,” there is little doubt that they became an important opportunity for a large number of people with limited skills. Farming opened many new doors for future generations. Ultimately, the most important role for the early Jewish farmers in Canada was their contribution to changing the image of who and what a Jew was. Not surprisingly, the image of Jews as hard-working farmers and people contributing to the Canadian dream was a strategy to combat antisemitic bias and reinvent the image of the Jew. Thus, Simon Belkin felt that the East European Jews were the focus of a delicate public relations effort. Jews who became farmers in North America helped to establish “their value as citizens of a free society” during a difficult period.25 This does not diminish the activities of other 24 Leonoff, “The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada,” 77. 25 Belkin, Through Narrow Gates, 86.

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Jewish immigrants, but rather highlights how these Jewish farmers contributed to a very different image of what a Jew was. In the land of their birth, they lived in poverty and persecution. In Canada, they were pioneers, risk-takers, adventurers, struggling to contribute to the building of their country. Howard Gontovnick

For Further Study Belkin, Simon. Through Narrow Gates: A Review of Jewish Immigration, Colonization & Immigrant Aid Work in Canada (1840-1940). Montreal: The Eagle Publishing Co., 1966. Gontovnick, Howard. “From Colony to Community, Ste Sophie, Quebec.” Canadian Jewish Studies 9 (2001): 190-209. Joseph, Samuel. History of the Baron de Hirsch Fund. Fairfield: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1978. Leonoff, Cyril E. “The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada.” Western States Jewish History (1984): 1. Norman, Theodore. An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Zablotsky, Edgardo E. “Philanthropy vs Unproductive Charity: The Case of Baron Maurice de Hirsch.” Electronic Version : http://ssrn.com/abract=1013671. May 2004.

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V Communities and Conflicts: East European Jewish Immigrants in Ontario and Quebec From the Late 1800s through the 1930s

As Jews poured out of Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some made their way to Canada, yearning for safer and freer lives. During the course of this mass exodus, approximately one third of all eastern European Jews left the Old World, in response to vicious antisemitism and dramatic poverty. Their lives had been severely confined by many forms of overt hostility to Jews. In Russia, in particular, Jews had been forbidden to own land, to enter many occupations, and to live in many parts of the empire. At times, Jewish communities were victimized by murderous pogroms. These intense problems were compounded by economic and demographic pressures similar to those propelling members of other groups from eastern and southern Europe to depart for the New World at the turn of the twentieth century. While dramatic population growth produced severe overcrowding in the Jewish quarters of eastern Europe, many traditional Jewish artisans found their meagre livelihood further undermined by growing competition from factory-made goods as industrial capitalism began to develop in their homelands. Hence, many Jews joined the exodus. In the New World, Jewish immigrants hoped to find not only relief from intense hatred but also better economic opportunities and increased freedom. Yet in the years from the late 1800s through the 1930s, adapting to new lives on Canadian soil would not be easy, partly because the immigrants had not escaped antisemitism altogether. Nor had they escaped economic hardship. At the same time, there were many differing opinions among them about how—and how much—they should adapt. Many continued to assert deeply-rooted Jewish traditions while fearing assimilation. Others embraced various kinds of changes more readily. Religious divisions were criss-crossed by class and political divisions, and the immigrants wove together complex communities. On the one hand, many of them felt tied together as Jews in significant ways, especially—but not only—when it came to confronting external threats. — 52 —

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The extensive mutual aid within Jewish communities stemmed partly from the Talmudic injunction that “kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh” (all Jews are responsible for one another). On the other hand, the internal divisions among them testify to tensions that could sometimes become quite sharp, while also indicating rich diversity and dynamic intellectual ferment. At the same time, the vibrancy of these Jewish communities should not obscure the kinds of individual hardships that historians of immigrant groups have often neglected, such as wife desertion and mental breakdown. Between 1891 and 1930, well over one hundred thousand Jews entered Canada, but then Depression conditions combined with increased antisemitism to prompt Canada as well as many other countries to slam the doors shut, leaving the remaining Jews of Europe exposed to Hitler’s “final solution.” During the period of mass migration, although some Jewish immigrants settled in the Canadian west (especially in Winnipeg), most Jews who came to Canada settled in Quebec and Ontario. Within these two provinces, most Jews concentrated in Montreal and Toronto, although some settled in smaller locales (especially in Ontario). The growth of the Jewish communities in Montreal and Toronto was dramatic. While there were less than 2,500 Jews in Montreal in 1891, there were almost 58,000 by 1931. In Toronto, the Jewish population increased from less than 1,500 in 1891 to almost 47,000 in 1931. Although Jews constituted only 6% of the population of Montreal and 7% of the population of Toronto by 1931, in each city they were conspicuous not only as non-Christians but also as the largest ethnic group aside from the French and the British.1 In each of these two cities, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe encountered an extremely small group of established Jews who had arrived earlier. In both cities, many members of the older Jewish communities stemmed from England, and some others from Germany. They tended to be middle-class, and had achieved a significant level of integration in Anglo-Canadian society. Although there were tensions between members of these older Jewish communities and the newer Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, the impoverished new immi1

Bernard L. Vigod, The Jews in Canada (Ottawa: Canada Historical Association, 1984), 9; Gerald Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 499; and Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 321-322. — 53 —

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grants sometimes received crucial aid from the more established Jews. In the early 1880s, for example, just as the massive Jewish exodus from eastern Europe was beginning, Montreal’s Jews formed the Jewish Emigration Aid Society to help Jewish refugees from Russia find temporary housing and jobs. Toronto’s Jews undertook similar efforts, especially through the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Ladies’ Montefiore Hebrew Benevolent Society, while in both cities sympathetic Christians provided significant funding and moral support. The aid provided by the older Jewish communities in these two cities was spurred partly by the concern that the inrush of such “foreign” Jews would precipitate significant antisemitism, as indeed it did. Hence the more established Jews provided funding for antidelinquency work among immigrant Jews in interwar Montreal, for example, not only as an act of compassion but also in order to control troublesome Jewish youths whose behaviour might otherwise trigger increased hostility toward the broader Jewish community. Key women from Montreal’s more established Jewish community played important roles in the efforts to combat such juvenile delinquency. The immigrant Jews from eastern Europe built a wide range of community organizations on their own as well, partly because they resented the condescending efforts of the more established Jews to push them toward rapid (though not complete) assimilation. New synagogues sprang up, many founded by groups of people from specific areas of eastern Europe. Their members usually shared not only their main traditions but also certain specific religious customs that varied from region to region. In addition to serving as houses of worship, these synagogues also served as fraternal associations—often with ladies’ auxiliaries—as well as mutual aid organizations. Immigrant Jews also established many social and mutual benefit societies that were unaffiliated with synagogues. One of the most important of these was the landsmanshaft, a fraternal association of Jews who had come from the same town or region of eastern Europe. In the many landsmanshaftn in Montreal and Toronto fellow immigrants gathered together, seeking familiar company in the strange New World. Unemployed members could also seek assistance from these organizations, and a programme of sickness and death benefits helped members and their families cope with hardship. Members also helped friends and relatives from “the old home” immigrate to Canada, and then helped the new arrivals find housing and jobs. — 54 —

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The need for the self-organization of eastern European Jewish immigrants was highlighted by Montreal’s Yiddish newspaper (Der Keneder Adler) in 1914, when the editor called for the establishment of a local bikur kholim (an association to visit the sick). “Particularly sad is the situation of Jewish women who know no English, and have no relatives or acquaintances here,” explained the editor. “When they suddenly find themselves hospitalized and they need to rely on their Christian neighbours in the absence of Jewish doctors, they have no one to talk with, and loneliness is the more painful.”2 At the same time, the editor expressed exasperation that the immigrant Jews of Montreal had been so slow to set up a bikhur kholim. Partly in response to these types of pleas, many kinds of political, economic, social, and cultural organizations and facilities evolved in both Montreal’s and Toronto’s Jewish communities. But the editor’s exasperation cautions historians not to minimize the difficulties faced by the immigrants. While these associational developments were partly a product of Jewish traditions of self-organization, some of the key Jewish organizations in Montreal and Toronto developed in a halting fashion, and their development was fraught with tensions. These difficulties stemmed partly from the diversity of the Jewish communities in the New World. In addition to the divisions between the older Jewish communities and the newer Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, there were tensions between Jews from different parts of eastern Europe. Those from Lithuania tended to look down on their co-religionists from Poland as uncultured and uncouth, for example. Moreover, although some eastern European immigrants eventually prospered economically, many continued to experience considerable hardship and had little extra income to devote to the building of community institutions in the period from the late 1800s to the Second World War. Yet despite these difficulties, many Jews desired community development. The need for kosher meat, for example, meant that specially trained Jewish slaughterers and butchers were required, as was rabbinic supervision. For Orthodox Jewish men, the injunction to pray three times a day in the company of at least nine other male co-religionists meant that it was crucial to live and work among fellow Jews. Sabbath 2

Keneder Adler (Montreal), June 18 1914, cited in Through the Eyes of the Eagle, ed. Pierre Anctil (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2001), 65. — 55 —

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observance meant, of course, that one refrained from work and engaged in special prayers on Saturdays. Since riding on the Sabbath was not permitted, religious Jews needed to live within walking distance of their synagogues. Even secular Jewish immigrants often wanted to live where they could buy familiar ethnic foods (including kosher meat), speak Yiddish to shopkeepers and neighbours, and attend Yiddish theatres and other cultural institutions. Whether religious or secular, parents often wanted to live in locations where specific kinds of Jewish educational programmes were available for their children. Thus it is not surprising that immigrant Jews congregated together in specific parts of each city. The high level of residential concentration was also a product of antisemitism. In many parts of both cities, landlords would not rent to Jews, and restrictive covenants, as well as more informal restrictions, meant that many home-owners would not sell to Jews. Jewish residential options were further limited by economic constraints. As Jews thus congregated in a few specific areas in each city, their intense residential concentration facilitated the growth of Jewish organizations. In Montreal, many immigrant Jews lived around St. Lawrence Boulevard (known as “the Main”) which divided the English-Protestant western area of the city from the French-Catholic eastern area. Although some Jews clustered in a few other parts of Montreal, this “Jewish quarter” took shape in the middle of the city, in a belt that ran from the waterfront north along St. Lawrence Boulevard up to the edges of Outremont. Toronto’s immigrant Jews clustered at first in “the Ward,” a central area bounded by Yonge Street, University Avenue, Queen Street, and College Street. Somewhat later, Jewish immigrants settled along Spadina Avenue between Queen and College Streets, as residential areas of “the Ward” yielded to more lucrative land use and more Jews flooded into the city. While many of the leaders of the Jewish organizations in these enclaves were men, women often played crucial roles. In both cities, men were usually the ones who represented the Jewish communities to the outside world. Within these Jewish communities, the religious leaders were, of course, males, and men headed the landsmanshaftn, as well as many of the diverse political organizations. Groups of women often worked behind the scenes, cooking and serving food at fund-raising events for male-dominated associations. Yet women played more prominent roles when it came to charitable work, as had also been the case — 56 —

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in Jewish communities in eastern Europe. In Toronto, Ezras Noshim (Women’s Aid), for example, was founded in 1913 as a mutual benefit society for immigrant Jewish women. Members who became sick benefited from visitors and from help with housework. As members of this women’s society became increasingly concerned about elderly Jews who had no one to care for them, they raised additional funds and established the Jewish Old Folks’ Home (Moshav Zekenim). The establishment of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital further illustrates women’s crucial roles, while also demonstrating how women could be pushed to the side when one of their ventures gained in importance. The need for a Jewish hospital was partly due to the language barrier faced by Yiddish-speaking immigrants, as well as their desire for kosher food. In addition, since the public hospitals refused to hire Jewish doctors, when the patients of Jewish doctors entered these hospitals they were treated by unfamiliar physicians. Consequently, members of the Ezras Noshim raised funds to establish a Jewish hospital, and they were aided by Jewish doctors who donated both funds and medical services. In 1922, their combined efforts resulted in a twenty-bed hospital which struggled to provide adequate care, partly because of the lack of support from members of the wealthier—and more assimilated—older Jewish community, who tended to oppose separating Jews in this way. Before long, however, a group of prominent Jewish men (from both the older and the more recent Jewish groups) agreed to support the hospital if the women of Ezras Noshim would cede control to a new board of directors that was composed almost entirely of men. After this transfer of power, a ladies’ auxiliary was formed to raise additional funds for the hospital by holding social events. Members of this auxiliary also wound up volunteering as nursing aides and cooks when the hospital was short of staff. Local Jewish women also formed Canadian branches of larger Jewish women’s organizations. The Canadian branches of the National Council of Jewish Women were generally composed of women from the older Jewish communities that derived from western Europe, and these branches focussed on charitable and educational activities aimed at Canadian Jews. Meanwhile, Jewish women from eastern Europe, as well as their Canadian-born daughters, eventually developed local branches of two Zionist women’s groups: Hadassah and Pioneer Women. The women of Hadassah focussed on helping to provide social services, es— 57 —

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pecially healthcare, to Jews who were working in Palestine to create a Jewish homeland, and also supported the welfare of Jewish women and children in Palestine. The Pioneer Women’s Organization was an explicitly left-wing Zionist group whose activists stressed the role of women in building a Jewish homeland while also striving to educate Jewish children in the Labour Zionist movement. The organizational life of the Jewish communities of Montreal and Toronto also encompassed the development of the Jewish labour movement, as well as the Jewish left. While numerous eastern European Jewish immigrants struggled to earn a living as peddlers or small shopkeepers, many immigrant Jews were concentrated in the clothing industry, which became the basis for the Jewish labour movement. Jews were drawn to this labour-intensive industry partly because it provided many jobs. In early twentieth-century Toronto in particular, the clothing industry employed more people than any other industry. In addition to providing jobs for men, it also provided work for women. This was important to impoverished immigrant families, especially since this was a period in which women’s job opportunities were extremely limited. Despite legislation designed to curtail child labour, the industry also provided jobs for children, particularly in the late 1800s and the first two decades of the 1900s. In addition, Jewish immigrants gravitated toward the clothing industry in the New World partly because many of them had already been doing this kind of work before emigrating. The concentration of Jews in this sector in the Old World was partly a product of severe antisemitic occupational restrictions. It was also related to the religious injunction against wearing clothing that mixed wool and linen, for this meant that religious Jews had to depend on Jewish-made clothing to be sure not to violate sacred law. In Canada (as in the United States), Jews continued to concentrate in the needle trades, partly because local antisemitism ensured that many other occupations were closed to them. In addition to the experienced tailors who continued their work after emigration, many Jews who needed to find a new trade in the New World entered the clothing industry because it didn’t take long to learn the less skilled jobs in this sector. Numerous newly-arrived Jews were especially attracted to the garment industry once other Jews were already becoming entrenched there. This occupational concentration helped provide a basis for the main— 58 —

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tenance of Jewish culture. Religious Jews, for example, sought to work for Orthodox Jewish manufacturers so they would not have to work on Saturday or other Jewish holy days. In addition, the number of Jews in this sector meant that the Yiddish language could often be used at work. Moreover, for Jews with entrepreneurial aspirations part of the attraction of this expanding industry was the expectation that one could become a clothing contractor or small manufacturer without having to invest much capital. Some Jews became clothing workers in the hope that they would be able to accumulate the workplace experience and savings that would enable them to eventually open their own businesses in this sector. The garment industry was notorious for low wages and harsh working conditions. The situation was so bad that it was repeatedly condemned not only by labour activists but also by government investigators and newspaper reporters. In fact, when the young William Lyon Mackenzie King investigated the clothing sweatshops for the Toronto Daily Mail and Empire in 1897, he was overwhelmed by the pitifully low wages and crushingly long hours of labour. King also commented extensively on the “foul and noisome” workplace atmosphere that threatened the garment workers’ health, expressing concern that “a large number of hands were, as a rule, gathered together in small ill-ventilated apartments,” inhaling fumes from the gas irons.3 These problems were augmented by speed-ups during seasonal peaks, alternating with long bouts of seasonal unemployment, as well as additional health hazards. The situation was so grave that the Royal Commission on Price Spreads reported in 1935 that wages and working conditions in this sector “merit the most emphatic condemnation.”4 One female garment worker, who actually worked in one of the better clothing factories, testified before the commission that the speed-ups were so onerous that “I would go home nights and I would be so tired I could not eat my supper.... And I would be so tired and stiff going home on the street car, I would just dread getting a seat, because if I sat down, I could not get up again, my knees and my legs would be so stiff.” One of her co-workers, who had broken down several times and had had to go to the hospi3

4

Toronto Daily Mail and Empire, October 9 1897, and W.L. Mackenzie King, Report to the Honourable the Postmaster General of the Methods Adopted in Canada in the Carrying Out of Government Clothing Contracts (Ottawa: 1900), 26-27. Royal Commission on Price Spreads, Report (Ottawa: 1935), 111. — 59 —

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tal, explained to the commissioners: “Well you had to work so hard, you were driven so fast ... you were a nervous wreck.”5 In addition to nervous breakdowns, other occupational hazards included high blood pressure, anaemia, kidney problems, boils, and skin irritations (mainly from the chemicals in the cloth). Worst of all, there was the dreaded “tailors’ disease”—tuberculosis. Many Jewish garment workers responded to these conditions militantly. They struggled to unionize the various branches of the needle trades and sometimes mounted dramatic strikes, despite the fact that the police and the courts often aided anti-union employers, in this sector as in so many others. At the same time, the fact that most garment workers possessed no unusual job skills left the activists especially vulnerable to employers’ attempts to recruit docile workers to replace them. In addition, it was hard for militants to fight against the downward pressure on wages that resulted partly from the fierce competition among the many manufacturers, contractors, and subcontractors in this chaotic industry. But the Jewish labour movement was rooted in an activist, Jewish, working-class culture. A deep pro-labour current flowed through the immigrant Jewish communities, in Canada as in the United States, and led to much more than the kind of “trade unionism pure and simple” that focussed solely on concrete shop-floor issues. The Jewish unions served as social and cultural centres, and in the period under consideration they were explicitly socialist in orientation. While the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers tried to appeal to non-Jewish garment workers as well, these unions were often led by Jews, and many of the rank-and-file activists were Jews. Although the main leaders of these Jewish unions were men, some Jewish women played especially militant roles. As Jewish labour activists struggled to build a militant movement to advance their class interests, their experience of oppression as Jews heightened their political awareness and often sharpened their commitment to activism. For Jewish socialists in particular, class consciousness and ethnic identity reinforced each other, deepening their com5

Royal Commission on Price Spreads, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa, 1935), 4520 and 4462.

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mitment to radical social change. For example, Sol Abel, an activist in Toronto’s Jewish labour movement, had helped organize tailors while still in Poland and had come to Canada as an experienced radical trade unionist. As a youngster in Poland, Abel had joined the Bund in rebellion against the difficult lives Jews were forced to lead there. He declared that Polish antisemitism was the main reason why he became a Bundist. A non-Zionist, he was drawn to the Bundists’ belief in a decentralized form of socialism which would enable Jews to preserve their own culture within multi-ethnic socialist federations. Thus for Abel, socialism held out the promise of a new society in which everyone—including Jews—would be equal. Bessie Kramer was another activist who stressed similar issues even though she had not become a committed socialist until after her emigration. She explained that she joined the Young Communist League in Canada largely because she felt that communism would solve the related problems of antisemitism and harsh taxation that Jews continued to experience under the Polish regime. She stressed that she had been radicalized as a Jew: “I joined [the Communist movement] for [the] reason that [at] that time, we thought that the best solution for the Jew is in the Soviet Union. That was right after the revolution. And I joined for that reason, that I wanted my people should be equal with every other people. And that was the slogan of the Communist Party, that in the Soviet Union, all the citizens are the same.”6 Despite heavy household responsibilities once she became a wife and mother, she worked as a cloakmaker and devoted herself to building the union in her trade and building the Jewish branch of the Communist Party of Canada. Although most Jewish socialists were no longer religious, a significant number of them had been influenced by certain aspects of traditional Judaism. For Joe Salsberg, socialist conviction sprang from especially deep religious roots. Salsberg came from an Orthodox home, like many other Jewish socialists, and was pious in his younger years. While he went on to become one of the most prominent leaders of the Canadian Communist Party and a major activist in the Canadian labour movement, he retained a strong Jewish identity and explained that he had been strongly influenced by “the preachings of Amos and chapters of Isaiah which condemned the rich.” Indeed, these two prophets con6

Interviews with Bessie Kramer, 1969 and 1984. — 61 —

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tinually emphasized the need to “seek justice” and to “relieve the oppressed,” especially the poor, while they preached that the people must “undo the bands of the yoke ... to let the oppressed go free.”7 Both class consciousness and ethnic identity were definitive in shaping the politics of the Jewish labour movement—despite the fact that class issues functioned divisively within the Jewish community, especially as more Jews became clothing manufacturers, and ethnic issues functioned divisively within the working class. By contrast, a developed commitment to women’s rights did not emerge in this period, partly because of its divisive potential both within the Jewish community and in the working class. Meanwhile, the dual commitment to Jewish identity and working-class activism was both reflected in and and reinforced by the Yiddish press in Montreal and Toronto. In 1907, the very first issue of Montreal’s Der Keneder Adler declared that this newspaper “will take the part of the Jewish worker. Union reports will be welcome and their just demands against the bosses will be supported by us.”8 Toronto’s Yiddisher Zhurnal, which was founded in the early 1910s, was also prolabour. In the midst of a widespread strike of Toronto cloakmakers in 1919, for example, the paper’s editorial stressed the need to “help the oppressed to receive justice.” The Zhurnal often contained a special section on the labour movement which not only supported trade unionism but was also often socialist in tone.9 The activism of the immigrant Jewish communities in Montreal and Toronto was reflected not only in shop-floor struggles and class politics but also in strikes by Jewish schoolchildren and consumer boycotts by Jewish housewives. As reported in the Keneder Adler, five Jewish boys in grade 6 pulled five hundred children out on strike in 1913, after their teacher refused to apologize for “having insulted the feelings of the Jewish students by saying that Jews are dirty” and stating that she would inform the school committee that Jewish children should be kept out of this school. The striking children organized picketers and then called upon the adult leaders of the Jewish community to take their concerns to the board of education. The newspaper’s editor heralded the 7 8 9

Interview with Joe Salsberg, 1984; Isaiah 1:17, 33:15, & 58:6; and Amos 4:1. Keneder Adler, January 1910, in Through the Eyes of the Eagle, 34. Der Yiddisher Zhurnal, August 25 1919. — 62 —

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children’s activism as the mark of a “free generation ... which no longer bends its head,” and declared that “the act of these children is an honour unto us.”10 About a year later, in the context of deep concern within Toronto’s Jewish community about the activities of aggressive Christian missionaries, Jewish children from several of the city’s schools went out on strike to protest having to sing Christmas carols in class. The children triumphantly returned to school when the board of education reluctantly agreed they need not sing the carols. In 1918, another strike of Jewish schoolchildren broke out in a Toronto classroom, when the non-Jewish teacher refused to hang up the Jewish flag along with the national flags that decorated the room. While the flag incident triggered the strike, the Jewish students felt that this teacher had acted unfairly toward them on other occasions as well. According to the city’s Yiddish newspaper, the children won their battle.11 Meanwhile, immigrant Jewish women participated in a whole series of consumer boycotts in Toronto and Montreal during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The women launched these boycotts to combat sharp increases in the prices of kosher food products, and their protests often gathered wide support within the immigrant Jewish communities. In 1922, for example, when the price of Montreal’s kosher meat increased by about fifty percent, Jewish women organized a successful boycott which soon resulted in a drastic reduction in the price hike. Another kosher meat boycott, this time in Toronto in 1933, stands out as a dramatic example of the Jewish housewives’ militancy. When the price of kosher meat increased sharply in that year, seven hundred indignant Jewish women gathered at a mass meeting and decided to organize a boycott. As the boycott progressed, the leaders issued daily leaflets and held frequent mass meetings to discuss strategy. Approximately two thousand Jewish women joined the boycott, and hundreds of women picketed the butcher shops, sometimes beginning as early as five or six in the morning, holding their ground when the butchers tried to drive them away. One of the boycott leaders, who had been struck in the face by an angry butcher, stressed that this was a 10 Der Keneder Adler, March 1913, cited in Through the Eyes of the Eagle, ed. Pierre Anctil, 78-80. 11 See Shmuel Shamai, “The Jews and the Public Education System: The Students’ Strike over the ‘Flag Fight’ in Toronto after the First World War,” Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal 10 (fall 1988), 46–53. — 63 —

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women’s action; although there were male supporters, all of the leaders and the picketers were women. The women’s protest was so effective that within a week the butchers decided to reduce the price of meat substantially.12 As these struggles between Jewish boycott activists and Jewish butchers suggest, there were significant divisions within the Jewish communities of Montreal and Toronto. In fact, the 1922 Montreal kosher meat boycott took place in the context of bitter battles between two rival rabbis (and their followers), each of whom tried to exert exclusive authority over which meat would be deemed kosher. Similar kosher meat wars took place in Toronto as well, in the mid-to-late 1910s, for example, when rival rabbis each insisted that their followers should not buy allegedly kosher meat from butchers allied with the other faction. A similar dispute in that city in the mid-1920s actually wound up in the Supreme Court of Ontario, when a Jewish butcher sued four local rabbis for libel after they asserted that his meat was no longer considered kosher because he had joined the rival faction. As religious Jews grappled with pressures to assimilate, disagreements arose over aspects of traditional religious practices. Observant Jews sometimes tried to compel Jewish shopkeepers not to yield to the economic pressure to open their stores on Saturdays, for example, and other arguments broke out over the nature of children’s religious education, especially in situations wherein a newly established religious school was attempting to encompass several different groups within the eastern European Jewish community. Issues of assimilation created tensions within immigrant Jewish families as well. Indeed, some historians have argued that women tended to emphasize Jewish traditions more than their husbands because women’s Jewish rituals centred on the home, which was often more isolated from assimilative pressures. Greater tensions were likely to arise between immigrant parents and their Canadian-born children, especially since the Canadian school system promoted assimilation in many subtle and notso-subtle ways. In order to promote the retention of various forms of Jewish identity, a wide range of educational programmes, social clubs, 12

See in the former case Ira Robinson, "The Kosher Meat War and the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, 1922-1925," Canadian Ethnic Studies 22: 2 (1990): 41-53. — 64 —

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and athletic groups were established for Jewish children and youths. Meanwhile, some of the most dramatic conflicts occurred between Jewish workers and Jewish employers in the garment industry. Although there were many non-Jewish garment manufacturers at the turn of the twentieth century, the number of Jewish employers in this sector increased significantly in the interwar years. Jewish workers and Jewish employers were sometimes tied together as relatives, neighbours, or members of the same synagogues or landsmanshaftn. Although some Jewish workers were reluctant to strike against fellow Jews, strikes nonetheless broke out fairly often in the clothing industry. While some Jewish employers at times made key concessions out of sympathy for their workers, others were not nearly so obliging. Indeed, Toronto’s Jewish clothing workers sometimes complained that certain Jewish manufacturers hired only non-Jews, because Jewish workers were seen as more militant. In 1932, for example, Der Yiddisher Zhurnal proclaimed that “every day, people come to the office of the Zhurnal with complaints and report horrible facts of discrimination against Jewish workers and [by] none other than Jewish bosses.”13 The newspaper also reported at times that particular Jewish employers were actually stirring up antisemitism in order to keep non-Jewish clothing workers away from committed Jewish unionists. The Zhurnal’s editorials strongly condemned such behaviour and, in the midst of strikes, called upon the Jewish manufacturers to make concessions to the workers, partly because of the concern that public fighting between Jews could lead to increased antisemitism. Focussing on Montreal in the late 1930s, The Canadian Jewish Chronicle stressed that many of the Jewish clothing manufacturers were “boycotting Jewish labour.” The Chronicle highlighted the irony of “the attitude of the Jewish grandees of the dress industry.... With one hand they deprive the Jews of their earning capabilities, and with the other hand they support charitable institutions to dole out relief.”14 Within the Jewish labour movement, tensions between secular Jewish socialists and Orthodox Jews were normally not substantial. In Leah Stern’s experience, for example, religious Jewish clothing workers generally appreciated the fact that socialist union leaders “fought for 13 Der Yiddisher Zhurnal, August 12 1932. 14 Ibid. — 65 —

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the rights of the working person.” As an Orthodox Jew and a garment worker, Stern had turned to her union organizer for help in persuading her employer that she should be allowed to refrain from working on the Sabbath. This organizer was a Communist Jew who did not personally believe in religious observance of the Sabbath, but he nevertheless supported Stern. She won her fight and praised this union leader. “He was a lefty,” she declared, “but that didn’t bother me because he fought for my rights.”15 Nonetheless, tensions between Jewish leftists and Orthodox Jews occasionally developed in other areas, as, for example, when anger erupted within Toronto’s immigrant Jewish community in 1911 over the opening of the Jewish National Radical School, which the city’s Orthodox Jews condemned as blasphemous. Additional tensions centred on a range of political issues. Zionism was a controversial issue within the Jewish communities, especially in the years before the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, endorsing the building of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. Even after 1917, the issue of Zionism remained contentious among the Jewish left. While a few Jewish groups refused to support Zionism, some of those who agreed on certain basic tenets of Zionism disagreed about such matters as the place of religion, the role of class politics, or the role of the Yiddish language in the building of the Jewish state. Within the Jewish left in particular there was a great deal of intellectual ferment, as various camps debated the best solutions to both class oppression and the oppression of the Jewish people. The proponents of leftist ideologies included Anarchists (who were anti-statist), the Left and Right Labour Zionists (both of whom supported the establishment of a socialist Jewish state in Palestine), the Social Territorialists (who believed in the establishment of a Jewish state but not necessarily in Palestine), the Bundists (who supported the development of multi-ethnic socialist federations), and, by the interwar period, the Communists (who opposed Zionism). On the one hand, these differences fostered a rich and dynamic, intellectual and activist Jewish culture; on the other hand, these disputes could become quite sharp and divisive. Indeed, one of the deepest divisions within the Jewish left occurred when the Communist Party pursued its highly sectarian phase from the late 1920s 15 Interview with Leah Stern. — 66 —

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to the mid-1930s. In this period, Jewish Communists joined other members of the Communist Party in denouncing other leftists as “social fascists,” “labour fakirs,” and “parasites,” while promoting a destructive policy of dual unionism in the clothing industry. Yet while there were serious tensions within the Jewish communities, there was also a strong sense that Jews needed to pull together, especially to deal with antisemitism both in Canada and in Europe. From the outset, virtually every page of Toronto’s daily Yiddish newspaper, for example, reflected the Jewish immigrants’ concerns about prejudice in the New World and in their places of birth. Thus, when tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in pogroms in eastern Europe in the wake of the First World War, Canadian Jews worked together to protest the treatment of Jews overseas, send aid to surviving members of uprooted Jewish communities in eastern Europe, and push for the admission of more Jews to Canada. In terms of the relations between Jews and non-Jews within Canada, one of the most intractable problems centred on schooling. While Jewish children and teachers experienced some difficulties in Ontario’s school system, the discrimination they faced was more intense in Quebec. Upon Confederation, Quebec’s educational system had been set up to provide two separate religious school systems: one for Protestants and one for Catholics. As Jewish immigration increased, Montreal’s Protestant Board of School Commissioners took Jewish children into the city’s Protestant schools, but within this system Jews had sharply limited rights. Until 1913, the Protestant Board refused to hire Jewish teachers, even though some schools had many Jewish students. Even after 1913, few Jewish teachers were hired, and Jews could not sit on the Protestant Board. As tensions increased between the city’s Protestants and Jews over the schooling issue, Jews themselves became sharply divided as to how to solve this problem. The older, more assimilationist community of Jews from western Europe, joined by some of the more economically successful east European Jews, insisted that Jews should push for equal rights within the Protestant system. However, most of the eastern European Jewish immigrants argued that instead of paying their taxes to the Protestant system, Jews should assert their right to set up their own separate school system. While the members of the Protestant Board insisted on the religious nature of their school system, many non-Jews—especially key members of the French Catholic — 67 —

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hierarchy—opposed the establishment of a separate Jewish school system as inappropriate in a Christian country. As the 1930s dawned, the dispute resulted in an awkward compromise whereby Jews continued within the Protestant school system with limited rights. Meanwhile, although some English Canadians and French Canadians were notably sympathetic to them, Jews faced serious prejudice at the turn of the twentieth century and especially in the interwar years. Jews from eastern Europe faced rampant employment discrimination from the outset, unlike the members of the older community of Jews from western Europe, who had experienced significantly less discrimination in the mid-to-late 1800s. These Jews faced exclusion not only from most white-collar jobs but also from factory jobs in many industrial sectors. Jewish businesses faced discrimination and access to the professions was sharply limited, partly because of educational discrimination. Indeed, when “too many” Jews gained admission to McGill University in the 1920s, for example, the Dean of Arts responded by requiring higher grades for Jewish applicants, while certain other McGill faculties imposed quotas. Jews who did manage to graduate from law school or medical school often encountered serious obstacles in finding employment after completing their schooling. In addition, social discrimination kept Jews out of various recreational facilities and clubs, while housing discrimination also confined them. On a personal level, individual Jews were sometimes cruelly taunted and beaten up in the streets. In the interwar period, the negative stereotyping of Jews accelerated. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Jews in Canada (like those in the United States) were increasingly branded as Bolsheviks and disloyal aliens. At the same time, Jews were also stereotyped as cutthroat capitalists who pursued profits at all costs. The Toronto Telegram was particularly sharp in its repeated condemnation of Jews. In 1924, the Telegram proclaimed that: An influx of Jews puts a worm next the kernel of every fair city where they get a hold. These people have no national tradition.... They engage in the wars of no country, but flit from one to another under passports changed with chameleon swiftness, following up the wind the

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smell of lucre.16 When Toronto’s Jews objected to this denunciation, they were defended by the Toronto Star. Yet the pages of the Star were not entirely free of antisemitism either. Moreover, key members of the English Canadian elite—including William Lyon Mackenzie King—had been influenced by the intense antisemitism of Goldwin Smith, who was one of Canada’s most prominent intellectuals at the turn of the century. In Quebec, some segments of the Catholic Church tended to view Jews as a threat to “la survivance,” for they were seen as aliens who ushered in modern capitalism. Jews were also seen as upsetting the delicate balance between Quebec’s Francophones and Anglophones, in a context in which Jews tended to turn more toward the Anglophone community. In the early 1900s, Henri Bourassa, one of the leading French Canadian nationalists, repeatedly denounced Jews as “vampires on the community.”17 He too had been influenced by Goldwin Smith’s antisemitism, and although Bourassa later condemned antisemitism, his earlier views were so extreme that he even proclaimed in the federal parliament that the massacre of Jews in Russian pogroms had resulted, in some cases, from the “well known fact ... that ... the Jews had prepared a conspiracy to slaughter the Christians.”18 Amidst antisemitic tirades in certain—but by no means all—French Catholic newspapers, Jewish fears were heightened in 1910 when J. E. Plamondon, a notary in Quebec City, delivered a provocative lecture to a large meeting of the Association Canadienne de la Jeunesse Catholique in which he stressed the classic medieval charge that Jews slaughtered Christians for ritual purposes. At the same time, Plamondon condemned Jews as usurers and purveyors of whiskey while also claiming that they were destroying Quebec’s traditional rural way of life. Plamondon urged the boycotting of Jewish businesses, and his speech was published as a pamphlet which was sold to the public. In the wake of his speech, some of the city’s Jews were physically harassed, some Jewish property was vandalized, and certain Jewish businesses suffered. By the early 1920s in Quebec, the idea of boycotting Jewish busi16 Toronto Telegram, September 22 1924. 17 Cited in Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 135. 18 Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, March 15 1906, 232, cited in Alan Mendelson, Exiles from Nowhere (n.p.: Robin Brass Studio, 2008), 59. — 69 —

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nesses was becoming more prominent with the rise of the “Achat chez nous” movement, which gained further momentum during the Great Depression. The movement argued that French Canadians should patronize only French Canadian businesses, in a context where there was competition with Jewish shopkeepers and merchants. This campaign was pitched in highly antisemitic tones, for Jews were accused of out-competing French Canadians because they were allegedly inherently dishonest and corrupt. The ugliness of the campaign manifested itself in one Quebec town in 1934, for example, when the local priest endorsed the boycott. By the next day, antisemites had nailed a sign to a local Jewish store proclaiming, “Don’t buy from the Jews, because they are a cursed race of rotten sheenies, of anti-Christian thieves and, often, damned deicides. Be patriotic and encourage our own merchants.”19 In the same year, interns at four Francophone Montreal hospitals engaged in a successful strike against the appointment of a Jewish intern at L’Hôpital Notre Dame. Intensely antisemitic charges were also promoted by Abbé Lionel Groulx, an influential priest who taught history at l’Université de Montréal from 1915 to 1949 and who has often been lauded as Quebec’s national historian. Groulx represented a particular form of right-wing French-Canadian nationalism, which was interwoven with pronounced antisemitism. These views were also promulgated by L’Action nationale (a monthly publication), the Jeune-Canada political movement, and le Devoir. Describing le Devoir as “the leading nationalist daily” of the 1930s, one historian has recently minimized this newspaper’s antisemitic material as “quips and gibes [which] appeared in minor articles,” although he admits that these appeared frequently.20 But as several other historians have pointed out, Le Devoir’s antisemitism was often frontpage material—and was indeed virulent. Meanwhile, Groulx denounced “Jewish internationalism as one of the most dangerous forces of moral and social decay on the planet” in the pages of L’Action nationale,21 and 19 Jewish Daily Eagle, July 1934, cited in Jacques Langlais and David Rome, Jews & French Quebecers (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991), 99. 20 Pierre Anctil, “Interlude of Hostility: Judeo-Christian Relations in Quebec...,” in Antisemitism in Canada, ed. Alan Davies (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), 156. For the opposing point of view, see Esther Delisle, The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1919-1939 (Toronto: Robert Davies Publishing, 1993), 43-44, and Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 313-314. 21 Jacques Brassier (pseudonym of Lionel Groulx), “Pour qu’on vive,” Action nationale (September — 70 —

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this publication also printed a letter from an Austrian bishop, who declared: Together with Freemasonry, degenerate Judaism above all else propagates the worship of Mammon—capitalist self-interest—while simultaneously founding and preaching socialism and Communism, the forerunner and harbinger of Bolshevism.22 In the 1930s, Quebec Jews were especially alarmed by the fascist movement led by Adrien Arcand who explicitly emulated Hitler and Mussolini. In Arcand’s viciously antisemitic publications, Jews were repeatedly reviled as repulsive and filthy, and were accused of the ritual murder of Christians as well as conspiracies to dominate the world. Although these diatribes, together with scenes of Arcand’s marching and saluting followers, were horrific, especially at a time when Quebec’s Jews feared for their co-religionists in Nazi Germany, Arcand’s various newspapers were generally short-lived and his followers were relatively few. Meanwhile, one of the most dramatic clashes between anti-Semites and Jews occurred in Toronto in 1933 at the end of a baseball game between a predominantly Jewish team and a team from St. Peter’s Church. When the non-Jews unfurled a giant swastika (after having hurled anti-Semitic insults at the Jewish players throughout the game), a pitched battle began, involving hundreds of combatants and lasting four hours. Some immigrant Italian males rushed to join the Jews’ side, as did a few Ukrainian immigrants. While the Yiddisher Zhurnal likened the riot to an eastern European pogrom, it did not lead to further race riots. In the heated atmosphere of the 1930s (as well as earlier in the 1900s), there were some leading French Canadians and English Canadians who spoke out against antisemitism. For example, Olivar Asselin, a journalist and French-Canadian nationalist, helped counter anti-Semitic propaganda, as did journalist Jean-Charles Harvey and a number of other French-Canadian journalists. In fact, Asselin denounced the interns’ strike of 1934, declaring that it “could have only been motivated 1933): 1, cited in Delisle, The Traitor and the Jew, 148. 22 Action Nationale (September 1933): 15, cited in Delisle, The Traitor and the Jew, 150. — 71 —

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by racial hatred.”23 Furthermore, Henri Bourassa, who had been such a staunch anti-Semite in the early 1900s, condemned antisemitism in two speeches in the House of Commons in 1934 at the urging of a Jewish member of parliament, and took other measures to promote tolerance as well. It is also noteworthy that la Presse, a daily newspaper with a far larger circulation than le Devoir, did not promote antisemitism, nor did the widely circulated le Soleil or la Patrie. Among English Canadians, Claris E. Silcox, a United Church clergyman and a journalist, worked closely with Reform rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath to combat antisemitism, partly through their co-leadership of the Committee on Jewish-Gentile Relations. Silcox authored The Challenge of Antisemitism to Democracy, which was distributed by this committee, and also lectured on this topic in a variety of Canadian locales. By the 1930s, Silcox became one of the most prominent English Canadians to promote the highly controversial idea that Canada should accept Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis. In the late 1930s, Jewish leaders who had been lobbying in vain to promote the admittance of Jewish refugees received assistance from a number of non-Jews, especially after the atrocities of Kristallnacht in late 1938 provoked more sympathy for Jewish victims of the Nazis. Cairine Wilson, Canada’s first woman senator and president of the Canadian League of Nations Society, worked especially hard for this goal. But despite the eventual mobilization of significant non-Jewish support for this cause—particularly through mass meetings and petition campaigns in the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht—the government of William Lyon Mackenzie King would not budge from its firm stance against admitting Jewish refugees. Although the economic problems of the Great Depression played a role in this decision, the Canadian Jewish community made no headway even when its representatives sought the admittance of several hundred Jewish families while guaranteeing that the community itself would look after them financially and promising that they would not settle in Quebec. King’s rigidity stemmed partly from his own antisemitism, but especially from his concern about the political future of the Liberal Party in Quebec. Ernest Lapointe, the most important French Canadian in King’s cabinet, feared that if signifi23 Olivar Asselin, “La Grève de l’internat,” L’Ordre 22-23 (June 1934), cited in Tulchinsky, 313.

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cant numbers of Jewish refugees were admitted, the Party would lose too much political ground in the province. King may have rationalized his government’s continued opposition to Jewish refugees in terms of his determination to keep Canada united—in the hands of the Liberal Party—but the intense antisemitism of Frederick Charles Blair, director of the government’s Immigration Branch, and Vincent Massey, the Canadian high commissioner in London, were crucial factors as well. The Canadian Jewish communities that evolved in the post-war decades differ dramatically from the Jewish communities of the pre-war period. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish activists, especially in Ontario, spearheaded human rights campaigns that pushed for laws to prohibit discrimination in areas such as employment, housing, and the provision of public services. Over the years, antisemitism has decreased dramatically. Overt antipathy to Jews, which used to be a mainstream phenomenon, is no longer significant. In addition, many Jewish families have experienced significant upward mobility. Many of the children and grandchildren of immigrant Jewish peddlers, shopkeepers, and cloakmakers have entered prestigious occupations and have become successful economically. Jews have also gained significant political clout. On the whole, Canada’s Jews have found a degree of security and influence that they were never able to achieve in the years from the late 1800s through the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although there are significant exceptions, Jews as a whole have become deeply integrated in Canada—economically, politically, culturally, and socially—so much so that many Jewish community leaders currently fear that Canadian Jews are headed for total assimilation. But despite the levels of security, influence, and economic success that have been attained by many, the enormity of the Holocaust has meant that, years later, many Jews experience a degree of insecurity that contrasts with other aspects of their situation. The legacy of centuries of vicious antisemitism in eastern Europe (and various other parts of the world) has also not disappeared. Canadian Jews today are rooted in a long history of complex communities and conflicts. Ruth A. Frager

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For Further Study Anctil, Pierre, ed. Through the Eyes of the Eagle: The Early Montreal Yiddish Press, 1907-1916. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2001. ------. “Interlude of Hostility: Judeo-Christian Relations in Quebec in the Interwar Period, 1919-39.” InAntisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, ed. Alan Davies. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992, 135-165. Delisle, Esther. The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1919-1939. Toronto: Robert Davies Publishing, 1993. Frager, Ruth A. Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. ------. “Class and Ethnic Barriers to Feminist Perspectives in Toronto’s Jewish Labour Movement, 1919-1939.” Studies in Political Economy 30 (Autumn 1989): 143-165. Guttman, Frank Myron. “The Hebrew Free Loan Association of Montreal.” Canadian Jewish Studies 12 (2004): 46-72. Levitt, Cyril H., and William Shaffir. The Riot at Christie Pits. Toronto: Lester and Orphen Dennys, 1987. MacFadyen, Joshua D. “‘Nip the Noxious Growth in the Bud’: Ortenberg V. Plamondon and the Roots of Canadian Anti-Hate Activism.” Canadian Jewish Studies 12 (2004): 73-96. Mendelson, Alan. Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite. N.p., 2008. Myers, Tamara. “On Probation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Women’s Antidelinquency Work in Interwar Montreal.” Negotiating Identities in 19th- and 20th-Century Montreal, edited by Bettina Bradbury and Tamara Myers, 175201. Toronto: UBC Press, 2005. Speisman, Stephen A. The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1979. Tulchinsky, Gerald. “Goldwin Smith: Victorian Canadian Antisemite.” In Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, edited by Alan Davies, 67-91. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992. Vigod, Bernard L. The Jews in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1984.

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VI In Search of Unity: Antisemitism, Zionism, and the Canadian Jewish Congress to 1945

Canada’s motto “From Sea to Sea” also expresses the central challenge to Canadian Jewish unity: distance. Scattered across Canada’s vast geography, subjected to diverse external and internal pressures, the Jewish community proved slow to find pegs upon which to hang the trappings of unity. Zionism provided an early source of unity and ethnic pride; meeting the challenges of antisemitism would eventually serve as a powerful catalyst for the erection of a national communal advocacy organization. But progress towards this goal was slow, hindered by communal insecurity and most Jews’ daily battle for economic survival, combined with tensions between different waves of immigrants, political differences, and cultural intra-ethnic rivalries. It would take over three decades to complete this process. The Dominion census of 1901 recorded 16,131 Jews in Canada; a decade later there were over 75,000—an increase of more than 350%. Simply put, Jews were suddenly noticeable in the urban centers most flocked to. In Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, distinct Jewish neighbourhoods flourished. They were crowded, marked by Yiddish signage, and often attracted complaints from social reformers. Not that the inhabitants cared: they were too busy struggling to make ends meet while raising families and trying to help their relatives immigrate as well. To help each other, the immigrants created a rich organizational life. Landsmanschaftn, groups of people from the same towns in Europe, were established in Montreal, Toronto, and later Winnipeg. Some of them were fraternal organizations whose membership fee covered the rental of a meeting place, access to a “society doctor” who would make free house calls, cemetery rights, and insurance policies. These organizations served vital needs in a Canada which had no social safety net. Some landsmanschaftn took a more religious bent, forming small synagogues in which local prayer customs could be preserved. Other immigrants chose ideology over geography as the basis of unity, and Jewish union locals began to appear in Toronto, Montreal, and — 75 —

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Winnipeg; various types of Zionist organizations were transplanted into Canada as well. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the sum total of these affiliations produced bustling Jewish neighbourhoods in Toronto and Montreal teeming with garrulous street life and ethnic colour. But the Yiddish signs, cages of squawking fowl, and”poorly dressed” peddlers and pedestrians displeased many observers. These new immigrants sharply contrasted with the relatively few Jews who had arrived before the mid-1880s, most of whom had come from Germany or England and had integrated well within their communities. Despite positive indicators of Jewish acceptance in the nineteenth century, however, there were dissonant voices of antisemitism that centered in Ontario and Quebec, where Jews were most visible. In Ontario, acceptance of Jews had limits. Though Jews and Christians did business together, they remained apart socially. True, some Jews did belong to Masonic lodges, and one, Etta Birkenthal, was assistant principal of a Toronto public school. But if enough “foreign Jews” arrived, they might be perceived very differently than their more acculturated co-religionists were. This situation in fact occurred after 1900 with the rapid influx of Russian Jews. Between 1901 and 1911 Toronto’s Jewish population increased by over 400 percent, five times the growth rate of the city. And these new immigrants were all too visible, it seemed. After 1900, all the Toronto papers joined The Toronto Telegram in going out of their way to expose the Jewishness of anyone brought before the courts on criminal charges. While Toronto’s wealthier Jewish families experienced “genteel” marginalization, the new Russian immigrants were consistently critiqued. Of course, few immigrants read English, and thus they remained ignorant of the Toronto press’ opinion. The immigrants were further insulated by their residential patterns; the vast majority lived in “the Ward.” This area, bounded by Queen St., Yonge Street, Gerrard Street, and University Avenue, was already known as a slum well before the mass Jewish immigration. Living conditions were crowded and dirty, and newspaper articles regularly reported health and building safety code violations. The Ward’s boundary abutted Toronto’s main shopping area, which ensured that these issues remained in the public eye. Negative public attention focused on rag peddlers. Not only did many of them look like “stereotypical Jews,” but their vocations near — 76 —

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the bottom of the socio-economic pecking order took them out of the relative safety of the Ward, and they were often harassed. In response, the “old community” urged that rag pickers and peddlers be directed into “less degrading occupations.” At the same time, “respectable Jews” were urged “to avoid loudness and assertiveness. To appear well-bred, people shun all display in dress, extravagance in expense and attempts to outshine others.”1 But Toronto was not Tomashov. The Jew was but one example of a broader class of foreigners who were disliked and discriminated against. Encountering racism was not pleasant, but the Russian Jews maintained a clear perspective. They may have faced very unpleasant incidents, but those incidents were not pogroms. The immigrants soon learned that while freedom was available, a line was drawn in the vocational sand. Jews found that they could not become engineers or teachers; that it was easier to work independently as lawyers, businessmen, or—if they could find a hospital to accept them—as doctors. They could forget about working for banks, insurance companies, and large downtown department stores. This was not good, but it could have been worse. Their children had access to a fine public school system—even if they were harassed over the Lord’s Prayer. Canada was a democracy, and citizenship was possible. Life may have been circumscribed, but with hard work one could move up, buy a better residence, and hope that one’s children would do even better. On the surface, Montreal’s even larger Jewish community seemed better off than Toronto’s. Montreal Jewry was well established economically and socially. Abraham de Sola, rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue from 1847 until his death in 1882, was a pillar of Montreal English intellectual society. Despite his fame, however, a great gulf loomed between the rabbi and Montreal’s French Canadians. De Sola did not respect French Canadian culture, nor were the French Canadians interested in inviting de Sola to address them. Here was striking proof of the “two solitudes” of Quebec, which were writ especially large in Montreal. In sharp contrast to the United States, Canada was a bicultural, biracial, and bi-religious state, and Jews were not on the constitutional radar. 1

Stephen A. Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1979), 123, 120. — 77 —

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This polarized state of affairs allowed French Canadian nationalism to develop, aided by a provincially funded confessional education system. By the 1890s the anti-French animus of Canadian politics made it clear that, despite their aspirations to the contrary, French Canadians could only preserve their identity within Quebec. In addition, despite linguistic affinity, the piously Catholic Quebec French Canadians had little in common with the increasingly republican France. This laid the groundwork for the post-World War One emergence of a highly idiosyncratic form of ultramontane nationalism that fused Catholic piety, racism, and French Canadian nationalism into a volatile cocktail. Despite these significant issues, most of the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Montreal were similar to those in the pattern already cited in Toronto. Until 1901 antisemitism was not a major issue; even the lengthy Dreyfus Affair did not leave a permanent imprint, though anti-Dreyfusard sentiment was evident among both English and French newspapers. Indeed, the Dreyfus Affair catalyzed the 1897 founding of the Jewish Times weekly newspaper by Lyon Cohen and the rising lawyer Samuel Jacobs. Both men would be key leaders of Canadian Jewry for decades. The Times served as the voice of the “Uptown Jews” of Montreal and Toronto, and regularly fulminated, against Jews who were “too Jewish.” But the Times served a more vital purpose as the voice of communal advocacy. For the first time, Canadian Jews could state in print their right to “the defence of Jewish rights as Jewish citizens of a free country.”2 The Times had plenty of advocacy work to do as immigration swelled the ranks of Montreal Jewry. The population swelled over fourfold, from 6,941 in 1901 to almost 29,000 a decade later. These often impoverished masses settled in “the Main,” an area in the middle of the ethnic divide between French East Montreal and the English west end. As in Toronto, the flood of immigrants taxed communal social welfare agencies to the hilt. Again similarly, rag peddlers and second-hand dealers were often the victims of antisemitic physical and verbal attacks. Anecdotal evidence suggests that physical violence against Jews in Montreal and the rest of Quebec was more severe than what went on in Ontario, but there were two distinct features to be considered in 2

Gerald Tulchinsky. Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1993), 149 — 78 —

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Quebec Jewry’s interaction with non-Jews: the issue of Jews receiving public education, which by the 1920s would morph into the Montreal Schools Question, and the Plamondon Affair. Both of these issues were based on the constitutional and cultural uniqueness of Quebec society. Both were indicators of what Gerald Tulchinsky has termed a uniquely structured type of antisemitism. The Quebec school system—unlike that of Ontario—was confessionally based. In Ontario, there was a Catholic school system and a public school system. The latter, as its name denotes, served all nonCatholics irrespective of religion and ethnic origin. Not so in Quebec, where the Jews were part of the Protestant school system, and the Montreal Protestant School Board did not even officially have to educate Jews. As their numbers grew rapidly, the Board claimed that the Jews’ property taxes did not cover the costs of educating the Jewish students. In 1903 an uneasy compromise was reached when the Uptown and Downtown communities combined to negotiate with the Montreal Protestant School Board. They were able to ensure that all Jewish students would be admitted and would moreover be exempt from religious instruction. However, Jewish teachers were not hired, nor could Jews be elected to the Board itself. This result underscored the marginalization of Jews in Montreal, and the issue’s re-emergence after the First World War was to cause intra-communal strife. Other events soon reinforced Jewish marginality in Quebec society. On 30 March 1910, Quebec City notary Edouard Plamondon delivered a vitriolic lecture to an audience at the ultramontane Jeunesse Catholique. Angered at what he perceived as Jews pushing French Canadians out of their neighborhoods, he lashed out, dredging up a host of medieval calumnies against Jews: they were thieves, deceitful in business, corrupters of women, and spreaders of disease who were not to be trusted. To make matters worse, Plamondon then repeated the age-old canard of the blood libel and urged the Canadian government to revoke the Jews’ citizenship rights and reinstitute the medieval laws that had proscribed Jewish life. In the spectacular libel trial that ensued in 1913, in the shadow of the Beilis blood libel trial in Russia, the Jewish community’s legal trust brilliantly refuted Plamondon’s accusations, but the case was lost on a technicality: libel was a personal, not a group, matter. To make matters worse, and foreshadowing the rise of a more powerful ultramontanism, a considerable number of — 79 —

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Catholic intellectuals testified on Plamondon’s behalf. All this made it very clear that Quebec Jews needed more than the Jewish Times advocating on their behalf. Despite these echoes of Tsarist and medieval antisemitism, Montreal and Quebec proved far safer havens than St. Petersburg and Moscow had. In many cases, Christians and Jews worked side by side in factories and sweatshops, battled managements in unified strikes, and went to school together. Canada remained a haven of opportunity for those fortunate enough to reach her shores. Many immigrants tried to transplant their religious or ideological affiliations in the New World. Certainly the most prominent of these was Zionism, which came to world attention in 1897 when Vienna journalist Theodore Herzl, an acculturated reporter attending the Dreyfus trial, was moved to begin a movement to find a Jewish homeland for the persecuted Jews of the Russian empire. Herzl’s plea fell on fertile Canadian ground. Henry Monk, a millennial Christian Zionist, had kept the issue of a Jewish homeland in the public eye sporadically during the 1870s and 1880s. By the time Herzl came to the fore, Canadian representatives of such Zionist groups as the Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) and Shavei Zion (Return to Zion) were already in existence, raising funds for settlement in Palestine. But it was Montreal businessman Clarence de Sola, of the illustrious de Sola family, whose brother Meldola now held the pulpit of the prestigious Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, who played the decisive role in the development of Canadian Zionism. De Sola was determined to differentiate Canadian Zionism from its American counterpart, which he perceived as mired in ideological dissent and bureaucracy. He was a General Zionist rather than an ideologue, focusing on Zionist aspirations for a Jewish homeland while demonstrating Jewish allegiance to Canada. This approach resonated with Canadian Zionist leaders, who, ever aware of potential charges of dual loyalty, were careful to emphasize widespread British support for their cause. The fact that Canada was binational aided the General Zionist cause, as it prevented the development of a full-blown Canadian nationalist movement. Canadian Zionism soon became one of the most successful Zionist movements in the world. De Sola rightfully claimed that the statistics spoke for themselves. By 1910, Canadian contributions to Zionist causes were the highest — 80 —

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per (Jewish) capita in the world. What’s more, membership in the umbrella Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada soared from 1,000 in 1903 to 6,600 in 1920; roughly 10% of adult Canadian Jews were members. Jews dwelling in small towns and villages, who made up roughly 25% of the Jewish population, made up fifty percent of the Zionist membership. Jewish National Fund records from the 1930s indicate that Jews in small towns gave even more generously per capita than those in cities did. Zionism was the defining source of Jewish identity for many who lived in communities too small to support other Jewish institutions. Clearly, Zionism spoke to Canadian Jews across denominational, geographical, and intra-ethnic lines. This grassroots support produced a nation-wide group of leaders who would later form the backbone of the Canadian Jewish Congress. For over two decades, de Sola presided—like a one-man band, playing chief publicist, organizer, and ideologue—over an organization that defined the role of a Canadian national Jewish organization. The Zionists were well aware of their distinctive status and would battle hard to maintain their role as the creators of the premier Canadian Jewish organization. Canadian Jewry’s interest in Zionism also reflected an immigrant generation’s concern about events in “der alter heim” (the old homeland). Many Canadian Jews regularly remitted funds to family members “back home” while working hard and frantically saving to fund their families’ reunifications. They were deeply aware of the difficulties Russian Jewry experienced under Tsarist rule, and the Zionist solution resonated with many of them. The ease with which Zionism swept the Canadian Jewish population and its vast popularity is a defining feature of Canadian Jewry. In contrast to how Zionism was adopted in the American experience, Canadian Zionism was readily accepted and became a key component of Canadian Jewish identity for almost a century. Gerald Tulchinsky suggests that Canada’s bi-cultural nature, the absence of Canadian nationalism, the scattered nature of Canadian Jewish demography, and the conservative nature of Canadian society accounted for Zionism’s rapid rise to pre-eminence. But the key impetus came from Clarence de Sola, founding president of the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada. De Sola, a great admirer of Herzl, whom he had met personally, had little time or patience for ideological arguments about the — 81 —

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course the Zionist movement should take. He concerned himself with imposing tight discipline and utilizing the excellent connections his name carried to build a network of supporters across the Dominion. The First World War put this organizational network to the test and found it wanting. Concern over the fate of relatives brought the refugee and war relief concerns of the Downtowners to the fore, to the point that they competed with Zionism for attention. In addition, de Sola’s genteel General Zionism was put to the test after the Balfour Declaration catalyzed discussion over what model of Zionism would best suit the new Jewish national home. Rival Zionist ideologies, largely supported by Downtowners, came to the fore. The Laurier era boom in Jewish immigration meant that over 75% of the Jewish population consisted of new immigrants, who were now concerned with the post-war plight of their families in Eastern Europe. When communications were restored, they suddenly learned of thousands of refugees and orphans in the Ukraine, relatives who were now trapped by battling White and Red armies, and the economically straitened conditions of even the families that had survived intact. Their anxiety was exacerbated by poor communications and little hard news on the condition of Eastern European Jewry. These concerns led to the formation of the Canadian Jewish Congress in January 1919. The impetus for this watershed event came from the Downtowners of Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto, and it would prove the high point of Downtown political and organizational achievement. This development was spurred on by the rise of the democratically elected and Downtown-friendly American Jewish Congress in 1918, the newfound support of Archie Freiman, de Sola’s successor as president of the Canadian Zionist Federation, and the desire to support international efforts to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The organizers temporarily transcended both the vicissitudes of Canadian geography and Jewish organizational disunity. The delegates were elected by over 25,000 ballots, an astonishing number for a Canadian Jewish population of roughly 125,000. But even as the Congress representatives gathered for their historic first meeting at Montreal’s Monument National, a key group was missing. Most of Montreal’s Uptown establishment stayed away. Lyon Cohen, who chaired the First Plenary of the Congress and became its first president, was a notable exception. The Jewish “upper class” of Mon— 82 —

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treal was but a shadow of the German Jewish émigré millionaires who had founded the elitist American Jewish Committee, but their absence was telling and would remain an issue. Their continued lack of involvement played an important role in the Congress’ quick demise by 1921. The short-lived organization left vital lessons for future Canadian Jewish organizational behavior. First and foremost, it indicated that vital common issues like Zionism, antisemitism, and immigration had the power to evoke a communal unity transcending Canadian geography and intra-ethnic dissension. Second, the Congress’s quick demise indicated that no central organization, national or local, could long survive without Uptown support. Ultimately, only Uptowners had the funds, free time, and connections to sustain and build organizations with communal and national clout. The difference between Canadian Jewish economic classes was not as sharply demarcated as the comparable difference was in the United States, and entrance to Uptown status was easier in Canada, but differences remained. It required three decades for Canadian Jewish Uptowners to impose their leadership after they decided to get involved, and the process was often difficult and met with resistance on a number of levels. But in the end, the traditional model of tzedaka yielded to professional budgeting and fundraising, while the model of giving on the basis of need alone was overturned by demands that organizations justify and rationalize their budgetary requests to communal Federations. But in 1921, all this lay in the future. The sad reality was that the stillborn Congress left Canadian Jewry without a national organization. Its one lasting achievement was to create the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS), with offices in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, which was designed to lobby for increased Jewish immigration and to offer an alternative to certain unscrupulous steamship agents’ high fees and unrealistic promises. JIAS also played an important role in coordinating the immigration of orphans from war-torn Ukraine. But by 1922 its Toronto and Winnipeg offices had declined: they were skeleton-staffed, while the Montreal head office had made little headway in its objectives. The Congress’s failure restored the Canadian Zionists to their status as the sole national Jewish organization. New CZF President Archie Freiman, after a temporary “lapse” during the Congress’s run-up, adamantly opposed any national organizational competition until his — 83 —

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death in 1944. This proved to place a significant damper on any national organizational development. The Zionists used their monopoly well, further expanding their fundraising efforts in the 1920’s, especially among women who joined Hadassah-WIZO in droves. Often local Zionist groups were the sole Jewish organizations in small Jewish communities. The growth of local Jewish organizations in both size and complexity contrasted sharply with a dearth of national ones. The 1920s saw Montreal’s, Toronto’s, and Winnipeg’s Jewish populations increase by 26.6%, 34.5%, and 19% respectively, before slowing in the 1930s as immigration dried up. This meant not only more synagogues, but sometimes larger ones, as Jews began to move to areas of second settlement. Jewish schools, emphasizing diverse religious and cultural perspectives ranging from the secular to the ultra-Orthodox, proliferated in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, and—of course and most spectacularly—Toronto and Montreal. All of this was simply a reiteration of the familiar pattern of European Jewish institutional completeness catalyzed by immigration and the tendency of Jewish immigrants to live together, for example in Winnipeg’s North End, Toronto’s Kensington Market, and Montreal’s Main. In addition, the interwar years saw a new and vital layer added to Jewish institutional completeness, consisting of hospitals, Jewish community centres, and federations. Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital opened in 1923 and Montreal’s Jewish General in 1934. Both opened to allow Jewish physicians—who experienced varying degrees of discrimination—a place to practice and to ensure that Jewish interns—especially in Montreal—would have a venue for their internships. The Montreal YMHA opened in 1910, Winnipeg’s in 1919, and Toronto’s slightly more than a decade later. Increasing institutional complexity mirrored burgeoning communal political, religious, cultural, and economic diversity. Simply put, the larger Jewish urban communities were ready for new institutions—but funding them would be the key organizational challenge. Traditional Jewish charity—known as tzedaka—mandated adherence to the biblical norm of “surely opening your hand to your fellow Jew in need.” The Downtown community continued this tradition, spawning a plethora of Free Loan societies, dispensaries, and other agencies providing food and essentials to the Jewish poor. Tzedaka promoted — 84 —

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a non-judgmental attitude toward those in need; God determined people’s lots. But the realities of Jewish life in North America challenged these traditional paradigms. Victorian and progressive influences linked poverty to a lack of industriousness and demanded that professional models of fund-raising and -dispensing be set up based on observable and accountable criteria. Enter the local federation, a professionally administered fundraising centre and clearing house for communal charitable organizations. Federation success hinged on the fact that the increasingly diverse North American Jewish communities required significant new methods of fundraising and financial oversight that would raise sufficient funds for diverse institutions, prevent overlap in charitable granting of funds, and most importantly minimize institutional competition for the chequebooks of a small cadre of “top givers”—the Uptown elite. This became the job of the communal federations, which arrived in Toronto in 1916 and Montreal in 1917 and began widening their influences in the interwar years.3 Indeed, a significant part of interwar Canadian Jewry’s organizational history centers on the complex and convoluted interplay of forces between Montreal’s and Toronto’s communal leaderships and their varied responses to the demands of fundraising and communal organization. To some extent, this battle represented an intergenerational struggle over the methodology of communal organization and control, but it was also a contest between the clashing visions of Downtown and Uptown. Montreal, by far the larger and more influential community in the 1920s, boasted a significant Uptown population. However, save for intermittent bursts of unified action, such as the 1903 Montreal Schools Question and the formation of the Congress in 1919, Uptowners rarely cooperated with Downtowners. The re-emergence of the Montreal Schools Question in the 1920s highlighted this ideological estrangement. When the option of a provincially funded Jewish school system briefly surfaced, Uptowners cringed, fearing that they would be labeled “un-Canadian.” Instead, they advocated a return to the compromise of 1903—in sharp contrast to those Downtowners who advocated the creation of what would be, in effect, publically 3

Winnipeg’s federation began only in 1938. This article will therefore concentrate on the federations of Montreal and Toronto. — 85 —

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funded Jewish schools. Indeed, Montreal Uptowners minimized their direct engagement with the Downtowners altogether, choosing instead to fundraise for the Jewish General Hospital, the YMHA, and of course the Montreal Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, which raised and distributed almost $200,000 per annum by the mid-1920s. The Toronto Federation in this era raised less than half of what the wealthier, more established Montreal Uptowners did. The “scientific charity” and practice of requiring audited financial reports in order to determine the distribution of annual allocations of both federations ensured that traditional tzedaka-based models continued to flourish among Downtowners. The demise of the Canadian Jewish Congress left the Zionists, as noted, the only national Jewish movement. Archie Freiman, the capable and energetic Ottawa businessman, was delighted with this monopoly position after his brief dalliance with Congress. He continued to expand Canadian Zionism, keeping the immigrant ideologues of Poalei Zion in place and resisting calls for joint fundraising until his sudden death in 1944. It took the challenging events of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, and the Second World War to permanently change the constellation of Canadian Jewish organizations. The almost simultaneous twin blows of Hitler’s rise and the Depression heightened Canadian Jewry’s awareness that it lacked an organized voice to present its communal wishes to the government. An upsurge in antisemitic activities in Ontario and Quebec, including the flamboyant posturing of Adrien Arcand in Montreal and the Christie Pits Riot in Toronto, certainly aided Hannaniah Meir Caiserman’s efforts to resuscitate the moribund Canadian Jewish Congress. Caiserman faced tough odds, but the shocking rise of antisemitism at home and abroad lent urgency to his pleas. Many Toronto Uptowners, including Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath and socialite Egmont Frankel, joined Downtowners from Montreal and Toronto to support the Congress cause. However, Samuel Bronfman, a major force in Montreal’s Uptown community, remained aloof, as did some other key Montreal players. So did the Jewish labor unions, which greatly limited the Congress’s impact on Downtowners. Thus the second incarnation of the Canadian Jewish Congress remained relatively weak, barely surviving on what must have seemed “a few doled out coins” between 1933 and 1939. It was — 86 —

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unable to live up to its self-proclaimed role as “the Parliament of Canadian Jewry.” Nonetheless, despite the significant absences in the Congress’s ranks, Caiserman’s accomplishment should not be underrated. Delegations to Prime Ministers Bennett and King and the Department of Immigration were cobbled together and gave the community the momentary relief of having representatives who could speak to government. That Congress lived again was in itself a victory. That some committees made considerable headway in lessening antisemitism in the workplace, organizing a boycott of German manufactured goods, and positively influencing press coverage, proved a bonus. Indeed, public relations provided the area in which Congress successfully gave notice of its rebirth as a national Jewish representative. In 1937, members of the Congress’ Public Relations Committee were able to convince the high-profile American B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to desist from its attempts to organize a separate Canadian anti-defamation agency. Instead, the ADL merged with the Public Relations Committee to form the Joint Public Relations Committee. The impetus for this Congress coup was that key players in both camps were members of both organizations. The crucial organizational overlap among a small number of Canadian Jewish powerbrokers thus played a key role in communal organizational behavior. Less than a hundred key players in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto—many of whom knew each other through committee work and communal service, while maintaining often conflicting hierarchies of organizational loyalty—would determine the history of Congress and the federations between 1937 and 1948. Depression economics further strengthened the trend toward centralized professional communal control. The Montreal and Toronto Ffederations were suddenly swamped by a dual challenge: needs were sharply higher due to unprecedented unemployment, and fundraising, no matter how thorough or sophisticated, netted less and less. To further complicate matters, the rise of antisemitism in Germany and the rapidly worsening situation of Polish Jewry after 1935 meant that international Jewish needs increasingly competed with domestic demands for charitable donations just as the Depression pressure on local needs peaked. In this case, challenge begat change. In Toronto, the closure of the Toronto Hebrew Free School, a revered non-sectarian institution, catalyzed a shift in organizational practice with far-reaching — 87 —

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effects. A group of young university educated businessmen and professionals boldly stepped forward with an action plan. By separating long-term mortgage debt from short- term needs—such as salaries and utilities—they convinced the School’s creditors that the operation could be viable. They set up one fund to steadily pay down the mortgage and another to trim administrative fat and pay current accounts, and fundraised for both purposes under one rubric. The School reopened. Flushed with success, the young leaders determined to apply their revisionist methodology to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. They took the key step of first approaching the one hundred top givers with their plan, and received rousing support for a 1937 campaign by the newly created United Jewish Welfare Fund of Toronto (UJWF). The overwhelming success of this campaign allowed the UJWF to legally dissolve the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and gave it almost complete control over every aspect of Toronto Jewish communal fundraising and planning. The UJWF funded local, national, and international Jewish agencies that permitted their books to be audited and agreed to accept a needs-based allocation of funds. The key theory behind Federation campaigns was that major donors—who accounted for eighty percent of campaign revenue—did not want to be bothered by numerous appeals from charities they didn’t support, being badgered by hired “door-knockers” invading their privacy. Instead, they would rather make a more substantial donation, if canvassed by a social or business colleague, to a pre-screened group of organizations that were run on acceptable business models. The Federation model proved so successful in Toronto that even the cash-starved Central Region of the Canadian Jewish Congress now depended on the UJWF for funding. This funding model flew in the face of traditional tzedaka and offended many. Some organizations, such as that of the Zionists, had the clout to maintain their separate annual campaigns. Archie Freiman continually insisted that the paramount nature of Zionism meant that it had to remain aloof from all local campaigns. Other organizations, such as the Mount Sinai Hospital, were quickly brought to heel by the refusal of the big donors to answer multiple appeals. The Downtowners proved the toughest to crack. The unions and landsmanschaftn remained aloof, but many Downtown institutions having trouble with fundraising threw in their lots with the UJWF, even if it meant out— 88 —

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side auditing of their books and committees determining their annual allocations. The UJWF could be brutal—for example, the communal orphanage was simply run out of existence because foster care was cheaper. The Uptowners’ imposition of will left many bruises, and few doubts about who was in charge. But there would be little time for communal institutional consolidation: Kristallnacht and the Munich Crisis burst upon the awareness of Canadian Jewry, and suddenly conflict seemed imminent. The fury of Nazi antisemitism brought a reluctant Samuel Bronfman into Congress’s fold. After assuming the organization’s presidency in January 1939, Bronfman quickly upgraded its Montreal headquarters by bringing in Saul Hayes, a talented young lawyer, as executive director and shuffling off the well-meaning but ineffective Caiserman to other duties. Using the same skills that had created a distilling empire, Bronfman poured his energy, time, and money into revamping the Congress. Its Montreal headquarters soon hummed with activity—quickly asserting control over Jewish immigration, lobbying for the admission of refugees, tightening the screws on its Toronto and Winnipeg divisional offices, and sounding very much like the spokesperson for Canadian Jewry it had always claimed to be. The revived Congress office in Winnipeg, and committees in Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Vancouver gave the Congress a national presence for the first time in two decades. The Canadian government’s insistence that ethnic groups consolidate national wartime fundraising campaigns further assisted Montreal’s efforts to consolidate power; this allowed Hayes to smoothly take charge of fundraising for refugees and European relief, a hugely popular Downtown cause. As the war continued, there was pressure on the Canadian Jewish community to unite ideologically and organizationally. Bronfman ceaselessly and effectively beat the unity drum, and by 1943 some labour unions and more Downtowners than ever fell into line and elected representatives to Congress. Only the Zionists remained aloof, but even they began to waver after Freiman’s death in 1944, especially as relief fundraising during wartime pushed the Zionist cause to the backburner. But just as it seemed that the Congress would finally seize control of Canadian Jewish life entirely as the war drew to a close, the Toronto UJWF asserted its control over its constituent agencies. Ultimately, Congress’ defeat in this dispute served to demarcate the — 89 —

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respective turf of Jewish federations and Congress in the future. The turf war was complex and took until 1950 to resolve. On one level, it mirrored a century-old rivalry between Canada’s largest cities. On another, it was a struggle over competing visions of what level of Jewish governance could best control refugee absorption and future planning at the national and communal levels. Hayes’ and Bronfman’s point of view was simple: Congress was the voice of united Canadian Jewry. It assisted with behind-the-scenes lobbying—much to the chagrin of the Downtowners, who wanted more public demonstrations of communal impatience—in efforts to secure the admission of post-war refugees. Congress, in control of refugee relief since 1938, was convinced that it was the organization best positioned to instruct local immigrant aid agencies on how to meet federal and provincial immigration requirements. Indeed, in 1945 it seemed that Congress held the keys to the Jewish organizational future at both national and communal levels. But the UJWF and its constituent organizations balked. They resented Bronfman’s attempt to assert hegemony after the Central Division of Congress based in Toronto had run autonomously under Caiserman’s weak stewardship. The Central Division’s successful resistance to Montreal was based on the UJWF’s efficient fundraising and allocation machine, which kept its constituent organizations’ budgets topped up. In return, the UJWF received complete loyalty. Toronto Congress leaders, resentful of Hayes’ and Bronfman’s intrusions on their perceived autonomy, made common cause with the UJWF. From 1944 to 1948 Federation constituent agencies ran independent immigrant absorption programs for a wide variety of immigrants, clashing all the while with Montreal over every aspect of immigration absorption policy. In 1948, the UJWF cemented its primacy by merging its campaign with the Zionist United Palestine Appeal for the first time. This set a formidable paradigm that persists to the present. Now all major campaigns for schools, community centres, social services, etc., would be coordinated by the federation. The federations of Winnipeg and Montreal scrambled to imitate the UJWF example. Congress could still claim to be the representative of Canadian Jewry, but Bronfman’s dream of control at the communal level had been effectively limited by the federations. Thus by 1948 the outline of the present Canadian Jewish organizational map had emerged. Uptowner professional fun— 90 —

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draising had triumphed over tzedaka, Canadian Zionism was now even more fully entrenched at both communal and national levels, and a Jewish civil service, fed by burgeoning university professional faculties of social work and community service, had taken over from “door knockers.” Canadian Jewish communal organizations’ coming of age was far less brutal than was the case for its counterpart in America, where “German” Uptowners and immigrant Downtowners fought over whether the American Jewish Committee or American Jewish Congress would be their primary representative, over the role of Zionism, and over how to combat antisemitism. In contrast, Zionism unified Canadian Jewry; the battle between Uptown and Downtown was based more on class and date of immigration than on sub-ethnicity, and Congress had no competition as a representative agency. However, the federations dealt with professional fundraising and planning for the future, and ensured the triumph of localism. Canadian Jewry in the postwar era found itself in generally good organizational hands, a situation that would be maintained for another two decades. Jack Lipinsky

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For Further Study Bialystock, Franklin. Delayed Impact: the Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Figler, Bernard. Lillian and Archie Freiman: Biographies. Ottawa: n.p., 1959. Karpf, Maurice. Jewish Community Organization in the United States: An Outline of Types of Organizations, Activities, and Problems. New York: Bloch, 1938. Lappin, Ben. The Redeemed Children: The Story of the Rescue of the War Orphans by the Jewish Community of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963. Lipinsky, Jack. Imposing Their Will: The Organizational Behaviour of Toronto Jewry, 1933-48. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. Marrus, Michael R. Mr. Sam: The Life and Times of Samuel Bronfman. Toronto: Penguin, 1992). Martz, Fraidie. Open Your Hearts: The Story of the Jewish War Orphans in Canada. Montreal: Vehicule, 1996. Raphael, Marc Lee. “The Origins of Organized National Jewish Philanthropy in the United States, 1914-1939.” In The Jews of North America, edited by Moses Rischin, 213-223. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,1987. Seeley, John R. Community Chest: A Case Study in Community. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957. Waller, Harold M. “The Canadian Jewish Polity: Power and Leadership in the Jewish Community.” In The Jews in Canada, edited by R. J. Brym, W. Shaffir, and M. Weinfeld, 254-269. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993.

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VII Post-War Canadian Jewry

In 1945, there were approximately 175,000 Jews in Canada.1 The vast majority of them were the immigrants who had come to Canada from eastern Europe between the 1890s and the 1920s, and their descendants; Yiddish was the mother tongue of approximately 60% of Canadian Jews over the age of ten.2 Although Montreal remained the predominant centre, with Toronto close behind, vibrant Jewish communities existed in most Canadian cities, and a Jewish presence was also evident in smaller towns across the country. At this point, vestiges of the communities created at the turn of the century still existed. Due to the Great Depression and the Second World War, there was little housing built, and what was new was mostly unaffordable. In sum, the Jewish immigrant urban landscape had changed little in a generation. Although the numbers of Jews employed in manufacturing had declined, Jews remained predominantly working-class. There were some minor gains: many peddlers had become merchants, and some of their children were moving into the professions. The virulent antisemitism of the 1930s had eased, though some antisemitism remained a feature of Canadian life. Doors still remained closed to Jews in many affluent neighborhoods, banks, and leading legal and engineering firms, and they were only slightly ajar in medical schools and university faculties. In the Prairies, the Social Credit Party had antisemitic elements. In Quebec, French Canadian nationalists in the media, the Church, and politics held sway. Fascists, headed by Adrien Arcand, were not silenced. The Canadian Jewish Congress was the representative of most of the Jewish community, but its ability to sway immigration policies or to eliminate restrictive covenants remained minimal. Most Jews belonged to synagogues, as well as various Zionist, political, and cultural associations, much as they had in the pre-war era. While knowledge of the 1 2

In 1941, there were 168,585 Jews in Canada. In 1951, there were 204,836. This estimate is based on the understanding that there was virtually no immigration during World War II. In 1941, the figure was 77%; in 1951, 51%. Source: Statistics Canada, Census Reports on Religious Denominations and on Mother Tongue. — 93 —

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Holocaust was disseminated via newsreel footage, and the murders of families and friends were traumatic for many Canadian Jews, there was as yet little comprehension of the scope of the destruction of European Jewry. Family life was much the same as it had been thirty years earlier. Few Jews divorced; fewer intermarried. Women had entered the workplace in great numbers during the War, but many had returned home after victory. Homosexuality was neither admitted nor acknowledged. Grandparents often lived with their offspring in multi-generational homes. The dream of a nation-state for Jews was a little closer to fruition in 1945 than it had been a decade earlier, but the intransigence of British rule was fixed, and the rejection of the Arab world was undeterred. In 2010, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in Canada.3 While most Jews are the descendants of the immigrants who arrived a century ago, a significant minority includes people born abroad or descended from post-war immigrants from around the world. Since 1945, approximately 40% of Jewish immigration to Canada has come from war-torn Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Arab world, Israel, South Africa, the United States, and South America. While almost all Canadian Jews in 1945 were Ashkenazi, today close to 20% have Sephardi roots. Yiddish as a mother tongue is spoken in some traditional Orthodox communities; otherwise it is a language studied in school, and spoken in broken form by baby boomers who spoke it with their grandparents. Winnipeg’s North End and Toronto’s Spadina vanished as Jewish neighbourhoods by the 1960s, while Montreal’s Plateau has retained some vestiges of Jewish life. Today, Canada’s Jews are even more concentrated in the largest cities than they were in the past. Toronto, where about half of Canada’s Jews reside, replaced Montreal as the centre of Jewish life in the 1970s. The Jewish presence in many smaller cities and towns, 3

There is some difficulty in providing an estimate that has a measure of accuracy. In 2005, Morton Weinfeld stated that there were “about 370,000 Jews in Canada.” See “Canada and U.S. Jewry: Similar, Yet Different,” in The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005. Canadian Jewish News, September 29, 2005, p. B 8. Brym, Shaffir, and Weinfeld cite the 2006 mini-census which shows that there were 315,120 Jews, as defined by ethnicity, a decline of 54,000 since the 1991 census. Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds., The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford, 2010), vi. In the decennial census, individuals are asked to identify according to ethnicity and religion, but that was not the case in the mini-census. In discussing this discrepancy with Morton Weinfeld for this paper, we could not find a definitive reason for the discrepancy. Hopefully this will be clarified when the results of the 2011 census are published in the spring of 2013. — 94 —

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strong in 1945, has almost vanished. Jewish neighbourhoods proliferate in certain suburbs along lines of almost unbroken Jewish presence. For the most part, these groupings are devoid of the kind of street life that characterized the 1945 Montreal of novelist and critic Mordecai Richler. Canada’s Jews are predominantly middle- and upper-middle-class. They are over-represented in the professions, notably medicine, law, and university faculties, and are among the leading entrepreneurs in the country. Nevertheless, the proportion of Jews living in poverty is close to the national average, and many Jews who have immigrated in the last twenty years are under-employed. Antisemitism has taken on a new cast. While Jews are no longer excluded from the political and economic halls of power, or denied entry to the best neighborhoods or clubs, ancient anti-Jewish shibboleths bubble under the surface of Canadian society. More striking still is the growing anti-Israeli animus in certain corners of Canadian life. This has manifested itself in some of the media, in the views of some immigrants from the developing world, and on some university campuses. Both the legacy of the Holocaust and the tie to Israel have become pillars of Jewish ethnic identification since the late 1960s. These pillars have become central in the affairs of the mainstream national organizations and in religious and educational institutions. The Canadian Jewish Congress lost its mandate and leadership due to the growth and influence of local Jewish federations and the continuing restructuring of professional and lay leadership. Nevertheless, the organized community has a voice that resonates in the body politic, is admired by other ethno-cultural communities, and is demeaned by its critics. Families have undergone profound changes. Divorce and intermarriage are common features of Jewish life. There are fewer marriages, fewer children, and fewer stay-at-home moms. The elderly are the largest growing component of the community: the fittest live independently, and the frailest are cared for in mostly-Jewish facilities. Homosexuality is both open and acknowledged, although not necessarily welcome. Somewhat surprisingly, the last thirty years have witnessed the growth of Modern and traditional Orthodoxy and of Jewish education for all ages. How do we account for these rather dramatic changes in the last sixty-five years? First, and most significantly, the changes in Canadian — 95 —

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Jewry largely mirror changes in Canadian society. These include the revolutions wrought by economic development, consumerism, suburbanization, and cosmopolitanism. The face of Canada as an Anglo-Celtic nation with a French-Canadian minority in 1945 has been radically altered via immigration and multiculturalism. A second factor is the maturation of the first post-war generation of Canadian Jews, which separated itself from its immigrant past and embraced Canadian identity. Third, we witness the separation of this generation from its traditional Jewish identity, resulting in the transposition from traditional links to Jewishness (religion, customs, the secular street) to a connection to the legacy of the Holocaust and support and concern for Israel. Finally, the diversity that has always existed among Canadian Jews is today both more pronounced and more accepted than at any other time. The Great Transition In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, Canadian Jewry was caught up in the rapid changes that engulfed Canadian society. After fifteen years of economic deprivation and social discontent, commitment to the Allied war effort and the vicissitudes of a wartime economy, Canadians were faced with establishing the nation on a peacetime footing. This necessitated the reintegration of servicemen and -women, and the initial integration of immigrants, many of whom had been scarred by the War. Canadian industry had to be re-tooled, while infrastructure, transportation, public services, housing, and farms had to face the challenges of modernization. In so doing, over the next fifteen years, they transformed Canada. This transformation radically changed the face of Canada’s Jews. It was a transition that was both visible, in terms of the Jewish urban landscape, and psychic, in terms of Jewish identity. The essential features of this transition were: i) The decline of the traditional immigrant neighborhoods due to movement into more prosperous and newly created suburbs. ii) The arrival of Holocaust survivors, and the gap between them and other Canadian Jews. iii) The creation of the State of Israel, and the concern about its fragile existence. iv) The ascendance of the generation born or raised in Canada in the — 96 —

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interwar period to the leadership of communal structures. v) Social mobility from working class to middle class. vi) The decline of visible antisemitism, resulting in greater access to employment, housing, and education. vii) The change in identity from immigrant to Canadian. Sixteen thousand Jewish men and women served in the Canadian Armed Forces during World War II. Countless more worked in defense plants and associated civilian war-related positions. With the return of the former and the integration of the latter into the new economy, young Canadian Jews were transformed. They no longer saw themselves as the children of immigrants but as Canadian citizens who had helped keep Canada free. This generation, born between 1910 and 1930, was most concerned with creating a new life. Their immediate primary objectives were finding useful employment or continuing interrupted educations, creating new families, and re-uniting with loved ones. Thus young Canadian Jews separated themselves from the legacy of their immigrant identity. To a large degree, their European past had been ruptured by the recent tragedy, and their collective memory of that civilization had been reduced to an image of misery and death. It was the postwar present and the promise of a brighter future in a new Canada that framed their consciousness and their dreams. In May 1945, there were two million Jews still alive in Europe, not including those in the Soviet Union. They were the surviving remnant of a millennium-long Jewish civilization. Spread throughout central Europe, they included people liberated by the Allies from the concentration camps, people who emerged from hiding in farms, basements, churches, and forests, and people who had somehow escaped the clutches of the Germans and their collaborators. Many wound up in Alliedoccupied Germany, where they languished in Displaced Person’s camps. Another two hundred thousand Polish Jews, who had found a haven in the Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union, trekked back to Poland only to find ruins and encounter elements of a hostile populace. Most of them fled westward. To survivors, Europe was a cemetery with no graves to visit. There were no homes to return to, and no possessions to be regained. Their wish was to leave quickly. Many wanted to go to Palestine, but those gates were still closed by the British. Others preferred the New World, but wartime immigration restrictions in the Americas and the Antipodes had not been lifted. Thus they were trapped in the — 97 —

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ruins of the war-time charnel house that had destroyed their lives. The Canadian government of William Lyon Mackenzie King maintained its exclusionary immigrant policy. Canadian bureaucrat Frederick Charles Blair, when asked how many Jews should be admitted to the country, famously replied: “None is too many.” The Canadian Jewish Congress pressed the government to abide by its wartime commitment to admit orphans, but its pleas went unanswered. Meanwhile, as the economy moved to a peacetime footing, manufacturers began pressing for a relaxation in immigration restrictions due to labor shortages. Finally, on May 1, 1947, two years after the cessation of hostilities, King announced that Canada would welcome new immigrants. While this gave hope to the survivors and their families and supporters in Canada, it did not have an immediate effect: Jews were still regarded as undesirable, even while some of the perpetrators and enablers of the Holocaust were accepted. As a first step, the Congress, together with the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), persuaded the government to allow a small number of orphans to enter the country. Approximately 1,100 children, many of them in their late teens, arrived in late 1947. Further, with the sponsorship of Congress and the JLC, some 2,000 tailors and furriers and their families were admitted by the end of 1948. Jewish representatives from industry and trade unions went to Europe to help immigration officials select the candidates. These initial breaks in the wall of rejection led to the further easing of restrictions. By 1951, some 30,000 survivors, including their children born in post-war Europe, had found a haven in Canada. About another 5,000 came during the 1950s, mostly in the wake of the failed uprising in Hungary in 1956. Thus Holocaust survivors represented approximately 15% of Canada’s Jews by 1960. Canada had the second-highest complement of survivors relative to the rest of the Jewish population, second only to Israel. The entry of those sponsored by Congress and the JLC, together with the rush of other survivors up to 1949, created an organizational nightmare. Jewish communities, notably those in Montreal and Toronto, which accommodated the majority of the newcomers, were ill-prepared for the sudden influx. Local Jewish federations were strapped for funds. The community was still relatively poor, and had to meet the needs of the newcomers. Furthermore, the communal organizational structure had overlapping jurisdictions, which were maintained by leaders who — 98 —

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did not want to yield control. Thus there were inadequate services in housing, education, employment, and psychiatric counseling. Most orphans were taken in by Canadian families. As the majority were in their late teens (few young children survived), there were often cultural conflicts with their adoptive families. For the adult survivors, many of whom had married in post-war Europe and arrived with children, integration proved to be easier. Their immediate needs were partially met, due to exigencies imposed on Jewish organizations, and in a short time, most of them had found employment in the traditional immigrant settings, mainly in textile manufacturing and small businesses. They also found housing in the traditional neighbourhoods, even as their native Canadian Jewish counterparts were vacating them. Of greater concern to the survivors was the reality that many Canadian Jews could not comprehend what they had endured. They were often referred to as greener (greenhorns), a sobriquet that had been bestowed on each wave of Eastern European immigrants since the 1880s. In turn, the established Jewish community saw itself as the gayle (the yellowed ones), who had long since become Canadianized. Some survivors were told that “they must have done something” to survive. Many, in trying to articulate their experiences, were told that “we suffered as well. We had rations.” It is important to contextualize these feelings. With the increasing restrictions against Jewish immigration, few Jews were able to come to Canada between the mid-1920s and the late 1940s. The Canadian Jewish memory of Jewish life in Eastern Europe was largely framed by what the older immigrants remembered, and what their children had been told. This historical memory was of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when Jews had been persecuted by Gentiles and discriminated against by the authorities. They had escaped a society where poverty and the fear (and sometimes actualization) of violence was constant. Canadian Jews, for the most part, were unaware of the progress made by many Jews in the interwar period: many had been integrated, despite antisemitism, into the new nation-states, and in the 1920s and 30s, the vast majority of Eastern European Jews lived in cities and were, depending upon their adherence to Jewish tradition, acculturated to modern life. When the survivors arrived, some of them having lived in post-war Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, many Canadian Jews viewed them as similar to the early immigrants. Survivors had indeed suffered in Europe, but in the estimation — 99 —

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of Canadian Jews, so had they or their predecessors. There is another salient point about this disconnection to keep in mind: Canadian Jews in the immediate post-war years were moving forward. For many, the survivors were an uncomfortable reminder of what they were escaping—the stigma of being immigrants. Canadian Jews advised the newcomers to forget the past and embrace the future. Thus, a gulf was created between the two communities. Survivors, many of whom had no family, came together, creating “new families.” They created societies, some of which constituted new landsmanschaftn, while more were loose groupings of friends. The survivors acclimatized themselves to their new lives and a number prospered, even to the degree that some had made investments in real estate by the early 1950s; their connections with Canadian Jews, and with Canadians in general, became part of their daily lives. Nonetheless, they either kept their experiences to themselves, sometimes not even revealing them to their spouses, or poured them out to one another. The psychic gulf between the two groups was gradually reduced decades later, but, for some survivors, it was never closed. Mordecai Richler’s seminal book, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959), portrayed the layers of Montreal Jewry in the late 1940s with a focus on descendants of the immigrants still living in the tenements of the Plateau. By the time the book came out, that picture had already changed. In the 1950s, many of the people upon whom his characters were based, including his protagonist, were no longer struggling to make a living. They had moved to better neighbourhoods, and from the sweatshops and small businesses to the business and professional classes. The most upwardly mobile joined the “Uptown Jews,” the descendants of the entrepreneurial elite of nineteenth-century Jews, in Westmount and Mount Royal. For the Jews of Toronto, the transition was even more drastic. Leaving Spadina as soon as they could, the more well-to-do moved to St. Clair, Cedarvale and Forest Hill, where there were already pockets of pre-War Jewish life. Others migrated to the newly built suburban bungalows in Downsview and Bathurst Manor. By 1961, Toronto’s Jewish population had grown to 88,000 from 50,000 in 1945. Similar migrations occurred in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Hamilton. Meanwhile, smaller cities, especially in Ontario, where there had been a Jewish presence for a century, saw the departure of young Jewish families to the larger centers. With this rapid transformation, the signa— 100 —

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ture features of the immigrant neighbourhoods declined. Where street life had prevailed in the shops, stibls (store-front synagogues), and delis of the old neighbourhoods, urban Jews now lived in places where they essentially had to drive. The bonds of Jewish immigrant life had been ruptured; they were replaced with better living conditions, but with few hallmarks of Yiddishkeit (Jewishness). The post-war economic boom brought unparalleled prosperity to most Canadians. They lived in larger homes than before, with many modern conveniences. Acquiring the newest cars, televisions, and fashions became significant objectives for many. For the new generation of post-war Jews, these features of Canadian life were desirable, replacing the earlier generation’s obsession with frugality, which had been driven by their experiences as immigrants. As young Jews born or raised in Canada climbed the socio-economic ladder, their occupational status and lives in the suburbs necessitated changes to traditional immigrant family structures. Most women stayed at home, their husbands usually driving to work. Shopping meant trips to plazas by car. Many Jewish children attended Jewish schools after public school classes and on Sundays, and went to Jewish summer camps. Few children attended full-day Jewish schools, especially in Ontario, where there was no funding for non-Catholic separate schools. Sundays were also reserved for visits to grandparents, some of whom still lived in the old neighborhoods. Synagogues in the suburbs were modern and often designed not only for worship but for social events. This generation had little interest in the ideological battles, labor struggles, and political wrangling that characterized prewar Jewish life. The visible and virulent antisemitism of the 1930s and 40s was easing as the postwar recovery occurred. In part, one could point to the Holocaust as a cause for this decline, but the tragedy that had befallen European Jewry had not yet become part of social discourse, let alone public appreciation. Instead, the efforts of human rights organizations, including some churches, labor groups, and major Jewish organizations, together with a new generation of politicians who recognized the growing diversity of Canadian society, were collectively responsible for some erosion of racism. Gone were the restrictive covenants, especially in housing and employment. Legislation, like the Fair Employment and Practices Code in Ontario in 1951, was an acknowledgment that discrimination was longer acceptable. As Ben Kayfetz, the director of com— 101 —

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munity relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1947 to 1984, stated: “[By the 1960s] Canada had the most advanced anti-discrimination laws in the world.” Nevertheless, it was still difficult for Jews to gain access to major law firms, the boards of corporations and banks, and social and country clubs. These remained the preserve of the AngloCeltic Protestant elite. In continuing the trend that had begun in the interwar years, Jews joined and/or created their own firms, whether professional or business. The postwar boom necessitated the construction of suburban housing, shopping centers, office buildings, and transportation networks. Jews, especially the young post-war generation and Holocaust survivors, became active in these entrepreneurial endeavors. Jewish architects and engineers, who had difficulty finding employment in traditional firms, went out on their own and found willing clients in these entrepreneurs. This postwar construction boom, initially driven by Jewish ingenuity and south European immigrant labor, became a hallmark of the Canadian economy and of the experience of many European immigrants in the last half century. While the objectives of the postwar generation were largely driven by economic concerns, one additional development became of prime importance—support for the state of Israel. With the United Nations approval of a Jewish State in November 1947, followed by that Jewish State’s creation in May 1948, followed by its War of Independence, there was an upsurge of Jewish pride in the Diaspora. Some felt, mistakenly, that this was redemption for the Holocaust, rather than an outgrowth of decolonization and the Cold War. In Canada, where the Zionist movement had a long, strong presence, support for the new state became of paramount importance, and some 240 Jewish war veterans enlisted to fight for Israel in 1948. After the establishment of the State, support blossomed. Some young Jews migrated, many more visited, and fundraising reached new levels. Israel’s existence, threatened in the 1950s by the belligerence of Nasser’s Egypt and the Soviet support of the Arab cause, resulted in a further increase in fund-raising and the growth of Zionist youth movements. These developments laid the foundation for a major pillar of ethnic identity for Canadian Jews—the belief that Israel’s security was a guarantor of their security.

