172-868: The history of the Jews in Canada goes back to the 1700s. Canadian Jews, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion, form the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel , the United States and France . In the 2021 census , 335,295 people reported their religion as Jewish, accounting for 0.9% of the Canadian population. Some estimates have placed the enlarged number of Jews, such as those who may be culturally or ethnically Jewish, though not necessarily religiously, at around 400,000 people. This total would account for approximately 1.4% of
344-462: A French Canadian girl and brought his children up as Catholics, Jacobs is often overlooked as the first permanent Jewish settler in Canada in favour of Aaron Hart, who married a Jew and brought up his children, or at least his sons, in the Jewish tradition. Lieutenant Hart first arrived in Canada from New York City as Commissariat to Jeffery Amherst 's forces at Montreal in 1760. After his service in
516-530: A Republic of Lower Canada was quickly thwarted. The provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada were combined as the United Province of Canada in 1841, when the Act of Union 1840 came into force. Their separate legislatures were combined into a single parliament with equal representation for both constituent parts, even though Lower Canada had a greater population. The Province of Lower Canada inherited
688-574: A Sefer Torah borrowed from Canada's only other synagogue , the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of Montreal. A year later in 1857 a permanent Torah arrived as a gift from Albert Ascher's (Asher) parents in Montreal (Isaac Gottschalk Ascher & Rachel Altmann) inscribed in Hebrew to "The Holy Congregation, Blossoms of Holiness [Pirchei Kodesh], in the city of Toronto." The name resonated among
860-626: A British Orthodox Jew would rent the upper floor of Coombe's Drug Store at the corner of Yonge Street and Richmond Street in Toronto for High Holy Day services which became only the second temple in Canada), Isidore a highly acclaimed Canadian poet and novelist, Jacob A Canadian Chess Champion (1878, 1883). By 1850, there were still only 450 Jews living in Canada, mostly concentrated in Montreal. Toronto's first Jewish prayer services were held on Rosh Hashanah , September 29, 1856, initially with
1032-480: A baseball game in Toronto a group of young men using Nazi symbols started a massive melee, arguably the largest in Toronto's history, on the ground of racial hatred, involving hundreds of men. In 1934, another anti-Semitic incident occurred when the first medical strike in a Canadian hospital was held in response to the appointment of a Jewish doctor to Montreal's Notre-Dame Hospital. Dr Sam Rabinovitch would have been
1204-433: A bastion of federalism, and Quebec separatists with their ideal of a creating a nation-state for French-Canadians have tended to be hostile to Jews. In both the 1980 and 1995 referendums, Montreal's Jews voted overwhelmingly for Quebec to remain in Canada. It was official Canadian policy after 1945 to accept immigrants from Eastern Europe as long they were anti-communist even if they had fought for Nazi Germany. For an example
1376-585: A genocide known as the Holocaust . Since then, the population has slowly risen again, and as of 2021 , was estimated to be at 15.2 million by the demographer Sergio Della Pergola or less than 0.2% of the total world population in 2012. Today, over 85% of Jews live in Israel or the United States . Israel, whose population is 73.9% Jewish, is the only country where Jews comprise more than 2.5% of
1548-457: A multilingual group to a monolingual one (or nearly so), speaking French in Algeria , Morocco , and the city of Tunis , while most North Africans continue to use Arabic or Berber as their mother tongue. There is no single governing body for the Jewish community, nor a single authority with responsibility for religious doctrine. Instead, a variety of secular and religious institutions at
1720-715: A people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele , which dates to around 1200 BCE. The majority of scholars agree that this text refers to the Israelites , a group that inhabited the central highlands of Canaan , where archaeological evidence shows that hundreds of small settlements were constructed between the 12th and 10th centuries BCE. The Israelites differentiated themselves from neighboring peoples through various distinct characteristics including religious practices , prohibition on intermarriage , and an emphasis on genealogy and family history. In
1892-690: A place of refuge for the Jews of Syria Palaestina . A number of significant Talmudic academies , such as the Nehardea , Pumbedita , and Sura academies, were established in Mesopotamia, and many important Amoraim were active there. The Babylonian Talmud , a centerpiece of Jewish religious law, was compiled in Babylonia in the 3rd to 6th centuries. Jewish diaspora communities are generally described to have coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled:
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#17328015271982064-583: A religious component in national memories and culture is common even in the modern era. This view is echoed by political scientist Tom Garvin , who writes that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews as one of several "obvious examples", alongside the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts . Lower Canada Canada The Province of Lower Canada ( French : province du Bas-Canada )
2236-539: A religious interpretation of the traditions and early history of the Jews, established the first of the Abrahamic religions , which are now practiced by 54 percent of the world. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a "way of life," which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture , and Jewish identity rather difficult. Throughout history, in eras and places as diverse as
2408-482: A religious or national approach to identity is used. Generally, in modern secular usage, Jews include three groups: people who were born to a Jewish family regardless of whether or not they follow the religion, those who have some Jewish ancestral background or lineage (sometimes including those who do not have strictly matrilineal descent ), and people without any Jewish ancestral background or lineage who have formally converted to Judaism and therefore are followers of
2580-603: A result, Ashkenazi Jews were gradually pushed eastwards to Poland , Lithuania and Russia . During the same period, Jewish communities in the Middle East thrived under Islamic rule, especially in cities like Baghdad , Cairo , and Damascus . In Babylonia, from the 7th to 11th centuries the Pumbedita and Sura academies led the Arab and to an extant the entire Jewish world. The deans and students of said academies defined
2752-638: A result, around 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain , seeking refuge in places such as the Ottoman Empire , North Africa , Italy , the Netherlands and India . A similar fate awaited the Jews of Portugal a few years later. Some Jews chose to remain, and pretended to practice Catholicism . These Jews would form the members of Crypto-Judaism . In the 19th century, when Jews in Western Europe were increasingly granted equality before
2924-527: A rule requiring in effect at least a 10% higher academic average for Jewish applicants; in certain schools of the University of Toronto anti-Jewish bias is being felt. City Councils debate whether Jewish petitioners should be permitted to build a synagogue; property deeds in some areas bar resale to them. I have seen crude handbills circulated thanking Hitler for his massacre of 80,000 Jews in Kiev." In 1945, in
3096-692: A significant population growth. This prosperity continued until the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib devastated the region of Judah in response to a rebellion in the area, ultimately halting at Jerusalem . Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire , and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah , the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and
3268-566: A significant role in the development of Western culture . The term "Jew" is derived from the Hebrew word יְהוּדִי Yehudi , with the plural יְהוּדִים Yehudim . Endonyms in other Jewish languages include the Ladino ג׳ודיו Djudio (plural ג׳ודיוס , Djudios ) and the Yiddish ייִד Yid (plural ייִדן Yidn ). Originally, in ancient times, Yehudi (Jew)
3440-670: A small minority, they have had an open presence in the country since the first Jewish immigrants arrived with Governor Edward Cornwallis to establish Halifax, Nova Scotia (1749). Prior to the British conquest of New France , Jews lived in Nova Scotia . There were no official Jews in Quebec because when King Louis XIV made Canada officially a province of the Kingdom of France in 1663, he decreed that only Roman Catholics could enter
3612-505: A variety of fields, making an impact on their communities' economy and societies. In Francia , for example, figures like Isaac Judaeus and Armentarius occupied prominent social and economic positions. However, Jews were frequently the subjects of discriminatory laws, segregation , blood libels and pogroms , which culminated in events like the Rhineland Massacres (1066) and the expulsion of Jews from England (1290). As
