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From Immigration To Integration

The Canadian Jewish Experience:
A Millennium Edition

Endnotes

The Challenge Ahead

14. The New Immigrants: A Contemporary Profile
  1. Special thanks to Ruth Klein, national director, Institute for International Affairs of B’nai Brith Canada, for her support and encouragement throughout this project and particularly for her valuable help in researching the institutional assistance for the Russian community in Toronto and Montreal.
  2. See N. Glick Schiller, L. Basch, and C. Szanton Blanc, “From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration,” Anthropological Quarterly 68:1 (1996): 48-63. Also L. E. Guarnizo, and M.P. Smith, “The location of transnationalism,” in M.P. Smith & L.E. Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below, Comparative Urban and Community Research Series 5:6 (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998): 3-34.
  3. Glick Schiller et al, “From Immigrant to transmigrant”, 61.
  4. “Russians” is a general term commonly used to describe immigrants from the Soviet Union or from the successor republics. This may include republics such as Ukraine, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Moldova. I use the terms Russia and former USSR interchangeably.
  5. The earliest Jewish settlers in Canada arrived two centuries ago in the second half of the eighteenth century. By the 1840s, there were about two hundred Jews in Canada; most of them came from England and Germany and resided in Montreal. During the 1850s and 1860s, additional Jewish communities developed in the Atlantic provinces as well as in Toronto. The first Russian Jews (fleeing pogroms and political unrest) only started to arrive in Canada in 1882. Many of them settled in the Prairies and Western Canada. By 1914, 20,000 Jews had entered Canada and communities of mostly eastern European Jews could be found in every city and town, and even in some villages, across the country. During the Great Depression and until the end of World War II, Canadian Jews witnessed a significant increase in antisemitism and an almost-freeze of immigration. Not until 1948 did thousands of Jews, predominantly Holocaust survivors, find refuge in Canada, in part as a result of pressure from the Joint Public Relations Committee of Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith, and from the labour unions, but mainly as a response to the enormous economic growth of the time. In addition to the Holocaust survivors, about 20,000 francophone Jews immigrated to Canada from North Africa, particularly from Morocco. The majority of Moroccan Jews settled in Montreal. Like the eastern European Jews, the Sephardic Jews developed their own synagogues, schools, and charitable organizations. Although the Sephardi communities in Montreal and Toronto are under the umbrella of Canadian Jewish Congress and are actively involved in issues related to Israel and antisemitism, they do persist in their independence and have a set of separate organizations and communal institutions. The most recent Jewish immigrants (from the early1970s until the eve of the new millennium) came to Canada from the former Soviet Union, Israel, South Africa, Latin America, and the US.
  6. Guarnizo & Smith, “The location of transnationalism,” 29; N. Van Hear, New Diasporas: The Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities (London: University College of London Press, 1998).
  7. Steven Gold, “Perspectives on becoming an American among Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Israel,” Centennial Review 32 (1998): 645-59.
  8. See Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1993-1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982); Richard Pierce, “Russians,” in Canadian Encyclopedia Year 2000 Edition (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999), 2054.
  9. See Irving Abella, A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1990), 147-77.
  10. See Paul Anisef, Etta Baichman-Anisef, and Myer Siemiatycki, “Multiple identities & marginal ties: The experience of Russian Jewish immigrant youth in Toronto”, unpublished paper, 2000.
  11. Roberta Markus and Donald V. Schwartz, “Soviet Jewish emigrés in Toronto: Ethnic self identity and issues of integration,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 16: 2 (1984): 71-88.
  12. See, for example, William Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Publication, 1979).
  13. See Fran Markowitz, “Criss-crossing identities: The Russian Jewish Diaspora and the Jewish Diaspora in Russia,” Diaspora 4:2 (1995): 201-10, and also Martin Gilbert, The Jews of Hope: The Plight of Soviet Jewry Today (New York: Viking, 1984).
  14. Fran Markovitz, “Responding to events from afar: Soviet Jewish refugees reassess their identity,” in Linda Camino and Ruth Krulfield, eds., Restructuring Lives, Recapturing Meaning: Refugee Identity, Gender and Cultural Change (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994), 57-69.
  15. Alexander Voronel and Viktor Yakhot, eds., I am a Jew: Essays on Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union (New York: Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry and Anti-Defamation League, 1973).
  16. Yaacov Glickman, “Russian Jews in Canada: Threat to identity or promise of renewal?” in Howard Adelman and John H. Simpson, eds., Multiculturalism, Jews, and Identities in Canada (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996).
  17. Interview with Rabbi Yoseph Zaltsman, January 29, 2001.
  18. Interview with Jay Brodbar, assistant director of community planning & director of research, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, January 25, 2001.
