The most authoritative account of this dark chapter in Canadian history is Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982).
Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998), 301.
Antisemitism in Quebec is discussed by Jack Jedwab, “The politics of dialogue: Rapprochement efforts between Jews and French Canadians, 1939-1960,” in Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky, eds., Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1995), 42-74.
Tulchinsky, Branching Out, 324.
Ibid., 258.
Marie Berdugo-Cohen, Yolande Cohen, and Joseph Levy, Juifs marocains à Montréal: Temoinages d’une immigration moderne (Montreal: VLB Editeur, 1987). See also Jean-Claude Lasry, “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Montreal,” in Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds., The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 395-401.
Daniel J. Elazar and Harold M. Waller, Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), 45-46.
The temper of the times is reflected in Ruth R. Wisse and Irwin Cotler, “Quebec’s Jews: Caught in the middle,” Commentary 65 (1977): 55-59.
Elazar and Waller, 441-444.
David J. Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair (Toronto: Doubleday, 1985).
Jules Deschênes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals Report, Part 1 (Ottawa: Minister of Supplies and Services, 1986).
For an overview of the situation, see David Taras and David H. Goldberg, eds., The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989).
Stuart Schoenfeld, “The Jewish religion in North America: Canadian and American comparisons,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 3 (1978): 209-231.
Elizabeth Thompson, “Bouchard petty, belligerent: Michaud,” Montreal Gazette, January 13, 2001.
“Canada,” Antisemitism World Report 1998 (London and New York: Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee, 1998).
Historical data, where not otherwise noted, are drawn from Michael Brown, Jew or Juif: Jews, French Canadians and Anglo-Canadians, 1759-1914 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986); Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1992) and Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998); and Irving Abella, Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1990).
Louis Rosenberg, Canada’s Jews, edited with an introduction by Morton Weinfeld (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), 198.
The section on Holy Blossom is based on Stephen Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to 1937 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979).
Cited in Jacque Langlias and David Rome, translated by Barbara Young, Jews and French Quebecers: Two Hundred Years of Shared History (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991), 43.
Speisman, Jews of Toronto, 278.
Ira Robinson. “A letter from the Sabbath Queen: Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg addresses Montreal Jewry,” in Ira Robinson, Pierre Anctil, and Mervin Butovsky, eds., An Everyday Miracle: Yiddish Culture in Montreal (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 101-14.
The new school also represented the increasing presence of Galician Jews in the Toronto community.
Ira Robinson, “The Kosher Meat War and the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, 1922-1925,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 22 (1990): 41-53. “The foundation documents of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal,” Jewish Political Studies Review 8 (1996): 69-86, “Towards a history of Kashrut in Montreal: The fight over municipal Bylaw 828 (1922-1924),” in Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky, ed., Renewing Our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1995).
On the connections between American Jewish movements and Canadian congregations, see Michael Brown, Jew or Juif, 100-05.
See Etan Diamond, And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia (Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press, 2000) for a study of Orthodox Judaism in the Toronto suburbs, and Albert Rose, ed., A People and Its Faith: Essays on Jews and Reform Judaism In a Changing Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959) for a reform perspective during the period of Toronto suburbanization.
John R. Seeley, R. Alexander Sim, and Elizabeth W. Loosley, Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of Suburban Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956); Stuart Schoenfeld, “Re-reading a Canadian classic: Crestwood Heights as a study of the invisible religion,” Revue Canadienne de Sociologie et d’Anthropologie/Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 25: 3 (August 1988): 456-63.
On early Hasidic immigrants see Ira Robinson, “The first Hasidic rabbis in North America,” American Jewish Archives 44 (1992): 501-15.
On Canadian Hasidim, see William Shaffir, Life in a Religious Community: The Lubavitch Chassidim of Montreal (Toronto: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1974); “Hassidic Jews and Quebec politics” Jewish Journal of Sociology 25: 2 (December 1981): 105-18; “Persistence and change in the Hasidic family,” in Steven M. Cohen and Paula E. Hyman, eds., The Jewish Family: Myths and Reality (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), 187-99; “Montreal’s Hassidim revisited: A focus on change” in Simcha Fishbane and Jack N. Lightstone, eds., Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society (Montreal: Concordia University, 1990), 305-22.