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#17328015271983784-405: A warning against intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman and an Egyptian man is "of the community of Israel." This is complemented by Ezra 10:2–3 , where Israelites returning from Babylon vow to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about
3956-522: Is Judaism . Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly interrelated, as Judaism is an ethnic religion , but not all ethnic Jews practice Judaism. Despite this, religious Jews regard individuals who have formally converted to Judaism as Jews. The Israelites emerged from within the Canaanite population to establish the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Judaism emerged from
4128-531: Is considered the father of political Zionism, offered his vision of a future Jewish state in his 1896 book Der Judenstaat ( The Jewish State ); a year later, he presided over the First Zionist Congress . The antisemitism that inflicted Jewish communities in Europe also triggered a mass exodus of more than two million Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1924. The Jews of Europe and
4300-828: Is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel . In some places, the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group. For example, in Quebec , the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English, while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language. Similarly, South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans . Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies, Russian has superseded Yiddish as
4472-648: Is further disagreement about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. Historians agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by c. 900 BCE , there is a consensus that a Kingdom of Judah existed by c. 700 BCE at least, and recent excavations in Khirbet Qeiyafa have provided strong evidence for dating the Kingdom of Judah to the 10th century BCE. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II , King of
4644-542: Is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the third largest in the Americas after the United States and Canada. A population of Israeli Jews emigrate to Canada to study and work. The Israeli Canadian community is growing and it is one of the largest Israeli diaspora groups with an estimate of 30,000 people. A small proportion of Israeli Jews who come to Canada are Ethiopian Jews . Following
4816-403: Is much higher than that in the United States, with a TFR of 1.91 according to the 2001 Census. This is due to the presence of large numbers of Orthodox Jews in Canada. According to the census, the Jewish birth rate and TFR is higher than that of Christian (1.35), Buddhist (1.34), Non-Religious (1.41), and Sikh (1.9) populations, but slightly lower than that of Hindus (2.05), and Muslims (2.01). In
4988-721: Is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula . Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries , and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian , Judaeo-Arabic , Judaeo-Berber , Krymchak , Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew
5160-436: Is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew , in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics , is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as There are now several Jews on
5332-818: The Ashkenazim (initially in the Rhineland and France), the Sephardim (initially in the Iberian Peninsula ), and the Mizrahim ( Middle East and North Africa ). Romaniote Jews , Tunisian Jews , Yemenite Jews , Egyptian Jews , Ethiopian Jews , Bukharan Jews , Mountain Jews , and other groups also predated the arrival of the Sephardic diaspora. Despite experiencing repeated waves of persecution, Ashkenazi Jews in Western Europe worked in
History of the Jews in Canada - Misplaced Pages Continue
5504-526: The Sephardim ( Iberian Peninsula ), and the Mizrahim ( Middle East and North Africa ). While these three major divisions account for most of the world's Jews, there are other smaller Jewish groups outside of the three. Prior to World War II , the global Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million, representing around 0.7% of the world's population at that time. During World War II, approximately 6 million Jews throughout Europe were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany in
5676-542: The 1944 Quebec election . The leader of the Union Nationale , Maurice Duplessis appealed to anti-Semitic prejudices in Quebec in a violently anti-Semitic speech by claiming that the Dominion government of William Lyon Mackenzie King together with Liberal Premier Adélard Godbout of Quebec had secretly made an agreement with the "International Zionist Brotherhood" to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees left homeless by
5848-625: The Austrian or Russian Empires . There were two competing strands of Jewish nationalism in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, namely Zionism and another tendency that favoured forming separate Jewish cultural institutions with a focus on promoting Yiddish. Institutions such as the Montreal Jewish Library with its collection of Yiddish books were examples of the latter tendency. The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC)
6020-510: The Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatristic —and later monotheistic —religion of Yahwism centered on Yahweh , one of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of cultic practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group , setting them apart from other Canaanites. According to Dever , modern archaeologists have largely discarded
6192-587: The Fall of Kabul in August 2021, the final Afghan Jew still in Afghanistan , Tova Moradi, fled to Canada. This marked the end of Afghanistan's 2,700-year Jewish history. Jewish Canadian population by province and territory in Canada in 2011 according to Statistics Canada and United Jewish Federations of Canada Yiddish ( יידיש ) is the historical and cultural language of Ashkenazi Jews , who make up
6364-737: The First Temple , putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon . According to the Book of Ezra , the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so called because he was a descendant of
6536-702: The Geonic period in Jewish history. Following this period were the Rishonim who lived from the 11th to 15th centuries. Like their European counterparts, Jews in the Middle East and North Africa also faced periods of persecution and discriminatory policies, with the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and Iberia issuing forced conversion decrees, causing Jews such as Maimonides to seek safety in other regions. Initially, under Visigoth rule , Jews in
6708-552: The Herodian dynasty as vassal kings . However, Judea eventually came directly under Roman control and was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea . The Jewish–Roman wars , a series of unsuccessful revolts against Roman rule during the first and second centuries CE, had significant and disastrous consequences for the Jewish population of Judaea . The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE) culminated in
6880-481: The Jewish–Roman wars , gave rise to the Jewish diaspora . The Jewish diaspora is a wide dispersion of Jewish communities across the world that have maintained their sense of Jewish history , identity and culture . In the following millennia, Jewish diaspora communities coalesced into three major ethnic subdivisions according to where their ancestors settled: the Ashkenazim ( Central and Eastern Europe ),
7052-616: The Neo-Babylonian Empire , besieged Jerusalem , destroyed the First Temple and deported parts of the Judahite population. Scholars disagree regarding the extent to which the Bible should be accepted as a historical source for early Israelite history. Rendsburg states that there are two approximately equal groups of scholars who debate the historicity of the biblical narrative , the minimalists who largely reject it, and
History of the Jews in Canada - Misplaced Pages Continue
7224-547: The Province of Upper Canada . The prefix "lower" in its name refers to its geographic position farther downriver from the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River than its contemporary Upper Canada, present-day southern Ontario. Lower Canada was abolished in 1841 when it and adjacent Upper Canada were united into the Province of Canada . Like Upper Canada, there was significant political unrest. Twenty-two years after an invasion by
7396-706: The Re Drummond Wren case, a Jewish group, the Workers' Education Association (WEA) challenged the "restrictive covenants" that forbade the renting or selling of properties to Jews. Through the case was something of a set-up as the WEA had quite consciously purchased a property in Toronto known to have a "restrictive covenant" in order to challenge the legality of "restrictive covenants" in the courts, Justice John Keiller MacKay struck down "restrictive covenants" in his ruling on October 31, 1945. In 1948, MacKay's ruling in
7568-837: The Seven Years' War ending in 1763 (also called the French and Indian War in the United States). Other parts of New France conquered by Britain became the Colonies of Nova Scotia , New Brunswick , and Prince Edward Island . The Province of Lower Canada was created by the Constitutional Act 1791 from the partition of the British colony of the Province of Quebec (1763–1791) into the Province of Lower Canada and