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In the Mainstream, 1960-1990 The maturation of the postwar generation of Canadian Jewry, from the early 1960s to 1990, was based on its consolidation of an ethno-cultural identity and an uneasy acceptance that it had ascended to unprecedented economic heights, social acceptance, and political influence. By 1990, the generation that was born or raised in prewar Canada had been succeeded by the postwar generation, consisting of men and women who had no memory or experience of immigrant life and whose attitudes were shaped by a bold and confident Canada, the Cold War, a renewal of antisemitism, concern over the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union and in Arab lands, the challenge of redefining a viable Canadian-Jewish identity, and concern over Israel’s security. While the Canadian Jewish population grew from 254,000 in 1961 to 318,000 in 1991, its percentage of the Canadian population shrank from 1.4% to 1%. This was primarily due to greater general immigration to Canada, proportionately, than Jewish immigration to Canada. Further, the fertility rate for Canadian Jews declined, and their median age rose. Nevertheless, the growth of the Canadian Jewish population possessed several distinctive features. First, most new immigrants did not come from traditional Ashkenazi Eastern Europe. Due to economic factors and their second-class status, Jews from North Africa, notably from Morocco, arrived in large numbers in Montreal. Jews from other Arab lands arrived for similar reasons. Further, the pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Jews to migrate in the 1970s, followed by glasnost in the 1980s, brought large numbers of Soviet Jews to Canada, but for many of them the heritage of Jewish identity had been bleached out in the postwar era. In both cases, many of the arrivals came by way of Israel. In addition, there was a significant migration of Israelis themselves. Smaller numbers of immigrants came from the United States— a minority of them because of opposition to American foreign policy, more due to professional opportunities—and from South Africa, largely due to discomfort with its racist climate. Thus Canadian Jewry became more diverse both ethnically and linguistically. Whereas Yiddish had been predominant in earlier decades, the new Jewish immigrants spoke French, Hebrew, Russian, English, and Spanish. The second feature was the re-creation of the “Jewish street,” especially in the expanded suburbs. Unlike Spadina Avenue in Toronto, the Main in Montreal, or Selkirk Avenue in Winnipeg, the modern Jewish street was automo— 103 —

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bile-oriented, and centered in plazas and malls. Jewish-, Russian-, and Israeli-inspired restaurants and shops appeared. New synagogues spanning a wider spectrum than simply Modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform added to the religious diversity. Jewish Community Centers which housed athletic and cultural facilities and Holocaust museums were built. Over the course of these decades, Jews became increasingly accepted into professional, corporate, academic, and political environments. In 1965, in his ground-breaking study The Vertical Mosaic, John Porter portrayed the continued stranglehold of Canadian economic and political leadership held by the traditional Anglo-Celtic elite. About one percent of the elite at that time was Jewish. As Morton Weinfeld writes, by the next generation this situation had changed drastically. By 1975, the Jewish percentage of the elite had risen to 6%, and by 1996 it was 14%. There are two caveats to be factored in. One is that traditional Canadian wealth lay in manufacturing and finance, whereas much of the rise in Jewish wealth came from real estate development. The second is that most upwardly-mobile Jews created and/or worked for Jewish firms. Nevertheless, with the continued decline in the barriers to Jews in the economic halls of power, Jews entered the board rooms of corporations, and the last obstacles to Jews in academe and the professions withered away. By 1996 Jews had the highest degree of education among ethnocultural groups in Canada. In 1991, 52% of Jews between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four had a Bachelor’s degree, compared to 16% of Canadians as a whole. The first Jewish cabinet ministers in Canadian history (Herb Gray and Robert Kaplan) were appointed by Trudeau in the 1970s, and David Barrett from British Columbia became the first Jewish provincial premier. David Lewis was the leader of the Federal New Democratic Party, and his son Stephen led the Ontario NDP. Three developments gave rise to a Canadian Jewish communal activity that marked a break with traditional approaches. These were: a revival of antisemitism; the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union and in the Arab lands; and concern for the security of Israel. The stimuli for these developments came from abroad, eliciting responses from Canada’s Jews. In reviewing these developments, one finds that they are intertwined with respect to the concerns, responses, internal debates, and actions of Canada’s Jews. Ultimately, over these three decades we find that the Jewish community created a new sense of self-empowerment, reflective of its — 104 —

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entry into the economic and political mainstream, its position within a multicultural society, and also its need to find an ethno-cultural identity consistent with its changed status. During Christmas 1959, there was a seemingly spontaneous epidemic of antisemitic graffiti, beginning in Europe and swiftly moving to Latin America and North America. In many Canadian cities, including ones in which few Jews lived, Jewish buildings, monuments, and tombstones were defaced. Naturally, this was a shocking development, especially given the comparatively mild, sub-surface antisemitism that had existed in Canada in the immediate post-war era. Within the next two years, a more systematic antisemitic campaign arose, due in part to the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and in part to the confidence gained by white supremacist movements in Canada. Antisemitic publications and pamphlets became widespread, targeting Jewish communities especially and indicating that a new breed of racists was taking its message of hate to the streets. Further inflaming the situation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation made the dubious decision to interview the leaders of the American Nazi Party and a neo-Nazi political party that was seeking electoral support in West Germany. These events in the early and mid-1960s created consternation within the Canadian Jewish Congress. Its traditional response had been to work quietly in the back rooms in Ottawa and provincial capitals. This method had met with little success when the Jewish community was still in its immigrant phase, but it had gained credibility in the 1940s and 1950s with the eradication of antisemitic covenants. This new phase was an entirely different matter. Furthermore, the community had changed. Fifteen years after their arrival, Holocaust survivors were extremely offended by the antisemitic actions and the tepid response of the Congress. First in Montreal and then in Toronto, they formed organizations to unmask and counter the extremists. The turning point occurred in June, 1965, where a planned Nazi rally in downtown Toronto at Allan Gardens attracted some 5,000 protestors, brought together by these groups, who caused a riot that was quickly put down by the police. The Congress blamed these Jewish groups for inflaming the atmosphere, reflecting a division between the survivors and their supporters and the organized community. The Congress could not withstand this pressure, and took a more aggressive tone. By the end of the decade, it had brought some of its — 105 —

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critics back into the fold. Its most important achievement was lobbying the federal government to create a Hate Crimes Commission headed by Maxwell Cohen of McGill’s law school in 1965. The Commission’s report ultimately led to legislation criminalizing the promotion of hatred via print and speech in 1970. Two new challenges related to antisemitism emerged in the 1970s. Although leaders at the Congress had known since the late 1940s that some participants and enablers of the German design to erase European Jewry had been allowed to enter Canada under false pretenses, they were unable to convince successive governments to expose these individuals. As this fact became known publicly, due to pressure from survivor groups, the community’s pressure on the Trudeau administration was no longer undercover. Trudeau refused to take action, presumably because he did not want to inflame the aspirations of other ethno-cultural groups who had their own similar issues. With the Conservative landslide in 1984, Prime Minister Mulroney, unexpectedly and seemingly without pressure by Jewish leadership announced shortly after taking power that he would create a commission to investigate the issue. The second challenge was dealing with a new face of antisemitism: Holocaust denial. Visible and aggressive antisemitism had waned in the wake of the Holocaust, but it had not been eradicated. First in Europe, especially France, and then around the world, antisemites now claimed with spurious evidence that the Holocaust had not taken place, and that in fact it was a hoax perpetrated by an international Jewish network. In saying this, antisemitism could be resurrected. This phenomenon had a Canadian connection: for years a German immigrant, Ernst Zundel, had been writing, publishing, and distributing Holocaust denial literature from his Toronto home. By the late 1970s, a small group of survivors urged the Congress to press the Attorney General to lay charges on him, based on the new hate crime legislation. But the Attorney General refused, in part because of the imprecision of the legislation. Finally, after further pressure from the survivors, Zundel was charged in 1985 with another crime: the distribution of false news. Found guilty, he appealed and won on a technicality in 1987. He was charged again and found guilty in 1988. Concurrent with the Zundel case was the revelation that a high school teacher in Alberta, James Keegstra, had been teaching students about the domination of Jews, and about Holocaust denial, for years. His trial, shortly after that of Zundel, resulted in his — 106 —

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dismissal and a fine. In both trials, experts from the Congress and B’nai B’rith aided the Crown Attorneys. The second development was the growing concern about the situation facing Soviet Jews, and to a far lesser degree the Jews in Arab lands. An estimated three million Jews lived in the Soviet Union in 1970, fully one quarter of world Jewry. A tiny minority had been active in the early Bolshevik movement, the revolution and civil wars, and after that in the government apparatus. Most of these became victims of Stalin’s purges. The vast majority of Jews, especially in the post-war period, became increasingly disenfranchised from their traditional institutions. Jews were increasingly portrayed as enemies of the state. Consequently, few young Soviet Jews had a connection to Judaism, and fewer understood Yiddish. Meanwhile, Jews became disproportionately engaged in human rights movements. A factor in the general opposition to state autocracy was the desire for freedom for Soviet Jews to emigrate. These movements were crushed, their leaders imprisoned, only to re-appear. By the late 1960s, solidarity with Soviet Jewish activists had grown in Canada, and Canadian visitors to the USSR were bringing Hebrew books and religious artifacts with them. The movement swelled with the 1971 visit of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to Toronto, where he was greeted by thousands of protestors. Congress established a committee on Soviet Jewry that advocated the cause on Parliament Hill. With the imprisonment of Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, the leading Jewish dissident, Canadian voices led by Professor Irwin Cotler, then president of the Congress, grew more strident. Under this pressure, some Jews were allowed to emigrate, but the gates were further opened in the 1980s under the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev. While the vast majority of the émigrés went to Israel, some quickly left there and moved to Canada, while others immigrated directly. The outcry concerning the plight of Jews in Arab lands did not have the same momentum, due to a lack of publicity and the relatively small number of Jews still living there. A Toronto community activist, Judy Feld Carr, single-handedly took up the cause of Jews in Syria, where conditions were most severe, and was able to secure their freedom. The third development was concern for Israel’s security, and indeed its existence. In the early and mid-1960s the status and military power of Egypt and Syria increased. Supported by the Soviet Union, they joined to create the United Arab Republic. In 1967, the Straits of Tiran — 107 —

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were closed and Israel’s southern port of Eilat was blockaded. As a result, Israel attacked Egypt and Syria in June 1967. The Six-Day War established Israel’s military superiority, and Israel too over the formerly Syrian, Jordanian, and Egyptian control of land in the Golan, West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula. The events of the spring and summer of 1967 elicited first great concern among Canada’s Jews and then wild elation. They brought together most of the community, which raised huge amounts of funds. Some Canadian Jews went to Israel to help, and thousands visited in the aftermath of the victory. Canadian Jewish aid was greater, per capita, than that of any other country. This marked a turning point for the community, and indicated that the tie to Israel was becoming a pillar of Jewish ethnic identity in Canada. Despite the euphoria, Israel remained vulnerable on three counts. First, its neighbors continued their attacks during the so-called War of Attrition between 1967 and 1973. This culminated in the simultaneous attack by Egypt and Syria in October 1973, the Yom Kippur War, which caught Israel by surprise and which necessitated a devastating counterattack to preserve Israel’s existence. Second was the rise of Palestinian national movements that attacked Israeli and Jewish interests and institutions throughout the world. Third, anti-Israel animosity emerged among many of its former allies, especially in Europe. This occurred because of oil embargoes by the Arab states after 1973 and the growing clout at the United Nations of developing nations that targeted Israel as an oppressive, racist entity. Despite the cold peace that Israel achieved with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), this sentiment grew in the 1980s, especially with Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 1982. Canadian Jews realized that, despite its military superiority and evident moral position as the sole democracy in the Middle East, Israel remained under threat from the Islamic world, and was losing support in the West. New approaches for advocating on behalf of Israel were necessary in Canada. The Canada-Israel Committee, created after the Six-Day War, was given the mandate of lobbying the government to support Israel at the United Nations and countering anti-Israel sentiment in Canada. The Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith ratcheted up their efforts in Ottawa, leading to the declaration by the short-lived government of Joe Clark in 1978 that Canada’s embassy would be moved from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. With Clark’s defeat nine months later, this plan was shelved. The response to these three events reveals structural changes within — 108 —

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the community, but even more significantly the gradual erection of a different ethnic identity. The growing appreciation of the legacy of the Holocaust as a rupture of Jewish civilization led to a number of changes in the community. Some survivor leaders became vocal politically, and, in time, gave their voices to community efforts to commemorate the tragedy and to educate Canadians, of all ages and walks of life, concerning the lessons of the event. In 1985, Holocaust survivors met in Ottawa on the fortieth anniversary of VE Day, where they were addressed by the leaders of all of Canada’s major political parties. In the same year, the Toronto Holocaust Centre was opened, six years after the first one was erected in Montreal. In due time a Vancouver Holocaust commemoration center would open as well. All were created under the aegis of local Jewish federations. Increasingly the Congress and B’nai B’rith brought the Holocaust legacy into their activities, as seen in the pressure they brought to bear in service of bringing charges against the purveyors of hate and suspected war criminals. The impetus for the release of the Soviet Jews and the Jews of Syria, and for the support and advocacy on behalf of Israel by most Canadian Jews and by the organizational mainstream may be seen as part of this same collective concern about antisemitism. Two factors account for this change. The first was the growing sentiment that Jews, whether in Israel, the Soviet Union, or Canada, were under threat. While this was more a matter of perception than reality for Canadian Jews, the perception had a recent historical precedent: the Holocaust. During the era under discussion, it became increasingly acknowledged that during the Holocaust the world stood by and did nothing to stop the murder of European Jewry. This includes Canada, which was worse than complacent, because, as revealed in the groundbreaking work by Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948, Canadian authorities, acting on antisemitic impulses and an exclusionary immigration policy, blatantly denied a sanctuary to the intended victims. The second factor is that the postwar Jewish community, in the wake of its accession to the mainstream of Canadian life, had lost touch with its ethnic roots. The street life of the downtown communities, the ties to labor, political, and ideological groups, and the daily prayers at local synagogues were but a memory. And what had replaced them? Attendance at large, impersonal synagogues? Meaningless consumerism? — 109 —

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Places at the tables of corporations and universities? As Saul Hayes, the long-serving executive vice-president of the Congress remarked in 1970: “There was a Jewish Emptiness.” What would fill the void? This cause, the defense of Jews domestically and internationally, which was based on the comprehension that only a few decades earlier millions of Jews had been wiped out, became a central pillar of Canadian Jewish ethnic identity. This consciousness provided most Canadian Jews with both a raison d’être and a sense of ethno-cultural exclusivity in the multicultural fervor of the time, consistent with their place in the mainstream of Canadian life. Contemporary Life, 1990-2011 The predominant characteristic of Jewish life in Canada in the last twenty years has been the growing diversity of the community, as determined by geography, faith, culture, class, ideology, and sexual orientation. However, while diversity is more pronounced, in seeming paradox there is an over-arching unity of purpose in the community. Social scientists have not yet fully analyzed the characteristics of the community since the 2001 census. We have the basic demographic information, which shows that the Jewish population in Canada has declined as a measure of ethnic identification, and that Toronto contains approximately half of the Jewish population. Montreal’s community has declined, Winnipeg has regained some of its losses, and the Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton Jewish communities have grown. Anecdotally, we know that intermarriage and divorce rates have grown, as has membership in traditional and Modern Orthodox synagogues. Fertility and immigration rates have dropped. The community is rapidly aging, and has the highest median age of any ethno-cultural group in Canada, aside from the British. Currently about one in six Canadian Jews is over the age of 65, and this percentage is expected to explode to about one in four by 2021. Jewish predominance in income and in the professions continues, but is less dramatic with the rise of other ethnocultural groups. Jewish philanthropy is in clear evidence. Federations raise more than $100 million annually to service their operations, and more than that for special projects. New and renovated synagogues and schools keep opening. Additionally, Jews are major donors to universities, hospitals, and cultural centres, as well as to a plethora of organi— 110 —

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zations representing specific institutions and causes in Canada and Israel. Nevertheless, Jewish poverty persists. More than 50,000 Canadian Jews, about one in seven, live under the poverty line. Half of the older Canadian Jewish population, particularly women over seventy-five, and half of Canadian Jewish children under age five in female-led single parent families, live in poverty. We begin our survey with Toronto. Most of the Jewish population in this city is strung out on a north-south line on and around Bathurst Street. At the south end, adjacent to the old immigrant neighborhood, is the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre, which serves both downtown Jews and the community at large. Restored in the early 2000s as part of the creation of three Jewish community centers by the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, it is emblematic of the return of Jewish life to the central core of Toronto. Most of the returnees are what may be termed liberal Jews, who tend to be drawn to the energy of the street, who attend egalitarian congregations, and who support alternative Jewish organizations. At the north end of town, some twenty-five kilometers up Bathurst Street, are the newest suburban developments. Here one finds all the requisites of modern Jewish life: synagogues, parochial schools, and kosher stores, living cheek by jowl with what can be termed secular Jewish enterprises. Residents vary from those with little connection to Jewish identity to the traditional Orthodox. However, the main constant is that even the least affiliated Jews associate mostly with other Jews in their social and occupational lives. The newest community centre, the recently completed Lebovic Campus, is intended to be the nexus of the north end. Between these two extremes are the older, wealthier communities of Cedarvale and Forest Hill and the inner suburbs built after the war, and interspersed with both are apartment buildings where many lower-income Jews live. Pockets of traditional Jews have created their own micro communities along Bathurst. As Etan Diamond writes, they have created “sacred spaces.” Here one also finds the third community centre, the Sherman Campus, which is presently under construction. The growth of the community, from 88,000 members in 1961 to approximately 175,000 in 2010,4 has been due primarily to immigra4

As stated at the outset of this chapter, the current population can only be an estimate, due to the confusing results of the 2006 mini-census, which shows 141,000 Jews in Toronto, conflicting with — 111 —

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tion. Internally, Jews from across Canada—from small-town Ontario, and from Montreal and Winnipeg—have flocked to Toronto, in the the continuation of a trend that began in the 1950s. Toronto also continues to be a mecca for Russians and Israelis. It is difficult to determine how many members of this group make their home there, as the two groups tend to coalesce, since so many Russians have arrived via Israel. Forty thousand is a broad estimate. Jews from South Africa and from elsewhere in the Americas have also found a home in Toronto. Thus, Bathurst Street is a ribbon of Jewish life that reveals the economic, social, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity of the community. Montreal has retained some of the vitality of the old community of “Downtown Jews.” One finds more of a feeling of “Jewishness” there than in Toronto. The Plateau still has some of the charm and Jewish eateries of decades past. Orthodoxy, both Modern and traditional, retains its clout in and around the city. Jewish cultural life remains rich and Jewish day school education, supported by the provincial government, remains strong. All this is true despite a 25% percent decline in Montreal’s Jewish population since the 1970s.5 The decline is generally attributed primarily to the resurgence of Quebec nationalism since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, a force that is a result of Quebec’s modernization and therefore must be distinguished from its traditional roots within Catholicism and agrarianism. Many Montreal Jews felt that their comfort level as an ethno-cultural community wedged between Quebec’s “two solitudes” was imperiled by the stridency of the imposition of the French language in all aspects of life by the Parti Québécois (PQ), while the provincial Liberal Party also basically supported French language rights. Connected to this concern was the Jewish community’s fear that the separatist movement was becoming intensely nationalistic, with tones of intolerance toward the allophone (non-French, non-Anglo) population. Much was made of the procession of Montreal Jews moving westward along Highway 401 to Toronto following the PQ’s victory in 1976. But consideration must also be given to the economic decline of Montreal, relative to Toronto,

5

the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, which indicates that there are close to 200,000. Again, it is hoped that the results of the 2011 census will clarify the situation. The highpoint was in 1971, with 109,480 Jews (Decennial Census in Tulchinsky, The Jews of Canada, p. 490). The mini-census of 2006 shows 66,485 (Brym, et. al, eds., ix). In conversation with Morton Weinfeld, it was decided that a reasonable estimate is 80,000-85,000. — 112 —

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as the centre of the nation’s business. This decline had less to do with French-Canadian nationalism than with Toronto’s tremendous growth due to immigration and corporate consolidation. Indeed, the drop in Montreal’s Jewish population is a mirror of the transition of economic centralization from one city to the other. In the last two decades, Montreal’s Jewish population has stabilized, relatively speaking. A major distinguishing aspect in the Montreal Jewish community is the prevalence of French-speaking Jews from Arab lands. This segment of the population has grown and now accounts for approximately 35% of the Jewish community. Most of these so-called Sephardi Jews have Moroccan roots.6 Changes in the Jewish family structure mirror those in Canadian society. While the husband/wife/children paradigm still predominates, single families, couples without children, same-sex couples with and without children, and singles also lay claim to the term “family.” Intermarriage is more commonplace, accounting for about 35% of unions in the last twenty years. An estimated 25% of intermarried couples raise their children as Jewish. Jewish women have assumed leadership roles in the community and in Canadian society. As recently as the 1960s there were no women among the officers of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and B’nai B’rith had separate divisions for the sexes. There were no female rabbis until the 1990s, and even then they were only welcome in liberal congregations. The Orthodox Jewish divorce, the get, is still difficult to obtain for some women, despite an amendment to the Canada Divorce Act in 1990. Yet Jewish women, in line with most Canadian women, have made major strides in business, academics, politics, and the professions. Rosalie Abella is the first Jewish women to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and Myrna Freeman was appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia. Norma Baumel Joseph of Concordia University is a leading activist, especially for Orthodox women, and Judy Rebick of Ryerson University is one of the major activists on behalf of women and oppressed minorities in the country, as is Naomi Klein. Julia Koschitsky is a leading philanthropist and community leader, and Dorothy Reitman and 6

I thank Professors Morton Weinfeld, Ira Robinson, and Pierre Anctil, and Rabbi Howard Joseph of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, for explaining the situation in Montreal to me in private conversations. — 113 —

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Rochelle Willner were the first female presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith respectively. Jewish education in Canada continues apace. Morton Weinfeld writes that in a 1990 Toronto survey, an estimated 90% of Jewish children received some form of Jewish education, while 58% were enrolled in Jewish schools. Furthermore, about 40% of Jewish undergraduates take a course in Jewish studies, and about 25% of adults participate in Jewish education. Aside from in Ontario, provincial administrations support Jewish schools in some measure. Aside from Quebec, few baby boomers went to full-day Jewish schools. The children of the boomers, however, are much more likely to do so, despite the fact that religious observance has not grown proportionately. One can conjecture that this is due to a perception that secular public schools have declined in quality. However, it may also be relevant that there is a much greater concern about the continuity of Jewish life today than there was thirty years ago. The impact of antisemitism since the 1960s is that facing it has come to be a marker of Jewish identity in Canada. Anti-Israel condemnation in the wake of the Six-Day War has mushroomed in the last twenty years. Meanwhile, traditional antisemitism within some Christian denominations has receded, and old Canadian nativist sentiments have diminished. Many analysts also feel that extreme right-wing racist activities have declined. They are most concerned by radical left-wing support for the Palestinian cause. While this is certainly of concern, the analysts are too dismissive of the racist right wing, which has become more vociferous in its attacks on Jews and other minorities due to easy exposure on the internet and has committed violent attacks on Jews and Jewish organizations in the United States. Given these developments, most Canadian Jews perceive antisemitism as thriving in Canada. They point to the ferocity of anti-Israel rhetoric amongst intellectuals, actions such as Israel Apartheid Week on a few campuses, the reticence occasionally shown by political leaders preventing them from fully supporting Israeli policies, the wave of antisemitism within much of the developing world, and antisemitism’s growing acceptance in Europe. Much of this concern is well placed, but Canadian Jews would be hard-pressed to describe personal attacks or to furnish proofs of being denied jobs, housing, or education on the basis of their religion. Furthermore, polls indicate that virulent antisemitism among Canadians is marginal, and that overt an-

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tisemitism is engaged in by relatively few Canadians.7 Nevertheless, the responses of Jewish organizations and politicians to the issue of antisemitism has become the litmus test for most Canadian Jews. Canadian Jews have traditionally supported centrist and left-wing parties. A small minority was in the vanguard of the CCF and Canadian Communist Party in the 1930s, while the liberal parties, provincially and federally, held sway among Jewish and most other immigrant communities. These sentiments persisted into the 1960s, but gradually Jews moved to the middle and the right. The Jewish presence in the labour movement and in the NDP has receded. The Trudeau governments were reluctant to respond to Jewish advocacy on war criminals, and the Chrétien governments adopted an even-handed policy regarding Israel. Concurrently, Conservative leaders from Mulroney to Harper have championed Jewish causes, and Harper has been Israel’s most supportive ally of all the world’s heads of government. This has yet to be played out politically. There are few federal ridings that have enough Jews to sway elections; only one, Thornhill outside Toronto, has switched from Liberal to Conservative. In the elections to come, we will be better able to determine the extent of the swing to the right. The specter of antisemitism has taken more of a hold on Jewish consciousness in Jewish communal politics. B’nai B’rith, which raises its own funds and is accountable only to its membership, was in joint association with the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian Zionist Federation on the advocacy front from the 1930s until the 1970s. Since then, it has lobbied in its own right. In the last decade, it has become outspoken in its support for the military and foreign policies of Israel’s mainstream right wing and in its ringing denunciation of hatred of Jews in Canada. This has been driven by its view that according to its research antisemitism in Canada has rapidly grown. The Canadian Jewish Congress, the established mainstream organization, has always been dependent upon the funds raised by the federations via the United Jewish Appeal. Since the Second World War, the Congress’s dominance has been whittled away by the ten federated communities that in 1998 created UIA (United Israel Appeal) Federations of Canada (UIAFC). This dimin7

In a World Values Survey reported in 2009, in response to the following question, “On this list are various groups of people. Could you please mention any that you would not like to have as neighbours”, 2.1 percent of Canadians, outside of Quebec, mentioned Jews, based on data collected in 2000. Only the Netherlands had a lower figure. Brym, et. al eds., p. vii. — 115 —

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ished the Congress as local needs came to be intertwined with advocacy on all fronts. In 2004, UIAFC created the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) to oversee the Congress, the Canada-Israel Committee, and organizations dealing with Jews on campuses. This further reduced the Congress’ mandate and its historic position as the “parliament of Canadian Jews.” The impetus for these actions, although not explicitly stated, was the perception that the growth of antisemitism domestically, and the lackluster effort to both reduce this development and persuade the government to reverse its even-handed approach to the Middle East, was a reflection of an antiquated and over-lapping advocacy structure. As of this writing, the organizational structure of community-funded advocacy has been restructured once again, resulting in an effective marginalization of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the rise to prominence of the new Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Further to these internal organizational changes has been the creation of new organizations responding to antisemitism through Holocaust education and commemoration. These include the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, the Canadian Friends of Yad Vashem, and the Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Canada. In addition, many synagogues have become involved in advocacy for Israel. Outside of the mainstream, the New Israel Foundation and Canadian Friends for Peace Now advocate and raise funds for Israel-Arab co-existence. On the other end of the spectrum, the Jewish Defense League, which takes a confrontational approach to anti-Israel demonstrations, has been resurrected. Against the mainstream, articulating a condemnation of Israel’s policies and support for Palestinian nationalism, are a very small number of Jews who are among the members of groups devoted to this cause. In so doing, they believe that they are articulating a Jewish commitment to the human rights of the Palestinians. This panorama of Jewish organizational life leaves us with two perspectives. First, that Canadian Jews are highly disproportionate volunteers. We have listed only some of the Jewish organizations—in addition to these there are synagogues and schools, in which a significant number of community members are involved, and there is a disproportionate Jewish involvement in mainstream Canadian organizations devoted to health, education, and cultural causes. Canada’s Jews fully embrace their Jewishness and their Canadian identities, even when they oppose the mainstream. — 116 —

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The second perspective is that the political spectrum, ranging from unconditional support for Israel to the outright condemnation of Israel, is the continuation of a tradition that is centuries old. Certainly it may seem that the ideological disputes of the inter-war years are re-cast in these current debates. However, there is a significant difference. Today virtually all Canadian Jews are committed to the democratic process and to the maintenance of the Canadian state. They vote for mainstream parties and wish to see a secure foundation, free of prejudice, for all Canadians. Few wish to overthrow the political and economic structure, and virtually all believe that they are responding in an appropriate “Jewish” way to the maintenance of Jewish and Canadian life. Nevertheless, many Canadian Jews seem to cling to the legacy of the Holocaust and provide their political and institutional support to those who back Israel unconditionally and those who perceive that antisemitism is a real threat to Jewish life in Canada. In effect, this demonstrates that despite their mainstream status they are insecure. Yet the position occupied by Jews in Canadian society is the most secure now as it has ever been, and may be unparalleled in the history of the Jewish diaspora. Morton Weinfeld’s contention in 2005 that the community “is becoming the second most important Diaspora community after the United States” is even more apt today. There is today a greater diversity of Jewish life in Canada than there has been at any other time. Jewish men and women can be found in the political, cultural, and economic elite, across the broad band of the middle class, and, unfortunately, also among the most destitute. They may be completely consumed by traditional life or devoid of Jewish identification altogether. But these and countless other divisions are now more accepted. One can only point to the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto in 2010 as an example of the tolerance of diversity. Kulanu, an organization of Jewish gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered people, marched with leaders of the Congress, federations, and other organizations. From the Orthodox to the unaffiliated, Jews marched together both in a show of the community’s internal solidarity and to support the human rights of all Canadians. The goal of most Canadian Jews, and most Canadians, is to live in what Trudeau called “a just society.” Franklin Bialystok

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For Further Study Azrieli, David J. Rekindling the Torch: The Story of Canadian Zionism. Toronto: Key Porter, 2008. Bercuson, David J. Canada and the Birth of Israel: A Study in Canadian Foreign Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Bercuson, David J., and Douglas Wertheimer. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair. Toronto: Doubleday, 1995. Bialystok, Franklin. Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Brown, Michael, and Leo Davids. A Maturing Community: Jewish Women and Seniors in Canada. Centre for Jewish Studies Annual 7 (2005). Brym, Robert J. “The Rise and Decline of Canadian Jewry? A Socio-Demographic Profile.” In The Jews in Canada, edited by Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, 22-38. Toronto: Oxford, 2010. Davids, Leo. “Yiddish in Canada.” In The Jews in Canada, edited by Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld. Toronto: Oxford, 2010. Finkelstein, Maxine. “Making Philanthropy Meaningful for the Next Generation.” In The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005, B 15-17. Supplement in Canadian Jewish News September 29 2005. Lappin, Ben. The Redeemed Children: The Story of the Rescue of the War Orphans by the Jewish Community of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963. Martz, Fraidie. Open Your Hearts: The Story of the Jewish War Orphans. Montreal: Vehicule, 1996. Owram, Doug. Born At the Right Time: A History Of The Baby Boom Generation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Patrias, Carmela, and Ruth Frager. “‘This Is Our Country, These Are Our Rights’: Minorities and the Origins of Ontario Human Rights Campaigns.” Canadian Historical Review: 82: 1 (March 2001). Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class And Power in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. Schoenfeld, Stuart, Joan Schoenfeld, and Gail McCabe. “From Diaspora to Diaspora: South-African-Jewish Immigration to Canada.” Canadian Jewish Studies/ Etudes Juives Canadiennes XV (2007): 99-128. Shahar, Charles. “The Major Demographic Challenges Facing Canadian Jewry.” In The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005, B 60-66. Supplement in Canadian Jewish News September 29 2005. Stingel, Janine. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Taras, David, and David H. Goldberg, eds. The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. Troper, Harold. The Ransomed of God: The Story of One Woman’s Role in the Rescue of Syrian Jews. Toronto: Malcolm Lester, 1999. Walker, James St. G. “‘The Jewish Phase’ in the Movement for Racial Equality in — 118 —

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Canada.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 54 (2002). Waller, Harold M. “The Canadian Polity.” In The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005, B 18-22. Supplement in Canadian Jewish News September 29 2005. Weimann, Gabriel, and Conrad Winn. Hate on Trial: The Zundel Affair, The Media and Public Opinion in Canada. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1986. Morton Weinfeld. “Canadian and U.S. Jewry: Similar, Yet Different.” In “The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005, B 8-13. Supplement in Canadian Jewish New September 29 2005.

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VIII The Jews of Canada: A Demographic Profile

This article seeks to offer a brief historical overview of contemporary Canadian Jewish life, and continues with a discussion of some key current demographic indicators of Canadian Jewish life. Early Jewish Settlement in Canada After the British gained control of New France in 1760, a small Jewish population from England and British North America arrived in the area, creating a small Jewish community in Montreal. The Jewish population of Canada rose slowly but steadily throughout the nineteenth century. While Montreal’s Jewish community remained the largest in Canada during this era, in the 1840s Jews from western and central Europe established small communities in Hamilton, Kingston, and Toronto. The gold rush of the 1850s on the west coast brought small numbers of Jewish traders, merchants, and wholesalers to British Columbia. By the 1870s, over a thousand Jews lived in Canada, primarily in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the late nineteenth century Jewish communities were also established in London (Ontario), Halifax (Nova Scotia) and Saint John (New Brunswick). Expansion At the end of the nineteenth century, large numbers of Jews fled to North America from eastern Europe. While the overwhelming majority of these emigrants settled in the United States, between 1880 and 1900 Canada received approximately 10,000 of them. The Jewish population of Canada thus grew quickly in these two decades, reaching a total of approximately 16,000. Montreal had the largest Jewish community in the country (approximately 7,000), followed by Toronto (3,000) and Winnipeg (1,000). Jewish populations were also forming at this time in Ottawa and Windsor. Small numbers of Jews developed modest businesses along the new western railroad lines in towns such as Wapella, — 121 —

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Moosomin and Edenbridge, all in Saskatchewan. The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the largest period to date of Jewish immigration to Canada. Approximately 52,000 Jewish immigrants entered the country, settling from coast to coast. Again, most of them Jews were from Eastern Europe. The population was concentrated in the larger metropolitan areas of Canada. In addition to tremendous growth in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Vancouver, Jewish communities expanded in smaller cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Saskatoon. By the 1920s a Jewish presence could be found in numerous small towns across the country. Some examples include Glace Bay (Nova Scotia), Brantford (Ontario) and Moose Jaw (Saskatchewan). By 1930, the Canadian Jewish population had grown to approximately 150,000 people. As a response to the unemployment created by the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Canadian government imposed severe restrictions on immigration. In one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian history, Canada took in fewer Jews per capita during the Nazi era than any other country in the Western world: only 5,000 Jewish refugees entered Canada during this period. Post-War Period After the war, the Canadian government liberalized its immigration policy. Roughly 40,000 Holocaust survivors emigrated during the late 1940s, settling primarily in Montreal. In the 1950s, North African Sephardi Jews emigrated to Montreal and Quebec City, where they had the advantage of already being able to speak French. The 1956 Hungarian uprising brought about the emigration of approximately 4,000 Jews to Toronto. In search of better economic conditions, Soviet/Russian, South African, and Israeli Jews began to arrive in significant numbers in the 1970s and 1980s. Smaller numbers of Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia, India, Latin America, the United States, and other areas added to the diversity of the Canadian Jewish community. See Table 1 for an illustration of the growth of the Canadian Jewish population.

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Table 1 Jewish Population of Canada: Historical Summary1 Year

Jewish Population

20012

370,520

1991

358,055

1981

313,865

1971

286,550

19613

254,368

1951

204,836

1941

168,585

1931

155,766

1921

125,445

1911

74,760

1901

16,493

Starting in the 1970s, the province of Quebec legislated to ensure the primacy of the French language in the workplace and to restrict access to Quebec’s English educational system. This, combined with the increased popular sentiment in Quebec for separating from Canada, made many Anglophone Quebec Jews nervous and uncertain of their future. Several thousand moved to Toronto and elsewhere. By the 1980s Toronto had replaced Montreal as the largest Jewish centre in Canada. Today, there is roughly the same amount of Jews in Toronto and its sub1 Charles Shahar, 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 1: “Basic Demographics” (Toronto: UIA Federations, Canada, 2003). 2 2011 Census results will not be available until 2013. Community estimates suggest that the figure is around 385,000. 3 Data previous to 1971 are based solely on the religion variable, whereas statistics cited for 1971 to 2001 are based on the Jewish Standard Definition. — 123 —

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urbs as in the rest of the country combined. Jews continue to be the most urbanized ethno-religious group in Canada. Currently, approximately 195,000 Jews live in Toronto and 90,000 in Montreal. These populations together constitute about 75% of Canadian Jewry. There are approximately 26,000 Jews in Vancouver, 17,000 in Ottawa, 14,000 in Winnipeg, and 8,500 in Calgary, with smaller populations (5,000 or less) in Edmonton, Hamilton, Victoria, and other smaller cities in the country. The approximately 385,000 Jews of Canada constitute the third largest Jewish diaspora community (see Tables 2 and 3 below). In 2011 Jews represented approximately 1.2% of the total population of Canada. Table 2 Countries with the Largest Jewish Populations, 20102

4 5

Rank

Country

Population

1

Israel

5,703,700

2

United States

5,275,000

3

France

483,500

4

Canada

375,0005

5

United Kingdom

292,000

6

Russian Federation

205,000

7

Argentina

182,300

8

Germany

119,000

Sergio Della Pergola, World Jewish Population, 2010, Mandell L. Berman Institute-North American Jewish Data Bank. This figure uses a slightly different definition for Jewish, and thus is slightly lower than the Canadian estimates of 385,000. — 124 —

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Table 3 Jewish Population by Canadian City6

3

Rank

Metropolitan Area

1981

1991

2001

Estimates for 20117

1

Toronto

129,325

163,050

179,105

Moderate increase

2

Montreal

103,765

101,400

92,960

Small decrease

3

Vancouver

14,925

19,640

22,595

Moderate increase

4

Ottawa

9,355

11,605

13,450

Moderate increase

5

Winnipeg

16,170

15,185

14,765

Small decrease

6

Calgary

6,085

7,260

7,940

Small increase

7

Hamilton

4,660

5,160

4,685

No change

8

Edmonton

4,705

5,470

4,925

Small decrease

Counting Jews with the Canadian Census Unlike the United States, whose ethos of separation of church and state does not allow its national census to ask questions on religious affiliation, Canada has asked its citizens to identify their religion since 1871. Religious affiliation has been asked every ten years, and ethnic ancestry has been asked every five years. The Canadian census has thus been an accessible and invaluable tool for counting and sorting Jews and assess6 7

These figures are taken from the various reports of Charles Shahar’s “Census Analysis Series, The Jewish Community of Canada,” UIA Federations Canada, 2003-05. These are unofficial community estimates. — 125 —

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ing the state of Canadian Jewish life. It is this area in which Canadian scholars and demographers have the greatest comparative advantage over their counterparts in the United States. The National Jewish Population Survey in the United States, while providing a wealth of information, has been subject to significant debate on proper interpretation and, in its most recent form (2000-2001) was fraught with methodological problems. The Canadian census on the other hand (in which all Canadians are obliged by law to participate) has been considered the gold standard in demography. Statistics Canada, the agency which administers it, is well-respected internationally. The census requests respondents to fill out two sections that are pertinent to Jews: “religion” and “ethnic ancestry.” The question arises as to which of these categories is more appropriate for counting Jews. While some Canadian demographers of the Jews count only those who refer to themselves as Jews “by religion,” since 1971 the Jewish Federations of Canada have developed what they have termed the “Jewish Standard Definition,” which incorporates a combination of the two variables. This definition includes anyone who identifies as Jewish either “by religion” or “by ethnic ancestry” (providing they indicated “no religion” under the religion question). Significant use has been made of census data over the past quarter century for Jewish communal planning. Various reports on specific Jewish cities, and Canada as a whole, have been produced by James Torczyner at McGill and Charles Shahar of the Federation Combined Jewish Appeal (CJA) in Montreal. While reports that are based on census data are useful in learning about the age, marital status (including intermarriage rates), residence patterns, and socio-economic status of the Canadian Jew, they do not shed light on the specifically Jewish dimensions of the population, such as synagogue attendance, attitudes towards Israel, extent to which donations are made to Jewish charities. To uncover this type of data, Jewish federations have commissioned their own internal Jewish community surveys. Using these two sets of studies together we can sketch a picture of some dimensions of contemporary Canadian Jewish life. Place of Birth As of the 2001 census, approximately two-thirds of Canadian Jews were born in Canada, and one-third was born elsewhere. The proportion of — 126 —

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Jewish immigrants in Canada (32.5%) is significantly higher than the proportion of immigrants in the overall Canadian population. It is also higher than the proportion of Jewish immigrants in the United States, and this may be one reason why Canadian Jewry is more traditional than American Jewry on many standard behavior indicators (intermarriage rates, synagogue membership, visits to Israel, etc). The largest Jewish immigrant segment in this country hails from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). This is followed by the immigrant population from the rest of eastern Europe, western Europe, the United States, Israel, and North Africa/the Middle East (excluding Israel). See Table 4 for further detail. Since 2001 we have seen a significant rise of Israeli-born Jewish immigrants coming to Canada. Table 4 Place of Birth: Canadian Jewish Population (2001)8

4

Place of Birth

Number

Percentage

Canada

250,055

67.5

Former Soviet Union

27,790

7.5

Eastern Europe

21,935

5.9

Western Europe

15,950

4.3

United States

15,530

4.2

Israel

13,545

3.7

North Africa / Middle East

13,115

3.5

South America

2,365

0.6

Other

10,235

2.8

Total

370,520

100.0

8 Charles Shahar, 2001 Census Analysis Series, The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 5: “Immigration and Language” (Toronto: UIA Federations, Canada, 2005). — 127 —

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Age In 2001 the Canadian Jewish population had an almost identical proportion of children (age 0-14 years) as the total population of Canada. In the economically productive age group (25-44 years old) we see a discrepancy, in that 24.4% of Jews fall into this age cohort, whereas 30.5% of Canada’s total population is represented here. The proportion of Jews in the economically productive age group has significantly declined from 1991. The Jewish community has a higher proportion of senior citizens (16.7%) than the total Canadian population (12.2%) (Table 5) While the “graying” of the Canadian population is a salient issue today, this pattern is even more pronounced in the Jewish community. Overall, in 2001 the median age in the Jewish community was 40.2 years, as opposed to 37.3 years in the Canada population as a whole. Table 5 Age Breakdowns: Total Canadian Population and Jewish Population9 5

Total Canadian Population 0-14 15-24 25-44 45-64 65+ Total

# 5,737,675 3,988,200 9,047,170 7,241,135 3,624,845 29,639,025

% 19.4 13.5 30.5 24.4 12.2 100.0

Canadian Jewish Population # 71,595 48,430 90,510 98,115 61,870 370,520

% 19.3 13.1 24.4 26.5 16.7 100.0

Jewish Religion The development of Jewish religious denominational patterns mirrored the gradual separation of American Judaism into four movements, although the distributions are slightly different. Canadian Jewry is more traditional, with a higher proportion of Orthodox community members (who today make up approximately 18% of Canadian Jews) and a lower 9 Charles Shahar, 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 1: “Basic Demographics” (Toronto: UIA Federations, Canada, 2003). — 128 —

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proportion of Reform adherents (15%) than in the United States. The largest Canadian Jewish denomination is Conservative (approximately 35% of the Jewish population). Reconstructionist Jews comprise only about 2% of the Canadian Jewish population. Some Jews are reluctant to formally label themselves with an “official” denomination. This is a part of a larger trend in religious life in Canada and elsewhere toward individualizing one’s religious expression. Many Jews no longer feel obliged to categorize themselves within one of the predetermined religious categories. Within Canadian Jewry this has resulted in the rise of Jews who refer to themselves as “just Jewish,” “secular Jewish,” “humanist Jewish” or the like. This category encompasses approximately 30% of Canadian Jews. Montreal has the highest proportion of Jews reporting that they are Orthodox (24.3%),106followed by Toronto (14.2%).11 7This can be seen in contrast, for example, to Vancouver, which reports somewhere between 7-12% of its members being Orthodox.12 8 Intermarriage In 2001, of the approximately 175,000 Jewish people who were married or in common-law relationships in Canada, approximately 137,000 of them were partnered with other Jews and approximately 38,000 were partnered with non-Jews. In precise terms, the intermarriage rate in Canada at this time was 21.7%. It is certainly reasonable to suggest that this rate has risen considerably in the last ten years, but it is doubtful that it has reached the Jewish intermarriage rates in the United States (approximately 45-50%). It is quite instructive to see the differing intermarriage rates in different major cities in Canada. Rates are lower in Toronto (15.6%) and Montreal (13.1%), which are known to house more traditional Jewish populations, than they are elsewhere. Rates are higher in less Jewishly traditional cities such as Vancouver (41.3%) or Calgary (34.3%). Winnipeg is around the national average, at 23.3%.

10 Charles Shahar, Jewish Life in Montreal: A Survey of the Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviours of Montreal’s Jewish Community (Montreal: Federation CJA, 2011). 11 Shahar Charles and Tina Rosenbaum, Jewish Life in Greater Toronto: A Survey of the Attitudes and Behaviours of Greater Toronto’s Jewish Community (Toronto: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, 2006). 12 Report on the Jewish Attitudes and Practices Among Members of the Greater Vancouver Jewish Community (Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, 2008). — 129 —

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Comparison to Other Religious Groups In 2001 the Jewish community was the sixth-largest religious community in Canada. The 2011 census will surely show that Jews are dropping in this ranking. The Jewish growth rate from the 1991 census to that of 2001 was only 3.5 %, and the best estimates suggest that the Jewish growth rate between 2001 and 2011 is similar. By contrast, the Muslim growth rate between 1991 and 2001 was 128.9%. In 1991 there were only 253,265 Muslims in Canada, compared to 358,000 Jews. As we see in Table 6 below, in 2001 there were 370,520 Jews and 579,645 Muslims. While the Jewish population has increased to approximately 385,000 in 2011, recent estimates suggest that there are more than 850,000 Muslims in Canada today. The Buddhist, Hindu, and Sikh populations in Canada are also growing at a much faster rate than the Jewish population. Between 1991 and 2001, each of these religious groups increased by approximately 85%. The 2011 census is sure to indicate that they have also surpassed the Jewish population. Table 6 Jewish Religious Groups in Canada, 200113

Catholic Protestant Other Christian Muslim Christian Orthodox Jewish Buddhist Hindu Sikh Other No religious affiliation Total

# 12,936,910 8,654,850 780,450 579,645 479,615 370,520 300,345 297,200 278,415 101,515 4,900,090 29,639,030

9

% 43.6 29.2 2.6 2.0 1.6 1.3 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.3 16.5 100.0

13 Charles Shahar, 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 1: “Basic Demographics” (Toronto: UIA Federations, Canada, 2003). — 130 —

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The 2011 Canadian Census Alas, serious methodological problems have arrived in Canada with important implications with respect to the counting of Canadian Jews. In the spring of 2010, the Canadian government announced that the long form of the 2011 census, called the National Household Survey (which includes the pertinent questions on religion and ethnic ancestry) will become voluntary, rather than mandatory This decision triggered a national debate, with numerous organizations arguing that voluntary responses to the census skew the results, thus producing unreliable data. Organizations that have opposed the new census design include numerous faith-based groups, including the Canadian Jewish Congress. At this point, we can only hope that the 2011 census will continue to provide useful demographic information for the purposes of investigating Jewish life in Canada.1410In response to this issue, the Jewish Federations of Canada developed a campaign to try to encourage Canadian Jews to complete the National Household Survey and indicate their Jewish origins. In 2013, we will be in a position to determine the accuracy of the 2011 census as it relates to Canadian Jews. Randal F. Schnoor

14 It should be noted that questions on religion are also optional on the British and Australian census. — 131 —

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For Further Study Brown, Michael. “Canadian Jews and Multiculturalism: Myths and Realities.” Jewish Political Studies Review 19 (2007): 3-4. DellaPergola, Sergio. World Jewish Population, 2010. Mandell L. Berman Institute –North American Jewish Data Bank. 2010. Shahar, Charles. Jewish Life in Montreal: A Survey of the Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviours of Montreal’s Jewish Community. Montreal: Federation CJA, 2011. Shahar, Charles. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 6, Basic Demographics. Toronto: UIA Federations Canada, 2006. Shahar, Charles. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 5, Immigration and Language. Toronto: UIA Federations Canada, 2005. Shahar, Charles. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada, Part 1, Basic Demographics. Toronto: UIA Federations Canada, 2003 Shahar, Charles, and Tina Rosenbaum. Jewish Life in Greater Toronto: A Survey of the Attitudes and Behaviours of Greater Toronto’s Jewish Community. Toronto: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, 2006. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. 2008. Report on the Jewish Attitudes and Practices Among Members of the Greater Vancouver Jewish Community. Weinfeld, M. “Jewish Demography: Qualitative, Quantitative or Both.” In Creating the Jewish Future, edited by B. Lightman and M. Brown, 234-248. Walnut Creek: Sage, 1999.

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IX The Politics of the Contemporary Jewish Community

Introduction The Jews of Canada boast an elaborate community structure and an active internal political process. Following the tradition of centuries of autonomous Jewish governance, Canadian Jews have established a large number of organizations, some of which perform what amounts to internal governmental functions. Of course, not all Jews are part of this system; at root, organized Jewish life in the diaspora is based on voluntary identification and participation. But for those who do associate with the organized community, there is in fact a process of authoritative decisionmaking. Thus, it is appropriate to discuss these matters in terms of a political system for Canadian Jews, though. Of course Jews constitute an integral part of the general Canadian political system as well. Organized Jewish life in Canada follows a tradition that dates back to the exile from the Land of Israel after the destruction of the Second Temple in approximately the year 70 CE. Jews never enjoyed political independence from then until Israel’s creation in 1948. However, they generally had some political control over their own communal affairs and, in some cases, considerable autonomy. Thus political organization was a continuing feature of communal life. In the past the focus of Jewish political life was necessarily on local communities, but in more recent times, certainly since the emancipation of the Jews beginning in the late eighteenth century, societal changes have made the possibility of country-wide community politics possible. Larger Jewish communities in free countries maintain elaborate community institutions that usually serve dual purposes: they organize and raise funds to provide a variety of services to Jews, and they represent the community to the external world, including governments and the people of the host country. Consequently, it is reasonable to conclude that country-wide Jewish communities effectively function as polities, with the caveat that membership is ultimately voluntary. Thus, insofar as Jews are willing to identify with a communal polity. There is a political process in which they can participate. — 133 —

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Typical functions in the contemporary Jewish polity are raising money, allocating it to various functional agencies, delivering services, representing the community to governments, and community relations. Canadian Jewry is largely a product of twentieth-century development, despite its origins lying as far back as the eighteenth century. Immigrants from Europe settled mainly in Montreal and Toronto, but also in smaller cities in Ontario and later the west. Early in the twentieth century the predecessors of modern federations were founded in the two large communities (Toronto in 1916 and Montreal in 1917), and this was followed by the establishment of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) in 1919. The Congress was designed to be a representative body that could speak on behalf of the country-wide community to federal and provincial governments as well as the general public. Its presence on the communal scene was an important characteristic of Canadian Jewish life that distinguished it from that of the United States, where there was no comparable body. Early philanthropic or welfare funds reflected a preference for a loose political structure that emphasized coordination. The most pressing concerns of the time were those involved in meeting the needs of immigrants. For decades, the Congress was the main voice of the organized Jewish community. It attracted top talent and was recognized for the quality of its leadership. It did have some competition in the early years from groups such as B’nai B’rith Canada (BBC) and the Zionist Organization of Canada. But, once firmly established, the Congress became the unchallenged voice of Canadian Jewry. By the middle of the century the federation model had spread to a number of mid-sized communities and was seen as providing an opportunity to give more centralized direction to the communities served. As a result, by the 1970s the federations had begun to eclipse the Congress as the central address for the community’s decision-making and public-policy formation. These developments were furthered by influences from the United States and the appropriation of the Israel connection by the federations after the Six-Day War, along with federation control of community funds. The Congress, in contrast, never focused on raising money from the public and eventually became dependent on the federations for its budget. This enhanced the status and power of the federations and correspondingly reduced the significance of the Congress. By century’s end the trend toward centralization in communal life — 134 —

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was evident at both country and local levels. On a national basis the federations had formed bodies to allocate communal funds to organizations such as the Congress or the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS) by the early 1970s. Similarly, budgetary allocations became the centerpiece of the local federations’ missions. Gradually the system became more centralized, so that the bulk of community spending was controlled by committees that operated within the federation framework. Some organizations did remain outside that structure, including B’nai B’rith, various Zionist organizations, synagogues and other religious institutions, and schools. During the twentieth century the Canadian Jewish polity changed considerably, moving from a situation in which there were numerous organizations with little coordination or unified planning and no central campaign to one in which the main communal bodies were subject to considerable discipline, planning, and allocation of centrally raised campaign funds. Moreover, national bodies operated in much the same way. Only those organizations that remained outside the federation structure retained any substantial measure of autonomy. Community Institutions: The Federation Structure Political life in the Canadian Jewish community revolves around a number of organizations, of which the federations are the most prominent. The building blocks of the contemporary community structure are the local federations, which have the indispensable advantage of conducting the annual fundraising campaigns that support their budgets and those of their associated institutions. For some forty years community-wide fundraising has been dominated by the federations, which have designated charitable arms for this purpose, whereas previously other bodies competed for funds. The turning point came after the Six-Day War in 1967, when the Canadian Zionist Federation relinquished its hold on its primary fundraising connection with Israel, giving the various united or combined Jewish appeals the opportunity to bring together, in a single annual campaign, a call for funds to support local institutions and agencies, country-wide bodies, and Israel’s needs. The allocation for Israel was significant, often constituting about half of the money available for distribution. In effect, this enabled local campaigns to raise funds for their own needs while taking advantage of Israel’s popularity among their donors. — 135 —

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Overall, the federations benefited substantially from the Israel connection. First of all, visiting Israeli celebrities, primarily political or military people, appeared under the auspices of the local federation, thereby cementing the perception that federations were the link between ordinary Canadian Jews and the State of Israel. Given the strong attachments between Canadian Jews and the Jewish state, this connection proved to be exceptionally valuable and gave the campaigns a distinct advantage over other fundraising drives. Essentially, the federations succeeded in establishing themselves as Israel’s address in Canada. This proved to be a valuable strategy. Later on, various developments decreased the value of the Israel connection. Among these were the decline in close identification with Israel among some Jews; the growth in local needs, such as education; and the perception, originating in Israel, that Israel needed the money less than the diaspora did. The cumulative impact of these developments was that federations reduced the allocation to Israel and increased local allocations accordingly. Despite this, the preeminent position in fundraising achieved by the federations persisted. Indeed, there is presently no effective challenger for that position. Other campaigns certainly take place in the community, but none has the visibility or impact of the annual federation campaigns. The control over money provided by the annual campaigns gives the federations a major advantage in terms of governing. Since they are the central repositories of communal funds, they can decide how to allocate those funds. Any agency that is part of the federation depends on the annual allocation it receives from the federation budget. If times are good and allocations increase, the agencies find that their own budgets will be augmented. Conversely, when there is an economic decline and receipts diminish, budgets are cut. Consequently, federations have become de facto community governments. The agencies are thus similar to government departments or ministries. They depend on central governmental institutions for their budgets and agree to adhere to the norms established by the federation’s governing bodies. Although they have some flexibility in terms of establishing and administering programs, they can ill afford to undertake programs that might antagonize the federation leadership. Organizations that are outside the established structure may apply for grants or other forms of support, but generally the agencies that constitute the federations have first call on resources. — 136 —

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In an earlier era, local federations allocated some of their budgets to support country wide organizations, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress or JIAS. However, during the last third of the twentieth century, the desire for greater coordination and consistency in allocation decisions led to the establishment of structures to make these national-level decisions. The first of these, in the 1970s, was the National Budgeting Conference. This was followed some two decades later by the Council of Jewish Federations of Canada. Finally, in 1998, the United Israel Appeal Federations Canada (UIAFC) was established. It brought together the vehicle for funding activities in Israel, the United Israel Appeal of Canada, and the Canadian federations that fund and carry out activities in Canada. Presently there are 10 federations and some 40 regional communities that provide the funding for and receive benefits from UIAFC. The federations are located in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Windsor, London, Ottawa, Atlantic Canada, and the regional (i.e., small) communities of Ontario. UIAFC has a Budget and Allocations Committee that allocates the fimds that the local federations make available for country-wide and overseas purposes. The major overseas beneficiaries are the Joint Distribution Committee, which assists Jews outside of Israel, and Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency, both of which carry out programs in Israel. In addition, UIAFC contributes to the umbrella organization United Jewish Communities in the United States, of which the Canadian federations are a part. In return, the United Jewish Communities provides certain services. Domestically the major beneficiaries are the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA). CIJA, in turn, has the responsibility of overseeing the activities of National Campus Jewish Life (NCJL), the University Outreach Committee (UOC), and the Canadian Jewish Congress.1 CIJA, NJCL, and UOC are relatively new, having been created in 2004, and are currently in a major restructuring. Also under CIJA direction are the Canada-Israel Committee and the related Quebec-Israel Committee, which have responsibility for Israel-oriented advocacy. The new structure represents an attempt to provide coherence primarily to efforts that support Israel but also to those that have domestic relevance. 1

This was the situation prior to the most recent reorganization, in which the Congress’s remaining functions were essentially taken over by CIJA. — 137 —

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The country-wide institutions clearly reflect the primacy of the federations, which means that most major decisions that determine the community’s policy orientation come from the federations. Because it dominates the allocation process for such a large part of community funds, UIAFC is able to take the lead in the development of policies and programs, especially those with country-wide or international scope. This leaves organizations outside the federation structure on the periphery. Organizations Presently or Formerly Outside the Federation Structure As the federation system gradually achieved primacy in the political system of Canadian Jewry, organizations that were not part of the federated structure eventually had to decide whether and how to try to maintain their positions. The most prominent body outside the federation family was the Canadian Jewish Congress, which always saw itself as having a different mandate—primarily political and cultural—from the philanthropically-oriented bodies. In particular, the CJC was generally not in the business of delivering services. Indeed, it claimed to represent all Jews in the country through the representation of all Jewish organizations in its governing bodies. As a result, it traditionally spoke with considerable authority on behalf of the community, both locally and nationally, and represented Canadian Jewry in international Jewish organizations as well. As the federation movement became more significant, the question of whether the Congress’s mission meshed with the priorities of the local federations emerged. Beginning in the 1970s several developments led to a reassessment of the relationship between the Congress and the federations. One factor was the expansion of the federations’ role. Eventually the federations came to see that the representational activities of the Congress with respect to governments at all levels were most relevant to the achievement of their own goals. A second factor was that the Congress found it increasingly difficult to finance its own programs. Instead it turned to the federations for support. Eventually, the federation leadership began to wonder why they were paying for the Congress but had little direct influence in a group that played such a vital role. Thirdly, the connection between the federations and Israel for fundraising purposes eventually — 138 —

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expanded into a concern about the nature of pro-Israel representation in Canada. These factors led to a major reorganization in 2004, in which the Congress came under the federation umbrella and was subordinated to the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), which was a federation institution. The Congress was redefined as an advocacy organization, one that the CIJA would oversee and which would focus on domestic matters. It was a small step from this situation to one in which the Congress’s remaining functions were taken over by the CIJA. Much ink has been spilled on the meaning of this organizational transformation, one that was deeply resented by some old-time supporters of the Congress. Whatever one’s interpretation, there is little doubt that the CIJA is now the community’s address for representation on these issues. The major organization that still remains outside the federation structure is B’nai B’rith Canada. It is financed by donations from its members and other supporters, engages in a variety of activities, and is affiliated with B’nai B’rith internationally. Some of its domestic activities definitely fall within the ambit of service delivery, but the organization’s high profile is the result of its advocacy activities, which are involved with the gamut of causes, including Israel, community and government relations, civil liberties, combatting hostility toward Israel on university campuses, and antisemitism. BBC has maintained a high profile, taking clear positions and trumpeting them in the media. Often those positions depart from those articulated by federation bodies. In fact, several decades ago, the Congress and BBC cooperated on a Joint Community Relations Committee. But after that partnership dissolved, BBC developed its own positions and often appeared to depart from the style of discreet behindthe-scenes persuasion favored by the Congress and the federations. The competition between BBC and what it sees as the establishment organizations has been underway for decades and shows no signs of abating. At times the rivalry has become rancorous. BBC and the CIJA, a part of the federation family, both purport to speak on behalf of the community. This competition makes it difficult for outsiders to determine just who represents whom, and weakens the attempt to have the community address governments and the general community with a unified voice. Despite the evident discord, B’nai B’rith has carved out a niche for itself, has a loyal following, and maintains a high level of activity. The Canadian Zionist Federation and its constituent Zionist orga— 139 —

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nizations were once major forces on the communal scene, especially because they used to control Israel-oriented fundraising. However, the Zionist parties and their umbrella organization have faded in recent decades due to a combination of aging supporters, lack of relevance to younger people, and an inability to obtain the funds necessary to remain active. In a sense, the community as a whole has embraced a watereddown version of Zionism, one that emphasizes attachment to Israel and contributions to it but de-emphasizes aliya (Jewish emigration to Israel). Nevertheless, Canadian Jews are markedly more involved with Israel than their American counterparts, though not in the ideological sense that was so common in the years before and for a while after 1948. Synagogues and religious institutions generally operate outside the federation system, although they cooperate closely with local federations. They raise their own funds and receive community financial support only under unusual circumstances. They also make their own decisions independent of the federations’ communal planning process. Schools also remain substantially independent, but are more closely tied to the federations because of their need for tuition assistance. They also cooperate with community boards of education and education centers on professional matters. Generally, the schools have to conduct their own fundraising campaigns. Where a provincial government provides direct operating grants to the schools (which is the case in most provinces, with the notable exception of Ontario), some kind of coordinating body may be needed to provide an interface between the schools and the government. This is especially true in Quebec, which has the largest government-supported Jewish school system in the country. It should be noted that even where governments provide operating funds, the amount provided per child is only a part of the cost of general education and does not support the Judaic part of the curriculum at all. Other groups that operate outside the federation framework include the Canadian fundraising arms of various Israeli institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and other educational and charitable entities. These operate independently and have little formal interaction with the federations.

Key Functions: Taxing and Spending — 140 —

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Traditionally much of the business of any government involves taxing and spending: raising money and deciding what to do with it. Since governments normally operate on annual budgets, decisions about programs and how to finance them are central to their functioning. The same holds true for the federations, which fulfill a governmental role within the Jewish community, bearing in mind, of course, the fact that a Jewish community is a voluntary polity; no one is compelled to belong to the community in the organized sense and no one can be compelled to contribute funds to support the operation of its various agencies. It must be borne in mind, however, that despite the officially voluntary character of annual federation campaigns, there can be considerable persuasion applied to convince hesitant Jews to contribute. Obviously this falls short of compulsion, but the pressure can indeed be intense. A conventional polity possesses sovereignty and thus coercive power, enabling it to compel people under its jurisdiction to pay the appropriate taxes. Diaspora Jewish communities have demonstrated for many years that the absence of sovereignty and formal coercion are not insuperable barriers to collecting revenue. Therefore, insofar as community members are willing to subject themselves to what amounts to taxation, they enable the central community organizations, in this case usually the federations, to function in a manner analogous to a government. Although donations remain technically voluntary, suggested annual gifts are normally a function of income, especially for higher-income contributors. Once they have the money in hand, the federations can allocate it to the various constituent agencies, projects, and programs, thereby setting priorities for the community’s policies. One of the major differences between the model described here and that of a democratic state is that the federation political systems generally lack a full-fledged electoral process to choose those who will make policy or decisions. By and large, the rank and file of contributors to annual campaigns do not involve themselves in elections or budgetary decisions. Many of them do serve as canvassers (i.e., part-time tax collectors), but leave spending choices to a narrow segment of the community. Those who run federations never lose sight of the fact that although they are part of an apparatus that functions as a government with regard to areas in which the community can act autonomously, they raise a disproportionate share of revenue from a small proportion of donors. — 141 —

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Ultimately such contributors, if disaffected, can withhold all or part of their annual gift. As a result, particular attention must be paid to the preferences of these big givers. The extent to which large contributors exercise disproportionate power over substantive decisions is frequently an issue in this kind of political system (and often in sovereign systems as well). As for the Canadian Jewish polity, this kind of arrangement is generally accepted because big givers are indispensable in a voluntary system. Dissenting voices are also heard from time to time. The Political Process: Organized Interests Interests are not nearly as well organized in the Canadian Jewish polity as they are in some sovereign states. This is in part a reflection of the fact that policies within the Jewish community are generally not as consequential as those of the federal or provincial governments. But it is also a reflection of the nature of Canadian politics, where interest groups are certainly present and active but do not have the impact that their American counterparts do. Some identifiable interest groups include educational institutions, groups advocating change in the allocation of funds between Israel, national, and local needs, supporters of particular institutions, and those who want greater emphasis on social service delivery. There is no formal arena in which these various groups can confront one another. Instead, the political struggles are carried out in the allocation process within the federations. Essentially the groups compete for scarce resources through both formal and informal means, including the official allocation process as well as personal interventions. Given that involved individuals, both in the federations and in the various interest groups, tend to know each other, there are manifold opportunities to gain access and attempt to influence outcomes. How effective informal intervention is remains difficult to gauge. Recruitment and Elections Within the voluntary Jewish polity, recruitment to hold office is generally a matter of bringing potential leaders into an organization or federation, preferably at a young age, encouraging them to develop leadership skills, giving them increasing responsibility, and grooming them — 142 —

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to eventually assume the top positions. Because contested elections are rare, ascent to the top is usually the result of original selection, demonstration of governance and leadership skills, and a long-term commitment to the cause. Generally, those who aspire to or achieve leadership positions are not partisan in the sense of favoring one interest or another over the long term, but rather express their commitments to the organization (or the broad community) and its well-being. This means that serious divisions within the echelon of the top leadership are relatively rare and that the organization’s public face can emphasize unity. At one time, contested elections were fairly common within the Canadian Jewish Congress, but within the federations contested elections seldom occur, and the question of who comprises the electorate rarely arises. The result of this arrangement is that the political process customary in sovereign polities does not appear to operate within community organizations. With regard to recruitment, community organizations use current activists to spot future talent, especially people under forty. Once identified as suitable prospects, the inidividuals chosen are given assignments, possibly positions on boards, and certainly opportunities to prove themselves. The federations run formal leadership training programs in order to prepare the next generation of leaders. From those who have gained such early experience, the best are selected for intermediate level leadership positions, with the strongest performers moving on to the top positions after a further period of seasoning. Much of the process is based on merit, though undoubtedly the ability to raise funds and make or obtain substantial donations can be a significant factor in recruitment and advancement. Since most organizations depend on fundraising, access to substantial sources of funds is definitely an asset. Elite and Grassroots Members of the Polity Jewish community organizations must necessarily maintain their ties with the grassroots members of the community. Realistically, however, they depend most on the continuing generosity of their biggest donors. In most community fundraising campaigns the large donors provide a substantial portion of the funds, sometimes more than half. Given the voluntary nature of the organizations, those who provide such large — 143 —

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proportions of the income often have a disproportionate share of the political power. If they are not consulted on major policy initiatives, or if they feel that the existing policy is leading the organization in the wrong direction, their enthusiasm for soliciting and donating money may wane. The result is an informal process in which key donors must be kept happy in order to ensure a dependable flow of funds over a longterm period. This contrasts with the formal democracy that is reflected in organizational constitutions and by-laws. In practice, democracy is observed in the formal sense, but care is taken, through nominating committees, to insure that the desired people are elected to the various offices and board positions. The political process within the federations may create a gulf between the elites who have access to the decision-making process and the rank and file members of the community who have considerably less access. So far, the federations have been generally successful in keeping both elites and grassroots reasonably satisfied. They maintain their legitimacy not through elections with broad participation but rather through the renewal of annual donations that individuals contribute to the campaign. The participation rate of giving has remained high. Issues Facing Canadian Jews Although by most accounts the organized community is well run, there are a number of issues facing it in political terms. Most Canadian Jews do not conceptualize their community, either locally or nationally, in political terms, and few, if any, think of it in terms of a Jewish polity. Nevertheless it does operate as a political system and currently faces a number of challenging issues. Establishing Priorities and Allocating Resources The allocation of funds raised in the annual campaigns can be a source of conflict, especially in times of scarcity. Some of the issues that have arisen over the years include the relative funding of Israel projects as opposed to local or national ones, how and whether to aid Jews from the Former Soviet Union who wish to settle in Canada as opposed to Israel, the importance of Jewish education relative to competing local needs, how to accommodate government pressure to bring community — 144 —

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institutions into line with government policies, whether to cut the budget across the board or make selective cuts when facing financial limitations, whether to allow governments to take over certain functions that have been carried out within the community, how to accommodate Jewish voices that dissent demonstratively from the community’s consensus position on Israel, how to respond to Quebec nationalism (in the case of Montreal Jewry), and how to manage government funding for education (or the lack thereof, in the case of Ontario). Overall the allocation process is very closely scrutinized and is probably the most contested aspect of federation life. However, most of the struggle over allocations occurs behind closed doors, usually far from the public view. Organizational Competition Competition between Jewish organizations is hardly a novel concept; it has been going on in various forms for centuries. In Canada, most of the competition has faded away because many of the causes that animated it are no longer very relevant. Personalities may also contribute to organizational competition, but Canadian Jewry has produced few figures who could command the political heights for a protracted period, Samuel Bronfman being the notable exception. As the federation movement matured in Canada, mainly during the 1970s and 1980s, it began to challenge the Congress for preeminence in the community. Eventually Congress was put under indirect federation control, and was eventually marginalized by the CIJA, a new initiative of the federations and several wealthy contributors. The main rivalry today is between B’nai B’rith, which has its own base of contributors and has remained outside the federation orbit, and the federations themselves. For decades BBC has sought to carve out a role for itself that has put it into competition with other organizations. In recent years BBC has reacted to the crisis of anti-Israel and even antisemitic activity on university campuses with some very splashy interventions, while federation agencies have concentrated on building and strengthening existing pro-Israel organizations on campus. Underlying the rivalry between B’nai B’rith and the federations is a contention that the former represents ordinary Jews while the federations cater to a more elite segment of the community. As long as BBC can maintain its financial base, the rivalry is likely to continue. — 145 —

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Relations with Israel Since the Six-Day War, the community has been engaged in political activities that support Israel’s goals and objectives, primarily through the Canada-Israel Committee, and now through CIJA. The 1967 experience drove home to Canada’s Jews, along with their brethren in other parts of the diaspora, that Israel’s security could not be taken for granted. Generally, community organizations have backed the policies of the current government of Israel, whatever its composition. However, since the late 1980s divisions have arisen, largely at the grassroots level but to a certain extent at the elite level as well. The bulk of the community and its organizations back the policies of Israel and its government of the day, but some have moved to a more critical position, and a small number of Jews on the fringe of the community have actually allied themselves with harsh Arab and left-wing critics of Israel. Community leadership has tried to steer a middle course, generally backing Israel’s government but trying not to tilt too much to the right. Relations with Governments Most issues involving the federal government are concerned with foreign affairs, primarily Middle East policy. Jews have historically supported the Liberal Party and appear to be more comfortable with that party in power. However, the Conservative Party has been in power since 2006. This has led to some awkwardness, especially since Jewish organizations, and Jews in general, have been pleased with the demonstrably pro-Israel tilt of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. Other matters of federal responsibility of concern to Jews include those relating to Nazi war criminals, antisemitism, immigration and refugee policy, criminal law, and combating terrorism. Relations with provincial governments are rather complex. Among the most salient issues is government funding of Jewish day schools. The questions that arise include level of funding, curricular requirements, and language policy in Quebec. In Ontario the community has battled politically and in the courts for years to obtain funding, but has been stonewalled by a succession of governments that have generally refused to budge on the issue. The other key provincial issue is how to — 146 —

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maintain the Jewish character of various agencies that were formerly funded by the community but are now funded in part or totally by the government. Conclusion The Canadian Jewish polity, as manifested in community institutions and their relationships to individual Jews, has come of age during the past 40 years. It is generally recognized as well-governed, with a high level of participation. The community continues to grow, albeit slowly, and remains capable of supporting a wide range of activities, both in political terms and in terms of service delivery. However, looking ahead one can see that there are serious challenges to be faced, including the connection of Jewish identity to participation, generational change in wealthy families, and the relationship to Israel, that will require numerous policy responses in order to keep the community operating at its current level. Harold M. Waller

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For Further Study Brown, Michael. “The Americanization of Canadian Zionism, 19171982.” In Contemporary Jewry: Studies in Honor of Moshe Davis, edited by Geoffrey Wigoder, 129-158. Jerusalem: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, 1984. Elazar, Daniel J. Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976. Elazar, Daniel J., and Stuart A. Cohen. The Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization from Biblical Times to the Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Elazar, Daniel J., and Harold M. Waller. Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990. Goldberg, David H. Foreign Policy and Ethnic Interest Groups: American and Canadian Jews Lobby for Israel. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. Taras, David, and David H. Goldberg. The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. Waller, Harold M. “Organized Canadian Jewry: ‘CJC’s glory days are past.’” Canadian Jewish News, March 15, 2007, 9. ------. “Power in the Community.” In The Canadian Jewish Mosaic, edited by Morton Weinfeld, William Shaffir, and Irwin Cotler, 151-169. Toronto: John Wiley, 1981. ------. “The Canadian Jewish Polity: Power and Leadership in the Jewish Community.” In The Jews of Canada, edited by Robert Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, 254-269. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993. ------. “A Community Transformed: The National Picture.” In From Immigration to Integration, The Canadian Jewish Experience: A Millenium Edition, edited by Ruth Klein and Frank Dimant, 149-164. Toronto: Malcolm Lester, 2001.

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X Atlantic Canada

Introduction Atlantic Canada is a region comprising the four provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Its Jewish population, with the exception of that of Halifax, is miniscule. Jews make up less than one percent of the population of Atlantic Canada, and less than one percent of the Jewish population of Canada as a whole. Atlantic Jewry is united organizationally by the Atlantic Jewish Council, whose annual meetings echo with concern for the future of these communities. Like small Jewish communities elsewhere in North America, Jewish communities in Atlantic Canada were based economically on small businesses owned by Jews, which have largely disappeared over the past several decades. Those communities that were unable to “reinvent” themselves have found themselves faced with declining and aging populations with no real prospect of replacement. Like elsewhere in Canada, most synagogues tend to be Orthodox, though in some communities congregations that began as Orthodox have become Conservative. Only in Halifax is the Jewish population sufficient to support two congregations. An important uniting force among the Jewish communities of Atlantic Canada is Camp Kadimah, in Nova Scotia, which attracts children from all of the Atlantic Canada communities and creates for them a sense of a larger Jewish community. Newfoundland The Jewish population of Newfoundland was 215 in 1935 (which was the year of the first census to include Jews as a separate religious denomination), and reached a high of 360 in 1971. The 2001 Canadian census lists 140 Jews (by religion) in the province. The first synagogue in Newfoundland, the Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland, was founded in the city of St. John’s in 1909. It was renamed Beth El, and was originally an Orthodox congregation. It now describes itself as an egalitarian Conservative synagogue. In St. John’s there is also a Jewish community Ha— 149 —

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vura, an egalitarian religious and social organization, founded in 2006. Beth El and the Havura have cooperated in such events as Holocaust memorial observances. Other small communities have existed in Stephenville and Cornerbrook. Prince Edward Island The province of Prince Edward Island had 55 Jews (by religion) of a total population of 133,385 in 2001. The Jewish population there has never been large enough to allow for the founding of a synagogue. There is, however, an informal Jewish community network that comes together to study and to celebrate holidays and lifecycle events. New Brunswick In 2001, the census listed 670 Jews (by religion) in New Brunswick, out of a total population of 897,570. Synagogues are to be found in three New Brunswick communities: Fredricton, Moncton, and St. John. In Fredricton, a small community of eastern European Jewish immigrants formed in the early twentieth century. The community’s synagogue, Sgoolai Israel, was incorporated in 1929, and built a synagogue building in 1934. The community today claims a membership of sixty families. Moncton also has a community founded in the early twentieth century. Its synagogue, Tiferes Israel, was created in 1910 and built its synagogue building in 1927. The community is estimated to have 100 families. St. John began attracting Jewish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, it had its first synagogue, Ahavat Achim (1899). In 1906, a second congregation was formed. The two merged in 1919 to form Shaarei Zedek congregation, which ultimately became Conservative. The Jewish population of St. John peaked in the 1960s at an estimated 1400. By the 1980s, the community was in a noticeable decline, and responded by founding the Saint John Jewish Historical Society (1986), which created a Jewish museum to preserve the community’s heritage. The synagogue and museum were sold in 2009 and relocated in the smaller quarters required by a community that now numbers approximately thirty families. — 150 —

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Nova Scotia Nova Scotia had a Jewish population (by religion) of 2,120, out of a total population of 719,710, in 2001. The community is largely concentrated in Halifax, with a 2001 Jewish population of 1985 out of a total metropolitan population of 359,111. Halifax has two synagogues, Beth Israel (Orthodox), founded in 1890, and Shaar Shalom (Conservative), founded in 1953. It also has a significant number of Jewish students attending local universities, especially Dalhousie University. It serves as the headquarters of the Atlantic Jewish Council. Smaller communities in Nova Scotia, which once had viable Jewish communities, have experienced declines. Two of them, in Yarmouth and Glace Bay, sold their synagogue buildings in 2006 and 2010 respectively. A conservative congregation, Temple Sons of Israel, exists in Sydney. Ira Robinson

For Further Study Atlantic Jewish Council Website: http://www.theajc.ns.ca/. Accessed February 13, 2011. Baron de Hirsch Congregation, 1890 to 1990: 100th Anniversary Commemorative Book. Halifax: Beth Israel Synagogue, 1990. Kahn, Alison Joane. Listen While I Tell You: A Story of the Jews of St. John’s, Newfoundland. St. John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1987. Koven, Marcia. Weaving the Past into the Present : A Glimpse into the 130Year History of the Saint John Jewish Community. Saint John, NB: Saint John Jewish Historical Museum, 1989. McGrath, Robin. Salt Fish and Shmattes: The History of the Jews in Newfoundland and Labrador from 1770. St. John’s: Creative Publishers, 2006. Medjuck, Sheva. Jews of Atlantic Canada. St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1986. — 151 —

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XI Jewish Life in Montreal

An Insular Community To understand Montreal Jewry today one must understand the Quebec context, past and present. Quebec is a French-speaking and historically Catholic province, especially in the pre-World War II period. Since 1945 Quebec has modernized and continued to urbanize. It has retained its distinct identity though shifting its focus from religion to the French language and culture. This makes it unique in the North American continent, though some might draw parallels to the growing assertiveness of the Spanish language, and Latinos, in some American states. French Quebecers have historically seen themselves as inhabiting a besieged island of French surrounded by a sea of continental English, and with good reason. In 2001, there were about 93,000 Jews in Montreal, which was home to almost all the Jews in Quebec. About 70-75% of Montreal Jews are Ashkenazi, the rest Sephardi. There is a high proportion of EnglishFrench bilingualism in the Jewish community. Jews in Quebec are very successful by most socioeconomic indicators, notably those of education, occupation, and income. At the same time, they are a very insular community. They were even more insular in the past, and of course the surrounding society was equally closed off. Though they are less so today, the Jews of Quebec remain largely isolated from the surrounding francophone milieu. The term insular, however, ought not to be construed too negatively. The Jewish community in Montreal is very institutionally complete. By every indicator of Jewish identity it is a very “Jewish” community, more so than American Jewish communities, arguably more than the Toronto Jewish community, and certainly more than the communities of Vancouver or Calgary. Moreover, Montreal Jews have “agency,” as do all minorities. They are social actors and, especially in the modern period, they have played a role in shaping their fate. It is misleading to focus on them only as passive victims and objects of antisemitic prejudice; there is interaction — 152 —

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with the larger society. The very vibrant and positive Jewish identity in Montreal may also be linked to the isolation and insularity of Jews from the surrounding francophone milieu. For a variety of reasons, the Jews in Montreal integrated more into the English-speaking segment of Quebec society, or at least chose English over French as their predominant language. So there may well be a tradeoff, with enhanced culturalsurvival prospects associated with lesser socio-cultural integration. In the prewar period antisemitism in Quebec was found in both the English and French segments of the population, as it was in Canada as a whole. Beginning in the 1960s the rise of French nationalism and specifically the Quebec independence movement weakened the demographic base of the Jewish population as large numbers of Montreal Jews, especially young college graduates, emigrated. In the 1960s, Montreal Jews numbered about 110,000-115,000, and by 2006 about 90,000. The size of the community has been declining steadily since the 1960s. At the same time, the Jewish population of Toronto has been growing because of movement from places like Montreal, but also because of a great deal of international immigration to Toronto. By 2001 the Jewish population there was approximately 170,000. What evidence is there for the relatively high degree of Jewish identity in Montreal? To begin with, Canadian Jews as a whole have a higher average level of Jewish identity than American Jews. By every measure, Jews in Canada are more religiously involved than those in the United States. Jews in Canada are also one generation closer to the old country than their American counterparts are. Whereas about 10% of American Jews are foreign-born, in Canada that rate is about 25-30% percent—a dramatic difference. Canadian Jews, in comparison with Jews in the United States, are more likely to identify as Orthodox and less likely to identify as Reform. They are also much more communally involved. They read Jewish newspapers, belong to Jewish organizations, make United Jewish Appeal donations at a higher rate, and donate more per capita. More of their close friends are Jewish, and they are more socially segregated. They can converse more in Yiddish and in Hebrew than American Jews. Canadian Jews also are much more involved with Israel. For example, in 1990 only one-third of Canadian Jews had “never” visited Israel, compared to twothirds of American Jews. Seventy-two percent of Canadian Jews knew the year of the Six-Day War, compared to only 40% in the United States. — 153 —

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The gaps between Montreal Jews and American Jews are even wider, in that Montreal Jews are more traditional and more communally involved than the Jews elsewhere in Canada, and are similar to or slightly more identified than Jews in Toronto. Jews in Montreal are even more likely to be Orthodox and less likely to be Reform. By a slight yet consistent margin, according to a 1990 community survey, Jews in Montreal were more likely than other Canadian Jews to belong to Jewish organizations, read Jewish newspapers, visit Israel, feel very close to Israel, and talk about Israel. All of this is echoed by intermarriage data: Jews in Canada intermarry less than Jews in the United States, and Jews in Montreal do so even less than Jews in Toronto. A Third Solitude Why this very intense and distinctive brand of Jewish identity and cohesion in Montreal? One can argue that Jews in Montreal represent what is called a “third solitude.” English-French relations in Montreal were described as “two solitudes” in Hugh MacLennan’s celebrated novel of that title. By now the French in Montreal are far more numerous than the old-stock English, but historically those two solitudes had very little social and cultural contact between them. The Jews, an immigrant group that came later, constituted a “third solitude.” In the early years of the twentieth century, Yiddish was the third-most-common language in Montreal. Jews were caught in the middle, not accepted by the French Catholics or by the Anglo (English and Scottish) establishment in Montreal, and were marginal to both. That marginality and internal focus may have spawned a great deal of cultural creativity. When one thinks of the greatest Canadian Jewish poets and writers, one does not think of Toronto’s artists but rather of Montreal’s: J. I. Segal, Sholom Shtern, Melekh Ravitch, and Rachel Korn in Yiddish; Leonard Cohen, A. M. Klein, Irving Layton, and Mordecai Richler in English. Being a third solitude seems to have nurtured creativity. In recent years, however, the weight of numbers has shifted the center of gravity of Jewish Canadian culture to Toronto. Moreover, one element of that third solitude—the barriers between Jews and Anglos—has broken down. Jews are now totally accepted among Quebec Anglos, largely because both groups have shrunk. It used to be that Jews would face discrimination, and even anti-Jewish — 154 —

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quotas, at McGill University, but by 2010 Jews had served as its two most recent principals. English-language society and culture today in Montreal—schools, universities, journalism, hospitals, theater—would implode without Jewish involvement and leadership. This involvement has extended to general Montreal cultural organizations, such as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the Museé des Beaux Arts. Attitudes in Francophone Quebec, Past and Present Anglo-Jewish barriers have thus largely fallen, but the French-Jewish barrier remains, though it has weakened. The francophone Quebec environment evolved a distinctive sociopolitical and geopolitical character. By now Québécois share a strong antipathy—stronger than that of other Canadians—toward the United States and the American posture in the world. In this they have adopted a politically progressive posture rather like the very left wing of the U.S. Democratic Party or Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). Polls and studies show Quebecers to have more unfavorable attitudes toward the United States and toward U.S. policies than English Canadians. They are more likely to blame the United States or even Israel’s policies in the Middle East for the 9/11 attacks. French Quebecers also are more opposed in general to military spending and to Canada’s military role in Afghanistan, and while many Canadians oppose contemporary globalization (which is seen as furthering American interests), the movement seems stronger in Quebec, despite the province’s earlier support for North American free trade in the 1980s. Is this attitude an anti-American or antiwar phenomenon? Is there a pacifist strain in modern Quebec? There may be. Quebec was the region of Canada most opposed to the country’s involvement in World War I and World War II, notably because of the issue of conscription. There was a referendum on conscription in Canada in the spring of 1942, and about 72% of the Quebec population voted against it, whereas in Canada as a whole, including Quebec, the percentage of opponents of conscription was only 35%. What fueled that opposition? There were many factors. When Quebec opposed conscription during World War I, the opposition had nothing remotely to do with Jews and sparked a violent reaction by the Canadian government. But by the second conscription debate, antisemitism — 155 —

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was clearly added to the mix of factors. Just how large a part it played is still a subject for debate. In the 1930s there was much sympathy in Quebec Catholic society, including its intellectual and elite segments, for Mussolini, Franco, and fascism in general. Quebec’s government and the church were strongly anticommunist, and even antiliberal. Antisemitism was part of that ambience, and it affected many young Quebec intellectuals at the time. A recent biography of Pierre Trudeau revealed that in his twenties even he was part of those fascist, nationalist, and antisemitic movements before he evolved into a committed democrat and civil libertarian. Quebec voted against conscription in the spring of 1942, when the Nazis’ record of brutality was becoming abundantly clear. There has not yet been in Quebec a frank and full reckoning, combining public and intellectual discourse, with this particular period. Every European society has had a reckoning of some sort. West Germany, of course, had no choice. In France the myth of La Resistance was finally challenged by the facts of Vichy collaboration as revealed in subsequent research, trials, and artistic works. Even Austria was forced to do soul-searching, confronting the myth of Austria as among Hitler’s first victimized states, by the Kurt Waldheim affair. Different Reactions to various Books English Canada itself was far from blameless. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Canada, under the government of Mackenzie King, did not accept Jewish refugees from Germany or Europe. In 1982, historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper’s bestselling book None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 described in new detail the story of Canada’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees, and the antisemitism in English and French Canada. The title refers to Frederick Charles Blair’s statement on how many Jewish immigrants should be permitted. The reaction of English Canada to this highly critical book was clear: mea culpa. The phrase “none is too many” entered the Canadian political lexicon, and the related guilt has helped shape subsequent Canadian refugee policy in more liberal directions. The book has continued to sell. English Canadian elites responded with self-flagellation. The Literary Review of Canada selected the book as one of the hundred most important Canadian books in English. None Is Too Many received awards and — 156 —

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its authors were acclaimed in English Canada. However, it has never been translated into French. A very different reaction awaited the book that was published in French. A Québécoise scholar named Esther Delisle, a non-Jewish philoSemite, wrote her doctoral thesis at Laval University in Quebec City on the topic of antisemitism in the 1930s in French Quebec. She exposed in particular the currents of antisemitism—editorials, letters, articles, and cartoons—in a leading French daily, Le Devoir. Le Devoir was by no means Der Stűrmer, but a significant amount of antisemitism could be found in its pages, and Delisle highlighted it. Her case was debated in Quebec intellectual circles from 1990 to 1992, but the tone it took was the opposite of that spurred by the publication of None Is Too Many. Delisle’s dissertation also dealt with Abbé Lionel Groulx, a leading Catholic theologian and intellectual, and one of the founding fathers of modern Quebec nationalism. His writing included the reflexive antisemitic prejudices of conservative Catholics of the era, though he would occasionally add a philo-Semitic remark (or stereotype), suggesting for example that French Canadians should admire the Jews for their tenacity in surviving so long. The preponderance of Groulx’s writings, however, painted a negative picture of the Jews. Delisle’s dissertation was understood as an attack on both Le Devoir and Groulx, and became a cause célèbre. It was covered in newspapers and in L’Actualité, the TIME magazine of French Quebec. After this episode and the resulting publicity, Delisle was demonized by most of the Quebec intelligentsia, and could not get a job as an academic anywhere in Quebec. Her dissertation was eventually published as a book in English and French. Around the time that her case was just subsiding, satirist and novelist Mordecai Richler published an article in the New Yorker, then in 1992 a book entitled O Canada, O Quebec, which lampooned Quebec nationalism and Quebec’s restrictive language laws. Richler the outsider—who spoke very little French to boot—attacked Quebec nationalists and ridiculed their excesses in front of the Americans. To make matters worse, he also used the suspect Delisle as a research assistant, and cited some of her work with reference to antisemitism in the 1930s. He also cited more recent surveys that seemed to show that there was more attitudinal antisemitism in the Quebec population than in the English population in Canada. — 157 —

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Thus Mordecai Richler and Esther Delisle together became vilified as anti-Quebec and antinationalist. In fact, Richler admired much about French culture in Quebec; he opposed excessive nationalism whether in Quebec or among right-wing Zionists in Israel. Nevertheless, Jewish issues became intertwined with the English-French struggle in Quebec. Many Québécois thought Richler somehow represented the official Jewish community, which he of course did not. But it also was no secret that the Jewish community, like other minority groups in Quebec, was strongly federalist in orientation and opposed to Quebec independence. Note the very different receptions of the work of Abella and Troper and of Delisle. To date, at the societal level, francophone scholars have with just a few exceptions been reluctant to confront these dark moments of Quebec history. Quebec is not unique here. All minorities— Jews, Quebecois, and blacks, among others—are defensive if accused of causing the victimization of others. The Current Climate What, then, is the current context for Montreal Jews? There are surveys not in the public domain that find conventional measures of antisemitic attitudes several percentage points higher for francophones than for anglophones in Canada. As well, several high-profile incidents are troubling. On the other hand, as also noted, Jewish life in Quebec is thriving. Montreal is awash in synagogues and communal institutions, notably Jewish day schools that have historically received significant financial support from the provincial government in Quebec, unlike the situation in the United States or Ontario. On a per capita basis, communal fundraising has remained high, though strains are emerging. The Federation/CJA is the core Jewish communal governing body, with roughly twenty agencies under its supervision. The organized community faces many challenges, notably the large and growing proportion of seniors and ultra-Orthodox members of the community, which is larger than in any other Canadian city, at the expense of younger/middle aged adults and more economically productive individuals. Moreover, Jewish isolation has persisted. One study found that in Canada in the 1980s, 34% of English-speaking Canadians had no contact whatsoever with Jews; among the French-speaking it was 68%. There is extensive sociocultural segregation of Jews in Montreal that — 158 —

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is different from that in English Canada, the United States, and even France. This plays a role in shaping attitudes about Jews in Quebec. A comparison with Toronto and Ontario generally illustrates the degree of isolation of Quebec Jews. In the postwar period in Toronto there have been three Jewish mayors: Phil Givens, Mel Lastman, and Nathan Phillips. In Ontario all three of the major provincial political parties have had Jewish leaders: Larry Grossman of the Conservatives, Stephen Lewis of the NDP, and Stuart Smith of the Liberals. There has been no recent Jewish mayor of Montreal, or Jewish leader of a current political party in Quebec. Nor is one likely in the near future, even assuming he or she speaks perfect French. This situation also contrasts with the case of France itself, where, since the 1930s, there have been three Jewish premiers: Léon Blum, René Mayer, and Pierre Mendes-France, as well as two, Laurent Fabius and Nicholas Sarkozy, with Jewish ancestry. In France these Jews, admittedly very assimilated, were accepted as part of the French collective project at the very highest levels. There have been individual Jewish politicians as cabinet ministers in Quebec provincial politics—essentially in the federalist Liberal Party—but never as leaders. At the level of culture, most of the leading Quebec Jewish writers, such as A. M. Klein, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, and Mordecai Richler, worked in English. Their creations were relatively unknown to French Quebec and had little or no influence on the French cultural milieu. This differs dramatically from the case of English Canada, or the United States, where Jews have long been intimately involved in cultural production in every sphere. Jewish involvement with the CBC, radio and television, as writers, artists, producers, editors, or directors, has been extensive. Similar things could be said for the major newspapers in English Canada. Not so for Radio Canada, or for the major French newspapers in Montreal. There is no French Quebec equivalent of the influence of urban-liberal-Jewish creativity, from Hollywood to New York to Toronto, on the North American public. The same situation pertains with respect to the Jewish religious calendar. On English-language radio in Montreal one often hears hosts making references to Jewish Holidays such as Passover. This is not the case in French Quebec, where such chatter is very rare. None of this has led to any serious level of antisemitic experience in the day-to-day lives of Quebec Jews. More and more Jews in Mon— 159 —

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treal are becoming bilingual, and they continue to score high for levels of education, occupation, and income. Indeed, this high level of sociocultural segregation may ironically also have helped nurture high levels of communal Jewish solidarity and cultural vitality. Antisemitism in Quebec largely concerns global issues, and specifically Israel. Attitudes toward Israel in Quebec are very different than those in English Canada. The immigration of significant numbers of francophone North African and Lebanese Arabs has injected a different perspective in popular and elite Quebec discourse on the Middle East. A September 2006 Léger survey for the Association for Canadian Studies found a higher proportion of the population in Quebec—38%, compared to the full Canadian average of 31%—attributing the conflict in Lebanon to “Israel’s actions in the Middle East.” Periodic events in Quebec illustrate and bridge the local and the global themes. One was the April 2004 bombing of a Jewish school’s library in Montreal. It turned out that the bomber was an eighteen-year-old Lebanese immigrant to Quebec. This event, related to the Middle East, is an example of imported global antisemitism. A second event took place during the summer 2006 war in Lebanon. A large “peace” march was held in Montreal, which became a de facto rally opposing Israel’s offensive against Hizbollah and focusing uniquely on the plight of the conflict’s Lebanese victims. Among the leaders of the march were prominent Quebec politicians, notably André Boisclair, former leader of the Parti Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québécois, and Denis Coderre, a federal Liberal MP, along with union and other officials. The sight of fifteen thousand marchers in a de facto anti-Israel protest led by major Quebec politicians was frightening to many Jews, and remains a sore spot despite clarifications by the politicians present that they were not supporting Hizbollah and were simply promoting peace. A Socio-demographic Profile Two data sources shed statistical light on these observations. The first is the 2001 Canadian Census, as reanalyzed by Charles Shahar of the Federation CJA in Montreal. The second is the 1997 Federation/CJA Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal, conducted by Charles Shahar and Randal F. Schnoor, the result of interviews with 516 Jewish households. — 160 —

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The median age of the Jewish population, much like that of the general population, has steadily increased since 1971. The 2001 median age for Montreal Jews is about 4.2 years older than that of the total Montreal population. 21% of all Jews in Montreal reside in Cote St. Luc. Roughly 85% reside in the western and northern parts of the city. About a third (33.9%) of the community is made up of immigrants, a slightly higher level than in the national Jewish population (32.5%). In another way of looking at it, 31,500 of the 120,465 (26.1%) Jewish immigrants residing in Canada live in Montreal. The dominant mother tongue of the Montreal Jewish community is English. Not quite one in five respondents (18.2%) claim French as their mother tongue, and almost 14% report that they are native speakers of either Yiddish or Hebrew. Census questions on the birthplace of the respondent and those of both parents and the respondent’s mother tongue can be used to estimate Sephardi and Ashkenazi origin. Based on this evidence, Ashkenazi Jews outnumber Sephardi Jews, 69,300 to 21,215. Generally, Montreal’s Ashkenazi Jews are those who can trace their roots back to Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, while Sephardi Jews have roots in Muslim North Africa and the Middle East, as well as some European countries like Greece and Bulgaria. About 13.1% of all married couples in Montreal including at least one Jewish partner were in mixed marriages, far lower than the Canadian proportion of 21.7%. Jews in Montreal, like Canadian Jews in general, score well above average in terms of educational attainment, occupational status, and income. Nonetheless, there are still poor Jews. The Montreal Jewish community has a lower level of poverty than the total population of Montreal (Jewish and non-Jewish), at 18.4%, as opposed to 22.2%. Jewish poverty tends to be concentrated among the elderly, very recent immigrants, single mothers, and the ultra-Orthodox, due to their tendency toward large family size. The 1997 survey tells us much about the quality of Jewish life. It is interesting to note that 70.4% of Sephardim consider themselves “Traditional.” The Orthodox/ Conservative/ Reform distinction, valid throughout the rest of North America, is a legacy rooted in Ashkenazi/ European history and culture, and thus applies less to Sephardim, who generally immigrated from North Africa and the Middle East several decades following their Ashkenazi brethren. Thus it is hard to compare the denominational religiosity of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. Montreal has the highest rate of identified Orthodox Jews of any — 161 —

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major city in North America, at 21.9% of all Jewish individuals. The rate for Canada is 14%, and it is only 6% for the United States. Interestingly, around 27% of Montreal Jews also identify as “Secular” or “Just Jewish,” which is at the high end of that distribution. About 20% attend synagogue only on special occasions such as weddings or bar/bat mitzvahs, 10.2% attend only for High Holidays, and 1.1% never attend. In short, three of every four Montrealers do not regularly attend synagogue. About 4% attend once per month, 4.5% attend several times per month, 8% attend once per week and 7% attend more than once per week. Not surprisingly, denomination is a strong indicator of synagogue participation. Of Orthodox Jews, 56.3% attend at least once a month, compared to 41% of traditional Sephardim, 14.3% of Conservative Jews, and 3.4% of Reform/Secular Jews. Over one quarter of men (25.8%) report attending synagogue at least once a week, whereas only 6.8 percent of women report the same. Well over one third of Sephardi Jews (41%) report attending service at least once a month, compared to only 20% of Ashkenazi Jews. Almost two thirds (63.6%) of Montreal Jews are paying members of a synagogue or temple, a relatively high rate compared to other cities in North America. For comparison, Atlanta has a rate of 27%, San Francisco 33%, New York 41%, and Toronto 48%. The average American rate for synagogue membership is 41%. About a third (36%) of Montreal Jewish households always light candles for Shabbat, the highest rate for any city in North America. Almost 88% of households hold a Passover Seder every year, which is also the highest rate on the continent. Forty-four percent of respondents said that their households have separate dishes for meat and milk. Seventy-seven percent of them say that their households light Chanukah candles. Eighty-five percent say they fast on Yom Kippur. The rate for Toronto is 68.2%, and in the United States it is 61%. Montreal Jewry thus appears to be highly observant across a variety of traditions and rituals. Respondents in this survey were asked if they had any formal Jewish education. Almost three quarters of Montreal Jews (72.6%) reported that they had received some form of Jewish education, including day school or supplementary/afternoon school. Men (79.4%) are more likely to have gotten a Jewish education than women (67.5%). Age is also a strong indicator, in that younger adults (under thirty-five years) are more likely to have a Jewish education (81.6%) than those 35-64 years — 162 —

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(71.2%) or the elderly (66.9%). Interestingly, Ashkenazim are more likely to claim a Jewish education than Sephardim (75.6% and 60.4% respectively). Orthodox (84%) and Conservative Jews (81.2%) are more likely to indicate a Jewish education than are Secular/Reform Jews (63.4%). Regarding the type of Jewish education received by respondents, 47.8% say it was Jewish day elementary school, 26.7% say it was Jewish day high school, 40.1% say it was Jewish Supplementary School, 40.1% say it was private tutoring, and 12.1% say it was Jewish postsecondary studies (some respondents received more than one type). What of the children of the respondents? About 51.3% of respondents say their children have received a full Jewish elementary education. About 28.3% of respondents have sent their children to a Jewish high school. Households that have children in a Jewish school tend to be Sephardi (66.6%) rather than Ashkenazi (59.6%). All of the Orthodox respondents (100%) send their children to a Jewish day school, compared to 67% of Traditional Sephardi, 51.3% percent of Conservative, and 34.9% percent of Reform/Secular Jews. Of the roughly 34% who send their children to non-Jewish schools, 27% go to public schools, and 6.5% attend non-Jewish private schools. One of the concerns of Jewish educators in Montreal has been the competition, notably at the high school level, from elite non-Jewish private schools. However, day school enrollment remains strong, helped in large measure by the availability of government funding for these schools. Attitudes toward intermarriage constitute a key indicator for Montreal Jewish life. Today, it is estimated that approximately 45-50% of Jews in the United States are intermarrying (rates are lower in Canada). In the 1997 survey of Canadian Jews, almost half of the respondents (48.7%) claimed that they would actively oppose an intermarriage and express their opinion on the matter, 9% would oppose the marriage but not express their opinion, 14.2% would be neutral, 8.4% would openly support the marriage, 10.6% were not sure, and 9% did not respond to the question. Those who would actively oppose such a marriage tend to be Sephardim (77.2%) rather than Ashkenazim (42.7%). They also tend to be Orthodox (66%) rather than Conservative (56.2%) or Secular/Reform Jews (21.3%). Conversion would make a difference. Only about 16% say they would actively oppose a union in which the non-Jewish spouse goes through a conversion prior to marriage, whereas 4.3% would oppose it but not — 163 —

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express their opposition openly, 15.5% would be neutral, 36.4% would support openly, 12.6% are not sure, and 14.9% did not respond . American survey research has shown that there are no differences in levels of Jewish identity between conversionary and in-married Jewish couples, and this is likely the case in Canada. About 27% of respondents say that one or more of their children are married to non-Jews, meaning that more than one in four households deals with the situation of intermarriage. This is much higher than the 13% overall Montreal intermarriage rate derived from the census, and reflects a generational increase. With general North American trends among Jews showing a decline in religious observance due to higher levels of assimilation, it is interesting that research has found that Jews still place a high priority on having fellow Jews as their close friends. These strong Jewish friendships may serve the function of compensating for a somewhat weak attachment to religious Jewish life, thus helping to contribute to Jewish survival. A majority of Montreal respondents (58.3%) say that all or almost all of their friends are Jewish. Another 27.6% say that most are Jewish, 9.7% say that some are Jewish, and only 2.1% say that few or none are Jewish. In short, Montreal Jews seem to seek out friendships among their own group. Considering the above trends, it is not surprising that almost half (49.8%) of Montreal Jews consider it very important that their neighborhoods have a sizable Jewish population. A higher proportion of Sephardi Jews (65.7%) find it very important to live within a sizable Jewish population than do Ashkenazi Jews (46.7%). Almost 79% percent of Orthodox Jews say it is very important, compared to 49.8% of Conservative and 27.8% of Reform/Secular Jews. In fact, other studies based on census data have found that Jews in Canadian cities are the most residentially concentrated ethnic group, even more than visible minorities. Moreover, the concentration of Montreal Jews is greater than that of Toronto’s Jews. Whereas in the past this kind of residential pattern was thought to reflect exclusion by the non-Jewish majority, in fact it reflects a large degree of preference. A commitment to Israel, whether financial or ideological/moral, whole-hearted or critical and selective, constitutes a central component of Montreal Jewish identity. Indeed, identification with Israel can also be found among those Montreal Jews who are less observant. Support for Israel need not be confused with adherence to the classic ideas of — 164 —

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Zionism, which argued that all Jews should move to Israel. To the North American Jew, Zionism refers to a strong personal commitment to Israel as a central characteristic of a general Jewish expression, regardless of where that person lives. One quarter of the survey respondents (25.4%) have never been to Israel, 28.8% have visited Israel once, 14.2% have visited twice, 10.6% have visited three times, and 20.4% percent have visited four or more times. In other words, 74% of Canadian Jews (three out of four) have visited Israel at least once. This rate is far higher than that of any other North American community. It is followed by 63% in Toronto, 48% in Miami, 42% in Cleveland, 37% in New York, and 33% percent in Boston. Israel thus looms large for Montreal Jews. Over a third of Sephardi Jews have visited Israel four times or more, compared to only 17.3% of Ashkenazi Jews. Of Traditional Sephardi Jews, 43.8% have been to Israel four or more times. This compares to 25.8% of Orthodox, 14.6% of Secular/Reform, and 12.8% of Conservative Jews. About 14% of the respondents said they would consider living in Israel, while 32.2% consider themselves “Zionists.” Sephardim are more likely than Ashkenazim both to consider living in Israel and to consider themselves Zionists. The majority of respondents (nearly two thirds) feel close to Israel. About 40% feel very close and 34.3% feel fairly close. Fifteen percent feel fairly distant, and 3.3% feel very distant to Israel. About a quarter of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 have considered living in Israel. When asked whether “caring about Israel is a very important part of being a Jew,” 67.4% of respondents strongly agree, 22.8% somewhat agree, 3.8% somewhat disagree, 0.9% strongly disagree, and 5.1% are unsure or did not respond. Respondents aged sixty-five and over are particularly likely to agree strongly (17.7%). Sephardim (72.4%) are slightly more likely than Ashkenazim (66.6%) to agree strongly. Of course, in recent decades Israel has also emerged as a source of internal debate and conflict within the Jewish diaspora, in relation to the Middle East conflict. Montreal Jews seem to combine strong basic support for Israel with a high tolerance for debate and dissent on Israeli policy. When respondents are asked whether they agree with the statement, “Canadian Jews should not publicly criticize the policies of the Government of Israel,” the responses are quite varied. One-quarter (25.1%) strongly agree, one quarter (25.6%) somewhat agree, 20% — 165 —

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somewhat disagree, and 16.7% strongly disagree. 12.5% are either unsure or did not respond. Respondents aged sixty-five and over are particularly likely to agree (65.5%). What is not clear is how recent conflicts relating to Hizbollah, Hamas, and potentially Iran, along with greater condemnation of Israel by the world community, might affect those sentiments in the future. Conclusion The Montreal Jewish community is particularly diverse both ethnically and denominationally. The unique environment in Quebec has obviously had an impact on the community, notably in fuelling out-migration, but also in providing government support for Jewish schools. The Jewish case in Quebec is unique in North America. The community is socio-culturally segregated to a high degree from the mainstream society. Moreover, French Quebec has not come to a full societal resolution of the legacies of its attitudes toward Jews and World War II during the 1930s and 1940s. Contemporary currents of elite and popular political thought are more likely to be anti-American and anti-Israeli than they are in English Canada. Marginality remains an ongoing feature of Quebec Jewish life. At the same time, Montreal, compared to other cities in Canada and North America, ranks particularly high—along with Toronto—in issues pertaining to the “quality” of Jewish life: it has a relatively low rate of intermarriage, a wide range of communal organizations and synagogues, as well as Jewish/kosher bakeries, restaurants, caterers, etc., and maintains a vibrant relationship with Israel. This is, to a degree, a result of the preponderance of Orthodox, Sephardi, and “traditional” Jews in Montreal, as these groups score higher on matters relating to Jewish practice and Jewish identity than the more “liberal” Ashkenazi denominations. Morton Weinfeld

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For Further Study Anctil, Pierre, and Gary Caldwell, eds. Juifs et realités juives au Québec. Quebec: Institute québécois de recherché sur la culture, 1984. Bouchard, Gérard. Les deux chanoines: contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx. Montréal: Boréal, 2003. Delisle, Esther. The Traitor and the Jew. Montreal: R. Davies, 1993. Granatstein, Jack. Conscription in the Second World War: A Study in Political Management. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1969. Granatstein, Jack, and J. M. Hitsman. Broken Promises: A History of Conscription, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977. Menkis, Richard. “Anti-Semitism in the Evolving Nation: From New France to 1950.” In From Immigration to Integration: The Canadian Jewish Experience, edited by Ruth Klein and Frank Dimant, 31-51. Toronto: Institute for International Affairs of B’nai Brith Canada and Malcolm Lester, 2001. Ravvin, Norman. A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. Richler, Mordecai. Oh Canada, Oh Quebec: Requiem for a Divided Country. Toronto: Penguin, 1992. Shahar, Charles. A Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal, Part I. Montreal: Federation CJA, 1996. Shahar, Charles, and Randal Schnoor. A Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal, Part II. Montreal: Federation CJA, 1997.

