- CANADA
- CANADA, country in northern half of North America and a member of the British Commonwealth. At the beginning of the 21st century, its population of approximately 370,000 Jews made it the world's fourth largest Jewish community after the United States, Israel, and France. This Diaspora has been shaped by features that are distinctive to the Canadian nation: French-English duality, the relatively small immigration of German Jews, and proportionally much larger emigration from Eastern Europe. In addition, Canada's Jews have never been subject to a unified, overriding, and jealous Canadian nationalism, which has facilitated the maintenance of a strong sense of Canadian Jewish identity. While American Jewry yearned for integration into the mainstream of the great republic, Canadians expressed their Jewishness in a country that had no coherent self-definition – except perhaps the solitudes and tensions of duality, the limitations and challenges of Jewish communities in Canada, 2002, and founding dates of communities. Jewish communities in Canada, 2002, and founding dates of communities. northernness, and the colonial-mindedness of borrowed glory. While in the United States, Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America," in Canada the quintessential Jewish literary figure, abraham moses klein , wrote poems of anguish expressing longing for the redemption of the Jewish soul lost in a sea of modernity. A distinctive geography, history, population, and development patterns dictated the formative context of Canadian Jewish history and the personality of its community. -Early Beginnings When 15 Jews gathered to organize Canada's first congregation, Shearith Israel, in montreal on December 30, 1768, they were continuing a North American Jewish communal tradition that had begun in New Amsterdam 114 years earlier. The Montreal congregation took its name from New York City's major synagogue and, though oriented for many years to London for religious personnel and guidance, the Montreal congregation continued its strong connection to the Jewish communities in New York and Philadelphia. While most congregants were Ashkenazim, they followed the Sephardi order of prayer, which was an integral part of early American Jewish culture. Montreal's Jews benefited from the legal and economic advantages of their British ties. Jews worked with the British merchants who quickly dominated Canadian economic life, and these Jews exploited their political and commercial connections to London. Among them was aaron hart , the most successful of Canada's early Jewish settlers. In 1759 Hart arrived in quebec from New York, having served as a sutler to the British army, mainly at Trois-Rivières, where he would later trade in furs and buy real estate. He thereby founded a mercantile and political dynasty that would survive for decades to come. The Harts were not the first Jews of historical note. Joseph de la Penha, a Dutch Jewish merchant, was granted the territory of Labrador by England's King William III in 1697, possibly because one of de le Penha's captains had discovered the area. In 1732 a young Jew named Ferdinande Jacobs was employed as an apprentice by the Hudson Bay Company. He became chief factor at Fort Prince of Wales and at York Factory before returning to England in 1775. Like many other white traders, he took an Indian "wife" and fathered a number of children. Aside from the stories of the famous stowaway to New France, esther brandeau , in 1738, and the Dutch Jew who converted upon reaching Louisbourg, Jews traded to the French colonies in the Americas, including New France and Acadia. Between 1744 and 1759, Abraham Gradis of Bordeaux conducted a huge trade with New France, much of it in conjunction with the Intendant, François Bigot. There may also have been a few marranos among the French merchants living in Quebec and Louisbourg during the French regime. There were also Sephardi traders, with names like: Moresca, Fonseca, Cordova, and Miranda, who had come north with invading British troops in 1759 and 1760. The Montreal congregation founded by these merchants at first struggled to survive because many of its founders were transient, looking for quick gains in this commercial frontier. These early Canadian Jews behaved as if they were part of the new British administrative and commercial elite. Their language was English, many had been born in the 13 colonies or in England, and virtually all of them were traders whose ultimate political allegiance during the American Revolution was to Britain. Many signed the petitions that were periodically produced by agitators among the "old subjects" for a representative political body and other "reforms." Thus, while loyal to Britain in ways common to the Anglophone community to which they belonged, they also favored the same level of self-government present in the former American colonies. It fell to ezekiel hart , the second son of Aaron Hart, to become a casualty in the developing clash between English and French. In 1804 he won election to a seat in the Assembly of Lower Canada. His opponents publicly asserted that Hart could not be sworn in on the grounds that he was a Jew. The Assembly formed a special committee to consider the matter and recommended that he be expelled. This resolution was passed by the Assembly and Hart was thereby banned. Elected again in the ensuing by-election, Hart was expelled a second time, and he gave up the fight. Officially Jews were now second-class citizens in Lower Canada. They were ineligible for membership in the Assembly and legally unfit to hold any civil, judicial, or military office. This ban was removed in March 1831 through legislation supported by eminent reformers Louis-Joseph Papineau and Denis-Benjamin Viger. It became law in 1832, and after a challenge was confirmed in 1834 by a special committee of the Assembly. -Early Growth of the Montreal Community As Montreal, the hub of Canada's import-export trade, prospered, so did Montreal's Jews. In 1847 abraham de sola arrived from London to become their spiritual leader. For the next 35 years, he served as the community's religious leader while enjoying considerable eminence in the wider community. He was appointed to the faculty at McGill College and participated in local scientific and numismatic societies. He wrote widely on questions of science and religion and on Jewish history. He maintained contacts with the Jewish intellectual and social environment that stretched from London to Philadelphia. He took, as well, an interest in the persecuted Jews in Persia, charities in Palestine, and the threats to traditional Judaism from reformers in Germany and especially America. Though still tiny in size, during de Sola's ministry the Montreal Jewish community grew through immigration. It now encompassed increasing numbers of English, German, Alsatian, and Polish Jews following the Ashkenazi traditions common throughout Central and Eastern Europe. They formed an Ashkenazi congregation in 1846, and a Hebrew Benevolent Society was started in 1847 to assist new immigrants. The Jews of both congregations were mostly petty merchants, and with few exceptions, they were involved in Montreal's burgeoning financial, transportation, and manufacturing sectors which dominated the national economy. The same was true of the smaller Jewish communities taking shape in toronto , hamilton , and Victoria. Jews began as marginal men, engaged mostly in the petty commerce of jewelry and fancy goods, tobacco, dry goods, and cheap clothing, much of it sold to upcountry storekeepers. In Victoria, the Jews also conducted a lively trade with the interior, gold-mining camps. The sale of clothing, both wholesale and retail, provided a major springboard for later Jewish entry into what was by 1871 one of the leading industries in major Canadian cities – the manufacture of men's and boys' apparel. Tobacco merchandising gave Jews another major manufacturing opportunity in Canada. In addition to these Jewish settlements, there was some Jewish contact with the British colonies in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. The New York merchant jacob franks dealt in tea, shipping some to Newfoundland and some through Cape Breton in the early 1740s. In 1748 the executive of London's Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, then searching for a refuge for the city's Jewish poor, considered founding a Jewish colony in Nova Scotia. Nothing ever came of it. Some Jewish traders arrived in Halifax shortly after it was founded in 1749, as a British naval and military base. By the 1750s there were many Jews among the army and navy purveyors and the merchants who supplied the growing local civilian population. Land was acquired for a cemetery. The Jewish presence here continued into the 1760s, but gradually died out and the cemetery land was appropriated for a provincial workhouse. Jewish communities were established in Halifax and Saint John in the late 19th century. -Towards Maturity Until the late 1890s individual Jewish communities existed in isolation from each other. Organized assistance to immigrants arriving in Montreal in 1882 marked the beginning of coordinated philanthropic activity in Montreal, Toronto, and winnipeg . But pressures for coordination emerged in the late 19th century to respond to the rise in immigration of destitute and persecuted East European Jews. Between 1880 and 1900, Canada welcomed about 10,000 Jewish immigrants. Between 1881 and 1901, Canada's Jewish population exploded from less than 2,500 to more than 16,000. The Jewish population increased more than 14 times faster than the total national population in those two decades. The resident Jewish community was overwhelmed by the challenge to assist the destitute or sick of the influx of the 1880s and 1890s. They appealed to West European and British Jewish organizations to stop sending more immigrants and help support those who had already arrived. While financial assistance came from agencies like London's Mansion House Committee and the jewish colonization association , it was never enough to meet local needs. The new arrivals brought other problems besides poverty. The vast majority of Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Romanian Jews who came in the 1880s and 1890s did not possess the adaptive language or commercial skills of the previous British and German settlers. What was the solution? With the vast open spaces of Canada's western plains, Jewish agricultural settlement was encouraged. Alexander Galt, a leading Canadian government official, was interested in promoting immigration to the Prairies; in 1882 he proposed the migration of "agricultural Jews to our North West." These efforts resulted in the establishment of 28 families in a colony of about 9,000 acres near Moosomin in 1884. London's Mansion House committee provided each family with loans to buy cattle, implements, and food. Two years later, five Jewish families had settled near Wapella, including ekiel bronfman , the founder of what was to become a prominent family. There were many more Jewish farm colony experiments on the Prairies in subsequent years, some of them moderately successful and others of only fleeting duration. The lure of the open plains as a place for the rehabilitation of East European Jews continued to interest many, although the Jewish Colonization Association's Paris officials were less sanguine about Canada than they were about Argentina. Most Jews, in short, did not move to rural areas. Montreal Jewry was nevertheless severely strained by its staggering rate of growth during these years. While the city's total metropolitan population grew by some 55 percent in the 1880s and by 25 percent in the 1890s, the city's Jewish population rose by an average of nearly 300 percent in the same period. -Rise of an Ethnic Economy Some of these immigrants took to peddling, a form of penny capitalism pursued by their predecessors. In Montreal the Baron de Hirsch Institute provided small start-up loans for these peddlers. Other forms of small-scale commerce also abounded: clothing, confectionery, fish and grocery stores, kosher bakeries, and butcher shops. Some men were employed within the Jewish community as ritual slaughterers, teachers, or rabbis. These and others in the service sector, many of them self-employed, constituted as much as 30 percent of the Jewish gainfully employed, approximately the same level that was obtained in Russia in the 1890s. Many Jews were drawn to the booming ready-made clothing industry. Protected by high tariffs and stimulated by rising demand in the St. Lawrence Valley and in the more distant hinterlands, the industry's output doubled in the 1870s and doubled again in the 1880s. By 1900 clothing production was the province's second-largest industry. Many Jews found easy entry into the clothing industry, responding to its low capital requirements and the constant demand for seasonal labor in factories or in home workshops. By the 1880s, a new class of Jewish clothing manufacturers also emerged. Served by several railway systems that reached into the interior and all the way to vancouver , clothing production mushroomed in Montreal, Toronto, and Hamilton. The lesson of how most of their Jewish employers had become successful manufacturers or contractors was not lost on immigrants, and that role model was emulated time and again in subsequent years. Many Jews were willing to work in this industry, at least temporarily, and to endure the low wage rates, seasonal unemployment, and miserable conditions. The sweatshops where they worked attracted notoriety and public outrage during federal government investigations. Reports by provincial factory inspectors on the existence of sweatshops in the Montreal clothing industry received full exposure in the Jewish Times which revealed appalling conditions and called upon the "Baron de Hirsch" to start a program training Jewish immigrants in other trades. By 1900 Canada's Jewish community had grown and changed considerably from its earliest days. With its sizeable numbers of Romanians, Russians, and Poles, it was more diverse, and a more decidedly East European flavor was present. A distinct class structure had emerged, tending to sharpen differences among Jews. Workers in tailoring shops and clothing factories, machinists in railroad yards, tradesmen, peddlers, and small storekeepers had different economic agendas than the newly moneyed owners of substantial real estate, clothing manufacturers and contractors, and proprietors of large businesses. -The Rise of Antisemitism Public reaction to the increasing number of Jews in Montreal during the 1880s and 1890s was generally accepting, evoking no alarm or animosity from the major urban newspapers. An exception was Quebec's La Vérité, which published antisemitic articles in the early 1880s (most of them drawn from militant ultramontane publications in France) and screeds favorable to edouard drumont 's diatribe La France juive as well as to other French antisemitic publications. La Vérité's editor urged its readers "to be on guard against the Jews, to prevent them from establishing themselves here…. The Jews are a curse, a curse from God." These outbursts encouraged other French Canadian antisemites. Many antisemitic articles were published during the first stage of the dreyfus affair. But the major French newspapers in Quebec remained neutral. The most avowedly antisemitic of major Montreal newspapers of the 1890s was not a French publication but the daily serving the city's English-speaking Catholics. The True Witness and Daily Chronicle carried strongly partisan material during both Dreyfus trials, unabashedly in the camp of the French anti-Dreyfusards. Meanwhile in Toronto, Goldwin Smith, a leading intellectual of his day, became Canada's best-known Jew-hater. Widely believed to be a liberal spirit, Smith was so virulent an antisemite that he gained notoriety for it throughout the English-speaking world. He claimed that the cause of the Boer War was Britain's demand that the franchise be extended to "the Jews and gamblers of Johannesburg"; that Jews were gaining greater control over the world's press and influencing public opinion; that "the Jews have one code of ethics for themselves, another for the Gentile"; that Disraeli was a "contemptible trickster and adventurer, who could not help himself because he was a Jew. Jews are no good anyhow"; that "the Jew is a Russophobe"; and so on. Despite a growing atmosphere of Canadian racial prejudice, Jews sometimes fared better in the racial sweepstakes than other immigrant groups. Methodist minister and Social Gospeller J.S. Woodsworth, whose book about immigrants, Strangers within Our Gates, was suffused by the racism characteristic of some turn-of-the-century social commentators, in fact seems to have regarded Jews as more adaptable, assimilable, and culturally suitable to Canada than Ukrainians, Italians, Chinese, or blacks. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 witnessed more anti-Ukrainian than anti-Jewish sentiment, despite the fact that the strike probably had as much support among the Jewish working class as among Ukrainians, and the fact that Abraham Heaps – an English Jew – was among its major leaders. Jews remained nevertheless prime targets of prejudice. In 1904 the Lord's Day Alliance, an organization devoted to protecting the sanctity of the Sabbath, viciously attacked Orthodox Jews who had complained about Sunday observance laws, stating that they "had sought out our land FOR THEIR OWN GOOD" and should conform to Canada's "civil customs." Reverend S.D. Chown, head of the Canadian Methodist Church in the early 1900s, called Jews parasites in the national bloodstream and another influential clergyman pointed out that "Jews have much to do with commercialized vice." As late as 1920, Dr. C.K. Clarke, Canada's leading psychiatrist, argued strenuously against allowing the immigration of refugee Jewish children from the Ukrainian famine on the grounds that they "belong to a very neurotic race." University academics also were given to antisemitism. In 1919 Dr. R. Bruce Taylor, principal of Queen's University, rejoiced in the fact that there were only five Jews at Queen's, explaining: "The presence of many Jews tended to lower the tone of Canadian Universities." Dean Moyse of McGill reportedly resented the presence of Russian Jews in his English classes because they "were not even conversant with Shakespeare." At McGill, steps were taken to reduce the number of Jews. While they constituted 25 percent of arts students, 15 percent of medical students, and 40 percent of law students in 1920, university officials began to impose stiff quotas that would severely reduce those percentages during the interwar years. Meanwhile, the early 20th century witnessesed a rise in French Canadian antisemitism as well. The Catholic Church, strongly ultramontane in spirit and drawing inspiration from Rome and France, perceived Jews as dangerous aliens. Accused of being allied with the anti-clericals, socialists, and freemasons, they were seen as threats to the preservation of a Catholic Quebec, while some young nationalists viewed them, along with the English, as an entirely foreign and dangerously disruptive element. As the "spearhead" of modern capitalism, the Jews were perceived as exploiters and destroyers of the purity and sacredness of Quebec's rural way of life. Leading intellectual and newspaper editor Henri Bourassa had only contempt for the poor ghetto-dwellers in Montreal's Jewish quarter. In his remarks to the House of Commons on the proposed Lord's Day legislation in 1906, he dismissed the effect on observant Jews, condemning provisions of the bill which would exempt Jews, as these were added, "pandering to the Jewish vote." To Bourassa Jews were "vampires on the community instead of being contributors to the general welfare of the people" and are "detrimental to the public welfare." Jewish-Protestant relations fared only somewhat better. In Quebec education was divided along confessional lines. In 1894 the Protestant School Board of Montreal accepted responsibility for providing elementary schooling to the city's growing number of Jewish immigrant children. In return it received school taxes collected on Jewish-owned property. The Board also agreed to pay a salary of $800 annually to a teacher who would provide religious and Hebrew-language instruction to the Jewish pupils. But the Protestants felt aggrieved. Few Jews owned land, and the costs to the Board seemed to outweigh the benefits. In 1901 the Board denied a scholarship to a Jewish child. It should be noted, however, that Jewish children were never actually barred from Protestant schools. Nor were they forced to accept instruction in the Christian faith, or penalized for excusing themselves during religious instruction. While they were, in certain ways, made to feel unwelcome, and while Jewish teachers were not employed, all Jewish pupils seeking admission were accepted, received instruction, and enjoyed other facilities. For all the ill-feeling over the school question, Jews reacted most assertively to the open support that at least some segments of