7740-399: The Tanakh . Some modern scholars disagree with the conflation, based on the works of Josephus , Philo and Apostle Paul . The English word "Jew" is a derivation of Middle English Gyw, Iewe . The latter was loaned from the Old French giu , which itself evolved from the earlier juieu , which in turn derived from judieu/iudieu which through elision had dropped
7912-406: The Tannaim may have been influenced by Roman law , which dictated that when a parent could not contract a legal marriage, offspring would follow the mother . Rabbi Rivon Krygier follows a similar reasoning, arguing that Jewish descent had formerly passed through the patrilineal descent and the law of matrilineal descent had its roots in the Roman legal system. The prehistory and ethnogenesis of
8084-433: The United States in the War of 1812 , a rebellion now challenged the British rule of the predominantly French population. After the Patriote Rebellion in the Rebellions of 1837–1838 was suppressed by government troops and Loyal volunteers , the 1791 Constitution was suspended on 27 March 1838 and a special council was appointed to administer the colony. An abortive attempt by revolutionary Robert Nelson to declare
8256-485: The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple . The severely reduced Jewish population of Judaea was denied any kind of political self-government. A few generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) erupted, and its brutal suppression by the Romans led to the depopulation of Judea . Following the revolt, Jews were forbidden from residing in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and the Jewish demographic center in Judaea shifted to Galilee . Similar upheavals impacted
8428-533: The religion of Judaism are strongly interrelated. Converts to Judaism typically have a status within the Jewish ethnos equal to those born into it. However, several converts to Judaism, as well as ex-Jews, have claimed that converts are treated as second-class Jews by many born Jews. Conversion is not encouraged by mainstream Judaism, and it is considered a difficult task. A significant portion of conversions are undertaken by children of mixed marriages, or would-be or current spouses of Jews. The Hebrew Bible ,
8600-436: The 10th century BCE, two neighboring Israelite kingdoms—the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah —emerged. Since their inception, they shared ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics despite a complicated relationship. Israel, with its capital mostly in Samaria , was larger and wealthier, and soon developed into a regional power. In contrast, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem ,
8772-448: The 1880s, and continuing through the growing anti-Semitism of the early 20th century, millions of Jews began to flee the Pale of Settlement and other areas of Eastern Europe for the West. Although the United States received the overwhelming majority of these immigrants, Canada was also a destination of choice due to Government of Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway efforts to develop Canada after Confederation. Between 1880 and 1930,
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#17328015271988944-417: The 1940s to the 1960s, the man generally recognized as the chief spokesman for the Canadian Jewish community was Rabbi Abraham Feinberg of the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. In 1950, Dorothy Sangster wrote in Macleans' about him: "Today American-born Rabbi Feinberg is one of the most controversial figures to occupy a Canadian pulpit. Gentiles recognize him as the official voice of Canadian Jewry. This fact
9116-406: The 1950s the community was "virtually devoid" of discussion. Although one in seven Canadian Jews were survivors or their children, most "did not want to know what happened, and few survivors had the courage to tell them". He argued that the main obstacle to discussion was "an inability to comprehend the event". Awareness emerged in the 1960s, as the community realized that antisemitism remained. From
9288-466: The 21st century, anti-Semitism has become a growing concern, with reports of anti-semitic incidents increasing sharply in recent years. This includes the well publicized anti-Semitic comments of Ernst Zündel . In 2009, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism was established by all four major federal political parties to investigate and combat antisemitism, namely new antisemitism . The League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith monitors
9460-431: The Austrian empire or the Russian empire. Jewish women tended to be particularly active in Canadian Zionism, perhaps because many of the Zionist groups were secular. By 1911, there were Jewish communities in all of Canada's major cities. By 1914, there were about 100,000 Jews in Canada with three-quarters living in either Montreal or Toronto. The overwhelming majority of Canadian Jews were Ashkenazim who came from either
9632-612: The Babylonians. Genetic studies on Jews show that most Jews worldwide bear a common genetic heritage which originates in the Middle East , and that they share certain genetic traits with other Gentile peoples of the Fertile Crescent . The genetic composition of different Jewish groups shows that Jews share a common gene pool dating back four millennia, as a marker of their common ancestral origin. Despite their long-term separation, Jewish communities maintained their unique commonalities, propensities, and sensibilities in culture, tradition, and language. The earliest recorded evidence of
9804-452: The Baltic states to become Canadian citizens; and the Jerusalem Post called Canada a "near-blissful refuge" for Nazi war criminals. The Canadian Jewish historian Irving Abella stated that for Eastern Europeans the best way of getting into postwar Canada "was by showing the SS tattoo. This proved that you were an anti-Communist". Despite pressure from Jewish groups, the Canadian government dragged its feet on deporting Nazi war criminals out of
9976-417: The British Empire. Ezekiel was expelled from the legislature with his religion a major factor. Sir James Henry Craig , Governor-General of Lower Canada, tried to protect Hart, but French Canadians saw this as an attempt of the British to undermine them and the legislature expelled Hart in both 1808 and following his re-election in 1809. The legislature then barred Jews from holding elected office in Canada until
10148-461: The British Empire. In 1832, partly because of the work of Ezekiel Hart , a law was passed that guaranteed Jews the same political rights and freedoms as Christians. In the early 1830s, German Jew Samuel Liebshitz founded Jewsburg (now incorporated as German Mills into Kitchener, Ontario ), a village in Upper Canada . In 1841 Isaac Gottschalk Ascher arrived in Montreal with his family, including sons Albert (who later in 1856 together with Lewis Samuel
10320-403: The British. Several Jews were members of his regiments, and among his officer corps were five Jews: Samuel Jacobs, Emmanuel de Cordova, Aaron Hart , Hananiel Garcia, and Isaac Miramer. The most prominent of these five were the business associates Samuel Jacobs and Aaron Hart. In 1759, in his capacity as Commissariat to the British Army on the staff of General Sir Frederick Haldimand , Jacobs
10492-497: The CJC was to speak on behalf of the common interests of Jewish Canadians and assist immigrant Jews. The largest Jewish community was in Montreal, at the time the largest, wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city in Canada. The vast majority of Montreal's Jews who arrived in the early 20th century were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim but their children chose speak English rather than French. Until 1964, Quebec had no public education system, instead having two parallel educational systems run by
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#173280152719810664-475: The Canadian prairies . Few of the colonies did very well, partly because the Jews of East European origin were forbidden to own farms in the old country and thus had little experience in farming. One settlement that did do well was Yid'n Bridge, Saskatchewan , started by South African farmers. Eventually the community grew larger as the South African Jews , who had gone to South Africa from Lithuania invited Jewish families directly from Europe to join them, and
10836-448: The Canadian government to deport the Axis collaborators from Eastern Europe whom the government of Canada had welcomed with open arms in the 1940s–1950s. In 1997, a report by Sol Littman, the head of Simon Wiesenthal Center operations in Canada charged that Canada in 1950 had accepted 2,000 veterans of 14th Waffen-SS Division with no screening; the American news program 60 Minutes showed that Canada had allowed about 1,000 SS veterans from
11008-421: The Canadian population. The Jewish community in Canada is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews . Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented and include Sephardi Jews , Mizrahi Jews , and Bene Israel . A number of converts to Judaism make up the Jewish-Canadian community, which manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions and the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance . Though they are