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XII Sephardi Jews in Montreal

Montreal, a metropolis of some three million inhabitants, is home to a large and diverse Jewish community. More than a quarter of that community is Sephardic. Who would have thought that the descendents of Jews forced to leave Spain by the Inquisition would make their homes in Montreal, giving birth to a multiethnic Sephardic community whose existence in the twenty-first century is a sign of its durability and adaptability. Where did these Sephardim come from? How did they arrive in Montreal? How can they be identified today? These are the principal questions that must be asked concerning these migrants as we retrace the highlights of their journey from the four corners of the earth. A Two-Thousand-Year History Sephardic communities look back on a tumultuous history marked by numerous migrations as well as long periods of settlement. The name “Sepharad,” from the Hebrew, has been used by Jews since the fifth century CE to designate Spain. By extension, it came to refer to Spain’s Jewish inhabitants. With the expulsions of the Jews of Spain and Portugal by their Christian monarchs in 1492 and 1497, the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula emigrated in large part to North Africa, where they created a community distinct in its origins and customs. The Sephardic exiles were called Megorashim (“the Exiles”) to distinguish them from the native North African Jews, who were called Toshavim (“the Natives”). Those Jews, however, who decided to remain in the now-Christian Iberian Peninsula were forced to deny their Jewish faith and convert to Christianity. These conversos, some of whom continued the secret practice of Judaism, were considered by many to be crypto-Jews, and were sometimes called Marranos. The expulsion from Spain, on the one hand, and the phenomenon of Marranism, on the other, became basic building blocks of Sephardic identity. In early modern times, one could find Sephardic Jews settled in places like North Africa, Holland, England, Turkey, and the Balkans. — 168 —

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The First “Sephardic” Migration to Montreal It is from this early modern Sephardic diaspora that a handful of British Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origins came to Montreal and, in 1768, founded Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, one of the oldest synagogues in North America and the first in Canada. This Orthodox Sephardic synagogue has maintained its existence until the present day. The arrival in Montreal of massive numbers of Ashkenazi Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century permanently changed the composition and structure of Montreal’s Jewish community. In that era, the community acquired a number of essential welfare institutions, like the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS), which helped in the absorption of immigrants, and a network of synagogues and schools for the maintenance of religious practice. Because of this Eastern European Jewish influx, the Sephardi community in Montreal diminished in relative importance, if not in prestige. Additionally, beyond the original Sephardi families, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue attracted a number of Ashkenazi members. Thus the Sephardi tradition in Montreal experienced a certain diminution, without, however, disappearing completely. Sephardi Migration after World War II With the end of the Second World War, the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and the decolonization of North Africa, the history of the Jews of the Maghreb came to a turning point. The situation in North African countries became more and more problematic for Jews, while the question of aid for the Jewish community in the Arab countries (Maghreb),1 already an issue in the nineteenth century, became an urgent reality. There is a large body of recent scholarship on the nature of and the principal factors for the massive exodus of Jews from the Arab countries in the mid-twentieth century. What was the nature of discrimination against and the persecution of Jews in this time and place? What was the role of the State of Israel? What was the role played by international 1

Maghreb referring to northwest Africa, west of Egypt, and Mashrek, referring to Arabian countries to the east of Egypt and north of the Arabian peninsula, i.e. Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Syria. — 169 —

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Jewish organizations in this migration? Certain leaders of world Jewry helped to organize the Jews’ departure, while others put into motion policies seeking to ameliorate the Jews’ situations in their homelands by financing Jewish institutions in North Africa, for instance. Other complex questions arise concerning the immediate reception of the Jewish emigrants in Israel, France, and Canada. Some of these Sephardi migrants understood their journey as repatriation. This was true for Jews from Algeria, as well as for those Tunisian and Moroccan Jews who possessed French citizenship. At times, Jewish emigration was seen as the political exclusion of Jews on the part of newly independent Arab states, and at other times it was viewed as an outright expulsion, particularly in the cases of Egypt and Iraq. Sometimes the departure could be seen as a voluntary choice; at other times it was understood as an exile. These conflicting interpretations, to which various political and administrative problems are linked, are as complex as they are intertwined. It remains difficult to comprehend the hierarchy of individual and collective decisions that drove individuals and families to depart their native countries with no great hope of return. In the case of Israel, and also Canada, the Jews of North Africa and of the Mashrek were considered by some governments and international Jewish organizations as contributing to the population of their countries. For those among the emigrants who possessed French citizenship, destinations were largely determined by the legal obligations of France to its citizens in Algeria after its independence. Others wished to make the best of the situation, and sought greater security, or followed economic and, indeed, religious imperatives. It is from Morocco, which became independent in 1956, that approximately 15,000 Jews came to Montreal. About 80% of Moroccan Jewish emigrants went to Israel in several waves that ended in the 1970s. Several thousand Moroccan Jews left their country for France and Canada during the last major wave, which lasted from the end of the 1960s through the 1970s. However, this schema does not exclude the indirect routes by which some Moroccan natives, having tried life in Israel or France, later came to Canada. The arrival of Sephardi Jews in Montreal enables us to study their means of adaptation and incorporation as well as the transformation of the community in their new host country. This study of the integration of this group in Montreal may be considered a model of this genre, — 170 —

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not only for diaspora studies, but also for studies devoted to migration. These Jews both integrated into an older, established Jewish community and transformed it. A Multi-Ethnic Jewish Community: Institutions and Policies of Absorption The arrival in Montreal of Holocaust refugees marked a turning point in the life of the Montreal Jewish community and helped it emerge in the postwar period as a major international Jewish center. The arrival of Jews forced out of Iraq after Israel’s independence in 1948, as well as that of the Moroccan Jews, also made its mark on the dynamic of the Montreal Jewish community. Beyond the issues intrinsic to the departure of the Jews from their homeland, we need to add factors stemming from the nature of the Montreal Jewish community as well as from Canadian immigration policy. The Jewish community in Canada had acquired a considerable role as an intervener with the Canadian federal government on questions of Jewish immigration since the 1920s. The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, mentioned above, had developed a number of services for newly arrived Jews. In the postwar period, the Jewish community was concerned about its future: its leaders had commissioned internal reports that forecasted the rapid aging of the Jewish population. Thus, they naturally sought to increase the pool of Jewish immigrants coming to Canada. When Canada liberalized its immigration policy, the Jewish community was ready with an efficient network of institutions to welcome new arrivals. For its part, the Quebec government understood the importance of controlling the selection of immigrants and of providing itself with the authority to accomplish this goal. The Quebec Ministry of Immigration was thus created in 1968. Knowledge of French at this time became a much more important factor in the point system for immigrants seeking visas to immigrate to Quebec.2 This combination of factors was favorable for the immigration of French-speaking Jews from the Maghreb. Many of them arrived with 2 It was in 1967 that Canada adopted a point system for selection of immigrants based on objective criteria such as education and family reunification, as opposed to the previous criteria, which included ethnic origin, color, and religion, and were overtly discriminatory. — 171 —

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the aid of JIAS and were given further help by the Jewish Vocational Services (JVS). It was thus a Montreal Jewish community that was exceedingly well organized into which these Jews arriving from Muslim Arab countries sought to integrate. The Jewish community of Montreal up to that point had been mostly English-speaking, and it sought to find the means to integrate these French-speaking newcomers, even if it was not necessarily prepared to make room for their religious rituals and cultural traditions. For their part, the new immigrants did not really think of themselves as a homogenous group. They continued to see themselves in the identities they had constructed over the course of centuries in their respective homelands, and they thus set to work to create schools and synagogues, as well as cultural and recreational centers that would attract other people who were also from their countries. The special role that was played by the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in the absorption of these immigrants needs to be emphasized. It was in the context of that synagogue that the first encounters took place between Montreal’s “old” and “new” Sephardim. The congregation’s longstanding identification with the Sephardi tradition attracted newcomers who celebrated their marriages there in the early years and encountered other Jews, including Sephardim of different origins as well as Ashkenazim. In the 1960s, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, which had been preponderantly English-speaking and Ashkenazi, became an important meeting place for Moroccan Jews. It was also in the framework of this synagogue that the new immigrants worked out a means of identifying with Sephardi Judaism in Montreal that gave them the advantage of integrating into an existing, recognized, and respected community, while at the same time asserting a common identity that did not specifically bind them to their country of origin. Thus the Iraqi and Egyptian Jewish immigrants who found themselves members of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue coexisted in a noisy multi-ethnic crucible. Each group wished to impose its special liturgy, traditions, and melodies on the congregation. After the arrival of a large number of Moroccan Jewish immigrants, a reinvented Sephardi identity began combining a number of new and old religious and cultural practices, causing Sephardi identity to undergo unexpected development in Montreal. The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in those years played a crucial role, despite the fact that after 1970 the Moroccan Jews were numerous enough to celebrate their marriages at another community — 172 —

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institution, the Shomrim Laboker Congregation, as well. The recruitment of Salomon Amzallag, also called Samy El Maghribi, who had been a well-known musician and singer in Morocco, to be hazzan at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue from 1968 to 1984 also attracted Moroccan Jews to this synagogue. Later on, in the 1980s, with the establishment of other Sephardi congregations, the importance of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue diminished. The development of a hybrid Sephardi identity occurred in both Israel and the diaspora. However, Montreal witnessed this hybridization of different versions of Sephardism within a specifically Canadian context—that of Canadian multiculturalism. Jews of the Maghreb and Mashrek who participated in the great postcolonial migrations of the latter half of the twentieth century thus contributed to the diversity of Montreal Jewish identity by creating their own version of an identity and a culture that had already been present in Montreal. To Montreal Jewish identity and culture they added the dimension of an oriental Judaism that flourished on the banks of the St. Lawrence in the midst of a greater Jewish community. In analyzing the institutional structure of this group of Jews from Arab countries, we can discern how Sephardi identity is constructed in the context of a larger Jewish community. The Structure of the Sephardi Community: From the Groupement juif nord-africain to the Communauté Sépharade Unifiée du Québec (CSUQ) Of the new Jewish immigrants who settled in Quebec after 1960, Jews from Morocco constituted the largest “national” group. They numbered 7,995 persons who arrived from 1960-1991 (according to the 1991 census). That is nearly double the number of Jewish immigrants to Canada from Poland (4,250), and much more than the number of Jews originating in all other countries (including France and Israel). It is thus not astonishing that it was this community that had the largest impact on the construction of a Sephadic identity in Montreal. The arrival of a great number of Moroccan Jews, the bulk of whom arrived in a span of less than twenty years, changed the balance of the different ethnic or national communities that make up the Jewish community of Montreal, whose population now is nearly 90,000. — 173 —

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While JIAS, the agency that aided the immigration of North African Jews to Montreal, had the responsibility of getting them established at the beginning, it quickly clashed with the new immigrants’ desire to establish separate institutions. Thus in 1959 the Association juive nord-africaine, which soon changed its name to Groupement juif nordafricain, declared its intention to respond to the cultural and religious needs of its own constituency. After the demise of that institution, the Fédération Sépharade des juifs de langue française was founded in 1965 and became, in 1966, the Association Sépharade Francophone. It is significant to note that the term “North African” was dropped, and its place was taken by the ancient and mythic Sephardi identity that allowed these immigrants to assert their identity in the face of the English-speaking Jewish community. We can clearly see the two principles upon which the differentiation was constructed: the Sephardi heritage (old) and loyalty to the French language (new). After the arrival of large numbers of Moroccan Jews in the 1970s, the need to create their own Sephardi synagogues and community centers was felt in all the different neighborhoods in which they lived.3 North African Jews also negotiated with the Young Mens’ Hebrew Association (YMHA) to create a Frenchspeaking group for young people and a French-speaking adult group, later adding one for young adults. In 1971, this became the Centre communautaire Juif (CCJ). More than simply a leisure center, the CCJ offers sociocultural and recreation activities specifically directed toward Sephardim, with departments for children, adolescents, young adults, and golden age adults, focusing on leisure, culture, and religion. It also houses a synagogue and a nursery school, which are frequented by many Sephardim. The Communauté Sépharade du Québec (CSQ), created in 1976, immediately demonstrated its divergence from the institutions of the Ashkenazi Jewish community, while independent institutions, mainly synagogues, continued to function outside its auspices. The main objectives of the CSQ are to preserve and promote Sephardi culture and to 3 Congregation Or Hahayim of Cote St. Luc was founded in 1972, and its synagogue dedicated in 1981. A Sephardic community was founded in Laval in 1972, and its synagogue, Or Sepharade, was dedicated in 1980. In Ville St-Laurent, Petah Tikva was created in 1973 and its building dedicated in 1983. Another Sephardic congregation, Hekhal Shalom, was founded in Ville St-Laurent in 1981. The Sephardic Association of the West Island was created in 1975 and has recently acquired a community center which also serves as a synagogue. — 174 —

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contribute to a better integration of the immigrants in their host country. Just like similar institutions in Morocco, it has divisions that deal with religious matters (such as registers of marital status, associations for visiting the sick, and the Hevra Kadisha [burial society]), social assistance (such as providing information on social services and linking clients to agencies that can respond to their issues), and the dissemination of information through a journal (La voix Sépharade). It also offers direct services to its members in the critical areas of education and welfare. The CSQ merged with the CCJ in 2001 to create the Communauté Séfarade unifiée du Québec (CSUQ). In the area of education, the creation of École Maïmonide in 1969 was an important event in the growth of the community. This school offers primary and secondary education supervised by the Quebec Ministry of Education, as well as a program of Judaic studies geared toward preserving and reinforcing the Jewish Moroccan heritage. It has enjoyed unprecedented success. Its three campuses serve the three principal neighborhoods in which Sephardim live. One of the buildings in its campus in St-Laurent has been named in honor of Mohammed V, king of Morocco. Another Sephardi school, created in 1976 and affiliated with the Alliance Isralite Universelle (AIU), testifies to the relationship with the French Jewish educational institution, in which many of the Montreal school’s teachers were trained. Lastly, the Centre Hillel was created in 1972. It is a French-speaking branch of Montreal’s B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation and serves Frenchspeaking students at the postsecondary level (college and university). Students at the University of Montreal who are affiliated with Centre Hillel publish a journal, Bleu-Blanc, that has had a long run. There are over a dozen groups of lesser size that also cater to Sephardim. The multiplicity of these cultural and religious groups reflects the profound nature of the roots this community has put down, as well as the eagerness of their members, who think that communal organization is indispensable to maintaining their identity. In the areas of art and culture, most Moroccan Jewish groups sponsor lectures with local or out-of-town speakers, especially during the Festival Sépharade or Jewish Book Month. During these events, Quebec society has a chance to become more aware of the contributions of the Jewish Moroccan community. A small group of committed young people participated in the creation — 175 —

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of these institutions. As is the case in other communities in Quebec, the leaders of community organizations are mostly men between the ages of 45 and 60 whose occupation is either business or education. These leaders also took the initiative in 1990 to create the Congrès Sépharade du Canada, in order to develop links with Sephardi communities in the rest of Canada and to have representation of the CSQ locally and internationally, particularly with respect to Israel. The CSQ is also affiliated with the Rassemblement du Judaïsme Marocain. This strong institutionalization, achieved by a group of motivated leaders, needs to be understood in the context of a Quebec and Canadian immigration policy that supports the recognition and maintenance of the original cultures of immigrants. These institutions have also permitted Moroccan Jews, despite the secular identity of many, to continue the practice of a traditional Judaism and to support a rich liturgical heritage. The Sephardi community structure, which supports its members from cradle to grave and offers an extremely varied range of services with its synagogues, schools, welfare organizations, and cemeteries, structures its identity and mediates the community’s relations with other Canadians and Québécois. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was possible to speak of Sephardi-Ashkenazi tension within the Montreal Jewish community and to explain the high rate of intermarriages between Sephardim and Catholic Quebec women as a result of Ashkenazi hostility to Sephardim, who were considered by them to be lower class and possessing neither culture nor education. Now, however, Montreal Jews feel that their community has been created anew with multiple components. Indeed, the Sephardi community is an integral part of this new image of Montreal Jewry in the context of the Montreal “Jewish campus” where all the major institutions of the Jewish community have been concentrated since the 1990s, including the CCJ, Gelber Centre, Segal Centre, etc. The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, which was completely renovated in recent years, has also reestablished its pride of place as the oldest synagogue in Montreal and one of the oldest in North America. This process of settlement, which has occupied three generations of immigrants in Montreal since the end of the 1960s, has had many phases. It must be understood as an exemplary case of the capacity of immigrants to reduce barriers, whether real or perceived, between — 176 —

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themselves and their host societies in a postcolonial context. From images of the Jewish pariah, rebel or newly established, described so well by Hannah Arendt, we pass imperceptibly to images of Jews as figures of nostalgia (blending in an ahistorical setting). Sephardi Judaism, disoriented by the exile of most of its indigenous communities, ill-treated and disrespected in Israel, discovered in its Canadian diaspora an institutional completeness that it had lost with its migrations. These Montreal Sephardi struggles have resulted in a very strong effort to maintain community traditions, especially those having to do with religion and food. Unless these traditions are ultimately reduced to folklore (a fate which threatens all minority cultures) they can become means for the genuine affirmation of an identity that is both hybrid and open. The Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Sephardi Community Today, the Montreal Sephardi community is more than 20,000 strong. It is a religious and ethnic group that is well integrated into the cosmopolitan city of Montreal both economically and socially.4 First of all, just over 40% of this population has at this point been born in Canada, while 34% was born in Morocco and the rest in France (5.6%), Israel (5.5%), Egypt (3%), Iraq (2.2%), Western Europe (2%), Eastern Europe (1.6%), and elsewhere ( such as Lebanon, Turkey, United States, South America). This proportion of immigrants (59.6%) is high in comparison with the more established Ashkenazi population. The recent immigration of this population (of which one third originated in Morocco, and most of which has been in Canada for less than thirty years) explains this high proportion of immigrants. It is rather the 40% born in Canada who consider themselves to be Sephardi that might seem to be high. The number of Catholic women who converted to Judaism prior to their marriages partly explains the relatively high proportion of Sephardi Jews born in Canada. The geographic location of the Sephardim in Montreal is similar to the residential patterns of the Jewish community in Montreal as a whole. Thus a strong majority of them moved into traditionally Jewish 4

Sephardim are not merely to be found in Montreal. The 2001 census found 8070 Sephardim in Toronto (making up 24.7% of the Canadian Sephardic population), and 870 in Vancouver (2.7%). — 177 —

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neighborhoods in the West of Montreal: Cote St. Luc (4,285), St-Laurent (3,770), Snowdon (2,295), Cote des Neiges (1,715) and the West Island (2,185). Only 1,785 of them live elsewhere (Verdun, Lasalle, Lachine, etc.). Ville St-Laurent has the highest proportion of Sephardim to the total Jewish population (45.8%). In their matrimonial life, the majority of Sephardim live as couples (77.4%), even though only 45.5% of them are married (the rate of marriage for Montreal as a whole is 33.2%). Thus, the great majority of children (89%) live in a two-parent family. It is a young population that is 80% French-speaking, though 26.5% also speak English at home. Other traditional languages, like Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish, have seen a considerable decline. The educational level of the Sephardim is comparable to that of the Ashkenazi group. Forty-three percent of Sephardim have finished secondary school; 21.4% have a college diploma or professional certificate; 22.6% have a Bachelor’s degree; 11.2% have a Master’s degree; and 2.8% have a doctorate or medical degree. Thus, more than one third of them (35.7%) possess a university degree. This is comparable to the Jewish community as a whole, but higher than the population of Montreal as a whole (21.5%). This indicates that the Sephardim have made an important investment in education as a mode of integration into the Quebec and North American environment. The great majority of its members are mostly young people and adults of working age (26% are 25-44 and 27% from 45-64), rather than the aged (15.5%). These results from the 2001 census confirm the results of the first studies devoted to these new immigrants since the 1970s, which spoke of their successful economic integration. The majority of Sephardim are professionals (16.2%), upper and intermediate level managers (14.1%), sales and service personnel (12.6%), secretarial and office employees (9%), and technical and paraprofessionals (7.8%). Their contributions to the economic life of the metropolis are made primarily in the textile, clothing, shoe, and hairdressing industries. There is also a significant number of them in the liberal professions and on the staff of para-public institutions in health, social services, and education on the primary, secondary, college, and university levels. Their salary structure reflects their median status (defined as between $10,000 and $24,000), with a median income of $23,268, which is somewhat larger than the Montreal average and a bit lower than that of Ashkenazi Jews. More precisely, one quarter of Sephardim — 178 —

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earn less than $10,000 a year, approximately 30% earn between $10,000 and $25,000, and the rest are about equally divided at 17% for both the $40,000-$70,000, and the $70,000-$100,000 groups. Only 5.2% earn more than $100,000. While 82% of this population lives above the poverty line, with an overrepresentation of business and professional workers (30.3%), 17.8%, mostly seniors, lives below the poverty line. The Sephardi population is slowly increasing and is generally well integrated economically. It has demonstrated a remarkable adaptability to the social and cultural context of Quebec. It has succeeded in establishing a certain societal visibility and has made its presence and unique identity known in various ways, thus changing the image of the Montreal Jewish community. Conclusion: Sephardi Jews in Quebec Culturally, Moroccan Jews in Montreal are in a special position with respect to their integration into Montreal’s society. Because of their Jewishness, they share many things with the Ashkenazim. However, the Ashkenazi community, due to the number of its members, its predominant use of English, its economic power, and its well-developed network of communal institutions, desired to integrate these new immigrants as speedily as possible, without consideration of their identity and their knowledge of French. Furthermore, the processes by which this renewed Sephardi identity was established are equally important to establish. It is important to take careful note of the periodization of this process, because it coincides with the development of demands for the affirmation of French in Quebec. Moreover, the arrival of these French-speaking Jews in Quebec allowed certain Quebec scholars to advance the possibility of a convergence between the Jewish minority and that of French Quebec, thus engendering the interculturalism advocated by Gérard Bouchard. There are some weaknesses in this analysis: the French-Canadians are not a minority but a majority in Quebec, and the antisemitism that exists in Quebec, as it does in Canada as a whole, does not allow the convergence that Bouchard hoped for with the Jewish community. On the contrary, Ignaki Olazabal’s study presents the paradoxical situation of a Jewish community that is strong and alive, but relatively withdrawn within itself as a result of a misencounter with the majority society (using the — 179 —

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terminology of Zygmunt Bauman). Will Montreal’s several solitudes ultimately overwhelm this small group of French-speaking Jews? The social and economic integration of the Sephardim of Quebec has indeed been accomplished seemingly without great clashes, helped by the existence of strong communal structures, which also permitted the emergence of a social stratum that is well-to-do and can be found in some beautiful upscale neighborhoods. In many respects, we may also say that the Sephardim have created their own identity, which involves adherence to Jewishness, French, and the heritage of Sepharad. The most important of these factors remains religion, which is supported by synagogues, families, and community schools. Language plays an equally determining role in the community’s interaction with Quebec society, even though its use of English as well as French demonstrates its willingness to integrate into a greater North American environment beyond that of Quebec. This is a portrait of the Jewish Moroccan presence in Quebec today. There has been a good socio-economic integration of the community, along with retention and maintenance of the community’s religious character as a marker of its identity. Nonetheless, we must add that the notion of “Sephardisme” has a complex and somewhat paradoxical character. Thus members of this group sometimes identify with Morocco, sometimes with Israel, sometimes with France. Their complex ties and history, which have been radically cut off given the conditions of their departure and their arrival, appear vaguely under the smooth surface of the statistics. Other elements contributing to the interpretation of their recent history might possibly reside in the unstated (stifled) and practically unthought (traumatic) accounts of their migrations. Yolande Cohen

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For Further Study Anctil, Pierre, Ira Robinson, Gérard Bouchard, ed. Juifs et Canadiens Français dans la Société Québécoise. Sillery: Septentrion, 2000. Bédard, Jean-Luc. Identité et transmission intergénérationnelle chez les Sépharades à Montréal. PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 2005. Benaim Ouaknine, Esther. L’intégration des juifs marocains au Canada, Monographie de la communauté juive à Montréal. PhD dissertation, Université de la Sorbonne Paris, 1976. Bensimon-Donath, Dorisi Intégration des Juifs nord-africains en France. Paris: Mouton, 1971. Bilu, Yoram, and André Levy. “Nostalgia and Ambivalence: The Reconstruction of Jewish-Muslim Relations in Oulad Mansour.” In Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, edited by Harvey Goldberg, 288-311. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. Bin-Nun, Yigal. “Psychosis or an Ability to Foresee the Future? The Contribution of the World Jewish Organizations to the Establishment of Rights for Jews in Independent Morocco, 1955-1961.” Revue Européenne d’Etudes Hébraïques 10 (2004). Blaustein, Esther I., Rachel A. Esar, and Evelyn Miller, “Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (Shearith Israel) Montreal, 1768-1968.” The Jewish Historical Society of England Transactions vol. 23 (1971): 11-42. Boussouga, Hakima. La Vitalité ethnolinguistique de la communauté juive marocaine de Montréal. MA dissertation, Université du Québec A Montréal, 2003. Brière, Céline. Les Juifs sépharades à Montréal: traces passagères et marqueurs spatiaux d’une minorité dans une métropole nord-américaine. MA dissertation, Université d’Angers, 1990. Cohen, Yolande. “Juifs au Maroc, Séfarades au Canada. Migrations et processus de construction identitaire.” Archives Juives vol. 43 2 (2010): 132-144.  ------.“Mémoires des Migrations de juifs marocains à Montréal.” In Remembering War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations, edited by Steven High, Edward Little, and Ry Duong. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming. Cohen, Yolande, and Linda Guerry.“Mariages et parcours migratoires: Juifs nés au Maroc et mariés à la Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue — 181 —

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de Montréal (1969-1981).” Studies in Religion 40 (2011): 293-317. Eidelman, Jay. “Kissing Cousins: The Early History of Congregations Shearith Israel of New York City and Montreal.” In Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions and Constitutionalism in Canada, edited by Daniel Elazar, Michael Brown, and Ira Robinson), 71-83. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 2003. Elbaz, Mikhaël. “Les héritiers. Générations et identités chez les Juifs sépharades à Montréal.” Revue européenne de migrations internationales vol. 9 3 (1933): 13-34. Elkaïm, Betty. Evaluations des séquelles psychologiques du deuil. MA dissertation, Université de Montréal, 1981. La Voix Sépharade, “50 ans d’histoire.” Juillet-août 2009, Publication de la Communauté Sépharade Unifiée du Québec, Montréal, 2009. Laskier, Michel, et al., eds. The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Lasry, Jean-Claude. “Essor et tradition: la communauté juive nord-africaine au Québec.” In Les Juifs du Maghreb: Diasporas contemporaines, edited by Jean-Claude Lasry and Claude Tapia. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989. Légaré, Maurice. “La population juive de Montréal est-elle victime d’une ségrégation qu’elle se serait elle-même imposée?” Recherches sociographiques vol. IV 3 (septembre-décembre 1965) : 312. Loupo, Yaacov. Métamorphose ultra-orthodoxe chez les juifs du Maroc. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. Olazabal, Ignaki. “Entre les processus de communalisation et d’intersystème; Juifs et Québécois francophones à Montréal à travers quatre générations.” In Juifs et Canadiens Français dans la Société Québécoise, edited by Pierre Anctil, Ira Robinson, and Gérard Bouchard, 109. Sillery: Septentrion, 2000. Pâquet, Martin. Tracer les marges de la cité: étranger, immigrant et État au Québec, 1627-1981. Montréal : Boréal, 2005. ------. Vers un ministère québécois de l’immigration, 1945-1968. Ottawa  : Société Historique du Canada, 1997. Poirier, Véronique. Ashkénazes et Séfarades: une étude comparée de leurs relations en France et en Israël : années 1950-1990. Paris, les Éditions du Cerf, 1998. Schroeter, Daniel J. “The Shifting Boundaries of Moroccan Jewish Identities.” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 15: 1 (2008): 145-64. — 182 —

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Shahar, Charles, and Elisabeth Perez. Analyse du recensement de 2001. Montréal: Fédération CJA, 2002. Sourisce, Nicolas. La Communauté juive montréalaise: enracinement original. La presse des communautés culturelles : un nouvel outil de recherche. MA dissertation, Université d’Angers, 1996. Stillman, Norman. “Middle Eastern and North African Jewries Confront Modernity: Orientation, Disorientation, Reorientation.” In Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, edited by Harvey Goldberg, 59-72. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Taïeb, Jacques. “Historique d’un exode: l’émigration des Juifs du Maghreb de la fin des années quarante à nos jours.” Yod 10 (1979): 88100. Trigano, Shmuel, ed. La fin du judaïsme en terre d’islam. Paris: Denoël, 2009. Tsur, Yaron. A Torn Community: The Jews of Morocco and Nationalism 1943-1954. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001. (Hebrew) (English translation forthcoming; Stanford University Press) Vigod, Bernard L. Les Juifs au Canada. Ottawa: Société historique du Canada, 1984. '

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XIII Steps Forward and Steps Backward: Toronto Jewry at the Beginning of the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century

More than half of Canada’s Jews live in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and their number continues to increase, although almost entirely because of immigration from abroad or in-migration from elsewhere in Canada. Montreal is home to the oldest Jewish community in the country, and for more than 200 years from the first settlement of Jews in what is now Canada in 1759, it was the largest and the leading Canadian community. The spectre of Quebec separatism in the mid-twentieth century, the accepting multiculturalism of Toronto as opposed to the more insular nationalism of Quebec, and the displacement of Montreal as the economic powerhouse of the country, however, led to the ascendancy of Toronto Jewry. The primacy of Toronto has been manifested in a number of ways. One, of course, is population (164,510, according to the 2001 census, perhaps 175,000 in 2011). And size matters! With it come economic clout, political power, and the ability to maintain a wide variety of institutions satisfying different interests and concerns. Toronto’s size and variety, together with its Canadian setting and the diverse origins of the city’s Jews, have contributed to the emergence of an extraordinarily vibrant and pluralistic Jewish community at the forefront of both tradition and innovation in North America, especially in the areas of education and support for Israel. Natan Sharansky, once a heroic refusenik and now the head of the Jewish Agency, has called Toronto “one of the most important Jewish communities in the Diaspora.”1 In recent years, however, some shifts in communal structure and concerns seem to be developing. In part, these reflect broader changes in North American and international Jewry and in the larger societies in which Jews live. The general decline of the “old-fashioned” values, for instance, which formed the context for Canadian Jewry’s long-standing 1

Quoted in “GTA community’s the best, says Sharansky,” Canadian Jewish News, 23 December 2010. — 184 —

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traditionalism (there were only three Reform synagogues in the entire country as late as the 1950s, for example), is not peculiar to Toronto or to Canada. One of its consequences, however, is that while only a few short decades ago most North American Jews defined themselves as “religious” (Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform),2 now many— perhaps the majority of non-Orthodox Jews—think of themselves as “secular,” even if they retain synagogue membership, which many do not.3 This shift in identity undoubtedly affects group solidarity, marriage patterns, involvement in the Jewish community, patterns of charitable giving, and a variety of other behaviours. Another major change in sensibility is the increasing openness of North American society to the equality of women in every sphere of life. In Toronto and in most other places, this has led to a redirection of Jewish women’s energies towards the workplace and secular institutions and away from parochial Jewish institutions.4 In part, however, the shifts reflect local conditions and the influence of individuals. Here the focus will be more on the local than on the global. Emphasis will be placed on the areas of education, community organization, and the renewed focus of the community on fighting antisemitism in all of its guises, especially anti-Israel activity. Education In many ways, the bellwether of change in the Toronto Jewish community is education. In 1935, the city had one modern Jewish school, the Hebrew Free School, generally known as the Brunswick Avenue Talmud Torah. In March of that year, the 600 pupils of the school were sent 2 See Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). 3 Orthodox Jews tend to call themselves “religious,” but they mean something different by the term from what most other English-speakers mean. Like Israelis, they do not mean that they necessarily take spiritual matters seriously, although they may, only that they restrict themselves to kosher food and observe the traditional Sabbath rules. A recent study in the US by Barry Kosmin and Ayela Kaiser shows that one of three Jews in the United States is “thoroughly secularized,” while one fifth of American Jews define themselves as “non-religious” or “cultural” Jews. (MBD [Mordechai Ben Dat], “Signs to ponder from the south,” Canadian Jewish News, September 10 2009.) There is no reason to think that the figures are very different in Canada. 4 See Michael Brown, “From Gender Bender to Lieutenant Governor: Jewish Women in Canada, 1738-2005,” in A Maturing Community: Jewish Women and Seniors, ed. Martin Lockshin (Toronto: York University Centre for Jewish Studies, 2005). This essay appears in somewhat altered form in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia, ed. Moshe Shalvi (Jerusalem: Shalvi Publishing Ltd., 2006), CD-ROM. — 185 —

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home for an extended recess. This was the era of the Great Depression; the school had run out of money and was unable to reopen for some months. However understandable the closing, the Toronto Jewish Standard labeled it the Jewish community’s “badge of shame.”5 More recently, Jewish education has become, also in the words of the Jewish Standard, the community’s “badge of distinction.”6 In fact, Toronto has stood out among North American Jewish communities because of its extraordinary support for Jewish education. The allocation of community funds to all-day Jewish schools, largely through tuition subsidies to individuals, reached close to $10 million in 2010-11. In the 2010 school year, 10,817 children were enrolled in Toronto’s all-day Jewish schools and another 5,266 in supplementary schools. About 48% of all Jewish children in the city were enrolled in Jewish schools of some sort. The figures are much higher than in most American communities, although it must be noted that in Montreal, where provincial subsidies make tuition costs significantly lower than in Toronto, 57% of Jewish children were receiving some Jewish schooling. In South Africa, the UK, Australia, and Argentina, the percentage was higher still.7 The numbers are impressive, but so, too, is the variety of educational options. Day schools include those affiliated with the Conservative, Reform, and modern Orthodox movements, as well as officially non-denominational schools that serve the whole community, albeit generally with an Orthodox perspective (the Associated Hebrew Schools and the Community Hebrew Academy high school). There is also a secular day school (the Bialik School),8 a school that stresses the arts (the Heschel 5

6 7

8

“Jewish Education—A Communal Responsibility,” editorial, The Jewish Standard, May 3, 1935. See also, Rabbi B. I Treiger, “Eighteen Months with The Toronto Free School,” The Jewish Standard, April 19 1935; “Hebrew Free School Makes Progress Against Big Odds,” The Jewish Standard, October 1935. “Jewish Education—A Communal Responsibility.” This year’s figures were obtained from Annette Davis of UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto. For a review of somewhat earlier data regarding Jewish education in Canada, see Michael Brown, “Canada: Jewish Education in Canada,” in International Handbook of Jewish Education, vol. 2, eds. Helena Miller, Lisa D. Grant, and Alex Pomson (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 1141-53, and the sources cited there. As Seymour Epstein points out in “The Jewish Day Schools of Canada,” by the end of the twentieth century most formerly secular “Jewish day schools … [had become] religious institutions, or, at least, gave some religious instruction.” (p. 2) As elsewhere, at Bialik, sacred texts, especially Bible, occupy a prominent place in the curriculum. Epstein’s essay will appear in Discipline, Devotion and Dissent: The Promise and Problems of Jewish, Catholic and Islamic Schooling in Canada, ed. Avi I. Mintz, Nadeem Memon, and Graham McDonough, forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press. — 186 —

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School), a Jewish Montessori school, the Joe Dwek Ohr HaEmet Sephardic School, and several schools with a variety of haredi or ultra-Orthodox emphases (Bais Yaakov High School for girls, which does not accept children from homes with a television set, Tiferes Bais Yaakov, also for girls, which has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards television, and Yeshivas Nefesh Dovid for deaf boys, for example).9 An attempt in 2009 to establish a “non-religious Jewish private [day] school,” where “even [the] … youngest ones” would be “exposed to [the] … discipline [of Tae Kwon Do] on a regular basis” was apparently unsuccessful.10 Supplementary Jewish schools, although they serve only about half as many pupils as day schools, are even more diverse, including for-profit schools that specialize in preparing children for bar and bat mitzvah celebrations. An educational challenge met very creatively in Toronto is the education of children with disabilities. Although a few schools for such children were established in the United States somewhat earlier, the Ezra-Kadima supplementary school, founded by Rabbi Joseph Kelman at his own synagogue, Beth Emeth-Bais Yehuda in 1961, is regarded as a pioneer in the field. It was the first Jewish school in Toronto to offer special classes for the learning challenged. A spinoff of Ezra-Kadima was the Reena Foundation, which maintains group homes and counseling services for Jews who are learning challenged, and for a time also ran a summer camp.11 In 1971, She’arim (later the Abraham Shore She’arim Day School), a school for special needs children which sought to mainstream as many of its pupils as possible, was established by Rabbi Kelman and his associates and supporters. 12 In 2008, it closed its doors, largely because of high costs and alleged pedagogical deficiencies. Other Jewish schools agreed to mount special needs classes, although doubts continue about the viability of that arrangement.13 In addition to the ye9 On Tiferes Bais Yaakov, see Cara Stern, “Orthodox Girls’ School Turns 10,” Canadian Jewish News, May 27 2010. On Yeshivas Nefesh Dovid, apparently the only such institution in the world, see Laura Fixman, “The Deaf Jewish Community in Toronto,” Canadian Jewish News, August 25 2011. 10 Frances Kraft, “Couple Opens Non-religious Jewish Private School,” Canadian Jewish News, July 16 2009; wentworthprep.com/about-wps. A telephone call to the number on the school’s website revealed that the number had been reassigned months ago. 11 Ron Csillag, “ Highly Respected, Eighth Generation Rabbi Dedicated his Life to Helping People with Special Needs,” Toronto Globe and Mail, July 13 2009; www.beby.org/index.html. 12 M[ordechai] Ben Dat, “Saying Farewell,” Canadian Jewish News, July 9 2009; Ron Csillag, “Toronto Day Schools a Model,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch, August 21 2009, obtained from http:// jta.org/news/article/2009/08/21/1007388/toronto-day-schools-a-mod. 13 See Frances Kraft, “She’arim Students Two Years Later: The Kids are All Right, Or Not,” Canadian — 187 —

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shiva for the deaf mentioned above, another Toronto school for children with special needs is Zareinu, “a Jewish Day School and Treatment Centre, which provides special education and individualized therapies to children with a wide range of physical and developmental challenges.”14 Some other educational initiatives that respond to contemporary needs are programs for adult women, such as the Mekorot Institute of Torah Study for Women, which strives to “make a full range of Jewish texts available [in] … an [Orthodox] atmosphere of spiritual and intellectual growth.”15 Two private initiatives in Jewish education for women are led by Dr. Rachel Turkienicz and Dr. Shoshana Zolty. Seminars for adult men are conducted by Torah MiTzion, an organization which brings visiting young Israeli yeshiva scholars to Toronto and other communities throughout the world. An institute for liberal Jewish learning, which appeals to young people many of whom are otherwise unaffiliated with the Jewish community, is Kolel, the Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning. Founded as a Reform outreach program in 1991 by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, the first woman rabbi at Holy Blossom [Reform] Synagogue, Kolel “encourages students to experience, learn, and understand traditional Jewish thought and practices and apply them in our modern world.”16 An initiative that looks to answer a niche need is the Canadian Yeshiva and Rabbinical School founded by Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum, now retired as the assistant rabbi of Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto. Tanenbaum, the Rosh Yeshiva (head of school), and his associates, many of them rabbis, scholars, and lay people affiliated with the Conservative movement in Canada, believe that the Conservative movement everywhere has transgressed the bounds of Jewish law by ordaining women and counting them in the prayer quorum. They plan to ordain men who will be more traditional in practice and outlook than the graduates of the American Conservative rabbinical seminaries in New York and Los Angeles. The first classes, taught by Tanenbaum himself and others, began in the fall of 2011.17 The Yeshiva has engaged Rabbi Daniel Sperber Jewish News, August 19 2010. 14 www.zareinu.org/aboutus.html. 15 www.mekorot.org. 16 www.jewishtorontoonline.act/home.do. 17 See Frances Kraft, “Canadian Yeshiva Offers Classes to Community this Fall,” Canadian Jewish News, September 8 2011. — 188 —

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of Israel as chancellor; he is said to have made it a condition of employment that the institution not use the word “Conservative” in advertising or defining itself. On the face of it, the employment prospects of any rabbis the Yeshiva may ordain seem doubtful. Orthodox congregations will be unlikely to hire men trained by Conservative rabbis, and Conservative congregations will not be likely to hire men trained by Conservative rabbis who deny their affiliation.18 The market for the product is shrinking, in any case. Many ordained rabbis in North America are unemployed in 2011. The largest Conservative congregation in Montreal left the Conservative Movement some years ago; it is now led by an Orthodox rabbi. The largest Conservative congregation in Toronto, Beth Tzedec, became egalitarian in 2011; a number of congregations elsewhere in Canada have done the same, as have most Conservative congregations in the US. One of the other large Toronto Conservative congregations, Beth Tikvah, has recently parted ways with its long-time traditionalist rabbi and is embarking upon an “evaluation of … what direction the synagogue will take in terms of ritual orientation.”19 The new Yeshiva was born of the discontent among some Conservative rabbis and laymen in Toronto with the “liberal” leanings of their movement. There was also discontent because the movement was neglecting its Canadian constituents, an issue which the leadership in the US began to address in 2010.20 It may be that the Yeshiva’s window of opportunity has passed. A Toronto educational phenomenon with much broader appeal is the summer camp. Although not joined together under any local umbrella organization and not drawing their clientele exclusively from the GTA, educational summer camps located in the resort areas north of the city have been an important part of the Toronto Jewish educational scene since the 1920s. Early camps, such as Naivelt and Kindervelt, were established in the twenties and thirties by left-wing, Yiddishist groups; they sought to teach campers the Yiddish language and to inculcate in 18 Among other sources, see www.cdnyeshiva.org/Board/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Canadian_Yeshiva_%26_Rabbinical_School. 19 Frances Kraft, “Rabbi Allen to Leave Beth Tikvah,” Canadian Jewish News, January 6 2011. 20 Josh Nathan-Kazis in “USCJ Cuts Jobs, Realigns Structure,” Forward, June 24 2011, indicates that discontent with the Movement’s inattention to constituent congregations is widespread in the United States, as well as in Canada. See also Frances Kraft, “Conservatives Focus on Restructuring,” Canadian Jewish News, December 17 2009; and idem, “USCJ focuses on ‘service delivery’ to Cdn. Shuls,” Canadian Jewish News, February 4 2010. — 189 —

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them socialist or communist ideals.21 After the establishment of Israel in 1948, the left-wing camps entered a long period of decline, supplanted by camps with a Zionist and/or religious orientation. The first of these “second-generation” camps were established in 1948: Camp Shalom, operated by the Toronto Zionist Council, and Camp Massad in Ontario, a Hebrew-speaking camp. Camp Moshava, sponsored by the OrthodoxZionist Bnei Akiva youth movement, opened in 1959, and Camp Ramah in Canada, sponsored by the Conservative Movement, opened in 1960. Camp George, the Reform Movement camp, opened in 1999. All the post-1948 camps were still operating in 2011, except for Massad, which closed in 1977.22 Various Jewish groups and private individuals, including the Jewish Community Centre, operate recreational day camps in Toronto. Camp Northland-B’nai Brith has provided an overnight recreational camping experience for underprivileged Jewish children for many years. In recent years, the UJA/Federation has become a supporter of educational camps. Ab Flatt, a long-time advocate of educational camping, played a key role in persuading the organized community to offer subsidies to first-time campers. Flatt, whose family is highly regarded in Toronto, has been for many years one of the influential members of the board and sometimes the president of Camp Ramah in Canada. He is the only Canadian board member of the (American) Foundation for Jewish Camp (sic). In 2008, the UJA/Federation began awarding scholarships to first-time campers at educational camps in conjunction with the Foundation.23 There is not the slightest question that Flatt and his supporters are thoroughly convinced that educational camps foster Jewish identity and serve as effective educational instruments.24 It should be noted, however, that funders and Jewish federations in the United States and Canada have been searching for less expensive alternatives 21 See, among other sources, Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 1998), 131-32. See also www.ovguide.com/ camp-naivelt. 22 On Camp Ramah, see Michael Brown, “The Most Important Venture Ever Undertaken by the Seminary: Ramah in Its First Four Decades,” in Ramah, Reflections at 50: Visions for a New Century, ed. Sheldon A. Dorph (New York: National Ramah Commission, 1999), 25-88. 23 Frances Kraft, “Federation Offers Grants for First-Time Campers,” Canadian Jewish News, March 13 2008; Laura Fixman, “Couple Donates $1.2m to T.O.’s Jewish Camping Programs,” Canadian Jewish News, July 28 2011. 24 Frances Kraft, “Camp Ramah returns to its roots,” Canadian Jewish News, November 4 2010. — 190 —

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to day schools, whose enrolment has reached a plateau in Toronto and elsewhere, and in some places declined. Skyrocketing tuition costs are one reason; an aging Jewish demographic is another. Camps are one of the less expensive alternatives25 At the pinnacle of the Toronto Jewish education “system” for many years was the Centre for Enhancement of Jewish Education, the Mercaz (earlier called the Board of Jewish Education and before that the Bureau of Jewish Education). A coordinating, advisory, and research agency most recently under the direction of Dr. Seymour Epstein, the Mercaz was established in 1949 following a study by Dr. Uriah Z. Engelman, the director of the Department of Research, Publications and Information of the American Association for Jewish Education. From its founding, the Mercaz and its predecessors served as “the community’s central planning and coordinating educational agency and claimed credit for raising the educational standards of [its] affiliated schools.”26 In addition to coordinating city- and country-wide educational activities (lectures in Jewish and general education, a dance festival, and a Bible contest, to name just three), the Mercaz oversaw the budgets of schools subsidized by the community, maintained a resource centre for teachers, participated in teacher training and preparation, supervised teacher certification, brought together the principals of all the schools for the sharing of ideas, and employed a number of specialists who served all of the city’s Jewish schools. One of the most important long-term initiatives of the Mercaz was nurturing and sponsoring research into various aspects of Jewish education relevant to the Toronto community. Perhaps the best known of the studies it fostered in whole or in part was Back to School: Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), a book-length study by Alex Pomson and Randal Schnoor, which 25 See, for example, Debra Nussbaum Cohen, “Major Effort to Promote Day Schools Shows Mixed Results,” Forward, June 24 2011. In Toronto the day school enrolment figures have barely changed in the last decade. On the high cost of day school education in Toronto, see Frances Kraft, “Day School Tuition Fees on the Rise … Again,” Canadian Jewish News, September 8 2011. In A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States (New York: The Avi Chai Foundation, 2009), Marvin Schick notes that between 1998 and 2008, level enrollment or a decline was registered only by certain types of schools: Solomon Schechter (Conservative), Centrist and Modern Orthodox, Reform, and Immigrant Outreach. Chabad, Chassidic, community, and special education schools registered a healthy or even a dramatic increase in enrollment. (p.8) 26 J.[oel] Kurtz and S.[eymour] Epstein, Board of Jewish Education: A Retrospective, 1949-2000 (Toronto: UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto, 2008). — 191 —

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examines the role of a Toronto day school in nourishing the Jewish identity of the parents of its pupils, in this case people who live largely outside the mainstream of the Toronto Jewish community and who mostly lack links to the community other than their children’s school. Another book-length study of Toronto Jewish education is the doctoral dissertation of Harvey A. Raben, “History of the Board of Jewish Education of Toronto, 1949-1975: A Study of Autonomy and Control,”27 a work with particular resonance in light of recent developments at the Mercaz, of which more presently. Other research projects connected to the Mercaz are also of direct relevance to Toronto’s Jewish schools. Of these, Alex Pomson was the author or co-author of several, most significantly, “Jewish Day School Growth in Toronto: Freeing Policy and Research from the Constraints of Conventional Sociological Wisdom.” The paper demonstrates that the motivations for enrolling children in Jewish day schools usually ascribed to parents in the United States (the decline of public schools, increasing ability to pay, concern for Jewish continuity) do not apply in Canada, for the most part; it should be most useful to educational planners in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada.28 Other studies with communal policy implications written under the aegis of the Mercaz were authored by Randal Schnoor, Stuart Schoenfeld, S. Aba, and others.29 An aspect of Jewish education largely unconnected, at least formally, to the Jewish community is Jewish studies at York University and the University of Toronto.30 At both universities in 2011, there are large, active, comprehensive undergraduate and graduate programs. These began with a few undergraduate courses and one or two faculty members in the late 1960s, at the University of Toronto following some agita27 Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, 1992. 28 A.D.M. Pomson, “Jewish Day School Growth in Toronto: Freeing Policy and Research from the Constraints of Conventional Sociological Wisdom,” Canadian Journal of Education 27 (3): 321-40. 29 These include among others: S. Aba, Estimating the Demand for CHAT [Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto] using an econometric model (Toronto: UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto: Board of Jewish Education, 2001); Randal F. Schnoor, Which School is Right for My Child? Educational Choices of Jewish Parents (Toronto: UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto: Board of Jewish Education, 2004); idem, An Examination of Services Provided for Jewish Day School Students with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Challenges (Toronto: Centre for Enhancement of Jewish Education [Mercaz], 2007); Stuart Schoenfeld and Alex Pomson, “United Synagogue Task Force on Congregational Schools— Consultants’ Report” (Toronto: Board of Jewish Education, 2000). 30 McGill University in Montreal established a Jewish Teacher Education Program for that community a year or two earlier than York. — 192 —

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tion by students and the community, at York on the initiative of the university itself. The programs have grown and evolved, have received a significant measure of financial support from individuals in the community, and have become an unofficial Jewish community resource and source of pride. A particularly significant aspect of Jewish Studies at York—one which does have a connection to the Jewish community— is the Jewish Teacher Education Program established in 1979 with the cooperation of the Board of Jewish Education. For a number of years, the Board seconded one of its professionals, Dr. Shoshana Kurtz, to the Program at York, and the Board director also took on teaching duties in the program. The United Jewish Welfare Fund of Toronto (the predecessor of UJA/Federation) provided a seed grant to the university to augment its faculty so that a broader range of Jewish studies courses could be offered to students in the new program and to others. The Welfare Fund also provided a small ongoing grant to cover the university salary of Dr. Kurtz. The program itself is unique in a number of ways: “It prepares teachers for positions in both Jewish and public schools, and its graduates are qualified to teach the entire [Jewish] day school curriculum, both Jewish and general studies. Those who complete the program … receive two degrees, a B.Ed. and a B.A., and two certifications, as teachers of general studies from … the Ontario College of Teachers … and [formerly] as teachers of Judaic Studies from the Board of Jewish Education. Graduates of the program … bring a rich and integrative perspective to Jewish schools.”31 Since 2000, the Jewish Teacher Education Program has been supported by the Koschitzky Chair in Jewish Education, first held by Alex Pomson. The chair holder designate in 2011 is Laura Wiseman. As the foregoing makes evident, since its inception the Mercaz has been an increasingly invaluable resource for Toronto educators and stu31 Alex Pomson, Michael Brown, and Sydney Eisen, Teaching Teachers (Toronto: Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, 2000), 8. — 193 —

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dents. It has been instrumental in coordinating activities, planning, and research, training and helping teachers, principals, and lay people to create an unusually variegated and multi-dimensional educational “system.” And it served a population equal to that of a small city, demonstrably committed to providing a superior education for its young people. And yet, in the spring of 2009, the UJA/Federation, the parent body of the Mercaz, dismissed most Mercaz employees including the director and shuttered the Centre. No consultations with the board of directors of the Mercaz or with the schools it served preceded the closing; no notice of the impending step was given, nor have reasons ever been offered to the public. The closing came, moreover, less than two years after the restructuring and upgrading of the agency in response to the recommendations of a high-level task force convened by the UJA/Federation itself. Assurances by the lay chair of the UJA/Federation that the closing was not related to budget constraints made the step seem all the more portentous to parents, children, educators, and the general public.32 A caretaker was appointed to oversee some of the ongoing, public, but less-important activities of the Mercaz; a committee was struck to consider options for the future, and vague promises were made about the constitution of a new central education agency.33 Only after almost three years had passed was it announced that UJA/Federation was constituting a new “Centre for Jewish Education.” Its executive director, however, was not to be an educator, but a long serving executive of the Federation with experience in corporate affairs. The associate director was to be a person with experience in supplemental schools who had been the caretaker of the truncated agency since 2009. Although the communiqué announcing the changes spoke of “building capacity through collaborative community leadership,” inevitably doubts about the nature of the organized community’s commitment to education linger.34 On the other hand, the large number of children enrolled in day 32 David Koschitzky, “Streamlining Mercaz Frees up Cash for Education,” Canadian Jewish News, April 2 2009. 33 See Paul Shaviv, Letter to Community Leaders, June 16 2009. Shaviv, who has been head of school since 1998 at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, chaired a small committee appointed by UJA/Federation to consider the future of a central education committee. See also, “Jewish Education Services: Questions and Answers,” an advertisement of UJA/Federation, Canadian Jewish News, March 19 2009. 34 Annette Davis, email announcement distributed widely to members of the Toronto community, January 31 2012. — 194 —

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schools, the variety of schools, and the extraordinary sums of money the UJA/Federation spends on tuition subsidies and now camp tuition subsidies, as well (roughly 19% of the total funds raised), point to a very substantial ongoing community commitment to Jewish education. Governance As the foregoing suggests, another shift under way in the Toronto Jewish community in 2011 relates to the governance of the community. The shift is reflected in the structure, the tone of communications, the emphasis placed on various activities—especially Israel advocacy and the fight against antisemitism—and in other ways. To provide a context for the recent changes, it is necessary to review some of the earlier stages of communal organization. At the turn of the twentieth century, Toronto had a very small Jewish community. In all of Canada there were only 16,401 Jews in 1901, about a third of whom lived in the province of Ontario, most of those in what would later be the GTA. As a result of conditions in Europe, a somewhat open Canadian immigration policy, and confusion about the geography of North America (not a few immigrants thought Canada was a part of the United States), the Jewish population grew rapidly in the succeeding decades. By 1931, there were 156,726 Jews in Canada, of whom 46,751 lived in Toronto and its environs.35 Mostly poor and mainly first- or second-generation immigrants or their children, Toronto Jews were in desperate need of a range of social services in the early decades of the twentieth century. Initial efforts at organizing Jewish social services in Toronto were, like those in other North American Jewish communities, chaotic, and the organizations thus formed often competed with one another. In many of the larger American centres, federations of Jewish charities were coming into existence in the turn-of-the-century years. In Canada the Federation of Zionist Societies, with affiliates across the country, had begun to act as a national coordinating and representative organization soon after its inception in 1897. Local communities, howev35 Population figures gleaned from the decennial Canada census can be found in Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of Jews in Canada in the 1930s, new edition edited by Morton Weinfeld (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), passim. — 195 —

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er, remained unorganized. In 1911, the first steps were taken to bring together a number of Jewish charitable organizations in Toronto. The next year, the Free Burial, the Free Nursery, Hachnosis Orchim, and other organizations joined together to become the Associated Hebrew Charities of Toronto. A loose confederation used mostly for information sharing, the Associated Charities gave way in 1916 to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, a joint effort of the pre-existing community and the new immigrants designed to bring order to fund-raising, charity distribution, and other activities of the community. Like its predecessor, the Federation was an inclusive organization. It claimed to respect the autonomy of its constituent organizations, although it tried to impose what was then known as “scientific philanthropy” on them with regard to the use of funds and the maintenance of facilities.36 In contrast to Jewish charitable organizations elsewhere in North America, the Toronto Federation remained quite weak for many years, unable to raise the funds it needed, unable to exert control over its constituents, and unable to entice many groups to affiliate with it. Archie Bennett, a community leader since his student days at Queen’s University, remarked in 1926 that the failures of the Torontonians reflected “the indefiniteness of our communal character.” In the United States, he observed, Reform was dominant, and in Montreal Orthodoxy was most powerful. In each instance, communities were able to unite in support of communal ventures. In Toronto, “reform was weak and orthodoxy … in search of means of adapting to North American life. Consequently, the … community was still fluid, diverse and immature, unable to think in terms of communal action.”37 Looking back, one might view diversity and democracy as positive virtues. Unquestionably, however, the shortage of funds desperately needed for education, health, and welfare was harmful to individuals and to the community. By early 1937, the blatant and increasing antisemitism faced by Canadian Jews, as well as the growing menace in Europe, helped convince Toronto Jews of the need for solidarity. A new and stronger communal framework, the United Jewish Welfare Fund of Toronto (UJWF), came into being, and a measure of unity, so long elusive, seemed now to have 36 Stephen A. Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), 157, 259-67, and elsewhere. 37 Ibid., 318. — 196 —

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been achieved. The UJWF incorporated the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies together with a number of organizations which had remained outside the Federation. Among the latter were Mount Sinai Hospital; the Jewish Centre of Educational and Communal Activities (including the Hebrew Free School, which, as noted above, had been forced to close for a time because of lack of funds in 1935); the United Palestine Fund (later to become the United Jewish Appeal and the United Israel Appeal); the Joint Distribution Committee, an American organization formed during World War I to provide funds to Jewish communities in distress elsewhere; the Old Folks Home (now the Baycrest Hospital and Home for the Aged); Mizrachi, the Orthodox Zionist organization; ORT, an international organization that supports Jewish vocational and technical schools; the Hebrew Free Loan Society; and the Toronto branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress, which by then had largely supplanted the Zionist Organization of Canada as the representative voice of Canadian Jewry country-wide.38 The new organization, like the former, was inclusive, and all of its constituents retained a voice, although not necessarily an equal voice. That structure remained essentially intact for the next three decades. In the years since 1967, the governing framework of Toronto Jewry—of Canadian Jewry as a whole, in fact—has been steadily and radically transformed. The clearest description of what has happened to the Canadian Jewish community, in general, has been provided by Professor Harold M. Waller of McGill University. Although Waller focuses on the national community, the implications for Toronto can easily be extrapolated. Much of what follows is based on his works.39 Perhaps the greatest change has been the shift of power from the UJWF and national organizations to community federations (in our case, the UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto) and the federation of federations (the United Israel Appeal Federations of Canada—UIAFC). With that shift has come the concomitant diminution or elimination of 38 Ibid., 338-39. 39 Among other sources, see Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World (Lanham, MD: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and University Press of America, 1990), co-authored by Daniel J. Elazar; “Organized Canadian Jewry: Past and Present,” Canadian Jewish News, March 8 2007; “Organized Canadian Jewry: ‘CJC’s Glory Days are Long Past,’” Canadian Jewish News, March 152007; “The Evolution of Canadian Jewish Advocacy: CIJA Shifts the Focus,” Canadian Jewish News, March 22 2007; “The Canadian Jewish Polity,” unpublished article, 2010. — 197 —

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the power of national organizations, chiefly the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and its local branches, but also B’nai B’rith and the Canadian Zionist Federation (formerly the Zionist Organization of Canada). From 1933, the CJC had been the main advocacy body of Canadian Jewry, its representative, public voice on national and foreign issues, funded mostly by Samuel Bronfman. With the death of Bronfman in 1971, Congress was left without funding and became dependent on the federations. There was more at play after 1971, however, than CJC’s loss of its chief funder. After World War II, local Jewish federations in Canada followed the pattern established by American federations, gradually usurping the roles of almost all other Jewish groups: fund raising and allocations, determining community priorities, performing advocacy and lobbying for Israel and against antisemitism, representing the Jewish community, and taking on other tasks. Whereas the CJC, despite being funded mostly by one man, had maintained a measure of democracy through its triennial plenum with delegates from each constituent organization, federations, including the UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto, have no mechanism of public accountability. This is all the more problematic in light of the emasculation of the national organizations, which might have served as counterweights. For a short time, the Toronto community governing structure was known as the Toronto Jewish Congress, giving the appearance that the veteran Congress had the upper hand. That that was not the case became apparent with the name change to UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto. For a somewhat longer time, the CJC, the CZF, and B’nai B’rith were co-sponsors of the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC), the national community’s Israel advocacy organization. But the CIC was abolished in 2004 and replaced by CIJA (the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy), essentially a creature of the federations. The CJC, the Quebec-Israel Committee, and National Jewish Campus Life were all made subservient to CIJA. In 2011, CIJA was replaced by another, more powerful organization, named temporarily CIJA 2.0 and then the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Apparently the word, “Canadian,” was dropped from the title because it resonates poorly with the non-Jewish public in Quebec.) At the same time, the venerable CJC was abolished, as were the CanadaIsrael Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, the University Out— 198 —

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reach Committee, and National Jewish Campus Life. Their employees, many of them long-time veterans of Jewish communal service, and lay volunteers were dismissed, although some employees will apparently be retained by the successor organization as “department heads.” The new CIJA will “create policy and messaging for ‘local partners’ throughout the country’s Jewish communities.”40 Its funding will be provided by the UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto (50%), the Federation/CJA of Montreal (30%), and the eight smaller Canadian federations (20%). Effectively, then, it is a “Toronto-based organization”41 under the control of a rather small group of donors and professionals. There are, of course, advantages to the unified community structure that has emerged, as Waller notes. Speaking with one voice is usually more convincing than with multiple or conflicting voices, one fund-raising campaign can be more efficient and sometimes more effective than competing drives, and a central allocations body can have a sense of overall priorities lacking in a narrower committee. On the other hand, as Lord Acton noted, “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is not a comment on individuals, but on systems that lack checks and balances. Shimon Fogel, the director of the new CIJA, has claimed that the new community structure “enshrine[s] grassroots empowerment as a definitive operating principle.”42 He was probably more accurate in an earlier statement defining the restructuring as a “top-down” approach.43 The concentration of power means, moreover, that many people feel (and are) voiceless, without a means to express dissent or assent, resulting in passive withdrawal. What may follow is an active disaffection, the weakened identity and sense of commitment that have sparked the “continuity crisis” of Jewish communities in North America and elsewhere. The danger is particularly great with a group like the Jews, who tend to be 40 Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf, “CIC Exec Named to Lead New Agency,” Canadian Jewish News, December 23 2010; idem, “New Era in Community Advocacy to Begin,” Canadian Jewish News, June 30 2011. 41 Janice Arnold, “UIA Federations Canada Gets New President,” Canadian Jewish News, June 30 2011. 42 Shimon Fogel, “No Time to Lose Confronting Many Pressing Problems,” Canadian Jewish News, September 8 2011. 43 Quoted in Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf, “New Era in Community Advocacy to Begin,” Canadian Jewish News, June 30 2011. For a forceful critique of the restructuring, see Sally F. Zerker, “The Restructuring of the Communal Advocacy: Why is the New Way Better than the Old Way?” Canadian Jewish News, August 25 2011. — 199 —

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highly educated and to earn above-average incomes.44 A recent U.S. study of Jewish young adult volunteerism indicates that “most young Jews do some kind of volunteer service, but few do it through Jewish agencies or connect it to Jewish values.”45 And many of those who do volunteer through Jewish agencies seek out non-establishment organizations like the New Israel Fund, which supports liberal and leftist organizations in Israel, and Ve’ahavta, a Toronto service organization that works with people in need around the world from Guyana and Haiti to Africa, as well as Israel. The founder of Ve’ahavta, Avrum Rosensweig, and some of its staff are engaged Jews, but the volunteers include disaffected Jews and non-Jews, as well as Orthodox and other practicing Jews.46 There have been other phenomena associated with the shifts in governance. One is a change in the style of fund raising. Toronto UJA/ Federation and its predecessors, like many Jewish organizations in Canada that depend on donations, were once rather low-key and lowcost in administration and fund-raising, relying largely on personal approaches and public addresses by people of substance. Since the turn of the century and perhaps before, the annual UJA campaign in Toronto, which now stretches over most of the year, sponsors a number of flashy, frothy, costly, “American-style” events to energize donors and volunteers. The wind-up of the 2011 campaign, for example, starred Mike Reiss, the producer and writer of “The Simpsons,” speaking on the topic, “The Simpsons, Comedy and Judaism.” Although the event was scheduled for five days after an ad appeared in the Canadian Jewish News, readers were advised, “TICKETS SELLING QUICKLY!,” which suggests that they probably were not.47 Donations to UJA/Fed in 2010, a recession year, declined somewhat to $63m from $64m in 2009, although the drop was smaller than similar drops were in many other North American communities.48 The 2012 campaign, starring Jason Al44 See Morton Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else ... But Different (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001), 104, and elsewhere. 45 See Frances Kraft, “Young Jews Volunteer But Don’t Necessarily Connect it to Judaism, Canadian Jewish News, July 7 2011. 46 See Jared Lindzon, “Ve’ahavta Writing Contest Helps Turn Lives Around,” Canadian Jewish News, May 26 2011; Jenny Hazan, “Ve’ahavta Shines at Volunteering in Israel,” Canadian Jewish News, December 2 2010. See also the regular column in the Canadian Jewish News written by Rosensweig, “The Urban Writer.” 47 See the advertisement in the Canadian Jewish News, February 10 2011. 48 Frances Kraft, “Changes Underway at Toronto Federation,” Canadian Jewish News, July 14 2011. — 200 —

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exander of “Seinfeld,” kicked off on August 23, 2011. In structure and style, then, UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto has become rather Americanized, not surprising for a constituent of the (overwhelmingly American) Jewish Federations of North America, but it has also become more authoritarian and less democratic. It has remained inclusive, careful, for example, to embrace Kulanu Toronto, a Jewish gay and lesbian group,49 but at the same time its leadership has become socially and economically more exclusive. Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg, once the rabbi of Beth Tzedec, Toronto’s largest synagogue, saw the handwriting on the wall as early as 1971. Perhaps referring to his own congregants, he wrote: There is a new breed of “fund-raisers,” the younger men who have principally identified with the Jewish community and with Israel by means of their participation as leaders and managers of the large-scale and high-powered campaigns now [believed to be] required to support Jewish life…. Some of these fund-raising “technocrats” are impatient with what they consider to be the duplication of effort in the Jewish community. They seek to merge and to amalgamate the central institutions … some want to restructure the Congress and to combine it … with local, central Welfare Funds, perhaps ultimately to create a chain of Jewish Community Councils, in which fund-raising [sic], community affairs, Jewish education, public relations, and cultural activities might be managed by a single, central organization.50 Were he still alive, Rosenberg might cite in evidence the concentration of power at the UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto, the creation of CIJA 2.0, and the mega-building projects planned or under way in the 49 See, for example, Justine Apple, “On Side with Pride,” Canadian Jewish News, June 30 2011; “Jewish Community Marches with Pride,” Canadian Jewish News, July 7 2011, and many other sources. One viewpoint that would not be countenanced is opposition to Israel. The Winchevsky Centre was expelled from the UJA/Federation in 2011 for hosting a speaker representing the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, who was also a Holocaust survivor. (“UJA, CJC respond to Winchevsky after Severing Ties,” Canadian Jewish News, March 3 2011.) 50 Stuart E. Rosenberg, The Jewish Community of Canada, vol. 2 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971), 201, quoted in Elazar and Waller, Consensus, 164. — 201 —

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community in 2011, although his former synagogue, Beth Tzedec, Holy Blossom Temple, and the community itself have scaled down their renovation and building plans very considerably in the face of difficulties in raising the necessary funds.51 An Old/New Focus: Battling Antisemitism Education and governance, then, are two areas of Toronto’s communal life that reflect changes under way. The heightened focus on antisemitism is yet another. In fact, fighting antisemitism and especially antiIsrael sentiment and propaganda is the rationale given for consolidating community resources and power in the new CIJA. This is a battle that many Jews had assumed was successfully concluded years ago. It should be said at the outset that this author recognizes that antisemitism has been a serious problem in Canada during certain historical periods, especially during the Holocaust, when the country was less open to Jewish refugees than any other Western country.52 At present, however, the phenomenon appears to have declined radically in Canada. In the multicultural society of today, Jews seem to be well integrated, and little residue remains of the discrimination once experienced by them in many, perhaps most, areas of Canadian life. Jews have been members of the federal cabinet since the days of Pierre Trudeau. Others have served as provincial premier, lieutenant governor, and justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. One of the sitting justices in 2012, Madame Justice Rosalie Abella, is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and was herself born in a displaced persons camp in Europe. Anti-Jewish feeling seems even milder in Toronto than in many other places in Canada. The 2010 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents: Patterns of Prejudice in Canada published by B’nai B’rith Canada and the League for Human Rights, two organizations that seldom downplay antisemitism, reports that antisemitic incidents were relatively few in the Toronto region in 2010. Only 39.7% of all such incidents in Canada occurred in that city, which has some 50% of the country’s Jewish population. 51 See Rita Poliakov, “Schools and Shuls Change Lebovic Campus Plans,” Canadian Jewish News, August 19 2010. 52 The seminal work of Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, Publishers, 1982) discusses the era in detail. — 202 —

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Violence, moreover, was involved in only 1.6% of the Toronto region incidents, as opposed to 2.5% of those in Montreal and 28.6% of those in the Quebec region.53 While even one incident of antisemitism is too many, of course, there does not seem to be reason for alarm in Toronto. On the other hand, there are indications that antisemitism, often submerged or repressed, persists; most definitely, anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise, and many believe that it is little more than a mask for antisemitism. The Audit does depict a steady rise over recent years in antisemitic incidents in the country as a whole, as did the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism in its report released in July 2011. The coalition, which is allied with the international Inter-parliamentary Committee for Combating Antisemitism founded in 2009, is chaired by Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, the former Attorney-General of Canada, and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Its report claims that “Canada is turning into a hotbed of antisemitic activity, especially on university campuses.”54 There is ample evidence that universities are, indeed, a trouble spot, although in years gone by antisemitism in institutions of higher learning was certainly more explicit and more virulent than it is now.55 But universities are cause for special concern. In North America, most young Jews attend university, and Jews have long considered a university degree to be the key to integration and getting ahead socially and economically. Universities are also the place where the future leaders of the country are nurtured, and the attitudes they learn there are likely to persist for a lifetime. In recent years, highly publicized antisemitic incidents have occurred at universities in Britain, the United States, and Canada.56 A list of dramatic recent events with anti-Israel, and often anti-Semitic, overtones at Canadian universities will illustrate the point: a demon53 2010 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents: Patterns of Prejudice in Canada, prepared by Ruth Klein and Anita Bromberg (Toronto: B’nai Brith Canada and the League for Human Rights, 2011), 16. 54 Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf, “Antisemitism Rising in Canada, Parliamentary Inquiry Says,” Canadian Jewish News, July 14 2011. 55 See this author’s “On Campus in the Thirties: The Struggle Against Antipathy and Indifference,” in the forthcoming Nazi Antisemitism, Canadian Responses to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. 56 See, among other sources, Stephen H. Norwood, Antisemitism in the Contemporary American University: Parallels with the Nazi Era (Jerusalem: The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011). — 203 —

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stration that succeeded in preventing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Montreal’s Concordia University in 2002;57 annual Israel Apartheid Week events, which started at the University of Toronto and had spread to 40 or more locations around the world by 2010;58 the harassment of pro-Israel students at Ottawa’s Carleton University in March 2011;59 strident and vocal anti-Israel and antisemitic agitation at Queen’s University in Kingston led by the (student) rector, also in 2011;60 the acceptance of an MA thesis, “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education,” deemed by a number of professors and others to be largely anti-Israel propaganda without academic merit, at the University of Toronto; at the same institution, the refusal of some social work students—without opposition from their instructor—to participate in a field study and practicum at the Baycrest Centre for the Aged, because it was a Jewish institution;61 and a number of events at York University in Toronto, this author’s university, including the defense by the student newspaper of murders at an Israeli yeshiva in 2008;62 an incident in February 2009 at which a number of Jewish students holding a press conference to explain their opposition to the student government were held hostage in the Student Centre offices of Hillel and had to be rescued by police; a conference in June 2009, “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace,” the underlying goal of which was the end of the Jewish state; and a number of other events profoundly disturbing to Jewish students and faculty and to members of the Jewish community. It is not possible to examine all of these incidents here. Perhaps the 57 There was voluminous coverage of this event and its aftermath in the press. A film by journalist Martin Himel, “Confrontation @ Concordia,” was shown on Global TV in May and June, 2003. 58 Nora Gold, “Be happy it’s Adar? Not Easy when Purim Coincides with Israeli Apartheid Week,” (sic), Canadian Jewish News, March 4 2010. 59 Sheri Shefa, “Pro-Israel Students Harassed at Carleton,” Canadian Jewish News, March 3 2011, and other sources. 60 “Queen’s Students Overwhelmingly Vote to Impeach Anti-Israel Rector Nick Day,” National Post, March 23 2011, and other sources. 61 Paul Lungen, “U of T’s Standards Questioned in Approving Thesis,” and Len Rudner, “Shoddy, Racist ‘Scholarship’ at University of Toronto,” both in the Canadian Jewish News, December 16 2010, and other sources. It may be noted that both the student and her thesis supervisor are of Jewish origin. The incident at the School of Social Work and the critique of Professor Ernie Lightman are described in www.aish.com/jw/s/Anti-Semitism_@_University_of_Toronto.html. 62 “Contributor” Lama Aggad, op ed, “Jewish Attack Not a Surprise,” Excalibur, “York University’s Community Newspaper,” March 24 2008. — 204 —

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best approach is to examine in some detail a few of the York events and the response of the Jewish community and even a minister of the federal government to them. Although they may well be more numerous than those at any other single university, and they have certainly received the most publicity, the incidents at York are nonetheless indicative of the general atmosphere on campuses across the country, and the reactions of the Jewish community there are also not altogether different from the reactions of other Jewish communities to events elsewhere. What is particular to York are the vehemence of the attacks on the university and the latter’s inept responses. York is my focus here, also, because I know it best. I concentrate on some events in 2009, because distance from them allows for better perspective. On February 11, 2009, a group, most of whom were Jewish student members of Hillel opposed to the pro-Palestinian politicking of the York Federation of Students, called a press conference to publicize their views. They were quickly overwhelmed by a group shouting pro-Palestinian slogans and, according to the president of Hillel, shouting personal insults denigrating Jews at him.63 Feeling “intimidated, frightened, tense, and nervous,” according to students’ accounts of the event, “unsafe,” according to a university adjudicator, the students withdrew to Hillel’s lounge in the Student Centre. Barricaded, they remained inside until escorted out by York Security and the Toronto Police.64 Following the event, protests from students and faculty, the press, the general community, and the Jewish community poured in. Professor Gil Troy of McGill University, a regular columnist in the Canadian Jewish News who usually has the pulse of the community, suggested that professors should “don their multicoloured academic gowns” and escort students fearful for their safety, and should use their classes as bully pulpits to preach “the centrality of civility to campus life.”65 Mitchell Bard, executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE)—Israel on Campus, wrote in the Jerusalem Post of having spoken at York and elsewhere “to groups of energetic pro-Israel students.” But that comment was more than balanced by his mention of “the angry mob” at York in February and what he considered the cowardly pro63 James Cowan, “York Jewish students claim intimidation,” National Post, February 3 2009. 64 “Two York students sanctioned over confrontation,” Y File – York’s [Official] Daily Bulletin, May 262009. “Students penalized for anti-Semitic slurs,” Canadian Jewish News, May 28 2009. 65 Canadian Jewish News, March 4 2009. — 205 —

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Israel professors at all universities who allegedly failed to stand up for their students.66 Only in late May, almost four months after the event, did a committee struck by York’s president, Mamdouh Shoukri, issue a report fining one student, Krisna Saravanamuttu, president of the York Federation of Students, $150, and sanctioning a second, Jesse Zimmerman, without a fine.67 By then, another event that portrayed York as anti-Israel and perhaps antisemitic had overtaken the imagination of students and the public at large. Two professors at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, together with colleagues from Queen’s University, were planning a conference ostensibly to further peace in the Middle East. The conference, scheduled for late June, was titled, “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace.” It received official sanction as part of York’s 50th anniversary celebrations. When publicity for the conference began to circulate, a number of Jewish studies professors met with the conference organizers from York, both groups quite obviously people of good will, but neither of them having any academic expertise in Middle Eastern history or affairs. The intervention was not successful; the final conference program was heavily weighted towards anti-Israel speakers, most of them with no relevant academic credentials. A senior colleague, a member of the psychology department with no connection to Jewish studies, who attended the sessions, reported that they bore no resemblance to any academic conference he had ever attended: anyone with a good word to say about Israel was shouted down; everyone had strong opinions, but no one had done research on the topic; and one professor from Haifa University with impeccable left-wing credentials was called “insane,” when she tried to explain some Israeli policies. Protests against the conference began well before the scheduled starting date. The UJA/Federation of Greater Toronto and the earlier incarnation of CIJA issued a joint statement saying that the conference was skewed toward “a solution” to the Middle East conflict “that would spell the end of the Jewish state,” and argued the inappropriateness of its inclusion in the official anniversary celebration of York. President Shoukri’s reply was that it would “have been a fundamental violation of academic freedom” not to allow the conference “because of its subject 66 Mitchell Bard, “A NEW WAR ON CAMPUS?” Jerusalem Post, March 22 2009. 67 Ibid. — 206 —

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matter.”68 Gerald Steinberg, chair of the political science department at Bar Ilan University, whose field is the Middle East, demolished Shoukri’s contentions, juxtaposing the conference and the events of the previous February. In a widely circulated email, he spoke of the conference’s “context of vulgar anti-Israel activities and physical intimidation of Jewish students at York.”69 He noted that there had been ample warning that the conference program was seriously flawed and biased, that it was not academic in any sense other than its venue, that the problem was not the topic, but rather its one-sidedness, and that making the conference an official event of the 50th anniversary celebrations gave that one-sidedness the imprimatur of the university. When the head of the radical right Jewish Defense League was threatened by the general counsel of the university with a trespassing charge for picketing on campus against the conference, he appealed to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.70 After the event, there was no let-up in the bad publicity for York. An interesting example is a letter to the Toronto Globe and Mail by Jonathan Mackenzie, a law student at Osgoode Hall. Replying to York’s chief communications officer, who had drawn a parallel between a conference at the university on Iran’s theocracy and the Israel/Palestine conference, Mackenzie noted that the Iran conference had not been sponsored by Osgoode Hall Law School and Queen’s University, nor did any of its speakers “question … Iran’s right to exist.”71 A less temperate letter in the Canadian Jewish News probably captured popular sentiment in the Jewish community better, although none of its members had attended the conference, since attendees had been carefully screened. The letter spoke of York’s absurd conference that lent an academic gloss [sic] to the “one-state solution,” that is, Israel’s extinction; [York’s] participating in Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual glob68 The statements of Shoukri and of UJA/Federation-CIJA are quoted in Sheri Shefa, “Groups Keep Pressure on York Ahead of Conference,” Canadian Jewish News, May 28 2009. 69 Gerald Steinberg, email circular letter, “York University vs. Israel: Academic Freedom or Academic Farce?” May 22 2009. Steinberg is also the executive director of NGO Monitor, a watchdog organization that keeps tabs on the anti-Israel activities of NGOs. 70 Shefa, “Groups.” 71 Jonathan Mackenzie, Toronto, “York University’s Reputation,” letter, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 27 2009. — 207 —

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al event … that purveys lies, smears and blood libels … with the aim of making Israel’s demise a moral necessity; a long list of [York] professors who push the Marxist/Islamist line about Israel being an alien colonialist, imperialist “occupier”; a university administration that seems at a loss at how to deal with “the screaming demonstrators” who too often populate York’s Vari Hall; a campus awash in splenetic Jew-hate/anti-Zionism such that Jewish students (some of whom I have spoken to personally) are afraid to identify themselves as Zionists. Some of these students were recently forced to barricade themselves in a classroom and await police rescue, because some of their … campus-mates seemed intent on throttling them.72 Letters, blogs, and other communications from individuals and organizations depicted York as a war zone, where Jewish students felt, and indeed were, unsafe. The postscript to the conference came in the fall of 2011, when the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a booklength report written by Jon Thompson on the conference and its implications for free speech on campus.73 The promo for the book describes Thompson, a retired professor of mathematics and statistics, as “a leading expert on freedom of speech.” According to the blurb, he “establishes the facts, provides a context for understanding it [sic], reveals the threats to freedom of expression, explores the meaning of academic freedom in Canada and makes a series of recommendations to advance academic freedom.”74 The report, however, is anything but “a dispassionate account.” Thompson defines Zionism as a movement born out of violence to Jews who acted out their trauma by doing violence to the Palestinians, and he avoids direct mention of Arab terrorism, including the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria. His fantasy “solution” to the ongoing conflict is that “Jews and Palestinians should live 72 Mindy Alter, Toronto, letter, Canadian Jewish News, July 16 2009. Alter is an inveterate writer of cranky letters to Toronto papers, mostly about the menace of Islamists and antisemites. 73 Jon Thompson, No Debate: The Israel Lobby and Free Speech at Canadian Universities (Toronto: James Lorimer, 2011). 74 CAUT email blurb advertising the book, www.caut.ca/pages.asp?page=1041 . — 208 —

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together in one secular, liberal multi-cultural state (as if a model for such a state existed anywhere … in the Arab world).” One may note, as well, that CAUT, the sponsor of the report and self-described defender of academic freedom, has refused to take a stand against the boycott of Israeli universities, unlike its American counterpart or the president of York University.75 To some at York, the rhetoric in the community seemed both hyperbolic and destructive, although they were also very critical of the university. Professors known as engaged Jews, staunch supporters of Israel, some of them kippah-wearers, and some of them heavily involved in urging administrative intervention to address the issues and behaviours roiling the campus and the community, were not consulted by the community, although students were. Faculty members were dismayed that community organizations seemed to be using the university as a football, less interested in solving the problems than in competing with each other to prove which could best rescue York’s Jewish students. Cooler voices with a larger perspective were occasionally heard. Rabbi Dow Marmur, the rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple, wrote in the Toronto Star that the “attempts that York University is reported to be making to promote civility in the Israeli-Palestinian debate” would “probably [prove] insufficient.” What was needed, he asserted, was “a national debate about the nature of higher education to determine what must be done to promote truth, assure openness and safeguard mutual respect.” The “free exchange of ideas” is essential, he averred, but so too is the prevention “of malicious and indiscriminate manifestations of prejudice.”76 President Shoukri opted for a less far-reaching solution to the incivility that characterized the “Israeli-Palestinian debate” on campus, and appointed a Task Force on Student Life, Learning and Community. Task force members were to be students and faculty members; its chair was Professor Patrick Monahan, a long-time law professor and the new provost of the university. The task force terms of reference were to examine the “serious concerns” raised “over whether our most cherished values and commitments are being undermined by excessive conflict, 75 Martin Lockshin, “Book on Academic Freedom Attacks Jewish Community,” Canadian Jewish News, December 22 2011, 17. 76 Dow Marmur, “Educating a Generation of Jihadists,” Toronto Star, April 6 2009. — 209 —

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intolerance and even intimidation.”77 In response, the UJA/Federation, CIJA, Hillel at York, and Hasbara at York (the last an organization that aims to “educate students and staff on campus about Israel’s political, historical, and social realities, and to advocate for Israel’s well being”)78 formed the Commission on the Quality of Life for Jewish Students at York University. The purpose of the Commission was to “offer Jewish community members a chance to have their voices heard on the issue.” No faculty members sat on the commission, and its chair had no firsthand knowledge of York. It submitted a report with suggestions to the Task Force in June.79 In September 2009, the Task Force delivered its report. Tepid praise came from members of the Jewish community Commission, but Commission members, as well as B’nai B’rith and Hasbara@York, noted that the task force avoided explicit mention of Jewish students and had consulted the anti-Israel Students Against Israeli Apartheid but not Hasbara. Professor Monahan expressed hope that the recommendations for beefed-up security, better enforcement of existing rules, and the creation of more meeting spaces for students would improve the atmosphere at the university.80 Unfortunately, the prediction of Rabbi Marmur proved correct. The recommendations of the Task Force were not embraced energetically. The university was somewhat quieter, but the palpable friction did not disappear. Hostility to York was frequently expressed in the Jewish community and by its political allies. On September 13, Jason Kenney, the federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, spoke publicly about “York University, where we saw … what is reminiscent of the ancient pogroms directed at the Jewish student community organizations.”81 This was electioneering hyperbole by a prominent member of the Conservative Party, which was actively courting Jews and other “ethnic” voters. York Jewish studies professors Eric Lawee 77 Quoted in “York Wants More Civil Israeli-Palestinian Debate,” Toronto Globe and Mail, March 16 2009. 78 http://hasbara.ca/ 79 Sheri Shefa, “Report Urges York to Clamp Down on Intolerance,” Canadian Jewish News, June 25 2009. 80 Idem, “Jewish Groups Criticize ‘Omissions’ in York Report,” Canadian Jewish News, September 10 2009. 81 Quoted in Eric Lawee and Martin Lockshin, “York has Problems, But Not Pogroms,” Canadian Jewish News, October 12009. — 210 —

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and Martin Lockshin bristled at the equation of the “verbal abuse” experienced by some Jewish students at York to the “rape, pillage, and murder” of Jews in past eras.82 The comparison resonated well in the Jewish community, however. In the elections that were soon to be held, such rhetoric would help Kenney’s party capture a number of Toronto ridings with large Jewish populations that previously had been Liberal strongholds represented by MPs traditionally sensitive to Jewish concerns (Ken Dryden and Joe Volpe, for example). At York and in the community, the pot continued to boil. In February 2010, Hasbara stated that students at its information table in Vari Hall had been physically attacked. Police could not verify the facts; no charges were laid, but the incident (or non-incident) registered with the Jewish community.83 In April of the same year, a full page “OPEN LETTER FROM YORK UNIVERSITY” appeared in the Canadian Jewish News, signed by the chair of the Board of Governors, Paul Cantor, the chair of Senate, Celia Haig-Brown, and President Mamdouh Shoukri. The letter vigorously challenged the accusation “of harbouring and tolerating racist and specifically anti-Semitic behavior … as an assault on our integrity and on the integrity of the members of the York community.” Acknowledging the necessity of providing a safe campus, the letter argued for the “free exchange of ideas” and claimed that York had “demonstrated … the will to act.”84 It is doubtful that many in the Jewish community were persuaded. Some months later, George Galloway, the outspoken, anti-Israel British parliamentarian and propagandist, spoke at York and other Canadian campuses. Denunciations from campus and Jewish community groups began well in advance of the scheduled talks. The rabbi of a small, Toronto synagogue said in an email letter to his congregants that by allowing Galloway to speak, President Shoukri “again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus” [sic].85 The rabbi of the city’s largest Orthodox congregation picked up his colleague’s comments and 82 Ibid. 83 Rita Poliakov, “York Security Called to Hasbara Event,” Canadian Jewish News, February 11 2010. 84 Paul Cantor, Chair, Board of Governors, Celia Haig-Brown, Chair of Senate, and Mamdouh Shoukri, President, “OPEN LETTER FROM YORK UNIVERSITY,” Canadian Jewish News, April 1 2010. 85 Quoted in Laura Strickler, “Rabbi, York U Officials Meet in Wake of Lawsuit Threat,” Canadian Jewish News, December 23 2010. — 211 —

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circulated them in his own congregational newsletter. The remarks then went viral in the Jewish community. The university’s response aggravated the situation: the chief counsel threatened a libel suit. The university backed down after the rabbi apologized. The apology, however, noted that, “Under the guise of free speech and academic expression you have a continued normalization of the antisemitic ideal that Israel has no right to exist”(sic).86 The rabbi had clearly won the day. In his Canadian Jewish News column, Gil Troy acknowledged that the “antisemitism jab was inaccurate, even incendiary,” and that President Shoukri is “a decent man with a tough job.” But he also called the university counsel “foolish” for threatening the rabbi, and noted that “York has become a flashpoint.” Students, he observed accurately, “have second thoughts about enrolling,” and employers “first ask job applicants what’s happening on campus rather than what they’re learning in class.” Moreover, he asserted, “York’s core values … [are getting] trampled in the crossfire … [between the Jewish community and the university, while] the true enemies of civility and scholarship flourish.”87 As noted earlier, there can be no question that the administration of York has handled incidents of antisemitism on campus and the disgruntlement of students, faculty, and the community poorly. On the other hand, individuals and the organized Jewish community have acted irresponsibly. York has been a valuable community resource. Its Jewish studies programs are arguably the largest in the country and among the very best. York is one of the only public universities in the Diaspora which offers courses in which Hebrew is the language of instruction, and the university has a particularly strong presence in Canadian-Jewish studies and Holocaust studies. The first Holocaust course at a Canadian university was offered at York, and the innovative Mark and Gail Appel Program in Holocaust and Anti-Racism Education for future teachers is a York program that has gained international recognition. On campus are a kosher restaurant and a vibrant Hillel organization. Jewish Studies faculty members have always played an active role in the Jewish community, and among York alumni are more than a few Jewish community lay leaders and professionals. All of this has been put at risk by the intemperate and incessant attacks on the university by organizations 86 Ibid. 87 Gil Troy, “How Did It Get to That Point?” Canadian Jewish News, December 23 2010. — 212 —

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and individuals, because future students are fearful about the quality of education and student life, because potential supporters fear their money will be wasted, and for many other reasons. Antisemitism should certainly be fought wherever it manifests itself, but a valuable community resource should not be laid waste in the battle.88 The “battle of York University” should raise questions about the wisdom of viewing antisemitism as the central focus of the community and most certainly about the tactics employed to fight it. As the head of the new CIJA, Shimon Fogel, concedes, Jews in 2011 enjoy a very “fortunate position” everywhere in Canada.89 Accentuating the positive might be a more fruitful approach to organized Jewish community life than attempting to eliminate the negative. Conclusion This essay has attempted to survey three aspects of contemporary Jewish life in Toronto in which can be felt the winds of change. Outside observers who come to know the Toronto community consider it remarkable and fortunate, as do many insiders. It is characterized by strong institutions, a supportive multicultural general society, traditional Jewish values—although some of these are less firm than only a short time ago—a fairly healthy demographic, economic prosperity, and strong support for Jewish communities elsewhere, especially in Israel. In contradistinction to its weak sense of self in 1926, as noted by a community leader quoted above, today it is relatively confident and should have a very strong self-image. To be sure, Toronto Jewry, like any living organism, is a work in progress. Change has occurred recently in the critical areas of education, governance, and community focus, not all of it positive, in the eyes of this writer. And shifts are occurring in other areas of communal life. Nothing can remain the same, however, especially in a world that is changing as rapidly as ours. With luck and good will, the problems of Toronto 88 See “A Call to the Community and York U’s Administration,” Canadian Jewish News, April 2 2009, in which eight Jewish studies professors at York tried to make these same points. See also, Ruth Lockshin, “Attacking York Could Harm Toronto Jewry,” Canadian Jewish News, March 25 2010. Lockshin argues that York has played an important role in providing a place where Jews of university age from all backgrounds have been able to study together and learn to respect each other as members of the same community with common interests. 89 Fogel, “No time to lose.” — 213 —

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Jewry—some of them quite serious—that have been manifested during the recent era of change will be conquered, perhaps to be replaced by others. Based on past experience, however, one can reasonably hope that the community will emerge strengthened and better able to meet the challenges that surely lie in its future. Michael Brown

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XIV Jewish Life in Ontario Outside of the Metropolis1

Introduction Investigators of Jewish life in Ontario have, for the most part, focused on the experiences of Jews in major cities like Toronto. Recently, however, a few books have been produced documenting the history of Jews in the mid-sized communities of Windsor, Ottawa, and London. Despite the fact that the majority of Ontario’s Jews lived in Toronto,2 Ontario possessed a large number of thriving communities that sprang up during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across the province, and in a number of cases they persist today.3 Due to major differences in population size and infrastructure, Jewish life varied tremendously between large communities such as Hamilton—which was the sixthlargest Jewish community in Canada during the early 1950s with 3,236 Jews—and small ones like Owen Sound, which had only seventy-nine Jewish residents at that time. In the mid-twentieth century there were four communities which would be considered large, with close to or over one thousand Jews (Hamilton, Ottawa, Windsor, and London), and several like Kingston, Kitchener, and St. Catharines, which would be considered medium-sized, with over five hundred Jewish inhabitants. The remainder of the communities, around forty-four at that time, were small. Despite the differences that existed between these communities in terms of the local economies, religious infrastructure and cultural 1 I would like to thank a number of individuals who have contributed to this piece. They include Melissa Caza from the Ontario Jewish Archives, for providing me with the research materials that were required from the OJA, and my father, Stephen Scheinberg, and the editor of this work, Ira Robinson, who both provided invaluable editorial assistance which served in significantly enhancing this article. 2  According to a study conducted by Louis Rosenberg relying on data from the 1931 census, there were 45,305 Jews living in Toronto, out of 58,802 within the province as a whole. There were therefore 13,497 Jews living outside of Toronto during this time. See Eli Gottesman, ed., Canadian Jewish Reference Book and Directory (Canadian Jewish Literary Foundation, 1963), 169-173. 3  When comparing the number of Jewish communities situated across Canada in 1931, Ontario clearly had the largest number. Within Ontario there were 51 communities outside of Toronto, 36 of which would be considered small communities, since they had 20 to 1,000 Jewish residents. Quebec, in turn, had the second-largest number of small communities outside of the city, with 15 fitting into this definition. Ibid. — 215 —

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backgrounds of the residents, there were some common challenges that all Ontario Jews faced, such as dealing with antisemitism, raising children with strong Jewish identities, and maintaining synagogues and communities in the midst of declining membership and support. This study examines the diverse experiences of Jews who carved out lives outside of big-city Toronto, revealing how they developed, evolved over time, and coped with challenges, and finally, it reveals the status and prospects of these communities today. The Early Settlers The first Jews began settling in Upper Canadian towns in the 1840s. These early settlers were drawn to these locales for a variety of reasons—adventure, commerce, and family ties being main ones—but on occasion their choices were simply the result of happenstance. The early pioneers generally came from England and Germany. A small number of them arrived via cities in the United States or other parts of Canada. These individuals or families were often the only Jews in town. They were typically skilled tradesmen and merchants who acquired status and wealth due to their connections and ability to adapt to their surroundings. Examples of these first pioneers include the prominent journalist George Benjamin from Belleville, the Nordheimer brothers from Kingston, who became internationally renowned piano manufacturers, and oil magnate Isaac Waterman from London. A number of these pioneers, such as the Nordheimers, moved on to larger cities, in their case Toronto, in order to enhance their business opportunities and join a Jewish community. Due to the paucity of Jewish women in Upper Canada and their close association with the establishment, some, like Benjamin, married outside of the faith and converted to Christianity. Those individuals who persisted, and married within the faith, became the Jewish patriarchs of their communities, The second wave of settlers emerged from Eastern Europe in the years after Confederation, primarily following the commencement of the Russian pogroms from the 1880s until the early twentieth century. These new arrivals tended to be more religious and less affluent than the first settlers. The men would arrive first and, once they achieved a modicum of success, would if single locate a bride, or, if married, send for the rest of the family. — 216 —

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Employment Some, like Myer Salit, established themselves in their chosen communities due to family or happenstance. A Polish Jew who survived the shipwreck of the Danish SS Norge in 1904,4 Salit came to Canada to join his brother-in-law, Harry Rubin, in St. Catharines in 1905. He ended up settling in Niagara Falls after discovering the town when he lost his way while peddling goods by horse and cart in the vicinity. A number of adventurers moved to northern Ontario following the discovery of silver in Cobalt and during the gold rush at Timmins, South Porcupine, and Kirkland Lake. Others were attracted to the free land grants offered by the Baron de Hirsch Society to settlers willing to farm in northern towns such as Krugerdorf and Englehart around the turn of the twentieth century. After less than a decade, many of these immigrants ended up abandoning farming in favour of other pursuits. Peddling was a common trade among this early group, since it required little capital. Some would follow the routes of workers along the railroad line, traveling hundreds of miles— in many instances into the bush—with pack-sacks filled with clothing and other items that the workers might require. Gerald Tulchinsky refers to these individuals as “men on the move,” who were in search of adventure, and in some cases trouble. He describes them as “heading for destinations unknown, moving their stock by wagon or buggy, or occasionally hot footing it out of town.”5 One such individual was Aaron Silverman, who sold clothing to miners and lumbermen at construction camps along the northern railroad line during the early 1890s. Once men like Aaron gathered sufficient capital, they typically opened a store in a town and became merchants. In larger cities, particularly Hamilton, where the economy was quite diversified, Jews could be found in many different industries. In a study of Hamilton that Louis Rosenberg undertook using data from the 1941 census, he discovered that slightly over half of male Jews over fifteen years of age were engaged in wholesale and retail trade (mostly clothing 4  The Norge shipwreck occurred on 28 June 1904. The ship left Norway bound for America and hit a reef situated 300 miles west of Scotland, and 635 of the 800 passengers perished. The event was considered history’s worst maritime accident before the sinking of the Titanic. See Per Kristian Sebak, Titanic’s Predecessor: The S/S Norge Disaster of 1904 (Seaward Publications, 2004). 5  Gerald Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 51. — 217 —

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and food), almost 20% were in manufacturing (metal products, clothing, and textiles), and 6% in the professions. About 22% of the female Jewish population of Hamilton was employed—which was a lower rate of female employment than that possessed by other groups—and these women were working in trade (35%), clerical work (31%), manufacturing (20%), and service (9%).6 In Windsor, Jews were also primarily involved in trade and manufacturing. The former were mostly engaged in the junk business, furnishing companies, dry goods, and menswear stores. Ottawa’s Jews were mostly small business owners, but there were a number of successful families who ran large enterprises. Within Hamilton and Windsor there was a fair segment of the Jewish population that toiled in industry: the clothing and textile industries in Hamilton, and the auto-manufacturing industry in Windsor. After the emergence of the United Garment Workers Union during the turn of the last century, locals were established in Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton. Membership and militancy among Jewish workers were extremely high. A rash of strikes broke out in 1912 and 1913, and a major victory was won after the Davis Brothers strike in Hamilton in July 1916. One of the major issues raised in some of these strikes involved the issue of Jewish religious holidays like Passover. Within the shmatta, literally “rags,” trade, women earned lower wages than men, were exposed to poorer conditions, and were often sidelined by male union members. In Windsor, the Trades and Labour Council became extremely strong during the 1930s. In 1936 a sit-down strike at the Kelsey-Hayes automotive company polarized the workforce. Within these industrial cities, local working-class Jews often became advocates of socialist causes and joined organizations like UJPO (United Jewish People’s Order), which had branches in Hamilton and Windsor. The larger industrial cities thus included a more diversified class structure than medium and smaller locales. Many of the Jews in Ontario’s medium and small communities were employed as merchants in the retail and wholesale trades. Most storekeepers in the smaller communities dealt with basic consumer necessities such as dry goods, clothing, shoes, furniture, hardware, tobacco, tailoring, cobblers, etc. In North Bay, the majority of Jewish business6

Louis Rosenberg, “A Population Study of the Hamilton Jewish Community,” Bureau of Social and Economic Research (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1951), 31. — 218 —

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men owned clothing stores. Many of these businessmen purchased their merchandise in Toronto and ventured into the shmatta district of Kensington Market in search of the newest fashions. Other Jewish businessmen, particularly in south-western and northern Ontario, engaged in the scrap metal and second-hand goods trades. Peterborough, Niagara Falls, Sudbury, and St. Catharines were home to many of these scrap metal businesses. These Eastern European Jews started off as rag and tin peddlers and eventually built up scrap metal yards. It was such a popular trade in St. Catharines, in fact, that six families in town ran businesses in this trade, four of which were situated next to one another on Queenston Street. Several of the Jewish businessmen in this region, such as Myer Salit, Abe Newman, and Harry Tomarin ended up becoming successful steel entrepreneurs, running major steel plants. Some northern Ontario Jews took part in the fur trade. Harry Endelman of Sudbury began his fur business in 1900, buying raw furs from the natives and competing with the large companies. By the 1920s, his company had become one of the most successful in North America. Jack Leve pursued the same line of work in Sudbury during the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike the larger cities, these small communities were quite homogeneous in terms of their socio-economic characteristics and were very much communities of small businesspeople. All family members would work in these businesses and reside above the store. Without the involvement and labour of the owners’ wives and older children, many of these small enterprises would not have survived. Religion In contrast to their Toronto brethren, early settlers living in smaller towns typically confronted challenges which made it difficult to maintain their religion and their Jewish identities. They lived in a non-Jewish milieu and had to establish a Jewish life in places where it was a challenge to maintain the traditions and laws. In the early years of settlement, the men would try to pull together a minyan on Shabbat, which often involved drawing in travelers from other towns. Once they had the sufficient ten men, services would be held in a room in someone’s home, often referred to as a shtibl, and later on in a rented hall. Construction of a shul was only possible when the community had a Jewish popula— 219 —

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tion large enough to raise the funds required to buy land and support a mortgage. Within most of the early communities, local men would lead services until the congregation was large enough to support a rabbi. For cemeteries, many towns relied for some time on the Jewish cemeteries in the larger cities. However, once the community was well established, it would typically form a hevra kadisha (burial society) and cemetery before a synagogue was built. Setting up a Jewish cemetery was typically one of the first acts involved in establishing a Jewish community. Such was the case in Krugerdorf, situated in northern Ontario at least a couple of days’ drive by horse and buggy from Toronto and Thunder Bay. After three local Jewish men drowned in that area in a 1905 canoeing accident, Jewish pioneers in the vicinity—which included residents of Ansonville, Kirkland Lake and Timmins—established the Northern Hebrew Cemetery. The first rabbis who served as religious leaders for the community were imported from the United States and Europe. They typically did not possess a religious smicha (formal ordination) but had studied at a yeshiva. Due to the lack of Jewish services within these towns, they served their communities in a variety of capacities. They were jacks of all trades, each often functioning as rabbi, Hebrew teacher, shochet (kosher slaughterer), mohel (professional who performs circumcisions), and advocate for the synagogue. During the early years, they were often poorly paid and overworked. Rabbi S. Goldstein referred to these men as acting like a “general store,” stating that a rabbi was a man “whose sad state of material circumstances had forced him to condescend to whatever plight and to whatever means of maintaining that livelihood.”7 Early rabbis in a town such as Kingston made around $60 a month. To help their circumstances, they were often offered free accommodation, and a number of them were also able to supplement their incomes by killing chickens for community members and charging extra for leading High Holiday services. From the perspective of the community, it was often difficult to secure suitable rabbis, since well-trained and experienced rabbis were hard to come by in Ontario during that time. Most of the early religious lead7

Rabbi S. Goldstein, “General Klai Kodesh,” in Prominent Jews in Canada, ed. Zvi Cohen (Toronto: Canadian Jewish Historical Publishing Company, 1933), 21. — 220 —

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ers preferred establishing roots in large cities, like Toronto, that had all of the Jewish amenities they required. While the majority of the early community rabbis were competent, there were some exceptions. A small number of communities, in fact, had to grapple with rabbis who bordered on criminal. For instance, Niagara Falls Jews discovered that they may have employed a rabbi who was a Torah thief. He would send out Torahs for repair and they wouldn’t come back. Sudbury had to contend with one rabbi who, they discovered, was engaged in both bootlegging and pimping. While these cases were certainly rare, most of the communities, particularly the smaller and northern ones, had to deal with the pervasive transiency rampant among the profession of small-town rabbis. While men were the only ones who counted when forming a minyan, or who served on early synagogue boards, the women in these communities played a key role through the women’s auxiliaries in maintaining religious life and Jewish values within the community. The women’s auxiliaries prepared food for the kiddush after services, raised the funds required to build and later maintain the synagogue, collected funds to pay the rabbi and Hebrew teachers, and organized holiday celebrations for the community. The first society of this nature to emerge in Canada was the Deborah Ladies Aid Society, which was established by Hamilton’s German Jews in 1870. It began as a philanthropic society and later became the women’s auxiliary of Temple Anshe Sholom. These auxiliaries came to exist in almost every community. Beyond supporting the synagogue, they might also provide funds to support local Jews who were in need, as well as send funds overseas to assist Jews in Palestine or Eastern Europe. During the early years, most communities outside of Toronto had to import kosher food and Passover products from large cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Detroit. Beyond the inconvenience involved in having to import these special foods, spoilage was often a major problem that residents had to contend with whenever transportation delays occurred during the summer months. By the early twentieth century, however, most of the larger cities like Hamilton, Ottawa, and Windsor, and even some of the medium-sized communities, had kosher butchers and the infrastructure required to remain fairly self-sufficient when it came to Jewish products. Ottawa had a bustling Jewish neighborhood in the Byward Market area filled with businesses offering ko— 221 —

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sher meat, dairy, baked goods, and other products. In Windsor, Isadore Orke Williams ran a kosher butcher shop from 1902 until 1933, and later faced competition from other local butchers. By 1919, Kitchener had a kosher meat market owned by Abe Kershenbaum, which he ran until his death in 1960. He too faced competition from other kosher butchers during the community’s heyday. What truly distinguished the large and small communities from each other was that the former typically had the infrastructure required to make pursuing a Jewish life much easier. The small communities struggled to sustain one shul and to adhere to Jewish laws. The medium to large communities like Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor, London, KitchenerWaterloo and Kingston, on the other hand, were located close to major cities and also had the population size required to support more than one synagogue, as well as to attract Hebrew teachers, kosher butchers, and the other Jewish service providers who were required to build a healthy infrastructure. During the early years, all of the synagogues were Orthodox—with the exception of Anshe Sholom in Hamilton, which became Reform around the early 1880s, under the leadership of Edmund Scheuer—and were typically located in close proximity to one another in the heart of the Jewish communities. In fact, Ottawa’s Jewish community, often referred to as “little Jerusalem,” had a reputation for being quite traditional during the early part of the twentieth century. It boasted five synagogues, four of which possessed women’s galleries, and the last of which had a mechitzah dividing the women from the men. Interest in creating separate synagogues during this period was prompted by the desire on the part of the residents to pray in shul with people who came from the same shtetl in Europe they had come from. This distinction between the larger and smaller communities meant that Jews residing in larger communities had an easier time leading Jewish lives and actually were often afforded the luxury of choice when selecting a shul, Hebrew school, or kosher butcher. Small-town Jews, in contrast, had to put a great deal of effort into leading a Jewish life. They routinely had to confront the challenges of assimilation to maintain a Jewish life without all of the support and amenities that were usually necessary. Ultimately, small-town Jews, in contrast to their big-city counterparts, had to adopt an attitude of cooperation and compromise in order to survive as a community.