  19. See Frances Kraft, “UJA Federation seeks to integrate Russian-born Jews,” Canadian Jewish News, January 20, 2000; UJA Task Force Report (Toronto: United Jewish Appeal Federation, 2000).
  20. Phone interview with Jack Kugelmass, director, JIAS Toronto, January 22, 2001.
  21. Phone interview with Charles Shahar, research co-ordinator, Federation CJA of Montreal, January 26, 2001.
  22. Phone interview with Mrs. Anna Sirota, January 25, 2001.
  23. Phone interview with Edna Mendelson, interim co-ordinator, JIAS, Montreal.
  24. Phone interview with Pearl Gladman, national director, Centre for Community Action of B’nai Brith Canada.
  25. See Jim Torczyner, Shari Brotman, and Jay Brodbar, Rapid Growth and Transformation: Demographic Challenges facing the Jewish Community of Greater Toronto (Montreal: McGill Consortium for Ethnicity & Strategic Social Planning, 1995), 21.
  26. L. I. Remennick, “Identity quest among Russian Jews of the 1990s: Before and after emigration,” in Ernest Krausz and Gitta Tulea, eds., Jewish Survival: The Identity Problem at the Close of the Twentieth Century (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), 241-58.
  27. Although by Jewish common law (Halacha) only a child of a Jewish mother is a Jew, many half-Jews on the paternal side, including their children and grandchildren, were admitted to Canada as Jewish refugees.
  28. Glickman, 200.
  29. See Jay Brodbar-Nemzer, Greater Toronto Jewish Community Study: A First Look (Toronto: UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, 1991).
  30. Glickman, “Russian Jews in Canada,” 201.
  31. See Tanya Basok, “Soviet immigration to Canada: The end of the refugee program?” in Tanya Basok and Robert J. Brym, eds., Soviet Jewish Immigration and Resettlement in the 1990s (Toronto: York Lane Press and York University Press,1992).
  32. Torczyner, Brotman and Brodbar, Rapid Growth and Transformation, 30.
  33. Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada (JIAS) is the oldest chartered not-for-profit settlement organization in Canada. For over seventy-five years it has been a critical force in shaping and building the Jewish community of Canada. Founded on August 30, 1922, JIAS has assisted Russian Jews escaping pogroms, Holocaust survivors, Bosnian refugees, and a multitude of other Jews from around the world. In the 1990s JIAS became heavily involved in assisting Jews from the former Soviet Union in integrating into local Jewish communities from coast to coast by building partnerships among immigrants, government, charitable foundations, employers, service providers, and volunteers.
  34. These figures were collected by the Israeli government. See Immigrant Absorption: Situation, Challenges and Goals (Jerusalem: Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1996) and Immigration and Absorption, 1989-1997 (Jerusalem: Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1998). Since the Russian-Jewish community in Canada is quite similar to that in Israel (although a bit younger and including less single- parent families), it makes sense to assume similar tendencies.
  35. Glickman, “Russian Jews in Canada,” 202
  36. The Hebrew term for Israelis who have settled in the Diaspora is yordim (singular, yored), literally “those who go down,” who have chosen to leave Israel, in contrast to those who have made aliyah, those who “have gone up” to Israel, who have left their native land to settle in Israel.
  37. See Rina Cohen, and G. Gold, “Constructing ethnicity: Myth of return and modes of exclusion among Israeli families in Toronto,” International Migration: 3 (1997): 373-93; Rina Cohen, and G. Gold, “Israelis in Toronto: The myth of return and the development of a distinct ethnic community,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 38:1(1996): 17-27.
  38. See Cohen and Gold, “The myth of return and the emergence of Israeli ethnicity in Toronto,” in Howard Adelman and John H. Simpson, eds., Multiculturalism, Jews, and Identities in Canada (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996), 166-91.
  39. Torczyner et al, Rapid Growth and Transformation, 20.
  40. See for example Zvi Sobel, Migrants from the Promised Land (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1986); Moshe Shokeid, Children of Circumstances: Israeli Emigrants in New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); David Mittelberg and Mary C. Waters, “The process of ethnogenesis among Haitian and Israeli immigrants in the United States,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15:3 (1992): 412-35; and Steven Cohen, “Israeli émigrés and the New York Federation: A case study in ambivalent policy-making for Jewish communal deviants,” Contemporary Jewry 7 (1996):155-65.
  41. Glickman, “Russian Jews in Canada,” 197.
  42. UJA Task Force Report (Toronto: UJA Federation, 2000).
  43. Ruth Linn and Murit Barkan-Ascher, “Permanent impermanence: Israeli expatriates in non-event transition,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 38:1 (1996): 5-16.
  44. See Rina Cohen, “The Ethnitization,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 8:2 (1999): 121-37.
  45. Marcus and Schwartz, “Soviet Jewish emigrés in Toronto.”
  46. Ibid.; Mindy Avrich-Skapinker, Canadian Jewish Involvement with Soviet Jewry, 1970-1990: The Toronto Case Study, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1993; and Glickman, “Russian Jews in Canada,” 201.
  47. Gold, 655.
  48. Cohen, 129.
  49. See for example Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation States (Basel: Gordon and Breach, 1994).