11180-418: The Drummond Wren case was struck down in the Noble v Alley case by the Ontario Supreme Court, which ruled that "restrictive covenants" were "legal and enforceable". A woman named Anna Noble decided to sell her cottage at the Beach O' Pines resort to Bernard Wolf, a Jewish businessman from London, Ontario. The sale was blocked by the Beach O'Pines Resort Association which had a "restrictive covenant" forbidding
11352-433: The Holocaust in Quebec after the war in exchange for the "International Zionist Brotherhood" promising to fund both the federal and provincial Liberal parties. By contrast, Duplessis claimed that he would never take any money from the Jews, and if he were elected Premier, he would stop this alleged plan to bring Jewish refugees to Quebec. Though Duplessis' claims about the alleged plan to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees in Quebec
11524-403: The Iberian Peninsula faced persecutions, but their circumstances changed dramatically under Islamic rule . During this period, they thrived in a golden age , marked by significant intellectual and cultural contributions in fields such as philosophy, medicine, and literature by figures such as Samuel ibn Naghrillah , Judah Halevi and Solomon ibn Gabirol . However, in the 12th to 15th centuries,
11696-423: The Iberian Peninsula witnessed a rise in antisemitism, leading to persecutions, anti-Jewish laws, massacres and forced conversions ( peaking in 1391 ), and the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition that same year. After the completion of the Reconquista and the issuance of the Alhambra Decree by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the Jews of Spain were forced to choose: convert to Christianity or be expelled. As
11868-426: The Israeli Occupation and advocate for a two-state solution but focus primarily on Jewish cultural, educational and social justice issues. A smaller organization, Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) , characterized as anti-Zionist, argues that the CIJA and B'nai B'rith do not speak for most Canadian Jews. Also, many Canadian Jews simply have no connections to any of these organizations. The birth rate for Jews in Canada
12040-444: The Israelite religion of Yahwism by the late 6th century BCE, with a theology considered by religious Jews to be the expression of a covenant with God established with the Israelites, their ancestors. The Babylonian captivity of Judahites following their kingdom's destruction, the movement of Jewish groups around the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period , and subsequent periods of conflict and violent dispersion, such as
12212-598: The Jewish communities in the empire's eastern provinces during the Diaspora Revolt (115–117 CE), leading to the near-total destruction of Jewish diaspora communities in Libya , Cyprus and Egypt , including the highly influential community in Alexandria . The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE brought profound changes to Judaism. With the Temple's central place in Jewish worship gone, religious practices shifted towards prayer , Torah study (including Oral Torah ), and communal gatherings in synagogues . Judaism also lost much of its sectarian nature. Two of
12384-401: The Jewish identity of Biblical characters such as Jesus . Daniel R. Schwartz distinguishes "Judean" and "Jew". Here, "Judean" refers to the inhabitants of Judea, which encompassed southern Palestine . Meanwhile, "Jew" refers to the descendants of Israelites that adhere to Judaism . Converts are included in the definition. But Shaye J.D. Cohen argues that "Judean" should include believers of
12556-545: The Jewish immigrants were seen as economic competition for Gentiles, the leadership of the CJC was assumed by the whisky tycoon Samuel Bronfman who it was hoped might be able to persuade the government to allow more Jews to come. In view of worsening situation for Jews in Europe, allowing more Jewish immigration became the central concern of the CJC. Through many Canadian Jews voted for the Liberal Party, traditionally seen as
12728-433: The Jewish population of Canada grew to over 155,000. At the time, according to the 1901 census of Montreal, only 6861 Jews were residents. Jewish immigrants brought a tradition of establishing a communal body, called a kehilla to look after the social and welfare needs of their less fortunate. Virtually all of these Jewish refugees were very poor. Wealthy Jewish philanthropists, who had come to Canada much earlier, felt it
12900-401: The Jews are closely intertwined with archaeology, biology, historical textual records, mythology, and religious literature. The ethnic stock to which Jews originally trace their ancestry was a confederation of Iron Age Semitic -speaking tribes known as the Israelites that inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods . Modern Jews are named after and also descended from
13072-978: The Judean God and allies of the Judean state. Troy W. Martin similarly argues that biblical Jewishness is not dependent on ancestry but instead, is based on adherence to 'covenantal circumcision' ( Genesis 17:9–14 ). The etymological equivalent is in use in other languages, e.g., يَهُودِيّ yahūdī (sg.), al-yahūd (pl.), in Arabic , "Jude" in German , "judeu" in Portuguese , "Juif" (m.)/"Juive" (f.) in French , "jøde" in Danish and Norwegian , "judío/a" in Spanish , "jood" in Dutch , "żyd" in Polish etc., but derivations of
13244-766: The Protestant churches and the Catholic church. As the Jewish community was too poor to fund its own educational system, most Jewish parents chose to enrol their children in the English-speaking Protestant school system, which was willing to accept Jews unlike the Catholic school system. The CJC had its headquarters in Montreal while the Jewish Public Library of Montreal and the Montreal Yiddish Theatre were two of
13416-697: The Quebec Hebrew Relief Association for Immigrants, and the Quebec Zionist Society. By 1905, the Jewish population was about 350, in a total population of 68,834. According to census of 1871, there were 1,115 Jews living in Canada with 409 in Montreal, 157 in Toronto, and 131 in Hamilton with the rest living in Brantford, Quebec City, St. John, Kingston and London. With the beginning of the pogroms of Russia in
13588-635: The Queen's Own Rifles regiment was a soldier in the campaigns of 1944–45 in northwest Europe, highly decorated for his courage and ability under fire. In 1943, Saidye Rosner Bronfman of Montreal, the wife of the whiskey tycoon Samuel Bronfman was appointed MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her work on the home front. Saidye Bronfram had organized 7, 000 women in Montreal to make packages for Canadian soldiers serving overseas, for which she
13760-534: The United States gained success in the fields of science, culture and the economy. Among those generally considered the most famous were Albert Einstein and Ludwig Wittgenstein . Many Nobel Prize winners at this time were Jewish, as is still the case. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the situation for Jews deteriorated rapidly. Many Jews fled from Europe to Mandatory Palestine ,
13932-616: The United States, and the Soviet Union as a result of racial anti-Semitic laws, economic difficulties, and the fear of an impending war. World War II started in 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied almost all of Europe. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Final Solution —an extensive, organized effort with an unprecedented scope intended to annihilate the Jewish people—began, and resulted in
14104-450: The actual establishment of synagogue to 1777 on Notre Dame Street. Revolts and protests soon began calling for responsible government in Canada. The law requiring the oath "on my faith as a Christian" was amended in 1829 to provide for Jews to refuse the oath. In 1831, prominent French-Canadian politician Louis-Joseph Papineau sponsored a law which granted full equivalent political rights to Jews, twenty-seven years before anywhere else in
14276-614: The ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after The Age of Enlightenment (see Haskalah ), in Islamic Spain and Portugal , in North Africa and the Middle East , India , China , or the contemporary United States and Israel , cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious. Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from
14448-477: The army ended, he settled at Trois-Rivières , where he became a wealthy landowner and respected community member. He had four sons, Moses, Benjamin, Ezekiel and Alexander, all of whom would become prominent in Montreal and help build the Jewish Community. Ezekiel was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada in the by-election of April 11, 1807, becoming the first Jew in an official opposition in
14620-516: The city in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great . By 200 BCE, there were well established Jewish communities both in Egypt and Mesopotamia (" Babylonia " in Jewish sources) and in the two centuries that followed, Jewish populations were also present in Asia Minor , Greece , Macedonia , Cyrene , and, beginning in the middle of the first century BCE, in the city of Rome . Later, in