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Education Hebrew education was typically a high priority among Jewish parents. During the early years, many youths in small communities—typically only boys—received instruction from their fathers or the local rabbi at home. Classes were later held in synagogues and supported by the community through the women’s auxiliary, which would raise funds to pay the rabbi or instructor for his time. Classes were often held several times a week after school and on Sundays. The children were often not fully alert, and it was not unusual for the early instructors to rely on corporal punishment to gain their attention and cooperation. Many of the students, like Mike Rabovsky from Owen Sound, did not enjoy the experience. In an interview, Rabovsky described his Hebrew school as a dungeon, since classes were held in the basement of the shul. Most Jewish children in this area during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attended public schools in which they were among the few or the sole Jewish children in class. They made friends and tried to blend in as best they could. Some, however, like Alex Mongelon in Thunder Bay, asserted his Jewishness in class, refusing to decorate the Christmas tree or take part in the Lord’s Prayer. A more drastic option that was adopted by a minority of parents, those who felt that their children’s education or identities might be compromised if they remained in town, was to send them to Toronto during the school year, both in order to acquire a better Jewish education and to meet other Jewish children of their ages. Henry Abramson from Ansonville, for instance, was sent to Eitz Chaim School in Toronto before his bar mitzvah. The larger communities established Talmud Torahs during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beth Jacob in Hamilton was founded in 1901. Ottawa’s B’nai Jacob opened its doors before the First World War, and London’s B’nai Israel Synagogue established its Talmud Torah in 1927. During this period, when many Jews embraced left-leaning causes, several of these communities also offered a secular, Yiddish education. This was the case with Windsor, a manufacturing city that had a Peretz Shule that was built in the 1920s to educate the children of the local socialist Jews. Ottawa’s Jewish People’s School, called the Yehoash Folk Shule, was established in 1925 by a Labour Zionist group. Although there was less concern about the education of female students than about that of male students during the early years, by the 1940s many of the classes included girls. — 223 —

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Antisemitism The first Jewish pioneers to settle in Ontario, who were of German and British descent, were typically successful, assimilated Jews who were treated as full citizens and had the right to vote and hold office. This atmosphere of tolerance and respect changed after the arrival of the second wave of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. This huge influx of Jews in Ontario boosted the Jewish population within the province from 534 in 1881 to 3,000 in 1901.8 During this period, Jews were frequently denied employment in many stores, banks, and a number of professions. Those Jews who worked as professionals were doctors, dentists, architects, or involved in other fee-based professions. The salarybased professions such as engineering, nursing, and teaching were often closed to Jews. Moreover, before the Second World War, antisemitism was rife and many job ads in the newspapers would stipulate “Christians only need apply.” As a result, most Jews became self-employed as peddlers or merchants. The new immigrant peddlers often spoke Yiddish, dressed poorly, and, despite providing a valuable service, were perceived by mainstream society as backward, corrupt businessmen living off the “discards of respectable citizens.”9 Those Jews who operated their own stores were dependent on the business of residents from all backgrounds. They therefore often tried to establish connections with groups from different backgrounds in town, and even offered clients credit when the economy was poor or during strikes, in order to engender loyalty. For instance, Alex Abramson, a business owner from Ansonville, would talk to the French-Canadian mill workers who were his customers in a FrenchEnglish patois and would extend credit and provide interest-free loans to many of them, based on family reputation. Although there existed a deep rift between the English and French populations of Ansonville, Abramson attempted to develop ties with both groups and to remain neutral when it came to local divisions. In addition, during the first half of the twentieth century, Ontario’s Jews were denied rooms at hotels and banned from pools, beaches, and social clubs. Signs on public beaches and resorts reading “Gentiles Only” 8  Stephen Speisman, “Antisemitism in Ontario: The Twentieth Century,” in Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, ed. Alan Davies (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1992), 115. 9  Ibid. — 224 —

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or “No Jews or Dogs Allowed” were pervasive, particularly during the Depression years at locations such as Swastika Beach outside of Kitchener, Wasaga Beach, which is situated an hour north of Toronto, Sauble Beach outside of Owen Sound, Port Stanley south of London, Bronte Beach west of Oakville, and many others. One resident of Hamilton recalled his experience as a youth during the 1930s joining Jewish friends who grabbed bats, jumped into a truck, and successfully forced their way onto Bronte Beach. In many communities including Kingston, Peterborough, and Hamilton, Jews were refused admission to social clubs. Merle Koven recalls that she was unable to attend a friend’s Sweet 16 party that was held at a local golf club in Kingston during the late 1950s. There were, however, some daring youths like Sam Rothschild, who regularly jumped the fence of the local tennis club in Sudbury in order to practice and improve his game. In some of the larger communities, the only option available was to establish Jewish clubs. During this period there were also cases of restrictive covenants or “gentlemen’s agreements,” particularly in resort areas, which were intended to keep out Jews. In Hamilton, Jerry Pollock attempted to purchase a home that was listed at $5,500, and was informed when the seller discovered that he was Jewish that the price was $15,500. There were cases of this nature scattered across the province, and the Canadian Jewish Congress regularly attempted to intervene and provide support to people combating such restrictions. A major case, Noble and Wolf v. Alley, involved the purchase of a cottage in Beach O’Pines outside of London during the late 1940s. The seller, Annie Noble, was prepared to sell her property to Bernie Wolf, but the sale was challenged by the community, which argued that Noble had to abide by the restrictive covenant that was tied to the original deed. The CJC helped support and fund the plaintiffs, with Bora Laskin—later to become Canada’s chief justice—heading the committee established to manage the case. The suit was first rejected by a lower court, which upheld the restrictive covenant. The Ontario Court of Appeal also upheld the covenant, stating that its intent was to ensure that the community in this resort remained “of a class who will get along together.” In the end, the case went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which, in a landmark ruling on 21 November 1950, held that restrictive covenants were invalid and

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designated these agreements as illegal.10 On an individual level, antisemitism was pervasive before the Second World War; however, it varied significantly from community to community. Within cities like Ottawa, Hamilton, and Windsor, the local Jews had a larger number of Jewish friends to socialize with and a community infrastructure, and for the most part had an easier time developing a strong Jewish identity. Within smaller locales, Jewish youth were far outnumbered by non-Jews, and their parents had to work much harder to instill Jewish values and pride in them as they were growing up. There were also communities like Cornwall, the Sault, and Sudbury, where tension between the French and English, among other groups, made antisemitism less prevalent or visible. Author Morley Torgov notes these divisions in his novel A Good Place to Come From, dealing with his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie. Torgov contends that because of the sharp battles between the English in the East End and the Italians in the West End, the Jews were left in peace. In some communities the Jews were tolerated, but in others, some Jewish children were subject to teasing, ridicule, and even physical harm. Malcah Sufrin, who grew up in the small farming community of Hanover, relates that her sister “had teeth marks on her arm from one encounter with a religious zealot.” Judy Feld-Carr was accused of being a “Christ Killer” by the nuns and children at the Catholic school that she attended in Sudbury and was brutally beaten by a group of children, who knocked out some of her teeth. Social Life Within both the large and the small communities, Ontario’s Jews typically relied on celebrations like weddings and bar mitzvahs to impress non-Jewish society as well as other Jews. These occasions, particularly those celebrated by the more prominent members of the community, would be included in the social events section of local newspapers. The articles would often highlight the exotic nature and meaning of some of the rituals involved. In addition, Ontario’s Jews also took their social rituals, visits, and travels to other towns very seriously. These outings, 10 See Bill Gladstone, A History of the Jewish Community of London Ontario, from the 1850s to the Present Day (Toronto: Now and Then Books, 2011), 157-158. — 226 —

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in fact, were often documented in early Jewish newspapers such as the Canadian Jewish Times and the Canadian Jewish Review. The 4 November 1921 edition of the Canadian Jewish Review, for instance, stated in its society section that Miss Beatrice Caplan was visiting her sister in Hamilton and planned to return home to Toronto.11 While Jews in large cities could take part in the rich cultural and social activities that were afforded to citizens residing in urban centres, their small-town brethren typically had to devise their own fun. The small-town Jews shared closer relationships with one another than those in larger cities, and were often more inclusive in planning activities that involved many community members. For instance, in Owen Sound, many of the gatherings would be held at Sara Cadesky’s house. The Niagara Falls community, like many of the others, would hold picnics, pot-luck dinners, card games, and other activities throughout the year. The holidays were also a time when communities would congregate to celebrate. Bella Briansky, a former resident of Ansonville, recalls the holiday plays and musicals that a local resident, whom she recalls only as “Big Minnie,” coordinated, involving the children of Young Judaea. It was one of the major forms of entertainment for the community within this small, northern paper mill town. One area which was very popular in both large cities and mediumsized towns during the early twentieth century was Yiddish theatre. This form of entertainment thrived in Hamilton during the 1920s, where most of the productions were held at the Princess Palace Theatre. Within this city, Melech Graftstein served as the major champion of Yiddish arts. Later on, in the 1950s the Hamilton JCC also put on plays such as Bus Stop, Come Blow Your Horn, and Male Animal using local talent. These plays attracted some high profile patrons such as Lester B. Pearson and Premier John Robarts. Several other cities, like Kitchener and Peterborough, also boasted Yiddish and English theatrical productions performed by Jewish troupes. Jewish sports teams also thrived in many communities. Kingston and Kitchener both had Jewish basketball teams. The Kitchener team played in the church league and actually won the championship two years in a row during the late 1950s. Boxing, curling, hockey, and baseball were also extremely popular sports among Ontario’s Jewish youth. 11  Canadian Jewish Review, 21 November 1911, 9. — 227 —

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A number of prominent Jewish boxers rose in the ranks from the 1920s to the 1940s, including Oren Safir and Irving Ornstein, both from Thunder Bay. In northern Ontario, many children would play hockey on local ponds and backyard rinks, and then at arenas during the second half of the twentieth century. Mitchell Spiegel from Sudbury remembers the kids collecting “buffalo chips” from the street and using them as pucks during pick up hockey games during the 1950s. Many talented Jewish hockey players came out of Sudbury and other northern towns, including two who played in the NHL during the 1920s, Sam Rothschild and Joe Ironstone. Many Jews, particularly those from northern communities, also enjoyed outdoor recreational activities. Alex Devin from Thunder Bay recalls going swimming in the Shaffer farm swimming hole during the 1930s with his friends. Other popular activities included fishing, hiking, skiing, and picnics. During the post-war years many northern Ontario Jews bought cottages and would congregate with friends at locales like Sauble Beach, Sandy Beach, on the Thousands Islands outside of Kingston, and Lake Talon and Lake Nipissing for residents of North Bay. Sandy Beach Resort was owned by David Plaw and had sixty-five cottages, three restaurants, a playground, and a beach. The resort was very popular from the post-war years until the 1960s. Many members of the London community formed the Wingate Lodge, a co-operative cottage venture, which operated during the 1950s and 1960s and served as a resort that boasted a pool and other facilities, as well as a day camp, and offered Shabbat services. Zionism One of the most potent forces in the lives of Ontario’s Jews was their commitment to Zionism. Gerald Tulchinsky notes in his definitive work on Canadian Jewry, Canada’s Jews: A People’s History, that Zionism “provided Canadians with an ideology of survival and identity.” In fact, according to Tulchinsky, small-town Jews were more committed to this movement than their big-city counterparts were, making up nearly half of the national membership.12 This commitment was demonstrated in a myriad of ways. Some of the towns held parades and celebrations for 12 Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 167. — 228 —

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major events like the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 or, later, the establishment of the State of Israel. Many of Ontario’s Jews belonged to Zionist organizations, and women’s groups often played a leading role in supporting this cause. Hadassah was one of the most successful Zionist organizations within the country. It was established in 1916, and its first president was Lillian Freiman from Ottawa. Many chapters sprang up across Ontario including those in Hamilton (1917), Brantford (1918),Ottawa (1920), Kingston (1922),Peterborough (1923), London (1924), and Windsor (1924). There were also chapters established in Port Arthur, Fort William, and in Sault Ste. Marie. Some cities like Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton, London, Peterborough, Brantford, Timmins, and Windsor supported two chapters, and many others developed junior Hadassah Leagues, which emerged in 1923 and sprang up across the province. The key function of the chapters was to raise money for Jews in Palestine and later Israel, celebrate the cause, and organize social events to support these goals. In the smaller communities, joining Hadassah was like a rite of passage for young married women. The chapters were often intergenerational and the older women would mentor the younger members, teaching them about Zionism and politics, along with key skills like etiquette and cooking. In addition to holding regular meetings, the chapters would organize bake sales, teas, bingo games, strawberry socials, rummage sales, cook books, fashion shows, and in some communities bazaars. By the 1960s, some of the larger communities boasted as many as five chapters, which were often situated in different part of the city and were formed to accommodate women of different generations, classes, and backgrounds. For the men, B’nai B’rith was the key group within Ontario’s Jewish communities to engage the members both politically and socially. They too raised significant funds, relying on a variety of initiatives such as picnics, card games, dances, concerts, and fishing regattas. The lodges would also hold conventions, bond drives, and in the case of Kitchener, a brotherhood dinner which was held after the war and was intended to promote interfaith relations and dialogue. The Peterborough group also embraced the mandate of promoting the observance of Judaism and family living within the community. The Jewish youth was also very engaged in Zionist programming during this period. Large cities like Ottawa had a wide array of orga— 229 —

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nizations to choose from such as Young Judaea, the fraternal youth organization, AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph), and the Labour Zionist youth group, Habonim. However, even small communities like Cornwall supported a Young Judaea, an AZA, and a B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO). Cornwall youth would coordinate dances with orchestras and sweetheart balls, and organize exchanges with youth from Potsdam, New York. Beyond educating youth about Zionist issues, these groups helped inculcate members with Jewish values and strengthened their sense of Jewish identity, which was often a challenge for youths residing in smaller communities. Many of these groups were extremely successful. In fact, one former member from Kingston, Harvey Rosen, recalled that Kingston’s Jewish parents grew quite concerned when one boy who was a member of Young Judaea decided to make aliya, fearing that their own children might follow suit. In such cases Zionism was more successful than the parents bargained for. Zionist summer camps within Ontario were also a big draw. They emerged after the Second World War and included Camp Shalom which was situated near Halliburton, Camp Solelim close to Sudbury, Camp B’nai Brith Ottawa and Camp Shomria of Hashomer Hatzair near Perth. There was also the Labour Zionist Camp Gesher of Habonim located in Cloyne and the Orthodox Zionist Camp Moshava in Ennismore. These camps often drew Jewish youth from across the province as well as from as far away as Nova Scotia. Not only did these summer experiences provide young people with a connection to and insight into Zionism, they also enabled them to socialize with other Jewish youth and mentored them to become future community leaders. Some of the young people who came from very small towns particularly appreciated the opportunity to mingle with other Jewish teens. Sheila Whitzman from Cornwall described her summer at Camp Hagshama near Perth as a “life changing experience,” since it enabled her to make connections, learn about the meaning of being Jewish, and—perhaps most importantly for a teenage girl—meet her first Jewish boyfriend at the age of fifteen. Community Involvement Despite the fact that many Jewish communities in Ontario were extremely strong and in some cases self-sufficient, their residents were typically quite involved with the broader community in a variety of — 230 —

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ways. During the nineteenth century, many of the first settlers—who were successful, well assimilated Jews—were involved in city politics and business associations, as well as service and social clubs. For instance, Simon Oberndorffer from Kingston served as an alderman in 1892 and co-founded the local Odd Fellows society. William Englander from Windsor also served as an alderman in his city in 1899. G.H. Levy from Hamilton, the first Jewish barrister in Ontario, was a member of the local Hamilton Golf and Country Club as well as the Caledon Trout Club, and was the only Jewish member of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Dominion of Canada. Many Jews were admitted as members to non-sectarian fraternal organizations, like the Masons, Odd Fellows, Kiwanis, Rotary Club and Lions Club. In fact, some Jews served as leaders of these groups, including Nathan Rivelis, who was president of the North Bay Lions Club in 1957, and Henry Wiserman, who served as president of the North Bay Kinsman Club in 1958. Jewish women—primarily those from middle-class and affluent backgrounds—were also prominent, active, and in some cases, vital players in contributing to the broader community. In Peterborough, Ruth Black served one year as Parade Queen. Cecelia Oberndorffer, Simon’s wife, established the local Victorian Order of Nurses in Kingston and was also a member of the women’s auxiliary of Kingston General Hospital, the Local Council of Women, and the Poor Relief Society. Lillian Freiman from Ottawa, who was a national leader within the Jewish community, was responsible for helping the capital city contend with the influenza pandemic of 1918. During the First World War, she also organized a Red Cross Sewing Circle to produce dressing gowns and other items required for the troops, and helped entertain Jewish troops in town. Beginning in the 1930s, Jews began assuming prominent roles in politics. David Croll, a barrister from Windsor, served as mayor there from 1930 to 1934. He later became an Ontario legislator, the first Jewish provincial cabinet member, and later a senator. He resigned from the pro-business Liberal cabinet during the auto workers organizing drive with the ringing words, “I would rather walk with the workers than ride with General Motors.” Aaron Horowitz from Cornwall also served as mayor of his city for an impressive period of time, between 1930 and 1954. Waterloo had a Jewish mayor during the 1950s when Harold Paiken was elected to this prestigious office in 1958. Other Jewish may— 231 —

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ors included, Max Silverman of Sudbury (1965) Saul Laskin of Thunder Bay (1962), Lorry Greenberg of Ottawa (1975), Morley Rosenberg in Kitchener (1977), and Harvey Rosen in Kingston (2003). Herb Gray from Windsor served as an MP for the Liberal party beginning in 1962, eventually became leader of the opposition for a short period, and then was named solicitor-general and deputy prime minister. Another pathbreaking individual was Bora Laskin of Thunder Bay. Laskin initially confronted a great deal of antisemitism when he started working as a lawyer. He switched to teaching law and later in his career became the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court of Canada, assuming the position of chief justice in 1973, serving until his death in 1984. The Post-War Years After the Second World War some Ontario communities, particularly the larger ones, welcomed a wide variety of new residents as some Holocaust survivors attempted to begin new lives in smaller Jewish communities. London was the recipient of forty to fifty survivor couples. Following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, a number of HungarianJewish refugees settled in Windsor and other towns across the province. There was also an influx of Jewish professors into university towns like Kingston and London as universities began adopting a more open attitude in their hiring practices, particularly during and after the 1960s. While many of the larger communities and university towns enjoyed a period of growth, the northern communities saw their populations begin to erode by the 1950s, as the local resource-based economies that thrived during the 1920s and 1930s began to decline during this period. Some cities, like Kitchener-Waterloo, had dozens of thriving Jewish businesses immediately after the war situated in close proximity to one another, on King Street in the case of Kitchener-Waterloo. And in North Bay, twenty-nine of the businesses on Main Street during the 1960s were owned by Jews. There were also a number of new synagogues that sprang up in the big cities, resort towns like Belle Ewart and Jacksons Point, and smaller communities like Pembroke, Stratford, and Perth. Some communities outgrew their buildings and constructed larger ones, like the one in Sudbury, which hired the prominent Toronto Jewish architect Manuel Sprachman to create a huge modern structure that could accommodate 200 people. The post-war years up until the 1960s were — 232 —

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thus a period of prosperity and growth for most of the Jewish communities, particularly those of southern Ontario. Many of the new shuls located within the larger cities began to relocate, as Jews began migrating out of the early Jewish neighbourhoods to new dwellings in the suburbs. A number of Jewish day schools were also established in the larger communities during this period, with Windsor boasting four during the 1970s. Following the war, there were also major Jewish community centres built within the larger communities, along with community councils and Federations. Within Hamilton, the JCC moved from its downtown location to Delaware and Sanford in 1950. Another trend that arose during the 1940s and 1950s was the emergence of Conservative synagogues. One of the first synagogues to join the Conservative movement was Beth Sholom in London. The shul held Friday evening services and had a Sunday school and a mixed choir. Another Orthodox shul to join the Conservative movement was Agudath Israel in Ottawa. It joined in 1951 and moved into a larger building in the western part of the city in 1960. While some shuls had a fairly easy transition in this regard, others experienced considerable tension as members fought over the decision of whether to implement gender egalitarian practices. This was the case in Windsor and Kitchener. In Windsor, the community wanted a conservative shul, but Rabbi Stollman, who was wed to Orthodoxy, refused to accommodate the younger members. Kitchener experienced the same type of tension during the 1960s, since Orthodox Rabbi Philip Rosensweig was also reluctant to adopt more egalitarian practices. Rather than joining the conservative movement, the shul adopted mixed seating outside of Shabbat services as a concessionary gesture. Some of the smaller communities that had a single shul, like North Bay, made the switch to conservatism without much controversy or dissention. Another religious trend that developed in this period was the emergence of bat mitzvahs. The extension of the traditionally male coming of age ceremony (bar mitzvah) to young women in the United States came as early as the 1920s, but it still evoked controversy. One of the earliest bat mitzvahs held outside of Toronto was that of the daughter of Judge Abraham Gieff at Agudath Israel in Ottawa in 1949. In 1954, Merle Koven broke the gender barrier within Beth Israel, the Orthodox shul in Kingston. She didn’t read from the Torah or ascend to the bimah, but she was able to read from the bottom step and give a speech. Dur— 233 —

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ing the 1980s, Merle became the first female president of her shul. A couple of years later, Jack Leve pressured his synagogue in Sudbury to provide his daughter Judy (now Feld-Carr) with a Bat Mitzvah. Despite resistance, he forged ahead with his plan and steamrolled the shul to introduce this practice for his daughter, and the shul ultimately joined the Conservative movement. During this period, Ontario also welcomed a few Reform temples. This strain of Judaism attempted to modernize the religion in order to keep it in line with the needs of modern society. While the Reform movement was quite strong in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, before the war there were only two Reform temples in Ontario: Holy Blossom in Toronto and Temple Anshe Sholom in Hamilton. Windsor’s Beth El Temple was established in 1950. Congregants first met at a rented house before they constructed their own edifice. Temple Shalom in Kitchener was conceived in 1965. One of its first acts was to purchase land and open up a cemetery which could include inter-faith families. Kingston’s Reform congregation was established in 1975 and led by Professor Michael Levinson of Queen’s University. Within many of the university towns, in fact, new professors who started their careers during the 1960s and 1970s tended to gravitate to Reform Judaism and were instrumental to the establishment and maintenance of these temples. Reform congregations in the medium-size communities in some cases created dissention, since the Orthodox shuls often resented the challenge to their monopoly as well as to their rituals, which they regarded as the only true form of Judaism. Other trends that emerged following the war were a rise in intermarriage rates starting in the 1950s, as well as a growing number of unaffiliated Jews, particularly in university towns like Kingston. In her book documenting Kingston’s Jewish community, Marion Meyer reveals that by 1971 half of Kingston’s Jews were unaffiliated, according to the census. These individuals were typically university-educated, under forty, and in many instances intermarried. The final and most damaging trend during the post-war years was the mass exodus of young people from the smaller communities, in pursuit of a university education and professional careers in major centres like Toronto. Interestingly enough, many Jewish parents from small towns pushed their children to move away after high school, perceiving To— 234 —

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ronto to be a better place for them to make Jewish friends, get good educations, meet prospective Jewish spouses, and achieve success. Morley Torgov describes this pressure in his book A Good Place to Come From, stating that “our parents counseled us to leave, begged and pleaded with us to leave, even ordered us to leave.” He continues, “Only yonder in the big city, they insisted, could one be a truly big person.”13 Ultimately, many of the youth succeeded, only too well, in meeting their parents’ expectations. Few returned, and this loss of the baby-boom generation, along with the rise of mega stores like Walmart, delivered a fatal blow to the survival of hundreds of Jewish family businesses scattered across the province, as well as the communities themselves. Recent Years During the 1990s and into the first years of the new millennium, a number of congregations across the province celebrated important milestones. St. Catharines celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 2002. Belleville had a celebration in 2005 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the synagogue building. Thunder Bay marked the community’s hundredth anniversary in June 2008. The weekend festivities included a cemetery service, a historic exhibition, and a dinner with live entertainment at the Airlane Hotel. Kingston’s Orthodox synagogue also marked its centennial in 2010. Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox sect, grew during this period across the province, on campuses as well as within cities like Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls had a successful Chabad movement, run by Rabbi Zalman Zaltman. He arrived from Toronto with his family in 2005 and organized activities that appealed to both residents and tourists. Rabbi Zaltman brought kosher food to Niagara Falls and operated Mendy’s Kosher Niagara Restaurant and King David Pizza, Bakery and Falafel. His efforts resulted in a significant rise in Orthodox Jewish tourists to the Niagara Falls area. One of the major challenges confronting many of the medium- to small-sized communities was that because they had lost so many of their members they had a difficult time maintaining their synagogues and forming a minyan for Shabbat services. B’nai Israel in St. Catha13  Morley Torgov, A Good Place to Come From (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Limited), 15. — 235 —

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rines resorted to creating a weekly schedule and assigning members to attend on certain weeks in order to ensure that they would have a minyan for each service. Cornwall’s synagogue approved a motion allowing women to count as part of the minyan and to participate in all aspects of the service. Furthermore, in order to remain in the black, many congregations initiated innovative fundraising campaigns. Cornwall raised $30,000 as a result of its efforts to bolster the coffers of the shul, and in 2005 Thunder Bay worked with the Jewish Foundation of Winnipeg to hold a fundraiser to support an endowment for its shul. This event proved to be extremely successful, drawing 200 people and featuring Paul Shaffer, bandleader for David Letterman and former resident of Thunder Bay’s Jewish community. There was also a movement within the small- to medium-sized communities to adopt strategic and innovative schemes to keep their synagogues afloat. Some shuls, like the one in Cornwall, engaged in activities and events with congregations in upper New York State. Temple Tikvah in St. Catharines sent its children to Temple Beth Am in Buffalo for several years for afternoon Hebrew school, in order to save funds and pool their resources. Many small communities at this time also could not afford a full-time rabbi, and as a result some brought in rabbis from Toronto or the United States for the High Holidays. During the 1990s, North Bay and Sudbury decided to share a rabbi, in order to cut their costs and work together to support their respective shuls. The St. Catharines and Niagara Falls communities merged in 2000, in order to save their congregations. Finally, the Peterborough synagogue, which could not afford its own facility, decided to share a building with a branch of the Unitarian Fellowship. They hold services at different times and maintain a kosher kitchen. Unfortunately, some shuls had to be closed, like Cornwall’s was in April 2006. The congregation held a large closing ceremony and entered into a partnership with Ottawa’s Agudath Israel Synagogue, which inherited their religious items, such as the Torah and Ark, and agreed to take care of the cemetery. Those aged Cornwall residents who remain now make the trek to Ottawa in order to attend services at Agudath Israel. Although the Thunder Bay synagogue is still operating, the community entered into an agreement with the Jewish Foundation of Winnipeg, which will be responsible for selling the synagogue building and caring for the cemetery if and when there are insufficient members to — 236 —

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take on this responsibility. Over the last four decades, Ontario has witnessed the closure of over a dozen shuls across the province in cities such as Cambridge, Perth, Stratford, Brantford, Timmins, and Kirkland Lake. The exodus of younger generations from these communities and the subsequent closing of the shuls prompted Gerald Tulchinsky to conclude that in many of these once vital communities, “Only the cemeteries will remain to host the yearly visits of the descendants who place stones on monuments of the pioneer parents and grandparents buried there.”14 Conclusion The history of Ontario’s Jews outside of Toronto is truly one of longevity, survival, and persistence. While most of the communities confronted similar religious and social challenges and pursued work in the retail or wholesale trades, their experiences were extremely diverse, depending on where their Jewish population came from, where they resided in Ontario, and what class they were, as well as the infrastructure or network of their communities. Even though life was more difficult in smaller locales, those who grew up within these towns have many fond memories of the closeness that existed between community members and of the activities they engaged in together. Despite the fact that there was a decline in antisemitism after the war, there have unfortunately been incidents in several communities within the last couple of decades involving the desecrations of cemeteries and shuls. The exodus of young Jews from the small and medium-sized communities and the rise in intermarriage and unaffiliated Jews in many towns has also been extremely detrimental to the communities’ abilities to remain afloat. Indeed, many shuls have closed within the last few decades, and other communities are perilously close to losing their synagogues, since there are increasingly few members to support them. Those congregations that are receiving newcomers are often losing them to Chabad or Reform Temples in town. Despite these setbacks, many communities have attempted to adopt flexible and cooperative approaches and to initiate creative solutions in order to survive and even thrive. The forecast is therefore extremely bright for large communities like Ottawa, 14 Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 489. — 237 —

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which has a strong and diversified economy and broad population base, and fairly optimistic for those flexible and resilient communities that have been struggling, yet have remained open to change. Ellen Scheinberg

For Further Reading Abrams, Percy. “A Study of the Jewish Immigrants in Hamilton and Their Relationship with the Jewish Community Centre.” MA dissertation, University of Toronto, 1955. Abramson, Henry. “‘Just Different’: The Last Jewish Family of Ansonville, Ontario.” Canadian Jewish Studies IX (1991). Beth Jacob Congregation. A History of Beth Jacob Congregation, 18861969. Hamilton: Beth Jacob Congregation, 1969. Bilsky, Anna. A Common Thread: A History of the Jews of Ottawa. Renfrew, ON: General Store Publishing House, 2009. Briansky, Bella. “A Jewish Community that Was Ansonville, Ontario.” American Jewish Archives (November 1978). Cohen, J.A. “An Incomplete History of the Jews of London, Ontario.” Prepared for the London and Middlesex Historical Society, 1956. Cohen, Zvi. Prominent Jews of Canada. Toronto: Canadian Jewish Historical Publishing Company, 1933. Coppel-Park, Bryna, and Carol Line, eds. “Taking Our Place: The Changing Role of Jewish Women in a Small Northern Ontario Community.” Canadian Woman Studies 16: 4 (1996): 104-106. Curtis, Grant. Laugh and the World Laughs with You in Pontypool. Niagara Falls, NY: Heroes Workshop, 2005. Epstein, Howard. Jews in Small Towns: Legends and Legacies. Santa Rosa, CA: Vision Books, 1997. Figler, Bernard. Lillian and Archie Freiman: Biographies. Montreal: Northern Printing and Lithographic Company, 1962. Gladstone, Bill. A History of the Jewish Community of London Ontario: — 238 —

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from the 1850s to the Present Day. Toronto: Now and Then Books, 2011. Godfrey, Sheldon, and Judith Godfrey, eds. Burn this Gossip: The True Story of George Benjamin of Belleville, Canada’s First Jewish Member of Parliament, 1857-1863. Toronto: The Duke and George Press, 1991. ------. Search out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740-1867. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1995. Goldstein, Arlene. “The History of the Jewish Community.” Polyphony: Bulletin of the Multiculturual History Society of Ontario: Thunder Bay’s People 9: 2 (1987): 31-34. Gottesman, Eli, ed. Canadian Jewish Reference Book and Directory. Canadian Jewish Literary Foundation, 1963. ------. Who’s Who in Canadian Jewry. Ottawa: Canadian Jewish Literary Foundation, 1965. Hamilton Jewish Community Centre. Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Book, 1950-1975. Hamilton: Hamilton Jewish Community Centre, 1975. Jewish Museum of Maryland. We Call This Place Home: Jewish Life in Maryland’s Small Towns. Baltimore: The Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2002. Kruger, Herb. A Place Called Krugerdorf. Barrie: Barrie Press, 1994. Lerner, M. “The Story of London’s Jewish Community.” London and Middlesex Historical Society, 1969.Levitt, Sheldon, Lynn Milestone, and Sid Tenenbaum, eds. Treasures of the People: The Synagogues of Canada. Toronto: Lest &Orpen Dennys Limited, 1985. Meyer, Marion. The Jews of Kingston: Microcosm of Canadian Jewry? Kingston: Limestone Press, 1983. Meyer, Marion. “The Jews of Kingston: A Comparative Study of Organized and Non-Affiliated Jews—A Preliminary Report.” Canadian Jewish Studies 6: 2 (1998): 81-101. Moses, Dorothy. “Reconstructing the Past: Chronicles: Jews in Sudbury.” Polyphony: Bulletin of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario: Sudbury’s People 5: 1 (Spring/Summer 1983): 113-115. Ontario Jewish Archives. Ontario’s Small Jewish Communities virtual exhibit. http://www.ontariojewisharchives.org/exhibits/osjc/ Plaut, Jonathan V. The Jews of Windsor, 1790-1990: A Historical Chronicle. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2007. Rosenberg, Louis. “A Population Study of the Hamilton Jewish Commu— 239 —

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nity.” Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1951. ------. “A Population Study of the Windsor Jewish Community.” Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1951. Rothschild, Samuel. “A Reminiscence.”Polyphony: Bulletin of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario: Sudbury’s People 5: 1 (Spring/Summer 1983): 93-99. Schneider, Wendy, and Bill Shaffir, eds. The Way We Were: The Jewish Hamilton Project. 2007. Sebak, Per Kristian. Titanic’s Predecessor: The S/S Norge Disaster of 1904. Seaward Press, 2004. Stern, Sadie. “The Brantford Jewish Community, 1881-1911.” Canadian Jewish Studies 4, 5 (1996-1997): 23-30. Sufrin, Malcah. “Growing up Jewish in Hanover, Ontario.” Canadian Woman Studies 16: 4 (1996): 19-20. Torgov, Morley. A Good Place to Come From. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Limited, 1974. Weissbach, Lee Shai. Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005.

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XV Winnipeg

In the 2006 Canadian census, Manitobans listing a Jewish ethnic heritage numbered 13,175, down from 15,130 in 2001. In the 2001 census, Jews by religion in Manitoba numbered 13,040, out of a total provincial population of nearly 1.2 million. Nearly all the province’s Jews live in Winnipeg, making up nearly 2% of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Area population of 694,668 (2006). There is a small Jewish presence in other places in the province, such as Brandon, but for nearly all intents and purposes, Jewish life in Manitoba begins and ends in its capital city. Winnipeg represents one of the larger Jewish communities in Canada, after Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. However, it differs from other Canadian Jewish communities of its relative size, such as Ottawa, because of its unique history and its range of Jewish organizations and institutions. The community dates from the eastern European Jewish migration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and it is in fact one of the earliest-established Jewish communities in Canada. In its founding era, it constituted the most important Jewish community in Canada outside of Montreal and Toronto. It became the third major Canadian Jewish center, after Montreal and Toronto, and its members were influential in all aspects of Canadian Jewish organizational life, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress. The community became known, across Canada and beyond, for its devotion to Jewish causes, such as Zionism and the Yiddish language, as well as for its support of trade unions and leftist causes. The population of the Jewish community of Winnipeg peaked at approximately 20,000 in the 1960s and has declined noticeably since then. The story of contemporary Jewish Winnipeg, therefore, is to an important extent a story of the consequences of demographic decline and the struggle to reverse it. In the past few decades, aside from concerns for demographic decline, the Jewish community of Winnipeg has been preoccupied by a migration of major proportions of Jews from the north end of the city, — 241 —

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the traditional immigrant neighborhood, to the south end. There has been much emotional controversy over this movement among Winnipeg Jews, but it is fair to say that by the early twenty-first century most Winnipeg Jews are to be found in the neighborhoods of the south end. It is in the south end where much of the organized Jewish community is centered, and where the Asper Jewish Community Campus was built in 1997. The construction of this Campus both symbolized the demographic movement of Winnipeg Jews and increased concern for the maintenance of a Jewish institutional infrastructure in the north end. In recent years, the North End saw the loss or consolidation of many institutions, including several synagogues and schools, a Jewish library, and kosher markets. Thus the last kosher meat market in Winnipeg, Omnitskys, located in the north end, closed its doors in 2008. Even the consolidation of institutions in the north end has not been unproblematic. For example, there was a notable merger in 2003 of congregations Rosh Pina and Beth Israel, after lengthy and painstaking negotiations, to form the Eitz Chaim synagogue. Now the unified synagogue is being forced by circumstances to consider the propriety of its own move to the south end. As it has in the rest of Canada, traditional Judaism has enjoyed widespread support in Winnipeg, while Reform Judaism, represented in Winnipeg by Temple Shalom, is less influential. Unlike in Montreal and Toronto, however, Orthodoxy is not a really strong factor in the community’s religious life. While Chabad and mainstream Orthodoxy is certainly institutionally present in Winnipeg, the Jewish community generally has a stronger base of supporters of Conservative Judaism. Winnipeg Jewry at the turn of the twenty-first century has experienced the North-America-wide diminution of participation in multiple areas of traditional Jewish life. This means, among other things, that attendance at Sabbath and holiday services is perceptibly down. Synagogues find that they have less ability to maintain daily services, or, indeed, to maintain their infrastructures. Though controversies over the certification of kosher meat in Winnipeg, which have dogged the Winnipeg Jewish community for decades, seem to have been recently resolved, the demand for kosher meat has diminished and with it the number of stores offering kosher supplies to the public. Similar to the Jewish population of Montreal, Winnipeg Jewry is an aging community in demographic decline. In 2001, for instance, 22% of — 242 —

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Winnipeg Jews were older than sixty-five. The Winnipeg Jewish Federation has attempted to deal with the multiple challenges to the future of the Jewish community it perceives with several major initiatives. One of them, the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, has sought with considerable success to amass the financial resources to continue funding vital Jewish community projects irrespective of the demographics of the community. Another initiative of importance is the attempt to attract new waves of Jewish immigrants to Winnipeg. This initiative has had moderate success, and in the past decade or so, an estimated 1,800 Jews from the Former Soviet Union (often via Israel) and over 500 Argentine Jews have moved to Winnipeg with the support of the community. The challenges of integrating these newcomers in the religious and social institutions of the Winnipeg Jewish community are ongoing. With respect to Jewish education, there has been a sometimes agonizing process of mergers and closings of Jewish schools in Winnipeg, the latest of which is the Orthodox Ohr ha-Torah elementary school, which closed in 2009. At present, the Winnipeg Jewish community is effectively down to one Jewish school, the Gray Academy of Jewish Education. That institution, housed in the Asper Jewish Community Campus, has nearly 600 students and seems well positioned to maintain a healthy existence for the foreseeable future. The University of Manitoba was the first university in Canada to institute a program of Jewish studies, beginning it in 1975. It was, however, forced to close that program in the late 1980s due to budgetary constraints. Recently, however, the University has hired two new professors of Jewish studies, and the renewal of the Jewish studies program is under consideration. With respect to the cultural and intellectual life of Jews in Winnipeg, the community has built upon a strong heritage of cultural creativity, fostered in a large sense by Winnipeg’s relative geographical isolation from other large Jewish communities. A culturally important Winnipeg communal institution is the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, which includes a museum, a Holocaust education centre, a Jewish historical society, and a genealogical institute. Other notable initiatives include an annual Jewish Book Fair that in 2010 was paired with a Jewish Arts Festival. The community also supports a newspaper, the Jewish Post & News, which was founded in 1987 in a merger of two previous papers, the Jew— 243 —

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ish Post and the Western Jewish News. Despite the demographics of the Jewish community and the challenges to the viability of all newspapers in the age of the Internet, this weekly maintains its existence and its reportage of a significant Canadian Jewish community. Ira Robinson

For Further Study Chisvin, Sharon. Our Musical Heritage: A Century of Jewish Musicians and Music in Winnipeg. Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, nd. Jewish Federation of Winnipeg. http://www.jewishwinnipeg.org. Accessed March 10, 2011. Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada. http://www.jhcwc.org. Accessed March 29, 2011. Jewish Post and News. http://www.jewishpostandnews.com. Accessed March 29, 2011. Levine, Allan. Coming of Age: a History of the Jewish People of Manitoba. Winnipeg: Heartland Associates, 2009.

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XVI Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the North

Introduction Jews started coming to the Canadian West in the 1880s for the same reasons as other immigrants: to escape religious persecution in their European homelands, and to take advantage of the promise of vast tracts of cheap land. More specific Jewish reasons for immigration were to escape pogroms in Russia, or to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. Some came for the gold rush, and some were merely following the maxim, “Go west, young man.” While many started out in farming colonies run by the Jewish Colonization Association, the Baron de Hirsch Society, or the Montefiore Society, most of these ventures eventually failed, for the Jews of eastern Europe, insofar as they had farming experience, were primarily mixedcrop farmers, and the climate and soil of the prairie provinces was not conducive to this kind of farming. It didn’t help that they were mostly given land in the infertile and arid Palliser Triangle. When the failure of their farms forced them to move off their colonies, the Jews tended to migrate to the small towns, where they set up general stores. While the general store was the most popular choice for a business, there were also Jewish clothing stores, as well as Jewish doctors embarking on their first practices. Jewish teachers and nurses could be found in rural areas, as could a number of Jewish farmers, as well as cattle men, fur traders, hotel owners, and auto dealers. There were also Jewish peddlers, who traveled their small-town routes and were treated as long-lost relatives when they met other Jews in a town or village. Over time, the Jews in small towns gravitated to the larger centers of Edmonton and Calgary, where the constantly increasing Jewish population had developed religious and educational institutions and provided social and business opportunities. As Edmontonian Joe Shoctor noted: There were three constants in small town western prairie life: the — 245 —

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grain elevators, the Chinese restaurants and the Jewish general stores. They have all but disappeared. The desire—no the need for Jewish and higher education and a Jewish cultural atmosphere denuded small town Alberta [and Saskatchewan] of its Jews.1 Small Towns and Farming Colonies: Saskatchewan The first Jewish immigrants to Saskatchewan came in the last days of the nineteenth century. Saskatchewan’s first Jewish resident was Max Goldstein, a Russian-born tailor who opened a store in Fort Qu’Apelle in 1877. He also served as a quartermaster during the second Riel Rebellion in 1885. In 1901, there were a total of 198 Jews in all of the Northwest Territories. The first settlement was formed near Moosomin, also called New Jerusalem, in 1882. The oldest established Jewish colony was formed near Wapella in 1888. By 1892 there were 20 families there. Wapella was followed by the colony at Hirsch near Estevan in 1892, where the first synagogue in Saskatchewan was built. It is home to the oldest Jewish cemetery in the province, and was initially home to 47 families from Russia. The Lipton colony came in 1901, with 40 families, and Cupar was founded in the same year. In 1906, Edenbridge was founded, as were colonies at Sonnenfeld and Hoffer. In 1926, the Canadian Pacific Railway finally reached the colony of Sonnenfeld. At the same time, the Jewish Colonization Association purchased an additional 8,800 acres of land for resettlement of more Jews. The Sonnenfeld colony reached its peak population at the end of the 1920s, with 217 people. The Edenbridge Colony (literally, Yidn Bridge, or Jews’ Bridge) was settled by Lithuanian Jews who had lived in South Africa. It peaked at 232 in 1919, but had dropped to 187 by 1931, when it celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding. At that time the community had a synagogue, community hall, two public schools, a young persons’ club, a dramatic society, a Yiddish newspaper, and regular classes in Hebrew, Yiddish, and religion. The Edenbridge synagogue and cemetery are still standing, and the ark from the Sonnenfeld colony is now in the Montefiore Synagogue at Heritage Park, Calgary. 1

Joe Shoctor, Introduction, The First Century of Jewish Life in Edmonton and Northern Alberta: 18931993, edited by Uri Riosenzweig (Edmonton: Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta, 2000), 6. — 246 —

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The small towns of Saskatchewan were also home to many Jewish families, who mostly ran the general stores. By the mid-1920s, there were Jews in Melfort, Kamsack, Yorkton, Melville, Estevan, Weyburn, North Battleford, and Moose Jaw. Most of these towns had their own synagogues, cemeteries, Talmud Torahs, and cultural organizations. One of the largest of these communities was Moose Jaw, whose synagogue, the House of Israel, was completed in 1926 thanks to funds raised from both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. That community also had a long-standing B’nai B’rith lodge. At its peak in 1931, the Jewish population of Saskatchewan reached 5,047, and the numbers have been declining ever since. The 2001 census counted 2,090 Jews in the province, which has had a negative population growth in its general population as well for many years. Northern Alberta There were a number of small towns and villages in northern Alberta in the first half of the century where Jews made their homes and started their businesses. Often there would be a single Jewish family that usually owned a general store. In most of these towns, Jews were active in the general lives of their communities and served on chambers of commerce, town councils, and, in some instances, as mayors. Although they lived under conditions that separated them from larger Jewish communities, they did not abandon their religious beliefs, customs, and traditions. Many made the long treks to Edmonton or Vegreville to celebrate Jewish holidays, visit with relatives, or buy kosher meat. Vegreville and Camrose were two communities with larger populations of Jews. By 1919, the Jewish community of Vegreville was established, with a synagogue on 47th Ave., off 49th Street. By 1931, the community had grown and decided to build a larger building on Main Street and 49th Avenue. When the bylaws of the Vegreville Hebrew Association were approved in 1933, one of the conditions governing any future sale of the synagogue property was that the funds were to be donated to Jewish causes in Palestine. In 1973, when the Agudas Israel Synagogue was sold, the funds were donated to the State of Israel and were eventually used to build a synagogue at Kibbutz Alumim. By the 1920s, several Jewish families had settled in Camrose and the surrounding villages, and there was a unique Hadassah group composed — 247 —

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of women from Camrose, Wetaskiwin, Ponoka, Lacombe and Red Deer. Elhanan Hanson ran a general store in northern Alberta and wrote stories of the fur traders in Yiddish, which he later published as Treyder Ed and Other Stories of the Canadian North. One of Alberta’s early pioneers, Martin Nordegg (formerly Cohn), an immigrant from Silesia around 1906, built the largest mine in Alberta and created a model town that bears his name to this day. Central Alberta Colonies The Montefiore community, settled by transplanted European Jews who had mainly arrived from North Dakota, was the largest in central Alberta. The synagogue was built in 1913 in the south central Alberta farming community now known as Sibbald, which was the center of the Jewish colony established in 1910. The building served about thirty Jewish families as their synagogue, school, and community centre until the harsh farming conditions of the Great Depression forced most residents to move elsewhere. This building has since been purchased and restored by the Calgary Jewish community, and moved to Heritage Park in Calgary. Other central Alberta farming colonies included Rumsey/Trochu, founded in 1906/07, and Alsask/Montefiore, on the Saskatchewan border, founded in 1910, mostly by families originating in Russia who had previously farmed in the U.S. Pine Lake In the early 1890s, fifteen families, comprising some seventy men, women, and children, settled around Blank’s Lake, on or near Sections 28 and 33 of Township 36, Range 25, West of the 4th Meridian, near Red Deer, Alberta. Rabbi Blank, the new community’s leader, had a modest log cabin built on the southwestern edge of the small lake that was later to bear his name. The rest of the Jewish settlers lived in tiny shacks or dugouts nearby. The fledgling colony had very limited resources. The settlers had some seed potatoes, but very little in the way of seed grain. Shortly after the colony started, Rabbi Blank went to Red Deer with most of the community’s money to buy a horse and a gun. Tragically, while hunting shortly thereafter, the rabbi dropped the gun, which then went off and — 248 —

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killed the horse. The poor man purportedly cried out, “I am ruined!” The weather in central Alberta in the early 1890s was very cold and dry, and the Blank’s Lake colonists had very little in the way of farming experience. Virtually their only food source was some potatoes they managed to grow, as well as some fish they caught in Pine Lake. Eventually, the Russo-Jewish Relief Committee in London, England, learned of the destitution at the Blank’s Lake colony. In May 1894, Joseph Jacobs, chair of the Relief Committee, arranged to have $400 sent to help the colonists. The money was spent on several bushels of grain and sacks of flour and a number of horses. Unfortunately, the colonists had already pledged their small 1894 crop for some desperately-needed farm equipment, and their good fortune was short-lived. Given the ongoing grim conditions, all but six of the families left the district, presumably for Manitoba or the United States. The Russo-Jewish Relief Committee sent more relief money in the spring of 1896, but by the time it arrived, the colony was down to six residents. The oat crop from the previous fall had frozen, and the potato crop was poor. Moreover, Rabbi Blank had signed a contract for supplies with a merchant in Red Deer and then was unable to pay. In the spring of 1896, the last of the Blank’s Lake colonists left. Lethbridge The first Jewish family to settle in Lethbridge was that of Harris Goodman, in 1905. In 1909, after the first Jewish death in the community, the citizens organized to buy a cemetery. By 1913 the population had grown to around 60, and in 1911 the Hebrew Congregation of Lethbridge was incorporated with 19 male members, and Rabbi Aaron Goodman was hired. By 1921 there were over a hundred Jews in the city, as well as fifty in nearby communities who came in for services and celebrations. By 1935, a former church was purchased and converted into the Beth Israel Synagogue. A B’nai B’rith lodge was formed in 1939, and there were several women’s groups, including Hadassah and Ladies Aid, Pioneer Women, National Council of Jewish Women, Young Judaea, and BBYO. In 1952 the community hired Rabbi Morris Susman, who stayed for 10 years. The population peaked at seventy families in 1953. A new synagogue building was built in 1956, but then the population began to rapidly decline as more and more of the community decided to settle in — 249 —

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Calgary. In early 2000, a Hillel group was established on the University of Lethbridge campus. Today, only about thirty Jews remain in Lethbridge. Medicine Hat This community in southeastern Alberta became a major manufacturing and farm service center around 1900, which was when permanent Jewish settlers came to the area. In 1912 the Jewish population came together to form the Sons of Abraham congregation. They bought a Torah scroll and hired the community’s first rabbi, who also served as shochet and Hebrew teacher. Cemetery land was donated and the first funeral was held in 1916. Later, the Jewish graves were moved to a section of the Hillside municipal cemetery. By 1930, there were over a hundred Jews in Medicine Hat, whose total population was then 9,000. There were many community cultural and social activities, and in 1929 the congregation bought land for a synagogue, but did not buy a building for the site until 1938. Jewish citizen Harry Veiner served as the city’s mayor from 1952-1966, and again from 1968-1974. Born in Dysart, Saskatchewan, he was an athlete who played for the Regina Roughriders (later the Saskatchewan Roughriders). He also served with the Calgary Highlanders during World War II, and was invested in the Order of Canada in 1982. The community reached its peak of fifty-seven families in the 1950s, and in 1955 the synagogue was renovated and re-dedicated. Although a few Jewish families remain, the synagogue closed in 2000. Southern Farm Colonies In Southern Alberta, Jews could be found in many small towns, farming colonies, and coal-mining villages, including Bassano, Beiseker, Macleod, Irricana, and Strathmore in the 1920s, and Rumsey, Munson, Olds, Rockyford, Trochu, Magrath, Pincher Creek, Red Deer, Alliance, and Warner in the pre-war decades. Drumheller had the most Jews, 44, in 1931. About 20% of the area’s Jews lived in small towns in 1921, but that number dropped off dramatically after the Depression and World War II. After leaving farming, Jews often started small businesses like general stores and supply houses. After World War II, most Jews left the small towns, preferring to be in larger cities, primarily Calgary.

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Dawson City, Yukon A century-old Jewish cemetery, uncovered ten years ago, is one of the few reminders of the Jewish contribution to the Gold Rush. The Jewish population in Dawson City fluctuated from a high of about two hundred at the height of the gold rush to about a dozen by 1931, the last year someone was buried at Bet Chaim Cemetery. Without a rabbi or synagogue, worshippers gathered in homes, stores, and meeting halls for Passover and other celebrations, according to historical records. While their congregation was known in the beginning as simply the “Hebrew Congregation,” members chose in 1910 to name their group in honour of Baron Hirsch auf Gereuth, the German-born philanthropist who had helped out fellow Jews throughout Europe. The first person buried at Bet Chaim was Samuel Simon, a prospector who drowned in the Forty Mile River on September 1, 1902. Others later buried there include Jacob Klein, a clothier who committed suicide on July 9, 1903; Samuel Ross, a merchant who died in his home on July 28, 1911, of an unspecified illness; Abraham Packer, a seller of guns, knives, and hardware, who suffered a heart attack on February 26, 1918; and Jacob Rosenfeldt, who died January 8, 1931, of unknown causes. Yellowknife, NWT The Glick family began their sojourn in Yellowknife when J.I. Glick and his wife Sadie arrived there in April 1945, after he returned from service in World War II. Their son, Harold, joined them when he was released from the army six months later. After several business ventures, as well as terms as alderman and later mayor, Glick built the Gold Range Hotel in Yellowknife. Harold started Yellowknife Radio and Record Shop. Because of them, and a couple of other families in town, Jewish visitors to Yellowknife were always able to find a kosher meal and a place to stay while on business trips to the north. Calgary and Southern Alberta The first Jewish immigrants to settle permanently in southern Alberta were Jacob and Rachel Diamond, who came to Calgary in 1889, five years after the railway. Diamond led the first formal religious service in Calgary (1894), purchased land for a Jewish cemetery (1904) and brought — 251 —

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the first rabbi, Hyman Goldstick, to Calgary in 1906 (a joint venture with the Edmonton community). Diamond was also responsible for the first synagogue in Calgary, the House of Jacob, a five hundred-seat edifice built in 1911, a year before Beth Israel was built in Edmonton. The first Jewish organization to be formed in Calgary was the Chevra Kadisha, which incorporated in 1904. By 1914 a local Jewish newspaper noted many Jewish organizations in Calgary, including the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, the Zionist Society of Calgary (1907), the Yiddish Library of Calgary, the Jewish Workmen’s Circle and the Vaad Hair, formed in 1912. A B’nai B’rith lodge began in 1917, and a Jewish Ladies’ Aid Society and Council of Jewish Women were formed in 1920. The Hadassah group was formed in 1917 but not formally established until 1921. A Jewish Literary Society was formed in the 1920s, and the beginning of the Calgary Jewish Community Council came in 1928 when a group came together to raise funds for a new community building. Pioneer Women formed in 1935; Mizrachi in the 1940s. Histadrut was incorporated in 1937, and the Sharon Zionist Club and Canadian Friends of Hebrew University began in the early 1940s, along with the Calgary Zionist Council. The House of Jacob Congregation was incorporated in 1909, and the building, in which traditional Orthodox services were held, was completed in 1911. The first permanent rabbi, Simon Smolensky, arrived in 1917 and served until 1939. The building was demolished in 1968, and the community made do with temporary locations until a new synagogue, the House of Jacob-Mikveh Israel, was built in 1986. The Talmud Torah Hebrew School was established originally in 1910. At that time, there were one hundred Jewish families in Calgary. The school closed in 1911, but re-opened in 1912 with three teachers and a hundred pupils. After another brief closure and several more moves, the school opened in its own building in 1920, and then moved to another in 1930. By the 1920s, Calgary’s Jewish population had begun to grow. In 1921, there were 1,233 Jews in the city, compared to 600 in 1911, when the House of Jacob had been built. By 1931 there were 1,604, compared to 1,057 in Edmonton, 11 in Lethbridge, 104 in Medicine Hat, and 44 in Drumheller. In 1920, there were enough children to warrant the purchase of a building for the Hebrew School. Jewish cultural activity flourished in Calgary at that time, as evidenced by the posters of Abraham — 252 —

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Shnitka, King’s Printer, and the only Yiddish printer in Western Canada. The I.L. Peretz School started classes in 1927, and a new building was built in 1929 to house a Yiddish day school, which survived until 1958. The Jewish Community Centre opened a new building in 1930, which became home to the Beth Israel Congregation in 1935. The postwar years saw the opening of Camp B’nai Brith on the shores of Pine Lake, Alberta, not too far from the former Jewish colony at Blank’s Lake. This camp was founded by the Edmonton and Calgary B’nai B’rith lodges for the Jewish children of Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1959, the Calgary Hebrew School opened a new building. In 1960, a new Chevra Kadisha chapel was opened. The Calgary Jewish Community Council began in the mid-1950s and hired its first professional director in 1962. A new Peretz School building was opened in the early 1960s. The school continued to flourish until 1987, when it amalgamated with the Charles Waterman Talmud Torah to form the new Calgary Jewish Academy. Congregants of the new Orthodox Shaarey Tzedec Synagogue held their first services at High Holiays in 1959. Many of the best-loved clergy in Calgary served there, including Rabbi Lewis Ginsburg and Rabbi Abraham Postone (both of whom also served in Edmonton). In 1986, it amalgamated with the Beth Israel Synagogue to form the Beth Tzedec Congregation, and joined the Conservative movement. By the 1960s, Calgary’s Jewish population approached 3,000. At that time the Calgary Jewish Family Service Bureau opened. The agency became a beneficiary of the United Way in 1961, and continues to offer social services to families in need. The Hillel group was formed at the University of Calgary in 1967. There are now over 200 Jewish students at the University of Calgary, and Hillel has expanded its services to include Mount Royal College. The new Calgary Jewish Centre opened in 1979 on 90th Ave. S.W. and has become the hub of the modern Calgary Jewish community. It is also home to Temple B’nai Tikvah, Calgary’s Reform congregation, founded in 1979. Akiva Academy is the community’s Orthodox day school, founded in 1980. The Edmonton Jewish Community Edmonton, Alberta, was first incorporated as a town in 1892. At that time, there were about seven hundred permanent residents. Abraham and Rebecca Cristall, Edmonton’s first Jews, arrived in 1893. Abe be— 253 —

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came a successful businessman, and helped to bring more Jews over from his native Bessarabia. By 1901, there were 17 Jewish citizens in Edmonton. In 1904, Edmonton became incorporated as a city, and in 1905, Alberta officially became a province and the CN Railway arrived. That same year, William “Boss” Diamond came to Edmonton. He had come to join his brother Jacob, Alberta’s first Jewish citizen (1889), in Calgary, in 1892. He set up a clothing business in competition with Abe Cristall, but both worked together to lay the foundation of Edmonton’s Jewish community. Together with eight other men they formed the Edmonton Hebrew Association in 1906. They hired Rabbi Hyman Goldstick of Pilton, Latvia, to be rabbi, shochet and mohel for the Edmonton and Calgary Jewish Communities. In 1907, Cristall purchased land on the south side of the city for a Jewish cemetery and the Chevra Kadisha was formed. In 1912, the foundations were laid for the Beth Israel Synagogue. Abe Cristall served as the synagogue’s first president, and William Diamond as the second, a position he held for 31 years. In 1912, the Edmonton Talmud Torah Society was founded, with classes held in the basement of the synagogue. In 1925, the Society erected its own building, and in 1933 it was incorporated as the first Hebrew day school in Canada. In 1928, a second congregation was started in the basement of the Talmud Torah building, which later became the Beth Shalom Congregation (Conservative). In 1932, it was formally organized and the congregation engaged Rabbi Jacob Eisen, who became the first English-speaking rabbi west of Winnipeg. Also at that time, the Peretz or New Yiddish School was organized and opened in a building at 10135-95 Street. An offshoot of the Arbeiter Ring, which started in Edmonton in 1922, it had its heyday in the early 1930s, but had to close in 1939 due to declining enrollment. By 1941, Edmonton’s population had increased to 93,817, and the Jewish population stood at 1,449. The postwar years saw rapid growth in both the Jewish and general populations of Edmonton. As a result, a new Beth Shalom Synagogue was built in 1951. A new Beth Israel Synagogue building was constructed in 1953, as well as a new Talmud Torah Building that same year, reflecting the population shift of the Jewish Community from downtown to the West End. In 1954, the Edmonton Jewish Community Council was formed as an umbrella organization for the community, and served as such for 28 years. On September 20, 1982, the Community Council merged with — 254 —

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the Edmonton United Jewish Appeal to become the Jewish Federation of Edmonton. Alberta’s booming oil-based economy brought increased Jewish and general immigration over the next two decades, with major influxes from elsewhere in Canada and from Hungary, Russia, and South Africa. From a Jewish population of 1,748 in 1951, the community grew to 2,910 in 1971 and 5,430 in 1991. Today it stands at approximately six thousand. All of these new immigrants brought with them an organizational life that contributes to Edmonton’s vibrant Jewish community. Local branches of many Jewish organizations exist in the city today, including the Canadian Zionist Federation, Edmonton Hadassah-WIZO, and chapters of ORT, Na’amat, B’nai B’rith, and Emunah. Local offices of the Jewish National Fund are located at the Edmonton Jewish Community Centre, founded in 1970. The Edmonton chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women was responsible for founding the city’s Jewish Seniors’ Drop-in Centre (formerly the Golden Age Club) in 1954, as well as Jewish Family Services. An all-Jewish curling club, the B’nai B’rith Menorah, existed briefly in the 1960s and ‘70s. The community’s third congregation, Temple Beth Ora Reform Congregation, was founded in 1979 and incorporated in 1980. It rents space at the Jewish Community Centre. In 1996 Congregation Beth Tzedec, a breakaway from Beth Shalom, incorporated and began to hold services at the Talmud Torah. Chabad-Lubavitch arrived on the scene in 1991, and in 1993 a second Hebrew day school, the orthodox Menorah Academy, was founded. In 1999, a new building for Edmonton Talmud Torah was erected, and the next year, a new Beth Israel Synagogue was built, reflecting a further westward shift in population. In the fall of 2004, Edmonton elected its first Jewish mayor, Stephen Mandel. There has always been a strong tradition of civic involvement in the Edmonton Jewish community, with members serving on the boards and executives of many local arts, cultural, educational, and fundraising organizations, as well as in the judiciary. Regina Nine Jews lived in Regina in 1891, but by 1901, there was only one left. By 1911, the population had risen again to 130. Undoubtedly, the first Jews of Regina had initially settled on the surrounding farm colonies in — 255 —

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southern Saskatchewan. Several Regina families maintained their farms at these sites into the 1990s. The Chevra Kadisha was the first Jewish organization that emerged in Regina, in 1904. The first minyan took place in 1905 at a private home. The cemetery was formally established in 1915. The leader of the community at this point was William L. Nathanson, proprietor of the Clayton Hotel, who helped form the first minyan, and played a key role in the establishment of the first Talmud Torah. The first Jewish wedding to take place in the community was that of Dora Schacter and Joseph Schwartzfeld on January 23, 1909. Dora’s brother Jacob is the namesake of the Orthodox synagogue in Regina, the Beth Jacob, as the first organizational meeting took place at his home in 1906. By 1910, the “House of Jacob” congregation had hired a professional shochet and established regular weekly minyans. By 1912, there were twelve families, and a building committee was organized. The committee purchased two lots for $1,600, and in 1913 the cornerstone was laid for the new synagogue, which was completed in time for Rosh Hashanah services. That same year, the community established a Talmud Torah in rented space on 11th Avenue for 40 children and two teachers. Within the year, a building was moved onto a lot on St. John Street to permanently house the school. The next to be established was the Regina Zionist Council. Also in 1913, the community began negotiations with the city for the formal transfer of title of the two acres of land on Broad Street already in use as a Jewish cemetery. This charter was granted in 1915. By 1916, Regina’s Jewish population had increased four-fold in five years, to 495. By 1921, there were 860 Jews in Regina, creating a growth rate higher than that of the general population. The peak of the Jewish population occurred in 1931 at 1,010. On the other hand, the Jewish farm population in the five major colonies peaked in 1916 at 966, and then slowly started to decline. By 1931 the number of active Jewish farmers had sunk to 157. This indicates that in Regina, as was the case throughout the West, there was a slow but steady exodus from the farms to the towns and to the larger centers of Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton. Many also moved to larger cities like Winnipeg, Toronto, and Vancouver. The First World War brought with it a groundswell of Zionist enthusiasm, which reached its peak with the Balfour Declaration Parade of 1920, when the whole Jewish community marched through the city. The — 256 —

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war also gave rise to the growth of many Jewish organizations within the city, including the Jewish Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Brownies, Cubs, AZA and Young Judaeans. The Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Society was established in 1914, the Brandeis Lodge of B’nai B’rith in 1915 (charter revoked in 1923), the Regina Chapter of Hadassah in 1921 and the Anna Selick Junior Chapter established in 1927; the Hebrew Sick Benefit Association in 1921; and the Ladies Auxiliary to the Talmud Torah in 1927. A new B’nai B’rith lodge was chartered in 1929, which still exists. A major Zionist convention was held in Regina in 1928, which brought together Jews from across Western Canada. In 1920, the community hired its first rabbi, Menachem Kalef, who served for 25 years. The original B’nai B’rith lodge helped to raise money to purchase land and erect a new Talmud Torah building, whose cornerstone was laid on May 11, 1924. Classes began on September 22, 1924 with 150 students and three teachers. By 1926, all the major Jewish organizations in the city were amalgamated into one administrative entity, the Regina Hebrew Federated Budget, or Community. By this time, the community had become large enough to sustain a full-time kosher butcher shop, governed by the community. Rabbi Kalef served as shochet, and taxes were collected on the meat to help support the community. However, this butcher shop proved to be one of the most contentious issues the young community had to face. The thirties hit Saskatchewan hard, but the Jewish population in Regina did not decline substantially. From a high of 1,010 in 1931, it only dropped 7% by 1941, to 944. All of the major institutions survived. A new Hadassah chapter was formed during that decade, and the Regina Hebrew Savings and Credit Union was formed in 1937 with 68 members. It was the first credit union incorporated under the Province’s new Credit Union Act. Membership was open to “persons being of Hebrew descent, residing in the city of Regina and Southern Saskatchewan south of Township 28.” The entrance fee was twenty-five cents, and shares cost $5.00. It offered loans to members of the community who could not qualify for ordinary bank loans. The union was dissolved in 1972. The thirties were also a time of flourishing Yiddish culture, and as a result a new Yiddish school was established in Regina, as in Edmonton and Calgary. The Jewish National School was located in the old Labour Temple, just north of the synagogue. By the outbreak of World War II, however, the community saw the need to re-unite and shelve their — 257 —

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differences to show a united front, and the two schools were merged once again. On September 11, 1945, a committee was formed to build a new community centre. A decision was made to purchase land, and the cornerstone was laid four years later. Meanwhile, the old Ottawa Street synagogue was condemned as unsafe in October 1946, and fundraising for the new building took on a new urgency. During the summer of 1948, just after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Canadian Jewish Congress arranged for fourteen teenaged war orphans to be resettled in Regina, and this marked a new era in the Jewish community. On September 3, 1950, the new Jewish Community Center and Synagogue was officially opened. On that occasion, 193 charter members and their families were present, as were dignitaries from across Canada. In the early 1950s members of B’nai B’rith founded a curling club. The rink was built in the summer of 1952, and opened on January 23, 1953, as the “Wheat City Curling Club.” Curling continued to be popular well into the 1970s, but in 1979, the rink was sold to another group, and the proceeds from the sale were put into a trust fund to benefit the Beth Jacob Synagogue and the Hebrew School. Also in the 1950s, a new Talmud Torah was built, opening on April 18, 1955. Women’s involvement in communal activity increased dramatically during the postwar period, with two new chapters of Hadassah as well as the Hadassah Bazaar, which continued until 1984. In 1964, the synagogue board approved bat mitzvah ceremonies for young women. The first bat mitzvah took place in 1969. In 1967, the community considered mixed seating in the synagogue. After a change in its spiritual allegiance from the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire to Yeshiva University of New York, the congregation voted in 1973 to ask permission for mixed seating from Yeshiva University. They were turned down. It wasn’t until 1987, after the congregation, whose numbers were now much diminished, declared independence from any rabbinical supervisory body that mixed seating was instituted on a permanent basis at Beth Jacob. The Reform Temple, Beth Tikvah, was founded in Regina in 1990, probably due to a high rate of intermarriage within the community. In addition, a mixed burial ground was opened in the Jewish cemetery for intermarried couples in 2005. In the 2001 census the number of Jews in Regina was about the same as it had been since 1951—720, roughly the same size as the Saskatoon community. — 258 —

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Saskatoon The first Jews to settle in Saskatoon were William and Fanny Landa, in 1907. Landa came from the Lipton colony, where he had settled in 1904, and brought his family to Saskatoon in 1905. They built a dugout with a sod roof on poplar logs on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. Later, they moved to a railway car. The first minyan was purportedly held in 1908 in a rented house, although some insist the first minyan took place in 1910. The community also hired the first shochet, as well as the first Hebrew teacher, that year. Classes were held in the Cahill block until the purchase of a former church in 1911, which was converted into the Talmud Torah. Mr. O. Koukoy obtained land for a Jewish cemetery and also established the first synagogue, Agudath Israel, in 1912. By 1914 the Talmud Torah had fifty students and two more teachers. In 1918, a Hebrew high school was established. Because it was such a small community, kosher meat was always a problem, even though members of the community met regularly at Zaitlin’s Kosher Restaurant. In the 1920s and 1930s, about 95% of Regina’s Jewish women kept a kosher kitchen, but by the 1960s, the last kosher butcher shop closed its doors. Many Jewish organizations developed in the 1910s, including the Chevra Kadisha, the YWHA, the Hebrew Ladies Aid, the Herzl Zion Club, the Talmud Torah, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and B’nai B’rith Lodge 739, organized in 1913. During the First World War, the community was very active in raising relief funds for the Jews of Russia. The first Young Judaea club was organized in 1919. That same year, a second synagogue opened, Congregation Agudas Israel. A new Talmud Torah with four spacious classrooms was built in 1928. The Chesed Shel Emes was erected in 1948. The cultural life of the Jews of Saskatoon flowered in the 1920s, with a number of traveling Yiddish productions coming to town to play at the Strand Theatre. In 1921, Moe Ames started the Saskatoon Yiddish Players, which performed many classic works. They were taken over by the Zionist Organization in 1930. The Jewish Cultural Club of Saskatoon’s Jewish Chorus presented the city’s first Jewish choral concert on May 19, 1937. The Ladies Aid of the Talmud Torah was founded in 1918, and the Ladies Auxiliary of the Agudas Israel in 1919. Saskatoon Hadassah was started in 1923. The Good Behaviour Club for boys aged 7-11 began in 1927. The Saskatoon chapter of Pioneer Women was launched in 1932. — 259 —

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In 1936, seventy-five women from the Talmud Torah Auxiliary and the United Jewish Relief Committee banded together to form the Saskatoon section of the National Council of Jewish Women. Most of the Jews in Saskatoon ran small family businesses, which employed other Jews. The attitude of the Gentiles in greater Saskatoon was often restrictive. The Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t hire Jews, and the University of Saskatchewan School of Medicine had a Jewish quota at one time. The Saskatoon Golf Club did not allow Jews, so the Jews founded the Riverside Country Club. The University of Saskatchewan Hillel was organized in 1948. At that time, over a hundred of the University’s two thousand students were Jews. They even had their own newspaper, Kol Hillel. By 1954, there was talk of building a new synagogue/JCC complex, and in 1955, B’nai B’rith inaugurated its Silver Plate dinners to raise money for this venture. On May 15, 1957, sod was turned for the new building. The new Agudas Israel/JCC opened its doors in 1958 as a Conservative synagogue. Both it and the other synagogue were under the governance of the Community Budget, led by President Albert H. Krolik. Celebration of bat mitzvahs started at the synagogue in 1962. By the mid-1960s, membership in the synagogues and the population of Saskatoon started to decline (reaching 195 families during that decade). On June 14, 1965, the community decided to dispose of the old synagogue building and the Chesed Shel Emes, next door to it. Russian immigrants started coming to Saskatoon in 1978, and eventually, JIAS settled 59 people there. In 1982, the Saskatchewan Jewish Council began to function. In 1986, the Saskatchewan Region of the Canadian Jewish Congress was established. In 1992, Saskatchewan finally attained representation on the National Budgeting Conference of UIA Canada. The Saskatoon Jewish population rose from 77 individuals in 1911 to a peak of 793 in 1961. By 1991, the population was 615, and it has continued to hold steady while people of all faiths have left Saskatchewan for larger centers. The census of 2001 listed exactly 700 Jews in Saskatoon. The only other new development in the community has been the establishment of Congregation Shir Chadash in March 2000, as a result of a split in the former Agudas Israel Congregation. Both of these congregations are now Conservative. Debby Shoctor — 260 —

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For Further Study Baltzan, Jacob A. Memoirs of a Pioneer Farmer in Western Canada at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Edmonton: Edmonton Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton, 1994. Curtis, Fred A., ed. Our Heritage: The History of the Regina and Region Jewish Community. Regina: Beth Jacob Congregation, 1989. Dawe, Michael. “Blank’s Lake Jewish Colony.” Heritage/Yerusha 11: 3 (summer 2009). (The Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta.) Feldman, Anna. “Jewish Rural Settlements.” In The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. Regina: University of Regina, 2006. www.esask.uregina. ca. Freidgut, Theodore. “The Lipton Jewish Agricultural Colony, 19011905.” In Pioneering on Canada’s Prairies. Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2009. Gutkin, Harry. Journey into our Heritage: The Story of Jewish People in the Canadian West. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1980. Hanson, Elhanan. Treyder Ed and Other Stories of the Canadian North.” Winnipeg: 1957. (Yiddish) Heritage & History: The Saskatoon Jewish Community. Saskatoon: Congregation Agudas Israel History Book Committee, 1998. Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta, A Joyful Harvest: Celebrating the Jewish Contribution to Southern Alberta Life, 1989-2005. Calgary: Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta, 2005. ------. Land of Promise: The Jewish Experience in Southern Alberta. Calgary: Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta, 1996. Kayfetz, Benjamin. “Saskatchewan.” In Encyclopedia Judaica. The Gale Group, 2008. Lehr, John. “A Jewish Farmer Can’t Be: Land Settlement Policies and Ethnic Settlement in Western Canada 1870-1919.” In Jewish Life and Times: A Collection of Articles, vol. 9, edited by Daniel Stone and Annalee Greenberg. Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2007. Leonoff, Cyril Edel. The Architecture of Jewish Settlements in the Prairies: A Pictorial History. Winnipeg, Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada, 1975. ------. The Jewish Farmers of Western Canada. Vancouver, Jewish Histori— 261 —

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cal Society of British Columbia and Western States Jewish History Association, 1984. ------. Wapella Farm Settlement: A Pictorial History. Winnipeg: Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba and the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada, 1970. Pascoe, Ronald M. Talmud Torah: The First 75 Years, 1912-1987. Edmonton: The Edmonton Talmud Torah Society, 1988. Romer Segal, Agi, and Sandra Morton Weizman, eds. The House that Jacob Built: Congregation House of Jacob-Mikveh Israel Calgary, Alberta Centennial Commemorative Book. Calgary: Congregation House of Jacob-Mikveh Israel, 2009. Rosenzweig, Uri, ed. The First Century of Jewish Life in Edmonton and Northern Alberta: 1893-1993. Edmonton: Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Northern Alberta, 2000. Scott, Stephen. “Wilderness Gentry: Jewish Fur Traders in the Eighteenth Century.” In Jewish Life and Times, volume 9, edited by Daniel Stone. Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2007.

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XVII Vancouver

The city of Vancouver and its metropolitan region, at the southwest corner of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, encompasses 21 municipalities and one electoral area, with a total population of about 2.1 million. In 2006, the Jewish population of the region was 21,465, or about 1% of the total general population, and, while comprising only 6.8% of the Jews in Canada, it has the nation’s third-largest Jewish community. The Community’s Origins Victoria, on Vancouver Island, is British Columbia’s capital city. The first substantial white population arrived there in 1858 for the Fraser River gold rush. Among them were 242 Jews of Polish, Germanic, and British descent who had participated in the earlier gold rush and settlement of California. Experienced merchants who were politically astute and English-speaking, they were an asset to the fledgling British colony. Prominent among them were: four Oppenheimer brothers from Bavaria, entrepreneurs in the gold fields; Selim Franklin from Liverpool, the first Jew to sit in a British colonial legislature; his brother, Lumley, the second mayor of Victoria; and Henry Nathan Jr. from London, who, on British Columbia’s entry into Confederation in 1871, became member for Victoria, the first Jew to sit in the Canadian Parliament. This community established a cemetery and a synagogue, Congregation EmanuEl, which continue to this day. The Rise of Vancouver Vancouver originated in 1870 as a town named Granville but colloquially called Gastown. Its first Jewish citizen was storekeeper Louis Gold, a Polish Jew who arrived from the United States in 1872. Vancouver was officially born on April 6, 1886, as the terminal city of the Canadian Pacific Railway, chosen for its mainland location and deep-sea harbor, convenient for the company’s steamship line to Australia and the Orient. — 263 —

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By the beginning of the twentieth century, the city had succeeded as the commercial and industrial centre of the province. Vancouver’s early Jewish families came from Victoria and were joined by others from the south and east. Among these were: two of the Oppenheimer brothers, David and Isaac, who were principals of the Vancouver Land and Improvement Co.; Victoria-born Samuel Davies Schultz, appointed justice of Vancouver County Court in 1914, the first Jewish judge in Canada and, in 1917, the first Vancouver delegate to a national Zionist conference; and Samuel Gintzburger, Swiss consul and leader of Reform Judaism. A small community developed in the affluent West End of Vancouver’s downtown, where they formed a semi-Reform congregation. From the outset, Jews were engaged in civic politics. Isaac and David Oppenheimer sat on the 1887 council. David Oppenheimer (18341897), the city’s second mayor, 1888-1891, established much of the city’s infrastructure and institutions, and is regarded as the “father” of Vancouver. The arrival of the transcontinental railway on May 23, 1887 coincided with the mass exodus of Russian Jews to America, some of whom came to Vancouver directly or after intermediate stays elsewhere. They brought with them their customs, Orthodox Judaism, and the Yiddish language. Starting out as peddlers, they soon opened shops as tailors and clothiers, jewelers and pawnbrokers in the Gastown district. These businessmen settled their families nearby in the neighborhood of Strathcona, where they established an Orthodox synagogue (which evolved into Congregation Schara Tzedeck), a Talmud Torah school, kosher butcher shops, and other community institutions. Ukrainian-born, Yiddish-speaking Rabbi Nathan Mayer Pastinsky served the community for 30 years, until his death in 1948. The Interwar Period With the increasing immigration from eastern Europe, Russian Jews began to dominate the community while the Reform group stagnated and had to suspend its services. Other than the rabbi and teacher, no community professionals existed to guide development: leadership was in the hands of Jews who were working their way up the economic and social ladder. In contrast to the Victoria community and the days — 264 —

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of the Oppenheimers in Vancouver, no Jews were involved in the civic, provincial, or federal political scenes. While overt antisemitism was infrequent, few Jews could be found on corporate boards, as university professors, in elite private schools, or in business, golf, and social clubs. By the 1930s, a number of Jews had achieved upward mobility as proprietors of department and chain stores, wholesale warehouses, and factories. They also moved their residences to new neighborhoods south of downtown. Consequently, in 1928, a Jewish community centre was built in Fairview and, in 1932, a more liberal congregation, Beth Israel, was constituted, which affiliated with the American Conservative movement. It engaged the city’s first Canadian-born rabbi, Samuel Cass, who would serve as a Jewish chaplain in Europe during the Second World War. By the end of the War, Vancouver’s Jewish population was about 5,500. Postwar Immigration and the Growth of the Community The European-born pioneers had achieved a measure of economic stability, social acceptance, and communal welfare, yet they perceived that future opportunities for their children lay in better secular education. This was particularly true in Western Canada, where mechanization was making the family farm less viable while better transportation was depopulating the small towns where Jewish storekeepers had proliferated, and city clothing factories and wholesale houses, dominated by Jews, were being displaced abroad. Thus, the postwar westward movement came from the Canadian-born generation, which was graduating in large numbers from universities and looking for new economic opportunities. This cohort found their opportunities in the expansive growth of the British Columbia economy from 1952-1972. Vancouver’s Jewish population growth was also precipitated by the opening of Canada’s gates to immigration in the postwar period. In 1948, forty-eight Jewish refugee children from the European Holocaust arrived in Vancouver, followed by fifty other refugees, the so-called “tailors.” The most exotic of the schemes to bring in Jewish immigrants, Operation Flying Dragon, rescued two hundred Jews who left Shanghai abruptly when it fell to the communists. After the Hungarian uprising of 1956, a number of Hungarian Jews arrived in Vancouver. Inthe 1980s and 1990s, there was another major wave of Jewish immigration from — 265 —

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the former Soviet Union. Peak growth rates were experienced between 1941 and 1951, when the Jewish community increased 93.3% (from 2,828 to 5,467), and between 1971 and 1981, when the community increased 47.1% (from 10,145 to 14,925). From 1981-1991, the community grew 31.7%, and from 1991-2001 by 14.9%. From the census, it seems that the community has decreased in recent years, from 22,130 Vancouver Jews in 2001 to 21,465 in 2006, mirroring the situation across Canada, as fewer people nationwide identified as Jews in 2006. In 2001, the birthplace of Jews in Greater Vancouver was mainly other parts of Canada (64.8%), Western Europe (7%), the United States (6.9%), the Former Soviet Union (6%) and Israel (3.7%). According to data from the same year, 79.5% of Jewish residents in the Vancouver area reported English as their mother tongue; 5.4% Russian; 3.3% Hebrew; 2.3% Spanish; 2.2% Yiddish; and 1.9% French. The Evolution of Community Organizations By the 1950s, most Jewish families were living in new city subdivisions in the south and west. In 1948-1949, the principal congregations, Schara Tzedeck and Beth Israel, built modern synagogues along Oak Street and, in 1962, a new Jewish community centre was located at 41st and Oak. Though decreasing membership threatened the JCC’s future in the 1980s, the completely renovated Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCCGV) now houses the Wosk Auditorium, the Norman Rothstein Theatre, the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, as well as the offices of several Jewish organizations and athletic facilities. Also along or near the Oak Street corridor are Beth Hamidrash (the only Sephardi congregation), the Reform Temple Sholom, the Lubavitch Centre, Vancouver Talmud Torah elementary school and King David High School as well as the Louis Brier Home and Hospital and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Residence, which comprise the Dr. Irving and Phyliss Snider Campus for Jewish Seniors. From the postwar period to the late 1990s, Jewish population growth gave a huge boost to traditional community organizations. Men’s clubs and sisterhoods proliferated; at its peak, B’nai B’rith had three men’s — 266 —

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lodges, three women’s chapters, a youth organization, and a Hillel House at the University of British Columbia (UBC); the annual Negev dinners of the Zionist Organization raised millions for the new state of Israel; and the women’s group Hadassah, the most active in the community, grew to 22 chapters. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the nature of Jewish organizational involvement has changed. Thus, all the local B’nai B’rith lodges are now defunct, though the organization has spawned several other groups: B’nai B’rith Women has been reconstituted as Jewish Women’s International of Canada, Vancouver section, and there are now Hillel Houses on the campuses of Burnaby’s Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria, as well as UBC. In addition, the B’nai B’rith Building Society runs B’nai B’rith Manor and is involved in Haro Park Centre, both of which are downtown Vancouver affordable housing projects, opening in 1989 and 1980, respectively. Men’s lodges have all but disappeared, but there are still several women’s groups, including Hadassah-WIZO, National Council of Jewish Women, and Na’amat. However, membership numbers in these organizations have diminished since the 1970s, when women started to become wage-earners in larger numbers, thereby reducing the time available for volunteering, and the focus of their activities changed. For example, the last Hadassah Bazaar was held in 2007 (the first having been in 1952). Hadassah is still a vital organization, but now focuses on fundraisers that require shorter time commitments, like an annual golf tournament. While NCJW no longer runs schools, summer camps, or thrift shops, it has several programs it carries out with other local partners—Jewish and non-Jewish—such as Books for Kids, to provide used books for children in inner city schools, and a recent forum on human trafficking, co-hosted with the Temple Sholom Sisterhood. Today, there are easily more than a hundred Jewish organizations in Vancouver, including local chapters of Canadian or Israeli groups. This expansive structure requires a large amount of funding. The first attempt at combined community fundraising, organizing, and planning took place early in the community’s history, in 1932, with the founding of the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council, which under various names expanded its activities over the years and was run largely by volunteers. Since 1986, its work has been the mandate of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver (known as the Federation), which is — 267 —

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professionally staffed but still employs many volunteers. Thus some 400 volunteers helped with the Federation’s 2008 campaign, which allocated funds to twenty-seven local agencies and nearly forty overseas programs. This effort raised about $7.2 million from 3,574 pledges—short of the $8 million target and down 4% from the previous year’s total, which was collected from 3,702 pledges. Community Challenges A major challenge for the Vancouver Jewish community’s fundraisers and planners is that population growth and high land costs have led to a rush to suburbia by young families and seniors seeking affordable housing. In 1971, the city of Vancouver contained 77.9% of the overall Jewish population in the Lower Mainland area, whereas in 2001, just over half of the Jewish community in the Lower Mainland (54.6%) lived in Vancouver proper, while 22.1% lived in Greater Richmond, 11.1% on the North Shore, 9.2% in Burquest (Burnaby-Coquitlam-New Westminster), and 3% in Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows/Langley. While the community has spread geographically, the main Jewish infrastructure in these areas has been synagogues or synagogue/community centers. Vancouver is still the major focal point of communal activity, from the arts to health care. While there are seniors groups in the suburbs, the senior care facilities are all in Vancouver. Though there are concerts, plays, and lectures that take place in the outlying areas, most of the action takes place, if not at the JCCGV, then at Vancouver synagogues or other venues. The Jewish Family Service Agency, the Jewish Food Bank, ASTEH (Alternative Short-Term Emergency Housing), a shelter for victims of domestic violence, and the two Yaffa homes (for mentally challenged people) are all in Vancouver. According to a 2008 study, there are approximately 1,250 Jewish people in Greater Vancouver, or approximately 4-5% of the population, living with mental illnesses. Nonetheless, the aforementioned Yaffa homes and five other units of supportive housing are the only community housing options for Jewish adults with such illness. There were 3,150 Jews living below the poverty line in the Greater Vancouver area in 2001, or 14% of the community. Though the situation has been improving—the rate was 16.1%—the level of Jewish poverty in the Vancouver CMA (census metropolitan area) is higher than that — 268 —

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in Winnipeg (12.4%) and Toronto (11%), though Montreal is higher (18.4%). Addressing such social problems is complicated not only by the geography of the community, but its increasingly diverse—and lessaffiliated—nature. According to the 1991 census, one-quarter of Jewish families in Greater Vancouver had a non-Jewish partner and, while in Montreal and Toronto there wasn’t much difference between the Jewish ethnicity and religion questions in the Census, more than one-quarter of Vancouver Jewry gave “no religion” as an answer to the religion question, though they noted Jewish as their ethnic origin. In 2001, there was still a significantly lower proportion of highly identified Jews in the Vancouver CMA (76.5%) than in Canada as a whole (89.1%); cities from Montreal (95.5%) to Calgary (82.2%) had higher levels of Jewish identification. As well, 41.3% of married Jews in Vancouver were married to non-Jews in 2001, which translates into a 144% increase in the number of Jews living in intermarried families from 1981 to 2001, while the Jewish population of the area only increased by 51.3% during this period. Responses to a 2008 survey commissioned by the Federation indicated a trend toward a decrease in denominational identity over three generations. Of the group of parents, approximately 65% stated that they were raised denominationally, and about 52% identified themselves that way, but only 32% identified their children as denominational. The top ten religious practices deemed important and observed are overwhelmingly those associated with home and family, rather than those requiring institutional involvement. Arts, Culture, Sports, and Education Vancouver has seen numerous Jewish arts festivals, film festivals, and theatre groups. Many of them, like the Jewish Music Society of the 1980s, and the Chelm Cultural Club’s annual film festival, which ran from the late 1970s into the 1980s, lasted several years before disappearing. Others transformed themselves: the Jewish Festival of the Arts Society, which started in the mid-1980s, held its first annual film festival in 1989 and, when it disbanded in 1997, became the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival. The Vancouver Showcase of Canadian Jewish Writers, which began as a two-day literary festival in 1984, is now the five-day Cherie Smith JCCGV Jewish Book Festival. — 269 —

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There was much controversy when the Shalom Gallery, which opened in 1982, became the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery in 1988: there were resignations from the gallery committee and letters to the Jewish Western Bulletin about the possible threat to freedom of expression that a privately endowed gallery could entail. This sort of patronage has, however, become commonplace. Among others, there is Chutzpah! (The Lisa Nemetz International Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts), the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts, and the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. In the general community, there is the Ben and Esther Dayson Judaica Collection and Reading Room at the Richmond Public Library, and, with the financial backing of the Sophie Waldman Endowment for Holocaust Education, a new permanent course on the Holocaust was introduced at UBC in 2000. There have always been sports activities and groups, with a Jewish hockey league being quite popular since its inception in 1989. The year 2010 marks the seventeenth annual JCCGV Sports Dinner, which reaches the larger Vancouver community. The broader outreach of such dinners, and festivals such as Chutzpah!, has contributed to their success. What most attracts the local Jewish community, however, are events related to Israel. Israel has been a main cause of the community, though a divisive one, since the 1970s. There have been several incarnations of organized Israel advocacy groups, like the Canada-Israel Committee, which in recent years has renewed its presence in Vancouver, while various other organizations have come and gone, such as the Zionist Federation, the Israel Program Centre and the Israel Action Committee. There have also been college groups, such as Langara College’s Israel Advocacy Club, and the still extant Hillel Vancouver’s Israel Awareness Club. Leafing through the Jewish Western Bulletin (JWB)/Jewish Independent from over the years, we see that Israel rallies or celebrations are the only events that attract thousands of Jewish community members. The paper reported that, during the Six-Day War in 1967, more than 2,000 people turned out at Schara Tzedeck for a rally, the overflow crowd listening outside. In October 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the JWB noted that 1,500 people came to Schara Tzedeck in solidarity with Israel, while the Oct. 30, 1975, issue reported that more than 1,200 Christians and Jews packed the Courthouse square downtown to protest the United Nations resolution condemning Zionism as racism. — 270 —

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In 2005, the Independent covered the year’s Yom Ha’atzmaut concert, which saw a capacity crowd of 1,400 fill the Vogue Theatre. Generally, audiences in the hundreds attend the organizations’ galas, or the launch of the Federation’s annual campaign, while educational seminars, lectures, and more low-key events attract smaller numbers. There have been numerous singles groups, with none having a large impact or longevity. However, Lubavitch B.C. (Chabad) and Ohel Ya’akov Community Kollel events are popular with younger community members. Chabad had a monopoly on the Orthodox side, including hosting Shabbat dinners to bring singles together, for some 25 years, until the Kollel came to town in the year 2000, first with educational programs, then with pub nights, business club meetings, and the like. The two provincial camps—Camp Miriam and Camp Hatikvah— have thrived for more than sixty and fifty years, respectively. The twenty-first century has seen the introduction of a yeshivah for boys and one for girls, as well as a new after-school Jewish studies program organized by the National Conference of Synagogue Youth. Adult education also saw a boost, with the introduction in Vancouver in 2005 of the Florence Melton Adult Mini School, developed by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although day school enrolment continues to grow, TAG, a supplementary Jewish learning program for teens, is struggling, and the JCCGV has the only early childhood program, outside of the Jewish day schools, that offers a Jewish curriculum. As well, while 72% of respondents to a 2008 Federation survey stated that some form of Jewish education was important, in 2001 only 30.7% of Jewish children (K-12) had experienced any education with Jewish content. Vancouver Jews in the General Community Postwar migration, Canada’s commitment to a pluralistic society, and economic demands for skilled people in all fields have resulted in an unprecedented participation and influence of Jewish people in the country’s political, economic, and cultural life. Countless B.C. Jewish community members have contributed to both the Jewish and general communities. In the interwar period, few Jews engaged in politics at any level, but the postwar era saw a reversal of this lethargy and the creation of a — 271 —

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number of firsts. David Barrett grew up in Downtown Eastside, and, as a social worker in B.C. prisons, sought elective office as a way to improve the system. Elected to the B.C. Legislature in 1960, he was the first Jew in ninety years to gain a seat. In August 1972, as leader of the New Democratic Party, Barrett became the first Jew to become premier of a Canadian province. He was defeated in the election of December 1975. Simma Holt spent thirty years as reporter and columnist for the Vancouver Sun, and wrote books on crime, the counter-culture, and social concerns. A Trudeau Liberal, Holt became the first Jewish woman to serve in Canada’s Parliament when she was elected in 1974 as member for Vancouver-Kingsway. In a five-year parliamentary career, she was notable as vice-chair of the Justice Committee and for her work on prison reform. Recently, a number of Jews have been active as city councilors, school trustees, and members of the Vancouver Park Board. Two of note are Harry Rankin and Muni Evers. Self-described as a “radical,” Rankin served on Vancouver City Council as an outspoken maverick and contrarian for twenty-five years. Evers settled in New Westminster and served as a police commissioner for four years, then in 1969 was elected mayor. He was the first Jew in British Columbia to hold such office since David Oppenheimer, and held it for seven terms, through 1982. Jews have also served as judges in all levels of the B.C. courts. Perhaps the most well known is Nathan T. Nemetz, who was an early supporter of civil and human rights issues, and a founder of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Appointed a judge of the B.C. Supreme Court in 1963 and chief justice in 1973, he continued to speak out on human rights issues. He was the first Jewish chancellor of UBC (1972-1975), and, in 1978, he was appointed chief justice of the Appeal Court, the top judicial post in the province. In a unique case, Risa Levine and her younger sister, Miriam Gropper, are both on the British Columbia bench. Levine was appointed to the B.C. Supreme Court, later being elevated to the Court of Appeal. On April 15, 2005, Gropper was appointed to the B.C. Supreme Court. To their knowledge, they are the only biological sisters who are federally appointed judges in Canada. What Lies Ahead As in many other localities, intermarriage and assimilation, along with a low birth rate, threaten the continuity of the Vancouver Jewish com— 272 —

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munity. Who will support the Jewish communal infrastructure in the future? Already, most Jewish groups struggle with financial viability and attendance, and now, after decades of high growth, the community is losing members. While a decrease in the Vancouver Jewish population could be attributed to out-migration from the city to outlying areas, a provincial decline indicates otherwise. According to census data, the B.C. Jewish community decreased from 31,280 in 2001 to 30,380 in 2006, going from 0.8% of the total population of B.C. to 0.75%. The demographics have some somewhat favorable aspects, however. The senior (65+) cohort, though increasing, is still a smaller percentage of the Greater Vancouver Jewish community (13.1%) than it is of the Canadian Jewish population (16.7%). The Vancouver community’s dependency ratio (children 0-14 plus seniors, divided by the 15-64 population) is only 0.41, as compared to that in Toronto (0.54), Montreal (0.70), and Winnipeg (0.64), suggesting that the burden of looking after its economically dependent members is not as pronounced in Vancouver as it is in other major Jewish communities across Canada. On the other hand, a significant portion of the population is living below the poverty line and, for reasons other than mere community unity, there is a need to reach out to Jews in Vancouver’s outlying areas. Richmond, for example, has the second-highest concentration of seniors in the Lower Mainland, yet has no Jewish-oriented affordable housing or assisted living units, and few counseling or other support services. As well, there are few programs or organizations specifically geared to intermarried couples, though the necessity for them is apparent, given that the intermarriage rate when both spouses are under thirty years old is 71.1% (when both spouses are at least forty years old, it is 36.2%). Such young families have the potential to contribute to the community’s future, but only if they are included in it. The number of donor families sustaining the majority of the community structure remains small. The Federation’s 2008 planning report notes some of the ways being explored to engage the next generation, including creating networking opportunities based on career and personal interests and creating specific philanthropic opportunities based on social action issues, which several women’s groups have done successfully. Cyril Leonoff and Cynthia Ramsay

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For Further Study Barrett, Dave, and William Miller. Barrett: A Passionate Political Life. Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintyre, 1995. Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region. Public Affairs Action Agenda 2004-2007: An Action Guide to the Issues of Concern to the Jewish Population of British Columbia, Yukon and Northwest Territories. Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region. http://www.cjc.ca/docs/RD/177_ PAAA%202005.pdf. Accessed Dec. 16, 2009. Holt, Simma. Simma Holt: Memoirs of a Loose Cannon. Hamilton: Seraphim Editions, 2008. Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. Kol Hakehila: Your CommUNITY, vol. 1, edition 2. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, 1994. ------. 2008 Annual Report. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, 2008. ------. 2008 Planning Council Report. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, 2008. ------. Survey Highlights: Attitudinal Survey of the Greater Vancouver Jewish Community. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, 2008. Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia. In the Footsteps of Jewish Vancouver 1886-2006. Vancouver: Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, 2006. ------. Celebrating the Opening of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. Vancouver: Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, 2007. Jewish Independent, 2005-2009. Jewish Western Bulletin, 1979-2005. Leonoff, Cyril Edel. Centennial of Vancouver Jewish Life: 1886-1986. Vancouver: Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, 1986. Lindberg, Ted. Pnina Granirer: Portrait of an Artist. Vancouver: Ronsdale, 1998. Rankin, Harry. Rankin’s Law: Recollections of a Radical. Vancouver: November House, 1975. Shahar, Charles, and Jean Gerber. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Greater Vancouver, vol. 1-6. Vancouver: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and UIA Federations Canada, 2003-2006. Sirotnick, Gareth. Running Tough: The Story of Vancouver’s Jack Diamond. — 274 —

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Vancouver: The Diamond Family, 1988. Statistics Canada. “Ethnic Origin (247) Single and Multiple Ethnic Origin Responses (3) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 Census - 20% Sample Data.” http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm7LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=O &DIM=O&FL=A&FREE=O&GC=O&GI D=O&G K=O&G RP=l& PI D= 92333&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHOWALL=O&SUB= O&Tempora1=2006&THEME =80&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=. Accessed Dec. 20, 2009. ------. “Population and Dwelling Counts, for Canada, Provinces and Territories, 2006 and 2001 Censuses - 100% Data.” http://www12.statcan. ca/census­recensement/2006/ d p-pd/h It/97 -550/1 n d ex. cfm 7TP L= P 1 C& P age= R ETR& LAN G = E ng& T = 10 1. Accessed Dec. 20, 2009. ------. “Ethnic Origin (232), Sex (3) and Single and Multiple Responses (3) for Population, for Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2001 Census - 20% Sample Data.” http://www12.statcan.ca/english/censusOl/prod ucts/standard/th e m es/RetrieveProductTable.cfm7T emporal=2001&PID=62911&APATH =3&GID=431515&METH=1&PTYPE=55440&THEME=44&FOCUS =O&AID=O&PLACENAME=O&PROVINCE=0&SEARCH=0&GC=99 &GK=NA&VI0=0&VNAM EE=&VNAMEF=&FL=O&RL=O&FREE=O. Accessed Dec. 20, 2009. ------. “Religion (13) and Age Groups (8) for Population, for Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas 1 and Census Agglomerations, 2001 Census - 20% Sample Data.” Statistics Canada. “Selected Religions, for Canada, Provinces and Territories ­20% Sample Data.” http://www12.statcan.ca/english/censusO1/products/highIight/ReI igion/Page.cfm7Lang= E&Geo=PR&View=la&Code=Ol& Table=1&Sta rtRec=1&Sort=2&Bl=Canada&B2=1. Accessed Dec. 20, 2009. ------. “Top 25 Ethnic Origins in Canada (1), Showing Single and Multiple Responses, 1996 Census (20% Sample Data).” Statistics Canada. http:// www.statcan.gc.ca/c1996­r1996/feb17-17fev/ethnic-ethnique1-eng. htm. Accessed Dec. 20, 2009.

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XVIII Orthodox Judaism

Orthodox Judaism makes the claim that it constitutes the continuation of the ideas, customs, and traditions of rabbinic Judaism as it developed from antiquity through the medieval period. A major difference between Orthodox Judaism in modern times and premodern rabbinic Judaism is that Orthodoxy now asserts its unique legitimacy within Jewish communities in which a majority of Jews have chosen other means of Judaic expression, or none at all. Contemporary Orthodoxy may be divided into two major groups, Haredi (sometimes called “ultra-Orthodox”) and “Modern.” While the groups share adherence to the rabbinic tradition, they differ strongly in their attitudes toward secular education and integration within the wider world. Haredi Orthodoxy (which is inclusive of the Hasidim, who are examined in a separate article in this volume) advocates the almost exclusive legitimacy of education in Torah, the term generally designating the intellectual sources and bases of rabbinic Judaism. Haredi Judaism generally makes a place for secular (non-Torah) subjects only insofar as they are required by the compulsory education laws of the state. Modern Orthodoxy, on the contrary, admits de facto and in many cases de jure the legitimacy and necessity of educating children in non-Torah, secular subjects. Modern Orthodox Jews, therefore, are more likely to have a higher level of secular education and to engage in occupations, like law and medicine, which require an advanced secular education. The first Jews who came to Canada in the eighteenth century established synagogues and other community institutions that embodied the practices of traditional, rabbinic Judaism. These synagogues were not, however, designated “Orthodox,” because until the nineteenth century there simply was no existing alternative model for Jewish religious institutions. It is only with the development of other models of modern Jewish religious expression in the nineteenth century that traditionally-oriented synagogues and rabbis came to be referred to as “Orthodox,” a term that was originally imposed on them by their rivals in Reform Judaism. — 277 —

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In any event, by the time these denominational definitions began to become meaningful in the nineteenth century, Canada’s first synagogues became understood as “Orthodox,” and their early spiritual leaders, like Montreal’s Rev. Abraham de Sola, were counted among the strongest opponents of Reform in North America. Reform Judaism did come to Canada in the late nineteenth century, and some synagogues, like Toronto’s Holy Blossom, changed their orientation from Orthodox to Reform in the early twentieth century. Other synagogues, like Montreal’s Shaarei Zion, were founded as “Orthodox” but ultimately declared their affiliation with Conservative Judaism. Nonetheless, Orthodox synagogues in Canada have displayed a relatively stronger profile and staying power than have similar institutions in the United States. In the United States, for instance, most synagogues founded outside major metropolitan centers such as New York and Chicago, and even many within these centers, either changed from their original Orthodoxy to one non-Orthodox denomination or another or were originally founded as non-Orthodox institutions. In Canada, however, even in many smaller communities the leading synagogues tend to be Orthodox, while non-Orthodox synagogues, while certainly present in larger communities, are often relatively less influential. Even in the smallest Canadian Jewish communities, which can support only one synagogue, that synagogue is often Orthodox, like Sgoolai Israel Synagogue in Fredricton, New Brunswick, and Beth Jacob Congregation in Kitchener, Ontario. This phenomenon must be understood in the context of the noticeable continued existence in Canada of the “non-Orthodox” Jew whose formal synagogue affiliation is with an “Orthodox” congregation. This phenomenon has largely disappeared in the United States, where it once flourished, and marks one of the striking differences between American and Canadian Judaism. The great eastern European Jewish migration to Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created large numbers of Orthodox synagogues in nearly every Canadian Jewish community of significance. The rabbis of these synagogues constituted a cohort of European-trained, mostly Yiddish-speaking spiritual leaders. They often competed fiercely for the limited opportunities available to them, but also were able to cooperate to create the basis of an Orthodox Jewish infrastructure in terms of kashrut supervision and educational institutions. — 278 —

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In contemporary Canada, as, indeed, was the case throughout the twentieth century, Orthodox Jews range widely in their orientation. They include those who, as mentioned earlier, often do not embody in their daily lives the practices and principles associated with Orthodox Judaism, but prefer to affiliate with Orthodox synagogues whenever they choose to participate in religious services. This characterizes many who affiliate with Orthodox synagogues outside the major Canadian Jewish communities, and a significant proportion of the Jewish communities of Toronto and Montreal as well. Among Canadian Jews of North African origin, who are numerous in Montreal and found as well in Toronto and Vancouver, this orientation is quite strong. In the larger communities, there exists a diverse group of more committed Orthodox Jews. They are characterized by their personal observance of the religious traditions and practices associated with Orthodox Judaism. The most important among these include the observance of the Sabbath and holidays (Shemirat Shabbat) and of the dietary laws and restrictions (kashrut). These committed Orthodox Jews, both Haredi and Modern, have created in the larger cities identifiable neighborhoods that are identifiably “Orthodox” in nature. As well, they have founded and sustain a number of significant institutions that are necessary for the full conduct of Orthodox Jewish life. Though many of them serve significant numbers of non-Orthodox Jews as well, the maintenance of these institutions requires an immense financial effort on the part of the Orthodox communities. Beyond synagogues, these institutions include ritual pools (mikva’ot) for purposes of ritual purity, organizations for the certification of kosher food, bookstores which stock Judaica as well as Jewish ritual implements, kosher butcher shops and bakeries, and schools. Of these institutions, it is the schools that are most characteristic and most emblematic of contemporary North American Orthodoxy. That is because becoming a knowledgeable participant in Orthodox Jewish society presupposes a large store of knowledge, starting with an advanced knowledge of the Hebrew language, in which the community’s ritual and life is conducted and in which the intellectual sources of Judaism were originally composed. In the early- and mid-twentieth centuries, most Orthodox Jews regarded supplementary Hebrew education to be sufficient for all but a small intellectual elite. By the late twentieth century, however, a consensus had been reached that the ideal education for Or— 279 —

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thodox children was that of a day school that combined Judaic and Hebraic study with secular studies. Because of this, Orthodox supplementary schools have become quite vestigial in many communities. In Toronto and Montreal, there are many day schools, some of which exclusively service Haredi communities. The Haredi schools are generally characterized by a lesser emphasis on secular subjects and by separate education for boys and girls. Other, generally co-ed, day schools serve the Modern Orthodox sector, and still other community schools reach out to both Orthodox and non-Orthodox families. In smaller Canadian communities, such as Vancouver, Calgary, and Ottawa, at least one such day school is in existence in each location. On a more advanced level of Orthodox education, there are yeshivot, such as Toronto’s Ner Israel, that teach the Talmudic and halakhic sources of Orthodox Judaism on an advanced level. There are also a number of Orthodox educational institutions that engage, in one way or another, in community outreach and adult education at all levels of expertise, for men and for women. Also of considerable importance to Orthodox life are the kashrut certification organizations. Though Orthodox Jews constitute a relatively small minority of the consumers of most kosher products, the kashrut certification organizations are directed and staffed by Orthodox Jews. Kashrut organizations such as COR (Kashruth Council of Canada) in Toronto and the MK (Jewish Community Council) in Montreal are part of a North American, and indeed worldwide, trend that has seen a wider and wider variety of products certified kosher and available in more and more outlets. Ira Robinson

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For Further Study Gurock, Jeffrey S. Orthodox Jews in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Robinson, Ira. “Judaism, Orthodox: Modern Orthodox.” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, edited by Judith R. Baskin, 343-344. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ------. Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007.

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XIX Hasidim in Canada

The Hasidim are Haredi Jews who meticulously observe the tenets of Orthodox Judaism1 as well as their own unique customs and traditions, and have voluntarily segregated themselves in order to maintain their chosen way of life. They are organized into tightly knit and highly insular subgroups that centre around a particular rabbi, called a rebbe, a spiritual leader to whom followers attribute extraordinary powers and whose advice they seek in all matters of personal and religious life.They are, arguably, the most visible of Quebec’s minorities: the men bearded in black suits or long black coats with black hats over side curls, and the women in high-necked, loose fitting dresses, often of unfashionable length, with kerchiefs or traditional wigs covering their hair. This segment of Jewry is characterized by its painstaking efforts at controlling secular influences impacting its way of life. Though they are often portrayed as a picturesque reminder of yesteryear caught in a time warp, Heilman observes that Hasidim, nonetheless, “are very much part of the modern world, struggling in a variety of ways against powerful social forces that threaten either to sweep them away or else transform them into something radically different from what their founders conceived or their leaders perceive.”.2 The Hasidic presence in Canada is overwhelmingly concentrated in Montreal and its environs. In fact, following the major concentrations of Hasidic Jews in Israel and New York State, Quebec’s Hasidic community is arguably the next largest. Today approximately 10,500 Hasidim live in and around Montreal. While Toronto includes Hasidic families, with the exception of Lubavitch Hasidim their numbers are very small. Although a few Hasidim lived in Montreal before World War II, the major influx began in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Hasidic Jews were attracted to the city because of its proximity to New York—the centre of 1 2

See chapter 17 for non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews. Samuel Heilman, “Forward,” in New World Hasidim: Ethnographic Studies of Hasidic Jews in America, ed. Janet Belcove Shalin (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), xii.

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Hasidic life in North America—, because of the economic opportunities and financial incentives offered by the Province of Quebec including, at one point, financial incentives for increasing family size, and eventually because of the established infrastructure of Hasidic institutions. Montreal includes followers of several Hasidic sects that have established institutions such as schools, yeshivas, and stiblech (small synagogues). The largest are Tash, Satmar, Belz, and Chabad-Lubavitch, each boasting over three hundred families. The Squarer Hasidim are said to include some one hundred fifty families, and the Vishnitz sect about 7080 families. In addition, there are followers of Bobov, Munkatch, Pupa, and Klausenburg, but their numbers are relatively small. Most recently, followers of Bratzlav, baalei tshuvah of Sephardi origin, have appeared on the scene and have settled mainly in the Cote St. Luc area. Despite their growing numbers, the Hasidim have not substantially altered their residential concentration within the city since their arrival. The followers of the Tasher Rebbe have relocated to the municipality of Boisbriand, and in the early 1960s the Lubavitchers settled in the Snowdon area where, to this day, their community is centered. However, the bulk of Montreal’s Hasidic Jewry is situated just west of the city’s Mile End district. Another block of Hasidim lives in the eastern part of Outremont, where Hasidim attain their maximum visibility. The Tasher Hasidic enclave in the municipality of Boisbriand, some twenty-five kilometers north of Montreal, is unique. Owing to his perception of the deteriorating moral climate of the city, and seeking to secure an environment conducive to Torah study, the Tasher Rebbe chose to establish his community in a rural setting and, towards this end, purchased land in 1962. The community has expanded over the years, currently enjoying a population of some 3,500 persons. Despite ideological and social differences among the various Hasidic sects, all of them attach great importance to preventing assimilation by insulating their members from the secular influences of the host culture. To any observer of the Hasidic scene, however, Lubavitcher are set apart from other Hasidic sects by their outreach to non-Hasidic Jews, intended to encourage greater Jewish observance on their part. Lubavitcher proselytizing work has increased dramatically over the years. Chabad-Lubavitch pamphlets and newspaper advertisements in English, Hebrew, and other languages extend invitations to perform commandments. The Lubavitchers also carefully coordinate witness— 283 —

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ing drives. They approach Jews at cultural gatherings, establish tefillin booths at locations such as shopping malls and plazas known to attract a Jewish clientele, and drive trucks, aptly called “tefillin mobiles” and “tefillin tanks,” decorated with slogans urging Jews to don tefillin. Lubavitcher Yeshiva graduates are encouraged to become emissaries of the movement. Thus, in Canada for example Chabad-Lubavitch centers have been established in all cities with appreciable Jewish populations and, where the population is sizeable, in neighborhoods within them. Two examples will suffice: In Quebec, Chabad Centers are listed in Chomedy, Cote St. Luc, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Hampstead, Montreal, Mont Tremblant, Pierrefonds, Quebec City, Ville St. Laurent, and Westmount; and in Ontario, in Hamilton, London, Maple, Mississauga, Niagara Falls, North York, Ottawa, Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Toronto, and Waterloo. Such centers can also be found in Nova Scotia, Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia. The Lubavitch emissary family will host such activities as study classes in the basics of Judaism, Shabbat dinners, and Jewish holiday celebrations whose overall aim is to establish a connection with Jews in all walks of life, to draw them closer to Jewish practices and traditions. Macro Elements of Change A 2005 report by Charles Shahar titled “The Hasidim and Ultra-Orthodox of Greater Montreal,” is a comprehensive survey and needs assessment of the Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox populations of Greater Montreal. The survey data do not focus exclusively on the Hasidic population in the designated Mile End area and Outremont, but also include Hasidic and nonHasidic Jews elsewhere in Greater Montreal. However, the responses of Hasidim can generally be identified separately from the larger survey population. The report examines perceived needs relating to immigration problems, language training, dealing with elderly parents, housing problems, managing the stress of home and work, and providing childcare. The second part features in-depth population projections of the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities in Greater Montreal. While these communities, particularly the Hasidic one, have been growing at a sizable rate, the report offers the first statistical projections, based upon the current trends, to arrive at population estimates for the years 2020 and 2030. While the size of the total Montreal Jewish community has been — 284 —

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diminishing over the past three decades, the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox populations have shown definite growth. According to the survey data in that report, these populations have been doubling every fifteen years owing to the tendency for large family sizes in these communities.3 The survey offers basic demographic data concerning household size. Figure 1 is a summary breakdown of mean household size across Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities, while Figure 2 examines the mean number of children across Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox communities. As both figures reveal, the mean household size and number of children are considerably lower in the overall Jewish population. Figure 1 Mean Household Size across Ultra-Orthodox and Hassidic communities, as Compared to the General Jewish Community Satmar/Belz/Skver

5.69

Yeshiva

5.40

Lubavitch

5.45

Tosh

6.37

Total Jewish Community

3.46

Figure 2 Mean Number of Children across Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox Communities, as Compared to the General Jewish Community

3

Satmar/Belz/Skver

3.66

Yeshiva

3.51

Lubavitch

3.47

Tosh

4.35

Total Jewish Community

1.20

The statistics are taken from Charles Shahar, The Hassidim and Ultra-Orthodox of Greater Montreal: A Needs Assessment and Population Projections of The Hassidic And Ultra-Orthodox Communities Of Greater Montreal (Montreal: Coalition of Outremont Hasidic Organizations, 2005).

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Part 2 of the survey focuses on population projections. In light of the significant rates of growth of the communities under examination, the analysis seeks to determine growth patterns by 2020 and 2030. We see that in 1996, there were 676 Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox households in the H2V postal area, representing 3,725 individuals. By 2004, this number increased to 4,981 individuals, an increase of 33.7%. By using the average percentage growth rates from 1996 to 2004, Shahar calculated projected growth rates, estimating that the H2V population will increase from 4,981 individuals in 2004 to 6,188 in 2010, an increase of 24.2%. Ten years later (2020), the population is projected to increase to 8,882 individuals, and by 2030 it would then be 12,750. Table 1 provides population projections for the Hasidim and ultra-Orthodox in Greater Montreal (1996-2030). Table 1 Projections for Hassidim and Ultra-Orthodox population living in Greater Montreal 1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

(2010)

(2020)

(2030)

J7E

Individuals*

959

1295

1555

1653

1902

3092

6930

15537

Boisbriand

Households

166

224

269

286

329

535

1199

2688

H3W/H3X

Individuals*

2493

2776

3551

3546

3933

5402

9152

15518

Snowdon, Hampstead, Western Cote des Neiges

Households

450

501

641

640

710

975

1652

2801

H3S

Individuals*

2997

3120

3259

3315

3418

3768

4431

5202

Eastern Cote des Neiges

Households

583

607

634

645

665

733

862

1012

H2V

Individuals*

3725

3989

4358

4634

4981

6188

8882

12750

Outremont, Park Avenue

Households

676

724

791

841

904

1123

1612

2314

* Based on average household size: H2V=5.51/H3S=5.14/H3W and H3X=5.54/ J7E=5.78

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The above figures starkly indicate that the Hasidic communities in Outremont and the surrounding area in Montreal have experienced a dramatic increase from 1996 to 2004. This explosive population increase has also been consequential in terms of the community’s ability to provide for its own in times of need. As well, the Hasidic population has been compelled to respond to ongoing allegations of municipal improprieties that have been brought to the attention of legal authorities. For the outside observer, the most tangible reflection of change lies in the increased numbers of Hasidic-owned businesses that are sprinkled through the neighborhood, including supermarkets, bakeries, and stores selling prepared foods, photography equipment, furniture, and clothing. In the past, by contrast, most Hasidic commercial ventures were located in peoples’ homes.

Micro Elements of Change Hasidic Jews’ efforts at boundary maintenance are meeting with increased resistance. The issue is not whether Hasidic communities attempt to establish viable institutions to effectively control permissible contacts with outsiders but, rather, the degree to which the playing field has tilted over the past decade or so. For example, the Satmar, Tash, Belz, Square, and Lubavitch Hasidic sects in the city continue to maintain separate schools for boys and girls as in the past and, as before, the secular curriculum remains closely supervised and even censored. However, relatively novel patterns of behavior have already impacted the Hasidic lifestyle. We will focus here on the Internet, divorce, and exposure to Hasidim who stray from or abandon the Hasidic fold.