the Quebec Catholic community gave to the most obscene medieval myths and superstitions about Jews. In the early 1900s a rising tide of antisemitic propaganda pervaded many of Quebec's nationalist and clerical newspapers. A major complaint was the increasing Jewish purchases of houses and businesses in the areas where both communities lived side by side. After 1910 much of this hate literature circulated in the clubs of the newly organized Association canadienne de la jeunesse catholique, an organization of French Canadian youth for nationalist and religious action. On March 30, 1910, a Quebec City notary, Joseph Edouard Plamondon, delivered a lecture at the local club of Jeunesse catholique advancing some of the foulest lies about Judaism, including ritual murder. Jews did not believe that Russian-style pogroms would occur in Canada but feared that deep-seated Christian antisemitism could be reinvigorated by the repetition of such horrendous lies and might lead to highly unpleasant manifestations. One rabbi wired the federal minister of justice asking him to "direct (the) attorney general of Quebec to stop antisemitic agitation and (calls) for massacre against the Jews of Quebec." Continuing hysterically, the rabbi warned that "large meetings to plan riots against Jews (will) take place Wednesday night (in) Quebec city." The Jewish community sued Plamondon for libel. On the whole, however, the Jews recognized that the existence of these and other manifestations of antisemitism – however nasty and frightening they might be – were only a pale shadow of what they experienced in Europe. Despite antisemitism, Jewish men (and a few women) attended universities, Jewish storekeepers and peddlers plied their trade, Jewish workers labored alongside non-Jews and walked the same picket lines, and Jewish householders shared neighborhoods with Christians. The Dominion of Canada allowed these and other possibilities for the blessings of peace, freedom, and opportunity. -Geographical Spread In the late 19th century, off in the west, Victoria's population had already peaked in size, and Jews in london , Ontario; Saint John, New Brunswick; and Halifax, Nova Scotia, were by the 1880s numerous enough to enjoy regular minyanim. Toronto's Jewish population grew by slightly more than 100 percent during the 1890s, Hamilton's by 50 percent, and Winnipeg's by about 90 percent. ottawa 's Jewish population, on the other hand, rose by 800 percent during the 1890s, both Windsor, Ontario and Saint John, New Brunswick grew by over 900 percent, and Quebec City by 600 percent. By 1900 all of these cities and towns, as well as Halifax, London, and Vancouver, possessed synagogues. In Winnipeg, the tiny Jewish community, which included only a handful of Jews in 1881, grew to more than a thousand Jews, with two active synagogues, by the turn of the century. Toronto's first congregation, Holy Blossom, formed in 1856 and was housed in a modest new building as of 1875. But the new immigrants of the 1880s and 1890s were not easily absorbed into Holy Blossom, especially once the congregation opened its magnificent new building on Bond Street in 1898. The congregation incorporated elements of Reform into the services at the new synagogue, including prayers in English, mixed seating, organ music, and a choir. In Montreal, on the other hand, both major synagogues were decidedly Orthodox, and the Reform group was very small. Yet these distinctions in liturgy and ritual observance were of less importance in dividing Toronto's older and newer sub-communities than the social and cultural barriers between them. sigmund samuel , the son of a well-to-do hardware merchant who had been the "moving spirit" in building the Richmond Street synagogue, completed his secular education at the elite Upper Canada College and the Toronto Model School, while his formal prebar mitzvah Jewish tutoring was limited to after-school hours. Although he experienced some anti-Jewish discrimination, Samuel became wealthy and circulated comfortably in Toronto's elite circles. Other Toronto Jews were so assimilated that the new Jewish immigrants regarded them as Gentiles. As a result, East European Jews established their own synagogues and organizational structures. The cleavages between uptown and downtown Jews widened. Not only was the Jewish community divided, but it faced a divided Canada. The "sense of mission" among many Anglophone intellectuals was offset by the emergence in French Canada of a national ideology combining ultramontanism, messianism, and anti-statism. At the same time, many Canadian Jews understood that, while part of "Amerika," Canada was a unique society. It was not as secular, as democratic, as nationalistic, as liberal a nation – at least theoretically – as the real "Amerika," even though Canada held out the same promise of freedom from persecution, and of a better material life for them and their children. It must have seemed a paradox to the Jews settling in Canada that they had arrived in a country where a major province like Quebec should be reminiscent of Eastern Europe, with its masses of poor "peasants," its extensive system of Roman Catholic religious institutions, and a ubiquitous state-recognized clergy. -Continuing Immigration and Settlement Jewish immigration rose between 1901 and 1922, to levels which have never since been equaled. Most of the Jewish immigrants were concentrated in the metropolitan centers. Between 1901 and 1911, Montreal's Jewish population grew by more than 400 percent, while Toronto's increased by nearly 600 percent, although the growth rates between 1911 and 1921 were a much more modest 60 and 70 percent, respectively. The Ottawa and Hamilton communities also grew dramatically during these decades, by about 400 percent from 1901 to 1911 and 70 and 50 percent, respectively. The most noteworthy expansion between 1901 and 1911 occurred in the west, where Winnipeg's Jewish community experienced a staggering 800 percent increase and Vancouver's nearly 500 percent. Meanwhile, smaller centers in western Canada, such as calgary , edmonton , regina , and Saskatoon, grew rapidly. Rare was the small town of booming western Canada that did not have one or two Jewish families by the early 1920s. -Small Town Jewries The dispersion of the Jewish population outside metropolitan centers and secondary cities was also occurring in central Canada, especially in southwestern and northern Ontario and the Maritimes. By the outbreak of WWI many of these small communities boasted a synagogue. Jewish concentrations in the Maritime provinces also increased. The importance of this sprinkling of small Jewish communities across Canada does not lie so much in the numbers involved. They were, after all, not large enough to indicate a significant demographic shift away from the metropolitan centers. The point about Jewish communities in Glace Bay, Brantford, and Moose Jaw, to take regional examples, is that they represent another dimension of the Canadian Jewish experience. Jewish life in these places differed in important ways from life in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, where Jews constituted a critical mass – a substantial minority in neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Small-town Jews had little such built-in community. There were too few Jews to form a distinctive neighborhood, and because they were almost entirely small-scale businessmen: storekeepers, peddlers, or junk collectors, they dealt daily with non-Jews. They lived among them, and their children were often the only non-Christians in the public schools they attended. On the cultural frontier between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, they were more directly exposed, on the one hand, to influences which drew them away from their identity as Jews, and on the other, to the need to explain and defend that identity on an almost daily basis. The small-town Jew did not enjoy the luxuries of landsmanschaften, political clubs, and other forms of cultural expression that were emerging strongly in large centers. The forms of local association were often limited to the local synagogue, the B'nai B'rith lodge, and for women, hadassah and the synagogue Ladies' Auxiliary. For the youth, after 1917, there was usually a branch of Young Judaea. Jewish cultural life was also derived from Yiddish newspapers and magazines from New York, Toronto, and Montreal, or from an occasional speaker, frequently a Zionist fundraiser. Small-town Jews huddled close to each other for mutual support. Here, nothing could be taken for granted. Unlike metropolitan centers, in small towns there was little or no Jewish working class. Most Jews were storekeepers, usually selling men's or women's clothing, furniture, or shoes. Others might operate a grocery, a theater, a flour mill, a candy store, or a dry cleaning shop. Some of these Jews began as peddlers selling merchandise from small carts or buggies from farm to farm in rural areas, or along the streets in towns and villages, securing the merchandise on credit from a Toronto, Montreal, or Winnipeg wholesaler. In a few years one might then open a small store. Instead of cash, some peddlers would take livestock or produce as payment, while still others accepted any scrap metal, hides, or furs that farmers had for barter. Thus, small-town Jewish commerce typically began on a partially rural basis, with the peddler providing an exchange, not simply selling merchandise in return for cash. Those seeking scrap metals, for example, often offered new kitchen utensils to farmers in exchange for cast-off implements. Such metals would be hauled back to the peddler's yard, knocked apart with sledgehammers, thrown into piles, and sold off to brokers who bought the lot to feed the steel mills in Hamilton, Sydney, and Sault Ste. Marie. Others collected rags, cleaned and shredded them, and sold off the product as "shoddy" to mills. Some dealt in hides and furs which they assembled, cleaned, sorted, and sold to brokers from the city. -Western Colonies The Western farm colonies, most of them in Saskatchewan, grew in the early 20th century. Mostly under the direct management of the Jewish Colonization Association, the settlement projects there were professionally managed and better financed. But their fortunes were in decline. By 1931, of all Jews who had settled on the Prairies, more than 60 percent were no longer living on farms. In 1921 only one in four Jews living in rural areas was directly engaged in agriculture, forestry, or mining. There were 700 Jewish farm families in all of Canada in 1921, the peak year of the colonization movement, most of them in Western Canada. But that farm population dropped significantly over the next decade, and by 1931 the whole Jewish agrarian experiment was in serious trouble. Within ten years, the Depression all but wiped out the colonies, even though a few families held on for another generation. There were some exceptions, but the farming movement had failed to generate a significant Jewish rural life in Canada. Like the settlement schemes fostered by the ICA in Argentina, the Canadian Jewish colonies suffered from confusing changes in management and perhaps from an overdependence on the ICA. Meanwhile, restrictions on immigration introduced in the mid-1920s severely curtailed recruitment of new settlers. While all of these factors were, no doubt, important in the ultimate failure of the colonies, it is clear that – in contrast to colonies established by Mennonites and Hutterites – most Jews showed a low commitment to the agricultural way of life and gravitated to the major urban centers. Certainly, none of these Jewish settlements demonstrated the strong social ideals that underpinned the kibbutz movement in Palestine. -Urban Social Problems and Adjustment Poverty, sickness, and burial were the most serious problems in metropolitan centers. In Montreal, the Baron de Hirsch Institute and its associated charity were extremely busy after 1900 offering assistance to those in need. There were so many burials of Jewish indigents (including 139 children) in 1908, for example, that local cemeteries ran out of space. Because the Institute's doctors' caseload tripled between 1907 and 1913, the Herzl Health Clinic was established to cope with the sick, many afflicted with tuberculosis. Mount Sinai Sanatorium was established in the Laurentian highlands near Ste.-Agathe, while for the growing numbers of children needing care an orphanage was built in the city's western suburbs. Mutual benefit societies flourished. In Toronto in the early 1900s, they helped to lessen the pain "of alienation, loneliness and rootlessness in a strange new country," as well as the economic problems of adjustment. The members were mostly those who could not afford synagogue membership or were secularists. Three types of mutual benefit societies existed in Toronto: the non-partisan and ethnically mixed, the left-wing, and the landsmanschafetn, whose members were all from the same area of Europe. Altogether, there were 30 mutual benefit organizations in the city by 1925: ten landsmanschaften, eight ethically mixed societies, and 12 branches of the left-wing Arbeiter Ring (Workmen's Circle), each of them with memberships ranging from 80 to 500. There was also a decided working-class orientation to these associations, even those that were not labor-oriented Workmen's Circle lodges: the Pride of Israel and the Judaean Benevolent and Friendly Society "often gave assistance to striking workers." Member benefits usually included payments during illness (excluding those caused by "immoral actions") and family doctors' visits, and free burial in the society's cemetery. Many also provided small loans at low interest. The annual price of this protection cost each member as much as two weeks' wages. Just as important were the social and psychological benefits provided by the landsmanschaften. Members could share nostalgic reminiscences about Czestochowa, Miedzyrzec, Ostrow, or other Polish towns and cities from which Jews came to Toronto. The Workmen's Circle lodges provided left-wing ideology that stressed Jewish cultural autonomism, a comfort both to working men in an exploitative economic climate and to Yiddish speakers. To those without the protection of such associations, cash, coal, food, bedding, and cooking utensils were dispensed by the Toronto Hebrew Ladies Aid; similar organizations sprang up for specific congregations, along with charities offering maternity care and child care and other social assistance needs. And in 1909 the Jewish dispensary was established to supply the poor with medicines and medical advice. An orphanage was established in 1910 and an old-age home in 1913. In Winnipeg, beginning in 1884 the Hebrew Benevolent Society provided relief for the needy, jobs for the unemployed, railroad tickets for those intending to resettle elsewhere, help for the farm colonies, and assistance for other communal efforts. In 1909 it was reorganized as the United Hebrew Charities. Differences of opinion over priorities between the poorer and more numerous Jews of the north end and those of the prosperous south side were resolved by an amalgamated organization called the United Relief of Winnipeg in 1914. Two orphanages were established by 1917, and in 1919 the Jewish Old Folks Home of Western Canada was founded. As in Toronto, landsmanschaften, fraternal orders, mutual benefit societies in Winnipeg provided material support and a "wraparound culture" of social and cultural activities that involved their members in regular, almost familial association. In major Canadian cities, lending societies serving the entire community like the Montreal Association Hebrew Free Loan provided a boost to Jewish penny capitalism. In 1918, of the more than 1,000 applicants, 31 were classified as ritual slaughterers, Hebrew teachers, or Jewish booksellers; 24 as merchants or manufacturers; 46 as peddlers (jewelry, eyeglasses, dry goods, tea, coffee, etc.); 21 as shopowners (plumbing, blacksmith, tinsmith, upholstering, and cooperage); and 25 as agents for other businesses. Other occupations included 16 farmers; 11 contractors (building, electrical, painting, carpentry); 38 custom tailors, tailor shop owners, or contractors; and 44 milk, bread, fruit, or ginger-ale peddlers. There were 47 shoe-repair store owners; 77 country, junk, rag, second-hand clothing, furniture, and fur peddlers; 54 small proprietors; 345 working men; and 239 store owners (jewelry, drugs, clothing, dry goods, hardware, shoes, fruit, grocery, second-hand goods, butcher, bread, and barber shop). While most of these loans were for business purposes, 38 were for remittances to Europe and five "to marry off a daughter." Sin was also of concern. Rumors of "white slave" trade into North and South America led Lillian freiman of Ottawa to voice deep concern in an address to Hadassah members over the fate of orphaned Jewish girls in Eastern Europe who were being lured to South America "into a future worse than death (by) … human vultures." While only a small part of this traffic appears to have extended into Canada, the "Baron de Hirsch" took notice of the danger and cooperated with international organizations and the National Council of Jewish Women in attempting to arrest its spread. From time to time, Montreal was alleged to be a site of some of this activity, and Vancouver a way-station on the Pacific. In 1908 Toronto newspapers reported the arrest and deportation to the United States of two local Jews, well known to the Chicago police as brothel keepers, and wanted on charges of white slavery. The 1915 Toronto Social Survey Commission noted that Jewish pimps were active in Jewish neighborhoods, probably servicing mainly a Jewish clientele, and there were allegations that many of the city's bootleggers were Jews. The fact that some prominent Montreal Jews – like Samuel Schwartz and Rabbi nathan gordon – took part in campaigns to suppress corruption and vice, including rampant prostitution, reflected their progressive and reformist impulses, and, possibly, a sense of guilt over Jewish participation in such crimes. In Canada the "world of our mothers" also began to change. The first generation of Jewish women immigrants from Central Europe were influenced by social reform ideas then current among their non-Jewish contemporaries, and looked to "deliver Jewish women from their second bondage of ignorance and misery." Some organized aid committees and, later, the National Council of Jewish Women. East European women who arrived later formed the Hadassah organization in 1917 for the welfare of women and children in Palestine. But the Jewish women of the third wave of immigration, during the years of mass immigration after 1900, often found work in factories. Because of their lack of familiarity with the English language, they avoided joining Hadassah. They gravitated towards socialist organizations, like the Labor Zionists, the Social Democratic Party, and the Workmen's Circle. Despite gender barriers set up against them by the Jewish unions, "Jewish women played an important part within the Jewish labour movement … (with) militancy and class consciousness …." North American social and economic conditions were inducing different segments of Jewish society to conform to new norms, which were changing the role of women within the community. -Emergence of Zionism The experience of the Canadian Zionist movement is an example of the national variations that occurred in the Zionist camp. At the first and second Zionist Congresses, theodor herzl interpreted political Zionism as a call to sympathizers in the West to organize local Jewish support for the movement, while remaining good citizens of the countries in which they lived. Canadian Zionists could afford to be more strident than their American cousins partly because of the absence of a countervailing pan-Canadian nationalism and the more Zionism-compatible religious traditionalism of Canadian Jews. Zionism in Canada also owed much to the organizational genius of Clarence de sola , for 20 years the head of the Federation of Canadian Zionist Societies (FCZS). Under de Sola the movement increased numerically and spread throughout widely dispersed Canadian Jewish communities. Fundraising became both the Canadian Zionist raison d'être and the measure of its success. Zionism demanded financial help from Canadian Jews, and they responded. The habit of giving became a substitute for a deeper, more positive experience. Discussion and debate on first principles and development of Jewish culture within the Zionist movement did not attract many participants. By the end of World War I, Canadian Zionism had produced only a few intellectuals with the ability to culturally energize the movement, or challenge the Federation's leadership. During World War I Canadian Zionists supported a recruitment campaign for the jewish legion , a 5,000-man force – the first Jewish military formation in modern times – organized to fight under Britain's General allenby to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. The Canadian government agreed to allow Jews who were "not subject to conscription in Canada" to join up. An officer