Charles Shahar, Morton Weinfeld, and Randal F. Schnoor, Survey of the Hassidic and Ultra-Orthodox in Outremont & Surrounding Areas (Outremont: Association of Outremont Hassidic Organizations, 1997).
For the situation in Quebec, see Julien Bauer’s essay in this collection; David Rome, “The political consequences of the Jewish school question, Montreal, 1925-1933,” Canadian Jewish Historical Society Journal 1 (1977): 3-15; Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out, Chapter 3.
On the lingering Protestant influence in Ontario schools, see Martin Sable, “George Drew and the rabbis: Religious education in Ontario’s public schools,” Canadian Jewish Studies 6/Etudes juives canadiennes (1998): 25-53.
Stuart Schoenfeld, “Transnational religion, charter schools and the dilemma of public funding for Jewish education: The case of Ontario,” Jewish Political Studies Review 11:3, 4 (1999): 115-39.
Arlette Corcos, Montréal, les juifs and l’école (Sillery: Septentrion, 1997).
Jay Brodbar-Nemzer, Greater Toronto Jewish Community Study: A First Look (Toronto: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, 1991).
Charles Shahar and Randal F. Schnoor, A Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal: Part II (Montreal: Federation of Jewish Community Services of Montreal, 1997).
See Jack Lightstone and Frederick Bird, eds., Ritual and Ethnic Identity: A Comparative Study of the Social Meaning of Liturgical Ritual in Synagogues (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995) for studies of the social meaning of ritual in various settings.
Stuart Schoenfeld, “Some aspects of the social significance of the bar/bat mitzvah celebrations” in Fishbane and Lightstone, Essays, 277-304.
Susan Sapiro, “Heritage and heresy: The first Galitzianer traditional-egalitarian synagogue,” Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 19 (1997): 27-33.
Stuart Schoenfeld, “Ritual and role transition: Adult bat mitzvah as a successful rite of passage,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity Since Emancipation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 349-76; “Interpreting adult bar mitzvah: The limits and potential of feminism in a congregational setting,” in Menachem Mor, ed., Jewish Sects, Movements and Parties (Omaha: Creighton University Press, 1992), 205-19; “Integration into the group and sacred uniqueness: An analysis of adult bat mitzvah,” in Walter P. Zenner, ed., Persistence and Flexibility: Anthropological Studies of American Jewish Identity and Institutions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 117-35;
Sarah Silberstein Swartz and Margie Wolf, eds., “Religion and ritual” in From Memory to Transformation: Jewish Women’s Voices (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1998), part 3; Francine Zuckerman, Half the Kingdom: Seven Jewish Feminists (Montreal, Véhicule Press, 1992); Sheva Medjuck, “If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution: Jewish feminism in Canada today,” in Robert Brym, William Shaffir and Morton Weinfeld, eds., The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, (1993), 328-43.
This article was written with considerable help from my able and efficient research assistant, Sonia Zylberberg. Others helped with crucial information and supportive interest: Janice Rosen, Anne Joseph, Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, Jean Gerber, and Esther Carmel-Hakim. I wish to thank them all.
Much has been written about the history and legal issues involved. Pamela S. Nadell, Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998); Robert Gordis, The Ordination of Women Rabbis, Simon Greenberg, ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1985); Shoshana Pantel Zolty, “And All Your Children Shall Be Learned”: Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish Law and History (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993); see also various chapters and references in Judith Baskin, ed., Jewish Women in Historical Perspectives (Detroit: Wayne State, 1991). A surprising list is compiled by H. Rabinowicz, “Lady rabbis and rabbinic daughters,” in The World of Hasidism (Hartford: Hartmore House, 1970), 202-10.
Devorah Stone, “When Eve read from Genesis: Woman and Judaism,” Women’s International Net 18b (1999): 2-5.