The Internet “The Internet is a real danger,” remarks a Hasidic woman with whom I meet. “It’s the high tech stuff that’s a real danger to our kids, and it’s so difficult to control,” she adds. Not surprisingly, Hasidic leaders, and Haredi ones more generally, have often issued religious decrees (piskei din) against media as a threat to Torah and family values. — 287 —

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In 2003, the Vishnitzer Rebbe instructed his Hasidim to avoid the Internet, identifying it as a sakoness nefoshess—a threat to life. In a pashkvil—a poster with religious and social information in the form of a public statement—eleven Montreal Hasidic leaders discouraged Internet use, because, they wrote, “It’s already well-known to most people how dangerous a computer is, how many have fallen victim to it, may we be spared. While it may have begun unwittingly, to their regret, they were corrupted and entire families have been destroyed.” In an interview, a male Hasid remarks: “There are many things going on in the world today, cell phones, let alone computers.” He then asks, “You know about the kosher cell phones? Kosher means it’s just a phone. Kosher means they cannot get the Internet. It’s a phone, and that’s it. Today telephones can do everything.” Reflecting on this general theme, a Hasidic mother and grandmother considers the enormous threat posed by recent technological innovation: We have the same problems right now that all parents, all over the world, are having, and that’s the high-tech stuff. Phones today are enabled to access e-mail…. The biggest problem … and it’s not pornography, gambling is one, and chat lines is the other where people are looking on the Internet for relationships. That’s the problem. We never had that…. All of a sudden, there’s a whole big wide world out there and you don’t have control…. Owing to the Internet, the community’s ability to exercise control is now lessened; indeed, access to the Internet is even more insidious than it at first looks, in that it enables contact with outsiders from the privacy of one’s home, or from a computer, without requiring the inquisitive Hasid to come into actual physical contact with outsiders. The Internet, then, has magnified the opportunities for deviance, and deviant-related activities can be pursued anonymously. Of course, it is not the Internet per se, but unsupervised access to it, that offers a range of activities and social worlds that were previously beyond the ken of the majority of Hasidim, particularly the younger, unmarried members. A Hasid underscores the opportunity dimension in this manner: “The biggest thing is opportunity. You know what we say? The mouse is not a thief; the hole in the wall is a thief…. Which means if there’s no girls — 288 —

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around, or nothing to steal, or whatever, you’re not going to do it. If there’s opportunity….” Divorce Divorce among Hasidic Jews has risen. For the majority of them, divorce is not an abstract topic about which one might speculate theoretically, but a situation that has been experienced in one’s own family. When I inquire of a woman from the Belzer community whether divorce is more prevalent today than it was twenty years earlier, she replies: Now you’ve hit home because my son just got divorced. I would say, let’s go back twenty years, divorce was horrible, horrible. You really had to be something to get divorced. Now my friend’s daughter lived with her husband three months. She decided he wasn’t quite as smart as she thought he was, and she just left. And this is happening. Divorces, I would say I would hear about one a week. Another female, already divorced and raising four children, echoes this view: “It’s certainly a lot more than before. It’s a real problem in the community because it never happened like this before.” “Don’t misunderstand me,” she adds, “the vast majority of marriages last but the option [of divorce] is no longer impossible.” One explanation for this developing phenomenon centers on the focus on the particular needs of the individuals concerned. Thus, the individual considers his or her needs to be supreme even if the ensuing behavior— marital separation and divorce—violates the mores of the insular community. A Hasidic woman reflects upon a divorce in her immediate family: When we got married, I knew I’m getting married, and if I had a problem I had to work it out. Today they get married, if there’s a problem, I’m out of here…. My daughterin-law was with my son for two years. She didn’t have any kids. She said: “You know what? I have a plan of the way I want to live my life, and it’s not working out, so I’m out of there.”

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On the other hand, an individual-centered explanation, in the opinions of several informants, masks attention to gender considerations, whose impact figures importantly in the divorce outcome. For example: … I would say ninety percent it’s the girls that are leaving.… I could write a thesis [arguing that] that’s because of the way the kids are educated. The girls get much more secular education. They are capable of going out and getting jobs as secretaries or whatever. The boy sits with the Gemorah [Talmud]. So until the night of his wedding he’s told that girls are something you don’t think about, you don’t look at, la la la la la. All of a sudden he’s got this female. She’s been out there for a year or two. She starts working right about seventeen or eighteen, gets married at about nineteen or twenty. He’s coming straight from the Gemorah, right…? You take these girls, they have social skills. As several informants indicate, this different exposure of males and females to the outside world, whether owing to employment or to secular studies within the confines of the school, contributes to perceptions of marital incompatibility. Of course, divorces did occur in earlier years, but they were uncommon. More recent exposures to secular influences have resulted in unexpected repercussions. Abandoning the Hasidic Lifestyle While the actual number of Hasidim choosing to sever ties with their religious upbringing has likely risen over the past two decades, the numbers are likely more modest than the exposés, whether in print or on film, suggest. However, the very small number of formerly Hasidic Jews masks a more insidious development that appears to be causing considerable concern: those that have become marginalized while pretending to remain connected to the Hasidic lifestyle. For example, an informant states: I’m not worried about the ones that are checking out, — 290 —

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but those that stay, [that are] like a worm in a rotten apple. There’s a guy on the net who’s a Hasid and a heretic…. I’m worried about the ones that are staying in the community and leading a double life. It’s hard to know who’s being influenced in which way and what they’re thinking inside. When you see someone in shul wearing a shtreimel, what are you supposed to think? He’s kosher right? But people who are giving in to doubts and experimenting are not so easy to detect and they are the ones that can spread poison. The number of defectors in Montreal is miniscule compared to those from the larger community in New York. However, there are many tales in Montreal about those who have left the fold, and it is clear that there is a growing concern about the matter. A Hasidic woman, living in Montreal, comments on the changes that have occurred during the last three decades. She bemoans the recent disappearance of what she calls “intact families,” and insists that such families were common in the past: I hate to tell you, mister, but there is almost no family out there today that is totally intact. [And were there such families earlier?] Yes, there were. Nowadays you can have a family of ten kids and you’re going to find nine kids, eight kids perfectly following the path and you’re going to find one or two that are totally out…. I cannot think of a family, and I’m talking about an extended family now … everybody’s got someone. It didn’t used to be that way. The Coordination of Secular Studies Altered economic circumstances have compelled Hasidic Jews to avail themselves of public and government-related services that their communities are unable to provide. Increasingly, social workers and health professionals are called to attend to such matters as abuse, learning disabilities, poverty, mental illness, and divorce. As well, there are challenges to the Hasidic lifestyle emanating from the larger society. Nowhere is this more evident than in the recently-introduced legislation in Quebec — 291 —

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mandating a compulsory Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) course for all students, both in public and private schools. The ERC course explores the various religious traditions in Quebec in order for students to learn more about key figures and events associated with those traditions. The issue is particularly problematic since Hasidim, in general, pay little regard to secular studies, especially for boys. They not only consider them to be of no inherent value, but they also view them as having a deleterious effect on Torah observance. Once boys begin to attend yeshiva at age fourteen, all their time is devoted solely to the study of Torah. Everything else is taboo. Several officials at Montreal’s Hasidic schools maintain that many of the objectives of this course are irreconcilable with their convictions, and that it is practically impossible for them to do so. They are also dismayed by the government’s declaration that no exceptions will be made. As of the writing of this article (August 2009), Hasidic officials concede that the secular curricular offerings in their schools are since 2006 more vigilantly reviewed by government inspectors, who are also more concerned about the hours of French instruction available to Hasidic children. The media has been quick to spotlight government interactions with Hasidic school officials, and one may reasonably expect that the previous Hasidic strategy of either ignoring provincial educational guidelines or procrastinating on their implementation will be increasingly challenged in the public sphere.

Conclusion While Montreal Hasidic Jews have successfully organized bounded communities to accommodate their religious and socio-economic needs and to achieve maximum insulation from the influences in their secular surroundings, these influences cannot be totally controlled. Although Hasidic leaders may initially have succeeded in regulating the pace of inevitable change, it seems increasingly likely that they will be challenged to maintain the physical and social boundaries that they have hitherto succeeded in imposing. The boundaries have become more porous, and the impact of social change is already apparent. William Shaffir

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For Further Study Belcove-Shalin, Janet, ed. New World Hasidim: Ethnographic Studies of Hasidic Jews in America. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995. Gutwirth, Jacques. The Rebirth of Hasidism: 1945 to the Present. London: Free Association Books, 2005. Levine, Stephanie Wellen. Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Mintz, Jerome. Hasidic People: A Place in the New World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Poll, Solomon. The Hasidic Community of Williamsburg: A Study in the Sociology of Religion. New Jersey: Transaction Books, 2006. Rubin, Israel. Satmar: Two Generations of an Urban Island. New York: Peter Lang Publisher, 1997. Shaffir, William. Life in a Religious Community: The Lubavitcher Chassidim in Montreal. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1974. ------. 2002. “Outremont’s Hassidim and Their Neighbours: An Eruv and its Repercussions.” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 44: 1&2 (2007): 56-71. ------. 2004. “Secular Studies In a Hassidic Enclave: ‘What Do We Need It For?’” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 46 (2009): 59-77. ------. 2009. “On Piecing the Puzzle: Researching Hassidic Jews.” In Ethnographies Revisited: Constructing Theory in the Field, edited by Antony Puddephatt et al, 212-224. London: Routledge, 2009. Shahar, Charles. The Hassidim and Ultra-Orthodox of Greater Montreal: A Needs Assessment and Population Projections of the Hassidic And UltraOrthodox Communities Of Greater Montreal. Montreal: Coalition of Outremont Hasidic Organizations, 2005. Winston, Hella. The Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.

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XX Reform Judaism in Canada

Many Canadian Jews could rightfully claim that the November 2003 decision to change the name of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations was long overdue. The new title, Union for Reform Judaism, finally acknowledged the existence of North American Reform congregations outside the United States. Yet over a century earlier, in 1882, a small group of Montreal Jews established Temple Emanu-El, and in that same year the members of Anshe Sholom in Hamilton, Ontario, introduced changes that were the touchstones of the Reform movement, such as dropping the second day of festivals. Granted, Canadian Reform Judaism has been relatively small. Reform would certainly not be able to make its claim to be “the largest Jewish movement in North America”1 on the basis of its success in Canada. In 1920, there were only three Reform congregations in the country, after Holy Blossom of Toronto had joined the Reform ranks in that year, and the numbers did not change until the postwar period. Even with the significant successes of the past four decades, when over twenty more congregations joined its ranks, Reform Judaism has consistently remained the “third stream” of Canadian Judaism, after Orthodoxy and the Conservative movement. Reform Judaism in Canada has a distinctive history, and the popular explanation that Canada lags behind the United States in some sort of time warp is hardly satisfying. The patterns of Jewish immigration to Canada, as well as the context of Canadian society and culture, have challenged the growth of Reform Judaism and have shaped it. But Reform rabbis and laypeople, with their particular outlook, have also had a prominent place in the life of the Jewish community. Until 1881, the Jewish community of Canada was small, and the most prominent nineteenth century Canadian rabbi was Abraham de Sola of Montreal’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Shearith Israel. A new phase in the history of the congregation, and in the history of 1

http://urj.org/about/union/history/, accessed July 28, 2011. — 294 —

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Canadian Judaism, began with his uninterrupted tenure with the congregation between his arrival in 1847 and his death in 1882. De Sola was an articulate advocate for a modern Anglo-Orthodoxy. He advocated a Judaism rooted in rabbinic teachings and a firm adherence to both ritual and a traditional liturgy, but believed that his Judaic outlook could and should be defended in modern terms. He thus participated in the contemporary passion for Natural Theology, which was especially strong in Montreal, and looked to defend the Bible and the Talmud from their detractors by arguing for their consistency with contemporary scientific discoveries. He used modern methods to convey his message and delivered effective sermons from his pulpit, spoke from the lecterns at many gatherings, actively supported catechisms and Sunday schools for Jewish education in the New World, was a regular contributor to the Jewish press, and himself published various works of Jewish apologetics. Many of Abraham de Sola’s colleagues in the United States shared his Anglo-Jewish orthodox outlook. The most notable was Sabato Morais of Philadelphia, who was in fact a student of Abraham’s father, David de Sola, but the network also included prominent mid-century rabbis like Morris Raphall and S. M Isaacs. Even Isaac Leeser relied quite heavily on English -Jewish writings for his own educational and publication agenda. These colleagues shared a disdain for the “flippant and shallow German rationalists,” to use Abraham de Sola’s description of Reform rabbis.2 But there were also significant differences between the Jewish communities on either side of the border. In Canada, the Anglo-Jewish elite was never challenged by a wave of German Jews. In the nineteenth century, the United States was an economic magnet for central Europeans, including Jews. By the late nineteenth century, the most radical Reform ideologies were promoted by German-trained rabbis, and struck responsive chords among German Jews settling in the United States. In Canada, there was never the same significant wave of nineteenth-century central European Jewish immigrants; to the best of my knowledge, only one congregation ever kept its minutes in German, Temple Anshe Sholom of Hamilton. The nature of Anglo-Canadian culture reinforced the outlook of the 2

As quoted by G. Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008), 67. — 295 —

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Jewish elite. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Canadian elite aspired to a strong Canada in a strong British empire. Within this framework, many of the acculturated Jews would also look for a form of English respectability, and were drawn to the predominant form of Anglo-Jewish religious life. They continued to search overseas, and not south of the border, for religious inspiration, and more specifically for rabbinic leadership. Abraham de Sola had deep and abiding ties with Great Britain. He turned to the chief Rabbi of England for advice and opinions, and saw in London’s Moses Montefiore an ideal modern Jew, both successful in the world and traditional in his behavior. England continued to provide many of the “Reverends” (only the chief rabbi was to be called “rabbi” in the British system, which was patterned after the Church of England) for the leading congregations in Canada into the twentieth century. English-born Solomon Jacobs was the clergyman of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto between 1901 and 1920. Herbert Samuel was hired on the express recommendation of Chief Rabbi, J.H. Hertz,3 and served Congregation Shaarey Zedek of Winnipeg between 1914 and 1925. In Montreal, Meldola de Sola occupied the pulpit of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue from the time of Abraham’s death in 1882 until his own death in 1918; although native-born, he remained faithful to the religious outlook of his father. These men, and others who came from England, retained their attachment to the ideals of Anglo-Orthodoxy. They also continued de Sola’s resistance to Reform Judaism. His son Meldola published an anti-Reform screed in 1905.4 At Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Solomon Jacobs and the pro-English establishment blocked those congregants wanting to institute reforms, and only after the English minister’s death were the reforms instituted. At both Holy Blossom and Temple Emanu-El in Montreal, the pro-English contingent remained strong, but in those two settings they could no longer reverse the movement towards Reform.5 3 4

5

A. A. Chiel, The Jews in Manitoba: A Social History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 85, 140. M. de Sola, Jewish Ministers? An Arraignment of American Reform Judaism (New York: Schoen and Kellerman, 5665-1905). The book was based on articles that had appeared in the Hebrew Standard of New York. At Holy Blossom, however, the group was not strong enough; Emanu-El actually hired the Rev. Herbert Samuel, suggesting an accommodation on both sides. What would have happened is unknown, as Samuel died suddenly while attending his first meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. — 296 —

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On several occasions, members of an acculturated community would attempt to plant Reform, but the conditions were not right for the roots to take hold. In late-nineteenth-century Vancouver, Rabbi Solomon Philo reported, “My congregation counts some twenty-two families and we held services in a Hall as we have no synagogue yet; but our services are strictly Reform.”6 This Reform congregation, however, disappeared without a trace within ten years. In Winnipeg, one group of Reformers set up their own Holy Blossom Temple and hired a Reform rabbi in 1904, but the experiment lasted only a year. One year later, the founders of Shaarey Shomayim synagogue noted that “the decorum of [Holy Blossom’s] Service was everything that could be desired, yet their services were perhaps too far advanced to draw the public.”7 Shaarey Shomayim still experimented with Reform, and occasionally hired Reform rabbis, who were quickly dismissed. The only period of stability was with a graduate of Jews’ College, and then when it merged with Shaarey Zedek to form the congregation that would hire Herbert Samuel. For the most part, in Winnipeg as in the other centers in Canada, the established community rejected Reform Judaism and remained attached to the Anglo-Jewish orthodox model. Reform would achieve no more success with the new eastern European immigrants to Canada who joined the older group of Jewish settlers. Reform Judaism did not have much of a chance in the immigrant quarters of Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, and during the interwar period there were only three Reform congregations in Montreal, Toronto, and Hamilton. The two largest Reform congregations, Temple Emanu-el in Montreal and Holy Blossom in Toronto, did manage to establish themselves securely in their respective communities, but this required adaptation to the Canadian environment. Rabbis proceeded with caution in introducing the principles and practices of Reform Judaism. Several months after Ferdinand Isserman arrived at Holy Blossom, he wrote to his colleague and mentor, Stephen Wise that “I am just realizing that I am in a most conservative, if not orthodox stronghold, and have a tough battle on my hands to keep liberal Judaism going.”8 Two years 6 Cited in C.E. Leonoff, Pioneers, Pedlars and Prayer Shawls: The Jewish Communities in British Columbia and the Yukon (Victoria, BC: Soso Nis Press, 1978), 127. 7 Chiel, Jews in Manitoba, 82-3; Archives of the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada (Winnipeg), MG3 A4, Minutes of Shaarey Shomayim, July 23, 1905. 8 American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati) Isserman Collection, Box 10, Folder 4, letters to Stephen — 297 —

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later, after replacing the Friday evening service with Sunday prayers and sermon, as well as mandating that head covering was optional, Isserman finally felt that he had made some headway, although he knew that he still faced challenges: “The wearing of the hat has been the last external symbol of orthodoxy, and now that that has begun to go, all that is left for me to teach my congregation the fundamental philosophy of Liberal Judaism, which most of them do not know even though they do like oysters.”9 The character of the Reform rabbinate in interwar Canada can serve as a touchstone of the adaptation of Reform. Just as Canada increasingly opened itself up to American influence, and weaned itself more and more from British institutions, so acculturated Canadian Jews began to look south of the border for their clergy. But there were some differences. If in the United States the eastern Europeans trained at the Hebrew Union College needed to be rendered salonfähig, in Canada some of the more successful Reform rabbis used their old-world credentials to advantage. Barnett Brickner, the first of the Reform rabbis in Toronto (1920-1925), had already achieved some measure of fame as a fiery orator in Yiddish before he arrived.10 In Toronto, he continued to preach in Yiddish and supported causes close to the hearts of the downtown Jews there, such as the creation of a Talmud Torah and sending aid for Jewish refugees in the Ukraine. Harry Joshua Stern, who arrived at Temple Emanu-El of Montreal in 1927 and remained rabbi until 1972, developed a rapport not just with his uptown congregants but also with many of the Jews still in the older Jewish neighbourhoods. Hirsh Wolofsky, editor of the most significant Yiddish daily in Canada, the Montrealbased Jewish Daily Eagle, gave him high praise: Dr. H.J. Stern, of the Reform Temple, is to my mind the best reform rabbi we have had in Montreal. Unlike his predecessors, he speaks an excellent Yiddish; unlike his predecessors he is not subject to that particular snobbism which held them aloof from “downtown” Jewry. Indeed, Dr. Stern can wax as rhetorical and enthusiastic S. Wise, February 9, 1926. 9 Ibid., Isserman to Wise, March 22, 1928. 10 S.M. Silver, Portrait of a Rabbi: An Affectionate Memoir on the Life of Barnett R. Brickner (Cleveland: Barnett R. Brickner Memorial Foundation, 1959), 11-15. — 298 —

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about Talmud Torah in addressing the East End Jews as he can in addressing his own congregation about the vistas of “liberal Judaism.”11 Many Reform rabbis in interwar Canada were Zionists, while American Reform was still profoundly ambivalent to Zionism. When he was still a teenager, Barnett Brickner was a successful Zionist orator, and his enthusiasm did not flag while in Toronto in the early 1920s. Ferdinand Isserman, who served as rabbi in Toronto between 1925 and 1929, used the editorial pages of the Canadian Jewish Review to encourage the Canadian Jewish community to support Keren Hayesod, and to follow with interest developments at the Hebrew University.12 Harry Joshua Stern was an ardent admirer of Stephen Wise, and followed that Reform leader in his strong support of Zionism. In addition to inviting Zionist speakers to his Temple, Stern traveled frequently to Palestine, and then Israel. The one apparent exception to this rule of support for Zionism was Maurice N. Eisendrath, whose early suspicion of Zionism was one plank in his fervently anti-nationalist platform. During his Toronto years, however, his animosity softened. His re-evaluation was in part due to the growing hostility to Jews in Germany in the 1930s. During his Toronto years, however, he also seems to have discovered socialist Zionism, which he accepted as a legitimate contemporary form of prophetic Judaism. By 1941, in a review of Abba Hillel Silver’s Crisis and Survival, Eisendrath expressed his appreciation for Silver’s synthesis of Zionism and Reform Judaism, although he did bristle at Silver’s castigation of the anti-Zionist Reform rabbis.13 One year later, Eisendrath sent out circulars on Holy Blossom Temple stationery informing the Jews of Toronto of his recently-completed tour of the eastern United States on behalf of the League for a Labour Palestine, and inviting them to learn more on the subject at a lecture by himself and the visiting executive director of the League.14 11 H. Wolofsky, Journey of My Life: A Book of Memories (Montreal: Eagle Publishing, 1945), 80. 12 See, for example, F.M. Isserman, “Redeem the Vale of Sharon,” Canadian Jewish Chronicle, April 13, 1928. In this and other editorials, Isserman was particularly anxious to end tensions between supporters of the Keren Hayesod and the Joint Distribution Committee. 13 M. Eisendrath, “Crisis and Survival [Review of The World Crisis and Jewish Survival, by Abba Hillel Silver]”, Jewish Frontier, (September 1941): 30-31. The much-debated subject of Eisendrath’s antiZionism and move to Zionism requires more study than is possible here. 14 Canadian Jewish Congress, National Archives (Montreal), ZB, Maurice N. Eisendrath — 299 —

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Despite these adaptations, there were still the distinctive qualities of contemporary Reform Judaism. In the interwar period, American Reform Judaism embraced a profound commitment to social activism. Creating a Jewish version of social gospel, Reform Judaism moved from a theoretical emphasis on prophetic ideals to the active embrace of specific issues. Canada’s Reform rabbis were no exception, and were active in a variety of causes that bridged the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. In Toronto, Ferdinand Isserman was a firm opponent of corporal punishment in schools, and commented frequently on it.15 Maurice Eisendrath and Harry Joshua Stern both railed against unfair labor practices, often assailing either directly or indirectly some of the factory owners in their own congregations. Eisendrath’s commitment to social justice made him a staunch pacifist well into the 1930s. He became the president of the local pacifist group, and was a very popular speaker in those circles. These Reform rabbis spoke with a unique religious voice within Canadian Jewry. Although unintelligible or alien to the majority of Canadian Jews, this voice could be very well understood within Anglo-Canadian Protestant circles, where social gospel had a profound influence. To cite the most recent comprehensive survey of Christianity in Canada: Christian social activists secured a much wider sphere of influence than their counterparts in the United States. Consensus among the major Protestant churches of Canada was deepened and reinforced by broad acceptance of the principles of social gospel, and this convergence of opinion eventually paved the way to such uniquely Canadian developments as the formation of the United Church. 16 This largely potential relationship became reality through the Reform commitment to interfaith dialogue. The reasons for this dialogue lay in the postmillennialism of social gospel, as expressed by Ferdinand Correspondence file, date May 1, 1942. 15 F. M. Isserman, “Our Campaign against Corporal Punishment,” Canadian Jewish Chronicle, February 3, 1928. 16 B. Clarke, “English-Speaking Canada,” A Concise History of Christianity in Canada, ed. T. Murphy and R. Perin (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), 325. — 300 —

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Isserman shortly after assuming the Holy Blossom pulpit in 1925: The two religions are not rivals; rather they should be partners—partners in building God’s kingdom on earth. The first step to tolerance is mutual respect and understanding…. When that is accomplished, the foundation stone in that edifice of good will which Christian and Jew will some day erect will have been laid. The exchange of pulpits by rabbi and minister can hasten that day.17 Following words with deeds, Isserman was the first Canadian rabbi to be involved in an exchange of pulpits. On February 5, 1928, at a Sunday morning service at Holy Blossom, the Reverend E. Crossley Hunter of the Carlton Street United addressed the congregation, and Isserman spoke at Hunter’s church later the same day.18 Exchanges of pulpits and other interfaith contacts subsequently became more frequent. In addition to his contacts with Protestant ministers, Harry Joshua Stern even managed, mirabile dictu, to begin a dialogue during the depression with a French Catholic, Father Joseph Paré. They met on a ship bound for the Mediterranean, with the Catholic on pilgrimage to Rome and Stern to Palestine, but the relationship persisted on their return to Quebec and until the death of Paré.19 To some in the Jewish community, this type of interfaith contact was scandalous, especially when Jewish preachers such as Isserman and Stern followed in the footsteps of their controversial mentor Stephen Wise and spoke of Jesus as a Jewish teacher. But with antisemitism on the rise both abroad and at home in the 1930s and early 1940s, Jews needed to marshal all their resources and search out friends. As a result, the Jewish community called on the contacts of these rabbis, and took advantage of the profile that they had achieved. Maurice Eisendrath and the United Church minister Claris E. Silcox co-chaired the Committee on Jewish-Gentile Relations in Toronto, which took a strong public 17

F.M. Isserman, “Shall Rabbi and Minister Exchange Pulpits?” Canadian Jewish Chronicle, November 27, 1925. 18 See Account of a Historic Exchange of Pulpits between Rabbi and Minister (Toronto: n.p., 1928), where the sermons are reproduced. 19 For the most complete account of the Stern-Paré relationship, see P. Anctil, Le Rendez-vous manqué: les Juifs de Montréal face au Québec de l‘entre deux guerres (Québec: Institut québécois de recherché sur la culture, 1988), 276-307. — 301 —

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stance against the rise of antisemitism. Eisendrath participated in a variety of goodwill tours, including one in 1937 with the Reverend Hunter, who had been Isserman’s partner in the first interfaith exchange of pulpits. As the Canadian Jewish Congress attempted to revitalize itself to meet the challenges of the 1930s, one of their main tasks was to fight anti-Semitism. In its Central Region (which basically corresponded with the province of Ontario), Eisendrath was the logical choice to chair the Public Relations Committee. In Montreal, the director of the Canadian Jewish Congress recruited Stern to improve relations with the Catholic Church, and Stern and Paré did manage to organize some meetings with members of the Catholic clergy to try to break down the hostility toward Jews in French Canada.20 The futility of the effort was hardly due to lack of trying. The Reform community may have been numerically small, but it was called upon to perform some crucial roles in the interwar Jewish community. In the decade after the war, very little changed for Reform Judaism. Two more congregations were added to the original three, one in Montreal because of an internal dispute in Temple Emanu-el and the other in Toronto with the blessing and support of the growing Holy Blossom Congregation. In Montreal, Harry Joshua Stern continued to lead his congregation along the same paths as he had before the war, emphasizing social justice, interfaith relations, and Zionism. In Toronto, Maurice Eisendrath left to head the UAHC in 1943, when the equally fiery and controversial Abraham Feinberg replaced him. Feinberg was also a staunch defender of the underdog, and became identified with left-wing causes and organizations. He was a forceful proponent of nuclear disarmament, and an equally forceful opponent of anti-Asian and anti-Black racism. He also had a high profile within the Jewish community. Within a year of his arrival, he was placed in charge of the region’s Joint Public Relations Committee, and like his predecessor Rabbi Eisendrath he was called upon to represent the Jews in the public square on controversial issues. He took a leadership role, for example, in the Canadian Jewish Congress-sponsored fight against compulsory Christian instruction in Ontario public schools. 21 20 Anctil, Rendez-vous, 296-302. 21 M. Sable, “George Drew and the Rabbis: Religious Education in Ontario’s Public Schools,” Canadian Jewish Studies/Etudes juives canadiennes, 6 (1998): 25-53. — 302 —

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A new period of growth for Canadian Reform Judaism began in the second decade after the war’s end and subsequently gathered momentum. An indication of a new era was the creation of the Canadian Council of Liberal Congregations, which was established in the mid-1950s but was not very active for several years. In 1961, an energetic group of laypeople and rabbis felt that the time had come for Canadian Reform congregations to assert themselves as a separate entity from the American regional councils; or, as one member declared, “the Canadian Council needs to be established to give us national identity in the World Union [for Progressive Judaism.]” 22 It was also clear to them that Canadian needs were different, “that we need a Canadian section dealing with our unique problems equipped to work on the Canadian scene.” Some of those unique problems were articulated about Winnipeg, but could hold true more widely in Canada: A general discussion took place in which it was indicated that in some cities like Winnipeg a fear existed towards Reform Judaism. Many professional people and businessmen wanted it, [but feared] parental reaction and the economic effects, and therefore an interpretive job must be done.23 The members of the Canadian Council for Liberal Judaism were correct in their major assumptions. The time was ripe for growth outside of the major centers, but that growth would not be easy. Some younger Jews, very often professionals, did not hold on to the old, almost visceral, eastern European disdain for Reform Judaism. They began fellowships or congregations in the larger centers of Winnipeg and Vancouver, and in some smaller towns like Kitchener, Ontario. They received some financial support from other Reform congregations and moral support in the form of visits by other Canadian rabbis. Rabbi Bernard Baskin, of Hamilton, and Rabbis Jordan Pearlson and Gunther Plaut of Toronto all visited Kitchener, and Plaut made several cross-country trips, particularly helping the fledgling Vancouver congregation.24 With the boom in 22 Archives of Ontario (Toronto), Series 085, MHSO, sub-series 054, Minutes of the Canadian Council of Liberal Congregations, MSR 6553, MFN 315, discussions of November 5, 1961. 23 Ibid. 24 For the visits of the rabbis, see the minutes of the Canadian Council of Liberal Congregations for — 303 —

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the Jewish population of Toronto, in part because of internal migration from Quebec, new Reform congregations sprang up like mushrooms in its suburbs and bedroom communities. In 2011, twenty-seven Reform congregations belonged to the Union for Reform Judaism, most of them in Ontario, but with representatives in all provinces from Quebec to British Columbia.25 After fifteen years of planning, in 1999 the movement opened Camp George, an overnight camp about two hundred kilometers north of Toronto. Of the eighteen summer camps in the Reform movement, this is the only one in Canada.26 Some of the well-established features of Reform life have persisted into the present. Most congregations have a social action committee, and the Reform rabbinate has continued to speak out on a variety of social issues. The national organization, now called the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism, also has a special office and national social action co-coordinator. Among its current concerns are programs to end child poverty, to improve conditions for the homeless, and to ameliorate conditions for garment factory workers in Third World countries.27 But there have also been some significant shifts within the walls of Reform temples. As we have seen, some of the earlier Reform rabbis considered Canadian Jewry’s attachment to Jewish ritual as atavistic. A change of tone occurred with the arrival to Toronto in W. Gunther Plaut, who succeeded Abraham Feinberg in the pulpit of Canada’s premier Reform congregation, Holy Blossom. Rather than treat the “Jewishness” of the congregation as a feature to be overcome, Plaut’s own European approach to Reform Judaism embraced those characteristics, and he encouraged the congregation along those lines, as he would the whole movement. Over time, the “traditionalism” of Canadian Reform Judaism became an explicit mark of distinction among many of the congregations and their rabbis. Comfort with the distinctiveness of Canadian Jewry became more pronounced as Canadian-born men and women became rabbis and occupied pulpits in Canada. There was also a specifically Canadian argument that could be used to legitimize the distinctions between Canada and the 1960s, Ibid, as well as W.G. Plaut, Unfinished Business: An Autobiography (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennis, 1981), 351-353. 25 http://congregations.urj.org/display.cfm?state=CD, accessed August 6, 2011. 26 http://george.urjcamps.org/about/experience/, accessed August 12, 2011. 27 “Englander promotes Social Justice in New Role,” Canadian Jewish News, October 16, 2003. — 304 —

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the United States. Canadians had long viewed their country as more of a “mosaic” than a “melting-pot.” Increasingly, Canadian Jews (whether “by religion” or “by ethnic group”) have used Canadian multiculturalism to describe and legitimize their attachment to the more particularistic Jewish practices, and their resistance to “innovations.” As a result, many Canadian rabbis and congregations have handled with care some of the newer issues confronting the Reform movement, such as the challenge of matrilineal descent. In contrast, when more “traditional” documents are issued, such as the 1999 Statement of Principles of Reform Judaism, one Toronto rabbi could correctly point out that “the new principles are much bigger news in parts of the United States than in Canada, where the new Reform movement has been much more attached to tradition.”28 Despite this attachment to tradition within the Reform context, Canadian Reform has distinguished itself from the other Canadian denominations, and not just in the area of social action. Not surprisingly, the first woman rabbi, cantor, and mohelet in Canada were all associated with the Reform movement. More significantly, Canadian Reform Judaism is at the forefront of outreach to interfaith couples. The resulting tension between Canadian Reform’s conservative resistance to the recognition of interfaith couples and the Reform commitment to inclusion and tolerance has been particularly acute in Canadian Reform congregations.29 Nevertheless, Canadian Reform has achieved some prominence because it is willing to go to the outer boundaries of the Jewish community. Not everybody would agree necessarily with sociologist Morton Weinfeld’s statement that “[t]he fact is that Reform and all liberal congregations are doing the community’s dirty work without receiving much thanks.”30 His sentiment, however, is absolutely right, namely: this “third stream” of Canadian Judaism has taken on responsibilities unlike the others, and has a significance in the Canadian Jewish community beyond what would be expected from its numbers. There is, as well, a vibrancy within the Reform movement in Canada, a sense of growth and pride, at a time 28 Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, cited in “Reform Conference Adopts New Statement of Principles,” Canadian Jewish News, June 10, 1999. 29 As implicit in the remarks by the regional director of outreach, reported in “New Regional Chair of CCRJ Connects Two Jobs,” Canadian Jewish News, October 25, 2001. 30 M. Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else—But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 2001), 298. — 305 —

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when the Conservative movement in Canada is fragmenting. The success and character of Reform Judaism vary from country to country. In the case of Canada, the unresisted prominence of AngloJewish Orthodoxy, the centrality of eastern European immigration, and the changing self-definitions of the nation have had an impact on the shape of Reform Judaism. But the reverse is also true. Leaders in social action, pioneers in interfaith contact, and now the only group which is strongly committed to extending its outreach to interfaith couples, the rabbis and laity of Reform Judaism have left and continue to leave a profound impression on the Canadian scene, and especially on the Canadian Jewish community. Richard Menkis

*This essay first appeared in slightly different form as “Both Peripheral and Central: Towards a History of Reform Judaism in Canada” in CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly 51: 4 (2004): 24 – 36. It is reprinted with permission. Recent reflections by Canadian rabbis in “The Canadian Way,” Reform Judaism (Fall, 2009), http:// reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1510, accessed August 7, 2011, confirm that the issues laid out in this article are still very relevant, and that the analysis is sound. — 306 —

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For Further Study Cleator, I. K., and H. J. Stern, Harry Joshua Stern: A Rabbi’s Journey. New York, Bloch, 1981. Cohen, M. “The Struggle for Inclusion in a Canadian Reform Synagogue,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2001. Davies, A., and M.F. Nefsky, How Silent were the Churches: Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1998. Meyer, M.A. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Plaut, W. G. More Unfinished Business. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Tulchinsky, G. “‘Justice and Only Justice Thou Shalt Pursue’: Considerations on the Social Voice of Canada’s Reform Rabbis.” In Religion and Public Life in Canada: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by M. van Die, 313-328. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.

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XXI Conservative Judaism, and its Challengers From the Left (Reconstructionism and Renewal) and Right

As the crow flies, New York City is less than 350 miles from Montreal. Even in 1899, it could not have been a very onerous or exotic trip. The Grand Trunk Railway offered several trips daily, and the journey was not much more than twelve hours.1 Yet when Rabbi Herman Abramowitz recalled his 1903 move to Montreal to assume the pulpit of the Shaar Hashomayim, he called it “pioneering in distant and foreign lands.”2 Was Canada that different? The answer—then and now—would have to be yes, and no. Patterns of Jewish immigration have been distinct, as have the political and cultural contexts. But Canadians have also had deep ties with the United States, although they frequently have qualms about those connections. The story of the arrival and growth of the Conservative movement3 in Canada is another example of the complicated relationship between Canada and its much larger neighbor to the south. I examine here the history of the Conservative movement in Canada, as well as two other non-Orthodox movements that are smaller than the Reform movement (which is treated elsewhere in this volume) and have offered non-Orthodox alternatives to Conservative Judaism. I As Abramowitz recalled, he found it strange to be in Canada. Raised 1  http://www.scribd.com/doc/21340203/1899-Grand-Trunk-Railway-System-Timetable. Accessed July 1 2011. 2 From an autobiographical sketch, reproduced in Bernard Figler, Canadian Jewish Profiles: Rabbi Dr. Herman Abramowitz, Lazarus Cohen, Lyon Cohen (Ottawa: n.p., 1968), 90. 3 There were a number of different points of contact between the Jewish community and what would become the Conservative movement. This article will focus on the rabbis (whether graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary [JTS] and/or members of the Rabbinical Assembly [RA, est. 1901]) and the synagogues, many of which would have joined the United Synagogue (est. 1913). The Conservative movement also has a professional association for cantors, women’s groups, youth groups, and a network of summer camps. — 308 —

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in republican America, he suddenly found himself in a country with a monarch. At a time of vitriolic anti-Catholicism in the United States, he was a rabbi in a city with a vibrant Catholic presence. Education was divided between Catholic and Protestant school boards, a far cry from the public school system in the United States. This educational arrangement bespoke a society in which Jews constituted a “third solitude” which made them inwardly focused, not expecting too much acceptance in the non-Jewish world. Furthermore, the “uptown” Jewish elite of Montreal was strongly anglophilic, quite distinct from the Americanized German Jews of New York.4 In this foreign Montreal, Abramowitz took on the task of «pioneering»—or perhaps more accurately, missionizing—for his alma mater, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and its Americanized Judaism. Abramowitz was a 1902 graduate of the Seminary, a member of the last graduating class prior to its reorganization. The older Seminary was meant to be a response to Reform, with the hope that it could draw together all the opponents to the Reform movement into a modern traditionalist camp. By 1902, however, it was clear that the majority of rabbis of eastern European background had no use for the Seminary, believing that the only hope for Judaism was in resistance to all innovations, including English usage in the synagogue. Wealthy Americanized Jews decided to try again and invested heavily in the Seminary, so that it could offer a vibrant acculturated alternative to a transplanted European orthodoxy. Most significantly, the new backers of JTS invited Solomon Schechter to serve as president. Schechter modeled the possibility of a modernized tradition. He was born in Romania, educated in the yeshivot of Eastern Europe, and was a reader in rabbinics at Cambridge University. Ideologically, he insisted that true Judaism hearkened to the aspirations of the broad community of Jews—catholic Israel—and not just to texts, which were perceived as legitimizing only tradition, not change. In the new seminary, students were required to enroll both in university courses and in the subjects necessary for preparation for the rabbinate. Although Abramowitz graduated just before Schechter’s arrival, 4

For a recent overview of the history of the Jews in Montreal, see the essays in Pierre Anctil and Ira Robinson, eds., Les commnautés juives de Montréal: Histoire et enjeux contemporains (Sillery: Septentrion, 2010). — 309 —

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many of the students of the 1902 class—Abramowitz included— became Schechter’s disciples. These students expected that Schechter, JTS, and then the United Synagogue (established in 1913) would appeal to all Jews who were outside the Reform camp. Within that group of disciples, however, there were those who hoped the movement would focus on significant change so as to adapt to America, and others, such as Abramowitz, who hoped that the movement would attract the Orthodox and remain oriented to slow change.5 It is not surprising that Shaar Hashomayim was drawn to Abramowitz, and vice-versa. It was the second oldest congregation in Montreal, established in the mid-nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the members of the synagogue were among the elite of the Montreal Jewish community, and wanted to assert their own integration and coming-of-age by hiring a rabbi who could deliver sermons in English and hold his own vis-à-vis the older Sephardi congregation, Shearith Israel. The Reform experiment at Temple Emanu-el was definitely too radical for their staid sensibilities. They were thus very happy that their new rabbi kept them on a course that hewed closely to the right wing of the movement. Whatever Abramowitz might have thought of the more left-leaning graduates of JTS—including his old classmate Mordecai Kaplan—he worked to spread the influence of JTS and Schechter. The greatest potential for growth was among eastern European Jews who had achieved a degree of upward social mobility and had left the earliest immigrant neighbourhoods for areas of “second settlement.”6 Several years after Abramowitz’s arrival in Canada, two Toronto congregations (Goel Tzedec and Beth Hamidrosh Hagadol) were secure enough financially to stop renting properties and to buy churches to convert to synagogues. Abramowitz hoped to draw them into the Conservative movement. He wrote to Schechter that he sensed that the congregations were “getting to feel the need of an English-speaking rabbi.”7 He was a frequent visi5

Michael R. Cohen, “Schechter’s Disciples: How Solomon Schechter’s Students Created Conservative Judaism,” (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2008). 6 Marshall Sklare, in his work on Conservative Judaism, emphasized the success of the movement in areas of third residence, the suburbs after the Second World War. Wertheimer, however, correctly points out that the early rooting was often in the area of second residence. See Jack Wertheimer, “The Conservative Synagogue,” in The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 114. 7 Cohen, “Schechter’s Disciples,” 34. — 310 —

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tor to Toronto, and on one occasion the Jewish press summarized his talk as follows: “He pointed out that the strength of Conservative Judaism lay in the fact that it meets the religious wants of old and young alike…. He quoted copiously from rabbinic [sic] authorities that true orthodox meant order, refinement, and decorum.”8 But Abramowitz and his supporters faced stiff opposition. In 1910, the Montreal rabbi wrote to Schechter of an opportunity in Toronto for a JTS graduate, but warned that there was “a strong faction … who do not see the need for an English speaking rabbi, and possibly are putting obstacles in the way.”9 In 1911, the Goel Tzedec congregation invited an advanced JTS student, Eugene Kohn, to deliver a sermon during the High Holidays. When Kohn tried to deliver his first sermon, however, he was drowned out by the thunder of stomping feet.10 The progressive faction did not give up, and two years later they convinced the synagogue trustees to ask Schechter to recommend “a suitable person as rabbai [sic] to our congregation who will be capable to represent the Jews of Toronto.”11 In 1914, the congregation hired Julius Price, who served it in conjunction with the most respected rav in Toronto, Jacob Gordon. But the tension persisted. The traditionalists would walk out on Price when he tried to preach, and they treated with disdain his attempts to introduce minor alterations in the service, including an English blessing for the congregation at the end of the service.12 Members of the synagogue fought over the proper seating of the two rabbis on the bimah, the partisans of each rabbi on the lookout for a possible slight of their favorite.13 Abramowitz searched for opportunities elsewhere. He claimed success in placing a seminary graduate in Hamilton, and tried to find seminary graduates for vacancies in Ottawa and Winnipeg synagogues.14 In the lean years before the First World War, however, the only secure pulpit for a seminary graduate was Abramowitz’s own, at Shaar Hashomayim.

8  Jewish Times, May 18 1906, quoted in Stephen A. Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (New York: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), 221. 9 Cohen, “Schechter’s Disciples,” 35. 10 Speisman, The Jews of Toronto, 222. 11 Ontario Jewish Archives (Toronto) (hereafter: OJA), GoelTzedec fonds, MG 3 A2, Minutes, November 25, 1913. 12 Speisman, The Jews of Toronto, 223. 13 OJA, GoelTzedec fonds, MG 3 A2, Minutes, June 1 1914. 14 Cohen, “Schechter’s Disciples,” 35-36. — 311 —

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II In the interwar period, possibilities for the movement increased. Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe resumed after the First World War, and continued until 1924, when the Canadian government dramatically altered its immigration policy and admission for Jews became virtually impossible. As a result, in those early interwar years the Jewish community witnessed the arrival of new Yiddish speakers, this time largely from Poland. By the 1930s, however, an increasing proportion of Jews felt more at home in Canada, and in English. At the same time, we see some growth in the Conservative movement. According to Louis Rosenberg, the pioneer social scientist of Canadian Jewry, in 1936 there were nine Conservative congregations, in contrast to 140 Orthodox synagogues.15 Given the demographic profile of Canadian Jewry, it makes sense that the number of Orthodox religious leaders who had trained in Europe remained very high. The Conservative movement did, however, attract some young Canadians to JTS. All were from families of Eastern European Jews, and most had a traditional upbringing. Julius Berger was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, in 1892, and arrived in Canada at the age of twelve or thirteen. His father was Joseph David Berger (c. 18741939), a respected rabbi in eastern Europe who had studied at various prominent yeshivot, including in Kovno, before he became the rabbi of Šiauliai. He then moved to New York City in 1902/3 and to Ottawa in 1904/5.16 One of eight children, Julius was immersed in the traditional world of his father, delivering, for example, a speech at the age of 18 at a siyyum at which his father had given the traditional talk (hadran).17 Shortly after his ordination in 1917, he assumed the pulpit of the ostensibly Reform Anshe Sholom in Hamilton. He then moved to Montreal in 1923, briefly serving the New Adath Jeshurun synagogue. In 1925 he became the rabbi of the newly-established Shaarei Zion synagogue. A cohort of Canadian-born Jews also graduated from JTS in the 1930s. Samuel Cass and Gershon Levi were both born in Toronto in 15 Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of the Jews in Canada (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1939), 97. He does not include information on the size of the congregations. 16  Shemu’el Noah ben Duber, SeferOhole-shem (Pinsk: Defus M.M. Glauberman, 1911/2), 293; Obituary, Keneder Odler, Sept. 20, 1939. 17 Lawrence F. Tapper, A Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Jewry 1909-1914 (Teaneck: Avotaynu, 1992), 148, citing Canadian Jewish Times Sept 9, 1910. — 312 —

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1908, and were ordained together in 1933. Samuel Cass moved directly from New York to Vancouver, where he assumed the pulpit of the recently-established Beth Israel. In 1936, Levi became the educational director at Shaar Hashomayim. Both also had prominent roles as chaplains during the Second World War.18 Reuben Slonim was born in Winnipeg in 1914 and grew up in the orphanage there. 19 Ordained in 1937, he first served as rabbi at the large Beth Hamidrosh Hagadol synagogue on McCaul Street. Between 1940 and 1942 he was also the rabbi of a small Conservative congregation that he had helped establish in London, Ontario. He then returned to McCaul Street for the years 1942-1955, except for the years 1944-7. These younger men joined Abramowitz as the vanguard of the Conservative movement in Canada. (Abramowitz even felt moved to welcome Berger in 1923 with the words: “I am glad that another force for good has been added to our communal life.”20) The other prominent graduate of JTS in Canada was Rabbi Samuel Sachs of Goel Tzedec. He was an excellent compromise candidate for that divided and fractious congregation. Shortly after the war, Goel Tzedec had hired a graduate of the orthodox Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), and in 1924 he was replaced by the American-born Jesse Schwartz, who had received his ordination from JTS. When Goel Tzedec went looking again in 1926, they found Sachs, who was born in Lithuania and had received some of his early education in a yeshiva in Radom, Poland. Once in North America, he attended both RIETS and JTS, and was ordained at the latter in 1916.21 Not only did Conservative rabbis distance themselves from the oldworld clergy, they also had a somewhat different public profile than their Reform colleagues. Although the prominent Reform rabbis in interwar Canada were supporters of Zionism, with some ambiguity in the 18 On Cass, see Richard Menkis, “’But you can’t see the Fear that People Lived Through’: Canadian Jewish Chaplains and Canadian Encounters with Dutch Survivors,” American Jewish Archives Journal 60: 1-2 (2008): 26-27; on Gershon Levi, see David Golinkin, “Introduction,” to S. Gershon Levi, Breaking New Ground: The Struggle for a Jewish Chaplaincy in Canada, ed. by David Golinkin (Montreal: National Archives, Canadian Jewish Congress, 1994), iv-viii. 19 His mother took on the job of cook in the kitchen after her husband suffered a devastating stroke. Reuben Slonim, Grand to Be an Orphan (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1983), 37. 20 Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives (Montreal) (hereafter: CJCNA), MC 10 G28. Monty Berger Fonds, Herman Abramowitz to Julius Berger, 20 August 1923. The emphasis is mine. 21  Speisman, Jews of Toronto, 227-228. — 313 —

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case of Maurice Eisendrath, the Reform movement overall was quite ambivalent about Zionism, especially before the 1930s. The leaders of the Conservative movement, on the other hand, evinced strong and unqualified support for Zionism.22 Canadian Jewry was also deeply Zionist, and thus a good fit with the Conservative movement. In fact, it was the JTS graduate and one-time Goel Tzedec rabbi Jesse Schwartz who took over as executive director of the Zionist Organization of Canada in 1932, and remained in the position for almost three decades. In 1934, he founded the magazine of the organization, Canadian Zionist, and sporadically served as its contributing editor.23 There were some roles, in contrast, that Conservative rabbis did not assume. As discussed in a separate essay in this volume, the Reform rabbis in interwar Toronto and Montreal shared with their Christian colleagues a strong commitment to viewing religion as a way to promote social justice. Finding similar messages in the teachings of the Hebrew prophets and of Jesus, rabbis and ministers felt comfortable exchanging pulpits. Few of the Conservative rabbis in Montreal or Toronto showed much interest in this initiative. In an interview with the Toronto Star on the differences among the denominations, Samuel Sachs explicitly stated that he could not speak from a Christian pulpit, as “our cardinal difference has to do with One of whom I cannot concede what Christians do [i.e. that Jesus is messiah]—and thus the whole gesture takes on the air of unreality.” 24 During the Second World War, Reuben Slonim met with Christian clergy, and would speak in churches, but no Christian minister set foot in his synagogue until after the war.25 Although Abramowitz had done some important work in defense of Jews earlier in the century—most notably speaking against the blood libel at the Plamondon Trial—the Conservative rabbis in Toronto and Montreal were less active in this work than their Reform colleagues were. The exception seems to be Rabbi Sachs of Toronto, who served in 1933 as the chair of the League for Human Rights and dealt publicly with the outbreak of violence from swastika clubs. However, when the 22 See Marc Lee Raphael, Profiles in American Judaism: The Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist Traditions in Historical Perspective (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 106107, for a comparison to Reform, see ibid., 30-31; 41-43.) 23 Lewis Levendel, A Century of the Canadian Jewish Press (Ottawa: Borealis, 1989), 285-287. 24  Toronto Daily Star, Sept. 26, 1935, 1 and 2. 25  Reuben Slonim, To Kill a Rabbi (Toronto: ECW Press, 1987), 145. — 314 —

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Canadian Jewish Congress re-established itself in 1934, Reform rabbi Maurice Eisendrath was chosen to be the most prominent representative of the Jewish community in matters of public relations.26 The true exception was in the smaller communities, where Conservative rabbis did take on leadership roles in anti-defamation work. In Vancouver, Samuel Cass spoke in various churches beginning in 1934, usually on the theme of prejudice and events in Nazi Germany. The number of occasions on which he spoke to non-Jewish audiences, both church and especially non-church groups, rose dramatically in 1938-1939, especially after Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938).27 To judge from the titles of these addresses, Cass was not interested in finding common purpose with Christianity by referring to Jesus and Christian scripture but worked hard to make clear the threat to Jewish life emanating from Nazi Germany, as well as from prejudice in Canada. Many of the Conservative rabbis of the interwar period had to carefully navigate the calls for change. JTS graduate Julius Berger, whose first pulpit after graduating was at Hamilton’s Anshe Sholom, had to appeal to several audiences. Anshe Sholom had been Reform, but there was also a traditional group. A circular in Yiddish and English, clearly printed shortly after Berger’s arrival in 1917, announced that the new rabbi would conduct Friday night services for the younger generation. The traditionalists would also be respected, and there would be traditional weekday services, a traditional Saturday morning service, and once a month (on the Sabbath before a new month began) he would also deliver a Sabbath sermon in Yiddish “for the people of the older generation who find themselves more at command in that language.” In short, there was no need for “all your old contentions and objections” (in Yiddish, alte taynes, “old complaints”).28 At Toronto’s Goel Tzedec, Rabbi Samuel Sachs proceeded with caution and encountered resistance on a number of liturgical changes, winning some battles and losing others. By the end of the 1920s, he had introduced special Friday night services for families and was delivering weekly sermons in English. When it came to the decision about changing the seating of women from their gallery, 26 As pointed out by Cyril H. Levitt and William Shaffir, The Riot at Christie Pits (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1987), 125-9, and 280 n. 45. 27 Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa)(hereafter: LAC), Samuel Cass Fonds, MG 30 D225, vol. 39, “Addresses by Rabbi Cass. Dates, organizations & topic 1933-1940.” 28 Circular in CJCNA, ZB Julius Berger. — 315 —

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the congregation followed the opinion of the Seminary’s Louis Ginzberg, who stated that it would be permissible to have men and women on the same floor, though they would have to sit separately. The congregation thus distanced itself from both the liberal position of mixed seating and the Orthodox position that rejected any change.29 Some Conservative rabbis did become advocates for a significant change in the place of the synagogue in the community. The Eastern European rav came from a milieu where a house of prayer was one institution among many on the landscape of the Jewish community, and centers of learning were at least of equal stature. The Conservative movement, especially under the impact of Mordecai Kaplan, re-imagined the role of the synagogue as an institution that was at the center of the Jewish community, and that incorporated multiple functions of Jewish civilization. Although Canada would not have any “shuls with pools,” there were definitely ”shuls with schools.” Julius Berger, of Montreal’s Shaare Zion, was an especially vigorous proponent of the central role of the synagogue. In one of his sermons, he stated quite bluntly that “the center of Jewish education detached from the synagogue, financially supported by the community at large, has been given a fair trial. It has proved unsuccessful in every way….” He insisted that the only hope for Jewish schools was to place them in synagogues, and offered the slogan “Every Beth ha-k’nesseth also a Beth Ha-Midrash.”30 On another occasion, he was adamant that “the only institution left to knit us together as Jews is the synagogue…. As soon as we leave the synagogue, we are in a non-Jewish atmosphere, we are under non-Jewish influence….” 31 At one of the semi-centennial events held at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Berger offered a five-point program for the renewal of the synagogue, and education was one of the primary factors. He included in his discussion the state of education in Montreal, where he figured that only four thousand out of the twelve thousand Jewish children were receiving a Jewish education. The synagogue was the way to remedy this, he argued, but Jews needed to embrace the year-round synagogue. He was especially perturbed by its antithesis—the “mushroom” syna-

29 Speisman, Jews of Toronto, 218-231. 30 Julius Berger, Holidays and the Festivals (New York: Bloch, 1931), 228-229. 31 CJCNA, Monty Berger Fonds, MC 10 G8 file 9, “Yom Kippur Sermons, 1930-1949.” Julius Berger, Yom Kippur sermon, 1931. — 316 —

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gogues that emerged for the High Holidays.32 The Conservative rabbis in the interwar period were thus advocates for a modern but moderate course for Canadian Jews. Shortly after his arrival at the Beth Hamidrosh Hagadol of Toronto, Reuben Slonim tried to explain his stance in the local Jewish press: There are those professing orthodoxy…. In the face of any modification they would hurl the epithet of reformer. I am not a Reformist—Jewish tradition is sacred to me, and Jewish law is dear to my heart. I have no sympathy for rapid change, for the feverish activities of a restless age. But I do realize that any institution which seeks to remain stationary in a moving world is courting disaster. I want to save our heritage, not destroy it. That is why I say: Hold fast to the past, but do not stand still.33 In addition to—or perhaps instead of— this religious program of moderate change of a beloved Jewish law, the Jews on the street found something else in these synagogues. Sammy Luftspring was a scrappy kid from the tough Jewish streets in Toronto. By 1938 he had fought his way to being a serious contender in the boxing world as a welterweight. Conscious of status—he was a big shot in New York City, after all—he did not want to have his wedding at his father-in-law’s old-world Polisha Shul (Beth Jacob) on Henry Street. Instead, he insisted that the marriage should be at the Beth Hamidrosh Hagadol, on McCaul Street, “where Toronto’s affluent Jews then married” and with the young rabbi Reuben Slonim officiating.34 It is not altogether surprising that Slonim (like other rabbis) would present his years in the pulpit as the story of a martyrdom-in-slow-motion, in which he holds on to his religious ideals but is hounded by relentless seekers of prestige.35

32 Newspaper clipping in Monty Berger Fonds, CJCNA MC 10 G9, file 15; undated, but from internal evidence from January 1937. 33 Rueben (sic) Slonim, “A Challenge to the Traditional Synagogue,” The Jewish Standard (November 1937): 4. 34 Sammy Luftspring, with Brian Swarbrick, Call Me Sammy (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1975), 138. 35 Slonim, To Kill a Rabbi, passim. — 317 —

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III For a variety of reasons, in the years after the Second World War Canadian Jews publicly identified themselves as members of a religious group and de-emphasized their self-definition as an ethnic group. Belonging to a synagogue became an important marker of one’s attachment to the community, whatever the actual commitment to religious belief or practice. The synagogue was a place to meet friends, and to send one’s children to afternoon school. The resulting rapid increase in the number of synagogues was distressing to Jewish secularists. The Yiddishist Yacov Zipper confided in dismay to his diary in 1950 that “the secularists have lost their power and the common people don’t know what they want. They want a Bar Mitzvah but really desire the banquet that follows. Strive to join a synagogue but are intent on mere belonging.”36 In that same year, Louis Rosenberg, Labor Zionist and pre-eminent social scientist of Canadian Jews, openly wondered about the priorities of western Canadian Jewry, which was heavily investing in ornate synagogues and ignoring other needs of the community.37 This immediate postwar period marked an end to the first generation of the Conservative movement in Canada. In 1947, Herman Abramowitz died after more than four decades of service in the pulpit of the Shaar Hashomayim. Abramowitz certainly felt an ongoing commitment to the Conservative movement in the interwar years, and served as president of the United Synagogue of America from 1926-1927.38 But he and his congregation retained their place on the right wing of the movement. On the occasion of the centennial of the congregation in 1946, Abramowitz summarized how the congregation had taken its character from “two streams of influence … the authentic Jewish tradition which was informed by sound Jewish scholarship emanating from Lithuania; and the English tradition of an enlightened conservatism.”39 What about New

36  Yacov Ziper, The Journals of Yaacov Zipper, 1950-1982: The struggle for Yiddishkeit, trans. and ed. by Mervin Butovsky and Ode Garfinkle (Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2004), 6 37  Louis Rosenberg, “Random Reminiscences and Comments of a Westerner,” Jewish Post (Winnipeg), August 17, 1950. 38  Pamela S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 27. 39 H. Abramowitz, “One Hundred years of Spiritual Growth: A Brief Ideological Survey of our Congregation,” Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, 1846-1946 (Montreal: 1946), 7. — 318 —

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York, and the Conservative movement?40 He notes with pride his assumption of the presidency of the United Synagogue of America, but his emphasis is always on what impact the Shaar had on the movement. He depicts how at the first meeting of the United Synagogue his American colleagues reacted to the Shaar Hashomayim’s president, Lyon Cohen, the first time he spoke. With his long patriarchal beard they expected “a rattling good speech” in Yiddish. What they got, though, was a “well reasoned out address in cultured English with the added charm of a slight English brogue.” For Abramowitz, this was no less than a “demonstration of Canadian Judaism. Our extreme orthodoxy [!] with all its trimmings and yet completely integrated with the vernacular down to its characteristics of dialect.”41 Despite the loss of the influential Abramowitz, in the two decades after the Second World War the Conservative movement in Canada grew substantially. Most Canadian synagogues and their rabbis were Orthodox, but congregations of Jews of eastern European background were increasingly joining the Conservative movement. In 1951, there were ten Conservative congregations;42 a decade later, the number had more than doubled, with congregations from Halifax to Vancouver, and by 1974 there were forty-nine that identified as Conservative, although a smaller number were formally affiliated.43 The majority of the congregations were in Toronto and Montreal. In Ontario, even more congregations wanted to join the United Synagogue in the 1950s, but only on the condition that they could get a JTS-trained rabbi. At this time of rapid 40 According to Abramowitz’s successor at the Shaar, Abramowitz reacted negatively to the changes in liturgy passed by a special committee—on which he supposedly sat and then resigned from—in the 1940s, and implemented in the 1946 Sabbath and Festival Prayerbook. These changes included: replacing the morning benedictions of thanks that had a negative wording (not made me a man, not made me one of the nations) with positive statements; and having sacrifices remembered as a feature of the Temple, without expressing hope for their restoration. See Robert Gordis, “Foreword,” Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book with A New Translation, Supplementary Readings and Notes (New York: The Rabbinical Assembly of America and The United Synagogue of America, 1946), iv-xiii. Wilfred Shuchat, The Gate of Heaven: The Story of Congregation ShaarHashomayim of Montreal (Montreal: Published for the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 151. Unfortunately, Shuchat does not have any references, and it would be reassuring to find written evidence for Abramowitz’s participation in the commission, and his reaction. 41  Abramowitz, “One Hundred years of Spiritual Growth,” 8-9. 42 LAC, Louis Rosenberg Fonds, MG 30 C 119, volume 34, file: synagogues 1951-5. 43 Stuart Schoenfeld, “The Jewish Religion in North America: Canadian and American Comparisons,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 3: 2 (Spring 1978): 217. — 319 —

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expansion both north and south of the border, this was not a promise that could be met.44 The movement showed other signs of vitality in Canada. Two day schools affiliated with the movement would be established, in Montreal (at Shaare Zion) and at Toronto’s Beth Tzedec. In 1960, a Camp Ramah opened in the Muskoka district north of Toronto, the fourth in the network of camps designed to instill the values of Conservative Judaism and foster a young leadership for the movement.45 There was also growth in visibility. The suburban synagogues of all denominations built during this period were meant to announce Judaism’s place on the Canadian religious landscape. Synagogues were set away from the street as showpieces, and were often designed by prominent architects. The most dramatic of all was Toronto’s Beth Tzedec. The two large downtown synagogues—Goel Tzedec and Beth Ha-Midrosh Hagadol/Chevrah Tehillim—decided to merge and move uptown, to the upscale neighbourhood of Forest Hill. They hired a brilliant young architect, Peter Dickinson. He designed an architecturally dramatic building, which would also be the largest synagogue in Canada, holding 2,600, with room for 900 more when opened to the connecting banquet hall.46 It would ultimately house the community’s day school, become a hub for adult Jewish education, and in the late 1960s would even house a museum, acquiring the rich collection of the historian Cecil Roth. Other synagogues did not have such grandiose designs—or cheque-writers in the same weight class as those at Beth Tzedec—but nevertheless created large synagogues. Both Vancouver’s Beth Israel and Edmonton’s Beth Sholom, for example, used the Toronto-based architectural firm of Kaplan & Sprachman to create large formal spaces. What did the Conservative movement offer at this time? Not all congregations had the same hopes. In Halifax in 1953, a group of ninety men and women came together to set up a Conservative congregation. It may have been difficult to break away from the only other congregation in town, but it was time for something new. As expressed by one 44 LAC, Ruth and Bert Godfrey Fonds, MG 31 H177, volume 14, file: United Synagogue of America, Ontario Region, “Third Annual Conference, Ontario Region, United Synagogue of America, Report of the President Mr. Bert Godfrey, Sunday May 3 1959.” 45 Michael Brown, “It’s Off to Camp We Go: Ramah, LTF, and the Seminary in the Finkelstein Era,” in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary, vol. 1, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), 823-854 46 Sheldon Levitt, Lyn Milstone, and Sidney T. Tenenbaum, Treasures of a People: The Synagogues of Canada (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1985), 90-91. — 320 —

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of their leaders ten years after the founding of their congregation, they were looking for “a break with the rigid undeviating orthodoxy and move toward an intelligible and meaningful service.”47 When Milton Aron came to serve as rabbi at Winnipeg’s newly-Conservative Shaarey Zedek just after the war, he introduced more English prayers and made a place for women in the synagogue choir.48 It was a far cry from the small synagogues of landslayt. In Toronto, as Michael Brown has shown in a recent thoughtful article, the congregants of Beth Tzedec longed for recognition among both Jews and non-Jews. With their new cathedral synagogue, they hoped to command at least as much stature in the community as the majestic Reform temple, Holy Blossom, which had preceded Beth Tzedec in the neighbourhood. They sought a dynamic personality, which they soon found in the person of Stuart Rosenberg. Rosenberg, a powerful orator, assumed a leadership role in a number of initiatives. He was a pioneer in the Canadian campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry. He also supported the teaching of Jewish studies on campus. Stuart Rosenberg gave the congregants of Beth Tzedec the recognition that they sought, although the relationship between rabbi and congregation would deteriorate rapidly in the 1970s.49 Whatever the reasons, the Conservative movement grew in Canada, paralleling its growth in the United States. Although precise statistics are not available, evidence from the early 1970s suggests that among synagogue-affiliated households, 50% of Jews in the United States identified with the Conservative movement, while the Canadian number was somewhat lower.50 There are more precise numbers for the early 1990s, and here the numbers are very close, with Canada at 43% and the United States at 45%.51 But there were also very important differences. Some of the evidence from the early years is impressionistic. Arthur Chiel and his Winnipeg47 Noa Heinish, “At the Threshold of Our Tenth Year: Looking Backwards” Shaar Shalom Congregation High Holy Day Bulletin, Tenth Anniversary Issue (5723-1962): 10. 48 Levine, Coming of Age, 314, 49 Michael Brown, “Platform and Prophecy: The Rise and Fall of Stuart E. Rosenberg as Foreshadowed in his Early Toronto Sermons on Leadership,” Jewish History 23: 2 (2009): 195-217. 50  Schoenfeld, “The Jewish Religion in North America,” 213. 51 Jay Broad-Nemzer et al., “An Overview of the Canadian Jewish Community,” in The Jews in Canada, ed. Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2010), 43. — 321 —

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raised wife, Kinneret, faithfully served the Winnipeg Jewish community from 1948 to 1957. He was the rabbi at Congregation Rosh Pina, as well as the Hillel Director and an instructor in Jewish studies at the University of Manitoba. After a decade, however, the Chiels found the traditional atmosphere and the relatively small size of the community difficult and opted to move to the United States.52 As we move into the later decades we have more detailed information. Canadian synagogues in the 1970s were slow to implement the 1973 decision of the Rabbinical Assembly allowing congregations to include women in the minyan. According to a survey on the status of women in Canadian synagogues conducted in the late 1970s, of the twenty-one congregations that responded only one counted women in the minyan.53 In the 1990s, a survey of North American Conservative congregations found that Canadian congregations were less likely than their American counterparts to include women in the ritual of the synagogues (counting them in the minyan, having them lead services and read from the Torah, etc.), and were less likely to have had a woman president. Ritual practices were also more traditional, with Conservative congregations in Canada far less likely to read the Torah on a triennial cycle as opposed to the traditional annual cycle, or use musical instruments on the Sabbath.54 These differences are a reflection of an overall tendency toward more traditional practices within the Canadian Jewish community. Postwar immigration patterns kept the Canadian Jewish community more conservative. The proportion of Holocaust survivors from eastern Europe coming to Canada was greater than it was in the United States. In the 1950s, Jews from Iraq and Morocco arrived in Canada, mostly settling in Montreal. These groups had no interest in the American denominations, and kept the overall community more traditional in its outlook. Patterns of settlement within cities were also significant. Much of the postwar expansion of the Jewish community took place, as in the United States, in the areas of “third settlement.” As a result of rapid population growth both from immigration and a family-oriented postwar genera52 Allan Levine, Coming of Age: A History of the Jewish People of Manitoba (Winnipeg: Heartland, 2009), 319. 53 Monty L. Lazar, “The Role of Women in Synagogue Ritual in Canadian Conservative Synagogues,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 20: 3 (December 1978): 168-9. 54 Jack Wertheimer, Conservative Synagogues and their Members: Highlights of the North American Study of 1995-96 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1996), 20-21. — 322 —

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tion, the cities started sprouting suburbs, and Jews who had once lived downtown moved to these areas. What distinguished Jewish suburban life from its American counterpart was the degree to which Jews still lived in Jewish neighborhoods in the suburbs. This was especially true in Montreal and Toronto, together home to 80% of Canada’s Jews in 1961. In Montreal, the Jews as third solitude persisted, only now in new Jewish settlements in Snowdon and Cote St. Luc. In Toronto, the Jewish community moved north to North York, much of it huddled around Bathurst Street, from the upper-class Forest Hill in the south, to new neighbourhoods for an upwardly mobile middle class. IV Growing rapidly in the three decades after the Second World War, Conservative Judaism seemed to be unstoppable. There were, however, individuals and groups who wanted something different than the postwar norm, who wanted their synagogues to look and sound different. One of these challenges came from supporters of Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan’s vision of Judaism, articulated most famously in his work Judaism as a Civilization in 1934, argued that religious ideas and rituals had always served to maintain the communal and individual lives of Jews. This sociological reality should be studied, consciously accepted, and used to construct the community. In order to appreciate the complex dynamics involved, one needs to understand the wide range of experiences of the Jews, and appreciate the secular cultures of Jews and their non-Jewish contexts. Kaplan also articulated these views in his liturgical innovations, especially in the 1941 New Haggadah and the 1945 Sabbath Prayer Book. The latter included an introduction that enumerated a variety of traditional beliefs that no longer had a hold on Jews, and thus should not be reflected in the liturgy. Among the most controversial of Kaplan’s excisions was the concept of the chosenness of Israel.55 Despite some fundamental and ongoing disagreements with the Conservative movement, Kaplan taught at JTS from 1909 until his retirement in 1963. Reviled by some of his contemporaries, he was re55 Mel Scult, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 360-361. — 323 —

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vered by many of his students. Among them was Montreal-born Lavy Becker. Born in 1901 in a traditional household, he attended Yeshiva University for two years before going to McGill, where he earned a BA in 1926. From there, he returned to New York City, this time to attend the rabbinical program at JTS. Both he and his father believed that Lavy would benefit from a useful and safe education at Schechter’s seminary.56 Becker, however, fell under the influence of Mordecai Kaplan, as did his contemporary and friend Ira Eisenstein, later an architect of the movement and son-in-law of Kaplan. After his ordination, Becker took a pulpit in Long Island (from 1930-1935) and maintained an active interest in the work of Kaplan. Shortly after the appearance of Judaism as a Civilization, he organized study groups of the book, much to Kaplan’s appreciation. Becker also lived the broadly communal ideals of the Reconstructionist movement in his choice to leave the rabbinate and take on other positions working with Jews.57 He worked as a social worker and communal worker, in Detroit, New Haven, and Boston, before returning to Montreal in 1944 to serve briefly as director of the YMHA. He had a prominent role after the Second World War with the Joint Distribution Committee, working with survivors in the United States’ zone of occupation. When Becker returned from Europe to Montreal in 1947 to work in the family business, he also volunteered in the Jewish community. Evidently following in the footsteps of Kaplan himself, who did not want to see Reconstructionism as a separate denomination, Becker supported the establishment of Congregation Beth-El. This Conservative congregation in the new Jewish neighborhood of Mount Royal first met in the fall of 1951 for discussions, and held its first High Holiday services in 1952. Becker volunteered his services as “Honorary Rabbi” from 1952-1954, and was subsequently called the “First Spiritual Leader of Congregation Beth-El.”58 56 Sharon Gubbay Helfer, “Lavy’s Shul: A Canadian Experiment in Reconstructionism” (PhD dissertation, Concordia University, 2006) p. 92. Unless otherwise noted, the information on Becker derives from this thesis. 57 Both Ronald Aigen and Ira Eisenstein stress the role of community service in Reconstructionist Judaism, and how it informed Lavy Becker’s life. See Ronald S. Aigen, “Introduction: Community and the Individual Jew,” in Community and the Individual Jew: Essays in Honor of Lavy Becker, ed. Ronald S. Aigen and Gershon Hundert (Philadelphia: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Press, 1986), and Ira Eisenstein, “Lavy Becker: A Community Jew,” in ibid., 114-117. 58 Louis Jason, “Some Reflections on the Early Days,” Congregation Beth-El Town of Mount Royal Bar — 324 —

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Becker did not, however, discover a spiritual home in the synagogues of the 1950s. He and others found the Judaism of the suburbs passive and intellectually lifeless. His former classmate, Ira Eisenstein, also wanted to offer a real alternative and pushed for Reconstructionism to become a denomination, assuming the role of Director of the Reconstructionist Fellowship of Congregations, established in 1955.59 At first the Fellowship called on all Reconstructionist congregations to have an affiliation with one of the denominations. By 1960, however, that requirement was dropped. In that same year, Becker was ready to participate in the transformation of the movement as a whole, and the Montreal scene specifically, and placed an advertisement in the local paper inviting people to come to a meeting to form a “Jewish Reconstructionist Group.” Only thirty people came to the meeting. Over the next few years, however, enough people found the movement and the local group attractive to build their own synagogue, under the name Dorshei Emet— ”Seekers of Truth”—they came together to build their own synagogue in 1967, in the once-restricted town of Hampstead. The synagogue embodied many of Becker’s Reconstructionist ideals. It was built to be more modest than many of the postwar suburban synagogues, but it also drew from the surrounding society and had architectural features drawing from “habitant style.” The congregation focused on study in order to develop a pluralistic Jewish philosophy of life and to engage with the Jewish community. It would also offer services that would satisfy the emotional needs of the congregants, but that would also remain faithful to the liturgical innovations of the movement in content and associated rituals.60 Becker continued his service to Canadian Jewish life and worked to strengthen the Reconstructionist movement. Once Kaplan retired from JTS in 1963, his students encouraged him to set up a Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Becker played an important role in the early history of that institution, including serving as the co-chair of the board of govMitzvah Year Dedication Weekend June 12th to June 14th, 1964 (Montreal: 1964), 23; see also 12. 59 Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America, 76-77. 60 Jack N. Lightstone, “Ritual, Reality and Contemporary Society: The Case of a Reconstructionist Synagogue,” in Ritual and Identity: A Comparative Study of the Social Meaning of Liturgical Ritual in Synagogues, ed. Jack N. Lightstone and Frederick B. Bird (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1995), 65-80. — 325 —

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ernors, but much of his work was closer to home. He served as the nonpaid religious leader of his Montreal congregation until 1977, when the congregation hired a full-time rabbi. Becker also offered some guidance to a small group of Jews in Toronto in the late 1960s. They had become interested in the works of Kaplan, and started a small group for discussions and prayer. Becker successfully encouraged them to establish a Reconstructionist synagogue.61In the summer of 1973 the group issued a “statement of principles,” highlighting the non-supernatural Reconstructionist understanding of Judaism, as well as a commitment to promoting pluralism inside and outside of the Jewish community. In the cover letter, they promised that they were bringing something new to the Toronto synagogue scene: “As you can see in the attached statement of Principles, our synagogue is different than most.” They then promised a developed program, with monthly Friday night services, festival celebrations, and study groups.62 In the late 1980s, a group in Ottawa also came together to study, and would ultimately become the third Reconstructionist congregation in Canada. Each Reconstructionist community has grown significantly, with four hundred families in Montreal, a similar number in Toronto, and 110 families in Ottawa. In 2003 the Montreal congregation built a larger synagogue to accommodate its members, and in 2008 the Toronto congregation dedicated its own synagogue, after years of renting space.63 Despite these signs of growth, Reconstructionism is, in size, a distant fourth to the Reform movement in Canada. The Jewish Renewal movement has an even smaller institutional presence in Canada, although a significant early chapter of its history took place in Canada. The beginnings of the Renewal movement are in the Jewish countercultural movement and neo-Hasidism. Many young Jews had as much use for suburban synagogue religiosity as the counterculture had for middle-class suburban life—none at all. Some of them found their alternative in charismatic leaders who taught Hasidic joy through prayer and a popular mysticism that drew not just from the classical kabbalistic 61 Ron Csillag, “Reconstructionist Synagogue Celebrates 20th Anniversary,” CJN May 6 1993, 30. 62 LAC, Stephen S. Barber Fonds, MG 31 H113, file: World Jewish Congress-Reconstructionist Synagogue of Toronto. 63 Using the links to these synagogues at http://jrf.org/node/13/#Canada, accessed August 11, 2011. — 326 —

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sources but also from other religious traditions. They initially gathered in informal small settings which were the antithesis of the staid suburban synagogue. The movement, which would ultimately be called Jewish Renewal, is anti-hierarchical, with a strong commitment to lay leadership, feminism, and social justice issues.64 One of the spiritual fathers of the movement was Shlomo Carlebach, a dynamic figure from a prominent German Orthodox family who became a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe after the Second World War. The rebbe saw his potential, and directed him in 1949 to be Lubavitch emissary to college campuses. Carlebach attracted students with his exuberant music—often of his own composition—and storytelling. By the mid-1960s, he was reaching out to young Jews in coffee houses and hippie districts, spreading Hasidic teachings while inviting all—men and women, young and old—to participate in a new Jewish spirituality. In 1967, he set up the House of Love and Prayer in Haight-Ashbury, the district in San Francisco that was, for a time, the center of the hippie counterculture.65 The rebbe also sent out Carlebach’s friend Zalman Schachter (later Schachter-Shalomi). Born in Poland, he grew up in Vienna. After the Anschluss, he fled with his family to Antwerp, and then to France, Africa, and the West Indies before he made it to the United States in 1941. Like Carlebach, he had received his rabbinic ordination after years of study at the yeshiva of the Lubavitch movement. In addition to his travels for the rebbe, he took a pulpit in Fall River, Massachusetts, and then in neighboring New Bedford. But Schachter was looking for new ways to learn about religion and its impact, and registered at Boston University for an MA in psychology of religion. At BU he was deeply influenced by Howard Thurman and his course on spiritual disciplines and resources, which came complete with labs.66 In 1956 he earned his MA, and in that same year accepted an invitation to serve as Hillel director and part-time 64

For some recent studies of Renewal, see Shaul Magid, “Jewish Renewal: Towards a “New” American Judaism,” Tikkun 21: 1 (Jan./Feb. 2006): 57-60; Chava Weissler, “The Meanings of Shekhinah in the ‘Jewish Renewal Movement,’” in Women Remaking American Judaism, ed. Riv-Ellen Prell, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2007), 51-81. 65 Yaakov Ariel, “Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1976-1977,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 13: 2 (summer 2003): 139165. 66  Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, with Daniel Gropman, First Steps to a New Jewish Spirit (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2003), xv-xviii. — 327 —

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lecturer in Judaic studies at the University of Manitoba. As of 1964, he was with the university full-time. He remained there until 1975, when he took up a faculty position at Temple University in Philadelphia. During his two decades in Manitoba,67 Schachter-Shalomi traveled extensively. In his first ten years, he met a wide variety of religious leaders and scholars, including Abraham Heschel, Gershom Scholem, Thomas Merton, and Elie Wiesel. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s he began meeting with Sufis. Schachter-Shalomi also set off on trips of a different sort. In the early 1960s, Schachter-Shalomi decided to experiment with LSD. He first approached Abe Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond, who were experimenting with the drug at a psychiatric hospital in Saskatchewan. They told Schachter-Shalomi he would have to come to the hospital. Not seeing the setting as appropriate for the experience, he traveled to Boston to experiment with LSD with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass).68 His position at the University of Manitoba gave Schachter-Shalomi the freedom to explore Judaism from a variety of perspectives. After he publicized his first experiences with LSD, the university administration conducted an inquiry, and Shachter-Shalomi then decided to keep his experimentation with psychedelic drugs to himself, especially after they had been made illegal.69 His experience with LSD did not, however, seem to have had any long-term effects on his career, as he remained with the university for more than a decade after that, and was even made head of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. During his time in Winnipeg, Schachter-Shalomi published works that laid out his agenda for religious renewal. In his early years in Winnipeg he published The First Step: A Primer of a Jew’s Spiritual Life,70 which would later be incorporated into The Jewish Catalogue,71 a central text in the development of counter-cultural Judaism. It was meant to intro67 For a summary of Schachter-Shalomi’s time in Winnipeg, see Levine, Coming of Age, 324-326. 68  Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, “Transcending Religious Boundaries,” in Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics, ed. Roger N. Walsh and Charles S. Grob (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 197. 69  Schachter-Shalomi, “Transcending Religious Boundaries,” 200. 70 Meshullam Zalman Schachter, “The First Step: A Primer of a Jewish’s Spiritual Life,” has been transcribed at http://www.rebzalmanlegacy.org/index.cfm?objectid=482838B6-D614-E19E2F502500677364C4. Accessed August 10, 2011 . 71 “A First Step: A Devotional Guide,” in The Jewish Catalogue: A do-it-yourself Kit, compiled and edited by Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfeld, and Sharon Strassfeld (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 296-317. — 328 —

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duce the “elementary techniques of the spiritual laboratory,” beginning with the importance of kavvanah, or proper intentionality. It drew, as he claimed, from Hasidism and other mystical sources, but it synthesized these teachings in English, and promised (like Hasidism) that mystical experiences could be accessible to all. It also includes a strategy for surviving the synagogue Judaism of the 1950s, which he called “corporate worship at a regular synagogue,” where “[t]he officiating rabbi and cantor, the choir, the other worshippers, might make your synagogue attendance something uninspiring.” During the Manitoba years, Schachter-Shalomi also published a key text in the formation of the Renewal movement: his 1964 article “Toward an Order of B’nai Or (children of light).” He called it “A Program for a Jewish Liturgical Brotherhood.” It critiques the materialistic secular world, and complains that the religious life of his time was superficial, “at best a feeble vote for the good, for God, and against sin.” He wanted to create a setting for a deeper religious experience that would be explored through liturgy, study, and the arts.72 In 1969, he established the B’nai Or Fellowship, later renamed P’nai Or, and which ultimately became the Aleph Alliance. Schachter-Shalomi also published more traditional academic works, generally on topics having to do with mysticism, and translated several Hasidic texts. What impact did Schachter-Shalomi have on Winnipeg? He brought an idiosyncratic joy in prayer, which he applied to the local community, as is apparent in a playful short article he wrote less than two years after his arrival.73 Reporting on a “visit” to heaven, he describes the prayer office, where “prayers are received, sorted and tabulated on IBM machines.” An efficient and ecumenical kind of place, it keeps a precise record of the efficacy of prayers, and the data reveals that the prayers from Jews are far weaker than the suras of Moslems, the prayers of nuns, the prayer wheels of Tibetans and the rain dances of Native Americans. An angel informs him that Jewish prayers have all the right words, but the responsive and union readings were “too mechanical.” 72  Zalman M. Schachter, “Toward an ‘Order of B’nai Or’: A Program for a Jewish Liturgical Brotherhood,” Judaism 13: 2 (spring 1964): 85-197. According to a curriculum vitae preserved in the Schachter-Shalomi near-print file at the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati), he also published an article on B’nai Or in Hebrew for the journal Prozdor in 1962. I have not seen the article. 73 Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter, “Veg’n Nusach Brownstone,” in Talmud Torah Golden Jubilee Volume, 1907-1957 (Winnipeg: 1957), 62-63. It first appeared in the local newspaper, The Jewish Post. — 329 —

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Another angel, who appreciated the cantorial art, bemoaned the loss of the classic sacred melodies—skarbovve—of the past, which have been replaced by all types of cantorial performances that included opera and worse. But then, the machines process some new information, and the angel smiles because the visitor’s Landslayt—fellow community members—were praying. How did he know? Because Winnipeg had Nusach Brownstone— a unified rite used by Winnipeg’s choirs and synagogues, all taught by their distinguished cantor and composer Benjamin Brownstone—that was a pleasure to hear.74 Schachter-Shalomi’s charisma influenced others, some from Winnipeg and others who came to see him in Winnipeg. Charles Grysman was deeply affected by the dynamic Reb Zalman. He later remembered, for example, how he took the community’s children dancing from synagogue to synagogue on Simchat Torah. On his encouragement, Grysman went to yeshiva.75Grysman remained Orthodox; others, however, would be drawn to Schachter-Shalomi’s search for new and radical expressions of Judaism. He certainly brought new religious outlooks and scholarship back from his many travels, and students filled the classes of this charismatic figure who had experienced so much in so many places. Other seekers would have found in Schachter’s home a chance to view that diversity. According to one visitor, the “famous” basement had “colourful lava lamps, incense burners, mandalas, Tibetan bells, Indian music and pictures of great Chassidic masters.”76 Although Schachter-Shalomi left Canada in 1975, his followers continued to spread the ideals of P’nai Or. Rabbi Neal Rose was, as a student at JTS, influenced by Schachter-Shalomi, as was his wife Carol, a cousin of Carlebach. Neal Rose came to the University of Manitoba while Schachter-Shalomi was still there, and he and his wife have remained committed to Schachter-Shalomi’s vibrant Judaism. Another rabbi in Winnipeg, Alan Green, was ordained by Schachter-Shalomi in 1991 and 74 Benjamin Brownstone was a cantor/composer who arrived in Winnipeg in 1921, at the age of twenty-three. For decades, he worked with all types of Jewish singing groups, from synagogue choirs to the choirs at the seriously anti-religious Peretzschool and Liberty Temple. On Brownstone, see Sharon Chisvin, Our Musical Heritage: A Century of Jewish Musicians and Music in Winnipeg (Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, nd), 15-18. 75  He would be ordained by the halakhic scholar and head of Toronto’s Beth Din Gedaliah Felder. Marvin and Irma Penn Archives of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (Winnipeg), interview #451, August 8, 1989. 76 Carol Rose, in Levine, Coming of Age, 325. — 330 —

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served in several congregations in the United States before he came to a synagogue in Winnipeg’s north end. He subsequently assumed the pulpit in the city’s large Conservative synagogue, Shaarey Zedek, where he has introduced aspects of Renewal’s spirituality into regular and alternate services. The strongest institutional presence of Renewal is in British Columbia, especially Vancouver. The west coast of Canada—like the west coast of the United States—is known for its resistance to organized religion and its openness to individualism and new religious movements. The first recipient of an ordination from Schachter-Shalomi was Daniel Siegel, who received it in 1974 and one year later took over the pulpit of the Victoria Congregation, Temple Emanuel. He and his partner, Hanna Tiferet, a central figure in the development of feminist Renewal liturgy, left after one year, but in September 1977 they returned to British Columbia, this time to Vancouver. Hired to be the Hillel director, Daniel, with Hanna, started a minyan at Hillel in 1978, which then moved into their house in 1979. After gathering at other houses and rented locations, Or Shalom (“Light of Peace”) moved into its own synagogue in 1993.The congregation combines the vibrant communal singing of old and new tunes, the neo-hasidic mysticism of Schachter-Shalomi, complete egalitarianism in ritual and communal leadership, and extended discussions of the Torah portion. It has also excised certain elements from the traditional prayerbook, such as the Additional Prayer (musaf) on the Sabbath, and does not do the prophetic readings (haftorah) on a regular basis. Still, cross-border visitors remark that Or Shalom tends to be more traditional than most of its American counterparts in the Renewal movement. In the mid-1990s, a group started to come together in Toronto, and joined the (now-defunct) Network of Jewish Renewal Congregations in 2001. Their congregation, Shir Libeynu, includes one member, Aviva Goldberg, who has both created and studied feminist rituals in the Renewal movement.77 There is also a Shir Chadash Community Synagogue in Montreal, founded in May 2011.78

77 Aviva Goldberg, “Re-Awakening Deborah: Locating the Feminist in the Literature, Ritual and Theology of Jewish Renewal” (PhD dissertation, York University, 2002). 78 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shir-Chadash-Community-Synagogue/203157859721215?v =info. Accessed August 1, 2011. — 331 —

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V Conservative Judaism faced more than the challenges posed by the growth of Reconstructionism and Renewal. Within the movement itself, feminists called for equality, and more and more Conservative Jews—whether the laity at the United Synagogue meetings, or the rabbis at the Rabbinical Assembly— were listening and responded. In 1973, the Jewish Law and Standards Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly decided that women could be counted in the minyan, years after the United Synagogue had made the recommendation. At the synagogue in the Seminary, however, women would not be counted in the minyan, or be called up to the Torah. In fact, men and women were still sitting separately there.79 But the push for equality was only beginning. Starting in the early 1970s, women wanted to attend the JTS rabbinical program, and to be ordained. This was already occurring in the Reform and Reconstructionist communities; why not in the Conservative movement? Delegates at the United Synagogue convention thought they should, and called on JTS to admit female candidates. There were strong factions for and against it in the Rabbinical Assembly, and the issue was postponed in 1975 and 1976. The main hurdle for supporters of women’s ordination was the policy that only the faculty of JTS could decide on admissions, and it was clear that the faculty was divided. In 1977, the RA motion was again set aside, but the supporters had secured the promise that JTS Chancellor Gerson Cohen would establish a committee representing the divergent views in the movement, which was to present a recommendation to the RA after two years. For those two years the Commission for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis considered the halakhic implications and held public meetings in seven cities across North America, including Vancouver and Toronto. At the RA meeting of 1979, the Commission recommended, by a vote of 11 to 3, that women be admitted to JTS so that they could study for their ordination. The Commission was chaired by the Chancellor himself, who then 79 Beth S. Wenger, “The Politics of Women’s Ordination: Jewish Law, Institutional Power, and the Debate over Women in the Rabbinate,” in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary, vol. 1, ed. Jack Wertheimer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), 490. This article and the book by Pamela S. Nadell, Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), are excellent studies of this issue. — 332 —

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faced the daunting task of convincing the faculty at JTS to follow up. Even before the Commission had announced its recommendation, the faculty at the seminary began to mobilize, with the opponents including high-profile members of the Talmud faculty. Acknowledging the deep division in his faculty, Cohen decided in 1979 not to press the issue. The RA, however, grew increasingly impatient and in 1983 almost succeeded in bringing women into the ranks of the Conservative rabbinate by voting on admitting a female Reform rabbi into the RA, a decision which was in their power. The motion was defeated, but they had only four votes fewer than the necessary 75% required for approval. The vote was enough, however, to convince Cohen that the issue needed to be raised again at JTS, and in the fall of 1983 the faculty voted to accept women into the rabbinical program by the margin of 34 to 8, with one abstention. Reaction to the vote was swift. A relatively small but vocal group established in 1983 the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism, was meant to lobby the Conservative movement from within. Among its activities was a panel to look into halakhic matters, which confirmed the group’s opposition to counting women in the minyan and the ordination of women. In 1990, this group abandoned trying to change the Conservative movement from within. They dropped the word Conservative from their name, and set up their own institute for the training of rabbis. Throughout the drawn-out process of ordaining women, prominent Canadian Conservative Jews expressed strong opposition. When Cohen created the Commission on the ordination question in 1977, he appointed Wilfred Shuchat of Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim.80 Two years later, Shuchat was one of the three signatories of the minority opinion against ordination. The minority expressed grave concerns for the “unity of the Movement,” and thought that accepting women for ordination would compromise the image of the Conservative movement and the seminary as “authentic halakhic” institutions. 81 After the Commission’s report, he joined forces with dissidents in both the RA and JTS

80 Shuchat, Gate of Heaven, 370. According to Shuchat, he was a reluctant participant, only agreeing when Cohen “had put it on the basis of a personal favour to himself.” 81 Simon Greenberg, ed., The Ordination of Women as Rabbis: Studies and Responsa (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1988), 30. — 333 —

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in a Conference on Halakhic Process,82 which registered its strong opposition to the ordination of women.83 This opposition was one factor leading to the postponement of the motion at JTS in 1979. Four years later, at the RA meeting discussing the admission of the female Reform rabbi into Conservative ranks, he delivered an impassioned speech in which he wondered whether there could be a place for him in the RA, as the vote would not allow for a majority and a minority opinion.84 After JTS made its decision, Shuchat and others began to explore other options. At the United Synagogue gathering after the JTS meeting, he attended the preliminary meeting of the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism, or as he described it closer to the time, a “clandestine meeting where we debated [whether] there was a place for traditional Jews in the new Conservative movement.”85 He would play a prominent role in the Union. Other Canadians voiced their opposition to the 1983 JTS decision. Rabbi J. Benjamin Friedberg of Toronto’s Beth Tzedec published an article in the Canadian Jewish News expressing his concern that the decision was based on contemporary mores, rather than on halakhah. And, “just because North American society has undergone a sexual revolution and has become pagan in its sexual mores does not mean that we should accept the legitimacy in halacha [sic].”86 He also argued that Judaism valued the separation of the roles of men and women, rather than the “American unisex approach.” There were, to be sure, Canadian supporters of ordination for women. Shortly after the decision in late 1979 not to hold a vote at JTS on the issue, Canadian Elaine Kahn and her Toronto-born husband, rabbinical student Lawrence Troster, worked with two ordained rabbis to establish G.R.O.W (Group for the Rabbinic Ordination of Women).87 Kahn was the introductory speaker at the rally on the doorstep of the Seminary on March 18, 1980, and in an interview with the Canadian Jewish News, she reported on the events and expressed hope for support

82 Jonathon Ament, “The Union for Traditional Judaism: A Case Study of Contemporary Challenges to a New Religious Movement” (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2004), 72. 83 Ament, “Union for Traditional Judaism,” 83. 84 Ibid., 92. 85 Sheryl Halpern, “Female Rabbi Issue Stirs Conservative Judaism,” CJN, December 22 1983, 3. 86  “Seminary’s Decision on Women Called Serious Error,” CJN, November 10 1983, 7. 87 Nadell, Women Who Would be Rabbis, 208-209. — 334 —

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from Canadian Jews.88 She and Troster garnered additional attention by creating T-shirts for their twin one-year-old daughters emblazoned with “JTS Rabbinical School, Class 2001.” Several months later, Kahn and Troster informed the CJN that G.R.O.W. had scored an important victory at the RA convention.89 Canadian Conservative laity also expressed support for the ordination of women. Friedberg’s anti-ordination article of 1983 in the CJN provoked some irate responses. Activist Judy Feld Carr argued that Friedberg had ignored the halakhic reasoning allowing for ordination offered by Rabbi Joel Roth, and she disputed his view that providing women an equal role in the synagogue would somehow break down the Jewish family and weaken the synagogue.90 Another letter-writer alluded to Roth’s decision as well, but emphasized how out of touch Friedberg was with the Conservative laity. In addition to listing the various Conservative organizations that were in support of ordination for women, he also referred to the work of the Cohen Commission and its visit to Toronto: “Public hearings throughout North America, even here at Adath Israel, showed JTS that the majority of Conservative lay people support the ordination of women.”91 In Vancouver, where Friedberg’s article was reprinted in the local Jewish newspaper, Rabbi Howard Siegel from the suburb of Richmond contended that the halakhic challenges to ordination were not insurmountable, and that JTS had decided wisely, according to a worldview and praxis of “tradition and change.” 92 Despite these pro-ordination voices, opposition mounted in the largest two Jewish communities in Canada, Toronto and Montreal. In late 1986, Shuchat of Montreal and Philip Scheim, rabbi of one of Toronto’s largest Conservative synagogues, set up a Canadian branch of the Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism.93 In early 1987, when JTS agreed to accept women into the cantorial programme, a number of Toronto cantors, including Eliezer Kirshblum, the chairman of the movement’s 88 “Demonstration in Front of Seminary: Demand Wrdination of Women,” CJN March 27 1980, 1. 89  “Supports Women Rabbis,” CJN, May 22 1980, 7. After Troster’s ordination, he and Kahn were in Toronto for a number of years before Troster assumed a pulpit in the United States. As a columnist with the CJN, Kahn often bemoaned the lack of egalitarian options in Toronto. 90 Judy Feld Carr, CJN, November 24 1983, 8. 91 Ralph Arnoff, CJN, November 24 1983, 8. 92 Howard Siegel, “’Tradition and Change’ Mark Vote in Favor of Women Rabbis,” Jewish Western Bulletin, December 1 1983, 8. 93 Jeff Rosen, “New Conservative Group Seeks to Prevent ‘Erosion’,” CJN, December 18 1986, 32. — 335 —

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Cantors’ Assembly, Ontario Region, protested the decision.94 When the movement’s Cantors’ Assembly first admitted women in 1991, he and a group of ten other cantors from Toronto and Montreal joined the breakaway Federation of Traditional Cantors.95 In 1992, a number of Montreal cantors left the Conservative organization to join the Orthodox Cantorial Council of America.96 In the 1990s, the Conservative movement began to confront another divisive issue. In 1984, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College admitted gay men and lesbian women to its rabbinical program, and six years later the Reform movement followed suit. Conservative congregations wanted to know the status of gays and lesbians in their movement. In 1991, the RA’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards received a responsum arguing that “homosexuality is to be considered a halakhically-acceptable sexual orientation,” that homosexuals unions should be sanctified, and that no restrictions should be placed on the roles that they could exercise in the synagogue. The chairman of the committee, Joel Roth, who had argued so forcefully for the ordination of women, profoundly disagreed. He was now equally forceful in arguing that there was a clear rejection of homosexual behavior in the traditional sources. Although homosexuals could be counted in the minyan, he concluded, they could not have positions of authority.97 The Committee followed Roth’s decision. In May 1992, however, the Rabbinical Assembly set up a commission to study sexuality, and allowed Conservative rabbis to work in gay congregations. These decisions led to a storm of opposition, especially in Toronto. By then, Wayne Allen, a staunch traditionalist with a history of opposing the liberalizing tendencies in the Conservative movement, had moved to Toronto.98 94 95 96 97

Jeff Rosen, “Conservatives Object to Women Chazzans,” CJN, February 26 1987, 5. Ron Csillag, “Women’s Issue Forces Split in Cantors’ Assembly,” CJN, June 6 1991, 3. Ron Csillag, “Conservative Jews set to gather at UTJ Conference,” CJN, Oct. 21, 1935, 35. Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided: Judaism in Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 157. 98 In 1978, a year after his ordination, he made a strongly-worded presentation to the Cohen commission on the ordination of women, arguing that the laity should not be making these decisions. (Ament, “Union for Traditional Judaism,” 62.) He was one of seven rabbis who, anticipating the final report of the 1979 Commission, gathered on the first night of the RA meeting to mobilize against the Commission (Ibid., 67-68). He was active in the UTCJ from the outset, and after the 1983 decision by JTS wrote a stinging letter to Gerson Cohen, declaring that “The Conservative movement, as epitomized by the Seminary, has abandoned halakhah and now has replaced it with a new, and superior standard for application to Judaism, namely your ‘moral imperative.’” Letter of October 25, 1983, cited in Ibid., 106 — 336 —

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Within weeks of the RA meeting, the Ontario region, with Allen as its incoming head, was discussing whether it should follow the example of the Ontario cantors and break away. Allen resigned from the leadership of the Ontario region, and there was talk of the region as a whole seceding, but this was prevented on procedural grounds.99 The dissenting rabbis could, however, still voice their discontent individually. They were certainly drawn to the Union for Traditional Judaism. The UTJ established its own seminary in 1990, and two years later a new rabbinic organization came into being, under the aegis of the UTJ. Called Keness, it brought together the right-wing Conservative rabbis with their left-wing Orthodox colleagues. Shortly after Keness came into existence, Philip Scheim of Toronto guessed that ten out of the roughly forty Conservative rabbis in Canada would join it. 100 Recognizing a volatile situation, the Chancellor of JTS came to Toronto in December 1992 “to try to avert a split,” and to show appreciation for the “yiddishkeit of Toronto.”101 But the dissent persisted. In late 1993, UTJ held its annual meeting in Toronto, and for good reason. As was reported at the time, “virtually every Conservative shul in Toronto has aligned itself with the UTJ’s back-to-tradition philosophy.” Five Toronto rabbis were recognized for their work at the UTJ, and nine rabbis from Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and London attended.102 These Conservative rabbis continued to watch, with some apprehension, as the RA’s Commission on Human Sexuality met. Would it recommend opening the doors wider for homosexuals? How would it treat the delicate issue of non-marital sex? When the RA executive finally approved the Commission’s “This Is My Beloved, This is My Friend”: A Rabbinic Letter on Intimate Relations in 1995, the tensions eased somewhat. It took a very traditional stance on some issues, encouraging Conservative Jews to live by the laws of family purity, and to have at least three or four children. The document did not break any new ground on the question of gays and lesbians in Conservative synagogues, preferring to defer the issue for further discussion by the RA. In Canada, newspaper interviews with Conservative rabbis showed that some were uncomfort99 Ron Csillag, “Rabbinical Rift is Resolved,” CJN, August 27, 1992. The procedural issue was that a regional group of the RA could not dissolve itself. 100 Ron Csillag, “Rabbis May Leave Group,” CJN Sept 3, 1992, 16. 101 Ron Csillag, “JTS Chancellor Attempts to Mend Rabbinical Rift,” CJN, December 10 1992. 102 Ron Csillag, “UTJ Gathering Draws 300 Leaders,” CJN November 11 1993, 4. — 337 —

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able with many of the issues discussed in the open, and Wayne Allen did not think that the document came down firmly enough against sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Otherwise, Canadian rabbis thought that the RA was right in releasing This is My Beloved. Martin Cohen, rabbi in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, stated that “I feel it’s basically a great step forward. You can’t publish a document this long that is not going to engender some controversy and that cannot be picked at in terms of this or that detail.”103 For about a decade, there seemed to be less tension within the movement, at least in Canada. That relative calm ended in December 2006. After four years of discussions, the RA’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards accepted two responsa regarding the sanctification of samesex marriages and ordination. One of them found that there were few explicit restrictions on homosexual behavior in the Bible, and that most were rabbinic prohibitions and could be reversed out of consideration for human dignity. And, it was argued, just as the assumption is made that heterosexual couples are not violating the laws of niddah, so the assumption should be made that homosexuals are not violating laws regarding sexual relations. As a result, the responsum argued that samesex unions should be celebrated, and that gays and lesbians should have the same status as others in congregations and thus be able to serve in official capacities. The second responsum maintained that there were more biblically-mandated restrictions than recognized in the liberal reading. It did not accept that rabbinic restrictions could be reversed, and held that the first responsum was wrong to think that the principle of human dignity could be invoked. Each of these opinions received thirteen votes, which meant that Conservative rabbis could cite either as a basis for a ruling in the own communities. Within days of the announcement, the traditionalists in Canada’s Conservative rabbinate were seeing red. Once again, the rabbis thought that the Conservative movement was abandoning halakhah for political correctness. Rabbi Steve Saltzman of Toronto’s Adath Israel proclaimed that Canada’s Conservative Jews were so different than their counterparts in the United States that they should start a separate organiza103 Frances Kraft, “Sexuality Report Controversial in Canada: Rabbis Divided over RA Document, “CJN April 20, 1995, 3. Despite the title, the body of the article demonstrates more consensus than controversy. — 338 —

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tion.104 Several months later, when JTS announced that it would accept gays and lesbians to the rabbinical and cantorial programs, talk of separation started up again. Saltzman and others also pointed to a survey carried out by JTS on the issue, which found that 82% of Conservative Canadian cantors and rabbis disapproved of the decision to ordain gay and lesbians.105 In the spring of 2008, words became deeds and Saltzman led his congregation out of the USCJ, and a number of other congregations followed. In October, 2008 four congregations founded the Canadian Council of Conservative Synagogues. Those who joined felt either that the Conservative movement south of the border was too radical for Canada, or that the organization was not delivering enough services to warrant the dues. Some rabbis who shared the conservatism of the “separatists” were still hoping to work within the framework of the movement. Baruch Frydman-Kohl (rabbi of Toronto’s Beth Tzedek) and Scheim both made public pleas for remaining in the United Synagogue.106 Scheim did not doubt that the movement had to change, and was one of the signatories of the 2010 letter issued by Hayom: The Coalition for the Transformation of Conservative Judaism that called for immediate action in conjunction with the United Synagogue, but he still thought it could be done within the framework of the Conservative movement.107 Many of his colleagues disagreed, and their congregations have opted for separation. Seven congregations are now associated with the Canadian Council, and two are, as of the summer of 2011, “pending.”108 All of the congregations are in the Toronto and Montreal areas, with the exception of Congregation Beth Shalom in Ottawa. Some of the traditional Conservative rabbis have also decided to support a Canadian-based seminary. Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum, who is listed as the rosh yeshiva of the Canadian Yeshiva and Rabbinical School (scheduled to open in 2012), has argued that rabbis trained in the United

104 Bill Gladstone, “Few Canadian Conservative Rabbis Would Perform Gay Marriage,” Jerusalem Post July 6 2006. 105 Frances Kraft, “Local Rabbis Decry JTS Move to Admit Gays,” CJN, April 5, 2007, 3. 106 Letter of Philip Scheim, CJN, April 10 2008; Frances Kraft, “Largest Conservative Shul Leaves USCJ” CJN, May 1 2008. 107 Frances Kraft, “Conservative Biennial Focuses on Restructuring,” CJN, December 16 2009; Frances Kraft, “Conservative Rabbis Discuss Movement’s Future,” CJN, April 14, 2011. 108  http://www.canadianccs.ca/content/our-members. Accessed August 9, 2011. — 339 —

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States are unfamiliar with the Canadian scene.109 The school is looking to offer an alternative to right-wing Orthodoxy and left wing Conservative Judaism. It would seem that some of the traditional Conservative rabbis of Toronto area are participating in building a new home, feeling abandoned by their alma mater. Perhaps, as Michael Brown suggests elsewhere in this volume, the rabbinic leadership is out of touch with its own more liberal laity. It is certainly wrong to portray the Conservative congregations of Canada solely in terms of their resistance to liberalization, however. Even in Toronto there have been some signs of change. In 2000, Philip Scheim, once a stalwart of the right wing of Conservative Judaism and active in the Union for Traditional Judaism, expanded the role of women so that they could have aliyot and lead certain parts of the prayer, although they would not be counted in the minyan. Frydman-Kohl had already reached a similar decision.110 In 2011, he issued a responsum in favor of counting women in the creation of a minyan.111 Furthermore, many Conservative congregations outside of Montreal and Toronto did not join in the protests against the RA and the JTS in the 1980s and 1990s, and have aligned themselves with the more liberal trends on the place of women in services. According to a 2008-2009 register of synagogues issued by the Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee, egalitarian services took place in Conservative congregations in Halifax, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Sudbury, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton, and three took place in the Vancouver area.112 But even the “left wing” of Canada’s Conservative congregations seems cautious. There has not been a full time woman rabbi in any major Conservative congregation in Canada. (In contrast, the Reconstructionist Congregation in Toronto and the Renewal Or Shalom of Vancouver

109  http://m.jta.org/news/article/featured/2010/12/09/2742071/a-liberal-halachic-rabbinicalschool-takes-shape-in-toronto. Accessed August 9, 2011. More than two decades earlier, the frustration with the Conservative movement’s policies on women rabbis and cantors led one letter-writer to propose a Canadian Yeshiva where “hopefully rabbis will be trained to respect halacha and tradition….” Peter W. Bruckstein, “Letter to the Editor,” CJN July 23 1987, 11. 110 Frances Kraft, “Women’s Role is Changing at Beth David,” CJN Oct. 12, 2000, 5; Frances Kraft, “Conservative Rabbis Discuss Role of Women in Shul Ritual,” CJN Dec. 5, 2002. 111 http://www.beth-tzedec.org/events_list-detail-5267/getDoc.do?sid=3347. Accessed August 9, 2011. 112 http://www.ojcc.ca/fckedit_userfiles/file/CJC%20synogogue%20directory%205769.pdf. Accessed August 11, 2011. — 340 —

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currently have female rabbis.113)The most dramatic developments have been at the right wing of the spectrum. JTS, the RA, and the United Synagogue have less hold than ever before on Conservative Judaism in Canada. According to the August 2011 website of the United Synagogue, there are only four affiliated Conservative synagogues in the Greater Toronto area, and none are listed for Montreal.114 At Shaar Hashomayim, the last JTS graduate hired was Wilfred Shuchat, who arrived in 1948. More recently, the rabbis have come from Yeshiva University, and the liberal Orthodox yeshiva of Avi Weiss, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. *** Except for the inevitable security checks, crossing the United StatesCanada border is even less onerous now than it was at the time of Herman Abramowitz, and there has been a revolution in communication. Nevertheless, Jewish communities north of the border have not shown the same level of commitment to the “left-wing” of the Conservative movement as communities in the United States have. In some ways, this is surprising, as Canadian social policy, especially regarding gays and lesbians, has been more progressive than that of the United States. Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, and by then eight of the provinces and one of the three territories had already done so. This is a non-issue in Canadian politics, while Americans are deeply divided on it and only a minority of states allow it; most oppose it either by statute or by constitutional amendment. Still, Canadian Jews, especially in Toronto and Montreal, have prided themselves on their history of greater “traditionalism,” which we have argued may have been a result of demographic and social historical factors. Distance is not just a geographical fact, as Abramowitz learned many years ago. The world’s growing smaller, shows that this still seems to be true. Richard Menkis

113 The Reform movement was, however, the pioneer in hiring female rabbis in Canada, and women are currently leading or serving as assistants in several Reform congregations. 114 http://www.uscj.org/Affiliated_Congregat5493.html. Accessed August 10, 2011. — 341 —

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For Further Study Aigen, Ronald S., and Gershon Hundert, eds. Community and the Individual Jew: Essays in Honor of Lavy Becker. Philadelphia: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College Press, 1986. Brown, Michael. “Platform and Prophecy: The Rise and Fall of Stuart E. Rosenberg as Foreshadowed in His Early Toronto Sermons on Leadership.” Jewish History 23: 2 (2009): 195-217. Figler, Bernard. Canadian Jewish Profiles: Rabbi Dr. Herman Abramowitz, Lazarus Cohen, Lyon Cohen. Ottawa: n.p., 1968. Gubbay Helfer, Sharon. “Lavy’s Shul: A Canadian Experiment in Reconstructionism.” PhD dissertation, Concordia University, 2006. Lazar, Monty L. “The Role of Women in Synagogue Ritual in Canadian Conservative Synagogues.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 20: 3 (December, 1978). Levitt, Sheldon, Lyn Milstone, and Sidney T. Tenenbaum. Treasures of a People: The Synagogues of Canada. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1985. Lightstone, Jack N. “Ritual, Reality and Contemporary Society: The Case of a Reconstructionist Synagogue.” In Ritual and Identity: A Comparative Study of the Social meaning of Liturgical Ritual in Synagogues, edited by Jack N. Lightstone and Frederick B. Bird, 65-80. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1995. Schoenfeld, Stuart. “The Jewish Religion in North America: Canadian and American Comparisons.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 3: 2 (Spring 1978): 209-231.