from the British army arrived in Canada in late 1917 to begin a country-wide recruiting drive. Hundreds of Jews already in the Canadian military – both volunteers and conscripts – transferred to the Legion. World War I also created a context for Canadian Zionists that differed significantly from that of American Jewry. Loyalty to Britain's cause provided Zionists with opportunities to identify their purposes with Britain's imperial mission. As far back as 1903, when the uganda proposal was under consideration, de Sola had spoken eloquently on the subject of Zion's redemption under the British flag. Fourteen years later, when Allenby's armies were poised in Egypt for an assault against Turkish Palestine, de Sola saw the British liberation of Eretz Israel as the dawning of a new messianic age. Thus mesmerized, he even announced at the 14th convention of the Federation in 1917 that it was time for the re-establishment of the Sanhedrin as the supreme court of Jewish law and the governing council of the people of Israel. Canadian Zionists were therefore able to identify their cause within the context of British Canadian nationalism, and without raising the question of whether adherence to Zionism conflicted with their loyalty to Canada. After 1917 most Zionist women's groups in the country came in under the umbrella of Canadian Hadassah, which spread to every community. It became the most active arm of Zionism in Canada, infusing the movement with a sense of immediate and pressing urgency. In large and small centers Hadassah worked fervently for Palestinian causes, first for the Helping Hand Fund, and later for a Girls' Domestic and Agricultural Science School at Nahalal, a Nurses' Training School in Jerusalem, and a convalescent home and hospital for tuberculars. Innumerable raffles, bazaars, teas, and tag sales found members successfully raising money under leaders like Lillian Freiman, rose dunkleman , and Anna Raginsky, who personified the Zionist cause to the thousands of Jewish women across Canada who worked to help their sisters in Palestine. The more ideologically committed Pioneer Women and Mizrachi Women performed similar tasks for their communities. Zionist women's organizations in Canada were an expression of the earliest impulse among Canadian Jewish women for an independent voice and an emphasis on priorities which they chose to identify and support. In this sense, it was a vehicle for their Canadianization; it provided a medium of accommodation to a number of the cultural and social values shared by their non-Jewish sisters. It also served as an entrée into society in both the Jewish and the non-Jewish Canadian world. It raised the profile of Jewish women as Jews, as Canadians, and, above all, as women. Within the Jewish community the moral influence, political power, and fundraising ability of these women were of great significance. By 1920 Hadassah was the strongest, most coherent, and best-led national organization on the Canadian Jewish scene. -Corner of Pain and Anguish The clothing industry was vital to the economic life of Jews in the major cities. The 1931 census shows that in Montreal 16 percent of all gainfully employed Jews worked in the industry, while in Toronto it was more than 27 percent, Winnipeg just under 12 percent, and Vancouver almost 9 percent. In 1931 Jews composed approximately 31 percent of all Canadian workers engaged in the manufacture of ready-made women's wear, 41 percent of the workforce in ready-made men's clothing, almost 27 percent in other clothing items, and almost 35 percent in hats and caps. Absorbing such a high percentage of all Jews "gainfully employed," the needle industry, or the "rag trade" as it was sometimes called, was easily the outstanding fact of Jewish economic life in Toronto and Montreal. In the preceding decades, the percentages were probably even higher. Piecework, contractors, crowded conditions, dirty garret shops, immigrant labor – the hated "sweating system" – marked the industry, despite the publicity of the royal commissions and the accelerating tempo of strikes and picket line violence. Factory workers, many of them mere children who worked for a pittance, depressed wages in the industry. Seasonality was another problem. In the periods between the major production runs of July to September for fall deliveries, and January to March for spring deliveries, there were long layoffs for cutters, and only part-time work for operators. These conditions made it easy for employers to dictate terms of employment. In May 1904 jobs were so scarce that a planned strike was called off. Firms forced employees to post a formidable deposit guaranteeing that they would not strike; some employers would then foment a strike and pocket the monies from the guarantee. In Montreal women's clothing factories, Jewish pressers and cloakmakers battling for union recognition had to confront intra-ethnic animosity. One employer – himself a Jew – demanded that "foreign (Jewish) agitators be deported," claiming that "not one of our native born employees were affected." In March 1908 the workers at a leading menswear company – owned by a prominent community leader – struck for a reduction in their work week from 61 hours to 48. Other fierce confrontations such as these ensued in cities all across Canada. The fact that Jewish workers were locked in a struggle with Jewish employers, Jewish strike-breakers, and, sometimes, even Jewish gangsters (some of them arrivals from New York) during these confrontations, which continued for another generation, created deep and lasting divisions within communities. Beneath the surface, Jewish communal solidarity did not exist. Jewish employers blacklisted striking Jewish clothing workers. Union leaders even alleged that, as heads of Montreal Jewish charities like the "Baron de Hirsch," employers denied help to strikers who applied for it. Bitterness spilled over into other sectors of the city's Jewish life. When leading menswear manufacturer and communal leader lyon cohen officiated at the opening of a new synagogue, a crowd of clothing workers hooted, jeered, and threatened violence to force him off the bimah. Economic warfare had thus penetrated into the sanctuary of the Lord. Labor activity also spilled over into politics. In the early 1900s, the Toronto local of the Socialist Party of Canada had a large number of Jewish members, including women, while in 1911 the Social Democratic Party's Toronto Jewish locals participated in efforts to organize a socialist Sunday School. In September 1918 police wanted to outlaw the Jewish Social Democratic Party and monitor select Yiddish newspapers as part of a general program of censorship and surveillance of ethnic workers and organizations which had been declared subversive under wartime regulations. During Canada's "Red Scare" of 1919, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police believed that Jews were leading the Russian Workers' Party and that Jewish radicals were particularly dangerous because, as a cultural minority, they were especially hostile towards Anglo Canadians. During anti-alien riots in Winnipeg in January and February 1919, a Jewish-owned business was wrecked. Military intelligence reports held that two members of the Jewish Social Democratic Party in Montreal were the city's "cleverest and most outspoken" radicals. Three Jews were included among the five "foreigners" rounded up under Section 41 of the Criminal Code outlawing sedition following the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Three Winnipeg Jewish socialists were classified as dangerous enemy aliens, subjected to weeks of police surveillance, and charged with seditious conspiracy. They were threatened with deportation and jailed. -Education and Culture All the while, within the Jewish community education was given a high priority. Talmud Torahs, following Old World tradition, were open to all regardless of ability to pay, and employed curricula stressing traditional subjects including Bible, Hebrew, Yiddish, prayers, and often Talmud and Mishnah. While the religious influences were strong, especially at the United Talmud Torah of Montreal and the Toronto Hebrew Free School (later known as the Brunswick Street Talmud Torah), certain "modern" ideals made their appearance, including instruction in modern Hebrew. The Winnipeg Hebrew Free Schools, which began offering instruction in 1905, put especially strong emphasis on Hebrew, not only as a subject but as a living language in which most subjects were taught. In the early 1900s, daily Yiddish newspapers made their appearance in all three major cities: Montreal's Kanader Adler, Toronto's Yiddisher Zhurnal, and Winnipeg's Dos Yiddishe Vort. Dailies from the United States and even from Europe had been available for many years previously, and continued to attract many readers in Canada. By the end of the 1910s, Lazar Rosenberg collected the work of Canadian Yiddish poets and essayists – which often first appeared in the Yiddish press – in the anthology, Kanada: A Zamelbuch. This was a modest effort, to be sure, but it represented an important benchmark of self-expression by Canadian Yiddish authors. Here, in poetry, short stories, and essays, appeared the anguish and hopes of the immigrant. Jacob Segal celebrated Canada in his poem entitled "Af fraye vegn" ("On Free Roads"). Of Toronto's Yiddish poets, Shimon Nepom was the most renowned; a streetcar conductor, he wrote prolifically, publishing slim volumes of poetry – the last was entitled Tramvai Lider ("Streetcar Poems"). Yiddish culture also thrived in the smaller centers. In London, Ontario, for example, Dr. Isidore Goldstick, a high school language teacher, published translations of Yiddish literature in English, while Melech Grafstein published various Yiddish works, and two major English anthologies devoted to the Yiddish writers Judah leib peretz and shalom aleichem . Thus the East Europeans who arrived prior to 1920 introduced far-reaching changes in Canadian Jewish life, the impact of which lasted for at least another generation. Not only did they create a parallel set of cultural, religious, and welfare institutions, with their vereins, makeshift shuls, landsmanschaften, newspapers, unions, and clubs, they also revolutionized Jewish political life on several different levels. They pressed for a democratic Jewish voice to speak out on issues of Jewish concern. As an expression of that democratic impulse, the East European Jews established the canadian jewish congress (CJC). When the CJC – which convened at Montreal's Monument National on March 15, 1919, to address Canadian Jewish concerns and the fate of Jews in Eastern Europe – adjourned late in the evening of March 19, it had established for itself a formidable agenda. The main orientation of the CJC was domestic. Strong anti-alien sentiment was on the rise during and after World War I. The Winnipeg General Strike of May and June 1919 (which was attributed to "foreigners," especially the Austrians, Galicians, and Jews), the emergence of the Social Democratic Party and, in 1921, the Communist Party of Canada inflamed nativist and anti-immigrant sentiments. In this atmosphere of anti-immigrant suspicion and hatred, Jews were the object of special resentment. What is more, Canadian regulations against the immigration of "enemy aliens" implemented in 1919 prohibited the landing of Austrian, German, Bulgarian, and Turkish Jews. While Jews were later exempted from the enemy alien provision, the CJC remained deeply concerned about other immigration regulations concerning proper papers, a minimum amount of money in hand upon arrival, and continuous voyages as well as revisions to the immigration act that granted admitting officers wide discretionary powers. In November 1920 a new directive greatly raised the amount of cash needed by each immigrant. In the face of growing restrictions, CJC officials attempted to convince Canadian authorities that Canada should offer itself as a haven for Jewish refugees from the war, many of whom already had relatives in Canada. By 1921, however, Congress was hobbled by a lack of leadership and funding. It stumbled on for a year or two and then virtually disappeared as a force in Canadian Jewish life. Thus through the 1920s, Canadian Jewry was without a unifying voice, without a constituent forum for the expression of opinions from across the intellectual spectrum, and without a voice for its collective concerns, such as immigration. -Jewish Geography Between 1921 and 1941, the Canadian Jewish population increased by approximately 26 percent to reach nearly 170,000. Compared with the total Canadian population between the world wars, Jews were more urbanized, more concentrated in lower-middle-class occupations, and better educated; divorce rates were higher, while fertility, death, and natural increase rates were lower. The Canadian Jewish population was also younger, and growing in major cities. This was especially so in Toronto, where the Jewish population rose by 35 percent during the 1920s, more than the growth rates of Montreal and Winnipeg. While the majority of Canadian Jews were concentrated in the downtown cores, suburbanization was under way as Toronto's Jews began moving into York township and Forest Hill; Montrealers into Outremont, Westmount, and Notre Dame de Grace; and Winnipegers north into newer areas. And Jews outside the main cities were also urban. In nearly every city and town, as well as in many western villages, there was a Jewish presence, if only a general store. In some, there was also a Jewish district, a group of stores constituting an ethnic sub-economy of delicatessens, bakeries, groceries, clothing stores, pawnshops, and institutions, which catered largely to a predominantly Jewish residential district close by. Such places were not "ghettos" in any sense. They were neighborhoods like Montreal's The Main, Toronto's Kensington Market, and Winnipeg's North End, where there was a large Jewish community, and where there was an opportunity to buy Jewish food, books, and religious items and attend Jewish religious, social, and political gatherings. Outside of these neighborhoods, Jewish-owned clothing stores, metal or upholstery workshops, and junkyards across the city served a larger clientele. Those businesses that were located in the "Jewish area," on the other hand, were specifically Jewish and were intended for a recognized and usually sizeable population. But even these neighborhoods were not exclusively Jewish. Even in those Montreal areas where Jews were in a majority, few streets or blocks were entirely Jewish; French Canadian neighbors, stores, and churches were never far away. The same was true in the other cities. In Toronto, for example, while Jewish high school students dominated Harbord Collegiate and Central Tech, the nearby Christie Pits baseball and football fields attracted a multi-ethnic presence. In Winnipeg's St. John's Collegiate, Jews, while numerous, rubbed shoulders with the non-Jewish majority, which included students drawn from Ukrainian, Polish, and German immigrant homes. They all shared the North End streets and parks. The lives of Jews and non-Jews, then, were interwoven in these gritty, colorful neighborhoods. The Jews continued to adapt to their social and cultural surroundings. In late 1930s Montreal, one survey showed that English was the preferred language of Jewish newspaper and periodical readers, although in the downtown older areas of the city people preferred the Yiddish dailies by a considerable margin. But among children, even those in the old area, English publications far outsold Yiddish ones, while those in French and Hebrew ranked low. The transition to English culture was well under way. Without the antisemitism that barred even fuller Jewish integration into Montreal's Anglophone society, such transformation would probably have extended further and faster. -Antisemitism between the Wars Antisemitism emerged in virulent forms in the interwar years. In French-speaking Quebec, the most serious antisemitic accusations held the Jews responsible for the Russian Revolution and the spread of international Communism. Articles stridently alleging these lies frequently appeared in La Semaine Commerciale, L'Action catholique, and L'Action française as well as in milder form in English dailies like the Montreal Star. Much of this antisemitism was generated by writings in L'Action catholique. Its wide clerical readership made it an especially influential newspaper in the province. Meanwhile, the "Achat Chez Nous" campaign urging French Canadians to buy only from their own and boycott Jews was a severe irritant. In English-speaking Canada, antisemitism may have been more genteel, but no less pernicious in intent. Whether rooted in canards of Jews as Christ-Killers, or Shylocks, or wrapping itself in the mantle of scientific racism and eugenics, antisemitism was equally corrosive to the opportunities for individual Jews. The Canadian Jewish Congress, dormant since 1920, was revived in 1934, principally to battle the rise of domestic and foreign antisemitism. It sought to challenge the view among some contemporary opinion makers that "the Jew simply did not fit into their concept of Canada." As a result, Jews were denied professional, residential, and economic opportunities. Occasional antisemitic street violence – like the Toronto Christie Pits riot of August 1933 – erupted. Nazi-style uniformed "stormtroopers" also rallied and marched in several cities. In Quebec, dedicated antisemitic weeklies, such as Le Goglu, Le Mirroir, and Le Chameau, circulated by self-styled Nazi Adrien Arcand and his associates regularly featured cartoons caricaturing Jews as low, vile, and filthy. Arcand's Blue Shirts, modeled on Italian Fascist and German Nazi counterparts, marched and organized. From his position at the Université de Montréal, the influential clerico-nationalist Abbé Lionel Groulx published denunciations of Jewish materialism, communism, and capitalism, while at the influential newspaper Le Devoir, editor Georges Pelletier regularly published antisemitic pieces, as did the editors of the monthly periodical L'Action française. Students at the Université de Montréal demonstrated against "Judeo-Bolshevism." The interns at four Montreal francophone hospitals went on strike in 1934 to protest the hiring of a Jewish intern at Notre Dame. As if these problems were not enough, Quebec Jews also had little help from the Anglo-Protestant community, which considered them, officially, second class citizens in elementary and secondary education. At the English-speaking McGill University of Montreal, Jews had serious problems gaining entry on the same basis as other Quebeckers. All of these unpleasant and menacing elements put the Jewish community on notice that, with respect to antisemitism, "la province de Québec n'est pas une province comme les autres." In response the Congress mounted a vigorous educational campaign. In 1937 it distributed literature explaining the dangers of Nazism, the falsehood of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and the need for vigilance against antisemitism at home. In Quebec City the tiny Jewish community of about one hundred families encountered the first attempt made in Canada to pass municipal legislation specifically against Jews, while their attempts to erect a synagogue were stymied by local politicians. Ultimately successful in securing permission, their new synagogue was burned to the ground on the eve of its opening in 1944. In English-speaking Canada, the Ku Klux Klan surfaced briefly in the 1920s carrying powerful antisemitic messages warning of Jewish domination in industry, corruption, plots against Christianity, and vice. -Immigration Restrictions Among the most tangible impact of rising antisemitism was the imposition of anti-Jewish immigration control. Canadian immigration policy was changing in ways that adversely affected Jews, particularly in its preference for British subjects, Anglo-Saxons, North Europeans, and farmers. In addition, the "continuous journey" regulation adversely affected East European Jews because the shipping companies serving Canadian ports did not operate out of countries like Poland and Romania, making immigration nearly impossible for migrants who did not possess a prepaid ticket to Canada. Immigration restrictions placed serious burdens on Jews who had come from war-ravaged lands of Eastern Europe and had taken refuge in other countries. Regulations implemented in 1921 also required immigrants to have valid passports from their countries of origin. This complicated matters for many Polish and Russian Jews who escaped from the old Russian empire, now replaced by the U.S.S.R. It was impossible for them to get passports unless they returned to the U.S.S.R. to try to get one – a risk few would take. A further requirement, introduced in 1921, that all non-agricultural immigrants such as Jews possess $250 in landing money created more problems. This was replaced in 1922 by a stiff occupational test, accompanied by a stipulation that Canadian, not British, consular officials examine all passports. Since there were few Canadian consular officials