Review of the Year

OTHER COUNTRIES Canada

National Affairs

A HE GENERAL ELECTION OF OCTOBER 1993, Canada's first since the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, resulted in a massive shift in electoral fortunes. The Progressive Conservatives, who had governed the country since 1984, were routed and reduced to a rump of only two seats in a House of Commons with 295 members. The big winners were the Liberal party, now led by Jean Chretien, a veteran of the Trudeau era with extensive cabinet experience, Preston Manning's Reform party, which came out of nowhere to capture over 50 seats in the West in a protest against conventional political practices, and Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois (BQ), which became the official opposition in its first election. The BQ, closely related to Quebec's provincial party, the Parti Quebecois (PQ), was launched by Bouchard and other disgruntled Conservatives after the Meech Lake failure. Its overriding objective is to achieve the independence of Quebec, the province where it obtained all 54 of its seats. The Reform party was plagued by a widely held impression that it provided a haven for racists and even anti-Semites. Party leader Manning made a speech to the Jewish Civil Rights Educational Foundation in January in an effort, at least his fifth, to dispel the image that his party was inhospitable to Jews. He implored his audience to participate in the party in order to "inoculate us against the viruses of extremism, racism and anti-Semitism." The Reform leader announced that his party had expelled about 25 members who held a variety of racist views. The Liberal party also expelled a racist, Roger Alacoque, who had ties to France's National Front. Among the issues that were most important to the Jews of Canada were the preservation of national unity against the separatist threat, control of racism and anti-Semitism, the successful prosecution of Nazi war criminals living in the country, the maintenance of a fair immigration policy, and a constructive foreign policy posture with regard to the Middle East. In the October 25 election, constituencies with substantial numbers of Jewish voters generally elected Liberals, despite the strong bonds between the Jews and former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Four Jews were elected to the House of Commons: Sheila Finestone and David Berger won reelection in suburbs of Mon-

209 210 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 treal, while veteran parliamentarian Herb Gray earned another term in Windsor. They were joined by Barry Campbell, who carried a key Toronto riding. Three Jewish former MPs were not in the new House: Robert Kaplan of Toronto retired from politics, while Dave Barrett of British Columbia and Gerry Weiner of Quebec went down to defeat. Weiner, who had served in the cabinet under Mulroney and his successor, Kim Campbell, was a focus of controversy during the campaign when it was alleged that he abused his power and exercised undue influence to help his son Mark secure the PC nomination in another riding. Weiner denied doing any- thing inappropriate and the affair dissipated; still, both Weiners were swept away in the Liberal tide that carried the Montreal suburbs. Hugh Segal, a former Mulroney advisor, attributed his party's massive defeat to the breakdown of the coalition of groups "who felt outside the mainstream" — such as Westerners, Maritimers, and Quebec nationalists — which had been the corner- stone of Mulroney's 1984 and 1988 victories. Reform and the BQ took away two of those key elements, leaving the party uncompetitive. The inability of Kim Camp- bell, who succeeded Mulroney, to establish her credibility as prime minister contributed to the party's rout. In the new cabinet, Herb Gray, who was first elected to the Commons in 1962 and became the country's first Jewish cabinet member in 1969, assumed the posts of government House leader and solicitor general of Canada. Chretien appointed Sheila Finestone to a subcabinet post, secretary of state with responsibility for multiculturalism and the status of women. Within the Prime Minister's Office, longtime Chretien confidant Eddie Goldenberg was appointed as a senior policy adviser, while Chaviva Hosek became the director of policy and research. When Brian Mulroney stepped down as prime minister in June, Jewish leaders lauded him for a number of accomplishments and especially for his strong support for Israel. Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) president Irving Abella observed that "we have lost a good friend." He added that Mulroney "understood the needs of our community. He was very sensitive to them and he had a visceral attachment to Israel." B'nai Brith Canada president Gabriel Nachman recognized Mulroney for establishing the Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on Nazi war criminals, for ensuring the adoption of a law that reduced the possibility of husbands using the get (Jewish divorce decree) as a bargaining chip in divorce negotiations, and for his strong stance in favor of multiculturalism and against racism. A new immigration law, which took effect in January, was expected to prove favorable to Soviet Jews with trade or professional skills. However, the bill was expected to make it more difficult for Russian Jews coming to Canada via Israel to claim refugee status, because it presumed that asylum was available to them in Israel.

Israel and the Middle East The government, most Canadians, and the Jewish community generally welcomed the signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles (DOP) in September, CANADA / 211 although there were some dissenting voices within the Jewish community (see below, "Israel-Related Activities"). Prime Minister Kim Campbell and Secretary of State for External Affairs Perrin Beatty endorsed the pact enthusiastically. Ontario premier Bob Rae held a public celebration in October at Queen's Park in Toronto, the seat of the provincial government. Among the cosponsors were CJC, Palestine House, and the Canadian Arab Federation. In a speech there, Irving Abella expressed the sentiment that "for this evening at least, hope triumphs over hesitation, dreams over doubts, anticipation over apprehension." Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres both visited Canada during 1993. Peres made a quick trip in April. In a series of speeches, he gave hints of the policy shift that was manifested in the DOP, referring to "returning the territories to the Palestinian people," allowing them self-rule, and subsequently offering "negotiated independence." Rabin became the first foreign leader to meet with new Canadian prime minister Chretien when he arrived in November to address the General Assembly (GA) of the Council of Jewish Federations, which met in Montreal. At the GA he gave a vigorous presentation of the logic and necessity of his government's rapprochement with the PLO. In his private talks with Chretien and the new external affairs minister, Andre Ouellet, Rabin stressed the need to increase Canada- Israel trade, which at $300 million annually placed Israel forty-third among Can- ada's trading partners. The leaders also explored the idea of a free-trade agreement. In an interview with the Canadian Jewish News in April, Canadian ambassador to Israel Norman Spector also stressed the need for increased trade and reiterated the firm basis of Canada's support for Israel and the congruence between the policies of the two countries. In December he pointed out that Israel's free-trade agreements with the United States and the European Community made it increasingly difficult for Canadian goods to be competitive in Israel, implying that Canada should reex- amine its earlier reluctance to enter into such a pact with Israel. Stephen P. Cohen, who heads the independent Institute for Middle East Peace and Economic Development, based in Montreal, and who had been meeting for some time with Arab leaders, including PLO chairman Yasir Arafat, in order to facilitate communication between Palestinians and Israelis, told a large audience at Montreal's Beth Zion Synagogue in September that the DOP was a realistic basis for a future of peace, providing both for Israeli security and the attainment of Palestinian aspirations. In the weeks following the signing, Canada announced a commitment of $55 million over five years to improve the lives of Palestinians in the territories. The government also supported a plan to move 4,000 Palestinians from Sinai to Gaza and pledged $4 million for that. The refugees lived in an abandoned military installa- tion known as Canada Camp, which was built by Canada for UN troops in Sinai following the Suez War of 1956. While Peres was in Canada, he and External Affairs Minister Barbara McDougall agreed to establish the Canada-Israel Industrial Research and Development Pro- gram, to promote R&D in the private sector. In June the health ministers of the two countries signed a joint agreement to share information on health services. 212 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

Jason Friedberg, a 24-year-old from a Montreal suburb who had immigrated to Israel, where he was studying in a yeshivah and serving in the army, was murdered by terrorists near Jerusalem in March. He was buried in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl.

Anti-Semitism and Racism A number of highly visible manifestations of anti-Semitism occurred this year. The most graphic incident took place on the first day of the year, when seven Montreal area synagogues were desecrated with red swastikas. Since the synagogues were located in different parts of the Montreal area, it appeared that the attacks were a coordinated effort. B'nai Brith spokespersons characterized the events as "an attempt to intimidate" the Jewish community, which included many Holocaust survivors. Political and communal leaders expressed their deep concern and solidar- ity with the Jews. A few weeks later, yet another synagogue, a YM-YWHA branch, and two private homes in suburban Laval were similarly defaced. There were at least two incidents in Kitchener, Ontario, including an assault in June by three Nazis against a Jewish shopkeeper and a fire that destroyed the home of outspoken Jewish activist Monna Zentner in August. The house had been par- tially damaged by a 1992 fire. Zentner had led picketing at a store owned by a supporter of revisionist historian David Irving. When Winnipeg observed its first commemoration of Kristallnacht in November, vandals desecrated 78 tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. There were several incidents at the University of Toronto in January, including four spray-painted swastikas. The only synagogue in Victoria was defaced in July, and there was an attempted synagogue arson in Calgary and vandalism and a fire at a business in Winnipeg. B'nai Brith Canada's Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents for 1993 showed a sharp increase in the number of incidents of vandalism, 105 compared to 46 in the previous year. Yet incidents of harassment were virtually unchanged at 151. The increase in the total number of incidents, from 196 to 256, reversed the downward movement recorded between 1991 and 1992. There were particularly noticeable surges in the number of incidents in Montreal (54, up from 25 in 1992) and Ottawa (43, compared to 25), while Toronto continued to have the highest number of total incidents (107 compared to 97). Neo-Nazi Wolfgang Droege, head of the Heritage Front, one of the more visible racist groups in the country, faced contempt charges in Toronto in February for violating a 1992 court order regarding telephone hate messages on the front's hotline. The Canadian Human Rights Foundation went to court with the complaint and also investigated Droege. He also faced charges relating to a street brawl with antiracists in June and violations of his bail terms. As a result he spent time in jail during the year. Droege was ordered to stand trial in 1994. Anti-Semitic publisher and pamphleteer Ernst Zundel benefited from a decision by police not to charge him again under the "false news" provision of the Criminal CANADA / 213