As reported in Sarah Silberstein Swartz and Margie Wolfe, From Memory to Transformation: Jewish Women’s Voices (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1998).
Many of the organizations have published chronicles and anniversary books. The work of Paula Draper and Janice B. Karlinsky and the unpublished work of Sarah Filotas and Esther Carmel-Hakim demonstrates the significance of this line of research. Paula Draper, “The role of Canadian Jewish women in historical perspective,” in Edmond Lipsitz, ed., Canadian Jewish Women Today (Downsview, ON: J.E.S.L. Educational Products, 1983); Paula Draper and Janice Karlinsky, “Abraham’s daughters: Women, charity and power in the Canadian Jewish community,” in J. Burnet, ed., Looking Into My Sister’s Eyes: An Exploration in Women’s History (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1986); Sarah Filotas, Les organisations feminines de la communauté juive Montrealaise, 1918-1948, unpublished master’s thesis, Université de Montréal: 1999; and Esther Carmel-Hakim, “Hadassah-WIZO Canada and the development of agricultural training for women in pre-state Israel,” unpublished paper delivered at Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women at Brandeis University, 1999.
Judith Nefsky, “Writing women into history: Preliminary notes for the study of Canadian Jewish women,” unpublished draft, Canadian Jewish Congress National Archives, Montreal, 1987.
Daniel Hart, ed., The Jew in Canada: A Complete Record of Canadian Jewry from the Days of the French Regime to the Present Time (Toronto: Jewish Publications, 1926), 240-88.
Research on the sisterhoods is sorely lacking. See Daniel Hart, The Jew in Canada, as well as the history books published privately by the respective synagogues. Solomon Frank, Two Centuries in the Life of a Synagogue (Montreal: Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, 1968),
3; and Rabbi Howard Joseph, The Continuing History of the Spanish and Portuguese Congragation of Montreal 1768-1993: 225 Years of Renaissance (Montreal: Robert Davies, 1996); William Shuchat, The Gate of Heaven: the Story of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal, 1846-1996 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 104.
In this section, I rely heavily on the master’s thesis of Sarah Filotas and the as-yet-unfinished doctoral dissertation of Esther Carmel-Hakim.
Lillian Freiman, “Greetings to Hadassah,” Canadian Jewish Chronicle, February 27, 1920, 5.
Canadian Jewish Congress National Archives, Collection I-0050.
Evelyn Kallen, Spanning the Generations: A Study in Jewish Identity (Don Mills, ON: Longman Canada, 1977), 95.
The Montreal Tefillah Group, which is twenty years old, is one of the very few that meets in an Orthodox synagogue and actually holds services on Rosh Hodesh.
Rachel Schlesinger, “Changing roles of Jewish women,” in Edmond Lipsitz, Canadian Jewry Today: Who’s Who in Canadian Jewry Today (Downsview, ON: J.E.S.L., 1989) 63, 65-67; Yael Gordon-Brym, “The changing role of Canadian Jewish women,” in ibid., 14-16.
Jim Torczyner, Shari Brotman, Kathy Viragh, and Gustave Goldman, Demographic Challenges Facing Canadian Jewry: Initial Findings from the 1991 Census (Montreal: Council of Jewish Federations Canada and McGill Consortium for Ethnicity and Strategic Social Planning, 1993).
As noted by Sheila Finestone, MP, in a personal communication in 1989, when she greeted the various Jewish groups assembled to give testimony before the parliamentary committee. The law was first developed in Ontario as a provincial initiative by lawyer John Syrtash working closely with a group of concerned women, the Orthodox Va’ad HaRabonim of Toronto, and B’nai Brith Canada. In Montreal the Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get developed-from its origins as a committee of Canadian Jewish Congress-into a national committee to advocate for a federal amendment. This issue was supported by all sectors in the community, but was advanced specifically by B’nai Brith Canada and by Canadian Jewish Congress. I was proud to be a part of the entire process from its very beginnings and remain consultant to the Coalition.