15. Maintaining an Identity: A Focus on the Smaller Communities
  1. Allan Moscovitch, “Jewish Povety in Canada,” paper presented to the national meeting of Jewish Family Service ortganizations, Winnipeg, Manitoba, November, 1999.
  2. Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1961), 36-37.
  3. Marshall Sklare and Josehp Greenblum, Jewish Identity on the Suburban Frontier: A Study of Group Survival in the Open Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
  4. Raymond Breton and Maurice Pinard, “Group formation and immigrants: Criteria and processes,” in Canadian Society (Toronto: MacMillan Company of Canada, 1964), 74-88.
  5. Raymond Breton, “Institutional completeness of ethnic communities and the personal relations of immigrants,” American Journal of Sociology, 70:2 (1964): 193-205.
  6. Kurt Lewin, Resolving Social Conflicts (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 180.
  7. Solomon Poll, The Hassidic Community of Williamsburg (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), 256.
  8. William Shaffir, Life in a Religious Community: The Lubavitcher Chassidim in Montreal, (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, 1974), 175-79.
  9. Sheva Medjuck, “Jewish survival in small communities in Canada,” in Edmond Y. Lipsitz, ed., Canadian Jewry Today: Who’s Who in Canadian Jewry (Downsview, Ontario: J.E.S.L. Educational Products, 1989), 101.
  10. Evelyn Kallen, Spanning the Generations: A Study of Jewish Identity, (Don Mills, ON: Longman Canada, 1977), 120.
  11. Ibid., 125.
  12. Peter J. Rose, “Strangers in their midst: Small-town Jews and their neighbours,” in Peter J. Rose, ed., The Ghetto and Beyond: Essays on Jewish Life in America (New York: Random House, 1969), 345.
  13. Sheva Medjuck, Jews of Atlantic Canada (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1986), 18.
  14. Daniel J. Elazer, Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1978), 258.
  15. Medjuck, Jews of Atlantic Canada, 84-86.
  16. Breton, “Institutional completeness,” 193-94.
  17. Sheldon Goldenberg and Valerie A. Haines, “Social networks and institutional completeness: From territory to ties,” in Madeline A. Kalbach and Warren E. Kalbach, eds., Perspectives on Ethnicity in Canada (Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2000), 38-39.
  18. Fredelle Bruser Maynard, Raisins and Almonds (Toronto: Doubleday, 1972), 20, 21.
  19. Canadian Press, “Israeli couple help North Bay Jews,” (reprinted in the Chronicle-Herald, December 30, 2000).

[ Table of Contents ] [ Endnotes 1 - 4 ] [ Endnotes 5 - 7 ] [ Endnotes 8 & 9 ] [ Endnotes 10 - 13 ]