Code. His earlier conviction had been quashed by the Supreme Court on free- expression grounds in 1992. The police also declined to prosecute under the antihate laws on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence that he had committed a crime. A number of Jewish organizations protested, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Zundel inaugurated a television show, The Voice of Freedom, in June, on Showcase America, a satellite network, in order to promote his Holocaust-denial message. A few weeks later, after many protests, the show was canceled. Zundel had been recording the show in Toronto and shipping the tapes to Denver for transmission. He was also reported to be broadcasting over short-wave radio using stations in New Orleans and Nashville. Another Zundel television show, distributed through a Pennsylvania company, was canceled after protests from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Canadian Jewish Congress. A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Robert O'Driscoll, published The New World Order and the Throne of the Anti-Christ, a virulently anti-Semitic book in which he suggests that Jews control key world events and that a Jewish conspiracy has been involved in major political and military decisions. He also coauthored (with white supremacist John Ross Taylor writing under a pseudonym) The New World Order in North America: A Secret American Military Counter- intelligence Report, which was labeled anti-Semitic by B'nai Brith. The university, which had reprimanded him for the first book, announced that it was investigating him for conduct that could lead to his dismissal for cause. Attorney Douglas Christie, who had defended several anti-Semites over the past ten years, survived an investigation by a disciplinary committee of the Law Society of Upper Canada (the Ontario bar). At issue was his conduct during his defense of Imre Finta, who was acquitted of committing war crimes in his native Hungary. The committee did upbraid him for some of his tactics but declined to discipline him. It characterized some of his statements as anti-Semitic and found that he had "made common cause with a small, lunatic, anti-Semitic fringe element in our society." The controversial Nation of Islam official Khalid Abdul Muhammad, an aide to Louis Farrakhan, known in the United States for his anti-Semitic rantings, gave a provocative speech in May at Montreal's Concordia University that was described as "a lengthy diatribe against Jews, gays, and whites." Muhammad, who had a criminal conviction in his record, entered Canada illegally. When it was discovered that he was in the country, he was served with an immigration summons, but he delivered his speech and left the country before the government could act. The Peel Board of Education near Toronto had to deal with allegations that teacher Paul Fromm was involved in neo-Nazi activities. Even though an independent Toronto lawyer's report found that it was reasonable to conclude that Fromm "is not committed to the policies respecting ethnocultural equity, multiculturalism and anti-racism," the board declined to dismiss him, as B'nai Brith and CJC had asked. However, it did reassign him from high school to continuing education classes. In a similar case, the New Brunswick court of appeal reversed the decision of the provincial human-rights commission to bar Holocaust denier Malcolm Ross 214 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 from teaching in the public schools on the grounds that he had the right to express "sincerely held beliefs." In Prince Edward Island, Michel Safadi, a Lebanese immigrant, was charged with promoting hatred against Jews and other criminal acts. He countered by contending that he was the victim of a plot engineered by the Israeli Mossad. The Crown claimed that he had written anti-Christian letters to individuals and churches and tried to make it appear that the letters had been written by Jews. Safadi was convicted in July. During the period leading up to the opening of a revival of Show Boat in Toronto, some black groups formed a coalition to stop the show on the grounds that it was unfavorable to blacks. Because the original writers as well as the local producer, Garth Drabinsky, were Jewish, some of the critics incorporated anti-Semitism into their attacks on the show. A North York school board trustee, Stephanie Payne, remarked that "usually a Jewish person is doing plays to denigrate us," but she later apologized. (See also below, "Community Relations.") A new survey, conducted by Decima Research for the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, found little anti-Semitism among Canadians. Overall, only 6 percent of a national sample were classified as anti-Semitic. The highest concentra- tion of people with negative images of Jews was in Quebec, at 12 percent. In other parts of the country, anti-Semitic attitudes were held by about 5 percent of the population. Lower-income people were found to be more anti-Semitic than those with higher incomes. Two noted constitutional lawyers, Canadian Irwin Cotler and American Alan Dershowitz, debated Canada's antihate laws in September in Toronto. The topic was "What to do about racist hate propaganda?" Cotler, who charged that Canada had become a "world center" for Holocaust-denial and free-speech litigation, contended that freedom of speech is not absolute and that limits must be placed on it by responsible governments. He argued that racist speech is the antithesis of freedom of expression "because it constitutes an assault on the very values underlying free speech in a democracy." In reply, Dershowitz warned of the danger of allowing governments to get into the censorship business, because "the appetite of the censor is voracious." He expressed confidence in the ability of the marketplace of ideas to consign racist concepts to oblivion. The debate served to highlight the differences in Canadian and American approaches to the issue of freedom of expression.

Nazi War Criminals The Canadian Jewish Congress called for the appointment of independent prosecutors to inject some energy into the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. The motivation for the recommendation, which was made in a December meeting with the new justice minister, Allan Rock, was the perceived lack of progress on the matter. According to Jack Silverstone, CJC national executive director, Rock seemed "genuinely interested in understanding our concerns," such as the slow pace CANADA / 215 of prosecutions and the failure to obtain convictions. Of the fivecase s launched since the new law was adopted in 1987, only one succeeded in achieving the government's objectives: Jacob Luitjens was stripped of citizenship and deported. But that did not involve a criminal trial. Two other cases were dropped before trial, and one defend- ant, Imre Finta, was acquitted. Luitjens, who was serving a life sentence in his native Holland, was turned down there in his request for a new trial. Finta's case was in the Supreme Court, which heard a prosecution appeal of his acquittal and a defense appeal that the war-crimes legislation be declared unconstitutional. The case was still pending at year-end. The case of Radislav Grujicic, who pleaded not guilty, was under way.

JEWISH COMMUNITY

Demography At a time when continuity in the community was a matter of primary concern, the 1991 census offered some encouraging news. According to Prof. Jim Torczyner of McGill University and Gustave Goldmann of Statistics Canada, the Jewish population, at 356,315, had increased by about 14 percent since the previous census, despite the growing problem of intermarriage. Canada apparently now had the fifth largest Jewish community in the world, after the United States, Israel, Russia, and France. Torczyner's analysis of the census data showed that over 30,000 Jews had immigrated to Canada during the previous decade, about 70 percent of them born in the Soviet Union, Israel, the United States, or South Africa. Some 80 percent of the new arrivals settled in Montreal or Toronto. Also significant, the age distribution of the Jewish population improved, with an enhanced number of children in the community; some 20 percent were under age 14 in 1991, up from 17.4 percent in 1981. But 17.3 percent were over 65, compared to 10.8 percent in the general population. Some 13 percent of Jews lived in intermarried families, but the percentage varied from 6.8 percent in Montreal to 24.5 percent in Vancouver. The proportion of those in the census who identified ethnically as Jews but did not profess Judaism as a religion varied widely: it was 4.5 percent in Montreal, 6.3 percent in Toronto, and 26.0 percent in Vancouver. In terms of social variables, the two authors found that Jews were substantially more likely to have a university education and to be in high-status professions than the general population. Still, about 16 percent of Jews lived below the poverty line, compared to 19 percent of the general population. Toronto clearly emerged as Canada's preeminent Jewish community during the 1980s. The Jewish population was 162,605 — an increase of 26.4 percent from 1981 — representing about 45 percent of the Jewish population of the entire country. Moreover, Jews constituted 4.3 percent of the Toronto population, the highest such proportion by far in the country. Toronto's community benefited from immigration 216 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 during the decade, including internal migration from places such as Montreal, Winnipeg, and Windsor, the three Jewish communities of the top 11 that declined in population during the 1980s.' A federation study in Vancouver, now the third largest Jewish community, showed it to be a young community, with only 11 percent over 65. About 45 percent belonged to a synagogue and about one-third of Jewish children received some type of Jewish education. A further finding was that in 36 percent of the Jewish households one spouse was not Jewish. This figure, which represented a substantial increase over the past decade, compared to 15.7 percent in Toronto and 11.3 percent in Montreal, and 16.4 percent nationally. A report based on the Vancouver study compared the commitment of Jews who identified ethnically with those who identified by religion. It found that "if the fuzzy sense of Jewishness that 'ethnicity,' multiple or single, hints at is a predictor of behavior, one of the behaviors it indicates is the erosion of Jewish identity and a huge percentage of Jews in our community whose life choices are leading them away from communal life." The immediate past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Ted Zacks, warned that assimilation in his community had reached almost "epidemic proportions." The use of Yiddish continued its inexorable decline. In the 1931 census, 96 percent of Canadian Jews listed Yiddish as their mother tongue. This dropped to 32 percent in 1961, 11 percent in 1981, and 7 percent in 1991. The raw numbers were 32,800 in 1981 and 21,395 in 1991. Prof. Leo Davids of York University claimed that an influx of Hassidic families, mainly from the United States, had prevented the number of Yiddish speakers from dropping more dramatically during the last decade. Jewish population increases of more than 20 percent in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax strained community resources. The communities in Hamilton, London, Edmonton, Calgary, and Saskatoon grew as well, but at lower rates.