The six were: Jewish Women International of Canada, Emunah Women of Canada, Hadassah-WIZO Organization of Canada, Na’amat Canada, Canadian ORT, and Women’s Federation of Federation CJA. They were soon joined by: National Council of Jewish Women of Canada, Status of Women Committee of Canadian Jewish Congress, Toronto Jewish Women’s Federation, and Women’s League of Conservative Judaism.
Norma Joseph, “Jewish divorce and Canadian law,” Ecumenis 115 (Fall 1994): 18-22.
Personal communication, December 29, 2000.
Some resources are available: Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada, Jewish Life and Times, 1998; David de Brou and Aileen Moffat, “Other” Voices: Historical Essays on Saskatchewan Women (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1995); and Fredelle Bruser Maynard, Raisins and Almonds (Ontario: Paperjacks, 1973).
Torczyner et al, Demographic Changes.
Gordon-Brym, in Lipstiz, Canadian Jewish Women of Today, 14.
Sheva Medjuk, “If I cannot dance to it, it’s not my revolution,” in Robert Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 330.
Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1992), 105. On the general militancy of Jewish female garment workers see Ruth Frager, Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour Movement of Toronto 1900-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 99.
Frager, Sweatshop Strife, 43.
Ibid., 20.
See the many stories in Jewish Life and Times, chapter 1.
Torczyner et. al., Demographic Changes.
Gordon-Brym, in Lipstiz, Canadian Jewish Women of Today, 13.
Nora Gold, “Canadian Jewish women and their experiences of antisemitism and sexism,” in R. Siegel and E. Cole, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish Women (New York: Harrington, 1997), 282.
Janice Arnold, “Shul rituals include women,” Canadian Jewish News, September 17, 1998. The research was conducted by Howard Gontovnick.
Preliminary doctoral research of Marlene Bonneau.
I founded the prayer group and Barbara Nirenberg produced the prayer book called Siftei Channa.
“Victoria Jewish women organize unique seder,” Canadian Jewish News 32 (50): 46 (April 30, 1992).
Rivka Augenfeld, Naomi Black, Yolande Cohen, Freda Forman, “Jewish women in Canada,” Canadian Woman Studies 16:4 (1996): 78.
Jim Cummins, “Heritage language learning and leaching” in J.W. Berry and Jean Laponce, Ethnicity and Culture in Canada: The Research Landscape (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 435-56.
Reginald Bibby, Unknown Gods: The Ongoing Story of Religion in Canada (Toronto: Stoddart, 1993), 100.
Stuart Schoenfeld, “Transnational religion, religious schools, and the dilemma of public funding for Jewish education: The case of Ontario,” York University, 1998, mimeo, 19.
The Ontario Jewish Association for Equity in Education, along with the Alliance of Christian Schools, fought the case all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court in the famous Adler v. Ontario decision. In 1996 the court finally ruled against the plaintiff, citing the fact that Ontario Catholic Schools were constitutionally protected and thus eligible for funding while other schools were not, even though there was an inequity in the situation. The Supreme Court did not say that failing to fund independent schools was fair, non-discriminatory, or legally necessary. What the majority said was that the government does not have a legal obligation to provide funding to non-Catholic denominational schools, since the equality rights in the Charter do not apply. In other words, it may be discriminatory to fund only the Catholic and secular public systems while denying funding to other religions, but such discrimination is simply not illegal under the Canadian Constitution. The Adler ruling exhausted all domestic remedies so the community took its case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee with the Waldman complaint. When Canada signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1976, with Ontario's full consent, it also signed the Optional Protocol that made the decisions of the Human Rights Committee binding on all signatories. However, in spite of a 1999 ruling that Ontario's educational funding policies are discriminatory, there has been no further progress on this issue. B'nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto have been actively involved in furthering this campaign, which has been highlighted in both B'nai Brith and CJC Election Task Forces. The Jewish community has been working in alliance with a broad coalition of other faith communities on this issue.