posted anywhere near the East European Jewish migrants, this too constituted a stumbling block for the potential Jewish immigrant. Canadian immigration laws were tightened even further in 1923, when regulations demanded that immigrants be ranked according to the old racial preferences into "preferred," "non-preferred," and "special permit" classes. The last category included all Jews, irrespective of countries of origin. They were subjected to the most severe restrictions by which Jews were situated almost on the very lowest level of priority, along with blacks and Asians. One influential Jew who fought to liberalize immigration was Lillian Freiman. The wife of Ottawa department store tycoon A.J. "Archie" Freiman, she influenced Mrs. Arthur Meighen, wife of the most powerful minister in the Borden Cabinet, to lend her official support to a project to save some Jewish children who had been orphaned by the anti-Jewish persecutions in Ukraine following World War I. Meanwhile, sam jacobs , a Jewish member of Parliament from Montreal, and others appealed for the admission of Jewish refugees from Ukrainian pogroms. At the same time the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS), led by Lyon Cohen and Sam Jacobs, spear-headed the Jewish community's appeal to the government to forestall the application of even tighter restrictions. After Lillian Freiman secured special approval to allow up to 200 of these orphans into Canada "on humanitarian grounds," she led a team to Europe to select the orphans. While waiting to take the children to Canada, she presided over a moving Sabbath celebration where, she "carried the (kiddush) cup to each child and through the tears we could see her great nachas (joy) … from this experience." Despite increasingly severe restrictions, JIAS also successfully negotiated the entry of up to 5,000 Jews who were stranded in Eastern Europe, principally in Romania, by the Russian Revolution and ensuing civil war. By the end of the project in November 1924, only 3,400 of the 5,000 permits had been used. Lobbying to allow the rest of the permits to be taken by refugee Russian Jews stranded in Constantinople or by relatives of Canadian Jews from other parts of Europe was refused. A new restrictionist-minded bureaucracy further tightened the screws. Perhaps the extreme resistance by department officials to the petitions for allowing in Jewish refugees during the 1930s and 1940s stemmed from resentment at the heavy lobbying associated with those permits. Officials now stiffened their resolve against all non-British, especially Jewish immigrants. While not totally ended, Jewish immigration – except by those who could qualify for "special permits" as first degree family members – was effectively halted. Canada now became closed to Jews. Bowing to restrictionist pressures from bureaucrats, nativists, racists, trade unions, and outright antisemites, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was firm. Despite his protestations of sympathy for the Jews in Germany in the 1930s, along with his willingness to receive Jewish delegations and meet with the Jewish MPs (Sam Jacobs, Abraham Heaps, and Samuel Spector), King was not prepared to overturn the restrictionist policy that closed Canada to the Jews. Many Canadian intellectuals supported immigration restrictions. The distinguished historian of Canada, Arthur Lower, of Winnipeg's Wesley College severely criticized the government's previously generous immigration policies which, in his view, had attracted many unsuitable immigrants. Worse yet, it created, in Lower's eyes, a situation in which Canada's Anglo-Saxon character and institutions were jeopardized because "bad" immigrants drove "good" Canadians out of their own country. Restrictionism, grounded in antisemitism and accorded wide public support in Canada, effectively reduced Jewish immigration into Canada. By 1931 it was less than one-fifth what it had been in 1930. Faced with immigration restrictions, the rising tide of domestic antisemitism, and the threat of Nazism abroad, the CJC sought an infusion of new leadership and money. In 1938 Montreal liquor baron and philanthropist Sam Bronfman became CJC president, and hired saul hayes , a recent law graduate, as the CJC director. Buoyed by effective administration and Bronfman's financial support, the CJC made lobbying on behalf of Jewish refugee admissions a priority. But there was no breaking Canada's wall of restrictions. Throughout the 1930s and beyond, despite desperate appeals from Jewish refugees and organizations, the government barred Jewish entry into Canada on the theory that, as one official later put it, "none is too many." When the Jewish refugee question emerged in acute form following Kristallnacht in November 1938, King told his Cabinet that "the time has come when, as a Government, we would have to perform acts which were expressive of what we believe to be the conscience of the nation, and not what might be, at the moment, politically the most expedient." But in the end, political expediency outweighed all else. Recognizing that there were few votes to be gained, and many to be lost, in admitting Jews, Canada's gates remained locked. -The Montreal School Question Amidst deep concerns over limitations on immigration, the Jewish community of Montreal also faced special challenges because of the unique linguistic and cultural duality of the Province of Quebec. Throughout the 1920s, its leading problem was the Jewish school question, an issue which set the Montreal Jewish community apart from all others in North America. For many years, community spokesmen had demanded equal rights for Jewish pupils in the Protestant school system, which they could legally attend and were obliged to support through real-estate taxes. Eventually, some Jews even pressed for the right to establish an altogether separate Jewish school system. Montreal Jewry was torn apart by this issue, which involved not only two major factions within the community, those who wanted a separate Jewish school system and those who wanted equal rights within the Protestant system, but also the Protestant Board of School Commissioners, the government of Quebec, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, French Canadian nationalists, and the general public of the province. The Jewish school question evoked strong opinions on all sides, and it dominated the community's agenda for the better part of a decade, leaving in its wake long-lasting division and acrimony. The controversy also accentuated the virulent antisemitism then current in Quebec. In the face of this threat, there were appeals for the establishment of a Jewish Vigilance Committee "to protect the good name of Jewry" in Montreal, where "we have been made the object of libellous attacks by certain vigilant tabloids." As a small minority, Jews had no choice but to keep a profile that made them apprehensive, defensive, and cynical. It was a bitter irony that, largely as a result of divisiveness in the Jewish community and the lopsided compromise with the Protestants in 1930, Jews were officially relegated to second-class status in the very province that, in 1832, had led the entire British Empire in extending them equal rights. Continuing attacks on Jews in the antisemitic Quebec press and the removal in 1936 of the Jewish exemption from the Quebec Sunday Observance Act (designed to protect workers against undue exploitation) increased their uncertainty. -Labor Militancy in the Clothing Industry Profound philosophical differences over schools echoed even deeper divisions between Jewish employers and workers in the burgeoning, but fluctuating, clothing industry. Jews had become some of the largest manufacturers in the apparel trades. After World War I, there was an enormous increase in the manufacture of dresses and other women's ready-to-wear items, which became the dominant part of the womenswear sector. Known colloquially among its Jewish practitioners as the shmatta business, or the rag trade, it took on a personality of its own and attracted many daring (or foolish) entrepreneurs. The trade had rapidly increased during the war, when the market for inexpensive cotton smocks, housedresses, and shirtwaists increased, thus drawing large numbers into the factories. During the 1920s and 1930s, an even larger market emerged for inexpensive but stylish dresses for the growing numbers of women working in offices, banks, and stores. For its workers, however, the dress industry created some of the worst labor conditions in Canada. In Montreal and Toronto, the Jewish-dominated trade unions emerged, including the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (Amalgamated); the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU); the United Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union; and the Industrial Union of Needle Trade Workers (IUNTW), affiliated with the Communist-affiliated Workers' Unity League. These unions were not concerned only with shop floor struggles. Their battles for better material conditions were linked to "a broader social vision." For many of their members, these unions and the struggles for improved conditions were based on socialistic ideals. But the struggle to make a living while working in such a volatile industry blunted much of the idealism and most union leaders concentrated on basic issues like the dispersion of the clothing factories (runaway shops), the improvement of wages and working conditions, and the establishment of union shops. Their goal was industrial stability. -The Jewish Left While many young Jews were drawn to the radical and moderate left during the 1930s, it was not strictly from a desire to reform or overturn capitalism. Opposition to the growth of Fascism and Nazism were also important to the Young Communist League (YCL), which included many Jews. The RCMP even took note of the fact that at the almost all-Jewish Baron Byng High School in Montreal, the YCL's influence was "particularly strong…" and the RCMP maintained a sharp watch for Jews. The RCMP was under no illusions that Jews dominated the Communist Party of Canada, recognizing that Jews made up less than 10 percent of the its membership. Two Jews, fred rose (Rosenberg), a Polish-born Montreal electrician, and Joseph Baruch salsberg , a Toronto labor organizer, stood out. During the 1930s, Rose unsuccessfully ran for provincial and federal office in Montreal. However, in August 1943 he won Montreal-Cartier in a by-election, and successfully defended his seat in 1945. Nevertheless, in 1945, following revelations by defecting Soviet Embassy clerk Igor Gouzenko, Rose was arrested and charged with espionage. The court found Rose guilty of espionage and sentenced him to six years' imprisonment. He was released in 1951 and spent the remainder of his life in Poland. Joseph Salsberg was an activist in the United Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers Union during the 1920s and 1930s and a member of the Toronto City Council in 1938. He entered provincial politics in 1943, and aided by the fact that the Soviet Union was by then an ally, was elected from Saint Andrew to the Ontario legislature, where he served until 1955. The United Jewish People's Order (UJPO), with branches in major cities throughout Canada, was set up in 1945 by an amalgamation of the Labour League of Toronto, the Jewish Aid Society of Montreal, and the Jewish Fraternal Order of Winnipeg. While not Zionist, after World War II, UJPO, now an active component of Congress, strongly favored Jewish immigration to Palestine and the building of the Yishuv (settlement) there, until it was expelled in 1951. (It was readmitted to the CJC in 1995.) Education was also of great importance to UJPO. It supported afternoon schools, and summer camps, where programs on working-class struggles and the rising threat of Fascism were stressed. The left Po'alei Zion (sometimes known as Aḥdut Avodah – Po'alei Zion) thrived with educational and sick-benefit offshoots. Its main publications, Proletarishe Gedank ("Workers' Thought") and Undzr Veg ("Our Way"), included much working-class content. In the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Canada's social democratic party, david lewis became National Secretary in 1936. He was well versed in British Labour Party thought. "My brand of socialism," remembered Lewis, a Rhodes scholar from the Bundist family background that stressed Yiddish culture and socialism, "was of the rather harsh medicine variety, the only cure for an increasingly sick system." A Polish-born agnostic, Lewis succeeded in modeling the CCF party of democratic socialism on the British Labour Party. He possessed the combined qualities of leadership, a penetrating mind, and a brilliant capacity to organize. Many of his efforts in these years focused on establishing links with the Canadian labor movement, which he recognized "was necessarily engaged on the economic front against the same forces which the party faced on the political front." Here he developed even stronger suspicions of, and antipathies towards, the Communists. -Zionism between the Wars Zionism in Canada changed significantly in the interwar era as the Jewish community continued to diversify. In the Zionist Organization of Canada (ZOC) and the Hadassah-WIZO organization of Canada (Hadassah), both of them non-ideologically oriented groups affiliated with the World Zionist Organization, younger men and women had already assumed leadership roles. At the same time, Labor Zionism was gaining considerable strength among Jewish socialists, members of the working class, and others who supported the collectivist values and projects of the labor movement in Palestine. With the decline of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1920, the ZOC remained the only truly national Jewish body until 1934, when the Congress was revitalized. But the ZOC was clearly not representative of all segments of Jewish political opinion or social classes. While it remained stoutly independent of its American counterpart, strong links were forged between Canadian and U.S. members of Po'alei Zion and the Mizrachi, especially in their youth movements. Canada was all the more fertile ground because, with the balfour declaration , Zionism had received the imprimatur of Great Britain. Still legally and, for many, emotionally Canada's mother country, Great Britain was also the principal benefactor of the Jewish people because it was seen as the facilitator of its national homeland. Such circumstances created a near-perfect environment for Canadian Zionists because, as well, in sharp contrast to the cause in the United States, no problem of alleged dual loyalty arose here. Loyalty to Zionism, to the British Empire, and to Canada was an attractive "package deal" for Canadian Jews, with no apparent drawbacks. Hadassah, meanwhile, remained in the vanguard of Zionism in Canada. Lillian Freiman emphasized that Hadassah was a women's movement. In the spirit of the "new womanhood" that was current among gender-conscious Canadian women, she always referred to its members as "sisters," to their efforts as "our hands joined in true sisterly love and endeavor," and to the collectivity as "our Jewish womanhood." In the late 1930s, reacting to the male leaders' hesitation in bringing Jewish children from Germany and Austria to Palestine, Canadian Hadassah women rallied behind youth aliyah , asserting that "some infection must be drying up the channels of pity in Jewish life when Jewish fathers who could, with the stroke of a pen(,) lift a child from hopelessness to happiness have failed to do so." On their own and together with sister groups elsewhere, Hadassah members raised money to save tens of thousands of children who were otherwise doomed to die in Europe between 1939 and 1945. Labor Zionist women also mobilized for their own causes. pioneer women , a group formed in Toronto in 1925 as a branch of an American organization, had an explicitly feminist and socialist-Zionist agenda. It attracted mostly young, secularist, working-class Jewish women, often recent immigrants, who, because they were not well off and "green," felt uncomfortable with middle class, English-speaking Hadassah "ladies." Many were also attracted to the collectivist outlook of the movement and its social and educational opportunities. Often members of trade unions, or strongly sympathetic to the unionist cause, these women embraced Labor Zionism. Propelled by Zionist and socialist zeal, Ha-Shomer ha-Tza'ir also established groups in Toronto, Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Ottawa during the 1930s. In ensuing years, the movement sent dozens of shomerim from Canada to kibbutzim in Israel, the majority of them women. Their example stood as both a reminder and a reproach to checkbook Zionism, while their songs evoked a romantic declaration of their zeal to build the world anew. Some of them, however, defeated by the spartan conditions and extreme dangers, eventually returned home. Youth organizations committed to other ideologies also emerged, among them the Revisionist betar . habonim , a youth branch of Po'alei Zion, established groups in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, where it became a thriving and influential organization that stressed aliyah and ḥalutzi'ut (pioneering). Whether as pioneers on the kibbutzim, small farmers, or urban dwellers, in the end there was only a trickle of Canadian immigrants to Palestine through the 1930s and early 1940s. Most were members of Zionist youth movements who underwent a year of agricultural instruction on hakhsharah (special training) farms in Canada and the United States. But the ZOC took little notice. As late as January 1936, the ZOC did not know how many Canadians were on these farms. Its own emphasis on fundraising was rarely questioned openly, although Congress veteran and Labor Zionist intellectual hananiah caiserman shrewdly observed the discomfort felt by many Zionists. He warned that unless Zionists received substantial assistance for cultural programming, the movement would falter and the ZOC decline. -Canada's Jews at War The Congress, from 1939 firmly presided over by Samuel Bronfman, monitored all aspects of the Canadian war effort. The Congress wanted Canadians to know that Jews were doing their full share for the country, contrary to the perception that their contribution during World War I was inadequate. Bronfman was strongly patriotic and insisted from the very beginning that Canada's Jews get fully behind the war effort. The Congress formed the National War Efforts Committee (WEC) in late 1940. Military recruitment centers were opened across the country and Bronfman paid particular attention to the figures of Jewish enlistments, directing WEC to do all it could to encourage Jews to sign up. Until mid-summer of 1942, WEC concentrated on mobilizing the community while organizing programs for Jewish armed services personnel scattered in camps throughout Canada. It sent out field workers to organize hospitality, recreation, and entertainment for them, often through local communities and Jewish military chaplains. Whether it is reasonable to expect Jews to have volunteered en masse for the war against Nazism remains a question that only the soldiers – and eligible Jewish men who, along with others, avoided military service altogether – can answer. Some Jewish veterans later reflected on their own reasons for volunteering. "As a Jew, you had to go," Aaron Palmer, a sergeant, recalled. Barney Danson, a junior officer in the infantry, remembered that "the evil of Nazism existed and we had to be in it, as Jews and as Canadians." Danson felt some anger at the thought of the Jewish boys who did not join up. "I don't know how they could live with themselves. How could any (such) Jew look himself in the mirror?" Edwin Goodman, a major commanding a tank unit, also believed that he had a special responsibility to fight Nazism. According to the records of the War Efforts Committee, more than 16,000 Jewish men and almost 300 women served in the Canadian armed services during World War II. Jewish women constituted 0.55 percent of all Canadian women who joined navy, army, air force, and women's nursing units. Jewish enlistments were slightly less than the national average, but Jews were less likely to serve in combat units. As a result, Jewish casualties were substantially less than the national average. As Jews generally had a higher level of education than the national average, there may have been more who received non-combat postings. But Jews served with distinction, and many with a sense of Jewish mission. When the Canadian Army advanced into Belgium and Holland, Jewish servicemen provided key roles in assisting Holocaust survivors. Beginning in December 1944, they distributed food, chocolate, and toys to surviving children, and later sent supplies to children still at Bergen-Belsen. Jewish communities in Amersfoort, Apeldoorn, Nijmegen, and Amsterdam were also given assistance, and Jewish service personnel were encouraged by chaplains such as Rabbi Captain Samuel Cass to be generous. Thirteen days after the town of Nijkerk was liberated by forces of Canada's 1st Division