Communal Affairs As part of a restructuring initiative at the countrywide level, a new body called CJF Canada came into being this year, merging the National Planning and Budget- ing Conference and the Canadian services committee of the Council of Jewish Federations. The three main functions of the new body are planning, making bud- getary allocations, and maintaining liaison with the CJF in New York for the purpose of providing services. The board of directors of the new entity includes representatives of the ten local federations, CJC, United Israel Appeal (UIA), Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS), CIC, and representatives of the unfederated communities. UIA and the Montreal and Toronto federations each have four members on the new board; the Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Vancouver federations and CJC two each; and CIC and JIAS one each. President George Wasserstein said that the

'See "The Jews of Canada: A Sociodemographic Profile," elsewhere in this volume. CANADA / 217 new structure more accurately reflected the reality of Canadian Jewish life. CJF Canada established a task force on Jewish continuity and urged local federations to do the same. The objective is to identify policies aimed at ensuring the future of the Jewish community. One of the key issues at the local level for the past several years has been the appropriate allocation of money raised among Israeli, countrywide, and local benefi- ciaries. The Toronto federation decided to continue to send half of its campaign funds to Israel through the UIA, despite financial pressure caused by an unexpected write-off of $6.8 million in unpaid pledges from its 1991 -92 budget. A similar problem arose in Montreal, where about $2.3 million in pledges to the 1992 campaign were written off. In local developments: a new building to house both the Beth Jacob Congregation and a community center was opened in Regina in September; and the United Synagogue Day School bought the building of the bankrupt Shaareh Haim congregation in Toronto's suburban Richmond Hill. According to the JIAS annual report, some 300 to 400 families from the former Soviet Union had entered Canada since 1990, about 100 of them under a special program undertaken in cooperation with the Quebec government to encourage such immigration. About 150 Jewish immigrants from embattled Sarajevo were settled in seven Canadian communities. A gay and lesbian group was established at York University as part of the Jewish Student Federation. The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research received a grant of $15,000 from federal multiculturalism minister Gerry Weiner as part of its $100,000 fund-raising drive. Weiner aide Neil Drabkin stated that "the Canadian government is very supportive of the work of CUR," which publishes several periodicals on the subject of Israel and the Middle East. In September, the Rassem- blement Mondial du Judaisme Marocain and the Centre Communitaire Juif organized an evening at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel to pay homage to King Hassan II of Morocco. They were joined by Arab Moroccans.

Israel-Related Activities The signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles in September was generally welcomed in the Jewish community, but met with some skepticism. Thomas Hecht, chair of CIC-Quebec, cautioned that "the euphoria over peace" may be overdone. Rabbi Reuben Poupko of Montreal wondered whether the PLO had really changed. Fred Krantz, director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, expressed concern that Israel faced danger along the path that it had chosen. Samuel Shainhouse, president of Herut-Likud Canada, charged that Rabin and Peres were being "taken in by Washington and the PLO." Just hours after the September 13 signing of the DOP, Canadian Jews and Palestinians met at the B'nai Brith headquarters in Toronto, where they were joined by Israeli consul general Dror Zeigerman. The Palestinian group was led by Rashad 218 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

Saleh, president of Palestine House, while Frank Dimant, B'nai Brith's top professional, led his colleagues. At a briefing of community leaders in September, Israel's consul general in Montreal, Itzhak Levanon, called on the Jewish community for its "unconditional support" of the agreement with the PLO. He characterized the agreement as a "courageous step on the tortuous road toward peace." Veteran community leader Charles Bronfman, who had been present at the September 13 signing on the White House lawn, expressed a "feeling of real optimism and gratitude to the people who had the courage" to sit down together. Those who attacked the Israel-PLO agreement, he said, were "displaying very little faith in the basic moral fiber of Israelis." The effect of the agreement was evident when meetings were held in Ottawa in November between a delegation from CJC and the ambassadors of Morocco and Jordan. CJC president Irving Abella observed that "the meetings . . . create a sense of normalcy between . . . Jews and Arabs." Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, addressing the GA in Montreal in November, called upon Diaspora Jews to back the peace process and to create a new partnership with Israel. He maintained that the impending peace would create the need for a "new agenda" between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, stating that "we are undergoing a revolution of peace." But he also acknowledged the difficulty in coming to terms with the PLO, the equivalent to "grinding your teeth." The exhibit "Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada," was on display at Tel Aviv's Diaspora Museum during the summer, through the efforts of the Canadian Friends of the museum and its cochairwoman, Andrea Bronfman, along with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Canadian Jewish athletes competed successfully in the Maccabiah Games held in Israel in July, winning 85 medals, including 26 golds, for their best showing ever. Project Genesis, a community organization for the poor, established in 1976 in Montreal by Prof. Jim Torczyner, set up Israeli branches in Beersheba and Jerusa- lem. With help from the Montreal Jewish community, Genesis went to poor immigrant neighborhoods in the two Israeli cities to apply techniques of community organization that it had perfected in Canada. Another Montreal initiative was the inauguration in October of the BESA (Begin/Sadat) Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, with the support of businessman and community leader Thomas Hecht, who saw it as a "center-right" balance to the Jaffee Center at Tel Aviv University. Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation joined with four major Jewish groups to sponsor a program that would ensure that North American Jewish teenagers have an Israel experience. Research sponsored by the foundation showed that being in Israel had a major impact on teens, heightening Jewish awareness and identity among children from all backgrounds. The goal of the new program is to increase the number of participants in such activities from 8,000 to 50,000 per year. CANADA / 219 Education The status of Jewish education in both Montreal and Toronto remained in question. In Toronto, the community pursued a lawsuit to compel the Ontario government to provide funding for Jewish schools on the grounds that funding only for Roman Catholic religious schools amounted to unconstitutional discrimination. The Ontario court of appeal was asked to provide full funding or at least funding for the general studies portion of the program. Opponents were concerned about an exodus from the public schools if the request were granted. The decision was pending at year's end. Montreal's Jewish schools, which received government funding of about $18 million per year, about 52 percent of the costs of general studies, still faced financial problems and sought relief by attempting to obtain associate status with the Montreal Catholic School Commission. However, the negotiations, which had stirred apprehension in some circles of the Jewish community, never bore fruit. In Vancouver, the day schools received a budget increase from the British Columbia government of about 3 percent. The average annual per student grant was about $3,000. The first yeshivah in Hamilton, Beit Yitzchak, which was built chiefly through the effort of Rabbi Morton Green, was dedicated in November. Chabad opened a yeshivah for francophone students over the age of 17, Or Menachem, in the Mon- treal suburb of Cote Saint-Luc. Also in Cote Saint-Luc, the Hebrew Academy dedicated its new building in May, on a site formerly occupied by a branch of the YM-YWHA. The building, which cost over $5 million, was home to over 400 students at the elementary and high-school levels. Multiculturalism Canada gave Concordia and York universities $250,000 each to fund chairs in Canadian Jewish studies. Multiculturalism Minister Gerry Weiner, speaking about the Concordia chair, expressed the hope that it "will give the Jewish community a new sense of itself in Montreal and Quebec, a new spirit to engage itself fully in the entire community." Concordia expected to set up a Center for the Study of Canadian Jewry; York, located in Toronto, already had a Center for Jewish Studies.