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XXII Yiddish

Introduction Yiddish, a language representing 1,000 years of Ashkenazi civilization, has played a key role in Jewish Canadian life for over a century. Today, aspects of the language are familiar to many Canadians, with terms such as “kvetch” commonly used in mainstream discourse, as well as through the growing popularity of klezmer music, which often features Yiddish vocals. The current state of the language in Canada as well as abroad has been the subject of wide discussion. One hundred years ago, Yiddish was spoken by a vast majority of Canada’s Jewish immigrant population, and it continued to serve as the community’s shared language until the mid-twentieth century. While it has now largely lost its foothold as a vernacular within secular Jewish culture, the language is widely spoken within growing insular ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) communities. However, no matter where and how it is used, Yiddish has undergone enormous changes since its arrival on Canadian soil in the eighteenth century. Yiddish is one of dozens of tongues written in Hebrew characters to emerge among Jewish diaspora populations. With its origins in Germanic lands, it also contains terms in loshn-koydesh (“holy tongue,” in other words Hebrew and Aramaic), elements of Judeo-Romance languages, and, with eastward Jewish migration, Slavic components. In premodern Ashkenazi civilization, Yiddish functioned as the lingua franca of a widely-dispersed minority within a traditional system of internal Jewish bilingualism or diglossia, where loshn-koydesh functioned as the language of prayer and sacred text and Yiddish served as daily spoken language. The Jewish encounter with modernity some two centuries ago triggered a profound and total transformation. Much of western European Jewry was offered emancipation in exchange for cultural assimilation, and Jewish modernizers encouraged the population to abandon Yiddish, which resulted in a rapid decline of Yiddish in favor of other European languages. Meanwhile, the largely unemancipated population of eastern European Jews living under tsarist rule retained Yiddish as their dominant vernacular, despite the efforts of both state officials and Jew— 343 —

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ish modernizers to encourage Jewish linguistic assimilation. In the face of growing antisemitic persecution in the Russian Empire, many Jews participated in burgeoning leftist and nationalist movements, such as Zionism, where Yiddish played a vital role in the dissemination of new ideology. At the same time, the rapidly expanding Hasidic movement, which emerged as a populist mystical counterculture in the eighteenth century, imbued Yiddish with holy functions as a language of sacred oral lore. Despite state suppression in the Yiddish population basin of tsarist Russia, the nineteenth century brought an explosion of secular Yiddish culture, with the emergence of modern Yiddish literature and theatre and popular Yiddish press finding a mass consumer base. This secular culture paralleled the emergence of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) culture that evolved among Sephardi Jews, but on a far greater scale. The period between 1880 and 1920 brought marked changes in the geography and status of Yiddish. Increasing numbers of Jewish nationalists and other cultural activists, rallying for the recognition of Yiddish, spurred the expansion of “high” culture functions for Yiddish: education, literature, and scholarship. The ideological movement known as Yiddishism, formalized in the wake of the 1908 Czernowitz Conference, offered a public and symbolic legitimization of Yiddish as “a national language of the Jewish people.” Meanwhile, the mass emigration of over two million eastern European Jews, prompted by antisemitic persecution and pauperization, brought Yiddish language and culture to new shores, with its centre in New York. Yiddish reached its apex between the World Wars on both sides of the Atlantic, when, for a brief time, Yiddish comprised a complete culture that spanned the ideological and religious spectrum and included political activity, a popular press, book publishing of original works as well as translations of world literature, libraries, theatre, schools, youth groups, scholarly institutions, and university programs. Until the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish remained the dominant lingua franca of a religiously and socially diverse transnational Ashkenazi community, with an estimated eleven million speakers worldwide, or 75% of world Jewry. In the last hundred years, Yiddish has shifted from the shared language of millions of Ashkenazi Jews worldwide to one that has increasingly been branded as “dying.” The Holocaust’s annihilation of roughly half of the world’s Yiddish speakers and its destruction of the traditional Yiddish heartland in Europe has resulted in a profound reorientation of — 344 —

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the map of “Yiddishland” to immigrant centers, in particular America. However, even before the Holocaust, upwardly mobile Ashkenazi Jews worldwide jettisoned Yiddish in favor of other languages, notably English, Polish, and Russian. This steady attrition of supporters of Yiddish language and culture was further exacerbated by the systematic destruction of Yiddish cultural institutions in the USSR during the late Stalin era, and, once the State of Israel was created, the dominance of Modern Hebrew over other Jewish languages there. In tandem with these changes has been a reorientation in the function of Yiddish that scholars Jeffrey Shandler and Cecile Kuznitz have termed “postvernacular” Yiddish, which posits that the use of the language has become increasingly symbolic and tied to a quest for heritage. In the Canadian context, as in other locations where Yiddish remains rooted, anyone who engages with the language today does so deliberately, regardless of religious orientation or background. Yiddish Canada With a significantly different experience of immigration and acculturation than that of the neighboring United States, Canada has demonstrated long-term Yiddish vitality. Without a constitutionally enshrined separation of Church and State, Canada’s Jews were the country’s first sizable non-Christian group of immigrants within a country historically divided along religious and linguistic lines. The relatively late date of the Jewish mass immigration to Canada, combined with the lack of a unified Canadian culture, encouraged the country’s Yiddish-speaking Jews to create and maintain a lasting Yiddish infrastructure. In these features, Canada has much in common with other Yiddish immigrant centers, such as Mexico, Argentina, or Australia. As the primary destination for the 125,000 Jews that settled in Canada during the mass migration between 1905 and 1920, Montreal served as the country’s main Yiddish center, followed by Toronto and Winnipeg. The waves of immigrants that deluged a tiny pre-existing anglicized Jewish community were conspicuous in their language as well as their religious and political loyalties. In Montreal, where the Jewish community was sandwiched between French-Catholic and EnglishProtestant divides, Yiddish functioned as Montreal’s de facto third language. Marginalized by both dominant groups, Montreal’s immigrant — 345 —

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Jews established an enduring religious, social, and cultural infrastructure, with Yiddish as the common language. For its Jewish activists, Montreal formed the site of what David Roskies has termed a “utopian venture,” where ideology was translated into active community-building and cultural preservation, whether the mechanisms were secular Yiddish culture, Orthodox Judaism, or Zionism.1 Yiddish remained a vital force in Canada for decades after the Holocaust, with the community’s high degree of institutional completeness promoting an intergenerational transmission of Jewish ethnic identity. As discussed below, Yiddish day schools allowed the children of immigrants to bridge the worlds of English and Yiddish, and to gain an awareness and appreciation of Yiddish culture. Moreover, despite Canada’s dismal record of Jewish immigration between 1933 and 1948, it ultimately became home to some 35,000 Holocaust survivors, most of them Yiddish-speakers. This group included major figures in secular Yiddish culture that made Canada, and in particular Montreal, a world center of Yiddish, as well as Hasidim, who transplanted to Canada a culture of traditional Jewish diglossia. While it has become increasingly rare to find Yiddish experienced as a complete culture, Canada—and again Montreal in particular—continues to show a high degree of maintenance of Yiddish as a daily spoken language. At the same time, new expressions of Yiddish culture are evolving across the country. In the secular realm in particular, the transformation of Yiddish Canada in the last decades has been profound. Canadian Yiddish Culture Before 1950 Canadian Yiddish institutional life dates to the turn of the twentieth century and forms part of the rapid expansion of modern Yiddish culture in eastern Europe and its immigrant communities. The transnational traffic of newspapers, periodicals, books, plays, ideas, and personalities brought about a rich cross-fertilization of Yiddish culture. Core institutions of Yiddish culture—the popular press, libraries, schools, and theatre—developed simultaneously across the globe, motivated in 1

David G. Roskies,”Yiddish in Montreal: The Utopian Experiment,” in An Everyday Miracle: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, ed. Ira Robinson, Pierre Anctil, and Mervin Butovsky (Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1990), 22-38.

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part by ideological convictions about modern cultural revitalization via Yiddish, and in part by the pragmatic idea that the familiar and widely spoken language was the best way to reach the Yiddish masses. In the matrix of modern Yiddish culture, where literature took centre stage, Canada became home to a sizable group of writers who published in newspapers and periodicals, produced journals, organized literary activity, and interacted with literary figures abroad. With Canadian literature then in its infancy in both English and French, Yiddish writers looked to European and American models. Canadian Yiddish literature came of age relatively late in the 1920s and, like most smaller Yiddish centers, Canada never produced a particular school of writers like New York City’s modernist Di Yunge (Young Ones) or the avant-garde Inzikhistn (Introspectivists). However, the literature does have certain distinguishing features, notably depictions of the local landscape combined with an ongoing attachment to the Old World. Although most Canadian writers remained minor figures on the world stage, they understood themselves as part of a transnational movement of Yiddish letters and participated in wider trends. A partial list of the group, which spans the Jewish spectrum from secular through observant, includes: Montreal writers and poets N. Y. Gotlib, Ida Maza, Shapse Perl, Yudel Rosenberg, Esther Segal, J. I. Segal, M. M. Shaffir, A. Sh. Shkonikov, Sholem Shtern, Yacov Zipper, and Yehuda Zlotnik; Toronto poets Benyomin Katz, Sh. Nepom and Yudika (Yudis Tsik); Winnipeg writers and poets Mordkhe Miller and Louis Rosenberg; Montreal Yiddish critics Hannaniah Meir Caiserman and Israel Rabinovitch; and historian B. G. Sack. Before 1950, the chief site for their publication was the Yiddish press. The Yiddish press, which emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century in both eastern Europe and its immigrant centers, formed the most influential branch of modern Yiddish culture. A proliferation of Yiddish dailies, weeklies and specialty journals was essential to the emergence of Yiddish culture, creating both writers and readers where previously there had been none. These collective publications served both to educate the Yiddish masses and to propagate ideologies. The Yiddish press remained the primary venue for Yiddish letters before World War II, and it—not books—formed the site of new developments in modern Jewish culture in this period. Although books have been revered as cultural objects within modern Yiddish culture, they enjoyed a limited consumer base because they were too expensive for the — 347 —

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majority of the Yiddish-speaking working class. Moreover, the height of Yiddish culture coincided with the onset of the Great Depression. Without the commercial publishing houses of Poland or the state support of the Soviet Union, minor centers such as Canada lacked a viable Yiddish book market. The development of a Canadian Yiddish press was initially impeded by Canada’s relatively small and late mass Jewish immigration and the easy importation of American Yiddish newspapers from nearby New York City. After numerous failed attempts, the first enduring newspapers and journals came into existence in Canada in the years leading up to World War I: Montreal’s Der Keneder Adler/Canadian Jewish Eagle (founded in 1907) appeared as a daily beginning in 1908; Winnipeg’s Dos Yidishe Vort/The Israelite Press (founded in 1910 as Der Kurier, The Courier) and Toronto’s Der Yidisher Zhurnal/The Daily Hebrew Journal (founded in 1912) appeared as weeklies or dailies in the teens. These publications functioned both to acclimatize an immigrant readership to Canadian life and to promote Yiddish culture. Moderate and inclusive, their pages featured virtually every Yiddish writer in the country, from radical anarchists to Orthodox rabbis. At the same time, a variety of specialty publications, including some twenty literary journals, catered to the interests of specific readerships. Education formed a core component of modern Yiddish culture, and the Yiddish immigrants brought with them a commitment to both religious and secular learning. Canadian chapters of left-wing organizations such as the labor Zionist Poale Zion and Socialist Arbeiter Ring placed education high on their agendas. The many Yiddish libraries that sprang up across Canada—whether in remote rural settlements or in major urban centers—served to edify and entertain the new settlers and build a sense of community, whether real or imagined. In Montreal, collections of Yiddish books on left-wing thought and volumes of belleslettres formed the backbone of Montreal’ s Jewish Public Library, officially founded in 1914 as a non-partisan community lending library and cultural centre in the Jewish immigrant quarter. The library served as a hub of local Yiddish cultural activity, and offered a variety of programming that included adult education, public lectures, poetry readings, book launches, and celebrations of milestones in the Yiddish world. Schools emerged as a locus of Yiddish cultural activity, with the absence of non-sectarian schools in Canada spurring new ventures in — 348 —

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Jewish education. With Jewish children funneled into English-speaking institutions of Protestant orientation for their mandatory schooling, Jewish education was initially provided by supplementary schools affiliated with local synagogues or by a transplanted version of the cheder system that centered on traditional Jewish textual learning. On the eve of World War I, Canada was at the forefront of the North American development of modern secular Jewish schools, with Yiddish as the core of the curriculum. In Montreal in particular, the denominational school system helped to encourage the creation of a system of modern secular Jewish schools of a nationalist orientation. These Yiddish schools— known as shuln (sing. shul or shule)—played a central role in the long-term maintenance of Yiddish culture as well as group identification and social cohesion. Meanwhile, the United States was delayed in its development of a comprehensive system of shuln until the interwar period, despite its large Yiddish-speaking population. By 1914, “National Radical Schools” (later renamed Peretz Shuln) had been founded by members of the Poale Zion in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto to propagate leftist Zionist ideology. Soon after, Yiddishe Folkshuln (Jewish People’s Schools) were formed in Montreal and Toronto, distinguished by their increased emphasis on Hebrew and Jewish tradition. In the twenties and thirties, shuln in smaller Jewish centers such as Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver were founded along similar lines. These schools offered Yiddish supplementary education in language, Jewish literature, folklore, and history, and promoted diverse left-wing ideologies, with a variable role attributed to Hebrew. They promoted student commitment to Yiddish language and culture while involving the wider Jewish immigrant community. By the end of the 1920s, shuln in Winnipeg and Montreal were offering day school educations. The Canadian development of Yiddish full-day education parallels developments in Latin America, while the secular Yiddish schools in the United States, despite their rapid expansion, remained a supplementary system complementing the public schools. While Canada was in the forefront of the shul movement, its smaller consumer base and proximity to New York City hindered the development of local theatre in much the same way as it hindered the press: it was easier to import than create. In both Europe and immigrant centers, the Yiddish theatre attained tremendous popularity among the Jewish masses, with a proliferation of professional troupes performing repertoires that ranged from popular melodramas to art theatre. New York, — 349 —

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which emerged as the mecca of North American theatre, supplied both material and talent to Yiddish communities worldwide. Until the 1950s, most of the Yiddish theatre produced across Canada consisted of popular musical dramas with casts largely imported from New York; it was simpler and cheaper to bring in visiting troupes than to cultivate local talent. Toronto’s Standard Theatre, built in the heart of the Jewish immigrant district in 1921 as a Yiddish theatre, offered serious “art” productions as well as melodramas, but did not house a permanent troupe. In Montreal’s home of Yiddish theatre for over half a century, the Monument National—erected in 1894 as a symbol of French Canadian culture—repertoire troupes and stars of the Yiddish stage were imported from abroad. High-caliber local amateur theatre only emerged on the eve of World War II, when Soviet-trained former Habima actress Chayele Grober founded a short-lived Yiddish drama studio in Montreal known as the YTEG (Yidishe Teater Grupe/Yiddish Theatre Group). However, it was not until the late 1950s that Canada would house a permanent Yiddish theatre.

Canadian Yiddish Culture After 1950 Yiddish in Canada since 1950 has been characterized by enormous changes in who speaks the language and why. On the one hand, the use of Yiddish as a communicative language has plummeted; on the other hand, its active use is increasing among ultra-Orthodox pockets of the Jewish community. Yiddish is no longer the vernacular of Canadian Jewry, but it continues to carry important meaning for many of Canada’s Jews and is of interest as well to musicians, scholars, and the general public. There has been rising interest in Yiddish culture, in particular in the areas of performance and translation. Since the period of mass eastern European Jewish immigration, Yiddish has faced widespread attrition. During the first half of the twentieth century, even as new arrivals integrated and adopted English, successive waves of immigrants bolstered the population of Yiddishspeaking Jews, and a well-developed cultural life supported its ongoing role as the collective language of the community. In 1931, 99% of Montreal Jews declared Yiddish Mother Tongue (YMT),2 a percentage 2

The Canadian census defines mother tongue as the language first learned in childhood and still — 350 —

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far higher than the much larger Yiddish centers of Warsaw or New York City.3 However, while a vast majority of the Jewish immigrants who settled in Canada between 1890 and 1950 claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue, they also adopted English. A shift away from Yiddish as the lingua franca of the Canadian Jewish community was underway by the 1920s, when the tightening of immigration laws reduced the arrival of new Yiddish-speaking Jews to a trickle until the late 1940s. At the same time, the second generation was steadily acculturating away from Yiddish. Canadian census statistics of YMT among Canadian Jews reflect these quantitative changes: 4 Year

1921

1931

1941

1951

Total Jews

126,000

155,700

168,000

204,800

YMT

91%

96%

76%

43%

The dominant trend in Canada was slow but steady Anglicization. By 1931—the peak of YMT—a vast majority of Canadian Jews had some level of English, with just 3% of the population declaring themselves unable to speak the language. YMT dropped to 32% in 1961 and 11% in 1981, when Yiddish was declared language of the home for less than 4% of Canada’s 296,000 Jews. The 2006 Canadian census reveals that YMT was at a low of 17,255, and the number of Yiddish speakers was 27,605 out of a total Jewish population of some 315,000. Meanwhile, use of Modern Hebrew—the official language of the State of Israel and a core component of mainstream Jewish education—is growing among Canadians. Moreover, since the 1960s Canada’s Jewish community has also come to include significant numbers of non-Ashkenazi groups with no historic connection to Yiddish, notably the members of a sizable French-speaking Sephardi immigration from North Africa. Yiddish speakers are increasingly found in Hasidic communities, a far cry from a century ago when Yiddish was the lingua franca of Jews understood. 3 On Warsaw, see N. Cohen 2002, 163. According to the estimates of the American Jewish Yearbook of 1913-1914, the total Jewish population of the United States in 1910 was 2,043,762, and the number of Jews declaring Yiddish as mother tongue was 990,587. 4 Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of the Jews in Canada (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1939), 255-257. — 351 —

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from Eastern Europe across the religious spectrum. With the locus of Hasidic life destroyed in the Holocaust, Hasidim today form a transnational ethnic community that favors segregation from mainstream society and continuity with premodern Jewish eastern Europe, most evidently in dress and language. They maintain the traditional diglossic pattern of Yiddish as insider, oral language and loshn-koydesh as language of prayer and study. For many Hasidic communities, Yiddish has shifted from an immigrant language to an ethnic language that functions as a strong group marker as well as a manifestation of positive values and a “one-way barrier” to the secular world. Hasidic children are largely being raised and educated in Yiddish because the language is perceived as encouraging distinctiveness and group solidarity, as well as facilitating communication among Hasidim worldwide. Active resistance to the secular mainstream combined with a comprehensive school system work together to promote Yiddish as a core community language. Aside from the Lubavitchers, who promote outreach to less religiously-observant Jews and thus employ other vernaculars, Yiddish is used among Hasidim to maintain boundaries and a distinctive identity. Hasidim speak Yiddish day-to-day at home, in the community and with their children. This helps to explain the relative gap in Yiddish use between Montreal and Toronto, which does not have a major Hasidic presence:5

5

Canada

Montreal

Toronto

Jewish population

315,000

71,380

141,685

Yiddish speakers, all ages

27,605

13,515

10,345

Yiddish speakers, under 5

1,345

1,180

140

Yiddish speakers, over 75

9,305

3,345

4,390

Statistics Canada, 2006 census. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/index­eng.cfm.

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Despite housing more than double Montreal’s 2006 Jewish population, Toronto has significantly fewer Yiddish speakers than Montreal, in particular among the young. The demographic decline of Yiddish outside of the ultra-Orthodox world combined with the destruction of European Yiddish civilization in the Holocaust transformed the functions of the language in Jewish life. After World War II, Canada gained a position of rising prominence in the Yiddish world, with Montreal in particular becoming a major center of Yiddish life due to its strong institutional base and the high proportion of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors who made the city their home and played an active role in local organizational and cultural life. The city became home to some of world’s most prominent Yiddish cultural figures, including poet Rokhl Korn, poet and essayist Melekh Ravitch (Zekharye Khone Bergner), and novelists Yehuda Elberg and Chava Rosenfarb. However, while activists persevered in their promotion of the language and culture, Yiddish moved from a dominant force in the community to the margins as its ranks were not replenished. The turn of the twenty-first century brought a sharp erosion of Canadian secular Yiddish culture, in particular in Montreal, as several key cultural figures passed away: Yehuda Elberg, activist Sara Rosenfeld, and theatre director Dora Wasserman. On the whole, Ashkenazi Jews have transitioned from active to passive engagement with Yiddish. However, while the mainstream community’s engagement with Yiddish has shifted markedly, major components of the infrastructure to support Yiddish have remained, with new forms coming into play. These deep shifts in secular Yiddish culture transformed Yiddish publishing. As Yiddish declined as the Jewish lingua franca, the circulation of the Yiddish press fell steadily until its newspapers folded one by one: Montreal’s Keneder Adler appeared as a daily until 1963 and then as a weekly until 1988; the publication of Winnipeg’s Dos Yidishe Vort and Toronto’s Der Yidisher Zhurnal became increasingly sporadic into the 1980s. Today, there are no regularly-published Canadian Yiddish periodicals, although the Toronto and Montreal editions of the AngloJewish weekly Canadian Jewish News feature a Yiddish column, and the Hasidic community occasionally publishes community periodicals with Yiddish content. Paradoxically, this attrition coincided with an upsurge in Canadian Yiddish book publication. Despite a dwindling readership, writers increasingly published works with community support and took — 353 —

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on the responsibility of publishing and distributing their works, and as well as finding an audience. Most of Canada’s small Yiddish libraries have vanished, or their collections have been substantially augmented by volumes in other languages, as is the case for Montreal’s Jewish Public Library. Meanwhile, new Yiddish libraries were formed in the face of decreasing Yiddish readership: the Toronto Latner Jewish Library (formerly the Jewish Public Library of Toronto) was founded in 1941 with a core Yiddish collection; and Vancouver’s Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture (formerly the Vancouver Peretz Institute) introduced a Yiddish library in 1953 that became a permanent fixture of the institute in 1977, and remains the last Yiddish library in Western Canada. Today, with few who can read Yiddish seeking out Yiddish books, the bulk of Canada’s surviving Yiddish volumes are found in libraries and archival collections, and many have been shipped to the repository at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Similar shifts have occurred in the realm of education, with each generation further removed from the Yiddish vernacular. As early as the 1920s, shule pedagogues faced an increasingly uphill battle to maintain a Yiddish-centered environment, and sponsored mechanisms such as clubs and student publications to encourage Yiddish among an increasingly English-speaking student body. With the decline of leftist ideologies within the community, the increased prominence of Modern Hebrew, and a shrinking clientele for Yiddish education, many of the shuln closed their doors or merged with other Jewish schools, while others minimized or eliminated entirely instruction in Yiddish. For example, Winnipeg’s Peretz Folk Shule lost its Yiddish component in its amalgamation with the local Talmud Torah in 1983. However, by the same token, Canada houses some of the world’s few non-Orthodox Jewish day schools where Yiddish study is compulsory. In continuity with their roots, both the elementary and high school levels of Montreal’s Jewish People’s and Peretz Schools (JPPS) system offer Yiddish. With few, if any, of the students experiencing Yiddish as a day-to-day language, the instruction is focused more on establishing a connection with Ashkenazi culture than linguistic fluency. Yiddish also features in the curriculum of Toronto’s Bialik Hebrew Day School, founded by labor Zionists in 1961 as an extension of that city’s already-existing Jewish People’s School. Yiddish instruction at both JPPS and Bialik Hebrew Day School emphasizes the symbolic value of the language, while Modern Hebrew is — 354 —

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taught as a communicative language. Yiddish education takes place in other contexts as well. Hasidic education continues to embody the traditional diglossic system of study, and Yiddish is taught formally as part of the regular curriculum in some Hasidic schools, with instruction in Yiddish vocabulary, reading, and writing. Yiddish is primarily construed as a utilitarian language, with limited attention paid to consistency in terms of structure, vocabulary or accent. At the opposite end of the religious spectrum is the secular humanist United Jewish People’s Order of Canada (UJPO), founded in 1945 by a merger of far-left Jewish groups in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, which has evolved into a leftist secular cultural and educational organization and continues to support supplementary schools for children, as well as choirs and reading groups. Yiddish has also entered the Canadian mainstream via the university classroom, with courses in Yiddish language, literature, and culture offered at Canadian universities such as McGill University, the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto, and York University. Students come from a variety of backgrounds, both Jewish and non-Jewish, some searching for family roots and others seeking to engage with a new ethnic tradition. Moreover, the field of Yiddish studies includes a significant number of scholars and academics of Canadian origin. Montreal’s Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre reflects the shift of Yiddish theatre from popular entertainment to a vehicle for promoting both Yiddish heritage and cross-cultural exchange. As North America’s only permanent resident Yiddish theatre, it has produced dozens of plays since its inception in the 1960s: classic Yiddish plays, original adaptations of Yiddish literature, and new translations of works such as Quebec francophone author Michel Tremblay’s play, Les belles-soeurs. The audience for these annual productions spans the Jewish and wider communities, with simultaneous translation into English and French available. With Dora’s daughter Bryna Wasserman at the helm since 1998, the theatre has coordinated local and touring Yiddish productions and promoted the involvement of the younger generation through its youth wing, YAYA (Young Actors for Young Audiences). Yiddish has gained prominence in the contemporary Canadian music scene, in particular through the genre of klezmer music. The worldwide proliferation of klezmer has included dozens of bands across Canada, and it has become a forum for both intergenerational and intercultural — 355 —

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exchange. Toronto’s biennial Ashkenaz Festival, founded in 1995, features dozens of artists performing around Toronto to thousands of spectators. Likewise, KlezKanada, which was founded in 1996 and is annually held at a camp outside of Montreal, hosts hundreds of participants of all ages from across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Israel, and offers concerts, workshops in klezmer instrumental and vocal technique, classes in Yiddish language, art, and dance, and lectures about Yiddish culture. With their emphases on Yiddish as heritage and performance, these events and festivals mark ways of creating new expressions of Yiddish culture for individuals with limited actual facility with the language as a vernacular. Translation from Yiddish is another area of expansion. In the 1970s, a group of young Montreal Anglo-Jewish writers and poets embarked on a venture to translate Canadian Yiddish literature into English, and since that time over a dozen anthologies of Canadian Jewish writing have featured Yiddish poetry and prose. Other Yiddish writers have been involved in the translation of their own work, including Yehuda Elberg, Chava Rosenfarb, Sholem Shtern, and Simcha Simchovitch. Since the 1990s, the Quebec scholar Pierre Anctil has produced annotated translations of Yiddish volumes of belles-lettres, memoirs, and history into French, while Toronto-based translator Vivian Felsen has similarly rendered works of non-fiction into English. These translations have not only made Yiddish texts accessible to non-Yiddish audiences but have also opened up a side of the Canadian Jewish experience previously unknown to most readers. Moreover, Canada marks the site of innovative projects in Yiddish translation, including two recent anthologies of Yiddish women’s writing6 as well as Martin Green’s translation of a memoir called Oyf fremder erd (On Foreign Soil), which gradually introduces glossed and transliterated Yiddish terms into the English text until the text “turns to Yiddish” in English characters.7 Translation, broadly defined, represents an increasingly important locus for the Canadian engagement with Yiddish, as reflected in a 2004 conference and subsequent published volume entitled Traduire le Montreal Yiddish/New Readings of Yiddish Montreal/Taytshn un Obertaytshn Yidish in Montreol. 6

Frieda Forman, et al., eds., Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1994); Rhea Tregebov, ed., Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers (Vancouver: Sumach Press, 2007). 7  Falk Zolf, On Foreign Soil, trans. Martin Green (Winnipeg: Benchmark Publishing, 2000). — 356 —

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Conclusions Yiddish in Canada is far from moribund, as is often claimed, although the roles it plays are very different from what they were a hundred, or even fifty, years ago. Montreal remains a city where Yiddish use is stable and possibly even on the rise, with its large Hasidic population the fastest growing segment of the Canadian Jewish community due to its high birthrate. Moreover, elements of “post-vernacular” Yiddish are increasingly evident in Canada. Across the country, Yiddish clubs and reading circles are bringing together Yiddish speakers of various levels to engage with Yiddish through literature, song, and conversation,8 while Yiddish courses at community institutions such as synagogues or libraries teach elements of the language. Canadians like Shirley Kumove and Michael Wex are producing popular books that present aspects of the language for non-Yiddish speakers. Within the Jewish community, Yiddish is employed in a fragmentary manner to create and emphasize ethnic connections. The dominant function of this activity is not linguistic facility in Yiddish, but a means of expressing identity and values that include an attachment to the language. The beginning of the twenty-first century marks a new threshold for engagement with Yiddish in Canada. Descendants of Yiddish-speaking immigrants commonly announce that their parents only spoke Yiddish “when they didn’t want us to understand,” but continue to nurture a symbolic connection with the language. Translators, scholars, and popular writers continue to interpret the language and its wider cultural context for a non-Yiddish-speaking and -reading public. Performers draw on Yiddish to create new modes of expression and connection. Hasidim continue to actively speak Yiddish as a vernacular. In sum, Yiddish in Canada remains diversified and vibrant, but in ever-changing ways. Rebecca Margolis

8

Five of these groups are listed on the website of Der Bay: The International Anglo-Yiddish Newsletter as members of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs: http://www.derbay.org/ clubs.html.

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For Further Study Abley, Mark. “Ways of Escape: Yiddish.” In his Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, 201-228. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004. Anctil, Pierre, Norman Ravvin, and Sherry Simon, eds. Traduire le Montreal Yiddish/New Readings of Yiddish Montreal. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2007. Belkin, Shimon. Di poyle-tsien bavegung in kanade, 1904-1920/Le Mouvement ouvrier juif au Canada, 1904-1920. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Sillery: Editions du Septentrion, 1999. Corcos, Arlette. Montreal, les Juifs et l’ecole. Sillery: Editions du Septentrion, 1997. Davids, Leo. “Yiddish in Canada: Picture and Prospects.” In The Jews in Canada, edited by Roberg J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, 153-166. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1993. Gonshor, Anna Fishman, and William Shaffir. “Commitment to a Language: Teaching Yiddish in a Hasidic and Secular School.” In Yiddish After the Holocaust, edited by Joseph Sherman, 149-178. Oxford: Boulevard Books, The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, 2004. Fuerstenberg, Adam G. “From Yiddish to ‘Yiddishkeit’: A.M. Klein, J.I. Segal and Montreal’s Yiddish Culture.” Journal of Canadian Studies 19 (1984): 66-81. Fuks, Chaim Leib. Cent ans de littirature yiddish et hibrai que au Canada. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Sillery: Editions du Septendrion, 2005. Gold, Elaine. “Yiddish Words in Canadian English: Spread and change.” In Yiddish After the Holocaust,e dited by Joseph Sherman. Oxford: Boulevard Books, The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, 2004. Harshav, Benjamin. The Meaning of Yiddish. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. Hill, Brad Sabin. “Early Hebrew Printing in Canada.” Studia Rosenthaliana 38: 9 (2005-6): 306-47. Isaacs, Miriam. “Haredi, Haymish and Frim: Yiddish Vitality and Language Choice in a Transnational, Multilingual Community.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 138 (1999): 9-30. Jones, Faith. “A Chimney on the Canadian Prairies: Yiddish-language Libraries in Western Canada, 1900 to the Present.” Judaica — 358 —

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Librarianship 12 (2006): 49-68. Katz, Dovid. Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Kumove, Shirley. Words Like Arrows. New York: Schocken Books, 1985. ------. More Words More Arrows. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. Kuznitz, Cecile Esther. “Yiddish Studies.” The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, edited by M. Goodman, 541-71. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Lansky, Aaron. Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004. Larrue, Jean-Marc. Le theatre Yiddish à Montreal/Yiddish Theatre in Montreal (bilingual edition). Montreal: Editions Jeu, 1996. Levendel, Lewis. A Century of the Canadian Jewish Press: 1880s-1980s. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1989. Margolis, Rebecca. Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. ------. “Negotiating Jewish Canadian Identity: Montreal Yiddish Literary Journals in the Interwar Period.” Shofar 27: 4 (summer 2009): 2448. ------. “Yiddish Translation in Canada: A Litmus Test for Continuity.” TTR (Traduction Terminologie Redaction) 19: 2 (2008): 149-89. Medres, Israel. Between Two World Wars: Canadian Jews in Transition. Translated by Vivian Felsen. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2003. ------. Montrealfoun Nekhtn/Le Montreal juif d’autre fois. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Sillery, QC: Editions du Septentrion, 1997. ------. Le Montreal juif entre les deux guerres/ Tsvishn tsvey velt milkhomes. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Sillery, QC: Editions du Septentrion, 2001. ------. Montreal of Yesterday: Jewish Life in Montreal, 1900-1920. Translated by Vivian Felsen. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2000. Naves, Elaine Kalman. The Writers of Montreal. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1993. Orenstein, Eugene. “Yiddish Culture in Canada Yesterday and Today.” In The Canadian Cultural Mosaic, edited by M. Weinfeld, W. Shaffir, and I. Cotler, 293-314. Rexdale: John Wiley and Sons, 1981. Ravitch, Melekh. “Yiddish Culture in Canada.” In Canadian Jewish — 359 —

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Reference Book and Directory, edited by Eli Gottesman, 75-80. Montreal: Mortimer Ltd, 1963. Robinson, Ira, Pierre Anctil, and Mervin Butovsky, eds. An Everyday Miracle: Yiddish Culture in Montreal. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1990. Sandrow, Nehma. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theatre. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Segal, J. I. Poèmes Yiddish. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Montreal: Editions du Noroit, 1992. Shaffir, William. “Safeguarding a Distinctive Identity: Hasidic Jews in Montreal.” In Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century, edited by Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky, 75-94. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1995. ------. “Separation From the Mainstream in Canada: The Hasidic Community of Tash.” In The Jews in Canada, , edited by Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, 126-41. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1993. Shandler, Jeffrey. Adventures in Yiddish land: Postvernacular Language and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Shtern, Sholem. Tristesse et nostalgie. Memoires litteraires du Montreal yiddish. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Montreal: Editions du Noroit, 2007. Simon, Sherry. “Bifurcations: Yiddish Turned to French.” In his Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City, 90-118. Montreal and Kingston: McGill­Queens University Press, 2006. Usiskin, Roz. “The Winnipeg Jewish Community: Its Radical Elements, 1905-1918.” Manitoba Historical Society (MHS) Transactions series 33: 3 (1976-77). www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/jewishradicals.shtml. Accessed 10 July 2008. Weinreich, Max. History of the Yiddish Language. Translated by Shlomo Noble. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Wex, Michael. Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in all its Moods. New York: Martin’s Press, 2005. ------. Just say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do). New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. Wolofsky, Hirsch. Mayn Lebns Rayze: Une demi-siecle de vie yiddish a Montreal, 1946. Translated by Pierre Anctil. Sillery: Editions du Septentrion, 2000.

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XXIII Scrolls, Scrapbooks, and Solitudes: An Overview of Jewish Canadian Literature

In memory of Professor Moses Wolfe Steinberg, ‫( ז״ל‬1918-2011)

Introduction From their arrival in British North America in the eighteenth century until the present day, Canada’s Jews have been socially, politically, and religiously immured within a dichotomous English/French-Protestant/ Catholic culture to which they were peripheral. Elevated in the 1960s to the status of a foundational national mythology, this dichotomy became entrenched. However, the myth of Canada’s twin parentage—two equal founding cultures and languages, French and English—is a fiction which effectively effaces the indigenous First Nation populations long resident in North America, disregards the French colonists’ intention to establish in North America not a new country but a new France, and ignores other salient historical and political facts. The concepts of French linguistic, religious, and legal rights, having been guaranteed by the British Parliament in 1774, became in the twentieth century the Canadian principles of bilingualism and biculturalism. However, the official recognition of the English/French Canadian bifurcation did not occur until 1969 when—acting on the recommendations of the Final Commission Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism—the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau passed the Official Languages Act, thus making Canada legally a bilingual country. The last sections of the “Bi-Bi Commission”’s final report were published in 1969-1970. Acknowledging the reality of the country’s diverse social composition, the Postscript refers to another paradigm: the “cultural mosaic.” Within two years, this paradigm of cultural multiplicity replaced—both in law and in practice—the original concept of biculturalism. In 1972, Trudeau appointed a Minister of State responsible for the newly created official policy of “multiculturalism.” A federal gov— 361 —

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ernment Department of Multiculturalism was established in 1987, and, on July 12, 1988, the House of Commons passed Bill C-93, “An Act for the preservation and enhancement of multiculturalism in Canada,” otherwise known as the “Canadian Multiculturalism Act.” The passing of this Act represented the recognition—for the first time in Canadian history—of the existence of people who culturally, socially, linguistically, and/or ethnically belonged to neither one of the officially acknowledged constituent cultures of Canada: the English and the French. Two different, but ultimately intertwined, tropes characterizing the cultural duality (and, subsequently, multiplicity) of Canada’s social matrix—“solitudes” and “mosaic”— have become embedded in the Canadian consciousness. The first of these is derived from Two Solitudes (1945), a novel by Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990). In his novel, MacLennan reconstructs Canadian historian Donald Creighton’s model of the power relations between English and French as the titular two solitudes. MacLennan borrowed this powerful metaphor—utilizing it to represent the bicultural interactions between the novel’s French and English families and characters—from a letter by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). In both the letter and the novel, love unites the two solitudes. As reconstructed by the media and popular culture in the 1960s, however, the “two solitudes” became emblematic of an unbridgeable separation and mutual alienation between English- and French-Canadians. The trope of the twin solitudes has become part of the lexicon of Canadian cultural and historical discourse. However, those Canadians who by birth, culture, religion, or ethnicity did and do not fit into either the English or the French solitude were and are marginalized by this constrictive duality. As if in response, Jewish Canadian poet David Tarnow (n.d.) expanded the twinned concept by titling his 1968 volume of poetry A Collection of Solitudes. In a further qualification of the trope, Irving Layton (1912-2006), a popular Jewish Canadian poet and iconoclast, wrote in the foreword to his The Collected Poems (1971) of the French, English, and Jewish neighbourhoods in the Montreal of his childhood as constituting “three solitudes.”1 The genealogy of this new concept of three solitudes has since been elaborated upon by Jewish Canadian com1 Irving Layton, “Foreword, The Collected Poems, 1971,” in Engatements: The Prose of Irving Layton, ed. Seymour Mayne (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972). — 362 —

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mentators to delineate the sense of Jewish marginalization in Canada. It can be traced through historians Gerald Tulchinsky (b. 1933) in “The Third Solitude: A. M. Klein’s Jewish Montreal” (1984), Michael Brown (b. 1938) in “The Third Solitude” (1987), and literary critic Michael Greenstein in Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish-Canadian Literature (1989), a brilliant (and the only) full-length exploration of the Jewish contributions to Canadian literature. Subsequently, the trope underwent a further refinement when Linda Hutcheon (b. 1947) and Marion Richmond (n.d.) titled the anthology they co-edited Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions (1990). The original concept has thus undergone a transformation from a trope of bicultural duality to one of ethnic multiplicity. The second, and even more popularly disseminated, metaphor descriptive of the Canadian cultural ethos—the “mosaic”—was an extant trope used by John Porter (1921-1979) in his sociological study, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (1965). Porter contrasts the Canadian “mosaic” with the American “melting pot” as contrapuntal concepts of social integration. However, his understanding of the hierarchies of power, ethnicity, and culture inherent within Canadian society is indicated by the vertical spatial orientation of the mosaic. It is not improbable that the commissioners of the Bi-Bi Report were acknowledging Porter when they used the phrase “cultural mosaic” in the postscript to their Book VI in 1970. The combined tropes of the two (or manifold) solitudes and the mosaic have become inextricable from the concept/metaphor of multiculturalism. Thus the contemporary Canadian ethos—whether viewed from a sociological, historical, cultural, or literary perspective—may be characterized as a multicultural mosaic of multiple solitudes. However, the mosaic itself is a self-contradictory metaphor. While functioning as a trope of inclusive plurality, a mosaic simultaneously depicts through each of its constituent fragments an exclusive singularity. The overall pattern of perceived wholeness proves illusory, cleaved by the mosaic’s individual, bordered segments. Although the mosaic may invite readings and interpretations which suggest uniformity, consensus, and stasis, its tessellated nature produces an ongoing kinesis of recontextualization, re-reading, and reinterpretation. Within this metaphoric frame of reference, Jewish Canadian literature—a marginal solitude neither English/ Protestant nor French/Catholic—resists through both its content and — 363 —

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its literary forms an exclusive monolithic construction of the canon of Canadian Literature. Precursors: Isidore Gordon Ascher, Hyman Edelstein, and Ted Allan Just as there has been a Jewish presence in Canada from the beginning of the country’s colonial period, so too has there been a Jewish literary presence from the beginning of the country’s nascent literature. In the introductory essay to his Selections from Canadian Poets; with Occasional Critical and Biographical Notes, and an Introductory Essay on Canadian Poetry (1864; the first Canadian poetry anthology), Reverend Edward Hartley Dewart (1828-1903) intoned, three years before Confederation, that “[t]he literature of the world is the foot-prints of human progress.”2 The concept of an embryonic “Canadian Literature,” as it was then being formulated, was the object of Dewart’s book: “A national literature is an essential element in the formation of national character.”3 As the first anthologizer of the literature of a nation which had not yet officially confederated, he was instrumental in promoting a personal reading of what constituted the “Canadian” character. Thus both his purposes and his selections were overtly literary but covertly political. His was a monocultural, not a multicultural, point of view. Nevertheless, it was Reverend Dewart who included in his anthology selections from the first Jewish poet published in British North America: Isidore Gordon Ascher (1837-1933).4 Ascher, born in Glasgow, Scotland, had been brought to Montreal when he was a young boy by his father, G. T. Ascher, a businessman. He grew up in an observant family. In 1862, he became “one of the earliest Jewish law graduates of McGill [University].”5 He was one of the approximately thirty bachelor co-founders of the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevo2 Edward Hartley Dewart, Selections from Canadian Poets; With Occasional Critical and Biographical Notes, and an Introductory Essay on Canadian Poetry (Montreal: John Lovell, 1864), ix. 3 Ibid. 4 The first published Jewish writer in British North America was Adolphus Mordecai Hart (18131879)—son of Ezekiel Hart and grandson of Aaron Hart of Trois Rivières—who published a work of fiction, Life in the Far West; or, The Comical, Quizzical, and Tragical Adventures of a Hoosier, circa 1860. Hart’s work is enumerated in A Checklist of Canadian Literature and Background Materials 1628-1960, compiled by Reginald Eyre Watters. 5 Michael Brown, Jew or Juif?: Jews, French Canadians, and Anglo-Canadians, 1759-1914 (Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1986), 50. — 364 —

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lent Society (renamed the Baron de Hirsch Institute in 1871), created in Montreal in July 1863. In that year, he published in Montreal and New York his first volume of poetry, Voices from the Hearth: A Collection of Verses. A lawyer by profession, Ascher “was widely accepted as a Canadian literary figure.”6 Nevertheless, “[l]ike so many other Canadians of the day, Ascher looked upon acclaim in Canada as less significant than acclaim in the mother country. In 1864 he returned to England, where he lived until his nineties as a minor but not unsuccessful litterateur.”7 Although he strongly identified himself with the Montreal Jewish community and wrote about Jewish causes, neither his lyric poetry nor his fiction—An Odd Man’s Story (1889), Doom of Destiny (1895), A Social Upheaval (1898)—emphasizes Jewish concerns or portrays Jewish characters. Five of Ascher’s poems from Voices from the Hearth were included by Dewart in his Selections from Canadian Poets in 1864. To Ascher’s first selected poem, “Short Days,” Dewart appended a footnote in which he commented about the work of the “young Jewish lawyer, of Montreal”: Though not without occasional defects, which seem more the result of carelessness than of inability to do better, this volume reveals a subtle and delicate imagination, earnest and tender aspirations after the beautiful and the true, and, in several pieces, a rich musical harmony, which is full of promise of higher achievement in future, should Mr. Ascher continue to work the vein he has so auspiciously opened.8 Dewart’s closing trope was doubtlessly meant metaphorically, its nuances geological or literary, not anatomical or venous. Another of Ascher’s poems, “Indian Summer,” was also included in the first major post-Confederation Canadian poetry anthology, Songs of the Great Dominion: Voices from the Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada, selected and edited by William Douw Lighthall in 1889. Hyman Edelstein (1889-1957), the second precursor, “is the most 6

Sheldon J. and Judith C. Godfrey, Search Out the Land (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 350. 7 Brown, Jew or Juif?, 50. 8 Dewart, Selections from Canadian Poets, 27. — 365 —

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important of the Canadian Jewish authors of his own time,” according to David Rome.9 Edelstein was born in Dublin, Ireland, and received a classical education, graduating from Dublin University. He immigrated to Canada and settled in Montreal in 1912. Watters’s Checklist notes that Edelstein’s first publication was From Judean Vineyards: Poems, published in Montreal in 1914. This was followed in 1916 by Canadian Lyrics and Other Poems, several other books of verse, the last of which was Spirit of Israel and Other Poems (1950), and a novel, The Higher Loyalty, published under the pseudonym Don Synge in 1946. Edelstein’s poetry and prose fiction very often address specifically Jewish themes; however, although his works were generally well received critically when published, the quality of most of his writing is such that he has been overlooked by most anthologists and literary historians. His importance to Jewish Canadian letters is mainly in his role as editor of several seminal Jewish publications. In this capacity, he was able to voice his passionate Zionist sentiments, his strong Jewish identity, and his devotion to both Canada and Britain, and to comment on Jewish issues both local and international. Edelstein edited the Montreal-based Canadian Jewish Chronicle (successor to the Canadian Jewish Times) from about 1914 until 1917, at which time he took over as publisher and editor of The Jewish Weekly, holding both positions until 1918. He published and edited another Montreal-based journal, The Jewish Herald from 1926 until 1927. In 1928, he became the co-editor of the first English-Yiddish weekly in Canada, the People’s Journal. In his many capacities, Edelstein was a pioneer of Jewish Canadian, English-language poetry, and journalism. Edelstein’s pseudonymously published novel, The Higher Loyalty (1946), is the first post-Shoah Jewish Canadian work of prose fiction. The novel tells a predominantly Jewish story set within the specific time frame of 1938 to 1945, and it is narrated through the specific historical context and consciousness of the Shoah. It portrays the interactions among several generations of Jewish and Christian characters in their Montreal environments. Nonetheless, its convoluted plot relies too heavily on implausible coincidences, mistaken and multiple identities, and missed, misconstrued, and almost meetings. It awkwardly devel9

David Rome, “Jews in Canadian Literature,” in Jews in Canadian Literature: A Bibliography, rev. ed., vol. 1, comp. David Rome (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress and Jewish Public Library, 1964), v. — 366 —

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ops the novel’s thematic focus on Jewish-Christian relations, intermarriage, and antisemitism. The plot thus defies credibility. Structured as an amalgam of non-metaphysical detective story cum quest—the unsuccessful search by Vladimir Rudin, a German Jewish journalist who flees Germany in 1938, for his lost and last surviving family member informs the ultimately interconnected mysteries at the novel’s core—the novel propounds a very earnest, sincere, utopic, liberal humanist message about the relation between Jew and Christian in post-Shoah Canada and their aspiring to the spiritual ideal of a universal humanity. Representation—both of the catastrophic reality of the historical events framing the story and of the tragic consequences of those events in the lives of the various characters—is subservient to the conventions of romantic melodrama and Victorian sentimentality. Though a badly flawed novel, The Higher Loyalty nonetheless foregrounds many issues of Jewish identity, tradition, assimilation, marginalization, and alienation in a post-Shoah world which find their thematic reiteration in much of the Jewish Canadian literature which followed. Though understandably ignored by Canadian literary historians and critics, The Higher Loyalty is significant nevertheless for its position as the first Jewish Canadian novel to thematize Jewish concerns and to construct Jewish characters. The third precursor, Montreal-born Allan Herman (1916-1995), who published pseudonymously as Ted Allan (and, for a 1957 science-fiction novel, Quest for Pajaro, as Edward Maxwell), had a long and varied career as a writer of short stories, novels, plays (for stage, radio, and television), Hollywood screenplays, non-fiction prose, biography, and a children’s book; a journalist; a stage and television actor; and a storyteller for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He began writing at age eighteen as the Montreal correspondent for the Toronto Daily Worker, a pro-Communist publication. In April 1937, he published his first short story, “Cadieux Street Childhood”—about his boyhood in Montreal—in another leftwing Canadian journal, the short-lived New Frontier (Toronto). Soon after, he served, with other Canadian volunteers, in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigade on the side of the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). There he acted as political commissar in the world’s first mobile ambulance corps and blood-transfusion unit, founded by Canadian doctor Norman Bethune (1890-1939). — 367 —

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Allan’s wartime experiences in Spain resulted in two books. His first novel, This Time a Better Earth, was published in 1939. Written in a style derivative of Ernest Hemingway’s (1898-1961), This Time a Better Earth is perhaps the first significant Canadian novel of social protest. The protagonist, Bob Curtis, a twenty-one-year-old Canadian volunteer in the International Brigade, falls in love with a German press photographer against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Unfortunately, the clichéd, derivative language and storyline detract from the novel’s impact. The second publication, Allan’s most commercially successful and popular book—over a million copies in print in nineteen languages—is the biography of Bethune he co-wrote with Sydney Gordon, The Scalpel, the Sword: The Story of Doctor Norman Bethune (1952; revised 1971). Allan lived for some thirty years in England before returning to North America to take up residence in Toronto (summers) and Los Angeles (winters). In 1984, after having had several of his scripts and plays successfully produced—including Double Image, co-written with Roger MacDougall in 1957—he published a second novel, Love Is a Long Shot (which won the 1985 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour). However, the Jewish fiction for which Allan is most noted is an autobiographical short story he published in the September-October 1949 issue of the Canadian Jewish Congress’s Congress Bulletin, “Zaide and Me: A Short Story of Montreal”—which, retitled “Lies My Father Told Me,” became a Canadian classic. “Zaide and Me” is a retrospectively told story in which an adult Jewish narrator reconstructs himself as a six-year-old child and remembers his beloved Zaide (Grandfather). To the boy, Eleshka, Zaide appears to be a larger-than-life Biblical figure. Eleshka identifies with his Zaide, and his “happiest times” are spent riding with him on a decrepit cart drawn by an aged horse, Ferdeleh (“Little Horse,” in Yiddish), as they traverse the muddy lanes of Montreal on Sunday mornings buying used rags, clothes, and bottles from the public (Allan, “Zaide,” 10). The Zaide has, in his old age, become a very pious man, a role model for his grandson, whose love for him is unconditional, and the preserver of Jewish tradition across the generations. However, among the members of the extended family, there is intergenerational discord. To the Zaide’s tradition, vitality, and presence the narrator counterpoises his father’s assimilation, cynicism, and absence. The estrangement between son and father, mirroring that between Jew— 368 —

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ish tradition and secular assimilation, is a central theme in the story—a motif which recurs in subsequent volumes of modern Jewish Canadian literature. The divisions apparent in the family parallel those apparent in Montreal society itself. During one of their Sunday promenades, grandfather and grandson are stoned by a group of young boys and girls, who shout antisemitic epithets at them in French. This direct encounter with blatant antisemitism has several consequences: the sudden self-awareness of Jewish difference; the experience of Jewish vulnerability—physical attack is answered with powerful but ineffectual language; and the loss of access to the “the mountain in the centre of the city” (Allan, “Zaide,” 10). This episode is followed by another, much more traumatic loss: the deaths of Zaide and Ferdeleh. However, when told of their demise by his father, the narrator cries—not for his Zaide or Ferdeleh (who he knows would never abandon him), but for his father, who he believes has once again told “such a horrible lie” (Allan, “Zaide,” 21). The retrospective frame of the story allows the adult narrator to re-imagine and re-read his experiences and to determine the relation of his father’s lies to the truth. Jewish Canada’s Literary Patriarch: A. M. Klein Abraham Moses Klein was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Ukrainian town of Ratno in 1909. The following year, his family moved to Montreal, the city where Klein lived for the rest of his life. He received a traditional Jewish education in Hebrew language, Torah, and Talmud, and, in 1926 enrolled at McGill University. Throughout his life, he was committed to both Zionism and social reform. Graduating in 1930, Klein attended law school at the Université de Montréal, receiving his degree in 1933. Dissatisfied with the practice of law, Klein nevertheless continued to work as a lawyer, augmenting his income by editing The Canadian Jewish Chronicle (from 1938 to 1955) and by becoming a speech writer and public relations officer for Samuel Bronfman, then the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. In 1949 he ran as a candidate for the C.C.F. (Canadian Commonwealth Federation, precursor of the New Democratic Party) in the federal election, but failed to win the seat he contested. While attending McGill University, Klein began to publish his writing in various periodicals. In 1936, two of his poems were published — 369 —

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in New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors, a benchmark anthology of early Canadian modernist poetry. That same year, Macmillan published William Edwin Collin’s The White Savannahs, an influential book-length study of English-Canadian literature, written from its author’s modernist critical perspective. Klein, one of the four “Montreal Poets” whose work Collin examined, was received very favourably. Klein’s first collection of poetry, Hath Not a Jew , was published in 1940, followed by Poems and The Hitleriad in 1944, and The Rocking Chair and Other Poems, which won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, in 1948. His only novel, The Second Scroll, was published in 1951, two years after Klein had been sent on a fact-finding trip to Israel and to European and North African Displaced Person camps by the Canadian Jewish Congress. His mental health began to deteriorate, and, after several attempts at suicide in 1954, he gave up the practice of law, resigned his editorship of The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, and ceased writing. Becoming ever more reclusive, Klein lapsed into a silence which lasted until his death in 1972. The Second Scroll (hereafter TSS) is a key work of post-Shoah Jewish Canadian literature , a text which enacts an “almost meeting” between the nameless narrator and his Uncle Melech Davidson, between Shoah and survival, between diaspora and Israel, between destiny and history, between galuth (dispersion) and geula (redemption), between periphery and centre, between poetry and prose, and between the conventions of realism and literary artifice. The novel’s nameless narrator retrospectively reconstructs his quest for his elusive and mythical Uncle Melech Davidson (Melech = King; thus King David’s son, or the Messiah).10 The novel begins with a double absence: those of the narrator’s father (now dead) and Uncle Melech (whose name was taboo, unmentionable in the narrator’s father’s presence). As the past is recalled, inscribed, and commented upon, the narrator remembers the sudden arrival on Simchat Torah—the festival of the rejoicing of the Torah—of the first of the several translated letters transcribed in the novel (Klein, TSS, 20). Uncle Melech writes from his home town in 1917 about the murderous pogrom which he has just survived and which, his older sister’s family in Montreal later learns, has caused him to lose his faith in God. The transformation of Uncle Melech from a legendary Talmudic prodigy to 10 M. W. Steinberg, “Introduction,” in The Second Scroll, A. M. Klein (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), xii. — 370 —

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a dialectical Bolshevik and “international authority upon the decadence of European literature” (Klein, TSS 26), is interpreted by the narrator’s father as an act of “‘Hegel-baigal[’]” apostasy he can neither forgive nor allow his family to speak of (Klein, TSS, 24). However, in the narrator’s imagination, Uncle Melech is re-visioned: “I made myself a new image of the uncle who together with angels had stood invisible and auspicious over my Hebrew lessons. It was a strange metamorphosis, this from Talmudic scholar, syllogizing the past, into Moscow student, conspiring a world’s future” (Klein, TSS, 26-26). The first chapter, “Genesis,” ends with Uncle Melech caught in Kamenets by the German invasion of Poland in 1939, trapped with European Jewry in the flames of the Shoah, “enveloped by the great smoke that for the next six years kept billowing over the Jews of Europe—their cloud by day, their pillar of fire by night” (Klein, TSS 26). In “Exodus,” the adult narrator recalls his publisher’s directing him in 1949 to gather and translate the Hebrew poetry of the newly-established state of Israel, his preparing for his trans-Atlantic pilgrimage, and his receiving, belatedly, a misdirected letter postmarked Bari, Italia, addressed to his (now deceased) parents from Uncle Melech. The contents of this letter show that, having abandoned “those two-faced masters of thesis and antithesis,” after the signing of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact had condemned Polish Jewry to death, Uncle Melech renounced Communism and became again an observant Jew. The lone survivor of the massacre of the Jews of Kamenets, Uncle Melech crawled from the bloody pit of their mass grave and survived the war. As the archetypal, messianic Survivor/Witness of the Shoah, Uncle Melech carries an unbearable burden of guilt and feels a visceral obligation to the dead. As he hopefully awaits his turn to sail to Israel from the Italian port where he composes the letter his nephew now reads, he interprets and reinterprets his survival, introspectively and Talmudically seeking to read and re-read the significance of his life’s dialectic of cyclical text and inexhaustible marginal commentary. However, instead of sailing to Haifa, Uncle Melech makes a series of detours through which he retraces and recapitulates the wanderings of Diaspora Jewry since its exile two millennia before. In “Leviticus,” while flying over the Atlantic, “read[ing] and reread[ing his] uncle’s letter,” the narrator decides to resume his quest for his wandering relative (Klein, TSS, 39). Following the traces, signs, and evidence of his Uncle’s pres— 371 —

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ence in post-Shoah Europe and North Africa, the narrator becomes a detective trying to solve and resolve a mystery the (re)solution to which, his unseen and unknown Uncle, always just eludes him. In “Leviticus,” the narrator flies from Bari to Rome where Monsignor Piersanti at the Vatican Library had attempted to convert Uncle Melech to Roman Catholicism and now hands the narrator another avuncular letter (reproduced in “Gloss Gimel”)—and then flies to Casablanca in “Numbers.” In the odorous mellah—the Casablancan Jewish ghetto— whose “alleys are its cloaca,” the narrator finds everywhere the excremental squalor of a marginalized minority living on the impoverished periphery of French colonialism and Arab antipathy (Klein, TSS, 65). Uncle Melech, having caused “[‘]an affair of scandal[’]” in the organization for which he works by expressing his righteously indignant protest against the intolerable conditions of the mellah, has been shipped to Israel, via Marseilles (Klein, TSS 69). The only evidence of his uncle’s having been there is the manuscript of a one-act play of protest the narrator is given at one of the training schools in the mellah, a text reproduced as “Gloss Dalid.” In “Deuteronomy,” the narrator flies to Israel, and there his doubled quest continues as he crisscrosses the land. However, “to look for Uncle Melech was to suspect him everywhere and to find him nowhere” (Klein, TSS, 75). Eventually, the narrator begins to feel that his role as pursuer has been reversed and that he is now being pursued by his phantom uncle. He is likewise unsuccessful in finding the characteristic poetic voice of the new Israel. In a reiteration of the Russian pogrom at the novel’s outset, Uncle Melech is murdered by Arab pogromists and his body, doused with gasoline, is burnt so badly that his “features were unrecognizable” (Klein, TSS, 91). All Israel attends the funeral. This fifth and final chapter (followed by the five glosses) ends with the image of another conflagration. However, this symbolic fire has now become regenerative, transmuted from its significance elsewhere in the novel as destruction—the Shoah, Uncle Melech’s incineration. “I turned for the last time from the city of Safed, holy city on whose hills once were kindled, as now again, the beacons announcing new moons, festivals, and set times” (Klein, TSS, 93). The new moons, festivals, and set times of Jewish life and religious practice, heralded by the ancient lunar revolutions, are once again marked by fire in a reborn Israel. — 372 —

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The narrator’s quest for Uncle Melech becomes, ultimately, a search for Self. As the relation between the seeker and the sought becomes reversed, it is clear that the nameless and the named, the protagonist and the deuteragonist, are equivalent—doubles, benign dybbuks. The quest for Jewish identity in a post-Shoah world is inextricably intertwined with language, the narrator’s second quest. However, the language of identity the narrator seeks is not to be found in the Hebrew of the poets and littérateurs. In the demotic speech of the common citizens, the narrator hears both the “discovered poetry” he has sought and “its one obsessive theme”: “the miraculous” (Klein, TSS, 85). Indeed, the “key image” the narrator finds, the “fixed epithet” with which to “designate Israel’s poetry, the poetry of recaptured time,” is “the miracle,” where Israel and Diaspora, unity and diversity, the one and the many, illusion and reality, centre and margin (almost) meet (Klein, TSS, 87). Hebrew, miraculously reborn as a national language, unites the polyglot, multicultural Jews who have come from the four corners of the Diaspora to the newly-(re)founded state of Israel. The trope of the second, or doubled, scroll is both a structuring metaphor in the novel and a metaphor for structure. Onto the first Hebrew scroll, the holy Sefer Torah (The Pentateuch), is superimposed a second, English, scroll, the secular sacred text of the Diaspora and a commentary on the original. Therefore, within the formal structure of the novel, the division between text and commentary—and between first and second scrolls—is blurred, indeterminate, multiply exposed. The Second Scroll, like its progenitor, is plural, paradoxical—revealing through its multiple re-readings a mosaic of immediate and deferred meanings. Arguing for The Second Scroll’s being “an origin, a new covenant, for Jewish-Canadian literature,” Michael Greenstein comments: “Klein’s palimpsest results in blurred and double vision, returning to a religious past even as it progresses toward a secular future—a pattern followed by later Jewish-Canadian writers” (34). However, between the “religious past” and the “secular future” is the present miracle, reiterated—here and now, and not a past event memorialized and textualized in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible).

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The 1940s and 1950s: Henry Kreisel, Irving Layton, Norman Levine, Eli Mandel, Miriam Waddington, Adele Wiseman, Leonard Cohen Within the genealogy of Jewish Canadian writing, Klein stands out as a literary patriarch. Several Jewish Canadian poets, short fiction writers, novelists, critics, and literary anthologizers who began their writing careers in the 1940s and 1950s acknowledged, either explicitly or implicitly, Klein’s influence. Henry Kreisel (1922-1991) was one of them. In July 1938, Kreisel arrived in England, having fled Vienna after the Anschluss. Working at a Leeds clothing factory, he started to learn to speak and write English. In mid-May 1940, he, along with the other German and Austrian Jewish refugees who had sought asylum in England from Nazi German oppression, was reclassified as an “Enemy Alien” and interned. In July 1940, Kreisel, his father, and fifteen hundred other internees, predominantly Jewish, were shipped to Canada. Kreisel wound up in Camp “B” near Fredericton, New Brunswick. In June, 1941, he was moved to Camp “I” on Ile aux Noix (Camp Lennox), Quebec. In the autumn of 1941, after eighteen months of incarceration, Kreisel was among the first group of internees to be released. He went to Toronto to meet the family that had sponsored his entry into Canada and started attending Harbord Collegiate in November, 1941. He matriculated in June 1942, and began his studies at the University of Toronto. After receiving his B.A. (1946) and M.A. (1947) from that university, he began a distinguished academic career at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. He received his PhD from the University of London in 1954. In Kreisel’s short story “The Almost Meeting,” the Edmonton-based writer Alexander Budak seeks, unsuccessfully, to meet the Torontobased Jewish Canadian author David Lasker, “one of the greatest writers the country had produced, a great poet as well as a great novelist, who had created an astonishing body of work, but had then suddenly fallen silent” (Kreisel, “Almost,” 11). A letter from Lasker to Budak about the latter’s first novel advises: “[‘]An almost meeting is often more important than the meeting. The quest is all’” (Kreisel, “Almost,” 17). Later, Lasker and Budak almost meet on two separate occasions. Although Lasker is not A. M. Klein, he presents a Klein-like absence in the unfolding story of Budak’s quest for his elusive father-figure/oppelgänger. In Another Country: Writings by and about Henry Kreisel, Kreisel writes about both his internment and the influences of Joseph Conrad and A. — 374 —

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M. Klein on his development as a writer. Kreisel’s ironic transformation from “Enemy Alien” to Jewish Canadian writer—his personal experiences of perception and ignorance, irony and paradox, exile and alienation, language and identity, Judaism and antisemitism—form the thematic and symbolic matrix of his The Rich Man (1948), the first literarily significant post-Shoah Jewish Canadian novel to address Jewish concerns and one of the first modern Canadian novels to represent immigrant experience. The novel’s protagonist, Jacob Grossman, the ironically described rich man of the book’s title, is a poor Jewish immigrant from Galicia who has worked as a presser for Perfect Clothes Ltd. in Toronto for thirty-three years. In 1935, the year in which the novel is set, he decides to visit his aged mother and three sisters, now living in Vienna, and to present himself as a rich man, a self-created fantasy from which he does not awaken until it is far too late. The novel’s manifold ironies are enacted within the shadow of an imminent Shoah, that constant, overwhelming, foreboding sub-text which forms the subterranean, subconscious nightmare from which there is no waking and through which the events of the novel must be (re-)read. Overwhelmed by historical forces, abandoned by those who sit laughing on the window-sills of the world while pretending to artistic truth and humanity, Grossman—marginal immigrant, pseudo-rich man, Jew—is overpowered by a terrifying nightmare which both highlights his impotence to effect any meaningful intervention and prefigures (through indirection) the catastrophic events which will swallow his Viennese family, along with most of European Jewry. Kreisel further thematized this sense of alienation in his other novel, The Betrayal (1964). Irving Layton (1912-2006), born Yisroel Pinchas Lazarovitch, emigrated from Romania to Montreal with his parents at the age of one. Over a fifty-year period, beginning with Here and Now (1945), Layton published prolifically, winning the Governor-General’s literary award for poetry in 1959 for A Red Carpet for the Sun, and creating a persona as a poet/iconoclast that made him both popular and controversial. As Mervin Butovsky insightfully records of Layton: “His life-long act of writing has produced no single poem more impressive than his assertive, hectoring self, a mock-heroic figure who invented just the kind of person he had to become if he was to deliver himself from the obscurity

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and ineffectuality that had engulfed others around him.”11 Believing, as did A. M. Klein, that the poet had a public prophetic function, Layton railed against the life he found in Canadian society in the 1940s and 1950s. His voice could be heard on CBC TV’s Fighting Words and read in his many polemic prefaces to his books of poetry, collected in Engagements: The Prose of Irving Layton. Ottawa-born Norman Levine (1923-2005) began his writing career as a poet, publishing Myssium in 1948, and living for several decades in St. Ives, Cornwall, England. However, he is better known as a fiction writer, publishing collections of short stories such as One Way Ticket (1961), an uncomplimentary book of non-fiction prose titled Canada Made Me (1958), and two novels, The Angled Road (1952) and From a Seaside Town (1970). Levine’s work often portrays loneliness, exile, and estrangement. For example, in the story “By a Frozen River,” the unnamed narrator has returned to Canada from England in 1965 for a few months in order to write and to experience again a winter with snow. He travels by train to a remote, unnamed northern Ontario town by a frozen river where he rents a room in the Adanac Hotel. Although he identifies himself as a Jew, the narrator has long been estranged from Jewish practice. However, his encounter with Mr. Bischofswerder, a furrier who has a supply of “‘Jewish food,’” inaugurates a period of seven Shabbats during which the narrator attends the small shul (synagogue) on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings to pray with Mr. Bischofswerder and then joins the furrier and his wife for a large Shabbat meal (Levine, “By a Frozen River,” 104). The Bischofswerders are the last Jewish family in the town; the narrator is the first Jewish visitor to attend the deserted shul with Mr. Bischofswerder in three years. The encounter with this remote Jewish remnant brings back the memories and smells of the narrator’s Jewish childhood. Satisfied that he has all the reminders of a Canadian winter that he needs, the narrator leaves before the frozen river moves in the spring break-up. As he is transported away in a light plane, the narrator watches the small town get “lost in a wilderness of snow, trees, and frozen lakes” (Levine, “By a Frozen River,” 110). Estranged from both a 11 Mervin Butovsky, “Irving Layton: The Invention of the Self,” in Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century, ed. Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1995), 166. — 376 —

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nostalgic re-reading and reconstruction of his Canadian childhood and his Jewish identity, Levine’s first-person narrator (re-)experiences the winter wilderness of exile and discontent wherever he disembarks in the diaspora. Elias Wolf Mandel (1922-1992), born in Estevan, Saskatchewan, had a distinguished career as a Governor General’s Award-winning poet (in 1967, for An Idiot Joy), editor, anthologizer, literary critic, and professor of English and humanities at York University, Toronto. First published in Trio: First Poems by Gael Turnbull, Phyllis Webb, and Eli Mandel (1954), in 1981, Mandel published Life Sentence, a collection of poems and journal entries made during his travels to India, Peru, and Ecuador. Purposely blurring the genre boundaries between poetry, prose, documentary, and autobiography, Mandel constructs through the self-reflective and self-reflexive processes of travelling and journal writing both countries and self. As a Wandering Jew in the post-Shoah Diaspora, Mandel perceives the monstrous (especially in India) as the reflection or reiteration of the universal prototype for monstrosity—Auschwitz. The literary form in which the book is cast—a journal—accomplishes several things: it focuses the narrative on the author (and his language) as the mediator between fiction, place, and reality; it functions as both product and process of its creation; its necessary incompleteness resists closure or conclusion; its self-reflexive constructedness invites re-reading and recontextualization; and its fragmented nature resists unitary, finite interpretations of its meaning. Thus the literary form of the book itself becomes a trope for the type of fragmented articulation Mandel suggests may be the only possible authentic mode of expression in the post-Shoah universe—especially for the marginalized Jewish artist. Although Life Sentence is not strictly speaking a work of pure fiction, and although it may be marginal to Mandel’s own oeuvre, it is a Jewish Canadian text which, by blurring margins and boundaries, poses provocative questions it does not (perhaps cannot) answer. Miriam Waddingon (née Dworkin; 1917-2004), a Winnipeg-born poet, social worker, literary critic, anthologizer, and educator at York University, Toronto, was associated with First Statement in Montreal in the 1940s, when her first book of poetry, Green World, was published in 1945. Her 1970 book A. M. Klein was one of the first to explore Klein’s work. She also produced an anthology of Jewish Canadian short fiction, Canadian Jewish Short Stories, in 1990, the year after publishing a series — 377 —

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of her essays in Apartment Seven: Essays Selected and New. The accessible style of her socially conscious poetry is reflected in her short fiction, collected in Summer at Lonely Beach and Other Stories (1982). In counterpoint to The Second Scroll’s nameless narrator’s disjointed quest for a mythical, mystical, messianic double, Winnipeg-born Adele Wiseman (1928-1992) traces in her 1956 Governor General’s Awardwinning novel The Sacrifice (hereafter TS) a reverse trajectory of dislocation and discovery. In her re-reading of the first scroll’s first book— Bereshit (Genesis)—Wiseman creates from the Akedah story (Abraham’s binding, and almost sacrificing, of his son Isaac) her own new diasporic original: a palimpsest. In the novel, an immigrant family’s trans-Atlantic migration from Eastern Europe to Canada is superimposed over the biblical Patriarch’s family’s exodus and transplantation from Ur to Canaan; originary biblical names are repeated through those of the immigrants’ generations; a father’s faith is tested; a sacrificing of a beloved son is almost enacted; Mount Moriah segues into Mad Mountain—all within a New World prairie city ghetto which reiterates and replaces an Old World Yiddish shtetl. At the beginning of the novel, a surnameless Jewish immigrant family arrives by rail at an unnamed prairie city strongly resembling Winnipeg. Although the family’s tickets indicate a destination two day’s travel further west, Abraham, the father, decides suddenly that after fifteen months and eleven days they have run far enough from their eastern European home: “Enough!” (Wiseman, TS, 3). Abraham’s internally enunciated Judaic interjection is an exclamatory cry against the millennia of Jewish suffering, wandering, and victimization in the diaspora.12 And his awakening to the decision to act is accompanied by an angry and energetic resolve. However, his multilingual attempts—in Ukrainian, Yiddish, Polish, and German—to determine his location from the train’s conductor prove futile. Even in this New World, Can(aan)ada, he is still misunderstood and, through his linguistic miscommunication, isolated. To the trope of missed communication is added that of misperception. In answer to the question Abraham poses to his wife, Sarah, and his son, Isaac—“‘Who awaits us?’”—the omniscient narrator comments: “It did not really matter whether they stopped here blindly, or went blindly 12 Michael Greenstein, Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada: An Anthology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 105. — 378 —

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on to the other city for which they had bought the tickets” (Wiseman, TS, 4-5). Blindness, isolation, non-communication, anger, rebellious action: within the first few pages, the nuances of the novel’s tragic trajectory are indicated. Both Abraham’s initial excitement “at making a positive gesture in the ordering of his fate” and his deciding that the family “[‘]must stop running from death and from every other insult[’]” by disembarking at this station prove to be ironic (Wiseman, TS, 5). The family’s exodus from eastern Europe to western Canada is imagined by Abraham as an opportunity for a new life, new roots for “the often uprooted” (Wiseman, TS, 6). However, the tragedy of the Old World is reprised in the New. Abraham has a preternatural expectation that “something extraordinary was going to happen in [his] lifetime,” and this intuition is linked to his self-interpreted relation to his eponymous ancestor in Bereshit (Genesis): “I was born with this feeling, as though it had been promised to me in another place, another lifetime” (Wiseman, TS, 53). The analogy between the immigrant butcher and the Abrahamic forefather of the Jews, however, is in Wiseman’s re-reading tragically ironic. Devastated by the horrific deaths of his oldest sons in eastern Europe, Abraham now focuses his energy and projects his expectations on his third son, Isaac, and the young man’s putative New World potential— “The boy was young, the boy was blessed, the boy would grow”; “Isaac will yet do something fine. He was not spared for nothing” (Wiseman, TS, 6, 11). To Chaim Knopp, the shochet (ritual slaughterer) and mohel (ritual circumciser) whom he meets at work and who becomes his closest friend, Abraham describes Isaac as “‘[m]y life’” (Wiseman, TS, 60). In the novel’s unfolding, however, the fine action Isaac does perform results not in his being saved or spared, but in his being sacrificed. A conflagration engulfs the white synagogue, through whose flames bursts an ignited Isaac, clutching the Sefer Torah (Wiseman, TS, 195). Unfortunately, the severe injuries Isaac sustains exacerbate a heart condition from which he suffers—the result of the typhus which almost killed him in Poland during the family’s exodus—and, after being bedridden for some months, he dies. His father’s grief is also circular, a grim déjà-vu reminiscent of the previous deaths of his other two sons: “This was something that he had lived through before; the red and purple clouds, the dark figures waiting for him, had waited for a long time. It was as though he were walking into a picture that had hung on his own — 379 —

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wall all of his life, waiting for him” (Wiseman, TS, 220-21). However, the picture remains incomplete. Abraham’s daughter-in-law Ruth, Isaac’s widow, castigates her fatherin-law for his misperception of his son, telling him that Isaac was “[‘]a figment of your imagination’” (Wiseman, TS, 290). She justifiably accuses Abraham of being complicit in Isaac’s self-sacrificial desire to live up to his father’s unattainable and selfish expectations. In his despairing recognition of his culpability in Isaac’s death, Abraham finds himself at the home of Laiah, the community whore, whom he slaughters in a ritualistic, sacrificial manner, thus exposing a duality at the heart of his ambiguous nature: “Did he come at last to accept the shadow, to embrace the emptiness, to acknowledge his oneness with the fruit without seed, with death, his other self?” (Wiseman, TS, 300). To the guilt he feels as the symbolic murderer of his sons, Abraham now adds that of being the actual murderer of Laiah. When asked if he understands that he has taken a human life, Abraham responds with the recognition that Laiah represents the darker aspect of his divided nature. Found insane by the legal authorities, Abraham proves to be an antithetical imitation of his biblical namesake, foregoing the covenantal theophany of Mount Moriah for incarceration in the asylum on Mad Mountain. However, the circle of life remains ruptured. In the final chapter of the novel, Chapter 17 (one short of the number eighteen, the alphabetical equivalent of which in Hebrew spells chai, the word “Life”), Isaac’s son Moishe Jacob, a violin prodigy, visits his grandfather at the asylum on Yom Kippur. Though Abraham confesses that he has “[‘]built a crooked house[’]” for his grandson, there is a poignant and moving catharsis as Moishe allows himself to feel the deep bond of love which unites him with his estranged grandparent (Wiseman, TS, 343). As they touch hands across the divided generations, there is a sense of continuity of identity and trust. Moishe’s reconciliation with his grandfather both completes and repeats a genealogical circle reaching back to Abrahamic origins and forward to messianic redemption, all linked from generation to generation in a continuous Jewish text and commentary constantly re-read and reinterpreted. Wiseman published a second novel, Crackpot, in 1974. Montreal-born Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), perhaps the most popular of the Jewish authors who began their writing careers in the 1940s and 1950s, established his reputation as a poet with the publication of Let Us — 380 —

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Compare Mythologies (1956), The Spice Box of Earth (1961), and Flowers for Hitler (1964) and as a songwriting, folksinging troubadour during the late 1960s with his records Songs of Leonard Cohen (1968) and Songs from a Room (1969). He is still publishing and performing around the world in his late seventies. Cohen has also published two novels, The Favourite Game (1963; hereafter FG) and Beautiful Losers (1966). A novel about canonization, this latter has been canonized as one of the raunchiest, rawest, and most sexually explicit (pornographic, some would argue) texts in Canadian literature. The former is a Künstlerroman in which Lawrence Breavman, a Jewish poet growing up in Montreal, translates himself, his friends, and his life into art and myth through the third-person (auto)biography he constructs. Breavman adopts an excessively and obsessively self-conscious perspective from which to observe both himself and his many lovers, thus creating both an emotional and an artistic detachment from himself, his childhood and adolescence, and his physical and social environment. Breavman perceives life—his own and others’—always at a distance. This sense of estrangement is particularly apparent in the relation of Breavman to both Judaism and his family. His father, mostly bedridden or enclosed in an oxygen tent, tells Breavman lies, and dies while his son is still a child. Breavman’s martyr-like, guilt-inducing mother goes insane and is committed to the Allan Memorial Institute. As the self-declared Jewish conscience of the Breavmans, Breavman exposes the hypocrisy of his pious uncles and disparages his religion and identity: “If I could only end my hate. If I could believe what they wrote and wrapped in silk and crowned with gold. I want to write the word” (Cohen, FG, 222). Instead, scarred, Breavman writes of the flesh in which he religiously indulges. Breavman enacts a series of departures: from childhood, from Westmount, from his family, from college, from Judaism, from his job at a brass foundry, from Montreal, from Columbia University, from New York City, from his job at a Laurentian summer camp, from many lovers (Jewish and Gentile), and from his dialectical friend Krantz. The form of the novel reinforces the thematic patterns of dislocation, fragmentation, and incompletion. Essentially plotless, the novel is an artist parable cum romance cum shell game structured as a series of retrospectively reinterpreted and succinctly juxtaposed episodes, incorporating fragments of scrapbooks, diaries, home movies, letters, memories, paintings, music, and conver— 381 —

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sations, and conveyed in a minimalist, lyrical style. Breavman discovers neither truth nor a satisfactory secular identity, only his life’s loneliness and its transmutation into art—the bereaved artist’s favourite game. Mordecai Richler Mordecai Richler (1931-2001) was one of the most prolific, popular, and acclaimed writers in Canada, having written—in a career spanning fifty years—ten novels, one volume of short fiction, eight books of essays, a book about snooker, an historical analysis of the systemic antisemitism underlying Quebec nationalism, an autobiographical/historical/political reminiscence/account/memoir of his life and his 1992 trip to Israel, a travel book about Spain, three children’s books, and three edited anthologies. In addition, he is one of a handful of Canadian writers who enjoy an international reputation. Born at the beginning of the Great Depression into an Orthodox family living in Montreal’s Jewish ghetto (his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, was a celebrated Chassidic scholar and writer), Richler was educated at Baron Byng High School, then populated predominantly by Jewish students, and spent a year at Sir George Williams College (which later became part of Concordia University) before dropping out and travelling to Europe in 1951. Settling in London, England, in 1954, Richler began his professional writing career with the publication of The Acrobats (1954). In 1972, he, his wife Florence and their five children moved back to Montreal. As a journalist, screenwriter, editor, novelist, satirist, and acerbic political observer and commentator, Richler established himself as Canada’s resident controversialist, iconoclast, and literary icon. Richler created works of fiction which depict diaspora Jewry’s alienation in the post-Shoah world. Richler’s Montreal Jewish ghetto—“The Main”—establishes a place, a presence, and a perspective from which to explore the relations between Jews and between the Jewish and nonJewish communities of his native land. During the 1950s and 1960s, Richler published six novels. The Acrobats (1954), A Choice of Enemies (1957), The Incomparable Atuk (1963), and Cocksure (1968) are narratives in which the interaction between a disillusioned and dislocated non-Jewish Canadian protagonist and a Jewish character necessitates the redefining and restructuring of their relationship. The two other novels written during this period, Son of a Smaller Hero (1955) and The — 382 —

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Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959; hereafter ADK), present Jewish protagonists—Noah Adler and Duddy Kravitz—whose ambivalent relation to both the Montreal Jewish ghetto from which they emerge and the non-Jewish society in which they seek acceptance and success results in a conflict between the expression of their innate Jewish identity and the suppression of their Jewishness in order to assimilate to the majority culture of the goyim. For Duddy Kravitz, the anti-hero whose apprenticeship Richler chronicles in the novel which established his literary stature, the fastest way to escape the ghetto and make it in the Gentile world is to acquire land and the power and status he believes such an acquisition will confer. He repeats the mantra taught him at age seven by his immigrant grandfather—“A man without land is nobody” until it becomes a cliché. (Richler, ADK, 48). However, he forgets the context in which this precept is spoken—that of his grandfather’s profound sense of personal disappointment and failure as a father—and thus fails to catch the nuances the words carry, understanding their literal import only. In his blind quest for the familial recognition and approval he craves, and that he believes the ownership of land will secure, Duddy alienates his friends, his family, and, most poignantly, his Zaide—the single family member who pays him any attention and, consequently, whose approbation means so very much. Duddy finds the land he wants when, while working during the summer season as a waiter at Rubin’s Hotel Lac des Sables in Ste. Agathe des Monts, he is shown Lac St. Pierre by Yvette Durelle, employed at Rubin’s resort as a chambermaid. Wanting “to be a somebody” and “[n] ot a loser,” Duddy seeks to emulate the putative success of another St. Urbain Street Jewish boy who has escaped the ghetto—Jerry Dingleman, the Boy Wonder, whose polio-crippled legs are emblematic of his deformed and criminal consciousness (Richler, ADK, 62). However, instead of lending Duddy the money he needs to allow Yvette to start buying the farms surrounding Lac St. Pierre on his behalf, Dingleman takes Duddy to New York and uses him to smuggle heroin back into Canada. In turn, Duddy uses Yvette and Virgil Roseboro—an easygoing American Duddy meets while in New York who suffers an epileptic seizure while driving a truck for him and becomes a paraplegic as a result of the subsequent accident—to outsmart Dingleman (who is also interested in the property) and to secure the lake and the land around it for him— 383 —

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self. Duddy betrays, and finally destroys, his friendship with his two employees when he obtains the money he needs for the final piece of land by forging Virgil’s signature on a cheque. As he chases Dingleman off his newly-acquired property, Duddy symbolically displaces and replaces the mythical Boy Wonder in the pantheon of the ghetto’s wunderkinder. However, Duddy’s victory is a hollow one. In revenge, and to hurt Duddy as much as possible, Yvette tells his grandfather how his grandson obtained the land. He refuses to accept the offer to choose one of the farms on Lac St. Pierre, accusing Duddy of having obtained the land by swindling others. Duddy lashes out at his Zaide, who reacts with silence and, later, alone in the car, with tears. Rejected by his grandfather, Duddy protests that the land makes him now a “[‘]somebody. A real somebody’” (Richler, ADK, 313). The confirmation of his belief that he has achieved a new status occurs at the end of the novel at Lou’s Bagel and Lox Bar when the waiter ascertains that Duddy is indeed “[‘]the Mr Kravitz who just bought all that land around Lac St Pierre’” and marks the bill for him: “And suddenly Duddy did smile. He laughed. He grabbed Max, hugged him, and spun him around. ‘You see,’ he said, his voice filled with marvel. ‘You see’” (Richler, ADK, 16). However, Duddy’s double emphasis on ocular perception is unselfconsciously ironic. For his now mythical progress is both haunted and hindered by moral and emotional blindness. Throughout the novel, Duddy constantly runs from his distorted self-image as a nobody toward a pre-defined version of himself as a somebody. This ghetto Jew renames himself Dudley Kane and remakes himself as an important landowner. However, his acquisition proves to be an impotent antidote for his self-hatred and self-doubt. Although Irwin Shubert, an assimilated Jewish university student employed at Rubin’s for the summer, tells his colleagues that “‘[i]t’s the cretinous little money-grubbers like Kravitz that cause anti-semitism’” (Richler, ADK, 68), and although Uncle Benjy Kravitz, dying of cancer, informs Duddy, his disregarded nephew, that he is ignored “‘[b]ecause you’re a pusherke. A little Jew-boy on the make. Guys like you make me sick and ashamed,’” Duddy’s ability to become the locus of others’ hatred through his callous self-interest and ethical ambivalence is counterpointed by his fierce familial loyalty and frequent expression of genuine compassion (Richler, ADK, 242). The novel presents Duddy as a complex character, easily judged but less easily understood. — 384 —

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It is always the nail-biting, chain-smoking, money-chasing Duddy who acts decisively, loyally, and lovingly to resolve the crises which threaten the family. When Lennie Kravitz quits medical school and disappears, a possible suicide, it is Duddy who interrogates Lennie’s McGill classmates and tracks his brother down at a Church Street slum hotel in Toronto. When Lennie confesses to Duddy in Toronto, “‘O.K. I’m an anti-semite. I prefer the company of Gentiles’” (Richler, ADK, 184), that he has sought to assimilate himself within the non-Jewish crowd at McGill, and that he has consequently performed an abortion on Sandra Calder for Andy Simpson (the father) at the behest of Irwin Shubert, who manipulates Lennie’s insecurity and desire to belong—“‘But I know you’re not a frightened little hebe,’ Irwin had said. ‘I know you’ll come through’” (Richler, ADK, 187)—it is Duddy who intuits immediately that Lennie has been used by his supposed friends as “[‘]the Number I [sic] Sucker of All-Time’” and devises a plan to save his brother’s career (Richler, ADK, 186). Duddy confronts Hugh Thomas Calder (Sandra’s wealthy Westmount father) with the truth and ensures his co-operation, thus preventing Lennie’s being expelled from medical school. (Later, engaged to Riva Kaplan, Lennie admits his Gentile friends were all antisemites, “[‘]out to exploit my racial inferiority complex[’]” [Richler, ADK 292]. He and Riva plan to go to Israel.) When Uncle Benjy is dying, it is Duddy who finds Aunt Ida (and her gigolo) in a New York City hotel and persuades her to return to her husband in Montreal. Max’s hyperbolic and disingenuous platitude—“[‘]We’re one family and we should stick together, just like the Rockefellers. In our own small way, I mean’”—is Duddy’s code of action (Richler, ADK, 295). And because Duddy does care, his grandfather’s final censure is all the more devastating. As Duddy looks outside himself and beyond the Montreal Jewish ghetto—which both nurtures and limits him—for a tangible reflection of his own self-worth, however, he rejects his Zaide’s Jewish Orthodoxy and scrupulous honesty. His quest for land becomes a search for an assimilated, post-ghetto, “Dudley Kane” identity. With Jerry Dingleman, the Boy Wonder, as the benchmark against which he measures and compares the dubious success of his impetuous apprenticeship, however, Duddy can succeed, ironically, only within the narrow perspective of the familial ghetto he paradoxically both asserts and repudiates. Within the actual power structure of Anglo-Protestant Montreal, represented in the novel by Hugh Thomas Calder, the Jewish ghetto’s mythical wun— 385 —

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derkind is unknown, and Duddy fleetingly recognizes that fact: “What, Duddy thought, if the truly powerful people in the city knew nothing about the Wonder? Could it be that Dingleman was only famous on St Urbain Street?” (Richler, ADK, 198). Ultimately, Duddy remains marginal to both The Main and Westmount. With The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Richler enacts his own quest for both a literary form and language suitable for constructing his Montreal version of the Jewish Canadian experience. Combining elements of both the picaresque novel and the bildungsroman, Richler infuses the book’s language with the rhythms, words, structures, and cadences of Yiddish. The ghetto denizens speak in the crude, profane, and often scurrilous vernacular suitable to their everyday reality. The richness and inventiveness of Yiddish curses, for example, are translated into an English idiom both efficacious and humorous: “Boil in acid, Duddy thought. I hope all your teeth fall out. All except one. And the one that’s left should give you a toothache for life” (Richler, ADK, 289). Conversely, Duddy’s often repeated “‘Ver gerharget’” (“Drop dead”) and many other expressions are reproduced in transliterated Yiddish and left untranslated, to emphasize the difference and distance between the Jewish and Gentile experiences in Canada and the world. To achieve this authenticity, Richler shattered many of the sexual, linguistic, and religious taboos present in Canadian society and literature in 1959. As a result, Richler’s vital, but often gratuitously scabrous and satiric, portrayal of Jews in this novel (as well as in his others), combined with the author’s ambivalence toward his own and his characters’ Jewish identity—the imbalance between its assertion and its assimilation—has led to accusations that Richler himself exemplified the self-hatred he transmuted into fiction, thus contributing to antisemitism. In the Governor General’s Award-winning St. Urbain’s Horseman (1971; hereafter SUH), the second novel in a trilogy which begins with The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and ends with Joshua Then and Now (1980), Jake Hersh pursues the elusive cousin he idolizes and idealizes, Joey Hersh—St. Urbain Street’s mythical, ubiquitous avenging horseman—and thus, on the one hand, asserts his identification with the Jewish people. On the other hand, Jake marries Nancy Croft, a Gentile, and thus assimilates his confused sense of his Jewish identity to a world in which he feels constantly anxious and alienated. Adopting the role within the troubled Hersh family of “Cousin Jo— 386 —

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ey’s advocate” (Richler, SUH, 174), Jake becomes “oddly convinced that somehow Joey ha[s] answers for him” (Richler, SUH, 230). In his quest for the Horseman, his surrogate conscience, Jake, the artist, is ultimately searching for an assertive Jewish persona to counteract the assimilated identity he has constructed for himself in England by fleeing both the ghetto and the cultural standards of colonial Canada. When, at the end of the novel, Jake is informed that Joey has died in an airplane crash on July 20, 1967, in Paraguay, his reacts in two different ways. He weeps “because the Horseman, his conscience, his mentor, was no more” (Richler, SUH 460). At the same time, motivated by the suggestion that Joey died while smuggling cigarettes and not while hunting the Nazi Doktor Mengele, Jake interrogates both himself and his construction of his cousin: “What if the Horseman was a distorting mirror and we each took the self-justifying image we required of him?” (Richler, SUH, 460). His question produces the realization that Jake could now become the Horseman. And in a new version of his recurrent nightmare, Jake does just that. Upon awaking, he alters in his journal the details of his cousin’s demise, noting that his equine doppelgänger—in his various incarnations as Joey Hersh, Jesse Hope, Joseph de la Hirsch, Yoseph ben Baruch, the Golem—is merely “‘presumed dead’” (Richler, SUH, 462). Jake Hersh’s quest for the Horseman in Richler’s novel is very similar to that of the nameless narrator’s for Uncle Melech Davidson in Klein’s The Second Scroll and prefigures that of Moses Berger for the mythical Solomon Gursky in Richler’s penultimate novel, Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989; hereafter SGH). Solomon Gursky is presumed dead in an airplane crash. Gursky’s life is painstakingly reconstructed by Moses, the alcoholic son of a very Klein-like Jewish Canadian poet, L. B. Berger, who remains unacclaimed by both critics and the public and is eventually hired as a “speech writer and cultural adviser to the legendary liquor baron,” the Sam Bronfman-like Bernard Gursky, older brother of Solomon and Morrie (Richler, SGH, 20). Like a detective, Moses Berger, a Rhodes Scholar, collects and pieces together the dispersed evidence which becomes the biography of the elusive Solomon Gursky. As the Horseman becomes Jake Hersh’s obsession, so Solomon Gursky becomes Moses’s “quest and curse” (Richler, SGH, 21). Solomon Gursky Was Here also displays several of Richler’s ongoing thematic and stylistic obsessions. Time is fragmented; journals, letters, maps, documents, articles, manuscripts, and information are collected — 387 —

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and collated; real characters, adopting various aliases, are transmuted into mythical Jewish heroes; trials are held; families malfunction; Judaism is both asserted and ignored; the assimilative transaction between the Jew and the goyishe world is explored; the Spanish Civil War is idealized; the Montreal Jewish ghetto is reprised; Jewish Canadian history is revised; and the tangled relations between fathers and sons, and between grandfathers and grandsons, are reiterated in several ways. In Richler’s fictional worlds, Jewish tradition and identity are re-read from a Diasporic Montreal perspective—from generation to generation— and found not to be regenerative, but degenerative and discontinuous. Richler’s last novel, Barney’s Version (1997; hereafter BV), won, among other awards, the 1997 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 1998 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the 1998 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book (Canada and the Caribbean region) and is considered by many to be Richler’s finest novel. At the age of sixty-seven, Barney Panofsky pens his first book, his version of his life, in order to counteract his being (mis)represented in the forthcoming book by Terry McIver, his nemesis. Although the novel gives the appearance of order, each of the chronological tripartite sections carrying the name and date of one of Barney’s three wives, it is in fact fragmented, as Barney, suffering from the first signs of Alzheimer’s Disease, meanders, digresses, rants, drinks, smokes, and unfolds the many nuances of his eventful and untidy life. As Barney’s memory fails him, his grumpy, cantankerous, angry, and endearing personality is on raw display. The murder mystery at the heart of this satiric, humorous, and poignant novel entangles protagonist and reader, and it is not until the afterword, penned by Barney’s eldest child, Michael Panofsky, that the mystery is solved—too late for Barney, who, his manuscript complete, is now living in the King David Nursing Home in Montreal. Clinging to his “two cherished beliefs: Life was absurd, and nobody ever truly understood anybody else,” Barney relentlessly deconstructs his work, his marriages, his friendships, his family, and his life in a way that makes him one of Richler’s most compelling and tragic characters (Richler, BV, 417). The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s Many of the authors who began their writing careers in the previous decades continued to publish through the succeeding decades. During — 388 —

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the efflorescence of Canadian literature in the 1960s and 1970s, many other Jewish authors joined them. William Weintraub (b. 1926), born in Montreal, a documentary filmmaker, novelist, artist, journalist, dramatist, memoirist, and close friend of Mordecai Richler, published the first of his two satiric novels, Why Rock the Boat?, in 1961, and the second, The Underdogs, in 1979. (The latter was later reworked as a play in 1998.) His memoir City Unique (1996) reconstructs the multifaceted city of Montreal of the 1950s. Another memoirist and journalist, Fredelle Bruser Maynard (1922-1989), born in Foam Lake, Saskatchewan, published two very well received autobiographical works, Raisins and Almonds (1972) and The Tree of Life (1988). Helen Weinzweig (1915-2010), born in Radom, Poland, immigrated to Canada in 1924. She experiments with non-linear, surreal form in her two novels—Passing Ceremony (1973) and Basic Black with Pearls (1980)—and short story collection—A View from the Roof (1989; later adapted as a play published by Playwrights Canada in 1997). Winnipegborn Jack Barry Ludwig (b. 1922), a novelist, short story writer, editor, and sports journalist, published three novels during these decades: Confusions (1963), Above Ground (1968), and A Woman of Her Age (1973). Lawyer, memoirist, and novelist Morley Torgov (b. 1927), born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1975 for his memoir A Good Place to Come From (1974) and again in 1983 for The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (1982). With The Abramsky Variations (1977), St. Farb’s Day (1990), and The War to End All Wars (1998) rounding out his Jewish themed work, Torgov has turned to historic crime fiction set in the mid-1800s, creating Inspector Hermann Preiss, a German detective, who features in Murder in A-Major (2008) The Mastersinger from Minsk (2012). On a similar note, Toronto-born and St. Catharines-raised Howard Engel (b. 1931) published his first detective novel, The Suicide Murders, in 1980, introducing Benny Cooperman, a Jewish Canadian gumshoe based in Grantham, Ontario, a fictionalized St. Catharines. The Benny Cooperman mysteries, now numbering a dozen titles, have become extremely popular. In addition, Winnipeg-born historian, journalist, and educator Allan Levine (b. 1956) has published, among other works, three Winnipeg-based Sam Klein historical mysteries, beginning with The Blood Libel in 1997. Playwrights who began their careers during this period include Flin — 389 —

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Flon, Manitoba-born Beverley Simons (b. 1938); Torontonians Rick Salutin (b. 1942) and Janis Rapoport (b. 1946); Montrealers Sheldon Rosen (b. 1943), John Lazarus (b. 1947) and Jason Sherman (b. 1962); and Leonard J. Angel (b. 1945 in New York City and based in Vancouver). Poets who began their careers during this period include Torontoborn, Qualicum Beach, B.C.-based Joe Rosenblatt (b. 1933); Montrealers David Solway (b. 1941), Seymour Mayne (b. 1944; professor of English at the University of Ottawa), Robin Sarah (b. 1949 in New York City and raised in Montreal); and Susan Glickman (b. 1953; born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in Montreal); Hawkesbury, Ontario-born, B.C.based Tom Wayman (b. 1945); Brockville, Ontario-born Artie Gold (b. 1947); Torontonian Kenneth Sherman (b. 1950); and Saskatoon-born, Winnipeg-raised Rhea Tregebov (b. 1953; assistant professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia). Although many of these poets and playwrights have published short fiction and novels, three authors whose primary genre is fiction also began publishing during these decades. The prolific Matt Cohen (19421999), born in Kingston, Ontario, is known primarily for his tetralogy of novels tracing the multi-generational trajectory of a family in the fictional town of Salem, Ontario: The Disinherited (1974), The Colours of War (1977), The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone (1979), and Flowers of Darkness (1981). However, when with The Spanish Doctor (1984; followed by Nadine in 1986, and Emotional Arithmetic in 1990), he began exploring Jewish themes, Cohen experienced a backlash from his loyal readership. About the initial puzzled critical response to The Spanish Doctor, Cohen commented: “Finally I came to understand that The Spanish Doctor had come as such a shock to so many of my readers, especially the critics, because of their sense that I had betrayed my Canadianness by writing about being Jewish. It tells you something uncomfortable about people’s conception of what it means to be a Canadian. Even after Nadine was published people would say to me: ‘Are you going to write about Canada again?’ I would reply that most of Nadine takes place in Canada, and that her being Jewish does not mean she is not Canadian. Then they would be offended, as if I had made a hostile remark.”13 Not unlike A. M. Klein, Cohen felt that his work was underappreciated and 13 Mervin Butovsky, “Interview of Matt Cohen,” in Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions, ed. Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond (Toronto: Oxford, 1990), 175. — 390 —

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that he did not receive the recognition from the Canadian literary establishment that he deserved. Prolific fiction writer, playwright, and poet J. J. Steinfeld (b. 1946), the only child of survivors of the Shoah (i.e., a member of the Second Generation), has felt a similar lack of appreciation and recognition in his adopted country. Born in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany, he immigrated with his parents to the U.S.in 1947, and moved to Canada to pursue graduate studies in 1972. Ensconced in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the much-anthologized Steinfeld has published two novels, ten short story collections, and two poetry collections. Dozens of his one-act plays and several of his full-length plays have been performed in North America. Steinfeld’s acute awareness of—and identification with—the Shoah (and his parents’ horrific experiences during it) infuses his fiction with a malignant tension informed by a disconcertingly grim and tragic perspective. For the harrowed protagonists of his Kafkaesque fiction, Jewish identity has been refracted through their parents’ experiences and consciousnesses as survivors of the Shoah and is thus both sanity- and life-threatening. The protagonists’ compulsive and obsessive over-identification with the horror their parents suffered during the war leads them to dangerously unbalanced states of psychotic dissociation and psychic disequilibrium. Steinfeld’s Jewish-themed fiction is populated with writer/artist figures such as thirty-six-year-old Reuben Sklar in “Dancing at the Club Holocaust.” As a university professor, Reuben had attended a Halloween party dressed as Albert Camus, urinated on a dean costumed as Hitler (one of two Hitlers at the party), was arrested and, subsequently, fired. Under the terms of his probation, Reuben is now obligated to accept psychiatric treatment from an unnamed Montreal psychiatrist. The crux of the antagonism between doctor and patient is the former’s belief that the Club Holocaust, which the latter claims to frequent often in New York City, does not exist except as “a delusion or morbid fantasy” (Steinfeld, 35). However, the doctor’s construction of reality bears little relation to Reuben’s. Reuben writes stories, many about his mother—a dancer before the war, who survived the death camps with crippled legs, received war reparations money from West Germany, and later killed herself—and those which the psychiatrist has been given to read, including some in which he features as an unpleasant character, he de— 391 —

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scribes as being “[‘]set in hell’” (Steinfeld, 36). Reuben’s father died in an asylum run by nuns “[‘]because he never accepted the fact he had been liberated in 1945’” (Steinfeld, 38). Reuben thinks he sees his mother’s concentration camp number on his skin, and, when he admires the view from the doctor’s office window, he sees “[‘]Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka, Belsen, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück [. . .]’” (Steinfeld, 36)—Montreal transformed into a universe of concentration camps, counterpart of New York City’s Club Holocaust (Steineld 36). The Club Holocaust, located in a New York City basement, is a NeoNazi meeting place where antisemitic Nazi German propaganda films are screened and perverted sexual performances between an SS-uniformed man and a naked, submissive, putatively Jewish boy are staged for the patrons’ entertainment. Reuben dreams of dancing the Totentanz, the Dance of Death, on the Club’s stage. Avenging his parents and himself, Reuben sets fire to the Club at the end of the story and, screaming “‘Ich bin ein Jude’” at the audience, dances “a marvellous, masterful Totentanz, movement and heat and damaged decades coalescing, and for the first time in his adult life, he felt happy” (Steinfeld, 41). Although Reuben asserts his Jewishness and has a cathartic experience at the story’s conclusion, the insane reality he constructs and inhabits, the Club Holocaust, is a grotesque and disturbing projection of his inner torment, anger, and guilt—all of which remain unresolved and, perhaps, unresolvable. A Gift of Rags—the third of his five novels (the first having been published in 1982) by Second Generation fiction writer Abraham Boyarsky (b. 1946; professor of mathematics and statistics at Concordia University), who was born in Poland and immigrated to Montreal with his family in 1951 is another portrait of the Jewish artist as Second Generation chronicler of survivors’ experiences and memories of the Shoah. In this novel about Shoah survivors, thirteen-year-old Joseph Rosenbloom, an artist figure representative of the Second Generation, is also a survivor and thus must bear witness—but in his own way, and not as an appendage to his father’s pain. The character Beryl Friedman tells Joseph, “‘The world must be forced to remember this—and that’s your job, because you’re a writer’” (Boyarsky, 210). The act of writing—itself a form of remembering and memorializing the Shoah—is thus as much a moral as an artistic imperative and, as such, is an integral part of the process of healing broken lives and a damaged world. Within the thematic framework of the novel, choosing reconciliation over discord, love over — 392 —

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hate, forgiveness over condemnation, compassion over enmity, life over death, and Torah-centred Jewish identity over self-hatred is the survivor’s ultimate revenge against the forces of evil and the means of ensuring the survival of future generations. The 1990s and 2000s: New Voices and Directions In 1997, Mordecai Richler published his final novel. The same decade introduced many new Jewish Canadian writers, including: Budapest, Hungary-born, Montreal-raised, Second Generation writer Judith Kalman (b. 1954), whose The Country of Birches (1998) consists of fourteen interrelated, autobiographical stories; Lethbridge, Alberta-born writer and Yiddishist Michael Wex (b. 1954), whose first novel, Shlepping the Exile (1993), tells a prairie Hasidic tale; Montreal-born playwright and screenwriter Jason Sherman (b. 1962); Calgary-born Norman Ravvin (b. 1963; associate professor of Religion, Concordia University), whose Cafe des Westens (1991) explores the characters frequenting the Calgary diner named in the title of the novel; Montreal-born Lilian Nattel (b. 1956), whose The River Midnight (1999) creates an imaginary shtetl in nineteenth-century Poland; Montreal-born Nancy Richler (b. 1957), whose Throwaway Angels (1996) focusses on the disappearance of sex trade workers in Vancouver; and Toronto-born, Vancouver-based Karen X. Tulchinsky (n.d.), whose In Her Nature (1995) is a lesbian-themed series of short stories. Two of the strongest writers emerging from the 1990s are Montreal-born Second Generation playwright, poet, novelist, and translator Robert Majzels (b. 1950; associate professor of English, University of Calgary) and Toronto-born poet, musician, and novelist Anne Michaels (b. 1958). A fictional psychiatrist, Dr. H. Caulfield (Hyman, not Holden, although through his protagonist the author makes and analyzes the intertextual connections with J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye [1951]), attempts to excavate the psyche of David Hellman, son of Shoah survivors, in Majzels’s debut novel, Hellman’s Scrapbook (hereafter HS). Influenced by its author’s keen interest in Poststructuralist and Posthumanist literary theories, Hellman’s Scrapbook is a huge, complex antinovel constructed as a collage—of journal fragments dated from March 10, 1980, to May 31, 1980; newspaper clippings (some “real”—from the Montreal papers The Gazette, Le Devoir, and La Presse—and documented — 393 —