on April 17, 1945, Jewish soldiers were photographed standing by as armed members of the Dutch Resistance supervised the clean-up of a nearby synagogue by captured local Nazi collaborators. Writing to Congress officials in January 1945, Rabbi Cass reported on the Hanukkah celebrations he had organized in several liberated Belgian and Dutch towns: "Parties were arranged for hundreds of children … and for adults too, for whom this was the first celebration in years." In what must have been a most moving reenactment of the first Hanukkah, which marked the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple defiled by the ancient Greeks, Cass and scores of Jewish soldiers and civilians "met in Synagogues which had been stripped and vandalized and rededicated them through the kindling of Hanukkah lights." Enthusiasm for these efforts ran high among Jewish soldiers. "On the whole," Cass reflected, "relationships between Jew and non-Jew were of an excellent and wholesome character of comrades in arms." Most Jews made "splendid adjustments to their non-Jewish buddies, considering the fact that many of them, particularly the large numbers enlisted from … Montreal and Toronto, enjoyed only Jewish social relationships before enlistment." He went on to say, "Prejudices, very often melted away in the flames of battle and fast friendships were formed between Jew and non-Jew." In a sense, then, the armed services constituted a school for a type of Canadianization that went far beyond what most Jews had previously experienced. The soldiers absorbed the Canadian "culture" of their military service. It might well be that the decline in antisemitism in Canada after 1945 was as much an outcome of enforced military togetherness and camaraderie as it was a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. At the same time, for many Jews, service in the armed forces during the Holocaust heightened their awareness of Judaism and deepened their identification with the Jewish people. The efforts of the Jewish chaplains, the soldiers' own war experiences, and a growing understanding of the evil intent of Nazism sharpened their identity. -Zionist Activity during World War II Canadian Zionism in the 1940s and 1950s reached a new level of intensity. Vigorous political activity with a serious concern with ḥalutzi'ut was added to the long-established fundraising programs among members of Zionist youth groups. Political lobbying on behalf of a Jewish state probably had less effect on Canadian public opinion because of Canada's quasi-British identity than its United States counterpart. Nevertheless, some persons of influence were persuaded of the validity of Zionist claims. Thus, while not critical in the formation of Canada's policy on Palestine between 1945 and 1948, the publicity drives and lobbying efforts undertaken by Canadian Zionists advanced the Zionist cause in the Jewish community and served to further unite the Canadian Jewish community. In the wake of the Holocaust, even non-Zionists lined up in support of the establishment of a Jewish refuge in Palestine. From 1945 on, Zionism moved slowly towards a position of legitimacy within the Jewish world. Following 1948, Zionism came as close to being the universal credo of Canadian Jewry as any belief could. To be sure, the battle for Canadian Jewish acceptance had never been as difficult as it was in the United States. There were some non-Zionists and a few anti-Zionists in the community, but apart from sporadic and ambivalent attacks by some Jewish Communists, no Canadian Jewish group set itself up in sustained opposition to Zionism. -Holocaust Survivors in Canada In the years immediately following 1945, public attitudes remained strongly antisemitic, notwithstanding the newsreels showing horrific scenes from liberated concentration camps. In an October 1946 Gallup poll, Canadian respondents were asked to list the nationalities they would like to keep out of Canada. Only the Japanese fared worse than the Jews; Germans fared much better. The attitude of some Canadian officials was as bad or worse. In a letter from the Canadian high commission in London, one official wrote of the "black marketing, dirty living habits and general slovenliness" of the Jewish survivors in the German DP camps. Nevertheless, Canada's virtually exclusionist immigration policy softened in 1946, when the government recognized the need for an increased labor supply in a more buoyant economy and also gave in to United Nations pressures. Substantial numbers of Jews began arriving, including the more than 1,000 sponsored by CJC. In Prien, Germany, a Winnipeg-born social worker, Ethel Ostry, organized the care of displaced children immigrating to Canada. Samuel Bronfman took a special interest in this project. Reception centers were set up and foster homes arranged in communities across Caanda. At roughtly the same time, the first of more than 1,800 Jews arrived under the Tailor's Project, which looked to bring experienced clothing workers under the auspices of a committee representing CJC, industry, labor unions, and JIAS. In all, an estimated 35,000 survivors came to Canada from 1945 to 1956, forming a much greater proportion of the Canadian Jewish population than did survivors in the United States. They ranged from secular cosmopolitans to those immersed in a Yiddishist or devoutly Orthodox environment. These survivors helped invigorate educational and cultural life, and many found work as Jewish teachers and communal workers. These new arrivals, offended by what they perceived to be "negative reactions and attitudes," often stood apart from the existing community. After a serious disagreement with a local union activist, one survivor realized "that this person knew nothing about the … Holocaust … (and I) pledged never to discuss my experiences again with a non-survivor." Other survivors developed a resentment towards the established Jewish community. One commented, "Maybe they were going around with the guilt they could not work out with themselves that they left us over there. They didn't put up here a big fuss." A woman survivor who was crying at a Holocaust memorial service in 1949 was told by a Canadian-born Jew to stop. "Enough is enough … No more crying and no more talking about what happened. This is a new country and a new life." But among themselves, survivors felt free to reminisce: "Amongst our group, if we felt like talking about something, we could. We were listening to each other's stories, and it was just fine." These small groups, dedicated to mutual aid, support for Israel, and Holocaust commemoration, thrived, helping survivors to adapt. Many married, started businesses, had children, and established homes. Some lapsed into a lifelong depression that affected even their children and grandchildren. Most felt the significant distance between themselves and the established Jewish community open up again over the proper response to the reemergence of pro-Nazi organizations in the early 1960s. -Aiming for Equality Meanwhile, Jews by the 1960s were accorded an unprecedented degree of recognition. In Quebec, a new spirit of urban and secular awakening was dominant, and the antisemitism of an earlier age was dismantled. Dr. Victor Goldbloom was appointed to the cabinet in the Liberal government of Quebec premier Jean Lesage in the 1960s. At around the same time, Jewish parochial schools were accorded generous provincial financial assistance, and the semi-independence of the Jewish social-welfare network in Montreal was also upheld. Jews were even appointed to teaching posts in francophone universities. At the same time, however, Quebec's Jews still felt that they were walking a tightrope. The separatist upsurge in the 1960s, followed by the October Crisis of 1970, the language legislation of the 1970s, and ethnocentric nationalist statements by some sovereigntists, made Quebec Jews nervous and uncertain of their future. Many Jews, especially the young ones who were concerned that Québécois nationalist policies might hamper their career choices, began to leave the province. Many moved to Toronto or elsewhere in Canada. In English Canada, antisemitism's long history also left strong vestiges. In one Ontario case, Bernard Wolfe of London agreed to purchase a summer cottage at nearby Beach O'Pines resort, but he was prevented from taking possession by a pre-existing covenant, which barred sales to persons of "Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or colored race or blood." The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court decision declaring the covenant valid, but the Supreme Court of Canada overturned it in November 1950. Meanwhile, the Ontario legislature passed a bill voiding all covenants restricting the sale or ownership of land for reasons of race or creed. Although these actions lifted the prohibition on residence, the Congress and B'nai B'rith still battled against racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination in the work world and the schools. The Ontario government discouraged summer resorts from advertising that their clientele was "restricted" or "selected." It became increasingly difficult for haters to discriminate, and utterly impossible to restrict Jews from living in certain areas. Ontario, which enacted the Racial Discrimination Act in 1944 and the Fair Employment Practices Act in 1951, led all levels of government in passing comprehensive bills to outlaw discrimination and the dissemination of hate literature. Joseph Salsberg, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, various labor leaders, the Canadian Jewish Congress, Jewish activists in the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, and the Canadian Jewish press were all leading advocates for human-rights legislation. Unfortunately, legislation could not prevent continuing antisemitism at the universities. The admission of Jews to some medical schools was still severely restricted. McGill, for example, limited Jewish admissions to a rigid 10 percent until the 1960s and the University of Toronto required Jews to have higher marks than other applicants. Most Jewish University of Toronto medical graduates had to leave the city for the necessary year of internship because, with a few exceptions, Toronto's hospitals barred their doors to them, regardless of their academic standing. Also, it was still difficult for qualified Jewish doctors to acquire admitting privileges at these hospitals. When Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital was completed in the early 1950s, its status as a teaching hospital for the University of Toronto was delayed until 1962. Such discrimination forced the Toronto and Montreal Jewish communities to continue to support their own hospitals. Indeed, hospital building campaigns were the focus of their largest fundraising efforts; roughly 25 percent of all monies raised for capital projects in the 1950s and 1960s went to hospitals. -Women and Occupational Shifts Depictions of women went unchanged. One widely circulated cookbook depicted the subservient and dependent role of the Jewish wife in the 1950s. Although poorly educated in religious traditions, she was, however, responsible for the domestic observances of the holidays, including the laborious preparation of special foods. Assumed to be solely a "housewife," her responsibilities outside the domestic realm included an active role in Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, the premier Jewish women's Zionist organization. Such volunteer groups were viewed by men as adjuncts to the main Jewish communal structure, which seldom allowed women into their inner councils. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the situation for women began to change. In the later period nearly 21 percent of all Jewish working women were professionals, compared with less than 5 percent in 1931. During the same decades, the percentage of working Jewish women in blue-collar occupations fell dramatically. And increasing numbers of Jewish women entered the workforce, while still continuing to be homemakers. But the status of women in the workforce was far from equal to that of men, largely because, in the words of one scholar, "They enter later, often less prepared, and are often underpaid and overworked with their two jobs of paid work and homemaking." For most working women, therefore, entry into the workforce was not necessarily a liberating experience, and their responsibilities at home were not shared or reduced. A growing discontent raised the level of women's consciousness – including that of Canadian Jewish women – and led to the feminism that was to emerge in the 1970s and to flourish in the 1980s and 1990s. Some Canadian Jewish women assumed leadership roles in these feminist movements. -A Maturing Community With prosperity growing across Canada between 1945 and 1952, investment in communal services expanded enormously. Money collected in the community built hospitals, synagogues, YMHAs, community centers, and schools. New and expanded health and recreation facilities consumed more than half of the community's financial expenditures, while religious and educational institutions accounted for more than one-third. Social-welfare programs and general community administration took up the remainder. In the big cities, suburban synagogues replaced the old downtown shuls, while in smaller communities new synagogues often included community centers and athletic facilities. Typical of these multipurpose centers were the Jewish buildings in Halifax, Brantford, and Saskatoon. A plot of land was purchased near the house of the community's observant Jews, building and finance committees were set up, and a contractor was engaged. Once the new building was completed (often after stormy meetings where members, now "experts," hotly debated plans for the new structure), the congregation took its leave of the old shul with prayer and rejoicing. These transformations were also reflected in shifting Canadian Jewish occupational patterns. The professional classes accounted for almost 6 percent of the gainfully employed in 1941 and almost 9 percent in 1951. The percentage of Jews in commerce held steady, but in manufacturing it dropped almost 10 percent. By 1961 the proportion of Jews in professional occupations had risen to almost 14 percent, while the number working in manufacturing had fallen dramatically. The Jewish community also had twice as many university-educated members as any other ethnic group. According to the 1961 census, Jewish males had the highest average income in Canada. This, perhaps, had much to do with the fact that, in addition to being highly educated, Jews were the most highly urbanized of all Canadians. In addition, the Jews had a proclivity for self-employment, a preference explained party by job discrimination, which persisted on a fairly serious scale into the 1960s. Many Jews, anticipating anti-Jewish bias in fields like engineering and teaching, chose business or the other self-employed professions instead. Consequently, Jewish males were three times as likely to be self-employed as any other ethnic group in Canada. This meant that Jews were more likely to remain in the labor force after age 65, though they also entered it later because of a tendency to remain in school longer. The face of Canadian Jewry was changing, and its numbers were also growing. The Jewish population rose from only 168,585 in 1941 to 204,836 in 1951 and 254,368 in 1961. It registered its strongest growth rate in Alberta and British Columbia, even though the vast majority of immigrants moved to Montreal and Toronto. For all this growth, the face of Canadian Jewry was in many ways unchanged since its prewar days. A survey taken in 1960 showed that established synagogue affiliations had not fundamentally altered since 1935. For example, the vast majority of congregations were Orthodox in 1935 and modestly less so in 1960. The number of Conservative and Reform congregations grew, but did not challenge the numerical superiority of Orthodox congregations. Where there was change was in the pulpit. Before WWII the majority of Orthodox rabbis serving Canadian congregations had been European-born and trained. By 1960 virtually all of them were graduates of seminaries located in the United States, with a few from the four small yeshivot in Montreal and Toronto. Conservative congregations continued to draw their rabbis from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and the Reform from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Membership levels in Conservative and Reform congregations had grown enormously since 1945, and their new synagogues and temples usually were large structures accommodating several hundred people. In contrast, most Orthodox congregations were much smaller, some unable even to afford their own rabbis. In general, Louis Rosenberg noted, "The rise in synagogue building and membership appeared to be motivated by a desire to 'belong' rather than (by) strong religious conviction…. With the exception of the ultra-Orthodox, post-war active participation in Jewish religious life appeared to be limited to bar mitzvah and kaddish observance and synagogue attendance on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur…." Traditional Judaism nevertheless experienced a revival in postwar Canada. Once drawn only from a portion of the immigrant population, the Orthodox community, with larger families, soon had growing numbers of synagogues. -Two Centuries in Retrospect Over almost two hundred years Canada's Jews adjusted to a distinctive political, constitutional, and social environment of the northern half of the North American continent. Here the tensions between "two founding peoples," French and English, had led to laws which seriously disadvantaged the civil rights of Jews in Quebec, where ultramontane Roman Catholic and ultranationalist attitudes had encouraged virulent antisemitism. For its part, English Canada developed a quiet but effective form of social and economic discrimination. Immigration patterns – the lack of a German influx in the 19th century – and the absence of a significant Reform movement had left Judaism essentially in its traditional forms. Zionism, as a result, was stronger here than in the United States and thrived in a polity that stipulated no exclusivist national identity. By the 1960s, Canadian Jewry was a mature and strong community. Gone were the severe economic struggles of the early immigrant, though significant pockets of poverty remained, and the intracommunal strife in the embattled clothing industry was safely in the past as workers' sons and daughters entered the professions, moved to the suburbs, and in many ways lived upscale lifestyles. The old radical left still survived, but had lost much of its feistiness and, increasingly, its members. The Yiddish press had declined and a new, toothless, and bland English-language weekly, the Canadian Jewish News, purported to speak for the community. The Zionist organizations, too, had faded as their relevancy seemed dubious in the context of a strong and secure Israel. In terms of relationships between Jews and non-Jews, toleration – warm acceptance even – had replaced antisemitism, even in Quebec, where, by 1960, secular nationalism seemed to pose few problems for the community which now included many and growing numbers of francophone Jews. It seemed that in this respect Canada's Jews had arrived, if only just, and were now in large measure confident and secure. What lay ahead, however, were deep complexities and far-reaching challenges that only the wisest had anticipated. (Gerald Tulchinsky (2nd ed.) -The 1960s and Beyond After the trauma of the Holocaust, Canadian Jews slowly acquired a self-confidence that modified the insecurity and ambivalence of the prewar period. Israel's War of Independence and the creation of the state initiated the process. The Six-Day War of 1967 continued to strengthen Canadian Jewish identity, by enhancing the pro-Zionist and pro-Israel character of the community. The breaking of educational and occupational barriers and the rise of a broader Jewish middle class rooted in Canada provided the human and financial capital to create a wider and more professional network of Jewish communal organizations. Finally, the evolution of Canadian "multiculturalism" beginning in the late 1960s, reflected in the increasing ethnic diversity fueled by postwar immigration, official rhetoric, and government policy in various domains, served to enhance Jewish self-confidence. The community retained its particular ethno-religious identity, while maximizing participation in Canadian life. Both goals also reflected the agenda of Canadian multiculturalism. The pluralistic nature of Canadian Jewry persisted, though along different dimensions. Ethnic differences fueled by immigration continued. But the ideological passions of the prewar period declined dramatically as the community developed a middle-class, liberal, pro-Israel consensus. In their place emerged religious cleavages, pitting the Orthodox against the non-Orthodox, similar to divisions in Israel and elsewhere in the Diaspora. Jewish immigration to Canada continued in waves