Community Relations After complaints were received about an ad for a messianic Jewish group, Beth Sar Shalom congregation, in the Toronto Star, which CJC called deceptive, the paper agreed to reject advertisements from such groups unless they clearly stated that the congregation was Christian. Another complaint from CJC resulted in Congregation Melech Yisrael's removal from the Yellow Pages listing of "Syna- gogues" and its placement under "Messianic Congregations." The York Board of Education in Ontario reversed a guideline that penalized observant Jews who did not work on religious holidays. The guideline had reduced the number of days off for such purposes from 13 to 10. A similar case from the 220 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

Montreal area went to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was brought by the provincial teachers union on behalf of three Jewish teachers who lost a day's pay when they stayed away from work on Yom Kippur in 1985. Although the teachers had won at arbitration and in superior court, the Quebec court of appeal reversed, setting the stage for the appeal to the country's highest tribunal. A decision was expected in 1994. The Opening of the Courts, an annual religious-legal service in Ontario, was held in January at the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. It was attended by clergy, judges, and legal personnel. In connection with the furor over the musical revival of Show Boat, producer Garth Drabinsky of Live Entertainment, Inc., criticized Jewish community leader- ship for failing to back him. "I continue to be the target of anti-Semitic statements which are causing me a lot of pain and anguish. . . . What disturbs me most is the silence of the leaders in both the Jewish and black communities." In fact, CJC's Ontario Region questioned the motives of those who injected the Jewish question — the Jewishness of people involved in the show's production — into the dispute over the way in which blacks were depicted. The controversy threatened to strain black-Jewish ties, even though the Jewish community had no involvement in the production. A move to boycott the show was defeated 10-3 in the North York Board of Education in May. A black high-school teacher who spoke at the board meeting claimed that "certain blacks have pitted two communities against each other. They themselves have met secretly and have said 'bring down the Jews.'" Articles in a black Toronto newspaper, Share, charged that Jews had turned their backs on blacks and attacked the United Way for giving an inordinate amount of money to Jewish agencies. President Irving Abella of CJC declared that "the articles are scapegoating the Jews," while regional CJC chair Gerda Freiberg found the references to the Jews "abhorrent." The posture of Montreal Jews with regard to the prospect of Quebec independence remained an issue. Author Mordecai Richler set off a minor flap by giving a speech in which he counseled young anglophones against making their lives in Quebec. The sponsor, the Association of Young Jewish Adults, quickly distanced itself from his remarks, with the president declaring that he planned to stay in Quebec. Richler contended that Quebec was entering a "tribal period of great intolerance. If I was 22 or 25,1 wouldn't stay; who needs it?" In his lecture Richler also castigated CJC for its "betrayal" in dissociating the community from his earlier comments on Quebec nationalism. He found this unnecessary because "I do not speak for the community, and it most certainly does not speak for me." In an interview with the Canadian Jewish News in June, Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau tried to meet some of Richler's criticisms by stating categorically that "whoever wishes to build a life here and loves his or her native land or new homeland enough — is a Quebecer." He also expressed admiration for the Jews, who "have always fitted into the cultural life of Quebec in an exemplary manner," but criticized attempts to inject collective Jewish views into political debates, such as when community leaders took an official position on the 1992 referendum. CANADA / 221 In a response to Parizeau, in July, Montreal businessman Steven Cummings wrote that he opposed the PQ's move to make Quebec independent, because "independence and the continued delegitimatization [sic] of the English language will slowly erode the vitality of the Jewish community of Montreal."

Religion Two major annual meetings were held in Canada during the year. At the gather- ing of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Montreal, in July, a highlight was a speech by the Dalai Lama, who received a standing ovation from the over 600 delegates. He spoke about the Tibetan people, the Holocaust, and Israel, and thanked Jews for their support for his cause and for their example of survival in exile. The main emphasis of his remarks was on developing inner spiritual strength. One of the issues debated at the convention was the validity of homosexual marriages. Rabbi Ronnie Friedman strongly advocated making them a legitimate part of ritual, stating that "as Reform rabbis, we are free to reject any element of Jewish law which we deem arbitrary, archaic, or incorrect." In contrast, Rabbi Michael Stroh, while advocating civil equality for gays, opposed homosexual marriages and even commitment ceremonies because he did not want to convey the impression that the homosexual lifestyle is equivalent in Judaism to the heterosexual lifestyle. Outgoing CCAR president Rabbi Walter Jacob also warned the delegates about homosexual partnerships, as well as other deviations from the monogamous family ideal. He also addressed the thorny issue of the role of non-Jews in synagogue life, stressing that only Jews should be able to be members of synagogues. About 300 people attended the meeting of the Union for Traditional Judaism (UTJ) in Toronto, in November. The Conservative synagogues in that city had been very receptive to the UTJ's message of fidelity to Halakhah in an enlightened environment, in distinction to what many Toronto rabbis regarded as the erosion of Torah values and laxity of observance in the mainstream Conservative movement. A few months earlier, in August, the Cantorial Council of Greater Montreal dropped its connection with the Conservative Cantors Assembly and affiliated with the Orthodox Cantorial Council of America. The major issues prompting the switch were the acceptance of women cantors and rabbis and what the cantors regarded as deviations from Halakhah within the Conservative movement. Rabbi Elyse Goldstein of Toronto and Norma Joseph of Montreal's Concordia University led a workshop on Women's Role in Jewish Observance in Toronto, in February. Rabbi Goldstein urged changes in the language of prayer to signal inclu- siveness, adding that prayer "must take into account the occasions of women's lives that have been ignored." Joseph addressed the processes of ritual change that are possible within Halakhah. Both Goldstein and Joseph were also involved in a feminist Sukkot service, which stressed the possibilities for women in Judaism through various observances and teaching. It was the second annual Sukkah-by-the- Water ceremony on Toronto's lakefront. The Coalition of Jewish Women for the 222 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

Get urged synagogues to deny membership and honors to men and women who withhold a Jewish divorce while pursuing a civil divorce. Norma Joseph, president of the International Coalition of Agunah Rights, suggested that Jewish women picket outside the businesses of recalcitrant husbands or at synagogues and legisla- tures to draw attention to the problem of agunot ("chained women"). A panel of three Montreal rabbis from different movements discussed means of collaborative activity in a November forum. They agreed that it was possible to build bridges. Rabbis Leigh Lerner (Reform), Lawrence Perlman (Conservative), and Howard Joseph (Orthodox) spoke frankly about what each branch had learned from the others and what their differences were. Among the issues addressed were mitz- vot, the role of women, and patrilineal descent. Rabbi Mark Dratch (Orthodox) spoke in Toronto in February about new halakhic thinking on intermarriage and homosexuality that was not automatically condemnatory. "We have to find ways of bridging the gaps which have developed." At a meeting in New York of the Association of Reform Zionists in America, Rabbi Dow Marmur of Toronto gave a paper that related changes in Reform religious practice to the impact of Zionism, especially the movement from the universal to the particular. In Vaughan, a distant suburb of Toronto, ground was broken in May for the Canadian Center for Reform Judaism. The $5-million building will include a day school, a synagogue, a mikveh, an afternoon school, and the headquarters of the Canadian Council for Reform Judaism. Rabbi Jacob Chinitz retired from the Shaar Shalom Synagogue in Halifax. In a parting speech, he opined that Conservative Judaism is "as legitimate as Orthodoxy and may even be more legitimate." Rabbi Mark Dratch was installed at Congrega- tion Shaarei Shomayim in Toronto, while Montrealer Geoffrey Haber became the rabbi of Calgary's Beth Tzedec Congregation. Two Canadian women received rab- binical ordination in June, Ellen Wierzba at Hebrew Union College and Adina Lewittes Tannenbaum at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Rhonda Wilansky was certified as Canada's first female mohel (circumciser) by the Reform movement. An Orthodox mohel, Dr. Yehudi Shields, declared that her circumcisions were invalid because of her methods and because she is a woman.

Culture The Monument National Theater in central Montreal, a major center for Yiddish productions during the first half of the century, reopened in June after extensive renovations. Various Yiddish groups celebrated the event with a concert in October to benefit the new Yiddish Consortium. Dora Wasserman's Montreal Yiddish Thea- ter presented the world premiere of the Yiddish version of Herb Gardner's Conversa- tions with My Father in November, at the Saidye Bronfman Center. Wasserman's company also produced Sholom Aleichem's The Adventures of Menachem Mendel in June. The First Casualty of War by Sam Goldstein won a prize from the theater CANADA / 223 committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto. The play is about the moral dilemmas raised by Israeli army actions in Gaza. Victoria Keidan's Familiar Circles, which deals with Holocaust survivors and their families in Toronto, opened there in April. The Baltimore Waltz, a play about AIDS by Paula Vogel, also opened in Toronto. The Winnipeg Jewish Theater presented a new play by Carol Matas in April, The Escape. It deals with Jews in 19th-century Russia confronting military conscription. Srul Irving Glide's "Seven Tableaux," a choral composition based on the Song of Songs, was performed for the first time in Montreal in February. At Montreal's International Jazz Festival in July, the Klezmer Conservatory Band of Boston performed together with La Botine Souriante of Montreal. "Our Musical Heritage," a concert at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, in April, featured works by Milton Barnes, Glick, Helen Greenberg, and Ben Steinberg. In January the Beth Shalom High Holiday chorus sang with the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa in a performance of Arnold Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw." "Semaine du cinema juif," a film festival organized in Montreal in February by the Centre Communitaire Juif, presented films in French that deal with Jewish themes. Toronto had a Jewish film festival in May. Harriet Wichin's new film, Silent Witness, a documentary about Auschwitz, had its premiere in Montreal in October. Reminiscences of the immigrant period permeate Montreal Jewish Memories: Stories of the Twenties and Thirties, a documentary by Stan Asher that opened in April. William Weintraub's controversial documentary The Rise and Fall of English Mon- treal opened in Montreal in May. Joyce Borenstein's film The Colors of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein was nominated for an Academy Award as the best documentary short. Some 30 films were included in "Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds," the first major retrospective of Yiddish film to be shown in Canada, held at the Art Gallery of Ontario during June. Canadian Cultural Programmes L.A.E., Inc., presented a five-part program on the renowned writer A.M. Klein in Montreal, in March. One element was a dramati- zation of Klein's famous novel The Second Scroll by Maurice Podbrey. Yiddish theatrical personality Dora Wasserman was profiled on a CBC television program in January. Winnipeg artists Caroline Dukes and Eva Stubbs exhibited their works in their native Hungary in July. The Royal Ontario Museum exhibited "The City of David, 3000 BCE to 70 CE: Discoveries from the Excavations" during the summer.

