Jewish Canadians
Jewish Canadians represent a diverse and historically rich segment of the Canadian population. The Jewish presence in Canada began in the late 18th century, with the first synagogue established in Montreal in 1768. The community grew significantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly due to waves of immigration fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe. As of the 2021 census, approximately 335,000 individuals identified as Jewish in Canada, primarily residing in urban centers like Toronto and Montreal.
Historically, Jewish Canadians faced considerable challenges, including significant barriers to immigration and widespread anti-Semitism, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. Despite these obstacles, the community has largely thrived, especially after World War II, when attitudes towards Jewish immigration became more favorable. However, relations with other Canadian groups have been complex, with tensions arising, particularly in Quebec, where political dynamics have sometimes strained interactions.
Today, while many Jewish Canadians feel integrated and view their status as positive, challenges such as isolated incidents of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial persist. Overall, the Jewish community continues to play a vital role in Canada's multicultural landscape.
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Jewish Canadians
SIGNIFICANCE: Relations between Jews and other Canadians serve as a barometer of the degree to which the people and leaders of Canada practice religious toleration. The most hostile expressions of anti-Semitism occurred during the 1930s, replaced by more favorable attitudes after World War II.
Jews first arrived in Canada after the British conquest in 1763 and by 1768 had consecrated their first synagogue in Montreal. The Jewish population was small until the persecution of Jews in the Russian empire during the 1880s and the early 1900s intensified, creating a surge of refugees. From approximately 2,500 in the early 1880s, the Jewish population in Canada rose to 16,000 by 1900; the census of 1921 counted 126,000. Few Jews were permitted to enter in the 1920s and 1930s.
The 1991 federal census counted 365,315 Jews, 1.3 percent of the Canadian population of 27 million. More than 95 percent of the Jewish population lived in urban areas; three-fourths were concentrated in two cities, 163,000 in Toronto and 101,000 in Montreal. In 2011, the Jewish population in Canada was 391,665, accounting for 1.2 percent of Canada's overall population. By the 2021 census, around 335,000 people reported being of Jewish heritage.
Anti-Semitism
Jews were not welcomed by either French or English-speaking Canadians. Jews were barred from entering Canada while it was part of the French empire. The British granted Jews equal civil and political rights with other Canadian subjects in 1832. Although Canada encouraged immigration between 1880 and 1914, attempts by Jewish organizations to settle Jewish refugees on farms in the Canadian prairie provinces received little support and sometimes open opposition from government officials.
By the 1920s, young Canadian-born Jewish men and women applying for admission to colleges and universities faced both overt and covert barriers. McGill University, particularly attractive because it taught in English, secretly began to require higher grades from Jewish candidates than from other applicants, thereby successfully reducing the percentage of Jewish students from 25 percent to 12 percent. L’Université de Montréal was less successful in maintaining secrecy. French nationalists openly questioned the presence of Jews, who were less than 5 percent of the student body. The agitation spurred the 1929 undergraduate student association to petition the administration for the expulsion of all persons of Jewish origin. In the summer of 1934, interns at the university-affiliated Notre Dame Hospital went on strike over the admission of a Jewish intern, who was consequently forced to resign.
Canada began to restrict all immigration in the 1920s, and with the coming of the Great Depression, the barriers to entry became almost impenetrable. Jewish community organizations desperately petitioned the Canadian government to grant exceptions for refugees from Nazi Germany but failed to convince any officials. The manuscripts left by the director of the immigration office reveal him as totally contemptuous of Jews, devising bureaucratic tactics to prevent any from entering Canada. Appeals to accept refugee Jewish children— whose parents were inadmissible—were rejected on the grounds that it was bad policy to break up families. The director’s policies were approved by the prime minister and supported by public opinion throughout the country. The French Quebec press and political leaders were especially vigorous in opposing the admission of any more Jews. Although the government claimed in 1943 that it had admitted 39,000 immigrants since 1933, most of them refugees, the total actually included 4,500 German civilians who had been interned in Great Britain and 25,000 Axis prisoners of war. Fewer than 5,000 Jews managed to enter Canada between 1933 and 1945.
Post-World War II
During the first years after the war, the Canadian government policy, supported by public opinion, was no more generous than before in accepting Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Finally, in 1948, the government reversed its position on immigration and began to accept new immigrants; it also removed the barriers to Jewish immigration. Changing attitudes, as Canadians began to celebrate their multicultural diversity, eased relations between Jews and their fellow Canadians, one consequence of which was an increase in marriages between Jews and non-Jews, which made some Jewish community leaders worry about the future survival of Jews in Canada.
Relations between Jews and the Quebec separatists have been strained. English-speaking Jews have overwhelmingly supported the federalists in the various referendums on independence from Canada, leading to open expressions of hostility on the part of the separatists. The premier of Quebec blamed the narrow defeat of the October 1995, referendum on the “ethnic vote,” which Jews understood included them, and promised that Québécois would take their revenge in their own country. Anxiety about the future led many Jews to move from Montreal to Toronto and the cities of western Canada. Montreal’s Jewish population stagnated as immigrants (including a significant group of French-speaking Jews driven out of Arab lands in North Africa) barely replaced the young men and women who had left.
Canada’s contemporary Jewish community is one of the largest in the world, concentrated primarily in Ontario and Quebec. Some smaller communities of Jewish people live in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Alberta. All signs of anti-Semitism have not disappeared. Instances of vandalism against synagogues and cemeteries occasionally occur. A constant irritant to Jewish Canadians is the presence of people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. That assertion also includes the accusation that Jews control the media, using it to convince the public of a falsehood, thus conspiring to manipulate public opinion and use the government for group advantage. Yet, most Jewish leaders view the position of Jews in Canada as eminently satisfactory.
Bibliography
Arbella, Irving, and Harold Troper. None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948. Lester, 1982.
Davies, Alan, editor. Anti-Semitism in Canada: History and Interpretation. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1992.
Elazar, Daniel J., and Harold M. Waller. Maintaining Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World. UP of America, 1990.
Rosenberg, Stuart E. The Jewish Community in Canada—Volume I: A History. McClelland, 1970.
Schoenfeld, Stuart. "Jewish Canadians." Canadian Encyclopedia, 26 July 2024, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jewish-canadians. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.
Vigod, Bernard L. "The Jews in Canada." Canadian Historical Association, Aug. 2022, cha-shc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/5c3747d8f1333.pdf. Accessed 2 Dec. 2024.
Weinfeld, J., et al. The Canadian Jewish Mosaic. Wiley, 1981.