14792-509: The colony. One exception was Esther Brandeau , a Jewish girl who arrived in 1738 disguised as a boy and remained a year before she was returned for refusing to convert. The earliest subsequent documentation of Jews in Canada are British Army records from the French and Indian War , the North American part of the Seven Years' War . In 1760, General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst attacked and seized Montreal , winning Canada for
14964-630: The confines of the Roman Empire, became an important center of Jewish study as Judea's Jewish population declined. Estimates often place the Babylonian Jewish community of the 3rd to 7th centuries at around one million, making it the largest Jewish diaspora community of that period. Under the political leadership of the exilarch , who was regarded as a royal heir of the House of David, this community had an autonomous status and served as
15136-741: The congregants, and on July 23, 1871, the synagogue officially adopted the name פרחי קדש — Toronto Holy Blossom Temple . Abraham Jacob Franks settled at Quebec City in 1767. His son, David Salesby (or Salisbury) Franks, who afterward became head of the Montreal Jewish community, also lived in Quebec prior to 1774. Abraham Joseph, who was long a prominent figure in public affairs in Quebec City, took up his residence there shortly after his father's death in 1832. Quebec City's Jewish population for many years remained very small, and early efforts at organization were fitful and short-lived. A cemetery
15308-429: The council , which is unobjectionable, the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun. Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation , an ethnicity , a religion , and a culture , making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether
15480-528: The country visiting Parliament Hill and meeting with the prime minister, ambassadors and other dignitaries. Since the beginning of the 21st century Jewish immigration to Canada has continued, increasing in numbers with the passing of the years. With the rise of antisemitic acts in France and weak economic conditions, most of the Jewish newcomers are French Jews who are mainly looking for new economic opportunities (either in Israel or elsewhere, with Canada one of
15652-484: The desert and settled on the central mountain range of the land of Canaan, in simple semi-nomadic settlements in which pig bones are notably absent. This population gradually shifted from a tribal lifestyle to a monarchy. While the archaeological record of the ninth century BCE provides evidence for two monarchies, one in the south under a dynasty founded by a figure named David with its capital in Jerusalem , and one in
15824-466: The destruction of the First Temple , though there is ample evidence for the presence of Jews in Babylonia even from 626 BCE. In Egypt, the documents from Elephantine reveal the trials of a community founded by a Persian Jewish garrison at two fortresses on the frontier during the 5th–4th centuries BCE, and according to Josephus the Jewish community in Alexandria existed since the founding of
15996-533: The dispersal driven by both forced expulsions and voluntary migrations. In Mesopotamia, a testimony to the beginnings of the Jewish community can be found in Joachin's ration tablets , listing provisions allotted to the exiled Judean king and his family by Nebuchadnezzar II , and further evidence are the Al-Yahudu tablets , dated to the 6th–5th centuries BCE and related to the exiles from Judea arriving after
16168-478: The entire world. A number of modern scholars of nationalism support the existence of Jewish national identity in antiquity. One of them is David Goodblatt, who generally believes in the existence of nationalism before the modern period. In his view, the Bible, the parabiblical literature and the Jewish national history provide the base for a Jewish collective identity. Although many of the ancient Jews were illiterate (as were their neighbors), their national narrative
16340-574: The extra-biblical record, the Israelites become visible as a people between 1200 and 1000 BCE. There is well accepted archeological evidence referring to "Israel" in the Merneptah Stele , which dates to about 1200 BCE, and in the Mesha stele from 840 BCE. It is debated whether a period like that of the Biblical judges occurred and if there ever was a United Monarchy . There
16512-556: The fall of their empire in c. 333 BCE to Alexander the Great . After several centuries under foreign imperial rule, the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire resulted in an independent Hasmonean kingdom , under which the Jews once again enjoyed political independence for a period spanning from 110 to 63 BCE. Under Hasmonean rule the boundaries of their kingdom were expanded to include not only
16684-548: The fear of offending voters of Eastern European background, who make up a significant number of Canadian voters. Today, the Jewish culture in Canada is maintained by practising Jews and secular Jews . Nearly all Jews in Canada speak one of the two official languages , although most speak English over French. Most Ashkenazi Jews speak English as a first language, including most Ashkenazi Jews in Quebec . In terms of Jewish denominations, 26% of Canadian Jews are Conservative , 17% Orthodox , 16% Reform , 29% are "Just Jewish", and
16856-647: The federal government's "bulk-labour" program that allowed labour-intensive industries to bring European displaced persons to Canada, to fill those jobs. For Lewis' work on this and other projects during this period, the Montreal branch was renamed the Moshe Lewis Branch, after his death in 1950. The Canadian arm of the Jewish Labor Committee also honored him when they established the Moshe Lewis Foundation in 1975. In
17028-472: The federation following the rise during the 1970s of nationalist political parties in Quebec, as well as a result of Quebec's Language Law . The Jewish population is growing rather slowly due to aging and low birth rates. The population of Canadian Jews increased by just 3.5% between 1991 and 2001, despite much immigration from the Former Soviet Union, Israel and other countries. Politically,
17200-531: The fields of arts, journalism and literature. Since the 1960s a new immigration wave of Jews started to take place. A number of French-speaking Jews from North Africa ended up settling in Montreal. Some South African Jews decided to emigrate to Canada after South Africa became a republic in 1961, and was followed by another wave in the late 1970s, which was precipitated by anti-apartheid rioting and civil unrest. The majority of them settled in Ontario , with
17372-548: The first Jew appointed to the a French-Canadian hospital. The four-day strike, nicknamed the " Days of Shame ", involved interns refusing to "provide care to anyone, including emergency patients". The strike was called off after Dr Rabinovitch resigned after he realised that no patients would be treated otherwise. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, through such movements as the Jewish Colonization Association , 15 Jewish farm colonies were established on
17544-560: The first Jewish Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In 1971, David Lewis became the leader of the New Democratic Party, becoming the first Jew to head a major Canadian political party. In 1976, the Quebec provincial election was won by the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ), which sparked a major flight of Montreal's English-speaking Jews to Toronto with about 20,000 leaving. The Jewish community of Montreal has been
17716-682: The first centuries CE, as a result of the Jewish-Roman Wars , a large number of Jews were taken as captives, sold into slavery, or compelled to flee from the regions affected by the wars, contributing to the formation and expansion of Jewish communities across the Roman Empire as well as in Arabia and Mesopotamia. After the Bar Kokhba revolt , the Jewish population in Judaea , now significantly reduced in size, made efforts to recover from
17888-482: The former residents of the Kingdom of Judah) were the only Israelites that had kept their distinct identity as the ten tribes from the northern Kingdom of Israel had been scattered and assimilated into other populations. The gradual ethnonymic shift from " Israelites " to "Jews", regardless of their descent from Judah, although not contained in the Torah , is made explicit in the Book of Esther (4th century BCE) of
18060-549: The friend of minorities, the Liberal Prime Minister from 1935 onward, William Lyon Mackenzie King , proved to be extremely unsympathetic. Mackenzie King adamantly refused to change the immigration law, and Canada accepted proportionally the fewest Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. About 17,000 Jewish Canadians served in the Canadian Armed Forces during World War II . Major Ben Dunkelman of
18232-441: The ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." He adds that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism , before the onset of modernity." Agreeing with Smith, Goodblatt suggests omitting the qualifier "religious" from Smith's definition of ancient Jewish nationalism, noting that, according to Smith,
18404-527: The incidents and prepares an annual audit of these events. There was an increase of the scope of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada with a number of cases of anti-Semitic vandalism and spraying Nazi symbols in August 2013 in Winnipeg and in the greater Toronto area. On February 26, 2014, and for the first time in Canadian history, B'nai Brith Canada led an official delegation of Sephardi community leaders, activists, philanthropists and spiritual leaders from across