Publications Among new works of historical interest this year was the reissue of the late Louis Rosenberg's Canada's Jews: A Social and Economic Study of Jews in Canada in the 1930s, edited by Morton Weinfeld with introductory material by him and Seymour Martin Lipset. The original book was a pioneering work of Jewish social-scientific and demographic research that demonstrated the extent to which Jews around 1930 224 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 were unable to be a full part of Canadian society. The contemporary state of Canadian Jewry is treated effectively in The Jews of Canada, edited by Robert Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld. Yogev Tzuk wrote a first: History of the Jews in Canada: A Textbook for High School Students, which fills a gap for the Jewish schools. The first collection of scholarly essays on the subject of Anti-Semitism in Canada, edited by Alan Davies, examines the phenomenon at various times and at various places in the country but lacks an overview. The business experience of one of the leading Canadian Jewish families of the present era is chronicled in Towers of Debt: The Rise and Fall of the Reichmanns by Peter Foster. Patti Star tells of her own rise and fall due to fraud and breach of trust in Tempting Fate: A Cautionary Tale of Power and Politics. Judge Henry Steinberg provides an insider's view of Montreal's Palais de Justice in Backstage at the Palace: An Irreverent Romp Through the Hall of Justice. The early enchantment and later disillusionment of some Jews with Communism is recalled in Time Re- membered by Manya Lipshitz. Minerva Davis covers a similar topic in The Wretched of the Earth and — Me, a memoir of the Communist party in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. Candid perspectives on one of the key issues of our time are found in Half the Kingdom: Seven Jewish Feminists, edited by Francine Zuckerman. Shoshana Pantel Zolty wrote on a related topic: And All Your Children Shall Be Learned: Women and the Study ofTorah in Jewish Law and History. Rabbi Reuven Bulka's Jewish Divorce Ethics: The Right Way to Say Good-Bye deals sensitively with a difficult topic. Ann Kazimirski's Witness to Horror is a personal memoir of the Holocaust that has also proved useful in the schools. The heroic story of efforts to provide medical care and even run an underground medical school is told in Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto by Charles G. Roland. Other noteworthy new books included Soviet Jewish Emigration and Resettlement in the 1990s, edited by Tanya Basok and Robert Brym; Harvey Levenstein's Para- dox of Plenty; A Letter from My Father by Ariella Blum Samson; The Trotskys, Freuds and Woody Aliens: Portrait of a Culture by Ivan Kalmar; and Lawrence Tapper's A Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Jewry, 1909- 1914, from the Cana- dian Jewish Times. New works of fiction included In the Heart of Warsaw by Szloma Renglich; Zina and Other Stories by Tecia Werbowski; Listening for Somersaults by Shel Kra- kofsky; Daniel's Story by Carol Matas; and This Business with Elijah by Sheldon Oberman. Works of poetry included Seymour Mayne's Locust Silence and his translation of poems by Melech Ravitch, Night Prayer and Other Poems, and Archie Rottenberg's Child of Laughter and Other Frightening Sounds. New books of general interest included Law, Policy and International Justice: Essays in Honour of Maxwell Cohen, edited by Donald McRae and William Kaplan, and the autobiographical Honest Ed Mirvish: How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate. CANADA / 225 Personalia Erminie Joy Cohen was appointed to the Canadian Senate. Among the recipients of the Order of Canada were Dora Wasserman, Theodore Sourkes, Ivan Barry Pless, Moe Koffman, Morton Shulman, Harold Buchwald, Dian Cohen, Samuel Gesser, Freda Paltiel, Sandra Kolber, Edith della Pergola, Barbara Seal, Arnold Steinberg, Abraham Stern, and Morris J. Wosk. Murray Koffler and Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut were named to the Order of Ontario, Sydney Segal to the Order of British Columbia, and Michael Hornstein, Joseph Kruger, and Otto Joachim to the Order of Quebec. Bernard Shapiro was appointed principal of McGill University, the first Jew to hold that post, while Ian Segal became chancellor of Simon Fraser University. Caspar Bloom was elected batonnier of the Montreal Bar. Jason Sherman won the Chalmers Foundation Prize for his play A League of Nathans. The noted composer Srul Irving Glick was shot and wounded in a mysterious assault outside a synagogue in Toronto in January. Uri Mayer was appointed conductor of the Israel Sinfonietta. In the Jewish community, Bernard Ghert was elected president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto, Len Butcher was appointed editor of The Covenant, published by B'nai Brith, Bruce Elman was elected president of the Edmonton Jewish Federation, and Etty Danzig became president of Na'amat Canada. Elaine Zeitz became engaged to incarcerated spy Jonathan Pollard after a correspondence courtship. Sheldon Maerov was appointed executive director of CJF Canada. The following received Jewish Book Awards in Toronto: Eta Fuchs Berk, Gilbert Allar- dyce, Alan Davies, Michael Marrus, Shel Krakofsky, Sam Simchovitch, J. Imman- uel Shochet, Peter Silverman, David Smuschkowitz, and Peter Smuszkowicz. The J.I. Segal Awards in Montreal were presented to Gerald Tulchinsky, Chava Rosen- farb, Eugene Orenstein, and Leah Kaufman. Among members of the community who died during 1993 were family physician Dr. Joseph Chesnie, in January, aged 74; pediatrician and medical educator Dr. John Jacob Slavens, in February, aged 85; yeshivah dean Rabbi Uziel Milevsky, in February, aged 50; Frank Rasky, journalist who covered the Jewish arts scene, in February, aged 70; Alfred Feintuch, former executive director of Montreal's Jewish Vocational Service, in February, aged 77; Moe Seidman, longtime president of the Synagogue Council in Montreal, in February, aged 81; matriarch and mother of two rabbis Selma Plaut, in March, aged 102; Judge Samuel Freedman, former chief justice of Manitoba and the first Jew to hold such a post in Canada, in March, aged 84; lecturer and family therapist Hadassah A. Rosenberg, in March, aged —; longtime spiritual and community leader in Montreal Rabbi Charles Bender, in April, aged 97; Rabbi Charles Steinberg, head of chaplaincy services in Toronto, in May, aged 59; Dr. Max Avren, sports medicine specialist and organizer of the 1967 Pan-American Games, in May, aged 69; Annie Chesterman, a founder of Pioneer Women, in June, aged 87; scholar and director of the Toronto Kashrut Council for 42 years, Rabbi Nachman Shemen, in July, aged 81; leading Yiddish writer and one of the last survivors of the Young Vilna Poets, Peretz Miransky, in July, aged 85; 226 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

Cantor Emeritus Nathan Adler, of Cong. Shaarei Shomayim in Toronto, in July, aged 74; Harold Livergant, medical executive, in August, aged 68; Abe Posluns, founder of the geriatric Baycrest Center in Toronto, in September, aged 84; Middle East scholar Avriel Butovsky, in October, aged 32; educator and psychologist David August, in November; senior community leader Monroe Abbey, in November, aged 89; Sol Lederman, philanthropist who helped to establish the Shalom Hartman Institute, in November, aged 74; lawyer and community leader Michael Greenblatt, in December, aged 90; Temmy Florence Latner, businesswoman and philanthropist, in December, aged 62; and Yiddish writer Szloma Renglich, in December, aged 81.

HAROLD M. WALLER The Jews of Canada: A Profile from the Census

HE NATURE AND SHAPE of the Canadian Jewish community have changed significantly in the past decade. A stream of immigration caused Canadian Jewry to grow more quickly than the Canadian population as a whole, with certain local Jewish communities increasing in size by as much as 30 percent. And while some Jewish communities marginally lost population in the past ten years, these losses are far less substantial than has been previously reported. On the negative side, the communities that lost population have higher percentages of older and poorer persons, and the communities that mushroomed in the last decade do not necessarily possess the institutional resources and infrastructure needed to absorb their new constituents and respond to their varied needs. This study is based on data obtained almost entirely from the 1991 Canadian census, with comparative data from the 1981 census. The data base was developed through a unique partnership between the Council of Jewish Federations, Statistics Canada, and the McGill University Consortium for Ethnicity and Strategic Social Planning and is housed at the McGill University School of Social Work. The Canadian census includes the largest sample of Jews to be surveyed outside the State of Israel and contains data on the most comprehensive set of characteristics, including religious and ethnic identity, immigration, family structure, intermarriage, education, occupation, and income status. Overall, Canadian Jews continue to be better educated, more professional, and more urban and to have higher incomes than Canadians as a whole. As in 1981, husband-wife families remain the principal living arrangement of Canadian Jews, and children make up a higher percentage of the Jewish community in 1991 than they did in 1981. Several disconcerting social trends in the Jewish community that were already quite marked in 1981 have persisted and intensified during this last decade. The Jewish poverty rate is now almost indistinguishable from that of all Canadians. Women continue to be underrepresented in higher occupations and overrepresented among the poor. The number of single-parent families, the intermarriage rate, and the proportion of Jewish elderly all continue to rise.