from a variety of sources. (Indeed in 2001 roughly 30 percent of Canadian Jews were foreign-born, compared to 10 percent in the United States. About 17 percent of all Canadians were foreign-born compared to about 11 percent of Americans.) Following the Holocaust survivors came Middle Eastern and francophone North African immigrants, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s, and settling mainly in Montreal. These Sephardi immigrants were strongly identified as Jews, both pro-Israel and rooted in traditional Judaism, and added a new bilingual and bicultural dimension to Montreal Jewish life. Indeed, these francophone Jews were at times courted by nationalist and separatist elements in Quebec, and posed a challenge to the mainly English-speaking and federalist Jewish establishment. By the 21st century those initial tensions had given way to significant integration and Jewish communal unity. Another wave comprised "Soviet" and later Russian Jews, who began to arrive in significant numbers in the 1970s and continued into the 21st century. Many of these immigrants had grown up without formal exposure to Jewish religion or culture. Finally, Israeli Jews started to arrive in significant numbers in the 1970s and 1980s. These Jews posed an initial ideological dilemma for the receiving Jewish community, which was committed to Zionism. These immigrants wrestled with a certain ambivalence about having left Israel. But they brought with them a foundation of Hebraic culture, and many played roles in Jewish schools. Jewish immigrants from South Africa, Ethiopia, and Latin America also added to the Canadian mix. These more recent immigrants, and their descendants, numbered together in the tens of thousands. As was the case for earlier Jewish immigrants, these postwar groups experienced some hostility or ambivalence on the part of the established Canadian Jewish community. And each sub-community responded, as had previous Jewish immigrants, by developing its own networks of institutions. On many measures of identity, Canadian Jews were more "Jewish" than their American counterparts. Some might claim this is due to the higher levels of foreign-born Jews in Canada, and that over time this gap would narrow. Others might argue this is due to Canada's greater multicultural reality. -Socio-Demographic Overview Canadian Jewry continued to grow during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The census of 2001 lists 329,995 Jews by religion, and 348,605 Jews by ethnic origin. Of the ethnic Jews, 266,010 were also Jews by religion, 40,525 had no religion (secular Jews), and 42,070 had another religion. To get the best estimate of the number of Jews in Canada in 2001, one can add the secular Jews to all those who are Jewish by religion, for a total of 370,520. This compares to the estimate from the 2000 National Jewish Population Study of about 5.2 million American Jews, down from 5.5 million in 1990. Between 1991 and 2001 the Canadian Jewish population actually increased by 3.5 percent, and between 1981 and 1991 by more than 14 percent. Thus Canada differed sharply from most Diaspora communities where the Jewish population declined. Since 1971 Jews have comprised about 1.3 percent of the Canadian population. Canada, compared to the United States, had fewer secular Jews, more Jews "by choice," and fewer former Jews. Canadian Jews continued to live in Canada's largest cities. As far back as 1931, almost four-fifths of Canadian Jews lived in the three largest cities, a ratio that remained constant. By 2001 Toronto had almost 180,000 Jews, Montreal almost 93,000, and Vancouver, eclipsing Winnipeg, had almost 23,000. This metropolitan concentration meant that Canadian Jews maximized their interactions with Canadian society and played a major role in the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of post-war Canadian life. In this period Toronto clinched its position as the major Jewish metropolis, aided by the exodus of Jews, and corporate wealth in general, from Montreal beginning in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the separatist movement in Quebec. And while many Montrealers stopped at Toronto, others carried on further west, approximating the general flow of the Canadian population to Alberta and British Columbia, or headed south to the United States. One distinctive source of Jewish immigration to Montreal was Ḥasidim from New York and elsewhere attracted by Quebec's financial support for private religious schools. Toronto was not the Canadian equivalent of New York City, but it was teeming with Jews and called "Jew York" by antisemites. And in many ways Jews have set the tone in Toronto and in English Montreal, in business, the professions, higher education, the media, and culture. Canada's Jews were also aging, even faster than the rest of the population. In 2001 Jews over 65 comprised almost 17 percent of the Canadian Jewish population compared to just over 12 percent for all of Canada. This gap reflects both longer life expectancy, correlated with higher education and income, and lower fertility levels, which increase the proportion of the elderly. Age distributions varied widely by city, with the elderly proportions far higher in Winnipeg and Montreal than in Toronto and Vancouver. The marital norm remained strong among Canadian Jews: in 2001 54 percent of Jews over 15, 10 percent more than for the general Canadian population. While just over 30 percent of Jews had never been married, almost 40 percent of the general population had never married. Divorce and separation were less frequent among Jews: less than 10 percent compared to almost 12 percent among non-Jews. Moreover, the non-Jewish divorce rate has grown more rapidly than the Jewish divorce rate since 1981. Canadian Jewish fertility remained far below that of non-Jews, despite the fact that fewer Jewish women are childless, and a greater proportion of Jewish men and women do get married. The estimate for 1991 is that for 1,000 women over 15, Jews (by religion) had given birth to 1,601 children compared to 1,772 for non-Jews. But there is significant variation within the Jewish community. One estimate for ḥasidic women is that their fertility is a staggering four times higher than the Canadian Jewish average. Jews were less likely to have children out of wedlock. This is actually an old story. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish percentage of illegitimate births was only one-fifth the Canadian average. In 1991 over 2 percent of single/never married women had a child; among Jews the rate was 0.5 percent. Jews are half as likely to be found in common-law and single-parent families. Jewish marriage and family patterns vary by city. What some might describe as non-traditional family patterns are more likely in Vancouver than in Montreal. -Continuing Economic Success As the postwar decades unfolded, Canadian Jews emerged as an educated, primarily middle- and upper middle-class community. Jews were far more likely than non-Jews to work as physicians, lawyers, managers, educators, and health and social service professionals. The relative affluence of Canadian Jews provided the material basis for the vitality of the organized community. Despite the persistence of Jewish poverty concentrated largely among seniors, new immigrants, and single-parent families, the main economic story was one of success. The economic success of Jews was not a result of leaving the economic enclave. A 1979 study of Montreal Jewish household heads found that 70 percent were either self-employed or worked for mainly Jewish-owned firms, and 35 percent had Jews as most or all of their business associates – all without any negative impact on incomes. Another study found similar patterns in Toronto. Unlike the other minority groups, successful Jews did not abandon Jewish neighborhoods; instead, they re-created middle- and upper-middle-class Jewish neighborhoods in the suburbs. A Jewish "sub-economy" in Montreal and Toronto linked Jewish clients, customers, workers, suppliers, owners, and professionals like physicians, lawyers, and accountants. It included both a Jewish private sector and a Jewish public sector, referring to those many Jews employed by agencies of the Jewish community. Jews became solidly entrenched in the middle class, and higher. Among Canadians over 15 in 2001, more than 45 percent of Jews had a university degree, compared to 18 percent for the entire population. The Jewish rates were the highest of any ethnic group in Canada. The advantage is even more pronounced for advanced degrees, fourfold or higher. These large Jewish advantages in education were not simply a result of Jews living in cities, where educational levels are higher. In Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver one finds more Jews with higher educational achievements than non-Jews, with the highest proportions in Vancouver and the lowest in Montreal. The differences in the three cities result from different demographic profiles, notably the higher proportions of aged Jews in Montreal and the younger more mobile population in Vancouver. In each city Jews were statistically overrepresented in medicine, law, and accounting, as well as human service professions like teaching and social work. But stereotypes should not be pushed too far. In none of these cases did Jews come close to being a majority of the profession. Education and professional occupations translated into higher average incomes for Jews. Jews had a lower unemployment rate than the Canadian average in 2001, 6 percent to 7.7 percent. Canadian Jews became statistically well represented among the economically powerful and the "super-rich." For a long time the conventional wisdom held that even if Jews as a group were doing well educationally and economically, they were still largely shut out from the bastions of Canadian corporate power by a still exclusive "WASP" establishment. In Jewish Population of Canada Source: Shahar, C. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada. Part 1: Basic Demographics. UIA Federations Canada, November 2003. Jewish Population of Canada Source: Shahar, C. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada. Part 1: Basic Demographics. UIA Federations Canada, November 2003. Census Year Jewish Population \# Change From Previous Census % Change From Previous Census 4"> Data previous to 1971 are based solely on the religion variable, whereas statistics cited for 1971 to 2001 are based on a definition combining both religion and ethnicity. 1901 16,493 — — 1911 74,760 \+58,267 \+353.3 1921 125,445 \+50,685 \+67.8 1931 155,766 \+30,321 \+24.2 1941 168,585 \+12,819 \+8.2 1951 204,836 \+36,251 \+21.5 1961 254,368 \+49,532 \+24.2 1971 286,550 \+32,182 \+12.7 1981 313,865 \+27,315 \+9.5 1991 358,055 \+44,190 \+14.1 2001 370,520 \+12,465 \+3.5 his 1965 classic, The Vertical Mosaic, sociologist John Porter found that Jews in the 1950s made up far less than 1 percent of the Canadian economic elite, below their population percentage. Jews slowly increased their share of CEOs of major public corporations. More dramatic was their increase among Canada's super-rich. Of the 50 richest Canadians in January 1996, seven of the families were Jewish, or 14 percent. Among a list of the wealthiest Canadians as of April 2000, 20 percent were Jewish. By the beginning of the 21st century, the new Canadian "establishment" included Jews, francophones, other Europeans, Postwar Jewish Populations in Major Metropolitan Areas Historical Summary Source: Shahar, C. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada. Part 2: Jewish Populations in Geographic Areas. UIA Federations Canada, March 2004. Postwar Jewish Populations in Major Metropolitan Areas Historical Summary Source: Shahar, C. 2001 Census Analysis Series: The Jewish Community of Canada. Part 2: Jewish Populations in Geographic Areas. UIA Federations Canada, March 2004. 1971 1981 1991 2001 5"> 1\. Includes only the Ontario part of the Ottawa Census Metropolitan Area. Atlantic Canada Halifax 1,405 1,465 1,775 1,985 Moncton 195 350 295 265 Fredericton 240 235 410 290 Quebec Montreal 112,020 103,765 101,405 92,975 Ontario Toronto 107,310 129,325 163,050 179,100 Ottawa1 6,665 9,240 11,420 13,130 Barrie 90 145 210 715 Guelph 400 390 600 770 Hamilton 4,250 4,660 5,165 4,675 Kingston 640 795 880 1,090 Kitchener 1,175 1,430 1,125 1,385 London 1,670 2,335 2,695 2,290 Oshawa 450 520 660 905 Peterborough 195 345 230 355 St. Catharine's-Niagara 1,140 1,155 1,295 1,125 Waterloo 375 400 390 565 Windsor 2,505 2,155 1,785 1,525 Manitoba Winnipeg 18,960 16,170 15,180 14,760 Saskatchewan Regina 830 855 665 565 Saskatoon 550 650 870 505 Alberta Calgary 3,470 6,085 7,255 7,950 Edmonton 2,675 4,705 5,470 4,920 British Columbia Vancouver 10,145 14,925 19,650 22,590 Kelowna 10 160 485 515 Victoria 380 930 2,025 2,595 and Asians. Sam Bronfman and his son Charles set the tone among the Canadian Jewish economic elite, followed by names like asper , azrieli , belzberg , dan , koffler , reichmann , and schwartz . Jewish wealth and influence were increasingly mobilized for Jewish and non-Jewish causes, from universities to cultural institutions. -Jews and Canadian Culture The contribution of Jews and Jewish styles and themes to the broader Canadian culture has been large. Yet this major contribution to Canadian culture took place despite – or because of – a perceived historic and ongoing cultural distinctiveness. Canadian Jews have remained cultural insiders and outsiders at the same time. In this period Jews began to influence both Canadian high culture and popular culture. Authors such as leonard cohen , matt cohen , naim kattan , A.M. Klein , irving layton , anne michaels , mordecai richler , miriam waddington , adele wiseman – among others – became well-regarded Canadian writers whose work has been influenced by Jewish history, the Jewish immigrant experience, and eternal Judaic themes. They spoke to Jewish and non-Jewish Canadians alike, though the degree of Jewishness in their writings and its significance remain a matter for debate. The Jewish impact on Canadian culture has occurred mainly through individual artists who have reflected a Jewish sensibility. Jewish writers served as an opening postwar wedge in the penetration of a largely Anglophilic cultural establishment. They were the first celebrators of Canadian multiculturalism. They were among the first writers to sensitize Canadians to the immigrant and urban experience. Other European and later non-European writers have followed Jews and become accepted with them into the evolving Canadian literary canon. Jews have also been prominent in all sectors of Canadian music, theater, fine arts, radio, journalism, television, and cinema. They have found success as artists, directors, producers, cultural entrepreneurs, and administrators. Many have been quite open about their Jewish background. As one example, the celebrated comedy duo of Johnny wayne and Frank Shuster regularly sprinkled Yiddish throughout their skits. In both Toronto and Montreal, cultural institutions of the Jewish community – the Koffler Center and the Saidye Bronfman Center – play important roles in the general cultural life of each city. -Jews in Canadian Politics Jewish security and political acceptance both increased in this period. Canadian Jews continued to cluster on the left/liberal side of the political spectrum, although signs of a new conservatism are also to be found. Nevertheless, most Jewish voters continue to cast ballots for center/left mainstream parties, even as Jews tilted away from working class politics and the more extremist left-wing options popular up to the 1950s. Jews were more likely than other Canadians to vote for the NDP or the long-ruling Liberals, even taking into account factors like trade union membership, education, and economic status. The historic Jewish support for the center/left Liberal Party is not hard to explain. The peak periods of mass Jewish migration took place under Liberal Party governments, first under Wilfrid Laurier at the beginning of the 20th century and later under Louis St. Laurent in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (The restrictive prewar immigration policies of Mackenzie King's Liberals are either unknown, forgotten, or forgiven.) Also, in the postwar period, Jews and other immigrants were moving from a European experience marked by extremism of the left and right – Communism and Fascism and their attendant brutalities. They wanted no part of that in Canada. Seeking the relative safety of the ideological center, immigrants, and Jews, found their home in the Liberal Party. They felt – incorrectly – that possible dangers of European-style extremism were associated with the democratic socialist CCF/NDP and the Conservative parties. Indeed by the 21st century the renewed Conservative Party became the most strongly pro-Israel. But by the time they realized that the European analogies did not hold, Canadian Jews had grown comfortable with the centrist welfare-state policies of the Liberals. The Liberal Party was seen as a promoter of social welfare, civil rights, and multiculturalism, so some of the attraction is similar to that of American Jews to the Democratic Party. The mobilization and awareness of ethnic votes, whether in elections or even nomination meetings, emerged as an important new element on the Canadian scene. While predominantly Liberal, Jews in Canada have been influential in all political parties and causes and prominent as donors and fundraisers, though less than in the United States. In these activities Jews generally act as individuals, and rarely as part of an official coordinated campaign led by the non-partisan CJC. But the informal networks linking Jewish politicians, public servants, and Jewish communal leaders have a life of their own. Jewish communal leaders on occasion have been involved in party politics. The best example is former CJC President irwin cotler , who in 2003 became minister of justice in the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. Jewish political clout in Canada grew significantly in the latter half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, it was less than that in the United States, and not only because American Jews were more numerous in absolute and relative terms. The American political system with the distinction between the legislative and executive branch gives American Jews more points of leverage to influence policy than is the case with Canada's parliamentary system. Compared to American Jews, Canadian Jews are more likely to be foreign-born and thus less acculturated into local politics. Moreover the international stakes are not as great in Canada on any issue on the Jewish political agenda, from the Middle East to repayment of Nazi-era financial claims. So Jewish political mobilization and participation in Canada have been less important, and less effective. Throughout this period Jews have comprised 6 to 10 percent of the Congress compared to around 2 percent of the House of Commons. While heavily Jewish ridings in Montreal tend to elect Jewish members, in the rest of Canada Jews are as likely as not to be elected in ridings with few Jewish voters. Canadian Jews defended Israel's interests in a non-partisan way through the Canada-Israel Committee and later through the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy. Jewish organizations try to influence both the general public and policy makers. Traditionally policy makers in External Affairs have not welcomed input from any ethnic groups who may be seized with passion on a homeland issue, including Jews – and perhaps now Arab Canadians – on the Middle East. Jewish political involvement has focused on several key objectives. First is support for a united Canada. Jews fear the instability and uncertainty which might follow a hypothetical declaration of independence by Quebec. The rise of the Quebec independence movement and the Parti Québécois in the 1960s and 1970s exacerbated a sense of insecurity and marginality among Quebec Jews. Three Jews have served as mayor in postwar Toronto – nathan phillips , phil givens , and mel lastman . Montreal has not yet elected a Jewish mayor. Second is support for immigration in general and Jewish immigration in particular. It is hard to find many Jews who would rally around a Canadian political party or movement which was, or was perceived to be, anti-immigrant. It remains to be seen how strong this view will remain, giving the dramatic increase in Canada's Muslim and Arab population and Jewish concerns about the rise of a renewed antisemitism. The defense of Israel's right to live in peace and security is a third item. This does not mean that Canadian Jewish organizations, to say nothing of all Jews, inevitably supported every policy of the Israeli government. They did not. But the bedrock principle – Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state in peace and security – is inviolate. Canadian foreign policy visà-vis Israel has had its ups and down over the years, including UN votes where Canada abstained on or supported resolutions which were seen as tilting against Israel. Another item on the Jewish policy