18576-400: The interaction of Jews or specific communities of Jews with their surroundings, and still others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. This phenomenon has led to considerably different Jewish cultures unique to their own communities. Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh , "the holy tongue"),
18748-571: The land of the historical kingdom of Judah , but also the Galilee and Transjordan . In the beginning of this process the Idumeans , who had infiltrated southern Judea after the destruction of the First Temple , were converted en masse. In 63 BCE, Judea was conquered by the Romans. From 37 BCE to 6 CE, the Romans allowed the Jews to maintain some degree of independence by installing
18920-492: The language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures ( Tanakh ) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic , a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea . By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek . Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Asoristan , known to Jews as Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic ,
19092-475: The language of Russian Jews , but these policies have also affected neighboring communities. Today, Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post-Soviet states , such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan , as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan , Georgia, and Tajikistan . Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling, Jews there had shifted from
19264-583: The languages of the Babylonian Talmud . Dialects of these same languages were also used by the Jews of Syria Palaestina at that time. For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages. Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe . Ladino
19436-464: The larger cities. Canada's first ever census, recorded that in 1871 there were 1,115 Jews in Canada; 409 in Montreal, 157 in Toronto , 131 in Hamilton and the rest were dispersed in small communities along the St. Lawrence River . When elected mayor of Alexandria in 1914, George Simon was the second Jewish mayor in Canada (after David Oppenheimer , who was mayor of Vancouver from 1888 to 1891) and
19608-470: The largest Jewish cultural institutions in Canada. The Jews of Montreal tended to be concentrated in several neighbourhoods, which gave a strong sense of community identity. In 1930 under the impact of the Great Depression, Canada sharply limited immigration from Eastern Europe, which adversely impacted on the ability of the Ashkenazim to come to Canada. In a climate of anti-semitism where
19780-521: The largest community in Toronto , followed by those in Hamilton , London and Kingston . Smaller waves of Zimbabwean Jews were also present during this period. In 1961 Louis Rasminsky became the first Jewish governor of the Bank of Canada. Every previous governor of the Bank of Canada had been a member of the prestigious Rideau Club of Ottawa, but Rasminsky's application to join the Rideau Club
19952-686: The law , Jews in the Pale of Settlement faced growing persecution, legal restrictions and widespread pogroms . Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, aiming to re-establish a Jewish polity in the Land of Israel, an endeavor to restore the Jewish people back to their ancestral homeland in order to stop the exoduses and persecutions that have plagued their history. This led to waves of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine . Theodor Herzl , who
20124-598: The law of Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the law from the pre-exile period. Another argument is that the rabbis changed the law of patrilineal descent to matrilineal descent due to the widespread rape of Jewish women by Roman soldiers. Since the anti-religious Haskalah movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations of Jewish identity have been challenged. According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen ,
20296-646: The letter "d" from the Medieval Latin Iudaeus , which, like the New Testament Greek term Ioudaios , meant both "Jew" and " Judean " / "of Judea ". The Greek term was a loan from Aramaic *yahūdāy , corresponding to Hebrew יְהוּדִי Yehudi . Some scholars prefer translating Ioudaios as "Judean" in the Bible since it is more precise, denotes the community's origins and prevents readers from engaging in antisemitic eisegesis . Others disagree, believing that it erases
20468-481: The local, national, and international levels lead various parts of the Jewish community on a variety of issues. Today, many countries have a Chief Rabbi who serves as a representative of that country's Jewry. Although many Hasidic Jews follow a certain hereditary Hasidic dynasty , there is no one commonly accepted leader of all Hasidic Jews. Many Jews believe that the Messiah will act a unifying leader for Jews and
20640-485: The major Jewish Canadian organizations are the Centre for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) and the more conservative B'nai Brith Canada both claim to be the voice of the Jewish community. The United Jewish People's Order , once the largest Jewish fraternal organization in Canada, is a left-leaning secular group established in 1927 with current chapters in Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Politically, UJPO opposes
20812-601: The majority of the Canadian Jewry and was widely spoken within the Canadian Jewish community up to the middle of the twentieth century. Jewish community The Jews ( Hebrew : יְהוּדִים , ISO 259-2 : Yehudim , Israeli pronunciation : [jehuˈdim] ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites of the historical kingdoms of Israel and Judah , and whose traditional religion
20984-440: The manufacturing facilities. Jewish merchants and labourers spread out from the cities to small towns, building synagogues, community centres and schools as they went. As the population grew, Canadian Jews began to organize themselves as a community despite the presence of dozens of competing sects . The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) was founded in 1919 as the result of the merger of several smaller organizations. The purpose of
21156-406: The maximalists who largely accept it, with the minimalists being the more vocal of the two. Some of the leading minimalists reframe the biblical account as constituting the Israelites ' inspiring national myth narrative, suggesting that according to the modern archaeological and historical account, the Israelites and their culture did not overtake the region by force, but instead branched out of
21328-494: The mediation of Samuel became subject to a king, Saul , who was succeeded by David and then Solomon , after whom the United Monarchy ended and was split into a separate Kingdom of Israel and a Kingdom of Judah . The Kingdom of Judah is described as comprising the tribes of Judah , Benjamin , partially Levi , and later adding remnants of other tribes who migrated there from the northern Kingdom of Israel. In
21500-556: The mixed set of French and English institutions that existed in the Province of Quebec during the 1763–1791 period and which continued to exist later in Canada-East (1841–1867) and ultimately in the current Province of Quebec (since 1867). Lower Canada was populated mainly by Canadiens , an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to French colonists who settled in Canada from the 17th century onward. Travelling around Lower Canada
21672-754: The national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars. The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew, English, and Russian . Some Romance languages , particularly French and Spanish , are also widely used. Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language, but it
21844-486: The new rail lines, selling goods and supplies to the construction workers, many of whom were also Jewish. Later, because of the railway, some of these homesteads grew into prosperous towns. At this time, Canadian Jews also had important roles in developing the west coast fishing industry, while others worked on building telegraph lines. Some, descended from the earliest Canadian Jews, stayed true to their ancestors as fur trappers. The first major Jewish organization to appear
22016-519: The north under a dynasty founded by a figure named Omri with its capital in Samaria . It also points to an early monarchic period in which these regions shared material culture and religion, suggesting a common origin. Archaeological finds also provide evidence for the later cooperation of these two kingdoms in their coalition against Aram , and for their destructions by the Assyrians and later by
22188-528: The outbreak of World War I , there were approximately 100,000 Canadian Jews, of whom three-quarters lived in either Montreal or Toronto. Many of the children of the European refugees started out as peddlers, eventually working their way up to established businesses, such as retailers and wholesalers. Jewish Canadians played an essential role in the development of the Canadian clothing and textile industry. Most worked as labourers in sweatshops ; while some owned