Historic Growth The earliest reports of Jewish life in Canada appeared around 1738. In 1768, five years after France ceded its holdings to Britain in the Treaty of Paris, a handful of Montreal Jews, organized as the Corporation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, established the Shearith Israel Synagogue. This initiated what was to become an

227 228 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 uninterrupted and continuous process of institution building. Until the middle of the 19th century, Jewish life in Canada was almost exclusively based in Quebec, primarily Montreal.1 Jewish life west of Quebec began to develop a century after its first expressions in Montreal. By 1834, the newly incorporated city of Toronto had a population of approximately 9,000 residents, one known Jew among them. The Jewish community of Toronto was officially organized in 1849, when it purchased land for a cemetery. In 1856, Toronto Jewry established its first synagogue — the Toronto Hebrew Congregation, later renamed "Holy Blossom." Further west, Jewish life began to emerge in the late 19th century. A Jewish benevolent society was established in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1859. In 1881, 215 Jews lived in Winnipeg; ten years later, the Jewish population had increased by 300 percent to 645 persons (largely due to the efforts of the Jewish Colonization Association, established for the purpose of assisting Jews to settle in the Canadian west). By 1900, the Jewish community in Canada numbered 16,000 persons, approximately 45 percent living in Montreal (7,000) and 20 percent in Toronto (3,000). Many of them were recently arrived immigrants who had fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe and sought mutual support through association. In Montreal, 50 percent of the Jewish community lived within a one-square-mile area; they established three more synagogues, a Zionist organization, a Yiddish newspaper, and a Jewish day school in less than 20 years. The Jewish community increased more than seven and a half times during the first two decades of the 20th century, bringing the number of Jews in Canada in 1921 to 126,196. With a Jewish population of 46,000, Montreal accounted for 36 percent of all Jews and Toronto for 28 percent, having increased its Jewish population 11 times during the period to 35,000. By 1941, 168,367 Jews lived in Canada: approximately 65,000 in Montreal and almost 53,000 in Toronto. Few Jews were able to find safe haven in Canada during the period of the Holocaust, but in 1947 Canada's gates reopened, and 4,500 Jewish survivors settled in Montreal. They were followed by almost 36,000 Jews who entered Canada between 1951 and 1956 — the largest five-year immigration total for any period in Canadian Jewish history. By 1961, 275,000 Jews lived in Canada: 102,725 in Montreal, 85,000 in Toronto, almost 20,000 in Winnipeg, and approximately 67,000 elsewhere in Canada. Until it began to decline in numbers in the 1960s, Winnipeg was the important "third city" in Canadian Jewish life. By 1991, Vancouver had replaced Winnipeg as the third largest Jewish population center. Montreal remained the population center of Canadian Jewry until 1981. Between

'Daniel J. Elazar and Harold M. Waller, Maintaining Consensus: Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World (Lanham, Md., 1990) and Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld, The Jews in Canada (New York, 1993) are useful background sources. CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 229

1971 and 1981, the Jewish community in Montreal experienced a net loss of about 7,000 persons. This was due to the combined effect of uncertainty over the political future of Quebec in Canada — because of separatist agitation — and a robust econ- omy in Ontario. By 1981, Toronto had become the largest Jewish center. (See table 1) In relation to other countries, Canada had the fifth largest Jewish community in the world in 1991.

Methodology For the purposes of this study, there is no need to enter into the often intense and passionate debate over the definition of "Jewish," of who is to be counted. The criteria for Jewish membership in this work derive from the methodology of the data source, the Canadian census, which asks two separate questions: "To which ethnic or cultural group(s) did your ancestors belong?" and "To which religion or denomi- nation do you belong?" Respondents to the census are permitted to choose only one religion but they may choose up to four ethnic affiliations. Because the ethnic responses are not reported in order of priority, however, one can only make note of the number of persons who selected Jewish as their ethnicity along with other ethnic choices which they may have indicated. In both 1981 and 1991 census analyses published by the Council of Jewish Federations-Canada, the definition of "Jew" that is used is as follows: "A Jew is someone who identifies him/herself as being 'Jewish by religion,' or 'Jewish by religion and Jewish by ethnic origin' or 'Jewish by ethnic origin with no religion.' " This definition represents the highest degree of consensus among Jewish decision makers. The only group excluded from this analysis are those persons who identified themselves as Jewish by ethnic origin but with a religion other than Jewish. In addition to the basic identification data, the Canadian census provides a 20-percent sample of 71,200 Jews who provide responses on a wide range of socioeconomic and demographic variables. Because our data base is the census, analysis is limited to those questions that the census asks. Information regarding attitudes, beliefs, Jewish practices, and Jewish antecedents are not available; therefore, we can provide no information with regard to these important dimensions of Jewish life. However, census data have and will continue to shape more qualitative studies carried out by local federations, which in turn will enhance understanding of the dynamics of Canadian Jewry as it enters its fourth century in North America. 230 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

CENSUS FINDINGS

Population Size (1981-1991) According to the definition provided above, the Jewish population of Canada stood at 356,315 persons in 1991. This figure represents 281,680 persons identified as Jewish by religion and Jewish by ethnic origin; 36,390 persons identified as Jewish by religion with some other ethnic origin; and 38,245 persons who were Jewish by ethnic origin with no listed religion. (See table 2.) The 1991 total represents an actual growth rate of 14.2 percent and a numerical increase of 44,255 Jews since 1981. This substantial growth did not take place uniformly across Canada. Vancouver experienced the largest percentage increase in its Jewish population (31 percent), while Toronto outdistanced all other Jewish communities in terms of its actual gain in numbers (34,000). Between 1981 and 1991, Toronto's Jewish population increased by 26.4 percent, its population growing from 128,605 to 162,650, which accounted for nearly half (45.6 percent) of Canadian Jewry. In the same period, Montreal's population dropped by 2 percent, from 103,425 to 101,210. Smaller Jewish centers such as Ottawa and Halifax increased in size by more than 20 percent. Only a few Jewish communities experienced a net loss in population (Montreal, Winnipeg, and Windsor), and the losses for Montreal and Winnipeg were far less than what had been expected or previously reported (2.1 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively). Generally speaking, changes in Jewish community size follow general population trends. Urban centers such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa, which experienced growth rates of between 28 percent and 31 percent in the past ten years, experienced comparable increases within their Jewish communities. Cities with relatively low growth rates — Montreal, Windsor, and Winnipeg — lost Jewish population in the same period. (See table 1.) Variations in the size of specific Jewish communities are functions of complex and often competing processes. Immigration, migration within Canada, natural increase, conversion to Judaism, and renewal of Jewish identification by individual Jews account for most gains in population. Outmigration, emigration, death, marrying out, or ceasing to identify as a Jew account for most population losses. Of those factors measured by the census, two of the most significant are immigration and migration.

IMMIGRANTS AND MIGRANTS Nostalgic portrayals of Jewish immigrant life along the Main in Montreal, on Spadina in Toronto, and in the North End of Winnipeg a half-century ago are staples of popular culture. There is less awareness, however, of the significant role that immigration still plays in the Jewish community and the extent to which Jews remain a community of immigrants. More than 30,000 Jews immigrated to Canada in the past ten years, representing 8.5 percent of the Canadian Jewish population. CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 231