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at the end of the book, and others imaginary); letters; excerpts from The Legend of Mariang Makiling, a Filipino fable; and material extrapolated from the journal titled The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, written by Antonio Pigafetta—by writer/artist David Hellman, a psychiatric patient who has been committed to the Hochelaga Memorial Institute (Room 303) in Montreal after (or, perhaps, where) he deliberately starts a fire in a bathroom basin and badly burns the palms of both his hands. A man in both a physical and a mental hell, David writes his journal (with a damaged hand) in the early hours of the morning and keeps its existence hidden from Dr. Caulfield. Writing is both a clandestine activity—subversive of the medical power of the Memorial Institute in which he is incarcerated—and a means for David to order memory, memorial, history, event, identity, and life. To disguise his journal, David collects newspaper articles, which he cuts out and pastes over his written entries in the scrapbook which the hospital has issued to him. Thus Hellman’s scrapbook both subverts and rebels against the very order David is purporting to be arranging in his journal out of the chaos of his life and memories. However, the journal within the scrapbook, although apparently ordered by specific dated entries, is similarly chaotic and arbitrary both temporally and episodically—creating yet another layer of psychologically revealing self-concealment. The “smokescreen” of clippings David arbitrarily provides effectively conceals from his antagonists, including the reader (the alter ego of Dr. Caulfield), another smokescreen—his “true journal.” Instead of a true (re)presentation— which its very form as a scrapbook suggests is an impossibility—David constructs various random sideshows from his Montreal life. Several disjunct and disjointed fragments from his life form the autobiographical episodes about which David writes in his journal entries. Over an eleven-week period of entries during the late winter and early spring of 1980, David conflates thirty years of his life, juxtaposing his fathers’s experiences, memories (now David’s), and survival of the Nazi death camps; his Jewish childhood experiences in Montreal; his estranged relations with both parents; his experiences working as a carnie barker at the Coke Rings game at La Ronde, the midway at Expo 67; his living as a hippie in a McGill University fraternity house; his job and his participation in union politics at Continental Steel in Montreal; his involvement with Communist guerillas in the Philippine jungle; and his telepathic ability to access and feel the consciousness, memories, and — 394 —

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thoughts of others by holding their hands in his. One of the most compelling of the several narrative strands is that with which the book begins, from which other versions of the same sequence of events emanate, and to which the text constantly returns: the attempt by a group of Jewish concentration camp inmates, including David’s father, to protect their dying rabbi, a symbol of Jewish faith and identity. When a brutal Jewish Kapo is murdered while he sits asleep on a toilet in the barrack’s latrine, the Nazi guards remove the rabbi. In a grotesque re-enactment and rationalization of the Akedah, Steiner, Avram, and David’s father—who in one version of this recurrent story is the actual murderer of the Kapo—sacrifice the young adolescent Simon, an apostate whom they characterize as one of the “Goy-Jews” “that brought this down on us,” by betraying him in exchange for their rabbi’s life and watching him hanged (Majzels, HS, 48). Before the Kapo’s murder and the betrayal of Simon, David’s father tells his co-conspirators, “Clean hands are all we have left” (Majzels, HS, 45; cf. 181). In the very first journal entry, David asks his father, “Do you remember? [. . .] Do you remember, Papa? Because I do, every bit of it” (Majzels, HS, 7). What David remembers is his father’s taking him to the Mackenzie Street synagogue at age six—his first and only visit. However, David also remembers his father’s memories. And as his father’s concentration camp experiences become his own, David imagines himself as Simon, as the Kapo’s murderer, as the one who now has blood on his hands— hands which must be purged and purified by fire. At a certain point in the interweaving storylines, David believes he has killed all the characters he has been describing in his journal, the Memorial Institute having become a species of concentration camp (Majzels, HS, 259). However, at the end of the novel, David is joined by all the other characters in his journal to form a delegation of inmates united against the doctor—in all his incarnations—and his reign of terror. To prevent Dr. Caulfield from discovering and tampering with his true identity, David invents versions of himself which are, in turn, transmuted and destroyed. Dr. Caulfield “wants to produce plot” (Majzels, HS, 224). However, David uses his scrapbook as a means to obfuscate his identity, to avoid self-definition, and to frustrate Dr. Caulfield. He constructs his own unreliability as a defense against those in power, who would define and diagnose him. However, David’s constructing his alternate identities as—and in the form of—a scrapbook ultimately fo— 395 —

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cuses attention on the process of its very creation and, self-reflexively, foregrounds writing and reading. The postmodern literary form in which the novel is cast is significant. Although David purports to be imposing order on chaos, the scrapbook embodies chaos and invites re-reading, interpretation, and analysis, while subverting the ultimate goal of these activities: the search for, or imposition of, meaning. The scrapbook is its own message. Thus meaning inheres in the form; the novel’s content resists meaning. The scrapbook, as a literary form, becomes itself a trope for the subversion of power structures (including narrative fiction)—whether hierarchical, sequential, or canonical. Hellman’s scrapbook also resists and subverts the structures of normality, insanity, identity, reality, and self. The post-Shoah world David inhabits, and whose death camp horrors inhabit him, is a world gone insane; the text suggests that no-one’s hands can be clean after Auschwitz. Hellman’s Scrapbook portrays the position of the Jewish artist who does not quite “feel Jewish,” who has not “worked out some proper identity,” and the legitimacy of his/her art/writing in the post-Shoah world (Majzels, HS, 269). To avoid producing barbaric art, Majzels addresses the Shoah and shows its pervasive repercussions in the world and on the consciousness, memories, lives, psyches, and sanity of the post-survivor generations, for whom it remains a vital but vicarious memory. One of the most experimental Canadian writers, Majzels published an intriguing avant-garde novel in 2004, Apikoros Sleuth. A Talmudic, metaphysical detective story, the form of the novel mirrors that of a Talmudic tractate, complete with a central text in the middle of each page surrounded by commentary, marginalia, and notes. The novel cannot be read in the conventional linear way, as the form itself demands retracing one’s steps and rereading. At the heart of the novel is a mystery, the solution of which is deferred indefinitely as the reader/detective attempts to make sense of meaning, text, context, and interpretation. Fugitive Pieces (hereafter FP), the phenomenally successful first novel by poet Anne Michaels, is another Jewish Canadian artist parable. This beautifully written and moving book juxtaposes two first-person autobiographical memoirs. The much longer first section presents the journals composed by Jakob Beer, a poet, translator, and child survivor of the Shoah. The second section records the narrative of Ben, the child of Shoah survivors, who grows up in Weston, Ontario (then a separate mu— 396 —

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nicipality, and, in the present, a suburb of Toronto), and who eventually finds on the Greek island of Idhra the two journal volumes which form part one of the novel. Although their individual histories differ, the lives of both men have been profoundly shaped and distorted by the Shoah. Hidden in a cupboard wall in his family home in Poland, seven-yearold Jakob hears the Germans burst in the front door and murder his mother and father; he does not hear what happens to his older sister Bella, and the silence of her absence haunts the rest of his life. Burying himself in the earth by day and foraging for food by night, Jakob surfaces from the mud at an archaeological site in the drowned Polish town of Biskupin and, desperate, confronts Athanasios Roussos (Athos), a Greek member of the team excavating the site. Literally wearing Jakob under his coat, Athos escapes by car back to his home on the Greek island of Zakynthos. There he hides and teaches Jakob for the duration of the Occupation. As they struggle to survive the war, Athos impresses on Jakob important lessons: “Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful” (Michaels, FP, 44). Most importantly, although Jakob “already knew the power of language to destroy, to omit, to obliterate,” Athos teaches him, through poetry, “the power of language to restore” (Michaels, FP, 79). Later, as both poet and translator, Jakob unearths and excavates in his poetry the mass graves of the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide and works out his own deep grief. After the war Jakob and Athos immigrate to Canada and settle in Toronto, where Athos has been offered a post in the new department of geography at the University of Toronto. Like Biskupin, Toronto is a drowned city—both prehistorically and, historically, during the flooding caused by Hurricane Hazel in October 1954. Geology functions here and throughout the novel as both terrestrial fact and trope. As Jakob retrospectively examines the geological process of his psyche’s recuperation, he, like Athos, “applie[s] the geologic to the human,” and thus “construct[s] his own historical topography” (Michaels, FP, 119). Thus Jakob’s journals function simultaneously as both history and memory—both a book of the dead and a memorial to his dead family and all the other victims of the Shoah— a recuperative elegy in which memory, superimposed over history, forms a palimpsest through which history is humanized and rejuvenated. In the novel the process of language itself—transmuting Jakob’s memories into autobiographical journals and volumes of poetry—is redemptive. Jakob chooses life and love. Through — 397 —

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his poetry and his journals, he communicates to Ben (the Second Generation son of traumatized parents) that such a choice can and must be made. Like Hellman’s Scrapbook, Fugitive Pieces focuses on the acts of reading and writing. Both Jakob Beer and Ben are Jewish artist figures and refugees, and the forms their autobiographical writings take in the novel are appropriate for a fragmented world. In writing their lives, Michaels creates her own mosaic, which invites re-reading the fugitives’ pieces, the totality of which points to the power of language and love to redeem, bring peace, and give meaning to a post-Shoah world. Fugitive Pieces was both a Canadian and an international best-seller. Although the publisher zealously conceals sales figures, certainly no other Canadian novel, let alone a first novel, has traced such a successful trajectory. In 1996, Fugitive Pieces was short-listed for the prestigious Giller Prize and the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Author of the Year Award. It won the Trillium Prize (1996), the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award (1997), The Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award (1996; the main prize in the Jewish Book Awards), a City of Toronto Book Award (1997), and an Award of Merit from Heritage Toronto (1996). After its publication in Britain, it won the 1997 Orange Prize for Fiction by female writers, the 1997 Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize for Fiction (1997). In the United States, it won a 1997 Lannan Literary Award and the Harold U. Ribalow Award (Hadassah/WIZO; 1998). In Italy, it won the Giuseppe Acerbi Literary Award (2001). The novel made Michaels a wealthy woman. Her much anticipated second novel, The Winter Vault (2010), rehearses many of the same themes and tropes of her first novel, although with very little Jewish content. Not unexpectedly, it did not do as well as Fugitive Pieces did fourteen years earlier. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, new writers emerged. Born in Passau, (West) Germany in 1948, Gina Roitman lived in a Displaced Persons Camp before emigrating with her family to Montreal. Her Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth (2008) is a series of nine interrelated short stories foregrounding Second Generation concerns. Montrealborn, Ottawa-based Gabriella Goliger (b. 1949) published Song of Ascent, eleven interconnected short stories, in 2000, and Girl Unwrapped, a portrait of the protagonist/artist as a young lesbian, in 2010. Israel-born, Montreal-raised, Guelph-based Edeet Ravel (b. 1955) published Ten — 398 —

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Thousand Lovers in 2003, the first novel in what would become known as her Tel Aviv trilogy. Toronto-born poet and fiction writer Stuart Ross (b. 1959) has been active in Toronto’s literary scene for decades, his work, like that of Robert Majzels, often experimental. His Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (2011) is a postmodern novel composed of a series of poignant vignettes in the fragmented life of Ben, a performance artist living in Toronto. Montreal-born poet B. Glen Rotchin (b. 1964) published his first novel, The Rent Collector, in 2005; it foregrounds the ultra-Orthodox Jewish life of Gershon Stein, a Second Generation survivor who works at his father’s building in the garment district of Montreal in the 1970s as an inept rent collector. Vancouver-born medical doctor Daniel Kalla (b. 1966) published the first of a series of medical thrillers, Pandemic, in 2003. Baltimore, Maryland-born, Toronto-raised Michael Redhill (b. 1966) published Martin Sloane in 2001. Toronto-born Stephen Marche (b. 1976) published Raymond and Hannah in 2005. Three of the strongest writers to emerge during the 2000s are Riga, Latvia-born, Toronto-raised writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis (b. 1973), Toronto-born, Kitchener, Ontario-raised Alison Pick (b. 1975), and Toronto-born Sheila Heti (b. 1976). Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories (2004) is a series of interrelated short stories which chronicle protagonist David Berman’s life after his immigration from the U.S.S.R. to Toronto. An artist parable, Natasha won several awards, chief among them the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book for the Caribbean/Canada region. His first novel, The Free World was published in 2011. Pick’s The Sweet Edge (2005) is about a couple’s relationship. Her second novel, Far to Go (2010) is a Shoah-themed book which was on the long list for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Heti debuted with The Middle Stories (2001), a whimsical collection of unrelated short stories. Her latest work, How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life was first published in 2010 and was then released in a new and expanded form in 2012. A postmodern novel, it cleverly blurs the boundaries between fiction, (auto)biography, and literary art. Concluding Remarks Canada’s Jewish community is now the largest in the Commonwealth and the fourth-largest in the world. There has been a Jewish presence in — 399 —

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Canada from its earliest colonial days. And, starting with the first Jewish Canadian writers, there has been a distinct Jewish literary ethos expressed in their art. As David Rome noted in 1964, unlike their Jewish counterparts writing in English in Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, or elsewhere in the English-speaking world, [t]he Jewish writers in Canada, commencing with Asher a hundred years ago and continuing to the most recent poet or novelist, naturally wrote of their own background, experiences and interests, and they included their Jewish background and their Jewish experiences among their basic interests. The Jewish artists in Canada considered these Jewish interests legitimate material for their art; they considered it pertinent, and they introduced it into their work. They did not suppress it as too personal, private or narrow for public interest as did their colleagues in other English-speaking countries.14 In 1964, Rome could quote several literary critics of Canadian Literature—Roy Daniells and Milton Wilson, for example—who, Rome summarizes, concluded “that by the very nature of the position of Jewish culture in the Canadian frame of life, it is more than coincidental—it is natural and almost inevitable—that Jewish poets and Jewish novelists should write the most characteristically Canadian works, truly expressive of the Canadian spirit and artistically descriptive of the Canadian scene.”15 From a twenty-first century perspective, after more than four further decades of literary history, theory, and publication, the claim that Jewish Canadian literature is the most characteristic or most representative of all Canadian Literature seems hyperbolically essentialist and untenable. With the explosion of Canadian writing in the late 1960s and 1970s and the ongoing political and aesthetic debates about the various versions, visions, and constructions of the multicultural nation “Canada,” Jewish Canadian literature may be better understood as the first of a growing number of ethnic minority literatures which are contributing to the Canadian literary mosaic. 14 Rome, “Jews in Canadian Literature,” vii. 15 Ibid., ix. — 400 —

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Within Canada, however, the labels “ethnic” and “multicultural” (and how they are defined and applied) are problematic, if not derogatory. In an interview with Marlene Kadar, Mordecai Richler reacts testily to the interviewer’s asking him what he thinks of ethnicity: My initial response is anger because I find the term tiresome and pejorative. What is ethnic” writing, and why is a Scots Canadian “ethnic”? Or why is Jewish “ethnic”? Or Ukrainian? This is a country made up of many people, thirty per cent of whom are neither English nor French. And within twenty years the majority will not be English or French. It’s a pejorative WASP term. If you look up the Oxford Dictionary definition, “ethnic” is very insulting. [. . .] No writer ever thinks about whether he’s ethnic or not ethnic. He writes about what he knows.16 An echo of Richler’s sentiments can be found in the views of Matt Cohen. Interviewed by Mervin Butovsky, Matt Cohen comments: First of all, I’m not sure I like the words “ethnic writer.” Ethnicity in Canada, or multiculturalism, always seems to imply that there are two dominant streams—the English and the French—and in addition a bunch of minorities who occupy marginal positions and run different kinds of restaurants. I’m not sure this any longer reflects the Canadian reality.[ . . .] “Ethnic writing” is [. . .] almost by definition writing outside what is supposed to be the mainstream—itself hardly in existence. At this point I think it’s fair to say that critics of Canadian literature have no consensus about what either the canon is or what the criteria for “Canadian literature” are supposed to be. Like the writers, they have fragmented into postmodernists, regionalists, feminists, internationalists, etc.17

16

Marlene Kadar, “Interview of Mordecai Richler,” in Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions, ed. Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond (Toronto: Oxford, 1990), 41-42, 43. 17 Butovsky, “Interview of Matt Cohen,” 173-175. — 401 —

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Refusing the label “ethnic writer,” Cohen later equivocates about even being a “Jewish” writer: “In fact, to tell the truth, I don’t know if I even regard myself as a ‘Canadian Jewish artist.’ It seems like a very ambiguous role to take on.”18 Indeed, the role of the Jewish writer in the post-Shoah world is fraught with ambiguity, especially for those writers whose works eschew Jewish content. If in 1990 Matt Cohen was unsure or ambivalent about his role as a Canadian Jewish or Jewish Canadian artist, in 1994 he wrote an article in which he expresses his sense of alienation as a Canadian Jew. In “Outside Spain” (hereafter “OS”), his brief account about both the conception of The Spanish Doctor (1984), his first “Jewish” novel, and the research he conducted in Spain in preparation for its writing, Cohen refers obliquely to his status as a perpetual tourist—even in his native land: “I’d visited many countries, always enjoyed them, sometimes learned something about them as a result, but always felt, naturally, like an outsider, even if well tolerated. Just like being in Canada, I would say to myself, which had been my explanation of why I found travelling so easy” (“OS,” 184). Upon arrival in Spain, Cohen is shocked to see that everybody looks exactly like him: “Suddenly I knew, with a conviction that has never left me, that I was in the land of my ancestors” (“OS,” 184). In the course of his research, Cohen connected with the ruins of Spanish Jewry, destroyed through the Inquisition and expulsion, and realized that he, as a Jew, is inextricably linked to two momentous and contiguous events in world history: the expulsion and survival of the exiled Spanish Jewish remnant and the founding of New World empires: But now when I looked at the people on the streets of Madrid they were utter strangers. I was no longer inside them—instead I was in the nightmare their ancestors and mine had shared—the nightmare that for some had ended in death and exile, for others the beginnings of a new and dazzling empire. (“OS,” 187) The New World Jewish artist, exiled from the Old World, still maintains a connection with ancestral memories and identities, despite his estrangement. 18 Ibid., 178. — 402 —

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The questions of ancestry, continuity, and identity connote a sense both of community and of belonging. In an article titled “The Writer and Canadian Literature,” Adele Wiseman constructs a confident selfdefinition: All my young life I knew perfectly well who I was. I was a North Winnipeg kid of Ukrainian Jewish immigrant parents, living among immigrants of about twentyeight other nationalities, all immigr[a]nts of about one to four or five generations back, except for the original immigrant Indians. And I was building Canada, helping to hammer out a country out of conflict and stress and poverty and cooperation and hope. A depression and a war or so later, in a period of relative prosperity in which I emerged into my full estate as an adult, I suddenly discovered Chicken Little running around the country yelling I was a Canadian and therefore didn’t have an identity; the sky is falling in; who am I? Who could believe such nonsense? No writer of fiction. “I am that I am.” As a Canadian writer I am writing Canada.19 However, the striking reference to the Almighty identifying Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14 adds a note of burning ambiguity to Wiseman’s assured declaration that she is simply a Canadian writer. “I am that I am” is a powerful evocation of an existential and eternal Jewish identity. Thus Wiseman is not only “a Canadian writer [. . .] writing Canada,” she is simultaneously a Jewish Canadian writer writing the Diaspora. The Jewish Canadian artist feels a sense of estrangement in his or her own homeland. And government-mandated multiculturalism cannot assuage this overwhelming paradox of belonging. To be termed a “multicultural writer” is as inadequate and limiting a description as the label “ethnic writer.” The debate over the definition of the problematic concept/metaphor of multiculturalism and its implementation is heatedly engaged in Canada. Although Canadian multiculturalism may have become a system which constantly reminds those from elsewhere not 19 Adele Wiseman, “The Writer and Canadian Literature,” in Memoirs fo a Book Molesting Childhood and Other Essays, ed. Adele Wiseman (Toronto: Oxford, 1987), 83. — 403 —

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to forget their cultural identity, in the post-Shoah world even the most assimilated Jews know that to forget or ignore their identity can be fatal—for an antisemite may remind them that they are Jews. Post-Shoah Jewish Canadian literature reminds readers that the diaspora Jews of Canada have always lived within a multicultural, multi-ethnic mosaic of third, schizoid, and multiple solitudes. Being described as “ethnic” or “multicultural” appears to have marginalized much of Canada’s Jewish writing. Despite the inclusion of a few prominent Jewish Canadian writers such as Henry Kreisel, A. M. Klein, Adele Wiseman, Mordecai Richler, and Leonard Cohen in the canon of Canadian literature, most remain peripheral, their work present only in specialized anthologies of Jewish Canadian writing20 and absent from the syllabi of post-secondary level courses in Canadian literature. Post-Shoah Jewish Canadian literature expresses Jewish alienation and marginalization and contests—through both the content and the literary forms into which it is shaped—versions of a Canada constructed as an exclusively bicultural entity. Jewish Canadian literature resists being categorized as simply “ethnic” or “multicultural” writing—tantamount to being excluded from a putatively and objectively pure mainstream— and thus contributes, from a uniquely mosaic perspective, to the ongoing re-reading, redefining, and reconstructing of literary solitudes, canons, and mosaics. Alexander Hart

20 Seven such anthologies of Jewish Canadian writing have been published: The Spice Box: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Writing (1981), compiled by Gerri Sinclair and Morris Wolfe; Mirror of a People: Canadian Jewish Experience in Poetry and Prose (1985), compiled by Sheldon Oberman and Elaine Newton; Essential Words: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry (1985), edited by Seymour Mayne; Canadian Jewish Short Stories (1990), compiled by Miriam Waddington; Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry (1996), edited by Seymour Mayne and B. Glenn Rotchin; Not Quite Mainstream: Canadian Jewish Short Stories (2002), compiled by Norman Ravvin; and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada: An Anthology (2004), compiled by Michael Greenstein. — 404 —

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Works Referenced in the Article Allen, Ted [Allan Herman]. “Cadieux Street Childhood.” New Frontier [Toronto] 1.12(1937): 10-11. ------. “Guilty! Mr. Croll: A Story of Hawkesbury.” New Frontier [Toronto,] 1.9 (1937): 7-8. ------. “An Interview with Ernest Hemingway.” New Frontier [Toronto,] 2.3 (1937): 16-17. ------. “Lies My Father Told Me.” Canadian Short Stories. Ed. Robert Weaver and Helen James. Toronto: Oxford, 1952, 41-44. ------. Love Is a Long Shot: A Novel. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1984. ------. This Time a Better Earth: A Novel. New York, W. Morrow, 1939. ------. “Zaide and Me: A Short Story of Montreal.” [Canadian Jewish] Congress Bulletin [Montreal] 6.3 (1949): 10-11, 21. [Reprinted as “Lies My Father Told Me.”] Allan, Ted, and Roger MacDougall. Double Image: A Play in Three Acts. French’s Acting Editions 686. London: French, 1957). Allan, Ted, and Sydney Gordon. The Scalpel, The Sword: The Story of Dr. Norman Bethune. First edition: Boston: Little, Brown, 1952; Revised edition: Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971, 1989. Ascher, Isidore G[ordon]. Doom of Destiny. London: Diprose and Bateman, 1895. ------. An Odd Man’s Story. London: E. Stock; Montreal: W. F. Brown, 1889. ------. A Social Upheaval. London: Greening, 1898. ------. Voices from the Hearth: A Collection of Verses. Montreal: John Lovell; New York: D. Appleton, 1863. Bezmogis, David. The Free World. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2011. ------. Natasha and Other Stories. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2004. Boyarsky, Abraham. A Gift of Rags. Toronto: Lester, 1995. Cohen, Leonard, Beautiful Losers. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart; New York: Viking, 1966). ------. The Favourite Game. New York: Bantam, 1971. ------. Flowers for Hitler. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964. ------. Let Us Compare Mythologies. Illus. Freda Guttman. McGill Poetry Series 1. Montreal: Contact Press, 1956. ------. Songs from a Room. Columbia, CS 9767, 1969. L.P. — 405 —

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------. Songs of Leonard Cohen. Columbia, CS 9533, 1968. L.P. ------. The Spice-Box of Earth. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1961. Cohen, Matt[hew]. The Colours of War. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977. ------. The Disinherited. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. ------. Emotional Arithmetic. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1990. ------. Flowers of Darkness. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981. ------. Nadine. (Markham: Viking, 1986. ------. “Outside Spain.” Canadian Literature 142/143 (1994): 183-87. ------. The Spanish Doctor. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984. ------. The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979. Collin, William Edwin. The White Savannahs. Toronto: Macmillan, 1936. Dewart, Edward Hartley. Selections from Canadian Poets; With Occasional Critical and Biographical Notes, and an Introductory Essay on Canadian Poetry. Montreal: John Lovell, 1864; Rpt. in Selections from Canadian Poets. Literature of Canada: Poetry and Prose in Reprint. Edited by Douglas Lochhead. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Edelstein, Hyman. Canadian Lyrics and Other Poems. Toronto: Briggs, 1916; Rpt. enl. ed. (Montreal: Belles Lettres, 1921. ------. From Judean Vineyards: Poems. Montreal: n.p., 1914. ------. Pine and Palm: Poems. Montreal: Capitol, 1927. ------. Spirit of Israel and Other Poems. Toronto: Ryerson, 1950. Engel, Howard. The Suicide Murders: A Benny Cooperman Mystery. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1980). Goliger, Gabriella. Girl Unwrapped. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010. ------. Song of Ascent. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2000. Greenstein, Michael. Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada: An Anthology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Hart, Adolphus Mordecai. Life in the Far West; or, The Comical, Quizzical, and Tragical Adventures of a Hoosier. Cincinnati: Pearsons, [1860?]. Heti, Sheila. How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life. 2010. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2012. ------. The Middle Stories. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2001. Kalla, Daniel. Pandemic. New York: Forge Books, 2003. Kalman, Judith. The Country of Birches. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1998. Klein, A[braham] M[oses]. Hath Not A Jew. New York: Behrman’s Jewish — 406 —

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Book House, 1940. ------. The Hitleriad. New York: New Directions, 1944. ------. Poems. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944. ------. The Rocking Chair and Other Poems. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1948. ------. The Second Scroll. 1951. New Canadian Library N22. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982. Kreisel, Henry. “The Almost Meeting.” In his The Almost Meeting, 1st ed. Edmonton: NeWest, 1981. 11-21. ------. Another Country: Writings By and About Henry Kreisel. Edited by Shirley Neuman. Western Canadian Literary Documents 7. Edmonton: NeWest, 1985. ------. The Betrayal. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964. ------. The Rich Man. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1948. Layton, Irving. Engagements: The Prose of Irving Layton. Edited by Seymour Mayne. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. ------. “Foreword, The Collected Poems [1971].” In Engagements: The Prose of Irving Layton. Edited by Seymour Mayne, 142-148. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972. ------. Here and Now. Montreal: First Statement, 1945. ------. A Red Carpet for the Sun. Jargon 35. Highland, NC: J. Williams, 1959; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1959. Levine, Allan Gerald. The Blood Libel. Winnipeg: Great Plains Fiction, 1997. Levine, Norman. The Angled Road. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart; London: W. Laurie, 1952. ------. “By a Frozen River.” In Canadian Jewish Short Stories, edited by Miriam Waddington, 100-110. Toronto: Oxford, 1990). ------. Canada Made Me. London: Putnam, 1958; Ottawa: Deneau and Greenberg, 1979); Erin: Porcupine’s Quill, 1993. ------. From a Seaside Town. Toronto: Macmillan, 1970; Ottawa: Deneau and Greenberg, 1980; Erin: Porcupine’s Quill, 1993; Reprint: She’ll Only Drag You Down: A Novel. Don Mills: Paperjacks, 1975. ------. Myssium. Ryerson Poetry Chap Books 131. Toronto: Ryerson, 1948. ------. One Way Ticket. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart; London: Secker and Warburg, 1961. Lighthall, William Douw. Songs of the Great Dominion: Voices from the — 407 —

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Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada. London: W. Scott, 1889. Reprint: Coles Canadiana Collection. Toronto: Coles, 1971. Jack Barry Ludwig. Above Ground: A Novel. Toronto and Boston: Little, Brown, 1968). ------. Confusions. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, [1963]. ------. A Woman of Her Age. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973. MacLennan, Hugh. Two Solitudes. Toronto: Collins, 1945. Marche, Stephen. Raymond and Hannah. New York: Mariner Books, 2005. Majzels, Robert. Apikoros Sleuth. Toronto: Mercury, 2004. ------. Hellman’s Scrapbook. (Dunvegan: Cormorant Books, 1992. Mandel, Eli. An Idiot Joy. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1967. ------. Life Sentence. Victoria: Press Porcépic, 1981. Maynard, Fredelle Bruser. Raisins and Almonds. Toronto: Doubleday, 1972. ------. The Tree of Life. Markham: Viking, 1988. Mayne, Seymour, ed. Essential Words: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1985. Mayne, Seymour, and B. Glen Rotchin, eds. Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1996. Maxwell, Edward [Ted Allan]. Quest for Pajaro. London: Heinemann, 1957. Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1996. ------. The Winter Vault. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2010. Nattel, Lilian. The River Midnight. Toronto: Knopf, 1999. New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors. Toronto: Macmillan, 1936. Oberman, Sheldon, and Elaine Newton, comps. Mirror of a People: Canadian Jewish Experience in Poetry and Prose. Winnipeg: Jewish Educational Publishing. of Canada, 1985. Pick, Alison. Far to Go. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2010. ------. The Sweet Edge. Vancouver: Raincoast, 2005. Ravel, Edeet. Ten Thousand Lovers. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003. Ravvin, Norman. Cafe des Westens: A Novel. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1991. ------. comp. Not Quite Mainstream: Canadian Jewish Short Stories. Calgary: Red Deer Press, 2001. Redhill, Michael. Martin Sloane. Toronto: Doubleday, 2001. — 408 —

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Richler, Mordecai. The Acrobats: A Novel. London: A. Deutsch, 1954. ------. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. London: A. Deutsch, 1959. ------. Barney’s Version. Toronto: Knopf, 1997. ------. A Choice of Enemies. London: A. Deutsch, 1957. ------. Cocksure: A Novel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. ------. The Incomparable Atuk. London: A. Deutsch, 1963. ------. Joshua Then and Now: A Novel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980. ------. St. Urbain’s Horseman: A Novel. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971. ------. Solomon Gursky Was Here. Markham: Viking, 1989. ------. Son of a Smaller Hero: A Novel. London: A. Deutsch, 1955. Roitman, Gina. Tell Me a Story, Tell Me the Truth. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2008. Ross, Stuart. Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. Toronto: ECW Press, 2011. Rotchin, B. Glen. The Rent Collector. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2005. Salinger, J[erome] D[avid]. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951 Sinclair, Gerri, and Morris Wolfe, comps. The Spice Box: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Writing. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1981. Steinfeld, J. J. “Dancing at the Club Holocaust.” 1986. Dancing at the Club Holocaust: Stories, New and Selected. Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1993, 31-41. Synge, Don [Hyman Edelstein]. The Higher Loyalty. Ottawa: Tower Books, 1946. Tarnow, David. A Collection of Solitudes. Toronto: Probably Press, 1968. Torgov, Morley. The Abramsky Variations. Toronto: Lester and Orpen, 1977. ------. A Good Place to Come From. Toronto: Lester and Orpen, 1974. ------. The Mastersinger from Minsk: An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery. Toronto: Dundurn, 2012. ------. Murder in A-Major: An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery. Toronto: Napoleon/Rendezvous, 2008. ------. The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick: A Novel. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1982. ------. St. Farb’s Day, 1st ed. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1990. Tulchinsky, Karen X., In Her Nature. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1995. Turnbull, Gael, Phyllis Webb, and E. W. Mandel. Trio: First Poems by Gael — 409 —

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Turnbull, Phyllis Webb, and E[lias] W[olf] Mandel. Toronto: Contact Press, 1954. Waddington, Miriam. Apartment Seven: Essays Selected and New. Studies in Canadian Literature. Toronto: Oxford, 1989. ------, ed. Canadian Jewish Short Stories. Toronto: Oxford, 1990. ------. Green World. Montreal: First Statement Press, 1945. ------. Summer at Lonely Beach and Other Stories. Oakville: Mosaic Press/ Valley Editions, 1982. Weintraub, William. The Underdogs. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979. ------. Why Rock the Boat?: A Novel. Boston: Little, Brown 1961. Weinzweig, Helen. Basic Black with Pearls. Anansi Fiction series 41. Toronto: Anansi Press,1980. ------. Passing Ceremony. Toronto: Anansi Press, 1973. ------. A View from the Roof: Stories. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 1989. Wex, Michael. Shlepping the Exile. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1993. Wiseman, Adele. Crackpot: A Novel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974. ------. The Sacrifice. 1956. Toronto: Macmillan, 1988. ------. “The Writer and Canadian Literature.” In Memoirs of a Book Molesting Childhood and Other Essays, edited by Adele Wiseman, 81-90. Toronto: Oxford, 1987.

For Further Study Butovsky, Mervin.“Interview of Matt Cohen.” In Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions, edited by Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond, 172-178. Toronto: Oxford, 1990. ------.“Irving Layton: The Invention of the Self.” In Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century, edited by Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky, 165-179. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1995. Creighton, Donald. Dominion of the North: A History of Canada. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944. Fisher, Esther Safer. “The Life and Poetry of Hyman Edelstein.” Canadian — 410 —

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Poetry 6 (1980). Web accessed, 29 Oct. 2011. Greenstein, Michael. Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish-Canadian Literature. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. Hutcheon, Linda, and Marion Richmond, eds. Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Toronto: Oxford, 1990. Kadar, Marlene. “Interview of Mordecai Richler.” In Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions, edited by Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond, 40-48. Toronto: Oxford, 1990. Pollock, Zailig. A. M. Klein: The Story of the Poet. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965. Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. [6 volumes.] Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer, 1967-70. Rome, David. “Jews in Canadian Literature.” In Jews in Canadian Literature: A Bibliography, rev. ed., vol. 1, compiled by David Rome, i-xiv. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress and Jewish Public Library, 1964. Steinberg, M. W. “Introduction,” 1969. In The Second Scroll, by A. M. Klein. New Canadian Library N22. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982, vii-xvi. Tulchinsky, Gerald. “The Third Solitude: A. M. Klein’s Jewish Montreal, 1910-1950.” Journal of Canadian Studies 19.2 (1984): 96-112. Waddington, Miriam. A. M. Klein. Studies in Canadian Literature 10. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970. Watters, Reginald Eyre. A Checklist of Canadian Literature and Background Materials1628-1960, 1959, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972.

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XXIV Jews and Jewishness in French Literature

The presence of Jewish characters in the French-Canadian novel is a phenomenon that needs to be accounted for. There is no question of isolated cases or of a fortuitous choice of a single writer. Indeed, this is a phenomenon whose significance spreads beyond literature; to understand it we must consider the question of the presence in French-Canadian writing not only of the Jew but the Stranger. —Naïm Kattan1

What does the Jewish presence in Quebec literature mean? If, as Pierre Nepveu states, “The presence of Jewishness, in its referential and cultural reality, remains a marginal factor in the literature of French Quebecers,”2 this presence has nonetheless increased over the years, particularly recently. This may be attributed, on the one hand, to the increasing number of Jewish authors writing in French in Quebec and, on the other hand, to the continually growing interest on the part of francophones in Quebec in the Jewish community that has historically formed a “third solitude” in Canada.3 The first scholarly research on this subject, written by Victor Teboul in the 1970s, dealt with the image of the Jew in Quebec literary and artistic creation.4 By putting the accent on ethnic stereotypes, such an interpretation presents a considerable difficulty. Later work, by critics such as Pierre Nepveu, attempted to understand Jewishness in the context of Quebec literary discourse. This second perspective, which focuses on a larger cultural reference, has the advantage of bringing to the fore issues of identity as well as the cultural, linguistic, and existential factors that underlie references to Jewishness among Quebec writers.5 1 Naïm Kattan, “Jews and French Canadians,” in One Church, Two Nations?, edited by P. Leblanc and A. Edinborough (Toronto: Longman’s, 1968), 196. 2 Nepveu refers here to authors of French Canadian descent. Pierre Nepveu, “Désordre et vacuité: figures de la judéité québécoise-française,” Revue Études françaises, 37: 3 (2001) 69. 3 Michael Greenstein, Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish-Canadian Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 232. 4 Victor Teboul, Mythe et images du juif au Québec (Montreal: Éditions de Lagrave, 1977). 5 Cf. particularly Pierre Nepveu, “Désordre et vacuité : figures de la judéité québécoise-française,” Revue Études françaises 37: 3 (2001): 69-84. — 412 —

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Therefore, it permits us to transcend cliches and to avoid over-simplistic analysis. In this spirit, we will examine the representations both of Jews and Jewishness in French literature, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. A Family Affair For a period of fifty years, the French Canadian novel was definitely a “family affair.”6 Almost no outsiders had a place in it; only characters of French Canadian origin and Roman Catholic faith were present. However, there were a few exceptions: the novels L’influence d’un livre (1837) by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé fils7 and Charles Guérin (1853) by PierreJoseph-Olivier Chauveau do make vague allusions to Jewish characters. In L’influence d’un livre, the character Mareuil, who is about to commit a murder, is compared to Shakespeare’s Shylock; in Charles Guérin, there is a character, “bonhomme Shouffe,” who is a pawnbroker. Cliches like this, associated with minor characters, appear in a number of minor literary productions published up to the Second World War, whose authors hardly made a mark on Quebec literature.8 While revealing a profound ignorance concerning Jews and Jewishness, such a situation also reveals a dominant trait in French Canadian literature: fear of “the other.” Indeed, for several decades, each character coming from an “outside” community appeared as a “foreigner” menacing French Canadian identity. As Gilles Marcotte states, if “the English constituted an openly revealed menace,” the Jew constituted “an indirect, subtle menace.” 9 Beyond ethnic stereotypes and from a universal perspective, Jews as a minority group and as victims of persecution served as a “mirror” of French Canadian society in several literary works. Carla Fratta, in emphasizing that identifications with the Jewish people are somewhat present in many texts of Quebec’s literature, points out as an example

6

Gilles Marcotte, “Le romancier canadien-français et son Juif,” dans Naïm Kattan (dir.), Juifs et canadiens, deuxième cahier du Cercle juif de langue française, Éditions du Jour, Montréal, 1967, 63. 7 Cette oeuvre est le premier roman canadien-français. 8 Voir à ce sujet Ben-Z. Shek, “L’image des Juifs dans le roman québécois,” dans Pierre Anctil et Gary Caldwell (eds.), Juifs et réalités juives au Québec, Montréal, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1984, 257-288. 9 Gilles Marcotte, Op. cit., 64. — 413 —

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the Complainte du Canadien errant (1842) by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie.10 Written after the events which led to the Rebellion of the Patriotes of 1837-1838, this lament imitated the stereotype of the “wandering Jew” both in its title and in its words: A wandering Canadien Banished from his home Journeying while crying In foreign lands.11 Another example of this phenomenon, reported by Pierre Nepveu, is the speech of Judge Basile Routhier on the Feast of St. John the Baptist in 1880: Gentlemen, the fathers of the French Canadian nation were chosen by Providence. Like the prophet Ezekiel, they felt the spirit of God which lifted them and carried them from France to the exiles on the shores of the St. Lawrence! Like Abraham, father of the Jewish people.12 Despite its simplistic character, this sort of analogy reflects a general misunderstanding of the Jews on the part of French Canadians. In this case, where the differences between Christianity and Judaism were rendered hazy, it was to the benefit of what might be considered, in certain respects, a common destiny. According to a widely held messianic discourse, the Jew offered French Canadians “an exemplary image of their alienation and a promise of liberation.” 13 After a few decades in which they were absent, Jewish characters reappeared in Quebec literature 10 Carla Fratta,“L’altérité juive dans quatre romans québécois, ” L’Altérité dans la littérature québécoise, actes du Collotaria Editrice Bologna, 1987, 162, cité par Élisabeth Nardout-Lafarge, “Noms et stéréotypes juifs dans l’Avalée des avalés,” Revue Voix et images, Université du Québec à Montréal, 18 : 1 (52) (1992): 89-104. 11 “Un Canadien errant / Banni de ses foyers, / Parcourait en pleurant / Des pays étrangers.” 12 Messieurs, les pères de la nationalité canadienne-française ont été de ces élus de la Providence. Comme le prophète Ézéchiel, ils ont un jour senti l’esprit de Dieu qui les soulevait et les emportait de la terre de France vers les exilés des bords du Saint-Laurent! Comme Abraham, le père du peuple juif. Basile Routhier, “Le rôle de la race française au Canada,” cité par Pierre Nepveu, “Désordre et vacuité: figures de la judéité québécoise-française,” Revue Études françaises, Université de Montréal, 37: 3 (2001): 69-84. 13 Gilles Marcotte, Op. cit., 65. — 414 —

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and this mirror effect reaffirmed itself in several novels from the 1950s and 1960s, such as La dormeuse éveillée (1955) by Yvette Naubert, Éthel et le terroriste (1964) by Claude Jasmin, and Quand j’aurai payé ton visage (1962) by Claire Martin. However, these minor novels offer an image of the Jew and Jewishness that remains, all told, superficial. A parallel situation can be discerned among Anglophone Jewish writers in Montreal: Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, and Jack Ludwig portrayed in their works caricatured French Canadian characters who are naive, vulgar, and Catholic.” From “Stranger” to “Strangeness” After the Second World War, a new image of the Jew emerges. Even though the Jew is portrayed as a stranger, he is not merely, as was previously the case, the object of a systematic rejection on the part of a French Canadian community displaying the vulnerability of its minority position. This change reflects the socio-cultural changes of the period: after the War, French Canadian society, which was on the road to changing its identity to Québécois, was undergoing an important redefinition of its identity. In a period of modernization and Americanization, its structures of traditional legitimacy were in the process of eroding, removing the bases upon which French Canadian identity had rested until then. At that point, what it meant to be a “FrenchCanadian” became hazy and uncertain. This wavering is perceptible in the novels by Manitoba-born novelist Gabrielle Roy; it is reflected in the sort of Jewishness which characterizes many of her works. Thus in Alexandre Chenevert, the protagonist, a neurasthenic bank official, is overwhelmed by his inability to decipher the signs in Hebrew characters in stores on St. Lawrence Boulevard. According to Nepveu, “Yiddish is never neutral; sometimes, it is the sign of alienation, of an inability to read the city; at another time, it brings with it tension and conflict or takes on memory and emotion on a basis of community existence.”14 In this sense, Jewish characters in Roy evoke strangeness, lack of roots, and cosmopolitanism. 14 Pierre Nepveu, “Traduit du yiddish: échos d’une langue inconnue,” dans Pierre Anctil, Norman Ravvin et Sherry Simon (eds.), New Readings of Yiddish Montreal/Traduire le Montréal yiddish (Ottawa, Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2007), 72-75. — 415 —

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It is not until the publication of Aaron (1954) by Yves Thériault that a complex image of Jews and Jewishness in French-Canadian literature appeared. The axis of the novel is the intergenerational conflict between Moishe, an Orthodox Jew, and his grandson, Aaron, who has adopted modern values and has abandoned Yiddish for English. In certain ways, this echoes the dilemma felt by French Quebecers, used to linguistic conflicts and fearful of losing their own language to the dominance of English.15 The following citation evokes the conflict when Moishe, in an English marked by a heavy Yiddish accent, ordered his grandson Aaron not to stray far from home: - I muss zee you.... I am zo vorried when you go avay.... Il ânonnaît, ses lèvres charnues tremblotaient dans la barbe grisonnante. Aaron piétinait sur place, ne cherchant même pas à cacher sa hâte de sortir. Alors, Moishe, lentement, lui répéta l’objurgation en yiddish. Ce fus pis, car Aaron, grossier pour la première fois de sa vie, lança: - Why do you speak Yiddish to me? Isn’t English good enough? Why don’t you speak white, like everybody else around here?16 A few decades later, the ability to manipulate languages, as a trait of Jewish characters, appears in the writings of Francine Noël as an attempt to emancipate herself from an uncomfortable minority situation. For example, in Babel, prise 2, the character Allan, the narrator’s lover, indeed says, “We Jews have the talent to juggle languages, to slide from one to another. Sometimes this permits us to sew up the game.”17 The mirror effect previously associated with Jewishness is also perceptible in a novel of the Quiet Revolution, l’Avalée des avalés (1966) by Réjean Ducharme. The protagonist, Berenice Einberg, comes from a family divided by religion: father and daughter are Jews,18 while the mother 15 Ces deux aspects ont été soulignés respectivement par Pierre Nepveu, dans son article “Traduit du yiddish: échos d’une langue inconnue” et par Victor Teboul dans Mythe et images du juif au Québec. 16 Yves Thériault, Aaron, Éditions Typo, 1995 [1954], 27-28. 17 Francine Noël, Babel, prise 2 (Outremont: VLB Éditeur, 1990), 110. 18 Since Judaism is traditionally transmitted in the maternal rather than the paternal line, we have here a subversive feature of the novel that has not been noticed by the critics. — 416 —

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and son are Catholic, a situation that symbolizes the Canadian context, divided by a conflict between Anglo-Protestants and French Catholics. According to Naïm Kattan, who understands the Jewish “otherness” in the novel as a metaphor, “Ducharme follows the same procedure as a number of other French-Canadian novelists. The Jews become virtually an essential character: [...] this Jew, however [is] someone in whom the French-Canadian can find an alter ego.”19 For his part, Gilles Marcotte explains the Jewishness of the protagonist in this way: Berenice is Jewish because to be Jewish is to be humiliated and rebellious more than anyone else. She is a Jew opposed to all and opposed to the Jews themselves [...] Berenice Einberg is a Jew like no other that has been or ever will be. She possesses the truth of the language that created her.20 Élisabeth Nardout-Lafarge, who feels that this novel marks the end of the “Jewish stereotype,” states that “Jewish identity is at one and the same time an excuse for a discourse on the linguistic situation, a parody of the philosophy of Nietzsche and possibly much more ... the medium for a tragedy.”21 Nardout-Lafarge notices two currents running through the work of Ducharme: on the one hand, Berenice of l’Avalée, whose father is an Ashkenazi, is “a Jew opposed to the Jews themselves,” while the character of Juba in Dévadé (1990) is a Sephardi victim of exclusion. All in all, Aaron and l’Avalée des avalés illustrate a change in the way Jewishness is seen among Quebec francophone authors. Among other things, this is due to two historical events: the Holocaust, which awakened the sensitivity of the francophones toward the Jews, and the Quiet Revolution (1960-1966), a turbulent period that definitively pushed Quebec toward modernity.

19 Naïm Kattan, Op. cit., 112. 20 Gilles Marcotte, “Le canadien-français et son Juif ,” quoted by Élisabeth Nardout-Lafarge, “ Noms et stéréotypes juifs dans L’avalée des avalés, ” Revue Voix et images 18: 1 (1992): 90-91. 21 Ibid., 91. — 417 —

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The Contribution of Authors of Jewish Origin to Quebec Literature The Quiet Revolution, which resulted in the attenuation of the symbolic foundations of Quebec society, especially in terms of religion, caused a redefinition of Quebec’s national identity. In this context, there emerged a literary discourse in which depictions of Jewishness were significantly different than previous ones, because they stemmed from the interior perspective of the authors. Such texts as Alice Parizeau’s Voyage en Pologne (1962), Survivre (1964) and La Québécoise en Europe “rouge” (1965), contributed to this change of perspective. In these novels, the author, a Polish Jew in origin who was interned in a German DP camp after the War, depicts her painful European experience in a context of violence. This was followed by a trilogy written in the 1980s which made Parizeau well-known in North America and Europe: Les lilas fleurissent à Varsovie (1981), La Charge des sangliers (1982), and Ils se sont connus à Lwow (1985). These autobiographical works depict a Polish saga deeply affected by the war. Some time after Parizeau’s appearance, Monique Bosco, an author of Viennese Jewish origins, followed suit with novels like La femme de Loth (1970) and Jéricho (1971), which expressed her Jewish origins and her interpretations of biblical characters. It is worth noting that Bosco’s literary career was preceded by her University of Montreal thesis entitled L’isolement dans le roman canadien-français (1953). While echoing the position of the author as an immigrant, the subject taken up by Bosco reflects, from an outside point of view, a characteristic trait of French Canadian literature. Both Parizeau and Bosco were educated in French, and they both helped to deconstruct stereotypes of Jewishness within Quebec literature. In this sense, their works prefigured, among others, the subsequent development of writing by women and immigrants, literary currents that left their mark on the 1970s and 1980s. In hindsight, we must recognize that Gilles Marcotte made sense when he wrote, at the end of his 1967 article “Le romancier canadienfrançais et son Juif”: The Jewish character has entered into our mythology, more so than in our circle of acquaintances. How could it have been otherwise? A truly Jewish novel which pro— 418 —

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foundly explores the depths of the Jewish soul will never be written in French Canada other than by a Jew ... who is as French Canadian as Adele Wiseman and Mordecai Richler are English Canadian Jews, and as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud are American Jews.22 Jewishness and Immigrant Writing Even though Marcotte’s statement presents us with an essentialist view of ethnicity, it truly expresses the spirit of an era that is now gone by. We would need to wait for the emergence of Jewish writers who became Quebecers in order to see faithful representations of Jewishness appear in Quebec literature. In this respect, two names need to be mentioned: Naïm Kattan and Régine Robin, both of whom initiated a current of immigrant writing in Quebec at the beginning of the 1980s. The founder of the Cercle juif de la langue française, which fostered links between French Quebec and Jews, Kattan has written more than thirty books which recount the meeting of different cultures, such as Adieu Babylone (1975) and La fortune du passager (1989), in which Jewishness is implicit in the depictions of the foreigner and the exile. In 1980, Régine Robin published La Québécoite, depicting the journey of a woman who immigrated to Montreal, which launched her literary career in Quebec. In many novels, such as Le deuil de l’origine (1993) and L’immense fatigue des pierres (1996), where the Yiddish language represents the annihilation of the victims of the Holocaust, Robin expresses a profound sense of Jewishness against the background of the Second World War. Globalization and New Boundaries of Jewishness In recent years, a good number of works dealing with Jewishness have enriched Quebec literature. These very diverse writings represent multiple points of view. It must be stated that during the 1990s globalization served to break up national divisions and consequently to redefine identities. Quebec francophone authors born in foreign countries, who used to be called “immigrant writers,” have now become a part of the Quebec literary establishment. There naturally followed a redefinition of French 22 Gilles Marcotte, Op. cit., 68. — 419 —

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Quebec’s concept of Jewishness. Some authors became interested in the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, as in the case of Anne-Élaine Cliche in Rien et autres souvenirs (1998), a portrayal of an Orthodox Jewish family. Others are more interested in the meeting of cultures in Montreal, such as Myriam Beaudoin, who paints a picture of French Quebecers and members of the Hassidic community in Hadassa (2006). In a parallel development, Montreal Jewish writers depict their own community: in Kippour (2006), Marc-Alain Wolf deals with Jewish identity and its transmission; with her short story collection Lekhaïm!, Malka Zipora, a Hassidic Jew from Outremont, has given a portrayal of the daily life of Hassidic women. In 2009, Catherine Mavrikakis published Le ciel de Bay City, a novel that speaks of the transgenerational transmission of the Shoah with an American background. Finally, my own book of poetry, Le sang des ruines (2010), gives voice to the narratives of two Holocaust survivors in Quebec’s literary space. Essentially, the various representations of Jewishness in Quebec literature reflect the evolution of French Canadian society to the present. At the end of the nineteenth century, Jews represented a menacing “Other” as well as a reflection of “Self.” This sort of characterization was replaced in the literary discourse of the 1960s to the 1990s and beyond by depictions of Jewish experience as well as by new interpretations of Jewishness and of Judaism. The meeting of different cultures, preservation and transmission of identity, memory, relationships, and the trauma of the Second World War are some of the major themes with which these representations resonate. During the last few years, the increase in literary productions which deal with Jewishness indicates a growing interest in this subject in Quebec. It also reflects the erosion of cultural barriers as a result of globalization. Today, Quebec identity is made up of multiple elements. Needless to say, it is no longer necessary to be either Jewish or Québécois to contribute to a nuanced image of Jewishness in Quebec literature. Chantal Ringuet

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For Further Study Marcotte, Gilles. “Le romancier canadien-français et son Juif,” dans Naïm Kattan (dir.), Juifs et canadiens, deuxième cahier du Cercle juif de langue française. Montreal: Éditions du Jour, 1967. Nepveu, Pierre. “Désordre et vacuité: figures de la judéité québécoise-française,” Revue Études françaises 37:3 (2001): 69-84. Shek, Ben-Z. “L’image des Juifs dans le roman québécois,” dans Juifs et réalités juives au Québec, Montréal, Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, edited by Pierre Anctil and Gary Caldwell, 257-288. Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1984. Teboul, Victor. Mythe et images du juif au Québec. Montreal: Éditions de Lagrave, 1977.

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XXV Jews and Canadian Art

In the late nineteenth century, eastern European Jews began arriving in Canada in large numbers. From that time until the present, Canadian Jewish artists have been active in the visual arts, not limiting themselves to Jewish subject matter but creating paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations and performance art on an array of themes that convey the development of Canadian art. Their practice makes evident the diversity and open-mindedness of Jewish culture. The first section of this essay offers an overview of these artists through the 1950s, a time period during which little or no Jewish content is referenced. The entries follow a similar format: a description of the artist’s background and examples of significant contributions. In the second section, encompassing the 1960s and moving forward, only those artists who also created works related directly to Judaism are included. Here, the text mainly describes the subject matter of specific Jewishrelated works. The Six-Day War (1967), which precipitated a revival of Jewish identification with Zionism and transformed the historic image of the Jewish people and the Israeli state, undoubtedly accounts for the substantial increase in Jewish content in art works beginning in this period. In concert with these developments there was also a larger public discourse on the Holocaust and the start of an in-depth and widespread consideration of Holocaust themes in art. The last section briefly considers Jewish artists as educators, exhibition venues and permanent collections that have supported Jewish artists, and the role of Jewish art dealers and collectors in promoting Canadian artists, including those of Jewish origin. Artists from the Late Nineteenth Century Only two Jewish artists from the late 1800s, both highly accomplished, are noted in the record of Canadian art history: William Raphael (18331914) and Henry Mortikar Rosenberg (1868-1947). William Raphael, a Montreal painter, was born in Nakel, Prussia. As a student at the Berlin School of Fine Art under portraitist Johann — 422 —

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Edward Wolff and genre and history painter Karl Begas, he acquired a Biedermeier Realist approach to nature. Raphael left Europe in 1856 and passed briefly through New York City before settling in Montreal. His renown as a portraitist was such that he was invited to paint influential political, religious, and society figures, including British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Canada. While portraiture was the means by which Raphael earned much of his living, he is known today for his lively genre scenes of rural and urban life. In Immigrants in Montreal, 1866 (now titled Behind Bonsecours Market), he captures the immigrant experience and bustling waterfront activity of the city, and can be seen at the centre of the painting carrying the tools of his trade. Although active in Montreal’s fledgling Jewish community and identified as the first Jewish artist in Canada, Raphael did not produce Jewish-themed art. Rather, he integrated himself into the city’s art scene in both subject matter and style. He regularly exhibited with the Society of Canadian Artists and the Art Association of Montreal and was a charter member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Henry Mortikar Rosenberg came to Nova Scotia from the United States in the final years of the nineteenth century. Having received art training in Chicago, Munich, Paris, Florence, and Venice, where he studied painting and etching under James MacNeill Whistler, he became principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax (now the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) in 1898, a position he held until 1910. Rosenberg’s lasting legacy in Canada, and Nova Scotia in particular, was the founding of the Nova Scotia Museum of Fine Arts in 1910, now known as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. An engraver and painter of landscapes and seascapes, Rosenberg drew on his surroundings to evoke the mood of Halifax and Dartmouth. In 1934 he returned to the United States to retire in Citronelle, Alabama. Montreal Jewish Artists Beginning in the 1930s By the 1930s Jewish artists were committed participants in the Canadian art scene, contributing to the transformation of the modern art idiom. The 1987 exhibition Jewish Painters and Modernity: 1930–1945 (Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, now the Segal Centre for Performing Arts) and the 2008–2009 exhibition Jewish Painters of Montreal: Witnesses of Their Time, 1930–1948 (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, — 423 —

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Quebec City and McCord Museum, Montreal), both curated by Esther Trépanier, examine how a group of Montreal Jewish artists broke away from the prevailing nationalistic narrative of landscape art to focus on urban life, street scenes, proletarian themes, social issues, and new stylistic expressions. Despite the common interests of the artists, each had a unique profile and different background. The diversity of the Jewish artists of this period is revealed in the descriptions below. Eric Goldberg (1890–1969), born in Berlin, Germany, was considered an elder statesman of this group. Before settling in Montreal in 1928, he studied at the École des beaux-arts in Paris (1906–1910), the Berlin Academy of Art, and the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, where he was a student (1911–1915) and then a teacher (1924–1926). His paintings of women, harlequins, flowers and Quebec’s Gaspésie region have a romantic, lyrical quality. Alexander Bercovitch (1891–1951), born in Kherson, Russia, painted icons before leaving Russia to study at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy, the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and briefly in St. Petersburg. After working as a stage decorator in Odessa and Moscow, and as an art instructor in Turkestan, he moved to Montreal in 1926. Bercovitch’s paintings are suffused with bright colours and bold forms, a result of the influences of German symbolism, Russian primitivism, and impressionism. Although his early work was thematically and stylistically tied to Europe, by the mid1930s he began to concentrate on his Canadian surroundings. Bercovitch was also an influential art instructor who taught at the YM-YWHA. Louis Muhlstock (1904–2001) was a draughtsman and painter who is highly regarded for his nudes and scenes of marginalized people, abandoned buildings, and deserted streets. Born in Narajow, Poland, he immigrated with his family to Montreal in 1911. At the close of World War I he began to study art, first at the Monument National and then at the Art Association of Montreal and the École des beaux-arts de Montréal. Muhlstock also studied in Paris (1928–1931), where he concentrated on figure painting and sketching, and exhibited at the Paris salons. His return to Montreal came in the midst of the Great Depression, and his images of that time are some of his most moving work. Herman Heimlich (1904–1986) was born in Hungary, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 1930 he moved to Montreal and subsequently established the School of Fine Arts. Heimlich also taught for many years at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. A figurative — 424 —

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artist inspired by Matisse and Cezanne, Heimlich created landscapes, still lifes, and portraits working largely in charcoal, watercolour, and pastel. Ernst Neumann (1907–1956), born in Budapest, Hungary, came to Montreal in 1912. He studied at the Art Association of Montreal and the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and eventually became well known for his work as a printmaker. Neumann took an active interest in the condition of the working class during the Depression, and his Unemployed series is made up of iconic images of Montreal urban life in the 1930s. His Unemployed no. 1 (1939) was used by the government on a flyer that publicized the plight of the homeless. Sam Borenstein (1908–1969) was born in Kalvarija, Lithuania, and as a child moved to Suwalki, Poland. He settled in Montreal and made his living as a garment factory worker, studying art in his spare time at the Monument National and with Ernst Neumann. Borenstein’s work evolved thematically throughout his career, from intimate portraits of his family and local Yiddish poets to images of the working class neighbourhood where he lived and vibrant expressionist paintings of rural Quebec. (fig. 1)

Fig. 1: Sam Borenstein, Composition in Blue and Red, ca. 1949, oil on canvas, 76.4 x 91.7 cm, Quebec City, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, anonymous gift, 2000.245. — 425 —

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Jack Beder (1910–1987) was born in Poland and immigrated to Montreal in 1926. Recognized for his images of 1930s and 1940s Montreal, in which he captures the city’s vibrant streets, lush parks, and cafés, Beder also painted landscapes, still lifes, gardens, portraits and figures. Known predominantly as a painter, he also produced prints, works on paper, and sculpture. Harry Mayerovitch (1910–2004) was a Montreal-born painter, architect, and caricaturist, and a socially engaged artist. During World War II he created propaganda posters for the National Film Board and produced his own political cartoons, a practice he continued throughout his life. Mayerovitch was a professor of architecture at McGill University in Montreal for almost forty years. Moe Reinblatt (1917–1979), born in Montreal, was a member of the Canadian Air Force and from 1944 to 1945 was an Official War Artist. Reinblatt taught at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal and the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. His subjects include sketches and paintings of the city, scenes of Mount Royal Park and genre scenes of working people. Sylvia Ary (b. 1923), the daughter of Alexander Bercovitch, was born in Moscow and came to Montreal with her family when she was three years old. Although her father strongly discouraged her interest in becoming an artist, she was supported by her art instructors, in particular her teacher at Baron Byng High School, Anne Savage. She was further encouraged when she won a scholarship to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School. Throughout her life Ary worked in several media, but she is singled out for her family scenes and portraits of distinguished figures such as Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Yiddish poet Itzik Manger. Also of note are her self-portraits and illustrations inspired by the literature of Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Coleridge and others. Ghitta Caiserman-Roth (1923–2005) was born in Montreal and studied under Alexander Bercovitch in the early 1930s and later in New York City at the Art Students League and Parson’s School of Design. As a young artist her work reflected her interest in social issues and was often described as social realism. After a short surrealist period her focus became increasingly abstract, with a brief return to figuration in her final years. In her work Caiserman-Roth frequently used dolls as images of death, sometimes overlaying the dolls with numbers that — 426 —

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evoked concentration camp serial numbers. This practice reflected the artist’s association with a girl named Nella, whose family had been lost in the Holocaust and who was adopted by Caiserman-Roth’s parents after her father met the girl in Lodz when he was general secretary of the Canadian Jewish Congress. An exhibition of Caiserman-Roth’s “flung dolls” was held in Germany in 1995. Rita Briansky (b. 1925), a painter and printmaker, came to Canada from Poland at the age of four. A student of Alexander Bercovitch, Anne Savage, and Jacques de Tonnancour in the early 1940s, Briansky also studied at the Art Students League in New York City from 1946 to 1948, and then returned to Montreal to teach at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. Throughout her career Briansky created several series on Jewish themes, including Kaddish, inspired by a return visit to her native Poland in 1995. The eighteen paintings that make up the series are a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust and are permanently installed on the third floor of Pavilion H in Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. The Expansion of the Art Scene in the 1950s and 1960s In 1959, in celebration of 200 years of Jewish life in Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress sponsored an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts featuring Canadian Jewish artists. The organizer was Harry Mayerovitch, who explained in the introduction to the catalogue that the commonalities found between the works of Jewish and other Canadian artists demonstrate that “Jews in Canada feel and express themselves as Canadians.” Among the thirty-eight artists represented in the exhibition, most lived in Montreal. In addition to the artists cited above, they included Marian Aronson (1913–2005, Montreal), Hyman Charney (1907–2002, Poland), Ludwig Flancer (1900–1980, Poland), Emme Frankenberg (b. 1896, Germany), Eric Freifeld (1919– 1984, Russia), Lily Freiman (1908–1986, Montreal), Abe Goldberg ( b.1910, Lithuania), Regina Seiden Goldberg (1897–1991, Rigaud, Quebec), Betty Goodwin (1923–2008, Montreal), Anne Greenstein (1914–2005, Poland), Nathan Hendel (b. 1900, Poland), Anne Kahane (b.1924, Austria), Diane Lauterman (d. 1947, Montreal), Sylvia Lefkowitz (b.1924, Montreal), Stanley Lewis (1930–2006, Montreal), Israel Malamud (b.1904, Russia), Joseph Prezament (1928–1983, Winnipeg), Albert B. Rappaport (b. 1905, Lithuania), Meyer Ryshpan — 427 —

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(1898–1985, Poland), Joseph Sher (b.1894, Russia), Tobie T. Steinhouse (b. 1925, Montreal) and Fanny Wiselberg (1906–1986). Only three lived elsewhere in Canada: Aba Bayefsky (1923–2001, Toronto), who resided in Toronto, Jack Markell (1919–1979, Winnipeg), who moved to North Vancouver in British Columbia in 1961, and Henry Ornstein (1918– 2008, Midland, Ontario), who made his home in Halifax. Eight years later, when Canada was celebrating its centennial year and the eyes of the world were on Expo 67 in Montreal, the works on view at the Expo revealed that Jewish artistic activity had spread across the country, particularly to Toronto. Several Jewish artists were commissioned to create works for a number of sites, including the Pavilion of Judaism, which held a series of exhibits that showcased Jewish thought and creativity. These artists included Sorel Etrog, Saul Field and Gerald Gladstone from Toronto, and Montrealer David Silverberg, who now resides in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Saul Field (1912–1987), a printmaker, painter, and filmmaker, was born in Montreal and studied at the city’s well known École des beaux-arts. After moving to Toronto, he and his wife Jean Townsend opened Upstairs Gallery, where they featured art by young and new Canadians. Field and Townsend invented the acidless Compotina plate, a spontaneous hand-pulled technique that suited Field’s energetic printmaking style. Field created a number of print series on Jewish themes, including Themes from the Old Testament and The Sholom Aleichem Suite. Gerald Gladstone (1929–2005), born in Toronto, completed three commissions for Expo 67, including a “space age” tower for the Engineering Institute of Canada and a thirty-seven-foot fire-breathing monster called Uki for the Canadian Pavilion. In 1959 he received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts that allowed him to study in London, England, where he befriended Henry Moore at the Royal College of Art. The time Gladstone spent with Moore marked the beginning of a lengthy period of work in figurative sculpture. Sorel Etrog (b. 1933) is a Romanian-born sculptor whose family immigrated to Israel. As a young man he studied at the Institute of Painting and Sculpture in Tel Aviv; in 1963 he moved to Toronto. Etrog was selected to represent Canada at the 1966 Venice Biennale alongside Alex Colville and Yves Gaucher. By the 1960s modernist sculpture began to grow in popularity in Canadian art circles and Etrog’s signature — 428 —

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knotted bronze style, inspired by French Cubist Jacques Lipchitz, secured his place at the forefront of Canadian sculptors, leading to a number of significant public commissions and exhibitions. David Silverberg (b. 1936) is a printmaker who has worked extensively on Jewish subjects, with a particular interest in the evolution of the Hebrew script. His well-known illustrations for the Song of Songs and The Psalms of David (1967) showcase his distinctive style, which combines realism with fantasy. Silverberg studied painting and drawing with Arthur Lismer at the Art Association of Montreal and engraving at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. In 1963 he began teaching printmaking at Mount Allison University, leaving in 1995 to become the artist in residence at Acadia University. In addition to printmaking Silverberg has worked as a photographer and set designer, as well as with batik and ceramics. At Expo 67 his art was featured in both the Pavilion of Judaism and the Atlantic Provinces Pavilion. (fig. 2)

Fig. 2: David Silverberg, Prague Haggadah, engraving, 18 x 29 in.

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Artists with Jewish-Themed Works from the 1970s to the Present In the late 1960s a majority of the more prominent Jewish artists began to explore their Jewish identity from several perspectives, including religious, social, cultural, and psychological ones. With some exceptions, these artists were born in Canada or came to Canada after the Second World War. Most were educated at major art schools across the country such as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Concordia University, the Ontario College of Art, the University of Toronto, York University, the University of British Columbia and the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. The artists discussed below, arranged in their birth order, have exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the country and internationally. Their works reflect on daily life, religious practices, the rise of feminism, biblical stories, Yiddish folk tales, Israel, and the Holocaust. Meyer Kirschenblatt (1916–2009) was born in Poland and settled in Toronto in 1934, where he earned a living first as a sweatshop worker and later painting houses. In due course he opened a paint and wallpaper store and worked there until his retirement in 1970. In 1967 his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, began interviewing her father about his life in Poland. Encouraged by his family, at the age of seventythree Kirshenblatt taught himself how to paint, which allowed him to document his memories of Jewish life in Poland prior to World War II. His motivation was to ensure that future generations knew as much about how Jews lived as about how they died. With bold colouration and a lively folk aesthetic, Kirshenblatt’s paintings and interviews with his daughter were woven into a narrative and published in a book titled They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood before the Holocaust. Since 2007 an exhibition of his work has been touring internationally, visiting the Jewish Museum in New York City and the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Gershon Iskowitz (1921–1988), a survivor of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, was born in Kielce, Poland. During his time in the Kielce ghetto and his internment in concentration camps he created a series of drawings illustrating his experiences at the hands of the Nazis. Iskowitz immigrated to Canada in 1949 and made his home in Toronto, where he continued to create dark images in remembrance of the camps. He eventually turned to landscape painting, which gradually — 430 —

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became more and more abstracted. Iskowitz represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1972. In 1985 he established the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation, which awards an annual prize to a mature artist. Aba Bayefsky (1923–2001), born in Toronto, was a member of the Canadian Air Force, and became an Official War Artist in 1944. He was one of the first Canadians to enter the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and over a period of many years he created images that document what he witnessed there. In 1998 the Canadian War Museum presented an exhibition of these images called Reflections on the Holocaust: The Art of Aba Bayefsky, many of which are now part of the War Museum’s permanent collection. Bayefsky also dealt with broader Jewish themes, producing a series of eighteen lithographs titled Tales from the Talmud, as well as murals depicting Jewish history, Talmudic folk tales, and parables. Epilogue (1999), donated to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, covers fifty years of Bayefsky’s meditations on the Holocaust. Betty Goodwin (1923–2008) began her art career as a painter who depicted locations in Montreal’s Jewish neighborhood, but she was dissatisfied with her paintings and in 1968 abandoned the practice and destroyed much of her work. From 1968 to 1969 she trained with Yves Gaucher at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in printmaking and had a major breakthrough when she put a pair of gloves directly through an etching press. This was the beginning of a series in which she treated clothing and other textiles in the same fashion, and Goodwin soon became recognized for her innovative work in the medium of etching. Gloves, shirts, vests, and caps continued to be iconic elements of her production. Some critics have interpreted her work with garments as an exploration of the loss she felt after the death of her father, who owned a vest factory and died when she was nine years old, as well as being emblematic of the great number of Jews in Canada who worked in the garment industry. Caroline Dukes (1929–2002), born in Hungary and a survivor of the Holocaust, came to Toronto in 1958 and moved to Winnipeg in 1967. She began exploring her interest in Jewish subject matter with the series At the Focus of Forces (1989), which revolves around scenes of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. In this work she defies the apparent solidity of the architecture with acrylic brushstrokes and a dense use of charcoal. In 1996 Dukes created the intensely personal Remember . . . Relate . . . Retell, a multimedia installation with drawings, photographs, — 431 —

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text, ready-made objects, video, audio, and constructions. The creation of this work was triggered by the death of her mother, and it weaves the story of her childhood and connections to her father, who was still young when he died. Works from Dukes’ Cities series on Budapest, Munich, and Jerusalem (1996–1998) deal specifically with the Holocaust. In Music School (1996), which depicts Hitler’s Nazi headquarters (currently a music school), Dukes uses beer mats and sheets of music in the form of a swastika to convey the building’s inherent violence. Midnight (1996) shows an imaginary building in Munich, the city designated by Hitler to present the architecture that would symbolize the new German Reich. Biblical themes also dominated Dukes’s art practice. The Dream: Jacob’s Ladder (1999) imagines the ladder to heaven envisioned by Jacob while he flees from his brother Esau (Genesis 28:11–19). (fig. 3)

Fig. 3: Caroline Dukes, The Dream, 1999, acrylic, earth, xerox paper on canvas, 305 x 191 cm, JLI Chabad, Winnipeg.

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Nomi Kaplan (b. 1933) immigrated to Vancouver from Memel, Lithuania, in 1940. In 1988, having become consumed by thoughts of the Holocaust and the disappearance of Jewish life in Europe, she visited Berlin and Munich to search for signs of Judaism. Finding almost no acknowledgment of the destruction wrought by Hitler, she created the series Kaddish to express her mourning for the Jewish dead and her father’s family in particular. Intent on piecing together a story of the Holocaust, Kaplan used extensive photo-documentation and videotapes of Nazi rallies, medical experiments, mass burials, camp conditions, and the liberation of nearly dead survivors to create several works such as Dachau Doors and Windows (1989) and Dachau Barracks (1990–1993). In 1991 she traveled to Poland and took rubbings of headstones in Warsaw cemeteries, and during the same trip visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek. The rubbings evolved into the series Touched Stones (1992). In 1992 the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre held a twenty-year retrospective of Kaplan’s work, showing Kaddish as well as earlier and later images of death as part of the cycle of rebirth. A recent series by the artist entitled Torah Studies includes the work Shadows: Japanese Mourning Torah (2005-6). This life-sized Torah made out of embellished black aluminum screening is based on the Japanese style of mourning, and was created in memory of the Japanese consul, Chiune Sugihara, who issued the visa that allowed the artist’s family to escape from Lithuania in 1940. (fig. 4) Marcel Braitstein (b. 1935) is a sculptor who was born in Belgium and lives in Montreal. As a child during the Holocaust he went into hiding with a Christian family and was stripped of his name and Jewish identity. Braitstein’s series Fossils (undated) can be interpreted as his memories of the bombed houses and wounded and dead people that filled his harrowing childhood, which he later depicted in his book Five to Ten: Story of a Hidden Child (1994). Like memory tablets etched in matter, the images, in which body parts jut out from the work’s surface, conjure his early feelings of horror and fascination. In Fossil 885, soles of a pair of feet point upwards, in Fossil 884, fingers reach for the dial of a telephone, and in Fossil 882, hands grasp a Bible. (fig. 5)

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Fig. 4: Nomi Kaplan, Shadows: Japanese Mourning Torah, 2005-6.

Fig. 5: Marcel Braitstein, — 434 — Fossil 882, n.d.

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Melvin Charney (b. 1935) is an artist and architect from Montreal who in the early 1980s began exploring the “modernism” of totalitarianism through a series of drawings and installations representing the infrastructure of the Holocaust: death camps, railways, and crematoria. When asked to submit drawings for a construction to be built in Kassel, Germany, in 1981 for the Documenta 8 exhibition, Charney decided to create an installation piece reminiscent of the facade that was used during the war to camouflage the entrance to death camps, and to place it in the heart of Kassel, which was an important rail centre during World War II. The project was eventually turned down by the planning committee, and some of Charney’s preliminary drawings of the work, titled Better if they think they are going to a camp (1982–1987), were stolen from the exhibition site and destroyed. Sorel Cohen (b. 1936) from Montreal is an artist-photographer who has used her work to explore the fates of individuals killed in the Holocaust and the way of life that was lost. In 1996 she created a portrait photograph in which she overlaid her face with the faces of her father’s murdered relatives—mothers, sisters, and aunts—that she had copied from a small black-and-white snapshot. Below the photograph she included, in a separate frame, a silk-and-lace handkerchief embroidered with the word “Jude” and the Star of David the Nazis had forced Jews to wear to segregate them. Also functioning as a death fugue, the work was named Todesfugue (now Made Ash) after Paul Celan’s poem of the same name. Hauptbanhof is a companion piece to Made Ash and consists of a dark grey-and-black photograph of a train station and railroad tracks that Cohen took from a moving train in 1992 on her first visit to Germany. The word Hauptbanhof, meaning central station, is etched in German onto the glass. The thin white lines of the blurred train tracks and the spots of lamplight conjure the towers and electric barriers of the concentration camps. Yehouda Chaki (b. 1938) from Montreal is predominantly a painter of landscapes and still lifes of places and objects of imprecise origin. He explored his Holocaust experience with his project Mi Makir: A Search for the Missing (1999). Born in Athens one year before the start of World War II, Chaki spent six years in hiding with his parents and brother. They eventually moved to Israel, where he witnessed people hopelessly searching for family members who had disappeared during the war. The Mi Makir series commemorates the victims of the Holocaust through — 435 —

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haunting imagined faces of murdered family members and strangers that are presented alongside burned and mutilated books. The work evokes Nazi attempts to destroy not only the Jewish people but their entire history and culture. Vera Frenkel (b. 1938) of Toronto was born in what is now the Czech Republic. She immigrated to England in 1939 and to Canada ten years later. Her 1990 video work This Is Your Messiah Speaking looks at modern consumerism and its relationship to religious or cult practice. In 1992 Frenkel produced ...from the Transit Bar, a video/installation that creates a space belonging to the migrant, in which everyone involved, including the viewer, is “in transit.” Further, the piece translates the loss of family into an inquiry into the fate of artworks that were stolen during the war. First shown at Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, the work invited viewers to sit at a piano bar and witness the recorded stories of fourteen passengers, told in Yiddish and Polish (minority languages) with subtitles in French, English and German (dominant imperialist languages). The limited translation of the audio was meant to highlight the feeling of foreignness experienced by migrants. One of the stories revolves around the recovery of the artworks. In 1994 in a project that began in Linz, Austria, this segment of the installation evolved into a six-channel video-photo-web work entitled Body Missing. The idea was to pay homage to the artists and their work which had been looted by the Nazis. Hitler had stored these artworks in a warehouse in his hometown of Linz, where he planned to build a great museum. After the war, many of the artworks “disappeared,” later resurfacing all over the world in art galleries and museums that had acquired them through dubious means. It has now toured 15 cities and 10 countries. Phyllis Serota (b. 1938), a painter who examines themes relating to personal experience, her family history, and the Jewish community, produces art that comes from a place of memory, prayer and celebration. Her family originated in the Ukraine and settled in Chicago in 1912, but in the late 1970s she decided to make her home in Victoria, British Columbia. An exhibition at the Wings of Peace Gallery at Temple Emmanu-El in Victoria showcased a series of works in which the artist illustrates several of her childhood experiences. The images include a painting of children in Hebrew school, a portrait of her father wearing tefilin, and a Simchat Torah celebration. Serota has also explored the Holocaust in her work, creating the series Order and Chaos, which was — 436 —

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presented at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre in 1997. Sylvia Safdie (b. 1942) was born in Aley, Lebanon, spent her early years in Israel, and moved to Montreal in 1953. A multimedia artist, she explores the ideas of land, time, and memory through sculptural installations, video, drawing, and painting. Footfalls (2000) is the title she gave to an arrangement of stones placed in pairs like feet, suggesting the thousands of inmates who were sent on forced marches. Keren #4 (1999) is named after the Hebrew word for rays of light. Through its cylinder well-shape, it conjures the image of a crematorium chimney: at the bottom of a copper vessel we see an open book with blank pages that appear to continuously ignite, sending out flashes of red that reflect on the interior walls of the vessel. The book and the red flashes refer to the Nazi burning of sacred texts that culminated in the mass bonfires of 1933. Marion Wagschal (b. 1943) is a painter whose work has consistently explored the human figure. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to parents of German, Polish, and Lithuanian origin who escaped Germany in 1939, she came to Montreal with her family in 1951. As a young artist she was concerned with biblical themes, creating portraits of figures such as Abraham and Isaac. She was also fascinated by the intimate moments that occur at family gatherings, resulting in portraits that reflect the everyday, as can be seen in The Birthday Party (1970). Despite the humour of such works, upon close inspection one can find dark references to the Holocaust and other aspects of Jewish history, for example figures being chased by a German shepherd. In 1993 Wagschal painted Kiln, part of a series whose subject is the Holocaust. Although the kiln can be seen as an ordinary tool for firing clay, the viewer is forced to gaze upon its open mouth and the fire inside, which recalls the cremation of bodies during World War II. Burning Spoons (1993) is a portrait of the artist and her mother reclining on a bed with a box of spoons placed between them near the foot of the bed, along with a scattering of items used in Jewish rituals. The spoons are surrounded by fire and represent the Holocaust and unending mourning. They were a wedding gift to her mother, and were among the few possessions she brought with her upon fleeing Germany. Yvonne Singer (b. 1944) who lives in Toronto, was born in Budapest during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Singer’s immigration and exile experiences served as important sources of creative inquiry in works — 437 —

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such as In Memoriam: Remembering and Forgetting Fragments of History (1993) and Dem Braven Kinde (1997). In Memoriam is an installation that recounts the story of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who lived in Hungary during the occupation and helped save 100,000 Hungarian Jews. Dem Braven Kinde (1997), which translates as “those brave children,” are the words the artist engraved on a glass hanger she had been given by her mother, a replica of a hanger the family had owned in Hungary. The Veiled Room (1998), which was first exhibited at the ACC Gallery in Weimar, Germany, consists of sheer curtains printed with the names of famous German artists and intellectuals on one side, and excerpts from writings by Freud on the other. Because places where public histories and personal testimonies converge are so often the site of Singer’s explorations, the piece also contains a video loop of a home movie of her mother and father, connecting her personal memories and family history to the political. (fig. 6) Isaac Applebaum (b. 1946) from Toronto works with photography and photographic installations to explore the themes of ethnicity, racism, and the Holocaust. In 1985 he visited his birthplace in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, after which he produced the compelling series Man Makes Himself. This complicated work compares the photographer’s interpretation of the preliminary judicial hearing of James Keegstra, the Alberta history teacher charged with promoting hatred against Jews in the early 1980s, with events of the Second World War. Instead of the typical tale, which begins with discrimination in Europe in the 1930s and ends with the liberation of the camps in 1945, Applebaum reverses the order of things so that the ending is the beginning, with the war leading to the kind of racism promoted by Keegstra. Later that year Applebaum showed another series, Move, which continues his investigation of human displacement, again chiefly using portraiture. He also produced a series called Cruelty of Stone that captures his trip to Israel in 1989. In this work Applebaum departs from his usual strong emphasis on portraiture and combines images of the stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem with photo-etchings on rabbit hide and photographs of an uninhabited Palestinian village.

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Fig. 6: Yvonne Singer, The Veiled Room, 1998, dimensions variable, monitor, curtains, interior detail, photo by Isaac Applebaum.

Jeff Wall (b. 1946) from Vancouver is best known for his photographic transparencies, a method he began using in the late 1970s that still forms the core of his practice today. Credited with redefining the look of Canadian photography, Wall references a multitude of art forms, including painting and film, through the luminescence, scale, and format of his works. His staging of his photographs allows him to incorporate historical sources and create narratives that address social — 439 —

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and cultural aspects of the contemporary world. Wall’s 1987 pieces The Jewish Cemetery and The Holocaust Memorial in the Jewish Cemetery are some of the few works in which he deals with his Jewish heritage. Lyndia Terre (b. 1946) from Nanoose Bay, British Columbia, has created etchings and drawings that investigate feminist Judaic spirituality. An example is her series Biblical Women: Redrawing the Stories, produced in the 1970s at the height of the women’s movement as an affirmation of women’s strength, and a reflection on a time of hope and change. In To Celebrate with Light (1997), a book of poems and prints, Terre incorporates Hebrew lettering and Jewish symbols. In the etching Prague, Old New Synagogue she explores her sense of loss and displacement after seeing one of the last vestiges of Prague’s once-vibrant Jewish community. Terre’s father’s Russian origins are considered in The Potato Man, which reflects the artist’s desire to invent a visual image of her ancestry. Susan G. Scott (b. 1949) from Montreal creates works that fall within the tradition of narrative figurative painting. Spending one to three years on any given series, she uses specific texts as points of departure for focusing on the development of characters and dramatic interactions in the text. The Yiddish Folk Tales (1996-2000) has as its starting point the legends of Yiddish-speaking eastern Europe, which constitute Scott’s heritage. In her search for continuity between past and present, the stories become allegorical figures of a child’s imagination. Scott’s series of eleven painted canvases, called Description of a Struggle (19821983), have their origin in a short story by Kafka. Here she lays bare the mechanics of identity and gender, questioning how gender roles are informed and conditioned by popular culture. Kafka Questions (1984– 1986) continues this exploration in paintings based on a series of stories by Franz Kafka and the questions Scott pulled from each story that felt pertinent to her. Barbara Steinman (b. 1950) from Montreal is a video and installation artist who has often dealt with issues of injustice. Cenotaph (1985), now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, was originally created for an art space in Lyon, France, in the same year Klaus Barbie stood trial there for his role as the leader of the Gestapo. The work consists of video projections of faded portrait photographs, a pyramidal monument inscribed with a line of text from Hannah Arendt’s Totalitarianism—“treat people as if they had never existed and to make — 440 —

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them disappear”—and a hidden video monitor that creates an illusion of an “eternal flame.” The work memorializes the victims of the Nazis and other terror regimes whose bodies have never been recovered. In 1995 Steinman participated in “Notion of Conflict,” an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Her contribution was Atlantis Improv, an installation of caged books and hanging violins, accompanied by the daily performance of a street violinist which referenced the opera The Emperor of Atlantis, composed by Theresienstadt concentration camp victim Victor Ullman. Herzl Kashetsky (b. 1950) from Saint John, New Brunswick, is a painter who has produced many works that reflect everyday objects with an intensity that invests them with new and deeper meaning. A visit to Poland and several concentration camp sites in 1990 prompted the creation of the Prayer for the Dead (1996) series, through which he pays respect to the victims of the Holocaust as well as to people he has lost in his own life. The haunting tone of Prayer for the Dead, detected in the painfully detailed faces of the dying, the crematorium door, and the mass grave, marks a departure for Kashetsky. In Mass Grave, Bergen Belsen the bodies of the dead are clustered together, yet each one is individually commemorated through the artist’s careful and delicate rendering. Rafael Goldchain (b. 1953) from Toronto was born in Chile after his family emigrated there from Poland. He also has extended family in Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Costa Rica—everyone else who remained in Europe was murdered in the Holocaust. In his exhibition and publication I Am My Family: Photographic Memories and Fiction Goldchain presents the evolution of Jewish culture through a series of self-portrait photographs in which he makes himself up to capture the likenesses of his perished ancestors. In this way he creates a fictional family album that traces his ancestry from the early twentieth century to the present. An appendix to the book includes actual family photos and chronicles the meticulous researching, self-visualization, and costuming that Goldchain undertook to create his portraits. (fig. 7)

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Fig. 7: Rafael Goldchain, Self-portrait as Don Mauricio Goldchain, b. Montevideo, Uruguay 1925, d. Virginia, USA 2007 (from the series “I Am My Family”), © Rafael Goldchain 2007.

Sara Diamond (b. 1954) now living in Toronto, is a video artist who at the age of six was forced to leave the United States because of the persecution of her leftist parents. In her widely exhibited video piece — 442 —

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Influences of My Mother (1980), produced following her mother’s death, Diamond explores the processes of grieving and growing away from and toward this important person in her life. Ultimately, the video is an attempt to resolve her feelings of loss; it acts as a personal testimony. Influences of My Mother is also an examination of growing up in a socialist Jewish family during the McCarthy years. Angela Grossmann (b. 1955) from Vancouver was born in London, England, to a German-born father who was sent to England as part of the kindertransport. In 1970 she moved to Canada with her family. Throughout her career she has examined the themes of displacement and social margins, creating works that show the influence of her strong interest in the Holocaust and European history. In the series (sign)ifying the END of the (second) 2nd World War (1990), images of people lost in the war make her interest obvious. Less direct is Affaires d’Enfants (1987), a series that involved the artist painting on the insides of suitcases abandoned by an agency in Paris that sponsored summer camp holidays for orphans. The suitcases act as symbols of the abandoned in society and as signifiers of privacy and ownership. The 1990 series Scapegoats is based on mug shots taken in the 1940s of prisoners in the British Columbia Penitentiary. Having researched the abuse of prisoners during this decade and injustices in the penal system, Grossmann questions the system through her use of the prisoners as subject. In their lives, robbed of dignity, they echo the treatment of Jews during the same period, as well as the atrocities of the Holocaust. Simon Glass (b. 1956) from Toronto explores Jewish theology, culture and history through works that engage with the Holocaust by combining archival and original photographs with Hebrew texts. His 1997 exhibition Y-----H!, which uses faces inscribed with powerful symbols (words and numbers), is a memorial to those who were killed by the Nazis and a condemnation of God for not intervening to prevent the Holocaust. In The Thirteen Attributes of God (2009), a suite of thirteen gelatin silver photographs, the images of lips, hands, feathers, and dead birds are overlaid with Hebrew references to the holy names of God, which can be found in the liturgy of the Jewish High Holidays. Mindy Yan Miller (b. 1959), born in born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, creates sculptural installations that combine found materials with video, photographs, drawings, and other media. Her 1995 installation Papa, which examines her father’s influence on the formation of her Jewish — 443 —

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identity, is a video of the artist eating a photograph of her father while in the background a voice hums a Yiddish lullaby he sung to her as a child. A further exploration of Miller’s Jewish identity can be found in Chorus (1997), which consists of three installations: the Papa video from 1995, a solitary pew on a rectangular platform, and the Kaddish mourning prayer written out in ninety-nine crystal Hebrew letters arranged on a flat ebony tombstone (a Kaddish for her mother-in-law and for Holocaust victims). In Hold (1996) the words “Next Year in Jerusalem,” written in raw eggs, are glued to the floor. Initially presented at the Synagoga Na Palmovce in Prague, the piece’s inscription Next Year in Jerusalem represents for Jews a time of redemption and deliverance from exile and the coming of the Messiah. Devora Neumark (b. 1959) is a Brooklyn-born artist who has lived in Montreal since 1989. Interested in social activism and personal history, her works with installation, intervention, and performance integrate her Jewishness into her investigations of societal concerns. In A truth, a fiction ... of Sabbath clothes and feeling an imposter (1996/1998), Neumark inserts herself into the physical and psychological space of the painting The Friday Night by Isidor Kaufmann (early 1900s). Neumark embodied this woman, and unsewed the dress she had made from paper patterns in the style of the painted figure’s clothing. As she detached each piece of the pattern dress, she stitched it to a blanket she was creating to wrap her body. In this way she questioned why we conduct our lives according to the patterns of our heritage. In Harei at muteret (2000) she explores the Jewish divorce process and her unsuccessful attempts to find images in which divorced women could see themselves reflected. Wendy Oberlander (b. 1960) from Vancouver is a video and installation artist whose major works focus on the personal narratives of her parents, both exiled from Europe in the 1930s. In 1996 she created Geography has flooded, an installation that includes a wall painted to look like water, short texts about displacement, and an excerpt from the restrictive Canadian Immigration Act of 1946. Also in 1996, in the video Nothing to be written here, she reflects on her father’s wartime experiences. A Jew who fled from Vienna to England in 1938, Peter Oberlander was only fifteen when he was accused of being a “dangerous enemy alien” and deported to a rural prison camp in New Brunswick. Oberlander again reconnected with her German heritage when she returned to Berlin in 1998 with her mother, Cornelia, as guests of the — 444 —

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city on a tour for former residents who had been forced to leave. This experience is the subject of Still (Stille) (2001), a look back at the world of assimilated European Jews during the 1930s through archival footage that pieces together Oberlander’s interpretation of her mother’s story. Cheryl Paguerek (b. 1967) from Ottawa uses mixed-media installations, photography, and video to explore issues related to the home and family life. Her 1993–1994 installation 5 Fraserwood Ave., Apt. #2 presents the immigrant experiences and life of her Polish grandparents, juxtaposing a living-room interior with photographs of factory work and a Jewish cemetery. The flowery, ornate interior reflects her grandparents’ idea of success in light of the losses and hardships they suffered as Jewish immigrants. In the photos, video, and video stills of Ephemera (2008), Paguerek sets images of contemporary domestic life against footage of pre-Holocaust Jewish communities. Melissa Shiff (b.1967) from Toronto produces videos, performances, and installations that combine Jewish rituals, symbols, and myths, and engages with issues relating to cultural memory, social justice, and activism. In 2006 her outdoor video sculpture Ark was presented as the keynote piece at the Jewish Museum in Prague on the occasion of its centennial celebrations. Its acrylic and aluminum structure served as a 3-D screen on which was projected a thirty-minute video created by Shiff that showed the history of the museum and the Jewish community in Prague over the last century. For Shiff, parallels exist between the museum and Noah’s ark, in that both salvaged and stored that which might have otherwise been destroyed (fig. 8). Other works by Shiff include Cine-Seder Plate: The Six Questions (2008), a film reel with six circular openings that reference the six holders for symbolic foods that are found on the traditional Seder plate, and the performance piece Postmodern Jewish Wedding (October 12, 2003), in which she and her husband Louis Kaplan stood under a chuppah in a nineteenth-century distillery in Toronto, together inventing a ritual combining contemporary performance art and the customs of the traditional Jewish wedding. Another work is JAMS, the Jewish Animated Mandala Series (2008), which utilized a motion graphics software program to transform objects in the Judaica collection of the Jewish Museum in New York and the Hebrew names of God into mystical abstractions.

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Fig. 8: Melissa Shiff, ARK, video sculpture, 2006, 5.5 in. wide by 7 in. high.

The Impact of Jewish Artists on the Canadian Art Scene: Education, Exhibition Venues, and Art Dealers Many of the artists mentioned above were influential educators of other artists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and constituted a major contribution to art education in Canada. Jack Nichols (b. 1921), who was appointed as a war artist in 1944, later taught at the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. Aba Bayefsky, also a war artist, was an instructor at the Ontario College of Art. In 1945 Ghitta Caiserman and her then-husband Alfred (Alfie) Pinsky — 446 —

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(1921–1999) formed the Montreal Artists’ School, where she was the principal from 1947 to 1952. In 1960, Pinsky and Leah Sherman (b. 1925) initiated the fine arts program at Sir George Williams University (now the Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts). Of special interest, because of his work outside of Canada’s major cities, is Eli Bornstein (b. 1922), who is credited with bringing modernism to the prairies. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Bornstein studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago in the 1940s, and in Paris at the Académie Montmartre of Fernand Leger (1951) and the Académie Julian (1952). Settling in Saskatchewan in the 1950s, Bornstein became a professor and later the head of the art department at the University of Saskatchewan, from which he retired in 1971. Describing himself as a structurist, Bornstein founded the international art annual of the same name in 1960. It is important to note the non-profit exhibition spaces that were established to showcase artists from the Jewish community. Founded in 1967, the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montreal (now the Segal Centre for Performing Arts) was a multidisciplinary centre that encompassed a contemporary art gallery (renamed Liane and Danny Taran Gallery in 2001), a theatre, and a fine arts school. Before closing in 2007, the art gallery regularly presented cutting-edge shows by local, regional, national, and international artists. In Toronto, the Koffler Centre for the Arts was established in 1977 by Jewish philanthropists Murray and Marvelle Koffler. A recent expansion has seen its transformation into the Koffler Gallery, the central feature of the Koffler Centre, which is committed to contemporary art and regularly presents exhibitions by well-known Canadian Jewish artists. Also creating spaces to promote art through temporary exhibitions or the permanent installation of works are many of Canada’s synagogues. Recent exhibitions at two Montreal synagogues were Blessings, a contemporary art exhibition and symposium on the theme of the Jewish blessing, at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom (2007), and Kol Ishah, In Her Voice/Elle prend la parole at Dorshei Emet (2009), featuring video and photographic works that reclaim and rewrite aspects of Jewish marriage rituals by questioning certain patriarchal traditions involved in courting, marrying, and divorcing. As well, there are several Holocaust centres in Canada, including the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, the Holocaust Centre of Toronto, the Vancouver Holocaust Education — 447 —

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Centre, and the Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre in Winnipeg, all of which have programmed exhibitions of Canadian Jewish art devoted to the Holocaust. Historical societies and special collections have long been devoted to showing the works of Canadian Jewish artists. The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia (JHSBC) was founded in 1970 to document the history of the Jewish community in that province. In 2002 the board of the JHSBC began discussions to create a dedicated space to house and exhibit the materials amassed over the previous thirty years, and in 2007 the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia was opened to serve this purpose. One of the many points of interest at the museum is the Otto Landauer Photo Collection. Landauer (1903–1980), who was of German-Jewish origin and owned the Leonard Frank Photos studio from 1946 to 1980, was one of Vancouver’s most well-known photographers after World War II. Another noteworthy site in Vancouver is the Oscar Cahén Archives, set up by the artist’s son Michael, which includes an excellent selection of Cahén’s paintings. Born in 1916 in Copenhagen and active in the resistance, Cahén was interned as an enemy alien in Canada at the age of twenty-four. In 1943 he moved to Toronto, where he was a founding member of the renowned Painters Eleven, a group whose mission was to promote expressionist and abstract art. Organizations that have been active in promoting Jewish art and culture include the Toronto-based Ashkenaz Foundation, dedicated to fostering an increased awareness of Yiddish and Jewish culture through the arts. Through biennial festivals and year-round programming, Ashkenaz presents works by contemporary visual and performing artists and writers from Canada and around the world. Its festival, with over 200 participants, is the largest Jewish cultural event in Canada. Ashkenaz also encourages cross-cultural exchanges between Jewish artists and those of other traditions. Also in Toronto is the Pomegranate Guild of Jewish Textiles, whose mission is to bring together people who are interested in creating textile art and needlework on Jewish themes. The Guild has created four group projects: Sukkah (1988), The Chuppah (1991), The Pardes banners and the Ashrei banner. Art dealers and collectors are another means by which the public becomes aware of artists. Several Jewish art dealers have had a lasting legacy, among them Max Stern (1904–1987) who was in charge of his father’s gallery, the Julius Stern Gallery in Dusseldorf, when the Nazis — 448 —

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forced him to liquidate the gallery’s holdings in 1937. After fleeing Germany Stern settled in Montreal, where in 1947 he and his wife Iris Westerberg bought Rose Millman’s Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts. During Stern’s lifetime this was one of the most successful commercial galleries in Canada. In 1955 Winnipeg-born Avrom Isaacs (b. 1926) opened the Greenwich Gallery in Toronto, later renamed the Isaacs Gallery. At a time when Canadian art was difficult to sell, Isaacs spent considerable energy promoting artists, many of whom are now part of the Canadian art historical canon. David Mirvish (b. 1945), a renowned theatre producer who began his career as an art dealer and collector, opened the David Mirvish Gallery in Toronto in 1963. Although the gallery closed its doors in 1978, Mirvish continues to collect and lend works for exhibitions. Olga Korper who came to Canada in 1951 from the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia) opened her first gallery in Toronto in 1973. In 1989 the gallery was renamed The Olga Korper Gallery. A tireless promoter of Canadian and international contemporary art, Korper studied at the Ontario College of Fine Arts and spent several years as an educator. A significant contributor to the art community in Saskatchewan is the Mendel family, specifically Eva Mendel-Miller (b. 1919) and her father Frederick (Fred) Mendel (1888–1976). The Mendels escaped Nazi Germany in 1939 and settled in Saskatoon. Eva, known for her watercolour paintings, studied art in Vienna in the 1930s, and in Montreal and New York after the family came to Canada. She encouraged her father to buy art, leading to a family collection that was soon regarded as one of the key collections in Saskatchewan. In the 1960s Fred Mendel donated money to the city of Saskatoon to build a public art museum. The Mendel Art Gallery opened in 1964 and now houses over 5,000 works of art, at the core of which are pieces donated by Mendel in 1965. As a collector Ydessa Hendeles (b. 1948) from Toronto has also made great contributions to Canadian cultural life. Born in Germany after her parents managed to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, she immigrated to Canada in 1950. In 1987, she established the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, which exhibits and collects contemporary art primarily created by living artists. Loren Lerner and Suzanne Rackover

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For Further Study Artists in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Heritage Information Network, 2009. http://www.artistsincanada.com/php/linkcount.php?cat=1. The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historical Foundation of Canada. http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca. Contemporary Canadian Artists. Toronto: Gale Canada, 1997. Exhibition of Works by Canadian Jewish Artists at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Oct. 29 to Nov. 15, 1959. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1959. Jewish Experience in the Art of the Twentieth Century : The Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 17 December 1976 to 16 January 1977. Halifax, NS: Mount Saint Vincent University, 1976. Centre for Canadian Contemporary Art. The Canadian Art Database.. http://ccca.concordia.ca/. Greenberg, Reesa, and Shelley Hornstein. Mosaica. Toronto: York University, www.mosaica.ca. Lerner, Loren, ed. Afterimage: Evocations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature. Montreal: Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, 2002. ------. Canadian Artists of Eastern European Origin. Montreal: Concordia University, http://art-history.concordia.ca/eea/. MacDonald, Colin S. A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, 5th ed. Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 1967. Ravvin, Norman, Olivia Ward, and Robin Nobel, eds. Blessings: Art and Essays on Jewish Blessings. Montreal: Hungry I. Books, 2009. Trépanier, Esther. Jewish Painters of Montreal: Witnesses of Their Time, 1930-1948. Montreal: Les Editions de l’Homme, 2008.