22360-514: The passage of the 1832 Emancipation Act . Most of the early Jewish Canadians were either fur traders or served in the British Army troops. A few were merchants or landowners. Although Montreal's Jewish community was small, numbering only around 200, they built the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal , Shearith Israel, the oldest synagogue in Canada in 1768. It remained the only synagogue in Montreal until 1846. Some sources date
22532-494: The persecution and murder of Jews in Europe and North Africa . In Poland, three million were murdered in gas chambers in all concentration camps combined, with one million at the Auschwitz camp complex alone. The Holocaust is the name given to this genocide, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered. Before and during the Holocaust, enormous numbers of Jews immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, upon
22704-530: The population. Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development and growth of human progress in many fields, both historically and in modern times, including in science and technology , philosophy , ethics , literature , governance , business , art , music , comedy , theatre , cinema , architecture , food , medicine , and religion . Jews wrote the Bible , founded Christianity , and had an indirect but profound influence on Islam . In these ways, Jews have also played
22876-439: The post-war era, universities proved more willing to accept Jewish applicants and in decades after 1945, many Canadian Jews tended to move up from a lower-class group working as menial laborers to a middle class group working as bourgeois professionals. With the ability to obtain a better education, many Jews become doctors, teachers, lawyers, dentists, accountants, professors and other bourgeois occupations. Geographically, there
23048-782: The religion. Historical definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. These definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral Torah into the Babylonian Talmud , around 200 CE . Interpretations by Jewish sages of sections of the Tanakh – such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5 , which forbade intermarriage between their Israelite ancestors and seven non-Israelite nations: "for that [i.e. giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,] would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods" – are used as
23220-460: The remaining 12% align themselves with smaller movements or are unsure. Intermarriage is relatively low among Canadian Jews, with 77% of married Jews having a Jewish spouse. Most of Canada's Jews live in Ontario and Quebec, followed by British Columbia , Manitoba and Alberta . While Toronto is the largest Jewish population centre, Montreal played this role until many English-speaking Jewish Canadians left for Toronto, fearing that Quebec might leave
23392-590: The revolt's devastating effects, but never fully regained its previous strength. In the second to fourth centuries CE, the region of Galilee emerged as the new center of Jewish life in Syria Palaestina , experiencing a cultural and demographic flourishing. It was in this period that two central rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud , were composed. However, as the Roman Empire
23564-614: The rights of minorities with the League of Nations to monitor their compliance. The CJC was founded in part to lobby the government of Canada to use its influence at the League of Nations to ensure that the Eastern European states were abiding by the terms of the "minorities treaties". On August 16, 1933, one of the most famous anti-Semitic incidents in Canada took place, known as the Christie Pits riot . On that day after
23736-403: The royal line of David ) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple ) and their construction of the Second Temple circa 521–516 BCE. As part of the Persian Empire , the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah ( Yehud Medinata ), with a smaller territory and a reduced population. Judea was under control of the Achaemenids until
23908-458: The sale of cottages to any person of "Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or colored race or blood". With the support of the Joint Public Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai B'rith headed by Rabbi Feinberg, the Noble ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which in November 1950 ruled against "restrictive covenants", albeit only on the technicality that the phrase "Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or colored race or blood"
24080-408: The search for evidence of the biblical narrative surrounding the patriarchs and the exodus. According to the maximalist position, the modern archaeological record independently points to a narrative which largely agrees with the biblical account. This narrative provides a testimony of the Israelites as a nomadic people known to the Egyptians as belonging to the Shasu . Over time these nomads left
24252-454: The settlement eventually became a town, whose name was later changed to the Anglicized name of Edenbridge . The Jewish farming settlement folded in the first generation. Beth Israel Synagogue at Edenbridge is now a designated heritage site . In Alberta, the Little Synagogue on the Prairie is now in the collection of a museum. At this time, most of the Jewish Canadians in the west were either storekeepers or tradesmen. Many set up shops on
24424-507: The southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah . Gary A. Rendsburg links the early Canaanite nomadic pastoralists confederation to the Shasu known to the Egyptians around the 15th century BCE. According to the Hebrew Bible narrative, Jewish ancestry is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs such as Abraham , his son Isaac , Isaac's son Jacob , and the Biblical matriarchs Sarah , Rebecca , Leah , and Rachel , who lived in Canaan . The Twelve Tribes are described as descending from
24596-438: The status of the offspring of mixed marriages was determined patrilineally in the Bible. He brings two likely explanations for the change in Mishnaic times: first, the Mishnah may have been applying the same logic to mixed marriages as it had applied to other mixtures ( Kil'ayim ). Thus, a mixed marriage is forbidden as is the union of a horse and a donkey , and in both unions the offspring are judged matrilineally. Second,
24768-403: The termination of the mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel , a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. Immediately afterwards, all neighboring Arab states invaded, yet the newly formed IDF resisted. In 1949, the war ended and Israel started building the state and absorbing massive waves of Aliyah from all over the world. The Jewish people and
24940-446: The three main sects that flourished during the late Second Temple period, namely the Sadducees and Essenes , eventually disappeared, while Pharisaic beliefs became the foundational, liturgical, and ritualistic basis of Rabbinic Judaism , which emerged as the prevailing form of Judaism since late antiquity. The Jewish diaspora existed well before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had been ongoing for centuries, with
25112-491: The top destinations chosen by French Jews to live in, particularly in Quebec ). For the same reasons, and due to cultural and linguistic proximity, several members of the Belgian-Jewish community choose Canada as their new home. There are efforts by the Jewish community of Montreal to attract these immigrants and make them feel at home, as well as those from other parts of the world. There is also some immigration of Argentine Jews and from other parts of Latin America. Argentina
25284-403: The twelve sons of Jacob. Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacob's son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs' descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses , after which the Israelites conquered Canaan under Moses' successor Joshua , went through the period of the Biblical judges after the death of Joshua, then through
25456-410: The verb yada , meaning "praise", scholars generally agree that "Judah" most likely derives from the name of a Levantine geographic region dominated by gorges and ravines. In ancient times, Jewish people as a whole were called Hebrews or Israelites until the Babylonian Exile . After the Exile, the term Yehudi (Jew) was used for all followers of Judaism because the survivors of the Exile (who were
25628-422: The veterans of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizien , which was mostly recruited from Ukrainians in Galicia , settled in Canada. The fact that the men of the 14th Waffen-SS division had committed war crimes was ignored because they were felt to be useful for the Cold War. In Oakville, Ontario , a public monument honors the men of the 14th SS Division as heroes. Starting in the 1980s, Jewish groups began to lobby
25800-445: The word "Hebrew" are also in use to describe a Jew, e.g., in Italian ( Ebreo ), in Persian ("Ebri/Ebrani" ( Persian : عبری/عبرانی )) and Russian ( Еврей, Yevrey ). The German word "Jude" is pronounced [ˈjuːdə] , the corresponding adjective "jüdisch" [ˈjyːdɪʃ] (Jewish) is the origin of the word "Yiddish". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language , fourth edition (2000), It
25972-408: The youngest mayor in the country at the time. He died suddenly in 1969 while serving his tenth term in office. A community of about 100 settled in Victoria, British Columbia to open shops to supply prospectors during the Cariboo Gold Rush (and later the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon ). This led to the opening of a synagogue in Victoria, British Columbia in 1862. In 1875, B'nai B'rith Canada