More than 15 percent of all Jews in Canada today arrived in the past 20 years, which is almost twice the percentage of immigrants in the Canadian population as a whole (8.9 percent). Close to 80 percent of the most recent Jewish immigrants settled in Toronto (16,855) or Montreal (6,785). In Toronto, immigrants account for close to half the Jewish growth rate in the past decade. In Montreal, immigrants counteracted what would otherwise have been a more drastic population loss. (See table 3.) Smaller Jewish centers vary in the number of immigrants they absorbed. Halifax, Hamilton, and Ottawa received fewer than 500 immigrants each in the last decade, accounting for less than 5 percent of the Jewish community in each of these cities. In Edmonton and Calgary, one out of eight Jews arrived in Canada in the past decade. One in four Jews who immigrated to Canada between 1981 and 1991 was born in the former Soviet Union, one in five in Israel. Together, Jews born in the Soviet Union or Israel account for almost half of all Jewish immigrants to Canada in the past decade. Jews born in the United States or in South Africa together account for a quarter of Jewish immigrants (14 percent and 11 percent, respectively). (See table 4.) In French-speaking Quebec, where two out of three Jews speak both English and French, the sources of immigration are somewhat different. Half of all Jews who immigrated to Canada during the past ten years and lived in Montreal in 1991 were born either in Morocco or Israel. Morocco is the most frequently cited place of birth of those Jews born outside of Canada and living in Montreal in 1991. Jews identified as Sephardim — many of them Moroccan-born — accounted for between 15.8 percent and 20.2 percent of Montreal's 101,000-strong Jewish community. (See below for further discussion of this subset of the community.) Jews who immigrated to Canada between 1981 and 1991 are considerably younger than the Jewish community as a whole. In Montreal, for example, only 8.8 percent were over the age of 65, compared to 22.4 percent of all Jews. One out of four were between the ages of 20 and 34, over 5 percent more than in the Canadian Jewish community as a whole. Similarly, almost 25 percent of Jewish immigrants were between the ages of 35 and 44, compared with 17 percent for all Canadian Jewry. Migration within Canada is another source of changing demographics. The degree of Jewish mobility is determined from the census question asking respondents where they lived five years ago (1986). (See table 3.) Although Jews have higher rates of immigration than the Canadian population as a whole, they have lower rates of internal migration: 75 percent of all Jews had not moved within that period, compared with 71 percent of all Canadians. In actual numbers, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal received the largest influx of Jews from other provinces (2,830, 1,065, and 1,025 respectively). To sum up: immigration continues to have a profound impact on the growth rate of the Canadian Jewish community. Interprovincial migration has less of an effect but is significant in certain communities. 232 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 Demography

AGE STRUCTURE Changes in age composition over the decade 1981-1991 have also contributed to the changing profile of the community. One in five Jews was under the age of 14 in 1991, an increase for that age range of 2.3 percent over the decade. During the same period, the 15-34 age group declined by more than 7 percent, and the 35- 54 age group grew comparably larger (6 percent). The Jewish community continues to age, but this trend may level off temporarily at the turn of the century. Although 17.3 percent of all Jews were over the age of 65 in 1991 — an increase of 1.5 percent — the 55-64 age group dropped from 11.8 percent of the Jewish population in 1981 to 8.4 percent in 1991. This "preretire- ment" age group now commands a smaller percentage of the Jewish community than it does of the Canadian population as a whole. At the youngest age levels, the Jewish community increasingly resembles the Canadian population as a whole. Jews have experienced an increase in the percentage of children, while the Canadian population as a whole experienced reductions in this age group. The net effect is that in 1991, 21 percent of all persons in both the Jewish and Canadian populations were in the 0-14 age range. (See table 5.) Although the Canadian population as a whole is becoming more middle-aged, it remains significantly younger than the Jewish community: 53 percent of all Canadi- ans were under the age of 35, compared to 46 percent among Jews. Similarly, while the percentage of persons in the Canadian population aged 65 and over grew from 8.9 percent in 1981 to 10.8 percent in 1991, that proportion is 17.3 percent for Jews. The Jewish elderly population aged 75 plus has grown dramatically in the past decade and forms a substantially larger proportion of the Jewish community in 1991 than it did in 1981 (7.7 percent and 5.1 percent, respectively). The elderly are more likely to be women than men (54.2 percent vs. 45.8 percent). This tendency becomes stronger with advancing years: 51.4 percent of all Jews aged 55-64, 53 percent of the 65-74 age group, and 55.6 percent of those aged 75-plus were women. The changes in age structure affect Jewish communities across Canada differently. Communities that lost population in the past ten years have fewer people below the age of 14, communities gaining in population have more. Certain cities tend to attract young families. In London, Edmonton, Calgary, and Ottawa, almost one in four Jews were under the age of 14. The opposite relationship seems to apply for older persons. Jewish communities that are losing population have a higher percentage of older persons. Winnipeg, Montreal, and Windsor, the three Jewish communities that lost population in the last decade, had higher than average percentages of persons over the age of 65: 23.9 percent, 22.4 percent, and 18.6 percent, respectively. CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 233

FERTILITY

The birthrate of Canadian women as a whole is higher than that of Jewish women. For example, 10 percent of women aged 35-44 in Canada as a whole had 4-plus children, compared to 5.9 percent of Jewish women in the same age group. For those aged 45-64, 27.7 percent of all women had 4-plus kids, compared with only 13 percent of Jewish women. Only for women aged 15-34 are the figures more equal, with 1.2 percent of all women having 4-plus kids, compared to 1.5 percent of Jewish women. (See table 6.) The opposite is true in Quebec. Montreal Jewish women have substantially higher birthrates than Montreal women overall. For the 15 - 34-year-old group, for example, Jewish women have four or more children four times as often as non-Jewish women. The higher Jewish fertility rates may be attributable to higher percentages of Sephardic, immigrant, and older women, all of whom have or had more children than Montreal women in general.

MARITAL STATUS Marriage is the preferred relationship among Jews. Almost half of all Jews in Canada (of all ages)— 172,220 individuals — were married in 1991. Another 5.0 percent were divorced or separated; 5.6 percent were widowed; and 41 percent were single and had never been married (this figure includes all Jewish children as well). (See table 7.) Among Jews aged 20-34 and living in families, 42 percent were single and had never been married, while 56 percent were married.

HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE As a result of changing values, opportunities, and social and economic pressures, Jews in Canada have made room for and sanctioned a broader variety of relationships than in previous generations. Still, the predominant living arrangement remains the husband-wife family. In 1991, 85 percent of all Canadian Jews lived in families; over 75 percent were in traditional husband-wife families, and 7 percent lived in single-parent families, 81 percent of which were headed by women. Alto- gether, single-parent families accounted for more than 25,000 Jewish persons in Canada in 1991. Fourteen percent of all Jews lived alone. (See table 8.) The size of Jewish husband-wife families rose slightly in the period between censuses due to increased numbers of children. As noted above, since Canadian families as a whole became a bit smaller, Canadian and Jewish families have almost the same number of children. Similarly, the number of single-parent families is on the rise in both the Jewish and Canadian populations. Single-parent households form a larger percentage of the Canadian population than of the Jewish population: 10.4 percent vs. 8.5 percent. 234 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

This pattern is consistent across Canada with the exception of Vancouver, which has a slightly higher percentage of Jewish persons in single-parent families than in the Vancouver population as a whole (10.5 percent vs. 9.7 percent). Single-parent families have fewer children than husband-wife families. Half of all single-parent families had only one child — compared with 16.0 percent of all husband-wife families. Fourteen percent of all Jewish single-parent families had three or more children, compared to 23 percent of Jewish husband-wife families. More than 10,000 children lived with only one parent in the Jewish community in 1991, and these represented more than one out often young persons under the age of 19. Very few Canadian Jewish women have children out of wedlock: 0.5 percent of all Jewish single/never-married women 15 and over had given birth to at least one child in 1991. In Canada as a whole, the comparable figure is 2.3 percent. Living arrangements for divorced persons vary considerably by gender, with over 50 percent of all Jewish divorced women — who are most likely to be custodial parents — living in families, compared to only 9.7 percent of divorced men. The 50,000 Jews in Canada who lived alone in 1991 represented 14.2 percent of the Jewish population. This is higher than the overall Canadian rate of 12.3 percent and is probably attributable to the higher percentage of elderly persons in the Jewish community. Of the 61,000 elderly Canadian Jews in 1991, 18,505 lived alone. Thus, while persons over the age of 65 represented 17.3 percent of all Jews, twice this percentage — 37 percent — of all Jews who lived alone were elderly. The situation of elderly women is particularly striking. While elderly Jewish women account for only 3.9 percent of all Jewish persons in Canada, they make up over 25 percent of Jewish persons living alone. And while elderly Jewish women make up 54.3 percent of the total elderly, they comprise 75 percent of all elderly persons living alone. Elderly men are more likely to live with family members, while elderly women are more likely to be unattached. Winnipeg, which had the second highest rate of persons living alone (15.8 percent compared to Vancouver's 19.7 percent), had the highest percentage of Jewish elderly (23.9 percent). In Vancouver, only 20 percent of Jews who lived alone were elderly. The remainder represent a larger, young, single population — many of whom recently migrated to Vancouver (15 percent of all Jews who live alone arrived in Vancouver during the past five years). Of the 34,645 Canadian Jews aged 20-34 who were single, almost two out of three (63.2 percent) lived in families. This high percentage is related to difficult economic circumstances as well as to the strength of traditional family values that may influence young persons to live with their families.

Socioeconomic Characteristics Generally speaking, Canadian Jews have attained astonishingly high levels of education, are increasingly entering professional occupations, and have higher incomes than Canadians overall. As in the United States, this pattern is an outgrowth CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 235 of earlier developments. Immigrant Jews worked long, arduous hours to create opportunities for their children. At the end of World War II — in part as a result of legislation enabling veterans to attend universities — quotas limiting Jewish en- rollment came to an end, and large numbers of Jews were able to enroll in universities. The result of this process is the remarkably high level of educational achieve- ment among Jews and their increasing representation in the professions.