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XXVI Canadian Jewish Studies since 1999: The State of the Field

The study of Canadian Jewry—in all its anxieties, aspirations, and antagonisms, its choices, and its (perhaps unused) room—has grown richly over the past decade. Indeed, Canadian Jewish studies, as commentators have enjoyed announcing since the early 1990s, has become a bona fide field, with a humble infrastructure for its promotion, and a growing presence on the scholarly bookshelf.1 Benjamin Sack, Louis Rosenberg, and A. D. Hart called the area of study into existence, chronicling the emergence, growth, sociological patterns, and institutional arrival of Canadian Jewry.2 Spurred on by antiimmigrant and xenophobic sentiment, and motivated by the anxieties of cultural loss as a result of migration, the 1940s witnessed growth in the number of monographs and articles on Canadian Jewish subjects, creating a body of largely celebratory and compensatory historical and demographic studies of Canadian Jews. By the 1970s, with its first generation of university-trained scholars, the field began taking up questions at once more searching (in what does the Canadian Jewish community consist?), and simultaneously more activist (how can “we” ensure the continuity and growth of that community). By the early 1990s, as Robert Brym, William Shaffir and Morton Weinfeld observed in one of the first synthetic works, Canadian Jewish sociology alone had grown to such an extent that it was then “possible to offer a detailed and fairly comprehensive sociological portrait of the Canadian Jewish community for the first time.”3 The immigrant experience, the nature 1 I would like to thank Frank Bialystok and Randall Schnoor for their candid feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. Attempts at field-sized commentary, let alone a usable synthesis of it, necessarily involve sins of omission. For these I am solely responsible. 2 Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of the Jews in Canada (Montreal, Bureau of Social and Economics Research, Canadian Jewish Congress, 1939); A. D. Hart, The Jew in Canada: A Complete Record of Canadian Jewry from the Days of French Regime to the Present Time. (Toronto: Jewish Publications, 1926); and Benjamin G. Sack, History of the Jews in Canada / Gischichte fun Yidn in Kanada, Montreal, trans. Ralph Novek (Montreal: Harvest House, 1965 [1945]). 3 Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds., The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), viii. — 451 —

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and impact of Canadian antisemitism, and the bundle of problems and puzzles that faced the communal leadership absorbed the lion’s share of scholarly attention, with particular focus paid to education, Holocaust commemoration, and the place of Israel in Canadian Jewish consciousness. While the field can be accused of lacking brawn and controversy, and of remaining on the sidelines of many of the central preoccupations on the cutting edges of the humanities and social sciences, it has been consistently enriched by a cascade of carefully researched, elegantly written works of professional scholarship. This chapter aims to take stock of recent work among scholars of the Canadian Jewish experience and to articulate the set of broad questions the field is—and ought to be—facing.4 Statements on the state of Canadian Jewish studies have been few and far between; the field has never been particularly self-conscious, and few programmatic essays have been written directing scholars of the Canadian Jewish experience to aim research in any one direction.5 Yet restlessness piques the field. Its senior scholars have been remarking for over a decade now that Canadian Jewish studies feels like it is approaching a tipping point with a critical mass of energy and enthusiasm. Supportive optimism, in my opinion, ought to remain the most appropriate tone for the times, though a healthy dose of agitating arousal might complement this supportive tone well. Some of the more critical comments in this chapter, then, are offered as a spur in this spirit. This feels particularly appropriate now, for the field appears to be in an identity crisis of sorts, split between at least three audiences: 4

5

“Recent” is of course a slippery term for historians. This chapter will consider the scholarly output of Canadian Jewish studies since 1999, the last time a significant effort was made to take stock of the field. See Michael Brown, “Jews and Judaism in Canada: A Bibliography of Works Published since 1965,” Canadian Jewish Studies 7-8 (1999-2000) for works between 1965-2000. What ought to be included among scholarly works on “Canadian Jewish subjects” is perhaps even more slippery. For the purposes of this essay, I take a maximalist approach: any work that deals, even in part, with the Canadian Jews or Jewish Canadians is part of the field. Richard Menkis’s lecturing at the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies and the Association for Jewish Studies over the past half-dozen years has begun correcting this. He has lectured on several broad themes and critical historiographic issues, including “Multiculturalism and the Writing of Canadian Jewish History,” “New Growth in Canadian Jewish Historiography: Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking Root and Branching Out,” “Prolegomenon to a Historiographical Analysis of Narratives of the Canadian Jewish Experience,” “Jewish Culture, Canadian Culture: A View from the 1960s,” and “Jews and Canadian Multiculturalism, 1963-1965.” None of these lectures, however, have been published in article form. We look forward with hope to the publication of a collection of Menkis’s lectures. — 452 —

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Canadian studies scholars, Jewish studies colleagues, and the Canadian Jewish non-academic public. At the heart of the crisis of the audience lie questions: who will read new work on Canadian Jews? Who will publish it? Who will fund scholars’ teaching and research? In short: Who values Canadian Jewish studies, and why? Just as the tone of growing enthusiasm for the field has remained steady over the past decade, the scholarly program has held to some significant continuity. Much new work has focused on the preoccupations first articulated in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The remarkable endurance of scholarly attention to Canada-Israel relations, the Holocaust, Jewish education, and antisemitism, as well as to the project of mapping the contours of Canadian Jewish sociology and history in ever-greater detail, is notable.6 This persistence can be attributed to the fact that the production of scholarly works that attempt to deal with Canada as a whole largely comes from many of the same scholars who produced groundbreaking studies two and more decades ago. Many scholars approach Canadian Jewish subjects, but few tackle the whole. Brym et. al. argued that two essential questions preoccupied the field. One concerned “the sources and dimensions of the challenges faced by the Canadian Jewish community in its attempt to survive the exigencies of modern life.” The other question, “How does Canadian Jewry today compare—in terms of organization, attitudes, and behavior—to the Jewish community of the United States and to Canadian Jewry in the past, and what accounts for the similarities and differences?” will be taken up later in this chapter. Who is involved in Canadian Jewish studies? Based on the titles of several hundred articles on Canadian Jewish subjects since 1999 from searchable academic databases, the following is a breakdown of the kinds of studies being undertaken.7 History remains the dominant disciplinary approach, albeit marginally, with approximately 25% of the articles published in peer-reviewed journals, followed by sociology and political science (each with about 20%) and literary studies (at 15%). Small but meaningful contributions have come from anthropology, law, 6

See Derek J. Penslar, Michael Marrus, and Janice G. Stein, eds., Contemporary Anti-Semitism: Canada and the World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). 7 I searched clusters of combinations of keywords to yield the greatest number of citations on JSTOR, Project Muse, and RAMBI, the major search engines for academic articles printed in peerreviewed journals. — 453 —

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geography, and demography. Canadian Jewish political studies seems to have grown at the fastest pace for reasons yet to be explored—though on practical grounds Jewish political science has benefited from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The attention devoted to Canadian Jews and constitutionalism by the late Daniel Elazar, along with Ira Robinson and Michael Brown in their edited volume Not Written In Stone is the most obvious, but not the only, work supported by the Israel-based Center.8 Twenty-four of the forty periodicals that published work on Canadian Jewry in the past decade are journals devoted exclusively to Jewish subjects, including peer-reviewed national and international journals as well as denominational and institutional publications. This suggests that over half of Canadian Jewish studies work reaches a broad Jewish studies readership. Markedly contrasted with the Jewish interest in Canadian Jewish studies is the relative lack of interest from a general Canadian scholarly readership; only four of the forty journals represented focus on Canadian studies, suggesting either a low level of interest from readers of scholarly Canadiana or an equally low inclination on the part of scholars of Canadian Jewry to seek out publishers, audiences, and interlocutors whose focus is “Canadian” rather than Jewish. A quarter of these forty journals are devoted to education, Jewish communal service, or the mandates of specific institutions, suggesting a large share of published articles belong to a sub-field we might call “applied Canadian Jewish Studies,” while the final quarter consists of respected professional academic journals. Special mention should be made of Canadian Jewish Studies, the journal of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies, which I included in the first two categories above, as it is the only journal devoted to the field on a national scale (the British Columbia Jewish Historical Society’s journal, The Scribe, is regional). As a multi-disciplinary, but rarely interdisciplinary, field, Canadian Jewish studies seems to be supported by philanthropic dollars more than other area studies are, the proportion of programs and chairs bearing donors’ names compared with other area studies (like Asian Canadian studies or Canadian women’s studies programs) suggests. There are now 8

M. Weinfeld, “Jewish Demography: Qualitative, Quantitative or both,” in Creating the Jewish Future, ed. B. Lightman and M. Brown, 234-248 (Walnut Creek: Sage, 1999); see also Daniel J. Elazar, Michael Brown, and Ira Robinson, eds., Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions and Constitutionalism in Canada (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003). — 454 —

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nine Jewish studies programs in Canada, of which five offer courses in Canadian Jewish studies.9 Nowhere in Canada can an undergraduate earn a BA in Canadian Jewish studies, though the University of Ottawa offers a minor. Norman Ravvin and Seymour Mayne chair the only Canadian Jewish studies programs, at Concordia and the University of Ottawa respectively. While the university has become the central site for scholarly production, the field remains rooted in communal organizations outside the academy as well. As Irving Abella pointed out in the acknowledgements of his 1990 A Coat of Many Colours, the field owes a great debt for its footing, development, detail, and material to nonprofessional historians, librarians, and archivists.10 That is still the case. Institutional players outside the universities that support Canadian Jewish scholarship include regional historical societies (five of them), archives (four of them), and one professional organization, though it should be mentioned that neither the number of these institutional players nor their scope has grown substantially over the past decade. Measured in terms of institutional growth, the field may in fact have contracted over the past decade; the Institut quebecois d’etudes sur la culture juive recently dissolved, and the number of members of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies has declined from its peak in the mid-1990s.11 The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies hosts a yearly meeting for its members to present new work and to discuss the operations and directions of the association. It also publishes Canadian Jewish Studies, and takes on modest projects to advance the field as a whole, including offering a day of community-wide learning at its 9

York University, University of Ottawa, Concordia University, and the University of British Columbia. Queens University offers one course on the Jews of North America. As a point of comparison there are 12 Jewish studies programs in Massachusetts alone, 20 in California, 10 in Ohio, 7 in Florida, 6 in Maryland, and many in New York, most of them offering a host of courses on American Jewish studies. 10 Irving Abella, Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited, 1990). 11 There remain several Canadian Jewish historical societies / heritage centres—two in Alberta, two in BC and Saint John, and several substantial archives—the Canadian Jewish Congress National Archives, the Ottawa Jewish Archives, the Ontario Jewish Archives, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, the Jewish Historical Society and Archives of Edmonton and Northern Alberta, the Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal, the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, and of course the National Archives in Ottawa. The Canadian Jewish News published a special insert, “The Jews of Canada: Who We Are in 2005,” on September 29, 2005, that contained short, journalistic essays on various aspects of Canadian Jewish life. — 455 —

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annual conference. Indeed, throughout the 2000s, academic entities and community organizations deepened their bonds with one another, firming up an institutional bulwark for the field’s future. The Canadian Jewish Archives still maintains its funding through the Canadian Jewish Congress, but has also created a connection with Concordia University. New prizes and lectureships have been established, including the Switzer-Cooperstock Prize in Western Canadian Jewish History, and the Louis Rosenberg Award, established in 2001 by the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies to celebrate significant contributions the field.12 A growing number of student fellowships, awards, and graduate student conferences have helped promote the field’s growth, as have the establishment of two student journals, the Student Journal of Canadian Jewish Studies (est. 2006), and Morrow’s Voice (est. 2008). The continued production of documentaries, films, and websites dedicated to some aspect of (mostly regional and local) Jewries, exhibitions, art installations, walking and audio tours, etc., reveal continued interest in Canadian Jewish studies. In terms of scholarly production, significant synthetic works have been added to the bookshelf. Gerald Tulchinsky’s Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey, an update from his two volume works of the 1990s, is arguably the most thorough and important contribution to the entire field to date.13 Scholars in a variety of fields will likely cite Morton Weinfeld’s Like Everyone Else … But Different—the sociological complement to Tulchinsky’s history—for many years, since it covers such wide and useful ground. And while Michael Greenstein’s Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish Canadian Literature could use an update (it is now 20 years old), his Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada provides a compelling invitation for fresh attempts at synthetic analysis of Canada’s Jewish literary output.14 Special mention should also be made of Norman Ravvin and Richard Menkis’s The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader. This volume of collected essays, most of which were previously published, is important in part because it contains new 12 The winner’s circle now includes Miriam Waddington, Gunther Plaut, Ruth Goldbloom, Abraham Arnold, Gerald Tulchinsky, Irving Abella, Cyril Leonoff, Seymour Levitan, and Seymour Mayne. 13 Gerald Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 14 Michael Greenstein, Third Solitudes: Tradition and Discontinuity in Jewish-Canadian Literature (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989); and Michael Greenstein, ed., Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada: An Anthology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). — 456 —

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and generally impressive research giving the sense of the richness and diversity of the field. Also significant is the way the editors organized the material, with sections devoted to “heroes and counter-heroes,” “a sense of time,” “Jewish spaces,” “sites of memory,” and “multicultural encounters,” rather than encyclopedic categories like immigration, politics, and religion. It thus creates an opening for new research and for reconceptualizing familiar subjects. Menkis and Ravvin’s insistence on using the plural—Jewish cultures, Canadian cultures, Jewish spaces, and the like—bespeaks diversity and bodes well for fostering the development of the field.15 Surveying articles on Canadian Jewish subjects that have been published in peer-reviewed journals since 2000, one finds the greatest number of works devoted to regional studies and small communities. Quebec and the West received the largest portion of attention, due to the facts that nearly all of the French language studies of Canadian Jewry focused on Jews in Quebec, and that the British Columbia Jewish Historical Society publishes its own journal, The Scribe, devoted to regional studies(no other regional Jewish Historical Society publishes regularly).16 Uriel Rosensweig’s work on Jewish Alberta, Allan Levine’s work on Manitoba, and Cyril Leonoff’s and Sara Tobe’s works on British Columbia Jewry stand out.17 Perhaps surprisingly, the Prairies’ Jews 15 My chief criticism of the volume is that it did not go far enough in its critical examination of the role and place of “failures” and “counter-heroes.” We can learn a great deal from the projects, movements, institutions, and individual Jews whose visions were not met, whose ideologies crashed, and/or who faced overpowering opposition from one source or another. The “heroes” designated in the volume, as in most of the field’s literature, are all Jews, while all of the counterheroes appear counter-heroic because they are antisemites. Jewish anti-heroes and Jewish counter-heroes ought to be included as subjects in Canadian Jewish studies; a fuller, franker, and more morally ambiguous story of Canadian Jewry would deepen the field substantially. 16 For a discussion of Canadian Jewish studies in French, see Ira Robinson, “Jewish Studies in French Canada,” in Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies (forthcoming), and Ira Robinson, «La Tradition et la littérature juives,» in L’Étude de la religion au Québec, ed. Jean-Marc Larouche and Guy Ménard, 77-85 (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001). www.erudit.org/livre/ larouchej/2001/ livrel4_div10.htm. 17 Uriel Rosenzweig, The First Century of Jewish Life in Edmonton and Northern Alberta, 1893-1993: The First and Second Generations (Edmonton: Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta, 2000); Allan Levine, Coming of Age: A History of the Jewish People of Manitoba (Winnipeg: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 2009); Janine Stingel, Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000); Cyril E. Leonoff, The Rise of Jewish Life and Religion in British Columbia, 1858-1948, vol. 28, The Scribe (British Columbia: Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, 2008); Sarah H. Tobe, “The New Frontiers, the Pacific Northwest: A Jewish Overview, 16th-19th Centuries,” Western States Jewish History, 32: 4 (2000): 276-312. See also Caroline Claussen, “Bridging Unsettled — 457 —

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received more attention than Jewish Ontarians.18 Little was written on the maritime experience, save for Robin McGrath’s Salt Fish and Shmattes: A History of the Jews in Newfoundland and Labrador from 1770.19 Next to regional studies, we find, in order of diminishing volume, works on Canada during the Second World War; Holocaust education and commemoration; antisemitism, Canadian Jewish literary figures; community institutions; Jewish education in Canada; Canadian Jewish women (mostly literature but some history and sociology); Hasidism in Canada; Canada-Israel relations; Yiddish; and finally, the Jewish Canadian military experience. Perhaps the most enduring orthodoxy of the field remains comparing Canadian Jewry to the Jews of the United States. American comparisons are made in virtually every effort to write of the Canadian Jewish experience as a whole. Statements eschewing such comparisons tend to highlight contrasts between the two, serving to deepen the assumption that Canadian Jewry indeed ought to be understood visà-vis the American “counterpart.” The persistent impulse of scholars to distinguish between Jewish Canada and the American Jewish experience constitutes something of a structuring principle for the field, evident in nearly all of the field-sized reflexive commentary that has come out in the past decade. Comparison was the second of Brym’s two central analytic concerns in their volume on the sociology of Canadian Jews, while Ira Robinson framed his recent condensed summary of contemporary Canadian Jewry around differentiation.20 Richard Menkis’s recent short but potent argument, “North of the Border” in AJS Perspectives largely devoted itself to explaining how and why Canadian Jewry differs from Waters: Ethnie and Edentity(!) in the Calgary Jewish Community,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 36: 2 (2004): 119-131. 18 There is a surprising lack of scholarship on Toronto, given that it’s home to half of Canada’s Jews. On the prairies, see Theodore H. Friedgut, “Jewish Pioneers on Canada’s Prairies: The Lipton Jewish Agricultural Colony,” Jewish History 21: 3-4 (2007): 385-411; See Richard Menkis, “Negotiating Ethnicity, Regionalism and Historiography: Arthur A. Chiel and the Jews in Manitoba: A Social History,” Canadian Jewish Studies 10 (2002): 1-31; and Donna Krolik Hollenberg, “At the Western Development Museum: Ethnic Identity and the Memory of the Holocaust in the Jewish Community of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,” The Oral History Review,27: 2 (Summer-Autumn, 2000): 85-127 19 Robin McGrath, Salt Fish and Shmattes: A History of the Jews in Newfoundland and Labrador from 1770 (St. John’s: Creative Book Pub., 2006). 20 Ira Robinson, “Canadian Jewry Today: Portrait of a Community in the Process of Change,” in Changing Jewish Communities No. 12 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2006). http://www.jcpa.org/cjc/cjc-robinson-06.htm. — 458 —

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American Jewry, and bemoaning the neglect shown Canadian subjects by American scholars.21 Menkis convincingly opposed the “generation lag” theory of Canadian Jewry, which argued that Canadian Jews were essentially the same as their American counterparts, only more traditional. Instead he argued that the uniqueness of Canadian Jewry lay in its patterns of migration from both Britain and the U.S. after 1763, and the Canadian “environment.” Central among these environmental factors is that Anglo-Orthodoxy served as the model for religious and communal organization in Canada. Scholars of Canadian Jewish studies are certainly right to frame discussions relative to America. Yet while comparisons with the United States are both sensible and unavoidable, comparisons ought not to stop there. The Canadian Jewish experience has much in common with other national Jewries, and comparisons along other axes will likely yield new questions and insights that bear on the broader contours of Jewishness, nationalism, ethnic modernity, religion, and migration. The comparative and transnational studies that are becoming both more frequent and more robust are thus welcome. The “relative” in Morton Weinfeld’s “Canadian Jewry: A Relative Success Story,” modifies “success” more than it situates the Canadian story relative to other groups’ specific stories, though it can also be read alongside more focused studies—those that were part of the 1995 “Jews, Mennonites and Ukrainians in Manitoba” conference, for example,22 or recentlycompleted dissertations comparing in greater detail such topics as the Jews of Canada and Argentina before WWII; various North American cities’ governance of natural resources with governance in Israel/ Palestine; charitable organizations in Ottawa, Toronto, and Hamilton; immigration narratives in Galveston, New York, Montreal and Buenos Aires; and post-Shoah fiction in Canada, Australia, and South Africa.23 21 Richard Menkis, “North of the Border,” AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies (Fall 2008): 26-28. 22 M. Weinfeld, “Canadian Jewry: A Relative Success Story,” in Continuity, Commitment, and Survival: Jewish Communities in the Diaspora, ed. S. Encel and L. Stein, 23-48 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Fred Stambrook, A Sharing of Diversities: Proceedings of the Jewish, Mennonite and Ukrainian Conference “Building Bridges,” Jewish Mennonite Ukrainian Committee (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina 1999). 23 Morton Weinfeld, “Canadian Jewry: A Relative Success Story,” in Continuity, Commitment, and Survival, ed. Sol Encel and Leslie Stein, 23-47 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003); Haim Avni, “The Jews of Canada and Argentina before World War II: The Impact of Immigration and Industrialization Policies on the Formation of Two Diasporas,” Canadian Jewish Studies 3 (1995): — 459 —

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Significant contributions in a comparative framework have also been published based on such themes as antisemitism, survival/continuity, and migration.24 Even though no systematic and broad comparisons between Canadian Jewry and the Jewries of Australia, France, South Africa, Turkey, or Argentina have been undertaken, more and more scholars are including Jewish Canada, along with the Jewries of the Caribbean and Latin America, in their studies of “American” Jewry, just as there is trend among American historians to expand beyond the U.S. borders. Following the trend toward transnational studies, younger scholars are examining, for instance, Canada and Birobidzhan, Yom Kippur balls in London, New York, and Montreal, and a comparative study of Japanese and Israeli immigration to Canada. There are also noteworthy studies that have focused on Jewish immigrants to Canada since World War II, including dissertations on North African and Indian Jews in Toronto, French Jews in Montreal, Soviet Jews in Toronto, and Israelis in Montreal.25 In this vein (though without the epithet “transnationalism,”) research 11-54; Irus Braverman, “Tree Wars: A Study of Natural Governance in Israel/Palestine and in Four North American Cities,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2007; Marissa Guisti, “Tzedaka: Organizations in the Jewish Communities of Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton, 1930-1950,” PhD Dissertation, Laurentian University, 2006; Wendy H. Bergoffen, “We Are Chosen: Jewish Narratives in Galveston, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires,” PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004; Alexander Hart, “Writing the Diaspora: A Bibliography and Critical Commentary on Post-Shoah English-Language Jewish Fiction in Australia, South Africa and Canada,” PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1996. 24 Derek J. Penslar, Michael Marrus, and Janice G. Stein, eds., Contemporary Anti-Semitism: Canada and the World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Sol Encel and Leslie Stein, eds., Continuity, Commitment, and Survival: Jewish Communities in the Diaspora (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); and Daniel J. Elazar and Morton Weinfeld, eds., Still Moving: Recent Jewish Migration in Comparative Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000). 25 Henry F. Srebrnik, Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924-1951 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2008), and Henry F. Srebrnik, “Such Stuff as Diaspora Dreams are Made On: Birobidzhan and the Canadian-Jewish Communist Imagination,” Canadian Jewish Studies 10 (2002): 75-107; Rebecca Margolis, “A Tempest in Three Teapots: Yom Kippur Balls in London, New York, and Montreal,” Canadian Jewish Studies 9 (2001): 38-84; Ilan N. Magat, “Israeli and Japanese Immigrants to Canada: Home, Belonging, and the Territorialization of Identity,” Ethos 27: 2 (June 1999): 119-14; Kelly Train, “Authenticity, Identity and the Politics of Belonging: Sephardic Jews from North Africa and India within the Toronto Jewish Community,” PhD Dissertation, York University, 2008; Diana Cohen Reis, “The Immigration of Jews from France to Montreal: An Investigation of the Changes in Complex Jewish Identity,” PhD Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2008; Dianne De Genova Narrol, “An Ethnic or Religious Enclave? Experiences of the Former Soviet Jewish Community in Toronto,” PhD Dissertation, York University, 2004; Thelma Davidson, “Former Soviet Jews in Toronto: PostCollapse of the Soviet Union,” PhD Dissertation, Trent University, 2001. — 460 —

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on World-War-II-era Canada and the Canada-Israel connections has been unsurprisingly strong. Adam Mendelsohn’s Brandeis University dissertation conceptualizing a single Anglophone Jewish Diaspora represents a number of conceptually mature and ambitious projects of Jewish transnationalism growing out of the now quite rich field of Atlantic World studies.26 That allied field offers promising opportunities for research. Perhaps these recently finished dissertations may give a sense of the direction in which the field is moving.27 While the subjects that have enjoyed enduring scholarly attention continue to inspire solid research, promising new directions are also being pursued and new subjects being brought into the fold. Brown and Davids’ edited volume dealing, in part, with Canadian Jewish seniors is opening a new area of study. Attention to the Yiddish press has flourished with the work of Rebecca Margolis, who along with Faith Jones is editing a forthcoming double issue of Canadian Jewish Studies devoted to the topic.28 Ultra-Orthodoxy continues to receive due scholarly attention.29 When Brown et. al. introduced their bibliography of Canadian Jewish studies from 1965–1999, they called for several new directions to be pursued. Research on schools and social welfare systems, synagogues, 26 Adam Mendelsohn, “Tongue Ties: Religion, Culture and Commerce in the Making of the Anglophone Jewish Diaspora, 1840-1870,” PhD Dissertation, Brandies University, 2008. 27 Opportunities to consider collaboration among Jewish studies scholars were promoted in 2006 with a joint session of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies (ACJS) and the Canadian Society for Italian Studies. Plans are likewise in the making for a meeting between members of the ACJS and the Latin American Jewish Studies Association in 2010. 28 Rebecca Margolis, “Yiddish Literary Culture in Montreal, 1905-1940,” PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, 2005; Rebecca Margolis, “Jewish Print Culture in Canada,” in Histoire du livre et de l’imprimé au Canada/History of the Book in Canada, Volume III (1918-2000), ed. Carole Gerson and Jacques Michon, 305-307 (Toronto, ON, and Montreal, QC: University of Toronto Press/Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2007); and Rebecca Margolis, “Yiddish Translation in Canada: A Litmus Test for Continuity,” TTR (Traduction Terminologie Rédaction) 19: 2 (2006): 149-89. 29 See for example William Shaffir, “Outremont’s Hassidim and Their Neighbours: An Eruv and its Repercussions,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 44: 1&2 (2000): 56-71; William Shaffir, “Fieldwork among Hassidic Jews: Moral Challenges and Missed Opportunities,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 43: 1&2 (2001): 53-69; Valerie Stoker, “Drawing the Line: Hasidic Jews, Eruvim, and the Public Space of Outremont, Quebec,” History of Religions 43: 1 (August 2003): 18-49; and Ira Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 18961930 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007); see also dissertations on Canadian Jewish ultraOrthodoxy, including Sharyn Weinstein Sepinwall, “Women of Valour: Literacy as the Creation of Personal Meaning in the Lives of a Select Group of Hassidic Women in Quebec,” PhD Dissertation, McGill University, 2002; Jonathan Levy, “Deviance and Social Control Among Haredi Adolescent Males,” PhD Dissertation, McGill University, 2004. — 461 —

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Canadian Jewish women, and Orthodoxy in Canada have begun to be undertaken by Randal Schnoor and Henry Pomson, David Azrieli, Arkadiy Yakubov, Ruth Panofsky, Ira Robinson, Etan Diamond, and others.30 Meanwhile subjects like migration within Canada, the development of denominational Judaism, and occupational choices of recent generations are ignored or under-examined. Indeed, there are several areas into which the field ought to expand. We do not have a synthetic cultural history of Canadian Jews that gives shape, context, and voice to the myriad cultural products Canadian Jews have produced. Nor do we have even an outline for what a general intellectual history of Canadian Jewry and its interactions with the Canadian intellectual world might look like, though Alan Mendelson’s work on genteel antisemitism among the Canadian elite offers a piece of this puzzle.31 We have no overarching study of Canadian Jewish philanthropy. We have no critical history of the Canadian Jewish Congress or the B’nai B’rith. We do not know what kind of impact Jewish writers have had on the Canadian mosaic. Have A. M. Klein, Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Matt Cohen, or Miriam Waddington changed Canadians’ perceptions of themselves or impacted Jews and JewishGentile relations? No broad scholarly studies of Jewish Toronto have been undertaken since Speisman’s excellent but hardly definitive work in 1979, which accounted for Jewish Toronto until 1937 only. Toronto is the location, but not the subject, of about a dozen dissertations from the 30 Henry Felix Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor, Back to School: Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008); The congress united us / the Congress of Bukharian Jews of the USA and Canada; Arkadiy Yakubov, ed., = Kongress obʺedinil nas / Kongress bukharskikh evreev SSHA i Kanady. (New York: Congress of Bukharian Jews of the USA and Canada, 2005); David J. Azrieli, Rekindling the Torch: The Story of Canadian Zionism (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2008); Ruth Panofsky, At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish Canadian Women Writers (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2008); Ira Robinson, Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007); and Etan Diamond, And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Several dissertations on these themes have also been written. See Natalie Deborah Weiser, “Becoming an Observant Jewish Woman: Process, Practice and Performance,” PhD Dissertation, York University, 2007; Emily Rose Antflick, “Milk and Honey in the Snow: Teaching, Learning and Knowing Israel in a Toronto Jewish High School,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2007; and Susan J. Landau-Chark, “Community, Identity and Religious Leadership as Expressed Through the Role of the Rabbi’s Wife,” PhD Dissertation, Concordia University, 2008. 31 Alan Mendelson, Exiles from Nowhere: the Jews and the Canadian Elite (Montreal: R. Brass Studio, 2008). See also Kenneth Lyle Wyman, “Abraham de Sola and His Intellectual World,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002. — 462 —

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past decade.32 Apart from Joe King’s celebratory account, no scholarly history of Jewish Montreal has been undertaken either, though Montreal continues to enjoy great attention (with approximately sixteen dissertations written about it).33 We also have few accounts of smaller Jewish communities (there are no works on Halifax, Ottawa, or St. John, for example), and Atlantic Canada lacks the attention it deserves. We have yet to see much on Canada’s Jewish poor. Little attention has been devoted to examining community disunities, including religious strife, interrelations among non-Ashkenazi minorities, or the friction between the Canadian Jewish Congress and other community organizations. Very little recent scholarly attention has been paid to Jewish history before the turn of the nineteenth century; studies of pre-Confederation have been in steady decline since the 1980s.34 We have no work dedicated to studying how Britain’s version of Jewish modernity influenced Canadian Jewishness, nor do we have a volume on the experience of German Jews in Canada. Yet the past decade has seen the emergence—still in nascent form— of Canadian Jewish historiography, with a handful of articles and the 32 See, for example, Jack Edwin Lipinsky, “The Progressive Wedge: The Organizational Behaviour of Toronto Jewry, 1933-1948,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2003; Anne Karolyn Rennert, “The Landscape of Jewish Toronto: An Examination of Landscape as a Reflection of Community,” PhD Dissertation, University of Guelph, 1999; and, for more focused studies, Benita Wolters-Fredlund, “‘We Shall Go Forward with Our Songs into the Fight for Better Life’: Identity and Musical Meaning in the History of the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir, 1925-1959,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2005; and Andrew Shmuely, “Excavating the History of Counterhegemonic (and Thermidorian) Subjectivity in Kensington Market: The Rise (and Fall) of Toronto’s Jewish Left, 1881-1956,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008. 33 Joe King, From the Ghetto to the Main: The Story of the Jews of Montreal, second edition, ed. Johanne Schumann (Montreal: Montreal Jewish Publications Society, 2001); Montreal focused dissertations include: Max Beer, “What Else Could Have been Done? The Montreal Jewish Community, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Jewish Press and the Holocaust,” PhD Dissertation, Concordia University, 2006; Magda Fahrni, “Under Reconstruction: The Family and Public in Postwar Montreal, 1944-1949,” PhD Dissertation, York University, 2001; Sara Ferdman Tauben, “Aspirations and Adaptations: Immigrant Synagogues in Montreal, 1880s-1945,” PhD Dissertation, Concordia University, 2004; Eve Lerner, “Making and Breaking Bread in Jewish Montreal, 1920-1940,” PhD Dissertation, Concordia University, 2003; and Donna Goodman, “Montreal Synagogue Sisterhoods (1900-1949): A Female Community, Culture and Religious World,” PhD Dissertation, Concordia University, 2004. 34 Jay M. Eidelman’s “Kissing Cousins: The Early History of Congregations Shearith Israel of New York City and Montreal,” in Not Written in Stone, ed. Daniel J. Elazar, Michael Brown, and Ira Robinson, 71-83 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003), and Adam Mendelson’s dissertation on Anglo-Jewish Diaspora are notable exceptions. Sheldon Godfrey and Judith Godfrey’s Search out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740-1867 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995) remains indispensable. — 463 —

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first graduate seminar dedicated to its study.35 Frank Bialystok has written a thoughtful work on Canadian Jews’ post-Holocaust response.36 Harold Troper’s forthcoming work on Canadian Jews and the 1960s will be welcomed, and the time is arriving for the writing of histories of the 1970s and soon the 1980s, with their tremendous influx of Jews from North Africa, Israel, Russia, and elsewhere entering a Canadian landscape newly dazzled by multiculturalism.37 The 2000s have seen the first contributions toward a Canadian Jewish anthropology, including some chapters in The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader, along with work like that of Emma Jo Aiken-Klar on antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and Canadian Jewish diasporic identity, Kelly Train’s work on Indian and Sephardi Jews in Toronto, and Judith Cohen’s Jewish ethnomusicology.38 For the field to truly expand in size, scope, and creative range, several things need to happen. First, Canadian Jewish studies must grow beyond Canada’s national boundaries. The work done on Jewish life in Canada by University of Marburg (Germany) scholar Fabienne Quennet is among the few discussions about Canadian Jews by non-Canadians.39 The Association for Jewish Studies 2007 “Spotlight on Canadian Jewry: Dual Identities and Transnationalism among Canadian Jews” panel in Toronto seemed to draw few scholars aside from those researching Canadian Jewry. Second, practitioners in the field of Canadian academia more broadly 35 The first graduate seminar on Canadian Jewish historiography was lead by Richard Menkis in 2002 at Concordia University. 36 Franklin Bialystok, Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). 37 For a frame of this to-come discussion see Michael G. Brown, “From Binationalism to Multiculturalism to the Open Society: The Impact on Canadian Jews,” Changing Jewish Communities no. 10, July 16, 2006 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) http://www. jcpa.org/cjc/cjc-brown-06.htm, and Michael Brown, “Canadian Jews and Multiculturalism: Myths and Realities,” Jewish Political Studies Review 19: 3-4 (Fall 2007). 38 Emma Jo Aiken-Klar, “The Fear Factor: Assimilation, Antisemitism and the Relationship Between Zionism and Jewish Diasporic Identity,” vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology 9: 1 (2009): 106114; Kelly Amanda Train, “Authenticity, Identity and the Politics of Belonging: Sephardic Jews of North Africa and India within the Toronto Jewish Community,” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008; and Judith Cohen, “Three Canadian Sephardic Women and their Transplanted Repertoires: From Salonica, Larache and Sarajevo to Montreal and Kahnawá:ke,” in Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present, ed. Anna Hoefnagels and Gordon Smith, 150-162 (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007). 39 Fabienne, Quennet, “Jewish Canadian Writing in German Reception” in Charting the Institutions and Influences of Cultural Transfer: Canadian Writing in German Translation: 1967-2000 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2001). — 464 —

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and the Canadian Jewish community together should find ways to encourage aspiring Jewish studies scholars to remain in Canada and pursue Canadian Jewish subjects. Brain drain has taken away many Canadian-born scholars of the modern Jewish experience to pursue Jewish studies careers in the United States as part of a larger process— still unstudied, though noted by Morton Weinfeld—of Canadian Jewish leaders, scholars, and activists preferring to swim in what they perceive as bigger and more interesting waters.40 The third, and perhaps chief, barrier is the general lack of interest in Canadian Jewish studies among Canadian Jews. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Canadian Jews themselves believe their own history and culture lacks luster. Canada has no national museum of Canadian Jewry. Israel’s Judaica, Canada’s largest purveyor of Judaica and Jewish books, sells virtually no Canadian Jewish scholarship. The adult education committee of the largest Conservative synagogue in Canada, Beth Tzedec, recently rejected a proposal from its scholar in residence to develop a lecture series on Canadian Jewry, thinking that congregants simply wouldn’t be interested.41 Fourth, Canadian Jewish studies must expand its sources of comparison beyond the United States. The study of Canadian Jews has value for the study of other ethnic and religious groups in Canada, and for Canada’s explorations in multi-cultural statecraft. Furthermore, studies comparing Canadian Jewry with that of other countries would shed light on the dynamics of Jewish post-modernity. Fifth, the field must actively become a part of the discussion already underway among scholars in Canadian studies, addressing critical questions such as: how “white” have Canadian Jews been? What does “whiteness” mean in Canada? How have Canadian Jews located themselves—consciously or otherwise—in the essentially colonial project that is Canada?42 Virtually no work can be found on Jews and 40 Morton Weinfeld, Like Everyone Else, 80 41 The anecdote was conveyed to me by Beth Tzedec’s current scholar in residence, Rabbi Harvey Meirovich, a senior lecturer in Jewish studies at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, and its former rabbinical school dean, during a July 30, 2009, meeting. 42 See, for example, Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); Joesph Yvon Theriault’s 2009 Trudeau Foundation Lecture, “Is Canada a Truly Cosmopolitan Society?”; Himani Bannerji, The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000); Daniel Coleman, White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada (Toronto: University of — 465 —

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the construction of race in Canada, despite a significant interest in the extent to which Jews suffer or suffered from antisemitism. Canadian Jewish tudies, it seems, ought to join the conversations started by scholars like Sunera Thobani, Daniel Coleman, and Erin Manning, and contribute Jewish perspectives to the ongoing theoretical and political discourse that, ipso facto, already includes Jewishness. Canadian Jewish studies, in other words, should find room to examine Canadian Jews’ Canadianness, as well as their Jewishness.43 Finally, Canadian Jewish studies would do well to embrace Jewish cultural studies. With the notable exceptions of Pierre Anctil’s work and some of the chapters in Ravvin and Menkis’ Canadian Jewish Studies Reader, which are also cultural studies pieces insofar as they examine how issues are played out in the sphere of culture, read “texts” broadly, and see meaning generated out of tensions, negotiations, and conflicts, there is little work in this area. Nor have many scholars turned their gazes to analyzing media practices (Rebecca Margolis’ work on the Yiddish press and Jeremy Stolow’s rich work on ultra-Orthodox publishing excepted).44 Discussions of Canadian cultural texts (television, films, comics, ephemera, fine art, architecture, design, theatre, and music) receive minimal attention, and, again, we have nothing broad and synthetic. Canadian Jewish studies has yet to join in conversation with the field of diaspora studies, replete as it is with journals, programs, a conference circuit, and methodological debates. Perhaps most surprisingly, very little gender analysis has been undertaken, though scholars have continued to devote attention to Canadian Jewish women as subjects. Even the 2003 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies, devoted to Canadian women writers, did not use gender as an analytic category.45 Toronto Press, 2006), 3-45; R. Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Yasmin Jiwani, Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender and Violence (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); and Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 43 Thanks to Seymour Mayne for suggesting this phrasal realignment. 44 See above for Rebecca Margolis. Jeremy Stolow, “Holy Pleather: Materializing Authority in Contemporary Orthodox Jewish Publishing,” Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, 3: 3 (Autumn 2007): 314-335. Jeremy Stolow, “Communicating Authority, Consuming Tradition: Jewish Orthodox Outreach Literature and its Reading Public,” in Religion, Media and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors, 73-91. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 45 Laura McLauchlan’s “‘I,’ ‘Unknown’: Female Subjectivity in Miriam Waddington’s Early Life — 466 —

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I know of no work on Canadian Jewish masculinity, though credit is due for the good work done on queer Jewish Canadians.46 State of the field essays conventionally place a greater emphasis on taking stock of accomplishments than on pointing to lacunae. Indeed, Canadian Jewish studies has much to celebrate; the field is maturing and expanding in exciting and important directions, as we have seen, and the institutional structure supporting its production is stable if not strengthening. But the answer to our opening question of who values Canadian Jewish studies and why remains answered only in the “ought.” The field ought to be valued by Canadian Jews, by scholars of Canada, ethnicity, and religion, and by students of Jewish modernity and the Jewries of all of the countries to which Canadian Jewry could be fruitfully compared. Until the time when all of the field’s potential audiences are routinely and deeply engaged, the field has much to accomplish. David S. Koffman

Writing and Green World (1945),” Canadian Jewish Studies, 11 (2003): 53-92, and Donna Krolik Hollenberg’s “Gender, Jewish Identity, and Cultural Memory in the Poetry of Rhea Tregebov,” 93110 are exceptions, thought they both focus on individual writers, narrowly. 46 Oscar Wolfman, “Remaking Family: Canadian Jews, Sexuality, and Relationships,” in Queer Jews, ed. David Shneer and Caryn Aviv. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 156-171; Randal F. Schnoor, “Being Gay and Jewish: Negotiating Intersecting Identities,” Sociology of Religion 67: 1 (2006): 4360; and Shari Rochelle Lash, “Fitting Under the Marriage Canopy: Same-Sex Weddings as Rites of Conformity in a Canadian Liberal Jewish Context,” PhD Dissertation, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2007. — 467 —

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General Bibliography

Items in this General Bibliography were cited in the “For Further Study” sections of more than one chapter in this book and were therefore placed in this section. Abella, Irving. A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1990. Abella, Irving, and Harold Troper. None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1982. Anctil, Pierre, and Ira Robinson, eds. Les communautés juives de Montréal: Histoire et enjeux contemporains. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 2010. Brown, Michael. Jew or Juif? French Canadians, and Anglo Canadians, 1759-1914. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987. ------. “The Beginnings of Reform Judaism in Canada.” Jewish Social Studies 34 (1972): 322-342. ------. “From Gender Bender to Lieutenant Governor: Jewish Women in Canada, 1738-2005.” In A Maturing Community: Jewish Women and Seniors, edited by Martin Lockshin. (Toronto:) York University Centre for Jewish Studies, 2005. Brym, Robert, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds. The Jews in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993. Chiel, Arthur A. The Jews of Manitoba. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961. Alan Davies, ed. Anti-Semitism in Canada: History and Interpretation. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992. Diamond, Etan. And I will dwell in their midst : Orthodox Jews in Suburbia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Elazar, Daniel J., Michael Brown, and Ira Robinson, eds. Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions, and Constitutionalism in Canada. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003. Godfrey, Sheldon J. and Judith C. Search Out The Land. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995. — 468 —

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Hart, Arthur Daniel. The Jew in Canada: A Complete Record of Canadian Jewry from the Days of the French Regime to the Present Time Toronto & Montreal: Jewish Publications Limited, 1926. Joseph, Anne. Heritage of a Patriarch: A Fresh Look at Nine of Canada’s Earliest Jewish Families. Sillery, QC: Septentrion, 1995. Klein, Ruth, and Frank Dimant, eds. From Immigration to Integration the Canadian Jewish Experience: A Millennium Edition. Toronto: B’nai B’rith Canada, 2000. Langlais, Jacques, and David Rome. Jews and French Quebecers: Two Hundred Years of Shared History. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991. Menkis, Richard. “‘In this Great, Happy and Enlightened Colony:’ Abraham de Sola on Jews, Judaism and Emancipation in Victorian Montreal.” In L’antisémitisme éclairé: Inclusion et exclusion depuis l’Époque des Lumières jusqu’à l’affaire Dreyfus, edited by Ilana Y. Zinguer & Sam W. Bloom. Leiden: Brill, 2003 Menkis, Richard, and Norman Ravvin. The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader. Calgary: Red Deer Press, 2004. Paris, Erna. Jews: An Account of their Experience in Canada. Toronto: MacMillan of Canada, 1980. Rosenberg, Louis. Canada’s Jews: A Social and Economic Study of Jews in Canada in the 1930’s. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993. Rosenberg, Stuart E. The Jewish Community in Canada, 2 volumes. Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1970-1971. Sack, Benjamin G. History of the Jews in Canada: From the Earliest Beginnings to the Present Day, Vol. 1. Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, 1945. Speisman, Stephen A. Toronto’s Jews: A History to 1937. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979. Steedman, Mercedes. Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Tulchinsky, Gerald. Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. ------. Taking Root The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community. Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1992. Waller, Harold, and Daniel J. Elazar. Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian — 469 —

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Jewish Polity in the Postwar World. Lanham, MD: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and University Press of America, 1990. Weinfeld, Morton. Like Everyone Else, But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2001. Weinfeld, Morton, William Shaffir, and Irwin Cottler. The Canadian Jewish Mosaic. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 1981.

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Glossary

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Glossary

Achat chez nous—French phrase denoting a campaign on the part of French Canadians to patronize their own businesses and to boycott other businesses. Akedah—literally “binding” in Hebrew. It refers to the Hebrew Bible’s account of Abraham’s bringing his son, Isaac, to the point of sacrifice at God’s command. aliyah—( pl. aliyot) literally “going up” in Hebrew. It refers to Jewish immigration to Israel. Arbeter Ring—“Workman’s Circle” in Yiddish. A twentieth century Jewish labor organization. Ashkenaz—Hebrew term designating those Jews whose origin was in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. baalei tshuvah—literally “masters of return” in Hebrew. It refers to those Jews who adopt the beliefs and practices of traditional Judaism. bar mitzvah—literally “son of a mitzvah [commandment]” in Hebrew. It refers to the Jewish coming of age for boys, traditionally at the age of thirteen years. bat mitzvah—literally “daughter of a mitzvah [commandment]” in Hebrew. It refers to the Jewish coming of age for girls, traditionally at the age of twelve years. Bereshit—“In the beginning”, the Hebrew word designating the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. Beth ha-k’nesseth—literally “House of Assembly”. Hebrew word for synagogue. Beth Ha-Midrash—“House of Study” in Hebrew. bikur kholim—Hebrew phrase designating an association to visit and care for the sick. bildungsroman—a “coming of age” novel [German]. bimah—literally “platform” in Hebrew. It refers to the platform in synagogues from which the Torah is read. Bundist—member of the Jewish socialist and secular movement, which originates from the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897. — 471 —

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Glossary

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Chesed Shel Emes—literally “true kindness” in Hebrew. Designation for Jewish burial society. conversos—Spanish word designating those Jews converted to Christianity and their descendants. doppelganger—“lookalike” in German. dybbuk—Hebrew term for a wandering soul that attaches itself to a living human being. gabbay—Hebrew word meaning “overseer”. It denotes a synagogue officer. galuth—Hebrew word meaning dispersion, or exile. gayle—Yiddish word meaning “the yellowed ones”. This word was applied to longstanding residents of North America. Gemorah—Talmud. get—Jewish religious divorce document. geula—Hebrew term for redemption. glasnost—Russian word meaning “openness”. goyishe—Yiddish adjective meaning “appertaining to Gentiles”. goyim—Hebrew term for Gentiles. greener—Yiddish word signifying “green ones” [greenhorns]. This word was applied to new immigrants in North America. habitant—literally “resident” in French. It refers to the French settlers of New France and their descendents. Hachnosis Orchim—Literally “receiving guests” in Hebrew; hospitality. hadran—literally “we will return” in Aramaic. A formula recited after the completion of the study of a Talmudic tractate. haftorah—section of the prophetic literature read publicly in synagogues. halakhah—Judaic law. haredi—literally “trembling” in Hebrew. It refers to contemporary ultra-Orthodox Jews, especially Hasidim. hazzan—cantor. [c]hevra kadisha—literally “Holy Society” in Aramaic. It referred to the group within Jewish communities that dealt with issues relating to death and burial. Ich bin ein Jude—“I am a Jew” [German]. junta—Spanish word meaning council. It refers to the governing board of a Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. Kaddish—prayer in Aramaic recited in synagogues, often with reference to respect for the deceased. — 472 —

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Glossary

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kashrut—literally “fitness or properness” in Hebrew. It designates primarily food observant Jews may eat. (See kosher) kavvanah—intention or concentration [Hebrew]. kehillah—Hebrew word designating congregation, or community. It refers to the elected, ruling body of Jewish communities in Europe. These bodies, organs of Jewish self-rule, were expected to police and govern the Jewish community, and, in many cases, they were given broad and coercive powers. Kiddush—literally “sanctification” in Hebrew. It refers to the blessing over wine at Sabbath and Holiday meals. By extension, it refers to consumption of food and drink after synagogue services on Sabbaths and holidays. klezmer—The term “klezmer” means “musical instrument” in Hebrew. In Yiddish speaking Ashkenazi life, it came to refer to a professional travelling musician (plural: klezmorim) who played at community functions such as weddings. After a steep decline among North American immigrant Jews in the first half of the twentieth century, the late 1970s marked the beginnings of new waves of “klezmer” music by successive generations of musicians. kosher—Hebrew for “proper”. This refers to food that Jews may consume according to Judaic law. (See kashrut) Kristallnacht—literally “night of [broken] glass” in German. A major Nazi action against the Jews in Germany in November, 1938. landslayt—people who come from the same home town [Yiddish]. landsmanshaft—Yiddish word designating a fraternal association of Jews who came from the same town or region of eastern Europe. loshn-koydesh—literally “holy language” in Hebrew. Designates the Hebrew language. Maghreb—region of Northwest Africa [Arabic]. Mahamad—Hebrew word designating council or directors. mandala—is a Sanskrit word meaning “circle.” It represents the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. Marranos—crypto-Jews in Spain. Mashrek—the Middle East [Arabic]. mechitzah—literally “partition” in Hebrew. The divider between the mens’ and women’s sections of Orthodox synagogues. Megorashim [“the Exiles”]—North African Jews descended from Jewish exiles from Spain. — 473 —

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Glossary

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Melech—King [Hebrew]. mellah—Jewish quarter of a Moroccan city [Arabic]. minyan—literally “count” in Hebrew. It refers to a quorum of ten adult Jewish males necessary for a traditional Jewish religious service. mohel—Hebrew for the person who performs ritual circumcision. mohelet—female version of the word mohel. mussaf—literally “additional” in Hebrew. It denotes an “additional” service in the synagogue during New Moons, Sabbaths, and holidays. niddah—woman who is menstruating [Hebrew]. parnass—Hebrew for head of a synagogue. pashkvil—public poster or broadside [Yiddish]. Poalei Zion—labour Zionist organization. pogrom—Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks on Jews in Russia. psak din—legal decision of rabbinic court [Hebrew]. pusherke—a young, “pushy” individual [Yiddish]. rav—rabbi [Hebrew]. Rebbe—Hasidic spiritual leader. Rosh Yeshiva—head of advanced Talmudic school [Hebrew]. sakoness nefoshess—lifethreatening danger [Hebrew]. salonfähig—“presentable” [German]. Sefer Torah—Torah scroll [Hebrew]. Sephardim—Hebrew term designating those Jews claiming origins in Spain. Sephardim are Jews with roots in the Iberian Peninsula whose civilization spread to North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and Southeastern Europe. skarbovve—classic sacred melodies. Shabbat—Hebrew for Sabbath. shmatta—literally “rags” in Yiddish. This became a common term for the clothing industry as a whole. Shoah—literally “”destruction”. Hebrew term designating the Holocaust. shochet—Hebrew for kosher slaughterer. Shomer Shabbat—Jew who observes the Sabbath in accordance with Judaic tradition [Hebrew]. shtibl—(pl. shtiblech) literally “small room” in Yiddish. It referred to a small Jewish synagogue. — 474 —

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Glossary

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shtetl—Yiddish for small town. shtreimel—fur hat worn by Hasidic men [Yiddish]. shul—literally “school” in Yiddish. Synagogue. Shule—(pl. Shuln) Yiddish term that came to mean a “secular” school teaching Yiddish and socialist culture. Simchat Torah—festival marking the completion of the public reading of the Torah [Hebrew]. siyyum—ceremony for the ending of the study of a major rabbinic text [Hebrew]. smicha—Hebrew for rabbinic ordination. sura—division of the Qur’an [Arabic]. survivance—French word meaning “survival”, with special reference to the ethnic and cultural survival of French Canadians. Talmud Torah—literally “Study of Torah” in Hebrew. School teaching Hebrew and Judaism. Tanach—Hebrew designation of the Hebrew Bible. tefilin—Judaic prayerimpliments [Hebrew]. Toshavim [“the Natives”]—native North African Jews. Totentanz--the Dance of Death [German]. tzedaka—Hebrew word meaning charity. Ver gerharget’”—literally “Drop dead” in Yiddish. yeshiva—(pl. yeshivot) Hebrew for rabbinic academy; by extension a traditional Jewish school of all levels. Yiddishkeit—Yiddish word signifying Jewishness. Yom Ha’atzmaut—Israel Independence Day [Hebrew]. Zaide—grandfather [Yiddish].

— 475 —

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Contributors

Pierre Anctil is professor in the department of history of the University of Ottawa, where he teaches contemporary Canadian history. He was the director of the Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa from July 2004 until July 2008. Before that date, he was president of the Conseil des relations interculturelles of the Government of Québec, 2002-2003, and has held different positions in the Québec civil service in the area of immigration (1991-2004). He has written at length on the history of the Jewish community of Montreal and on the current debates on cultural pluralism in Montreal. Among his contributions are translations from Yiddish to French of memoirs written by Jewish immigrants to Montréal in the first half of the twentieth century. For the period of 2008-2010, he was awarded a Killam fellowship by the Canada Council of Arts. He has recently published Trajectoires juives au Québec (Presses de l’Université Laval 2010) and, in collaboration with Ira Robinson, Les communautés juives de Montréal, histoire et enjeux contemporains (Septentrion, 2010). In 2011 he co-edited with Howard Adelman Religion, Culture and the State, Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report (University of Toronto Press). Frank Bialystok teaches in the Canadian Studies Programm at University College, University of Toronto. His book Delayed Impact: the Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community (2000) was reissued in 2010. He is currently writing a history of the Jews of Canada to be published by the University of Toronto Press. Michael Brown is professor emeritus of history, humanities, and Hebrew and the former director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. Yolande Cohen is Professor of Contemporary History at l’Université du Québec à Montréal and has taught there since 1976. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and a Chevalier of l’ordre de la Légion d’honneur (France). Her work focuses on the history of social move— 476 —

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ments and gender history of France and Canada in the twentieth century. Her last published book is Femmes philanthropes : catholiques, protestantes et juives dans les organisations caritatives au Québec (Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2010). She is presently working on a major project on the comparative migration of Moroccan Jews to France and Canada from 1945 to the present. Ruth A. Frager is a member of the History Department of McMaster University.  She has written Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939  and co-authored  Discounted Labour: Women Workers in Canada, 1870-1939.  Her current research focuses mainly on human rights campaigns in Ontario in the aftermath of the Second World War.  Howard Gontovnick is completing his Ph.D. at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). He has maintained a private practice as a psychotherapist in Chomedey, Laval and has taught at Concordia University, the University of Sherbrooke, and Vanier College. In 2007, he created Howard Gontovnick Publications which has published several books in the field of psychotherapy and psychology. Alexander Hart worked for over a decade in the BC construction industry, earning trade qualifications as a journeyman plumber and gas fitter. He returned to university to toil in the deconstruction industry and to realize a long-felt potential to be an English teacher. Several years of night school completed his long unfinished BA, followed by a year of professional teacher training, an MA, and a PhD. Since 1997, he has taught as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, developing a second-year, online course “Literature in Canada” and two senior English courses unique to the department: “The Third Solitude: Jewish Canadian Literature” and “Writing the ‘Abyss’: Literary Representations of the Shoah.” Maxine Jacobson received her Ph.D. in 2004 from the Department of Religion, Concordia University. Her thesis is entitled “Trends in Modern Orthodoxy as Reflected in the Career of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung”. She is an independent scholar, based in Montreal, and has written and published on issues in American and Canadian Jewish history. — 477 —

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David S. Koffman is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of History, University of Toronto.  He has a Ph.D. in History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University. His recently completed dissertation, “The Jews’ Indian: Native Americans in the Jewish Imagination and Experience, 1850-1950”, analyzes encounters between American Jews and Native Americans.  Steven Lapidus received his doctorate from Concordia University where he has taught for the last several years.  Besides his work in Orthodox Judaism, Steven has published and taught in various fields, including Montreal Jewish history, death rituals and religion & sexuality.  His current book projects include an eyewitness account of life in a Ukrainian shtetl in the pre-World War I era and another on Hasidism in Quebec.  Loren Lerner is Professor of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal. Lerner is the editor of Afterimage: Evocations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature/Rémanences: Evocations de l’Holocauste dans les arts et littérature canadiens contemporains (Montreal: Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, Concordia University, 2002), Other exhibitions with Jewish content she has curated and written about are Memories and Testimonies/Memoires et Témoignages (Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 2002) and Sam Borenstein (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2005). She has created the biographical dictionary website publication, Canadian Artists of Eastern European Origin (1998). Cyril Leonoff is Historian Emeritus of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia and the Canadian Editor of Western States Jewish History, a California-based publication. Jack Lipinsky earned a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Canadian History. He specializes in the organizational and institutional development of the Canadian Jewish community. He is the author of Imposing Their Will: an Organizational History of Toronto Jews, 1933-48 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011) and co-author of a Telling Our Story, Canadian Jewish History to 1920, a textbook which integrates the — 478 —

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Ontario History Grade 7 and 8 curriculum with Canadian Jewish history. He has also written articles on intellectual history and organzational behaviour. Jack is an educator at Robbins Hebrew Academy of Toronto and a curriculum writer, online instructor, and educator with Facing History and Ourselves, teaching Holocaust and Genocide studies. Jack is the Spiritual coordinator of the Anshei Staszow-Slipi Congregation. Rebecca Margolis is associate professor in the University of Ottawa’s Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program. Her research and teaching interests centre on Yiddish culture in Canada as well as Canadian responses to the Holocaust. Her research has appeared in scholarly journals, edited volumes and a book, Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945. Richard Menkis is Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, cross-appointed to the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies and the Department of History. He was the founding editor (1993-2000) of Canadian Jewish Studies/Etudes juives canadiennes, co-edited with Norman Ravvin, The Canadian Jewish Studies Reader (2004), which won a Canadian Jewish book award, and was divisional co-editor, with Harold Troper, for the entries on Canada in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007). He is currently working on a book concerning the production and reception of narratives about Canadian Jewish history, as well as another, with Harold Troper, on Canada and the 1936 Olympics. Suzanne Rackover is the Art Librarian at The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. Prior to becoming a librarian Suzanne was curator at the Aron Museum in Westmount, Quebec and worked as an independent curator on the exhibition Blessings for which she published an essay included in the book Blessings: Art and Essays on Jewish Blessings (2009). Cynthia Ramsay is the owner and publisher of The Jewish Independent [Vancouver], formerly The Jewish Western Bulletin, and editor of The Scribe, the annual journal of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia.

— 479 —

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Chantal Ringuet, translator, holds a Ph. D. in literary studies. After postdoctoral research on Yiddish writers in Montreal (SSHRC, U. of Ottawa, 2007-08), she has published a book of poetry, Le sang des ruines (2009) which received the prix littéraire Jacques-Poirier 2010. She recently published a book about Yiddish Montreal entitled À la découverte du Montréal yiddish (Fides, 2011) and she is now preparing an Anthology of Yiddish literature in Montreal, which will include translations from Yiddish to French. Ira Robinson is Professor of Judaic studies in the Department of Religion and Interim Director of the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. Among his recent books are Rabbis and Their Community: Studies in the Eastern European Orthodox Rabbinate in Montreal, 1896-1930 (2007) which won a J.I. Segal Prize, Translating a Tradition: Studies in American Jewish History (2008), and Les Communautés juives de Montréal: histoire et enjeux contemporains (Sillery, QC, Septentrion, 2010) (co-editor with Pierre Anctil). He is president of the Canadian Society for Jewish Studies, and is past president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies as well as the Jewish Public Library of Montreal. Ellen Scheinberg received her B.A. and M.A. in history from Queen’s University and her Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa. Her dissertation is entitled “The Undesirables”: Canadian Deportation Policies and their Impact on Female Immigrants, 1946-1956”. Ellen has worked as an archivist for the last twenty years. She has worked at the Library and Archives of Canada as the immigration archivist for the Government Archives Division, as Director of the Ontario Jewish Archives. She is currently as a manager within the Archives of Ontario. While working at the OJA she helped coordinate many physical and virtual exhibitions, including the award-winning Ontario’s Small Jewish Communities virtual display. She has published many articles throughout the course of her career within journals and books in the areas of archival studies, women’s history, labor history and Canadian Jewish history. Randal Schnoor, a sociologist, teaches at the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in Toronto. He is co-author, with Alex Pomson, of Back to School: Jewish day school as a source of meaning in the — 480 —

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lives of adult Jews (Wayne State University Press, 2008). His research on Jewish identity has been published in academic journals such as Sociology of Religion, Canadian Ethnic Studies and Canadian Jewish Studies. Since 2005 he has served as president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies. William Shaffir is a Professor in the Sociology department at McMaster University. He has authored books and journal articles on Hasidic Jews, professional socialization, and field research methods. Shaffir has studied the transformation experiences of newly Orthodox Jews as well as the formerly Orthodox who have left the haredi fold. Two current projects centre on: a) how Hasidic Jews, and the larger Hasidic community, attend to the lures and intrusions of modernity; and b) claims of racial profiling aimed at the police.   Debby Glaser Shoctor became the Archivist for the Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta in 2001. In 2004, she joined the Board of the Archives Society of Alberta, serving as the Grants Committee Chair before becoming President in 2009. After working in publishing  for the Ontario Government and Prentice-Hall Canada, she came to Edmonton to be the Western Regional Director for B’nai Brith Canada in 1987. Returning to academic life in 1990, she completed her Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta in 1992. She has been active in many volunteer activities, including serving on the National Board of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, as President of Edmonton Hadassah-WIZO Council. She has written for many publications, including the King’s College Monitor, the University of Toronto Varsity, The Edmonton Jewish News, Edmonton Jewish Life, the Edmonton Jewish Times & Record, Heritage/Yerusha, The Edmonton Journal, Our Stories (Phoenix Society) and Living Legacies II. Harold M. Waller is Professor of Political Science and Director of North American Studies at McGill University.  He is the co-author, with the late Daniel J. Elazar, of Maintaining Consensus: the Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World, which won the National Jewish Book Award in the United States in 1991.  He has also published numerous articles and book chapters on the Canadian Jewish community over the past 40 years.

— 481 —

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Morton Weinfeld is Professor of Sociology and holds the Chair in Canadian Ethnic Studies at McGill. He has written widely on Canadian Jewish topics, as well as on multiculturalism and immigration. He is the author of Like Everyone else but different: the paradoxical success of Canadian Jews (2001), among many other works.

— 482 —

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Index Aba, S. 192 Abel, Sol 61 Abella, Irving 29, 109, 156, 158, 455 Abella, Rosalie 113, 202 Abrahams, Israel 22 Abramowitz, Herman 308-11, 313-4, 318, 341 Abramson, Alex 224 Abramson, Henry 223 Acadia 13 Achat Chez Nous 70 Action Nationale (Québec) 70 Acton, Lord 199 Africa 13, 200 Aiken-Klar, Emma Jo 464 Albany (New York) 24, 26 Alberta 35, 47, 49, 106, 245-7, 250, 253, 255, 284, 457 Alexander, Jason 200-201 Algeria 170 Allan Gardens Riot (Toronto) 105 Allan, Ted, see Herman, Allan Allen, Wayne 336-8 Alliance Israëlite Universelle 33, 41, 44, 175 Alpert, Richard (Ram Dass) 328 Alsace (France) 16 Am Olam 40 Amalgamated Clothing Workers 60 American Jewish Comittee 82, 91 American Jewish Congress 82, 91 American Nazi Party 105 American Revolution 22, 27 Ames, Moe 259 Amzallag, Salomon 172 Anarchism 66 Anctil, Pierre 356, 466 Angel, Leonard J. 390 Anglo-Jewish Association 54 Anshe Sholom (Hamilton) 33, 234, 294-5, 315

Ansonville (Ontario) 220, 223-4, 227 Anti-Defamation League (B’nai Brith) 87 Antisemitism 29, 35, 49-50, 53-4, 56, 58, 61-2, 67-70, 72-3, 75-6, 78-80, 83, 86-7, 89, 93, 95, 97, 104-6, 109, 114-6, 146, 152, 1556, 159-60, 179, 195, 198, 202-6, 212-2, 224-6, 237, 301-2, 344, 382, 451, 453, 458, 460, 462, 464, 466 Applebaum, Isaac 438 Aquitaine (France) 17 Arab world 94, 104, 107, 113, 160, 169, 172-3 Arcand, Adrien 71, 86, 93 Argentina 43, 47, 186, 243, 345, 459 Arnold, Abraham 9 Aron, Milton 320 Aronson, Marian 427 Ascher, G.T. 364 Ascher, Isidore Gordon 364-5, 400 Ashkenaz Festival (Toronto) 356, 448 Ashkenazi Jews 16, 25, 31-2, 94, 103, 152, 161-4, 169, 172, 176-9, 3435, 351, 353 Art, Jewish Canadian 422-449 Ary, Sylvia 426 Asselin, Olivar 71 Assiniboia (Saskatchewan) 42 Associated Hebrew Charities (Toronto) 196 Association Canadienne de la Jeunesse Catholique (Quebec) 68 Association for Canadian Jewish Studies 10, 455 Atlantic Canada 35, 47, 127, 149, 463 Atlantic Jewish Council 149, 151 Atlantic Ocean 17 Augustine Sisters 17 Australia 186, 345, 400, 459

— 483 —

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Austria 156 Avignon (France) 15 Avni, Haim 44 Azrieli, David 462 Balfour Declaration 66, 82, 229, 256 Bank of Montreal 25, 33 Bard, Mitchell 205 Baron de Hirsch Society 32, 217, 245, 365 Barrett, David 104, 272 Bartal, Israel 40 Baskin, Bernard 303 Bauman, Zygmunt 180 Baycrest Hospital and Centre for the Aged (Toronto) 197, 204 Bayesfsky, Aba 428, 431, 446 Bayonne (France) 16 Beaudoin, Myriam 420 Becker, Lavy 323-6 Beder, Jack 426 Begas, Karl 423 Beilis, Mendel 79 Belkin, Simon 50 Belleville (Ontario) 216, 235 Bellow, Saul 418 Bender Hamlet (Manitoba) 47 Benjamin, George 216 Bennett, Archie 196 Bennett, Richard B. 87 Berger, Joseph David 312 Berger, Julius 312, 315-6 Berkovitch, Alexander 424, 426-7 Berlin 99 Bernstein, Yosef 35 Berthier (Quebec) 24, 26, 32 Bessarabia 253 Beth Tzedec (Toronto) 201 Bethune, Norman 367 Bezmozgis, David 399 Bialystok, Frank 464 Bigot, François 18 Bilsky, Moses 34

Birkenthal, Etta 76 Black, Ruth 231 Blair, Frederick Charles 73, 98, 156 Blank’s Lake (Alberta) 248-9 Bloc Québécois 160 B’nai Brith Canada 107-9, 113-5, 134-5, 139, 145, 198, 202, 229, 462 B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation 175 Boisbriand (Quebec) 283 Boisclair, André 160 Boner, Aaron 27 Bordeaux (France) 15-16, 18 Borenstein, Sam 425 Bornstein, Eli 447 Bosco, Monique 418 Boston (USA) 35 Bouchard, Gérard 179 Bourassa, Henri 68, 72 Boyarsky, Abraham 392-3 Braitstein, Marcel, 433 Brandeau, Esther 17, 19 Brandon (Manitoba) 241 Brantford (Ontario) 122, 229, 237 Briansky, Bella 227 Briansky, Rita 427 Brickner, Barnett 298-9 British Army 30 British Columbia 34, 104, 121, 263, 284, 304, 331, 440, 448, 457 British Columbia Jewish Historical Society 454, 457 British Empire 22, 35 British North America 29, 34, 121 Bronfman, Samuel 86, 89-90, 198, 369 Brown, Michael 321, 340, 363, 454 Brownstone, Benjamin 330 Brym, Robert 451 Buddhists in Canada 129 Buffalo (USA) 236 Bund, Jewish Labour 61, 66 Burquest (British Columbia) 268

— 484 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Cadesky, Sara 227 Cahén, Oscar 448 Caiserman, Hannanaiah Meir 86-7, 89, 347, 427 Caiserman-Roth, Ghitta 426-7, 446 Calgary (Alberta) 84, 110, 122, 124, 129, 137, 152, 245-6, 248, 250-3, 256, 280, 349 California (USA) 34, 263 Cambridge (Ontario) 237 Camp Kadimah (Nova Scotia) 149 Camrose (Alberta) 247-8 Canada, Armed Forces 97 Canada, Census 125-6, 131 Canada, immigration policy 176, 195 Canada-Israel Committee 108, 116, 146, 198, 270 Canadian Association of University Teachers 208-9 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 105, 159 Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy 198 Canadian Council for Reform Judaism 304 Canadian Council of Conservative Synagogues 339 Canadian Civil Liberties Association 207 Canadian Council of Liberal Congregations 303 Canadian Jewish Chronicle (Montreal) 65, 366, 369-70 Canadian Jewish Congress 81-3, 857, 89-90, 93, 95, 98, 102, 105, 107-10, 113-6, 134, 137-8, 143, 145, 198, 225, 241, 258, 302, 315, 369-70, 427, 456, 462-3 Canadian Jewish Congress Public Relations Committee 87 Canadian Jewish Congress Archives 9 Canadian Jewish Congress Central Region 88, 90 Canadian Jewish Congress Charities

Committee 340 Canadian Jewish Historical Society 9 Canadian Jewish News (Toronto) 205, 211-2, 334, 353 Canadian Jewish Studies 9, 451-467 Canadian Jewish Review (Toronto) 227, 299 Canadian League of Nations Society 72 Canadian Pacific Railway 35, 246, 263 Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism 203 Canadian Yeshiva and Rabbinical School (Toronto) 188-9, 339-40 Canadian Zionist 314 Canadian Zionist Federation 82, 115, 134-5, 139, 198 Cantor, Paul 211 Cantorial Council of America 336 Cantors’ Assembly, Ontario Region 336 Cape Breton (Nova Scotia) 22 Carlebach, Shlomo 327 Carpentras (France) 15 Carr, Judy Feld 107, 226, 233, 335 Cartier, Jacques 13 Cass, Samuel 265, 312-3, 315 Catholic Church, see Roman Catholic Church Cavaillon (France) 15 Centre Communautaire Juif (Montreal) 174 Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 116, 198 Cercle juif de la langue française (Montreal) 419 Chabad 235, 237, 242, 255, 271, 282-4, 287, 327, 351 See also Judaism, Hasidic Chaki, Yehouda 435-6 Champlain, Samuel de 13 Charney, Hyman 427 Charney, Melvin 435 Cheauveau, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier 413

— 485 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Chicago (USA) 278 Chiel, Arthur 43, 321 Choiseul, duc de 18 Chrétien, Jean 115 Christ Church (Montreal) 23 Christianity 168, 216, 300 Christie Pits Riot (Toronto) 86 Church of England 22, 296 Clark, Joe 108 Cliché, Anne-Élaine 420 Cobalt (Ontario) 217 Coderre, Denis 160 Cohen, Gerson 332-3 Cohen, Jacob Raphael 25 Cohen, Leonard 154, 159, 374, 3802, 404, 415, 462 Cohen, Lyon 78, 82, 319 Cohen, Matt 390-1, 401-2, 462 Cohen, Maxwell 106 Cohen, Martin 33 Cohen, Sorel 435 Coleman, Daniel 466 Compagnie de la Nouvelle France 14 Compagnie des Indes Occidentales 16 Committee on Jewish-Gentile Relations (Toronto) 72, 301 Communauté Sépharade Unifiée du Québec (Montréal) 173-6 Communism 61, 65-7, 71, 190 Communist Party of Canada 61, 115 Concordia University 113, 204, 3923, 430-1, 447, 455-6 Confederation 29-30, 67, 263, 364 Congrès Sépharade du Canada 176 Conscription (Canada) 155 Conservative Party 146 Constitutional Act (1791) 28 Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) 115, 369 Cordova, Emmanuel de 23 Cornwall (Ontario) 33, 226, 230-1, 236 Cotler, Irwin 107, 203 Council for Israel and Jewish

Advocacy 116, 137, 139, 145-6, 202, 206 Council of Jewish Federations of Canada 137 Craig, Henry 26 Creighton, Donald 362 Cristall, Abraham and Rebecca 253 Croll, David 231 Cupar (Saskatchewan) 246 Czernowitz Conference 344 DaCosta, Isaac 22 Daily Mail and Empire (Toronto) 59 Daniels, Roy 400 David, David 24-5, 27, 33 David, Phoebe 21 Dawson City (Yukon) 251 Day Schools, Jewish 146, 158, 162, 186-8, 191-2, 195, 233, 271, 280, 346 See also education, Jewish Deborah Ladies’ Aid Society (Hamilton) 221 Dekel-Chen, Jonathan 40 de Hirsch, Baron Maurice 41-4 Delisle, Esther 157-8 de Gaspé, Phillipe Aubert fils 413 de Sola, Abraham 32-3, 35, 77, 278, 294-6 de Sola, Clarence 32, 35, 80-2 de Sola, David 295 de Sola, Meldola 32, 80, 296 Detroit (USA) 221 Devin, Alex 228 Devoir, le (Montréal) 70, 72, 157 Dewart, Edward Hartley 364-5 Depression, Great 70, 72-3, 86-7, 93, 122, 248, 348, 382 Diamond, Etan 462 Diamond, Jacob and Rachel 251, 254 Diamond, Sara 442-3 Diamond, Willliam 254 Displaced Persons 97, 370, 398 Dominion Lands Act (1872) 42

— 486 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre (Montreal) 355 Dreyfus Affair 78, 80 Drumheller (Alberta) 250, 252 Dryden, Ken 211 Duceppe, Gilles 160 Ducharme, Réjean 416-7 Dukes, Caroline 431-2 Dundas (Ontario) 34 Eastern Europe, Jewish immigration from 39, 46, 52-4, 76, 82, 93, 121-2, 134, 169, 224, 241, 264, 278, 312, 350, 422 Eastern Townships (Québec) 27 Ecole Maïmonide (Montreal) 175 Edelstein, Hyman 365-7 Edenbridge (Saskatchewan) 47, 122, 246 Edmonton (Alberta) 84, 89, 110, 122, 124, 137, 245, 247, 252-3, 256, 320, 340, 349, 374 Education, Jewish 114, 163, 185-6, 191, 223, 243, 271, 278-9, 291, 349, 354-5 Egypt 102, 107-8, 170, 172, 177 Eilat 108 Eisen, Jacob 254 Eisendrath, Maurice N. 72, 86, 299302, 314-5 Eisenstein, Ira 324-5 Elazar, Daniel 454 Elberg, Yehuda 353, 356 Emanu-el (Montreal) 35, 294, 296-8, 302, 310 Emanu-el (Vancouver) 34 Emanu-el (Victoria) 34, 331 Endelman, Harry 219 Engel, Howard 389 Engelman, Uriah Z. 191 England 21, 23, 25, 27, 31-2, 35, 424, 53, 76, 121, 168, 186, 203, 216, 263, 295-6, 298, 318, 400, 463

Englander, William 231 Englehart (Ontario) 217 English Canadians 53, 56, 68, 96, 102, 104, 110, 362 English language 172, 180, 345-6, 350, 361 English literature, Jewish Canadian 363-4 Epstein, Seymour 191 Estevan (Saskatchewan) 247, 377 Ethiopia 122 Etrog, Sorel 428-9 Europe 94, 99 Evers, Muni 272 Expo 67 (Montreal) 428 Ezras Noshim (Toronto) 57 Fair Employment and Practices Code (Ontario) 101 Farmers, Jewish 40-41, 48, 50, 245, 256 Fascism 71, 93, 155 Federation CJA (Montreal) 126, 158, 160, 199 Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (Toronto) 196-7 Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (Montreal) 86 Federation of Traditional Cantors 336 Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada 32, 81, 195 Fédération Sépharade des juifs de langue française (Montréal) 174 Federations, communal 85, 87, 95, 98, 110, 126, 134, 136, 138, 198, 233, 243 Feinberg, Abraham 302, 304 Felsen, Vivian 356 Field, Saul 428 Flancer, Ludwig 427 Flatt, Ab 190 Florentine, Abram 27

— 487 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Fogel, Shimon 199, 213 Fonseca, Fernandez da 24 Fontainebleau, Edict of 15 Former Soviet Union 82, 94, 243, 266 Fort Cumberland (Nova Scotia) 22 Fort Qu’Appelle (Saskatchewan) 246 France 15-17, 78, 106, 156, 159, 170, 173, 177 Franco, Francisco 155 Frankel, Egmont 86 Frankenberg, Emme 427 Franklin, Lumley 263 Franklin, Selim 263 Franks, Abraham 24, 26 Franks, David Salisbury 24, 27 Franks, Jacob 24, 26 Franks, John 23-4 Fratta, Carla 413 Fredricton (New Brunswick) 150, 278 Free Loan Societies 84 Freeman, Myrna 113 Freemasons 71, 76 Freidman, Noah 34 Freifeld, Eric 427 Freiman, Archie 82-3, 86, 88-9 Freiman, Lillian 229, 231 Freiman, Lily 427 French Canadians 14, 35, 53, 56, 68, 70-1, 77-9, 93, 96, 113, 152, 179, 224, 302, 350, 362, 413, 415, 420 French language 171, 179-80, 345-6, 361 French Revolution 16 Frenkel, Vera 436 Fridenberg, Isaac 27 Friedberg, Benjamin 334-5 Frydman-Kohl, Baruch 339-40 Fur Trade 24, 30 Galt, Alexander 42 Galloway, George 211 Garcia, Hananiel 23 Garment Industry 58, 60, 65-6

Gélinas, Jean-Marie 17 Gérin-Lajoie, Antoine 413 Germany 25, 32-3, 35, 53, 76, 87, 105, 216, 224, 263, 295, 299, 327, 463 Gieff, Abraham 233 Ginsburg, Lewis 253 Gintzburger, Samuel 264 Ginzberg, Louis 316 Givens, Phil 159 Glace Bay (Nova Scotia) 122, 151 Gladstone, Gerald 428 Glass, Simon 443 Glick, J.I. 251 Glickman, Susan 390 Gold, Artie 390 Goldberg, Abe 427 Goldberg, Eric 424 Goldberg, Regina Seiden 427 Goldchain, Rafael 441 Goldstein, Elyse 188 Goldstein, Max 246 Goldstein, Rabbi S. 220 Goldstick, Hyman 252, 254 Goliger, Gabriella 398 Gomez, Manuel 24 Goodman, Aaron 249 Goodman, Harris 249 Goodwin, Betty 427, 431 Gorbachev, Mikhail 107 Gordon, Jacob 311 Gotlib, N.Y. 347 Gradis, Abraham 16, 18-9 Grafstein, Melech 227 Gray, Herbert 104, 232 Great Lakes 13, 27 Green, Alan 330 Green, Martin 356 Greenberg, Lorry 232 Greenstein, Anne 427 Greenstein, Michael 363, 456 Greenway, Thomas 44 Grober, Chayele 350 Gropper, Miriam 272

— 488 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Grossman, Larry 159 Gorssmann, Angela 443 Groulx, Lionel 70, 157 Groupement Juif Nord-africain (Montréal) 173-4 Gua des Monts, Pierre du 13 Guadeloupe 13 Hadassah-WIZO 57, 84, 229 Haig-Brown, Celia 211 Halifax (Nova Scotia) 21-4, 27, 121, 149, 151, 319-30, 340, 423 Hamilton (Ontario) 33, 100, 121, 124, 215, 217-8, 221, 223, 225-7, 229, 231, 233-4, 284, 294-5, 297, 303, 311-2, 315, 340, 359 Hanover (Ontario) 226 Hanson, Elhanan 248 Harper, Stephen 115, 146 Hart, A.D. 451 Hart, Aaron 22, 24, 26-7, 30, 32 Hart, Aaron Philip 31 Hart, Adolphus Mordecai 31 Hart, Arthur Wellington 33 Hart, Dorothea 26 Hart, Ezekiel 22, 27-8, 30-1 Hart, Moses 24, 27 Hart, Samuel 22, 27 Harvey, Jean-Charles 71 Hate Crimes Commission 106 Hays, Andrew 24 Hays, Moses Judah 33 Hayes, Saul 89-90, 110 Hebrew (language) 153, 161, 178, 212, 246, 266, 283, 343, 345, 354 Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland 149 Hebrew Free School (Toronto) 87-8, 197 Hebrew Union College 298 Heilman, Samuel 282 Heilprin, Michael 40 Heimlich, Herman 424

Hendel, Nathan 427 Hendeles, Ydessa 449 Henri IV 15 Herman, Allen 367-9 Hertz, J.H. 296 Herzl, Theodore 80-1 Heschel, Abraham 327 Heti, Sheila 399 Hindus in Canada 129 Hirsch (Saskatchewan) 246 Hitler, Adolf 53, 71, 86 Hizbollah 160 Hocquart, Gilles 17 Hoffer (Saskatchewan) 246 Holland 168 Holocaust 53, 73, 94, 96, 101-102, 109, 202, 344-6, 351, 353, 366, 392, 417, 422, 430-1, 433, 435, 441, 452-3, 464 Holocaust Denial 106 Holocaust education 116, 150, 212, 243, 266, 458 Holocaust Museums 104, 109, 447-8 Holocaust survivors 98-100, 102, 105-6, 109, 116, 122, 171, 232, 265, 322, 346, 391 Holt, Simma 272 Holy Blossom Temple (Toronto) 33, 86, 188, 202, 209, 234, 278, 294, 296-7, 299, 301-2, 304 homosexuality 336-9, 341 Hôpital général de Québec (Quebec City) 17 Hôpital Notre Dame (Montréal) 70 Horowitz, Aaron 231 House of Commons (Canada) 34 Hudson Bay Huffman, David 27 Huguenots 15 Hungary 98, 122, 232, 255, 265 Hunter, E. Crossley 301-2 Hutcheon, Linda 363

— 489 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

India 13, 122, 464 Inquisition 168 Institut québécois sur la culture juive 455 intermarriage 94-5, 110, 129, 161, 163-4, 176, 216, 234, 269, 272 International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union 60 Iraq 171-2, 177, 322 Iran 207 Ironstone, Joe 228 Isaacs, Avrom 449 Isaacs, S.M. 295 Iskowitz, Gershon 430-1 Israel 94, 96, 102-4, 107-9, 112, 114-7, 122, 126, 133, 135-6, 138, 144-6, 153-5, 158, 160, 164-5, 169-71, 173, 177, 195, 198, 200, 229, 247, 258, 266, 270, 282, 299, 345, 370, 382, 422, 430, 452, 458 Israel Apartheid Week 114, 204 Isserman, Ferdinand 297-301 Jacobs, Henry 33 Jacobs, John 27 Jacobs, Joseph 249 Jacobs, Samuel (18th c.)22-3, 27 Jacobs, Samuel (20th c.)78 Jacobs, Solomon 296 Jasmin, Claude 415 Jewish Agency 137 Jewish Colonization Association 445, 47, 50, 245-6 Jewish Community Council (Montreal) 280 Jewish Defence League 116, 207 Jewish Emigration Aid Society 42, 54 Jewish Federation of Edmonton 255 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver 267-8 Jewish Federations of North America 201

Jewish General Hospital (Montreal) 84, 86, 427 Jewish Herald (Montreal) 366 Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (Winnipeg) 243 Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Canada 116 Jewish Immigrant Aid Society 83, 135, 137, 169, 171, 174 Jewish Labor Committee 98 Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia 447 Jewish National Fund (Canada) 81 Jewish National Radical School (Toronto) 66 Jewish Old Folk’s Home (Toronto) 57 Jewish Post (Winnipeg) 244 Jewish Post and News (Winnipeg) 243 Jewish Public Library (Montreal) 348, 354 Jewish Standard (Toronto) 186 Jewish Studies in Canada 192-3, 212, 243, 322, 328, 355 Jewish Teacher Education Program (York University) 193 Jewish Theological Seminary (USA) 309-10, 312-3, 316, 319, 323-5, 332-5, 339-41 Jewish Times (Montreal) 78, 227, 366 Jewish Weekly (Montreal) 366 Jewish Western Bulletin (Vancouver) 270 Jews’ College (England) 297 Joint Distribution Committee 137, 197, 324 Joint Community Relations Committee 87, 139, 302 Jordan 108 Joseph, Henry 26, 32 Joseph, Jacob Henry 33 Joseph, Jesse 33 Joseph, Norma Baumel 113 Joseph, Rachel 26 Judah, Samuel 24, 26

— 490 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Judah, Uriah 24 Judaism 14, 26 Judaism, Conservative 104, 129, 149, 151, 161-2, 185, 188-90, 233-4, 242, 253, 278, 294, 308-41 Judaism, conversion to 163-164 Judaism, Haredi 277, 279-80, 282, 286, 343, 350, 353, 461 Judaism, Hasidic 277, 282-92, 329, 344, 346, 351, 355, 357, 420, 458 See also Chabad Judaism, Liberal see Judaism, Reform Judaism, Modern Orthodox 277, 279 Judaism, Orthodox 31-2, 35, 55, 58-9, 64-6, 84, 94-5, 104, 110-1, 113, 117, 128, 149, 151, 154, 158, 161-2, 166, 169, 185, 187, 196, 200, 222, 233-5, 242, 264, 271, 277-9, 282, 294-6, 312, 317, 319, 327, 336, 346, 348, 382 Judaism Reconstructionist 129, 323, 325-6, 332, 340 Judaism, Reform 35, 72, 104, 113, 129, 154, 161-2, 185, 190, 196, 222, 234, 237, 242, 264, 278, 294-306, 309-10, 313-4, 317, 326, 332, 334, 336 Judaism, Renewal Movement 32632, 340 Judaism, Traditional 161, 166, 242, 277 Judeo-Arabic 178 Kage, Joseph 41 Kahane, Anne 427 Kahn, Elaine 334-5 Kalef, Menachem 257 Kalla, Daniel 399 Kalman, Judith 393 Kamsack (Saskatchewan) 247 Kaplan, Mordecai 310, 316, 323-6

Kaplan, Nomi 433 Kaplan, Robert 104 Kashetsky, Herzl 441 Kashrut 35, 55-7, 63-4, 221-2, 242, 278-9 Kashruth Council of Canada (COR) 280 Kattan, Naim 412, 419 Katz, Benyomin 347 Kayfetz, Ben 101 Keegstra, James 106 Kellert, Harris 34 Kelman, Joseph 187 Keneder Adler (Montreal) 54, 62, 298, 348, 353 Kenney, Jason 203, 210 Kensington Market (Toronto) 84 Keren Hayesod 137 Kershenbaum, Abe 222 King, Joe 463 King, William Lyon Mackenzie 59, 68, 72-3, 87, 98, 156 Kingston (Ontario) 121, 204, 215-6, 220, 222, 225, 228-35, 390 Kirschenblatt, Meyer 430 Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, Barbara 430 Kirkland Lake (Ontario) 217, 220, 237 Kirshblum, Eliezer 335 Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) 215, 222, 225, 227, 229, 231-4, 278, 284, 303 Klein, Abraham Mordecai 154, 159, 369-374, 377, 390, 404, 462 Klein, Naomi 113 KlezKanada (Quebec) 356 Kohn, Eugene 311 Korn, Rachel 154, 353 Korper, Olga 449 Koschitsky, Julia 113 Kosher, see kashrut Kosygin, Alexei 107 Koukoy, O. 259 Koven, Merle 233

— 491 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Kramer, Bessie 61 Kreisel, Henry 374-5, 404 Kristallnacht 72, 89, 315 Krolik, Albert 260 Krugerdorf (Ontario) 217, 220 Kuhn, Jacob 27 Kulanu (Toronto) 117, 201 Kumove, Shirley 357 Kurtz, Shoshana 193 Kuznitz, Cecile 345 Labour Movement, Jewish 58, 60-2, 65, 86, 88, 218, 241, 300 Lacombe (Alberta) 248 Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society (Montreal) 42 Ladies’ Montefiore Hebrew Benevolent Society (Toronto) 54 Ladino 344 Lafargue, Jacques see Esther Brandeau Lancaster 34 Landa, William and Fanny 259 Landau, Herman 43 Landauer, Otto 448 Langley (British Columbia) 268 Landsmanschaft 54, 56, 65, 75, 88, 100 Lapointe, Ernest 72 La Rochelle 17 Laskin, Bora 225, 232 Laskin, Saul 232 Lastman, Mel 159 Latner Jewish Library (Toronto) 354 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid 423 Lauterman, Diane 427 Lawee, Eric 210 Layton, Irving 154, 159, 362, 374-6 Lazarus, John 390 Leary, Timothy 328 Lebanon 108 Leeser, Isaac 295 Lefkowitz, Sylvia 427 Leonoff, Cyril 48, 50, 457

Lethbridge (Alberta) 249-50, 252 Letterman, David 236 Leve, Jack 219, 233 Levi, Gershon 312-3 Levi, Isaac 22 Levine, Allan 389, 457 Levine, Norman 374, 376-7 Levine, Risa 272 Levinson, Michael 234 Levy, Eleazar 24, 27 Levy, G.H. 231 Levy, Herman 33 Levy, Nathan 23 Levy, Simon 24 Lewis, David 104 Lewis, Stanley 427 Lewis, Stephen 104, 159 Liberal Party 72, 112, 146 Lighthall, William Douw 365 Lipton (Saskatchewan) 47, 246 Literature, Jewish Canadian 361-404, 458 Literature, French Canadian 412-20 Lithuania 55, 246, 318 Liverpool 22 Lockshin, Martin 211 London (England) 24-5, 27, 31, 296, 382 London (Ontario) 34, 121, 137, 215, 222-3, 225, 228-9, 232-3, 284, 313, 337, 340 Lorraine (France) 16 Louis XIV 13, 15-6 Louzada, Jacob 27 Lower Canada, see Quebec Lower Canada Legislative Assembly 28, 30 Loyalists 27 Lubavitch, see Chabad Ludwig, Jack 415 Luftspring, Sammy 317 Lunenberg 23

— 492 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

MacDonald, John A. 42 Mackenzie, Jonathan 207 MacLennan, Hugh 362 Majzels, Robert 393-6, 399 Malamud, Bernard 419 Malamud, Israel 427 Mandel, Eli 374, 377 Mandel, Stephen 255 Manitoba 34, 44, 47, 49, 241-3, 249, 284, 328-9, 457, 459 Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg) 45 Manning, Erin 466 Mansion House Committee (London) 41, 43-4 Marche, Stephen 399 Marcotte, Gilles 413, 417-9 Margolis, Rebecca 461, 466 Maritime Provinces, see Atlantic Canada Markell, Jack 428 Marmur, Dow 209-10 Marranos 168 Martin, Claire 415 Martinique 13 Massey, Vincent 73 Maurera, Jacob de 23 Mavrikakis, Catherine 420 Mayerovitch, Harry 427 Mayne, Seymour 390, 455 Maza, Ida 347 McGill University 32, 68, 155, 323, 364, 369 McGrath, Robin 458 Medicine Hat (Alberta) 250, 252 Meldola, Raphael 24 Melfort (Saskatchewan) 247 Melville (Saskatchewan) 247 Mendel, Frederick 449 Mendel-Miller, Eva 449 Mendelsohn, Adam 461 Mendelson, Alan 462 Menkis, Richard 456-9 Mennonites 49 Mercaz, Centre for Enhancement

of Jewish Education (Toronto) 191-3 Merton, Thomas 328 Metz 16 Mexico 345 Meyer, Marion 234 Meyerovitch, Harry 426 Michaels, Anne 393, 396-8 Michaels, Michael 33 Michilimackinac (Fort) 25-6 Mikve Israel (Philadelphia) 31 Miller, Mindy 443-4 Miller, Mordkhe 347 Miquelon (France) 18 Miramer, Isaac 23 Mirvish, David 449 Missionaries, Christian 63 Mizrahi 197 Mohammed V 175 Monahan, Patrick 209 Moncton (New Brunswick) 150 Mongelon, Alec 223 Monk, Henry 80 Montefiore (Alberta) 47, 248 Montefiore, Moses 296 Montefiore Society 245 Montreal (Quebec) 14, 21, 23-7, 31-5, 53-4, 56, 58, 62, 64-5, 75, 77-8, 80, 82-5, 87, 89-90, 93-4, 98, 100, 103, 105, 109-10, 112-3, 121-4, 126, 129, 134, 137, 145, 152-166, 168-180, 184, 186, 189, 196, 203, 218, 221, 241, 269, 279-80, 282-4, 287-8, 291, 294-5, 297-8, 302, 308-12, 314, 316, 319-20, 323-4, 326, 331, 333, 335-7, 339-41, 345-53, 355, 357, 362, 364, 366, 369, 382, 389-90, 423-4, 431, 435, 437, 440, 460, 463 Montreal General Hospital 25 Montreal Hebrew Philanthropic Society 32 Montreal Schools Question 78, 85

— 493 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Moose Jaw (Saskatchewan) 122, 247 Moosomin (Saskatchewan)42, 122, 246 Morais, Sabato 295 Morocco 103, 113, 171-3, 175, 177, 322 Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto) 57, 84, 88, 197 Muhlstock, Louis 424 Mulroney, Brian 106, 115 Multiculturalism 96, 304, 361-2, 464 Munich Crisis 89 Muslims in Canada 130 Mussolini, Benito 71, 155 Myers, Rachel 27 Nantes, Edict of 15 Nardout-Lafarge, Élizabeth 417 Nathan, Henry 34, 263 Nathans, Nathan 22 Nathanson, William L. 256 National Campus Jewish Life 137, 199 National Council of Jewish Women 57 National Film Board 426 National Hockey League 228 National Jewish Population Survey 126 National Yiddish Book Center (USA) Nattel. Lilian 393 Naubert, Yvette 415 Nazism 71, 86, 89, 122, 146, 156, 315, 430 Nemetz, Nathan T. 272 Nepom, Sh. 347 Nepveu, Pierre 412-3 Netanyahu, Benjamin 204 Neumann, Ernst 425 Neumark, Devora 444 New Brunswick 27, 35, 149-50 New Christians 15 New Democratic Party 104, 115, 154, 369

New England 22 New France 13, 16-9 New Hirsch (Manitoba) 47 New Israel Fund 200 New Jersey 27 New York (City) 21, 24, 26-7, 278, 291, 308-9, 312-3, 317, 323, 344, 347-9, 351, 423, 459 New York (State) 236, 282 Newfoundland 35, 149 Newman, Abe 219 Newport (USA) 21 Niagara Falls (Ontario) 217, 219, 221, 227, 235-6, 284 Niagara Peninsula 50 Nichols, Jack 446 Nietzsche, Friedrich 417 Noble, Annie 225 Noël, Francine 416 Nordegg, Martin 248 North Africa 103, 122, 127, 168-70, 174, 279, 351, 370, 460 North Battleford (Saskatchewan) 247 North Bay (Ontario) 218, 228, 232-3, 236 North Dakota (USA) 248 North End (Winnipeg) 84, 94, 241 Northwest Territories 251 Nova Scotia 21-22, 35, 113, 149, 151, 230, 284, 423 Oakville (Ontario) 225 Oberlander, Wendy 444-5 Oberndorffer, Cecilia 231 Oberndorffer, Simon 231 Olazabal, Ignaki 179 Ontario 28, 33, 47, 52-3, 67, 73, 76, 78-9, 100, 112, 114, 121, 134, 140, 145-6, 158-9, 215-37, 304, 319 Oppenheimer, David and Isaac 264-5, 272 Ornstein, Henry 428

— 494 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Ornstein, Irving 228 Orthodox Judaism, see Judaism, Orthodox. Ottawa (Ontario) 34, 86, 105, 10910, 121-2, 124, 137, 204, 215, 217, 221-3, 226, 229, 231-3, 2367, 241, 280, 311-2, 326, 337, 33940, 445, 459 Owen Sound (Ontario) 215, 223, 225, 227 Outremont (Québec) 56 Paguerek, Cheryl 445 Paiken, Harold 231 Palestine 58, 66, 80, 82, 97, 208 Palestinian Nationalism 108, 114, 116 Panofsky, Ruth 462 Papineau, Louis-Joseph 31 Paré, Joseph 301-2 Paris (France) 13, 16, 43, 99 Parizeau, Alice 418 Parti Québécois 112, 160 Pastinsky, Nathan Meyer 264 Patrie, le (Québec) 72 Patriotes, rebellion 31 Pearlson, Jordan 303 Pearson, Lester 227 People’s Journal 366 Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture (Vancouver) 354 Perl, Shapse 347 Perth (Ontario) 237 Peterborough (Ontario) 219, 225, 227, 229, 231, 236 Philadelphia (USA) 21, 24, 27, 31, 295 Phillips, Nathan 159 Philo, Solomon 297 Pick, Alison 399 Pinsky, Alfred 446-7 Pioneer Women 57-8 Plains of Abraham, Battle of 18, 21 Plamondon, J.E. 68, 78-80, 314

Plaut, Gunther 303-4 Plaw, David 228 Plantation Act 23-4 Pogroms (Russia) 39, 52, 67-8, 216, 245 Poland 32, 34, 55, 61, 87, 97, 173, 217, 263, 312, 430 Polish (language) 345 Pollock, Jerry 225 Pomson, Alex 191-2, 462 Ponoka (Alberta) 248 Pontiac Rebellion 25 Porter, John 104, 363 Portugal 15-17 Postone, Abraham 253 Potsdam (USA) 230 Presse, la (Montreal) 72 Prezament, Joseph 427 Price, Julius 311 Prince Edward Island 149-50 Protestant Board of School Commissioners (Montreal) 67, 79 Protestant Church 14-5 Quebec 14, 16-8, 22, 26, 28, 30, 47, 50, 52-53, 67-9, 71-2, 76-80, 93, 112, 114, 121, 123, 140, 146, 152, 155, 171, 179-80, 203, 2823, 291, 304, 457 Quebec, government 171, 175 Quebec, immigration policy 176 Quebec-Israel Committee 198 Quebec nationalism 145, 153, 184, 382 Quebec City (Quebec) 17, 24, 26, 68, 122, 157, 284 Quennet, Fabienne 464 Quiet Revolution (Quebec) 112, 4178 Raben, Harvey A. 192 Rabbi Isaac Elchanan theological

— 495 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Seminary (USA) 313 Rabbinical Assembly (USA) 321, 332, 338, 340-1 Rabbinical Assembly, Ontario Region 337 Rabinovitch, Israel 347 Rabovsky, Mike 223 Radio Canada 159 Rankin, Harry 272 Raphael, William 422-3 Raphall, Morris 295 Rapoport, Janis 390 Rappaport, Albert B. 427 Rassemblement du judaïme Marocain 176 Ravel, Edeet 398-9 Ravitch, Melech 154, 353 Ravvin, Norman 393, 455-7 Rebick, Judy 113 Reconstructionist Rabbinical College 325, 336 Red River (Alberta) 47, 248, 250 Redhill, Michael 399 Reform Judaism, see Judaism, Reform refugees, Jewish 72-3, 156, 202, 232, 265 Regina (Saskatchewan) 89, 122, 2557 Reinblatt, Moe 426 Reiss, Mike 200 Reitman, Dorothy 113 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal 14 Richler, Mordecai 95, 100, 154, 1579, 382-9, 393, 401, 404, 415, 419, 462 Richler, Nancy 393 Richmond (British Columbia) 268, 338 Richmond, Marion 363 Riel Rebellion 246 Rilke, Rainer Maria 362 Ringuet, Chantal 420

Ritual Murder, accusation 69, 71, 79 See also antisemitism Rivelis, Nathan 231 Rivière du Loup 24 Roitman, Gina 398 Robarts, John 227 Robin, Régine 419 Robinson, Ira 454, 462 Roman Catholic Church 14-8, 26, 67-8, 78, 93, 112, 152, 157, 226, 302, 413 Rome, David 9, 366, 400 Rose, Neal 330 Rosen, Harvey 230, 232 Rosen, Sheldon 390 Rosenberg, Henry Mortikar 422 Rosenberg, Louis 45-7, 312, 318, 347, 451 Rosenberg, Morley 232 Rosenberg, Stuart E. 201, 321 Rosenberg, Yudel 347, 382 Rosenblatt, Joe 390 Rosenfarb, Chava 353, 356 Rosenfeld, Sara 353 Rosenzweig, Avrum 200 Rosenzweig, Philip 233 Roskies, David 346 Ross, Stuart 399 Rotchin, B. Glen 399 Roth, Cecil 320 Roth, Joel 335-6 Rothschild, Sam 225, 228 Routhier, Basile 413 Roy, Gabrielle 415 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1970) 361, 363 Royal Commission on Price Spreads (1935) 59 Rubin, Harry 217 Rumsey (Alberta) 47, 250 Russia 32, 39, 52, 54, 81, 245, 255, 260, 344 Russian (language) 345 Russian Revolution 68

— 496 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Russo-Jewish Relief Committee (London) 249 Ryshpan, Meyer 427 Sabbath observance 55-6, 64, 66, 279, 284, 315 Sachs, Samuel 313-5 Sack, Benjamin G. 29, 347, 451 Safdie, Sylvia 437 Safir, Oren 228 Saint Antoine de Padoue (Quebec) 24 Saint John (New Brunswick) 35, 121, 150, 441 Saint John Jewish Historical Society 150 Saint John’s (Newfoundland) 149 Saint-Laurent (Quebec) 175, 284 Saint Lawrence Boulevard (Montreal) 56, 78, 84 Saint Lawrence River 27 Saint Lawrence Valley 13-14, 18 Saint-Pierre (France) 18 Sainte-Sophie (Quebec) 46-7, 50 Saintes 17 Salit, Meyer 217, 219 Salsberg, Joseph 61 Saltzman, Steve 338 Salutin, Rick 390 Samuel, Herbert 296-7 San Francisco (USA) 327 Sarah, Robin 390 Saravanamuttu, Krisna 206 Sault Sainte-Marie (Ontario) 226, 229, 389 Saskatchewan 35, 42, 46-7, 49, 122, 245-8, 253, 256-7, 260, 328, 447 Saskatoon (Saskatchewan) 89, 122, 256, 258-60, 340, 449 Savage, Anne 426-7 Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman 327-30 Schechter, Solomon 309-11 Scheim, Philip 335, 337, 339-40 Scheuer, Edmund 222

Schnoor, Randall 160, 191-2, 462 Schoenfeld, Stuart 192 Scholem, Gershon 328 Schomberg, Alexander 23 Schultz, Samuel Davies 264 Schwartz, Jesse 313-4 Scott, Susan G. 440 Second World War, see World War II Segal, Esther 347 Segal, Jacob Isaac 154, 347 Seixas, Elias 24 Sephardim 31-2, 94, 113, 122, 152, 161-4, 166, 168-80, 187, 283, 351, 464 Serota, Phyllis 436-7 Seven Years War 18 Shaar Hashomayim (Montreal) 32-4, 308,310-1, 313, 319, 333, 341 Shahar, Charles 126, 160, 284, 286 Shaffer, Paul 236 Shaffir, William 451 Shandler, Jeffrey 345 Shanghai (China) 265 Sharansky, Anatoly (Natan) 107, 184 Shearith Israel (Montreal) 24-6, 313, 80, 169, 172-3, 176, 294, 296, 310 Shearith Israel (New York) 31 Sher, Joseph 428 Sherman, Jason 390, 393 Sherman, Kenneth 390 Sherman, Leah 447 Shiff, Melissa 445 Shnitka, Abraham 253 Shoah, see Holocaust. Shocter, Joe 245 Shoukri, Mamdouh 206-7, 209, 211 Shtern, Sholom 154, 356 Shuchat, Wilfred 333-5, 341 Sibbald (Alberta) 248 Siegal, Daniel 331 Siegel, Howard 335 Sikhs in Canada 129 Silcox, Claris E. 72, 301

— 497 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Silver, Abba Hillel 299 Silverberg, David 428 Silverman, Aaron 217 Silverman, Max 232 Simchovitch, Simcha 356 Simons, Beverly 390 Singer, Yvonne 437-8 Six Day War 108, 114, 134-5, 146, 153, 270, 422 Slonim, Reuben 313-4, 317 Smith, Goldwyn 45, 68 Smith, Stuart 159 Smolensky, Simon 252 Snyder, Abraham 27 Socialism 61, 65 Soleil, le (Quebec) 72 Solomons, Ezekiel 24-5, 27 Solomons, Levy 24-8 Solomons, Meyer 24 Solway, David 390 Sonnenfeld (Saskatchewan) 246 Sorel (Quebec) 24 South Africa 94, 103, 112, 122, 186, 246, 255, 400, 459 South America 13, 94, 105, 122 South Porcupine (Ontario) 217 Spain 15-17, 168, 368, 382 Spanish (language) 178 Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, see Shearith Israel (Montreal) Spanish Civil War 367 Sperber, Daniel 188 Spiegel, Mitchell 228 Sports, Jewish 227-228 Sprachman, Manuel 232 St. Catherines (Ontario) 215, 217, 219, 235-6, 389 Stalin, Joseph 107 Star (Toronto) 68 Steinberg, Gerald 207 Steinberg, Moses Wolfe 361 Steinfeld, J.J. 391-2 Steinhouse, Tobie T. 428 Steinman, Barbara 440-1

Stern, Harry Joshua 298-302 Stern, Leah 65 Strasbourg (France) 16 Stratford (Ontario) 237 Stern, Max 448-9 Stolow, Jeremy 466 Sudbury (Ontario) 219, 221, 226, 228, 232-3, 236, 340 Sufrin, Malcah 226 Summer camps, Jewish 189-91, 195, 230, 304, 320 Susman, Morris 249 Syria 107, 109 Talmud 53, 431 Tanenbaum, Roy 188, 339 Tarnow, David 362 Teboul, Victor 412 Telegram (Toronto) 68, 76 Terre, Lynda 440 Territorialism 66 Thériault, Yves 416 Thobani, Sunera 466 Thompson, Jon 208 Thornhill (Riding) 115 Thunder Bay (Ontario) 220, 223, 228-9, 232, 235-6 Thurman, Howard 327 Timmins (Ontario) 220, 237 Tiran, Straights of 107 Tobe, Sara 457 Tomarin, Harry 219 Torczyner, James 126 Torgov, Morley 226, 235, 389 Toronto (Ontario) 33, 45, 53-4, 56, 58, 61-4, 66, 69, 71, 75-6, 78, 829, 93-4, 98, 100, 105-7, 110, 1124, 121-4, 129, 134, 137, 152-4, 159, 165, 184-216, 218-21, 223, 227, 234-5, 237, 241, 256, 269, 279-80, 282, 284, 294, 296-300, 302-5, 311-2, 314, 317, 319-20, 323, 326, 331-2, 335-7, 339-41, — 498 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

345, 347, 349-53, 355-6, 374, 390, 430-1, 436, 442-3, 459-60, 464 Toronto Holocaust Centre 109 Toronto Jewish Congress 90, 197-8 Toronto Zionist Council 190 Train, Kelly 464 Tregebov, Rhea 390 Tremblay, Michel 355 Trépanier, Esther 424 Trochu (Alberta) 47, 248, 250 Trois Rivières (Quebec) 24, 26, 30 Troper, Harold 109, 156, 158 Troster, Lawrence 334-5 Troy, Gil 205, 212 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot 104, 106, 115, 117, 155, 202, 361 Tulchinsky, Gerald 29, 35, 39, 79, 81, 217, 228, 237, 363, 456 Tulchinsky, Karen X. 393 Tunisia 170 Turkey 168 Turkienicz, Rachel 187 UJA Federation of Greater Toronto 111, 190, 194, 200-1, 206, 210 Ukraine, see Former Soviet Union. Ultra Orthodox, see Judaism, Haredi. Union of American Hebrew Congregations 294, 302 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 61, 97, 102-4, 107, 109, 112, 122, 127, 144, 345, 348 See also Former Soviet Union Union for Reform Judaism 294 Union for Traditional Conservative Judaism 333-5 Union for Traditional Judaism 337, 340 United Church of Canada 72 United Israel Appeal Federations of Canada 115-6, 137-8, 197 United Jewish Communities (United States) 137 United Jewish People’s Order 218, 355

United Jewish Welfare Fund (Toronto) 88-90, 193, 196-7 United Nations 102, 108 United Palestine Appeal 90, 197 United States 23, 26-7, 34, 42, 77, 83, 94, 103, 105, 114, 121-2, 1257, 129, 134, 154-5, 158, 162, 203, 234, 249, 266, 278, 294-5, 298-9, 309, 321, 345, 349, 423, 458-9, 465 United Synagogue of America 310, 318-9, 332, 334 United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism 339, 341 Université de Montréal 70, 369 University Outreach Committee 137 Upper Canada, see Ontario. Valentine, Herman 27 Vancouver (British Columbia) 84, 89, 100, 109-10, 122, 124, 129, 137, 152, 241, 256, 263-6, 268, 270, 273, 279-80, 297, 303, 313, 315, 319-20, 331-2, 335, 340, 349, 433, 439, 443 Vancouver Island 34, 263 Vaugeois, Denis 16 Ve’Ahavta (Toronto) 200 Vegreville (Alberta) 247 Veiner, Harry 250 Verchères (Quebec) 24 Versailles 17 Victoria (British Columbia) 34, 124, 263-4, 331 Vienna (Austria) 99 Vineberg, Alexander 33 Voix Séfarade, la (Montréal) 17, 175 Volpe, Joe 211 Yamachiche 24 Waddington, Miriam 374, 377-8, 462 Wagschal, Marion 437

— 499 —

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Waldheim, Kurt 156 Wall, Jeff 439-40 Waller, Harold M. 197, 199 Wapella (Saskatchewan) 43-4, 121, 246 War of Attrition 108 War Criminals, see Nazism Ward, the (Toronto) 56, 76-7 Warsaw (Poland) 351 Wasserman, Bryna 355 Wasserman, Dora 353 Waterman, Isaac 216 Wayman, Tom 390 Weinfeld, Morton 104, 114, 117, 305, 451, 456, 459, 465 Weintraub, William 389 Weiss, Avi 341 West Indies 13 Western Jewish News (Winnipeg) 244 Westphalia, Treaty of 16 Wetaskiwin (Alberta) 248 Weyburn (Saskatchewan) 247 Wex, Michael 357, 393 Whistler, James Macneil 423 Whitzman, Sheila 230 Wiesel, Elie 328 Williams, Isadore Orke 222 Willner, Rochelle 114 Wilson, Cairine 72 Wilson, Milton 400 Windsor (Ontario) 121, 137, 215, 217, 221-3, 226, 229, 231-4 Winnipeg (Manitoba) 34, 43, 53, 756, 82-4, 87, 89-90, 100, 110, 112, 121-2, 124, 129, 137, 221, 236, 241-3, 256, 269, 296-7, 303, 311, 313, 320-2, 329-30, 340, 345, 347-9, 353, 355, 377, 389, 431 Wise, Stephen 297, 299, 301 Wiselberg, Fanny 428 Wiseman, Adele 374, 378-80, 403-4, 419 Wiseman, Laura 193 Wiserman, Henry 231 Wolf, Marc-Alain 420

Wolfe, Bernie 225 Wolfe, General 23 Wolff, Johann Edward 423 Wolofsky, Hirsch 298 Women, Jewish 56-7, 62-4, 113, 185, 188, 267, 305, 322, 332 World War I 47, 67, 82, 312, 349 World War II 55, 86, 93, 96-7, 198, 226, 257, 265, 282, 313, 319, 324, 350, 353, 413, 415, 420, 426, 430, 458 Yakubov, Arkadiy 462 Yarmouth (Nova Scotia) 151 Yellowknife (Northwest Territories) 251 Yeshiva University 258, 324, 341 Yeshivat Chovevei Torah 341 Yiddish 56-7, 59, 66, 75, 93, 103, 107, 154, 161, 189, 223, 227, 241, 246, 257, 264, 266, 278, 298, 312, 315, 319, 343-57, 419, 430, 440, 458 Yiddish culture, Canadian 56, 347 Yiddish Press 62-3 Yidisher Zhurnal (Toronto) 62, 65, 67, 71, 353 Yidishe Teatr Grupe (Montreal) 350 Yidisher Vort/Israelite Press (Winnipeg) 348, 353 Yom Kippur War 108 York, see Toronto York University 204-13, 430 Yorkton (Saskatchewan) 247 Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) 84, 86, 174, 324, 424 Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society (Montreal) 41-2, 44, 364-5 See also Baron de Hirsch Society Young Communist League 61 Yudika (Yudis Tsik) 347 Yukon 251 — 500 —

————————————————————— Index —————————————————————

Zaltman, Zalman 235 Zimmerman, Jesse 206 Zionism 40, 57-8, 66, 75-6, 80, 823, 165, 190, 208, 270, 299, 302, 313-4, 344, 346, 422, 464 Zionism, Canadian 80, 88-9, 91, 93, 102, 140, 190, 197, 228, 230,

241, 256, 299, 366, 369 Zionism, Labour 58, 66, 318, 348 Zipora, Malka 420 Zipper, Yacov 318, 347 Zlotnik, Yehuda 347 Zolty, Shoshana 187 Zundel, Ernst 106

— 501 —