26144-412: Was B'nai B'rith. Till today B'nai B'rith Canada is the community's independent advocacy and social service organization. Also at this time, the Montreal branch of the Workmen's Circle was founded in 1907. This group was an offshoot of the Jewish Labour Bund , an outlawed party in Russia's Pale of Settlement . It was an organization for The Main's radical, non-Communist, non-religious, working class. By
26316-450: Was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec and the Labrador region of the current Province of Newfoundland and Labrador (until the Labrador region was transferred to Newfoundland in 1809). Lower Canada consisted of part of the former colony of Canada of New France , conquered by Great Britain in
26488-605: Was a tendency for many Jews living in the inner cities of Toronto and Montreal to move out to the suburbs. The rural Jewish communities almost vanished as Jews living in rural areas decamped to the cities. Reflecting a more tolerant attitude, Canadian Jews became active on the cultural scene. In the post-war decades Peter C. Newman , Wayne and Shuster , Mordecai Richler , Leonard Cohen , Barbara Frum , Joseph Rosenblatt , Irving Layton , Eli Mandel , A.M. Klein , Henry Kreisel , Adele Wiseman , Miriam Waddington , Naim Kattan , and Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg were individuals of note in
26660-426: Was acquired in 1853, and a place of worship was opened in a hall in the same year, in which services were held intermittently. In 1892, the Jewish population of Quebec City had sufficiently augmented to permit the permanent establishment of the present synagogue, Beth Israel . The congregation was granted the right of keeping a register in 1897. Other communal institutions were the Quebec Hebrew Sick Benefit Association,
26832-809: Was aptly demonstrated a few years ago when Montreal's Mayor Houde introduced him to friends as Le Cardinal des Juifs —the Cardinal of the Jews". Feinberg was very active in various social justice efforts, campaigning for laws against discrimination against minorities and to end the "restrictive covenants". In March 1945, Rabbi Feinberg wrote an article in Maclean's charging that there was rampant antisemitism in Canada , stating: "Jews are kept out of most ski clubs. Sundry summer colonies (even on municipally owned land), fraternities, and at least one Rotary Club operate under written or unwritten “Gentiles Only” signs. Many bank positions are not open to Jews. Only three Jewish male physicians have been admitted to non-Jewish Hospital staffs in Toronto. McGill University has instituted
27004-432: Was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire , which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy , a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, now under Assyrian vassalage , experienced a period of prosperity and witnessed
27176-410: Was entirely false, his story was widely believed in Quebec, and ensured he won the election. In 1945, several organizations merged to form the left-wing United Jewish Peoples' Order which was one of the largest Jewish fraternal organizations in Canada for a number of years. As in the United States, the community's response to news of the Holocaust was muted for decades. Bialystok (2000) wrote that in
27348-491: Was formed as a Jewish fraternal organization . When British Columbia sent their delegation to Ottawa to agree on the colony's entry into Confederation , a Jew, Henry Nathan, Jr. , was among them. Nathan eventually became the first Canadian Jewish Member of Parliament. In 1899, the Federation of Canadian Zionist Societies was founded to champion Zionism, and became the first nation-wide Jewish group. The overwhelming majority of Canadian Jews were Ashkenazim who came from either
27520-444: Was founded in 1919 and would be the major representative body of the Canadian Jewish community for 90 years. Much of its work was focused on lobbying government around issues of immigration, human rights and anti-Semitism. One of the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles were the so-called "minorities treaties" that committed Eastern European states with substantial Jewish populations such as Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia to protect
27692-399: Was less prosperous and covered a smaller, mostly mountainous territory. However, while in Israel the royal succession was often decided by a military coup d'état, resulting in several dynasty changes, political stability in Judah was much greater, as it was ruled by the House of David for the whole four centuries of its existence. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it
27864-405: Was mainly by water along the St. Lawrence River . On land, the only long-distance route was the Chemin du Roy , or King's Highway; it was built in the 1730s by New France . The King's Highway was, in addition to the mail route, the primary means of long-distance passenger travel until steamboats (1815) and railways (1850s) began to challenge the royal road. The royal road's importance waned after
28036-484: Was recognized by King George VI. Most Jewish Canadian who joined the Armed Forces at this time became members of the Royal Canadian Air Force . In 1939, Canada turned away the MS St. Louis with 908 Jewish refugees aboard. It went back to Europe where 254 of them died in concentration camps. And overall, Canada only accepted 5,000 Jewish refugees during the 1930s and 1940s in a climate of widespread anti-Semitism. A most striking display of antisemitism occurred with
28208-416: Was recorded as the first Jewish resident of Quebec , and thus the first Canadian Jew. From 1749, Jacobs had been supplying British army officers at Halifax , Nova Scotia. In 1758, he was at Fort Cumberland and the following year he was with Wolfe 's army at Quebec. Remaining in Canada, he became the dominant merchant of the Richelieu valley and Seigneur of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu . Because he married
28380-425: Was reinforced through public readings. The Hebrew language also constructed and preserved national identity. Although it was not widely spoken after the 5th century BCE, Goodblatt states: the mere presence of the language in spoken or written form could invoke the concept of a Jewish national identity. Even if one knew no Hebrew or was illiterate, one could recognize that a group of signs was in Hebrew script. ... It
28552-429: Was replaced by the Christianized Byzantine Empire under Constantine , Jews came to be persecuted by the church and the authorities, and many immigrated to communities in the diaspora. In the fourth century CE, Jews are believed to have lost their position as the majority in Syria Palaestina . The long-established Jewish community of Mesopotamia, which had been living under Parthian and later Sasanian rule, beyond
28724-455: Was the language of the Israelite ancestors, the national literature, and the national religion. As such it was inseparable from the national identity. Indeed its mere presence in visual or aural medium could invoke that identity. Anthony D. Smith , an historical sociologist considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies , wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to
28896-442: Was their social responsibility to help their fellow Jews get established in this new country. One such man was Abraham de Sola , who founded the Hebrew Philanthropic Society. In Montreal and Toronto, a wide range of communal organizations and groups developed. Recently arrived immigrant Jews also founded landsmenschaften , guilds of people who came originally from the same village. Most of these immigrants established communities in
29068-436: Was too vague. After the war, Canada liberalized its immigration policy. Roughly 40,000 Holocaust Survivors came during the late 1940s, hoping to rebuild their shattered lives. In 1947, the Workmen's Circle and Jewish Labour Committee started a project, spearheaded by Kalmen Kaplansky and Moshe Lewis , to bring Jewish refugees to Montreal in the needle trades, called the Tailors Project. They were able to do this through
29240-423: Was turned down on the account of his religion, a rejection that deeply hurt him. Through the Rideau Club changed its policies in response to public criticism, Rasminsky only joined the club after he retired as bank governor in 1973. In 1968, the Liberal MP Herb Gray of Windsor became the Jewish federal cabinet minister. In 1970, Bora Laskin became the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and in 1973,
29412-444: Was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath . Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda , who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel. Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as
29584-447: Was used to describe the inhabitants of the Israelite kingdom of Judah . It is also used to distinguish their descendants from the gentiles and the Samaritans . According to the Hebrew Bible , these inhabitants predominately descend from the tribe of Judah from Judah , the fourth son of Jacob . Together the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin made up the Kingdom of Judah. Though Genesis 29:35 and 49:8 connect "Judah" with
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