Jay Brodbar-Nemzer, Greater Toronto Jewish Community Study: A First Look (Toronto: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, 1991), 18; Charles Shahar and Randal F. Schnoor, A Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal, Part II (Montreal: Federation of Jewish Community Services, 1997), 26-33.
For a review see Yaacov Glickman, “Jewish education: Success or failure,” in Morton Weinfeld, William Shaffir, and Irwin Cotler, eds., The Canadian Jewish Mosaic (Toronto: John Wiley of Canada, 1981), 113-28.
The Tash and Satmar Hasidic groups run their own, separate establishments, which are not covered in these data.
The Montreal data is taken from Focus on Jewish Day Schools in Montreal, Report to the Federation CJA (Montreal: Bronfman Jewish Education Centre [BJEC] and the Association of Jewish Day Schools [AJDS], April 12, 2000). Information supplemented by telephone interview with Shlomo Shimon, BJEC executive director, February 15, 2001.
The Toronto data are from the Jewish Community Services Directory of Greater Toronto, 1997, as well as subsequent information reflecting additional new schools not covered in that summary. Information supplemented by telephone interview with Bernard Shoub, director of school finances at the Board of Jewish Education, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. The proliferation of supplementary schools in Toronto reflects the greater costs of day schools in Ontario. In Montreal, by comparison, the BJEC funds four supplementary schools, down from twelve in 1988.
Information on Jewish schools across the country is based on research undertaken by Nir Katzour, communications intern at B’nai Brith Canada, Summer 2000.
Report on Jewish Education in Montreal described in the Canadian Jewish News, April 9, 1998.
Daphne Gottlieb Taras and Gerry Beitel, “Preliminary analysis, Jewish Community Council Survey,” Calgary, January 30, 1997.
For general data on Jewish education in the United States, see Highlights of the CJF 1990 National Jewish Population Study (New York: Council of Jewish Federations, 1991); Alice Goldstein “Jewish education and Jewish identity: Findings from the National Jewish Population Survey of 1990,” in S. DellaPergola and J. Even, eds., Papers in Jewish Demography 1993 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 289-302. A recent report found an increase in day-schools students in the United States, up 20,000 children to 200,000 over the 1990s. See Marvin Schick, A Census of Jewish Day Schools in the United States (New York: Avi Chai, 2000).
Jay Brodbar-Nemzer, “An overview of the Canadian Jewish community” in Robert Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, eds. The Jews in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 54.
Steven M Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Community, and Commitment among the Variety of Moderately Affiliated (Boston: Susan and David Wilstein Institute, 1998), 37.
Harold Himmelfarb, “Agents of religious socialization,” Sociological Quarterly 20 (1979): 474-94.; Sylvia Barack Fishman and Alice Goldstein, “When they are grown they will not depart; Jewish education and the Jewish behavior of American adults,” (Waltham, MA: Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Research Report 8, Brandeis University, 1993); Bruce Phillips, Re-examining Intermarriage: Trends, Textures, and Strategies (Boston: Susan and David Wilstein institute, n.d.). This study used a sample of Jews in mixed marriages taken in 1993.
Shahar, Charles, The Jewish High School Experience: Its Implications for the Evolution of Jewish Identity in Young Adults (Montreal: Federation CJA and Jewish Education Council of Montreal, 1998).
F. Genesee and W. E. Lambert, “Trilingual education for majority language children,” Child Development 54 (1983): 105-14.
Charles Shahar, A Survey of Jewish Life in Montreal, Part I (Montreal: Federation of Jewish Community Services, 1996), 32.
Bruce Phillips, op. cit.
Morton Weinfeld and Phyllis Zelkowitz, “Reflections on the Jewish polity and Jewish education,” in The Jews in Canada, 142-52.
For a review of this history, see Gerald Tulchinsky, Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998,) ch. 2.
See Michael Brown, ed. A Guide to the Study of Jewish Civilization in Canadian Universities, with a historical overview by Richard Menkis (Toronto and Jerusalem: Centre for Jewish Studies at York University and the International Centre for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, 1998).
Alan Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1997), 333.