agenda is opposition to racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, and a general support for human rights and the principles of multiculturalism. This involves public policy. There are many cases, for example, where "reasonable accommodation" to Jewish religious concerns or sensibilities – in jobs, schools, or elsewhere – must be determined. How is a line drawn between legitimate debate over aspects of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial and hate speech? What of opposition to male circumcision? Of course the most complex issue is deciding where media or academic criticism of Israeli policies, or denying Israel's right to exist, deserves protection as free speech or crosses over into antisemitism. The future of Canadian ethno-racial coalition politics is unclear. Since the 1970s nearly three-quarters of immigrants to Canada have been non-European. They are non-white and low-income, while Jews are perceived, rightly, as affluent. The political demography for Canadian Jews is changing for the worse. This is not primarily because of overt antisemitism on the part of "visible minority" immigrants. But in advocating its interests, the Jewish community has been able to draw upon common experiences with other European immigrant groups, for whom the Holocaust and support for Israel are part of a shared historical discourse. Many visible minority Canadians do not share the same frame of reference. This is certainly true for the increasing numbers of Arab and/or Islamic immigrants. The Holocaust does not resonate in their historical memories, and Israel is an enemy. -Old and New Forms of Antisemitism As noted, antisemitism was perhaps the dominant feature of Canadian Jewish life in earlier periods of Canadian history. The key issue facing Jews in their private and public lives was discrimination, in its many forms. Canadian Jews into the 1950s played down their Jewish identity, traumatized by the Holocaust and still insecure in their new-found middle-class suburban status. Yet despite the fact that antisemitism is receding from the daily interactions of Canadian Jews and the general improvement in their social conditions, antisemitism has remained a defining feature of the Canadian Jewish consciousness. Economic success and social acceptance cannot fully erase bitter historical memories. The most successful nonfiction book ever written on a Canadian Jewish topic is None Is Too Many, exploring the antisemitism which provided the context of Canada's closed-door policy toward Jewish refugees before and during World War II. Antisemitism in Canada, as we have seen, has come in various forms. At the dawn of the 21st century it persisted among certain fringe elements of the far right, notably those involved in Holocaust denial. In addition it has remained present as background contextual noise, as prejudice, the holding and asserting of negative stereotypes, and residual discomfort in social interactions. Most significantly, it may be manifested as insensitivity to Jewish interests, and opposition to Israeli policies and even to the idea of the Jewish state, which most Jews see clearly as antisemitic in consequence if not always in motivation. One way to monitor contemporary trends in antisemitism has been through B'nai B'rith Canada annual counts of reported antisemitic incidents. Since 1982 the numbers of reported incidents have increased fivefold, reaching 469 in 2002 and 584 in 2003. But much of the increase in numbers derives from more enhanced data-collection procedures. No person would or should conclude that Canadian "antisemitism" has quintupled since the 1980s. But the general increase corresponded to the increase in Holocaust denial and hate speech in Canada, and to criticism of Israeli actions on the part of the Canadian media and commentators. Several high-profile cases of Canadian antisemitism marked this period and helped multiply Jewish apprehensions. A new provision in the Criminal Code in the 1960s made illegal any public expressions that "willfully promote hatred" against identifiable groups, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows "reasonable limits" to be placed on free speech. In the 1980s and 1990s several court cases tested the limits of free speech in Canada in the face of Holocaust denial and the preaching of a Jewish conspiracy. The first involved publisher Ernst Zundel, a major distributor of Holocaust denial literature, based in Toronto. The second involved Alberta high school teacher Jim Keegstra, who taught his students that all of modern history could be understood as resulting from a Jewish conspiracy. The third involved schoolteacher Malcolm Ross in New Brunswick, who publicly espoused Holocaust denial views outside his classroom. A fourth involved British Columbia columnist Doug Collins, who explored a Hollywood conspiracy to promote the Holocaust, using hurtful puns such as "Swindler's List." Eventually the courts upheld restrictions on such hate speech. Such blatantly antisemitic views became increasingly uncommon, and have no significant support among Canadians. Towards the end of the 20th century, one study found only that one in seven Canadians held negative attitudes toward Jews; the rest were either positive or neutral. Another national survey in 2003 found that only 10 percent felt Jews "had too much power" in Canada and 8 percent felt Jews would "use shady practices to get what they want." Such numbers are much smaller than revealed in previous studies in Canada and the United States. Immigrants and respondents from Quebec had slightly higher percentages for holding antisemitic views. Seventy percent of Canadians said they were comfortable with their son or daughter marrying a Jew. A variety of studies have found that Christian religiosity is no longer a source of antisemitism as in the past. Contact with Jews also plays a role. Canadians who had met at least one Jew were apt to be less prejudiced. Regardless of this evidence of broader social acceptance, many Canadian Jews still perceived antisemitism. About 30 percent of Canadian Jews in 2003 said they had experienced actual antisemitism in public places in the previous three years. The new battleground for antisemitism revolves around Israel. In 2003, 30 percent of Canadians expressed sympathy with Israel, 20 percent with the Palestinians, and 47 percent did not know. This reflected a decades-long shift away from greater support for Israel. Many Canadian Jews, as individuals and through their organizations, have despaired at the rising tide of criticism against Israel expressed in the press or in various national media. Among Canadians in general, 70 percent thought their television and radio were neutral, with the remainder feeling by a 4 to 1 ratio a bias in favor of Israel. Canadian Jews differed, with only about 40 to 50 percent feeling those media were neutral and the remainder feeling by a 3 to 1 ratio a greater bias in favor of the Palestinians\! "Terrorists" were now routinely called "militants or fighters or insurgents or the resistance." Throughout this period issues arose which intimated possible dual loyalties or clashes of interest between Canadian Jews and their government on Israel-related matters. In the 1970s Canadian Jews opposed the compliance by Canadian firms and agencies with the Arab boycott against Israel. In 1979 the short-lived Conservative government of Joe Clark stumbled on its promise to move the Canadian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Later, the appointment of a Canadian Jew, norman spector , as ambassador to Israel raised eyebrows. And in the 1990s and 2000s, concerns were raised over the illegal use of Canadian passports by Mossad agents. The strong links between the United States and Israel which emerged in the aftermath of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda hurt Israel's position among Canadian progressives and nationalists, who had long been ambivalent about the United States. Canada's refusal to participate in the Iraq war of 2003 exemplified this feeling. Whereas the Americans emerged as supporters and defenders of Israel, Canadians saw themselves as honest brokers and even-handed peacemakers. To defend Israel strongly in Canada was often seen as endorsing American actions in the Middle East and generally, and thus out of step with an "independent" Canadian foreign policy. While this is a far cry from traditional antisemitism, the perceived isolation of Israel has demoralized many Canadian Jews. Recently, the new Liberal government of Paul Martin has signaled a positive shift in policy towards Israel. -Contemporary Judaism Judaism in Canada through this period fared well against the forces of secularization and modernization, compared to Judaism in the United States. There were significant numbers of secular or atheistic Jews in Canada, about 11 percent of all Jews in 2001. But some of those self-declared Jewish atheists or agnostics still engaged in some religious practices and observances. For example, in Toronto 20 percent of Jews who never attended services still fasted on Yom Kippur and one-third attended or hosted a Passover seder. There are also more Jews with Christian ancestry – converts to Judaism – as well as Christians of Jewish ancestry. So more Jews and Christians had familial connections. There is a spectrum of religiosity among Canadian Jews. For those Canadian Jews who identified religiously in 1990, about 19 percent were Orthodox (9 percent in the United States), 37 percent were Conservative (38 percent in the United States), 11 percent Reform (43 percent in the United States), and 32 percent "other Jewish" (9 percent in the United States), which would include terms like "traditional." Two-thirds of Canadian Jewish adults were members of a synagogue, and the pattern of memberships followed roughly the pattern of identification. This confirms the relative strength of Reform in the United States and Orthodoxy in Canada. Part of the large Canadian percentage claiming "other Jewish" reflects the large Sephardi proportion, in which the usual denominational categories of Conservative and Reform do not apply. A 2000 survey of Montreal Sephardim found that one-half identified themselves as "traditional" Jews. Canadian Jews who are lapsed Orthodox or even Conservatives also might choose the term "traditional" more than Americans. Despite high levels of identity Canadian Jews are not avid synagogue-goers. Surveys in Montreal and Toronto have found that 10 to 20 percent never attend services. At the other pole 10 percent of Jews go to synagogue once or several times a week, and about 13 percent once or several times a month. There is still incongruence in the denominational patterns. For example, 56 percent and 67 percent of Orthodox Jews in Montreal and Toronto attended synagogue at least once a month, far more than the other denominations. What of the other 44 or 33 percent? A large minority of those who claim to be Orthodox are only sporadic synagogue-goers. On the other hand, about 20 percent of Toronto's Reform Jews attend services at least once a month. By the 21st century Orthodoxy was the most vibrant Canadian denomination. It was losing the fewest adherents to mixed marriage and its large families were adding to the population base. The ultra-Orthodox, whether ḥasidic or yeshivah-based, epitomizes this vitality; their communities, synagogues, and schools are bursting with children. Reform Judaism in Canada became more "ethnic," more open to Israel, more open to particularism, all without losing the traditional Reform concern with social justice, universalism, and integration into host societies. In a sense Reform in Canada anticipated the evolution of American Reform in the postwar period, which now includes an embrace of Hebrew and Israel and other elements of tradition. At the same time Reform has paradoxically had to embrace increasingly marginal Jews and innovations which lead to minimalism as a result of the increasing rates of intermarriage. Conservative Judaism in Canada remained generally more ritually traditional than in the United States. Canadian Conservative Judaism became a battleground on issues of the status of women. Rather than offering a happy medium, Conservatism was caught between the absolute gender egalitarianism of Reform and Reconstructionism, and the self-confident traditionalism of Orthodoxy. At the institutional level, Judaism in Canada remained an operation akin to the branches of a plant. Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Judaism are all completely dependent on their American counterparts for infrastructural support, and more importantly, for the major rabbinic seminaries. Rabbis in Canada must be trained in the United States. There were some ultra-Orthodox rabbinic seminaries in Canada, but the larger, modern Orthodox institutions such as Yeshiva University were likewise south of the border. By the close of the 20th century ritual observance among Canadian Jews was high: 92 percent attended Passover seders, 87 percent lit Hanukkah candles, and 77 percent fasted on Yom Kippur, all higher than in the United States. Sabbath observance was marked by a range of rituals and practices; 54 percent lit Sabbath candles compared to only 26 percent in the United States. In Canada 46 percent claimed to keep separate milk and meat dishes compared to only 18 percent in the United States. However, strict Sabbath observance – not handling any money – was observed by only about 15 percent in both countries. Levels of religious observance in Canada vary by region and by other social background characteristics. They were higher in the more traditional Montreal and Toronto, lower in western and smaller communities. Perhaps due to the greater fertility among religious Jews, there were more younger Jews who are observant. Observant Jews also tend to be those with a more Jewish social network, and who live in Jewish neighborhoods Needless to say, levels of observance are highest among Orthodox Jews, followed by Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist adherents. Religious friction between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox grew during this period, but was far less in Canada than in the United States or Israel. Moreover, for the vast majority of Canadian Jews, the doctrinal differences that defined these conflicts did not intrude on their daily lives. Most Canadian Jews voluntarily and happily self-segregated. They tended to go to synagogue, send their children to school and camp, socialize with, and marry, Jews who were like them. Thus, while there is no denying a gulf between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews in Canada, it is nowhere near as pronounced as found in the United States or Israel. -The Informal and Formal Community Informal community life refers to family, friends, and neighborhoods. Jewish feminism has posed challenges to organized Canadian Jewish life. There were proportionally far fewer practicing women rabbis in Canada compared to the United States, although their number is growing. Bat mitzvah celebrations grew among the non-Orthodox, and even among the Orthodox there emerged new ceremonies, such as delivering a devar torah at a kiddush after services. Women became leaders of major Canadian Jewish organizations. As more Jewish women entered the work and professional worlds, Jewish day care centers proliferated. Other issues have been more controversial. One is the role and status of gay and lesbian Jews, and their organizations. The trend has been toward increasing acceptance. But support for gay marriage varied among and within Jewish and other religious denominations. Canada's governmental tilt toward a more liberal position on the matter, compared to the United States, may influence Jewish responses and become a point of division within the Jewish community. The aging of the Jewish population has added increased financial burdens to communal services. The close-knit multigenerational Jewish family has become strained. Parents and grandparents in Toronto and even more so in Montreal may have had children living in another city, perhaps out west or in the United States. Winters spent in Florida by elderly Canadian Jews remain another source of geographic separation. No issue challenges the Jewish future, in Canada as elsewhere in the Diaspora, like intermarriage. The annual mixed marriage rate (no conversions to Judaism prior to marriage) in Canada stood at 10 percent or under through the mid-1960s. The rate then rose steadily, reaching an estimated 27 to 29 percent in the early 1980s, and remained at that level right through the end of the century. The Canadian rates were lower than for other religious groups in Canada, and far lower than the NJPS 2000 estimated American rate of 47 percent for those marrying between 1995 and 2000. Canadian Jews who were third or fourth generation were most likely to marry outside Judaism, as were the less religiously observant or non-Orthodox and those with less Jewish education. Adolescent dating patterns, in which Jews become habituated to dating Jews or non-Jews, were key in the United States and, one suspects, in Canada. Despite the increasing rates of mixed marriage, surveys in Montreal and Toronto found that Canadian Jews remained firmly opposed to it, unless there was a conversion to Judaism. In these attitudes against intermarriage, Jews were clearly at odds with Canadian public opinion, where 90 percent favored marriage among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, as well as between various ethnic or racial groupings. Canadian intermarriages where conversion to Judaism took place yielded Jewish marriages comparable to those of two original Jews. More problematic for Jewish continuity have been mixed marriages where there is no conversion. The majority of children raised in these households will likely be lost to the Jewish community. Almost no non-Orthodox Canadian Jewish family – and many Orthodox Jewish families – remains untouched. Mixed marriage in Canada has been highest in the West and in the Maritimes, while being much lower in Ontario and lower still in Quebec. This corresponds to American patterns which find much higher rates of intermarriage outside older Jewish population centers in the Northeast. Part of the reason lies in the demographic concentrations; intermarriage rates for Jews will be higher in those places with fewer Jews. On the other hand, there is some self-selection at work. Jews who move to outlying or frontier regions in Western Canada are likely less attached to Jewish tradition and community. Jewish neighborhoods have persisted in urban and suburban areas of Toronto and Montreal, as well as other cities. Jews have been the most residentially concentrated of any minority group, and this is largely by choice. A survey of Montreal Jews in 1991 found that about 48 percent claimed "all or most" of their neighbors were Jews, Even more revealing, in a 1996 Montreal survey 82 percent said it was "very or somewhat important" that they live in a neighborhood with a sizeable Jewish population. These patterns would apply to Toronto as well. But Jewish neighborhoods themselves were not homogeneous. In Toronto and Montreal, Jews know where their wealthy live, as compared to the broad middle class, the amkha or typical Jew. Moreover, religion also differentiates Jewish areas. There are well-known areas where ultra-Orthodox Jews, modern Orthodox, and Sephardi Jews live, in proximity to their synagogues and institutions. Jews not only live together, they stick together. Over three-quarters of adult Canadian Jews in 1990 claimed that "most of their friends" were Jewish, compared to one-half – still high – for American Jews. This pattern of intra-group friendship persisted into the third generation, and the levels were far higher than for any Canadian minority group of European origin. The "formal" community continued to expand during this period, operating at the local, regional, and national level. The organizations of the Jewish polity became increasingly sophisticated and well financed, and touched every aspect of Jewish life. A fascinating paradox: as individual Canadian Jewish identities were threatened by assimilation and mixed marriage, the organized Jewish community thrived. By the beginning of the 21st century a Canadian Jew in Toronto or Montreal and possibly other cities could live his or her entire life within an institutionally complete Jewish community. A Jew could be born in a "Jewish" hospital; attend Jewish day care or nursery, Jewish day schools or supplementary schools, and summer camps; take Jewish Studies courses on campus and socialize at a Jewish Students' Union; find work within a Jewish organization; pray in a synagogue; patronize a Jewish library and health club and play in Jewish sports leagues; get help from a Jewish social service agency; read Jewish papers and magazines; listen to Jewish radio and watch Jewish TV programs; attend plays, concerts, and lectures of Jewish interest; buy food or eat at kosher grocery stores, butchers, bakers, restaurants, and caterers; spend post-retirement years participating in programs at a Jewish Golden Age Center; move into a Jewish old age home or seniors residence or hospital as needed; and be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Orthodox Jews involved in civil disputes can even go to a religious court or bet din. Until recently, the Canadian Jewish Congress remained the major official national Jewish organization representing Jews to the government and the media. For all its imperfections, it has been seen as a model for other Canadian minority groups. While the CJC's roots were in populism and Labor Zionism, later the Congress became seen as the "Establishment," and has been challenged by B'nai B'rith as being too timid in defending Jewish interests, especially in opposing antisemitism, or out of touch with ordinary Jews. Another force weakening the unique position of the CJC has been the creation by established Jewish leaders of a new organization, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA). Created in 2003 and working with existing lobby organizations like the Canada Israel Committee, CIJA's mandate is to increase the level of professional advocacy for Israeli and Jewish causes directed towards the Canadian government and media. In effect, however, the CJC has been supplanted by the power of the federations. As in the United States, welfare federations became the units responsible for collecting general communal funds and then disbursing them to a variety of welfare, social, cultural, and recreational agencies. Throughout this period power and money became concentrated in their hands. Federation-CJA in Montreal and the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto became professional organizations which controlled the annual collection and disbursement of tens of millions of dollars. All their constituent agencies were run by lay boards and professional staff. Occasionally there was tension between the two, with power relations varying by agency and specific personalities. Quite often seasoned professionals wielded more power than elected or selected lay leaders from the community – not unlike the power wielded by senior public servants in government. The Canadian Jewish polity is supported by annual ẓedakah to the main Jewish Appeal. But throughout this period, Canadian Jewish philanthropy was increasingly marked by three major innovations. First is the habit of directed giving to specific agencies or causes, and away from federations and appeals. An example is the New Israel Fund, which receives donations aimed at progressive causes in Israel. Other examples are the "Canadian Friends" of various Israeli organizations, or direct giving to Israeli and Jewish organizations. Second is the development of Jewish community foundations in major cities, relying on endowments of capital sums where the interest is used to fund programs. Third is the spread of Jewish family foundations, where the giving often reflects specific interests of the donors rather than communal priorities. Canadian Jews have been generous. According to 1990 survey data, 41 percent of Canadian Jews gave $100 or more to the Appeal, compared to only 21 percent in the United States. Moreover, for those households who gave $100 or more, the average gift in Canada was $1,700, compared to $1,300 in the United States. Canadian Jewish communal life has had an abundance of organizations, leading to vibrancy as well as duplication and turf battles. In 1990, 47 percent of Canadian Jews claimed to belong to a Jewish organization, 31 percent to actually do volunteer work, and 25 percent to belong to a board or committee, all higher than the American Jewish figures. A Toronto study also found that Jews were significantly more likely than other ethnic groups to know of any communal organizations, to belong to an organization, and to express views about community affairs. Jews have had contradictory attitudes about their communal organizations and leaders, possibly a legacy of the tortured dilemmas facing Jewish leaders during the Holocaust. Those same Toronto Jews did not feel themselves "close to the center of community activities" despite their high levels of participation. It is certainly true that women, those with low income, the very old, and recent immigrants remained underrepresented in leadership positions. (The same is true of the Canadian Parliament.) But by and large positions of power on lay boards have been open to those who have the time and talent to get involved and contribute. Those who do well are generally rewarded with more responsibilities, as the demand for leaders has exceeded the supply. The bias here favors the middle class rather than an elite group of affluent Jews. Some presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress were clearly not chosen because of wealth: Rabbi gunther plaut , Professor Irving Abella, and Professor Irwin Cotler. The Jewish polity has slowly become fairly inclusive. Only groups which advocate violence, such as the Jewish Defense League, or which deny the legitimacy of Israel's existence are excluded from the Canadian Jewish Congress. Regional differences also continued to impact on Canadian Jewish life. Winnipeg declined as a major Jewish center, though it still retained its Yiddishist and populist traditions. As Toronto has grown, it has also become more heavily Orthodox in its character, and observers have noted greater friction between Orthodox and non-Orthodox there than in Montreal. Jewish communities in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver have grown over the decades and have begun to assert a greater voice in national Jewish affairs, but without the long tradition of the major philanthropic families that typified Toronto and especially Montreal. Jewish communities in Atlantic Canada and in smaller towns have continued to struggle. -Jewish Culture in Canada Compared to that of most other Canadian ethno-cultural groups, Jewish culture thrived during this period. Yet this coincided with agonizing Jewish fears of assimilation and cultural dilution. This period saw the steady decline in the once vibrant Canadian Yiddish culture. The Yiddish press disappeared. Yiddish was claimed as a mother tongue by a little more than 32,000 in 1981 and a little more than 19,000 in 2001. Still, in 2001, 10,680 Canadians used Yiddish at home. The increasing ḥasidic population, and some elderly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, helped offset the loss as old-timers and older Holocaust survivors died off. More Canadians could speak some Yiddish than claimed it as mother tongue or home language. The klezmer revival, marked by the Ashkenaz festival in Toronto and Klez Canada in Montreal, has also helped keep Yiddish culture alive. Hebrew language abilities increased. In 2001 more than 12,000 claimed Hebrew as their mother tongue, up from 8,300 in 1981, and almost 16,000 claimed they used it at home. (This larger number includes the recitation of Sabbath blessings.) A surprising 60,750 Canadians in 1996 claimed they could hold a conversation in Hebrew, up by almost 20 percent since 1991. Here the influence of increasing levels of Jewish education and travel to Israel is apparent. Both Hebrew and Yiddish are used in Canada far more than in the United States. Jewish culture in Canada was shaped by a robust Jewish media. Most prominent in this period has been the weekly newspaper the Canadian Jewish News, heir to the Canadian Yiddish press. The CJN enters tens of thousands of households. There are separate Toronto and Montreal editions, which add local items in addition to a central core of national news material. In this way the CJN has strived to create a national Jewish consciousness and became a model for other ethnic community newspapers. About 60 percent of Canadian Jews reported reading a "Jewish" newspaper regularly, compared to only 33 percent in the United States. The Canadian Jewish press was successful in a communal sense. But it did not, it could not, nourish a cohesive sub-community of "New York" Jewish intellectuals, with their own institutions and publications, discussions and debates. Journals like Commentary, Tikkun, or Moment are all American. Any discussion of the content of contemporary Canadian Jewish culture must recognize the thematic roles played by Israel and the Holocaust. By the 1990s two-thirds of Canadian Jews had visited Israel; 87 percent felt that Israel is important to their being a Jew; 85 percent felt that if Israel were destroyed, it would be a "personal" tragedy. Canadian research has found that trips to Israel were most frequently cited as having a strong positive impact on Jewish life. Encouraged by these findings, Canadian Jewish philanthropist Charles bronfman along with American colleagues helped create Birthright Israel in the 1990s, used to subsidize tours of Israel for young Diaspora Jews. Following the Eichmann trial in 1961, and after the early trauma of the Six-Day War when Canadian Jews feared for Israel's survival, the Holocaust as a theme permeated Canadian Jewish culture. It became commemorated in Jewish museums and played a growing role in Jewish school curricula and in new synagogue rituals and prayers, including courses in university Jewish Studies programs. Canadian artists and intellectuals began to wrestle with the Holocaust. Anne Michaels' award-winning Fugitive Pieces had the Holocaust as a thematic backdrop. The poetry of Irving Layton and the early Leonard Cohen wrestled with the Shoah. Layton's poem "For my sons, Max and David," a meditation on Jewish victimhood, ends with the hard-nosed charge to his children to "Be gunners in the Israeli Air Force." The Holocaust was also a way for some largely secular and unaffiliated Canadian Jewish intellectuals to identify themselves publicly as Jews. Jewish education was both cause and effect of the relatively high levels of Canadian Jewish identification and cultural vitality. The Jewish schools of the pre-war period expanded into full-fledged school systems, with different religious and cultural orientations, and there was dramatic growth in day school options. In Toronto in 1990 an estimated 90 percent of Jewish children at one time or another had received some form of Jewish education, and 58 percent were currently enrolled in such a program. Some 86 percent of parents of pre-school children expected them to receive some form of Jewish education. A 1996 survey of Montreal Jewry found that 73 percent of adults (82 percent of those under 35) had at one point in time received some Jewish education. These figures are far higher than the national Canadian figures for Christian or other ethnic education, and for Jewish education in the United States. Moreover, during the modern period Jewish education in Canada became focused on day schools. One study found that 61 percent of Montreal parents said their school-age children were currently attending a Jewish day school. Levels in Toronto might be slightly less at the level of elementary schooling. Education in Canada falls under provincial jurisdiction. These high day school enrollments in Quebec were helped by tuitions which are more affordable due to provincial government grants, which were unavailable in Ontario. The level of formal Jewish education of Canadian Jewish children in the late 20th century was on the whole much greater than that of their Canadian-born parents or grandparents, whose education consisted mainly of tutors or Sunday schools or a few years of afternoon schools. Jewish education highlights an important difference between Canadian and American Jews, and indeed between the two countries. American Jewish official organizations have been fierce supporters of the separation of church and state, which is rooted in the American Constitution. They usually opposed public funding of private religious schooling, seeing Jewish day schools as potentially ghettoizing. American Jews and Jewish organizations have been staunch defenders of the American public school system. Canada never developed an American mythology about the egalitarian nature of the public school system and did not have a constitutional separation of church and state. Hence provincial governments could choose to support religious private schools, as some have done. Indeed, since as a prerequisite of Canada's Confederation in 1867, Catholic schools received government funds in Ontario, Jews and other religious groups whose schools do not receive government support have challenged this policy as discriminatory, without complete success as of 2004. Jewish education in Canada became common before and after elementary and high school levels, and throughout the religious spectrum. Jewish nurseries, play groups, and day care centers proliferated in every Jewish community and catered to every Jewish orientation. A similar explosion has taken place at the post-secondary level and beyond. Ultra-Orthodox men were able to continue studying in a kolel, even after they got married. For more secular Jews, the campus has become an increasingly important venue. As of the beginning of the 21st century, strong Jewish Studies programs existed at McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, the University of Toronto and York University in Toronto, and smaller programs and course offerings at various other universities. Synagogues and other institutes sponsor lectures and courses on Jewish topics. -Conclusion The Canadian Jewish experience through the closing decades of the 20th century was a comparative success story. The diverse pieces of the Jewish mosaic helped define a vibrant community. A Canadian Jewish equilibrium balanced the forces of tradition and change, reinforced by the rhetoric and the policies of Canadian multiculturalism. No current Diaspora community can surpass this blend of comfortable integration with Jewish cultural retention and vitality. The Jewish community in Canada was on its way to becoming the second most important Diaspora community, after the United States. Not population size, but the ability to participate fully in public life while retaining a rich multidimensional heritage has been the strength of Canadian Jewish life. But Canadian Jewish life has not been static. The common argument is that Canadian Jewry is just one generation behind American Jewry in the process of assimilation. If this proves true, then an eventual decline in Jewish migration to Canada, and the impact of Canadian multiculturalism, may not be sufficient to perpetuate the Canadian Jewish distinctiveness. But given Canadian patterns of religious particularism, ritual observance, and the communal priority given to identification with Israel and Jewish education, Canadian Jewry may continue to travel a different path from Jews in the United States. Certainly, challenges await. While by the early 21st century the drive for Quebec independence seems stalled, one cannot rule out its revival, which would destabilize Quebec Jews and Canada as a whole. More generally, the advantages of a more recent and relatively larger Canadian Jewish immigration will likely fade at some point, and the rapid growth of the Arab/Islamic communities poses political challenges. There are strong ties of family, friendship, and organized community between Canadian and American Jews, cemented by migration of educated young Canadian Jews southward for school and work opportunity, and a general pattern of cross-border Jewish marriages. It remains unclear how or if the relatively high levels of Jewish identity found in Canada will persist deep into the 21st century. -Canada-Israel Relations The general Canadian public, like the Jewish community, has been generally supportive of Israel. Scattered surveys in the first few decades of Israel's existence as a state showed Canadians to be generally more favorable to Israeli positions in the Middle East conflict than those of the Arabs. With the Intifadas, Canadian Jewish leaders perceived a shift away from support for Israel by certain influential segments of Canadian society, notably within the intellectual and media communities. In addition, public opinion polls taken since 2000 have reported a narrowing of the gap in support for Israeli positions; the change has been more pronounced in Quebec, where there is a sizeable Arab-origin community. An anti-Israel riot that forced the cancellation of a planned talk by Binyamin Natanyahu in 2002 and a 2004 firebombing of a Montreal Jewish school library by a young Arab-origin Montrealer shocked the Canadian Jewish community. Official ties between the governments of Canada and Israel have been generally strong, albeit with some rough patches. Canada has always been a strong supporter of Israel's right to exist within secure borders. But as a middle-ranking power and a solid member of the Western alliance, Canada has never been a major economic or political stakeholder in the Middle East. Seeing itself as evenhanded in dealings with both Israel and its Arab neighbors, Canada has periodically attempted to play the role of honest broker in the region. Former Prime Minister Lester Pearson earned a Nobel Peace Prize in formulating a policy for a UN peacekeeping forces in the aftermath of the suez campaign in 1956, and for years after that Canadian (and other) forces were stationed in the Sinai separating Israel and Egypt and later in the Golan separating Israel and Syria. However, after the 1967 war and even more pronouncedly through the 1980s and 1990s, Canada's voting record at the UN routinely included abstentions or negative votes (from Israel's perspective) on matters such as the West Bank settlements or Palestinian rights. Relations with Israel were sometimes even a political hot potato in Canada. In 1981, for example, the short-lived government of Conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark announced its intention to move the Canadian embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, catching much of the Canadian Jewish leadership by surprise. The uproar in the Arab world and among Canadian corporations doing business in the Arab world caused the government to reverse its position and may have undermined the government's general credibility. In this regard the Canadian Jewish community consistently opposed any compliance of the Canadian government, and Canadian firms, with the Arab boycott of Israel. In the 1990s, misuse of Canadian passports by Mosad agents caused friction between Canada and Israel. The appointment of norman spector , the first Jewish Canadian ambassador to Israel in the early 1990s, also raised eyebrows and caused rumblings in some quarters. In addition, the decision by some Canadian refugee determination tribunals to grant Canadian refugee status to Israelis of Russian origin seeking to come to Canada naturally irked both Israel and Canadian Jewry. All these irritations were of short duration and were ultimately resolved. The major Canadian pro-Israel lobby, the Canada Israel Committee, maintains a strong and active presence in Ottawa, and its annual Parliamentary dinner in Ottawa is well attended by representatives of all political parties and all Canadian political parties support Israel's right to exist within secure borders. Liberal and Conservative parties have remained steadfast in their support of Israel even as Prime Minsters Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, and Martin have all spoken in favor of eventual statehood for the Palestinians. Observers report the shift to a more pro-Israel position by the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin elected in 2004. However, the left-leaning New Democratic Party and the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois have remained somewhat more critical of Israeli policies, especially on the West Bank. A recent wrinkle in Ottawa's political scene is a more sophisticated lobby effort being put forward by the growing Muslim and Arab communities in Canada. During the federal election of 2004 their lobbying showed better organization and voter mobilization than ever before. There are a wide array of institutional links between Canada and Israel, many mediated by Canadian Jews. Some have a decidedly Canadian flavor. Canadian Jewish philanthropists established an active Chair in Canadian Studies at the Hebrew University, and Canadians even built a skating rink and set up an infrastructure for ice hockey in Metullah. Through the efforts of McGill law professor and later Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, strong links have been forged between Canadian and Israeli legal scholars and court systems. Canadian and Israeli universities have also developed strong ties, and Canadian political and business leaders are routinely taken on study missions to Israel. As a tangible result of this effort in 1997, Canada and Israel negotiated a free trade agreement and trade between the two countries has greatly increased as a result. Jewish Canadian business leaders such as david azrieli , Charles Bronfman, and murray koffler continue to play important roles investing in new Israeli enterprises and more generally promoting the growth of the Israeli economy. (Morton Weinfeld (2nd ed.) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: I. Abella and H. 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