EDUCATION

Half of all Jews (48 percent) aged 15 and over were either enrolled in university or had completed a B.A. degree or higher; 16 percent of all Jews had obtained M.A., M.D., or Ph.D. degrees. The corresponding figures for the Canadian population as a whole were 21 percent and less than 4 percent. (See table 9.) For the 35-44-year-old age group, levels of educational attainment rise substantially for both Jews and Canadians as a whole. Two-thirds of all Jews between the ages of 35 and 44 were either enrolled in university or had completed at least a B.A. degree, compared to slightly more than one in four among Canadians as a whole. Bilingualism in Quebec: For Jews in Quebec, bilingualism (knowledge of English and French), which is deemed necessary to economic success, is related to education and age. Bilingualism increases with educational level: more than four out of five Montreal Jews in university or having completed a university degree are fluent in both English and French; only half that rate (40 percent) of Jews without a high- school diploma are bilingual.

INCOME Canadian Jews are better off economically than are Canadians as a whole, with fewer Jews falling into the lowest income levels. For example, two out of three Canadians (65.2 percent) aged 15 and over in 1991 earned less than $25,000, compared to 52.6 percent of Jews. Differences in income between Jews and Canadi- ans generally are most noticeable at the upper levels. The proportion of Jews earning over $75,000 in 1991 was close to four times that in the Canadian population as a whole (10.2 percent vs. 2.6 percent). (See table 10.) Income levels are related to age; that is, earnings were lower for people in the lowest and highest age ranges (15-34 and 65-plus), the periods in which many individuals have not yet entered, or have retired from, the workforce. Nearly half of all Jews under the age of 35 and almost one in five Jews (18.6 percent) over the age of 65 had incomes of less than $10,000. The highest income earners were in the 35-44 and 45-64 age groups. One out of eight Jews between the ages of 35 and 44 earned more than $75,000 in 1991. Three out of ten earned more than $45,000, while slightly more than one in ten Jews (11 percent) under the age of 35 earned more than $45,000. Only two in ten Jews over the age of 65 earned more than $45,000. Income and education are positively related. Thus, 26.5 percent of Jews with 236 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 master's or higher degrees earned $75,000 or more in 1991, compared to 11.1 percent of Canadian Jews who were enrolled in university or had completed a bachelor's degree and 5 percent who had not completed high school. The data are equally striking at lower income levels. Three out of four Jews (73.4 percent) aged 15 plus who had not completed high school had incomes below $25,000 in 1991, compared to 47 percent of Jews currently attending university or having completed a bachelor's degree.

OCCUPATIONS A total of 172,605 Jews listed an occupation in the 1991 census, representing 61.6 percent of all Jews aged 15 and over. (This compared to 63.4 percent of all Canadi- ans.) A much higher percentage of Jews than of the Canadian population as a whole are employed in professional and management positions. Three out of ten Jews aged 15 plus held management and professional positions in 1991, compared to a little more than two out of ten Canadians overall. Jewish professionals include architects and engineers (3.1 percent), human-services workers and teachers (14.1 percent), accountants, notaries, and lawyers (4.5 percent), and physicians, dentists, and surgeons (2.4 percent). Jews are three times more likely than Canadians as a whole to pursue professional careers in medicine, law, and accounting. Almost one in ten Canadian doctors and dentists were Jewish in 1991. Jews were twice as likely to be managers and administrators and substantially more likely to be employed in the human-services field and in sales. Only in architecture and engineering were Jews and Canadians represented more or less equally. While Jews comprised 1.3 percent of the total Canadian population in 1991, they accounted for 9.3 percent of all doctors and surgeons; 4.1 percent of accountants, lawyers, and notaries; 2.3 percent of managers and administrators; 2.2 percent of people in sales; and 2.0 percent of human-services professionals. By contrast, the percentage of clerical workers in the Canadian population as a whole was higher than among Jews (13.5 vs. 12), and while 41 percent of all Canadians listed manual labor as their occupation, only 13 percent of Jews did so. There is a strong relationship between age distribution and occupational trends, with an increasing tendency among younger persons to enter management and the professions. In the 35-44 age group, more than half of all Jews were in management and professional occupations (19.4 percent and 36.9 percent, respectively), compared to 40.4 percent among those aged 45-64. In the 15-34 age group — a population not as far along on its career and educational path — 36 percent were so engaged. Doctors and dentists had the highest incomes in the occupational categories available in this data base: 34 percent earning more than $125,000 and another 28 percent with incomes in the $75,000-$124,000 range. Lawyers, accountants, and notaries had the second highest incomes among Jews in 1991. Persons in manual CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 237 and clerical occupations earned the least: 35 percent of manual workers and 26 percent of clerical workers had incomes below $10,000 in 1991. (See table 11.)

INDUSTRIES An analysis of the economic sectors in which Jews and all Canadians are employed reveals significant differences. Jews were three times as likely as the Canadian population as a whole to work in the business services, clothing, and jewelry industries. A higher percentage of Jews were also found in education and human services. Jews were less likely than the Canadian population as a whole to be employed in the food/hotel, construction, and transportation sectors or in government services (3.5 percent of Jews vs. 6.1 percent of all Canadians). The industry profile is different in different cities. A higher percentage of Mon- treal Jews worked in industries such as clothing, jewelry, and manufacturing, compared to Jews elsewhere, whereas Toronto Jews were more likely to work in finance and insurance, business services, construction, and retail industries. Education and human services employ substantial numbers of Jews in both the Montreal and Toronto Jewish communities, though these sectors accounted for a much larger percentage of all Jews in Toronto than in Montreal (19.4 percent vs. 14.3 percent).

LABOR-FORCE ACTIVITY The overall employment patterns of Jews and the Canadian population as a whole are similar. In 1991, 68 percent of all Canadians and all Jews aged 15 plus were in the labor force. There are important differences, however, in age structure. Jews tend to enter the labor force at the same rate as the Canadian population as a whole: roughly 80 percent of all Canadians and of all Jews between the ages of 15 and 39 were employed in 1991. Jews, however, tend to remain in the labor force longer: 22 percent of all Jews over the age of 65 were still employed in 1991, compared to 9 percent of all Canadians. (See table 12.) The unemployment rate for Canadians generally was 6.9 percent and for Cana- dian Jews 5.0 percent. Another 32.0 percent of Canadians and 32.2 percent of Jews were considered to be "not in the labor force."2 In Montreal, Jews had higher percentages of persons not in the labor force: 38.9 percent compared to 33.1 percent for Montrealers generally. Thus, a substantially smaller portion of the Jewish community in Montreal was employed in 1991 than in the Montreal population generally or in the Jewish and Canadian communities nationally.

2The census defined as unemployed those persons who were on temporary lay-off, who were starting a job within four weeks, or who were looking for work at the time of the census. In a different category, persons "not in the labor force" were defined as people who were not looking for work or who had never worked outside the home. Women homemakers are included in this category. 238 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

These figures undoubtedly reflect both the high percentage of elderly persons in the Montreal Jewish community who have retired from the workforce and the significantly larger percentage of Jewish youth who are full-time students. One consequence of this phenomenon is the increased pressure on persons in the workforce to support both their children and their parents and the resulting economic strain on middle-class Jewish families. (In fact, a higher percentage of Jewish women and Jewish elderly men were employed in Montreal in 1991 than were their counter- parts in the entire Montreal population.) This economic pressure is likely to increase in the next decade as the 75-plus age cohort grows and Jewish birthrates and rates of university attendance continue to rise.

STATUS OF WOMEN Despite social and economic changes over the last 20 years that have improved the status of women in the labor force, women in general and Jewish women in particular have not achieved equality either in educational attainment or in the workplace. Although roughly the same proportions of Jewish women as Jewish men were enrolled in university or had completed at least a B.A. degree (31.6 percent and 33.1 percent), there was a noticeable gap in the post-B.A. levels of educational attainment: 20 percent of all Jewish men had obtained a graduate degree, compared to 12 percent of Jewish women. Jewish women, however, had higher levels of educational attainment than either Canadian men or women overall, whose own rates of educational attainment were similar. (See table 13.) Both Jewish women and Canadian women as a whole are underrepresented in the professions. Jewish men were almost twice as likely as Jewish women to be managers, three times as likely to be accountants and lawyers, and four times as likely to be doctors or dentists. Women, on the other hand, were almost twice as likely as men to be teachers or to work in human services. (See table 14.) Women in both the Jewish community and the Canadian population as a whole have lower rates of labor-force participation than men: 76 percent for men, 60 percent for women. Despite the overall similarity in women's labor-force participation rates for Jewish women and Canadian women as a whole, there are notable differences in the 40-64 age group: 75 percent of Jewish women compared to 63 percent of all Canadian women. Similarly, 12 percent of all Jewish women aged 65 plus were in the labor force, compared to 5 percent of all Canadian women. Given the differences in levels of education and employment in the professions, women's incomes are predictably lower than those of men. The gaps, however, are far greater than one would expect. Jewish men in Canada were more than four times as likely as Jewish women to earn $75,000 or over and seven times more likely to earn $125,000 or higher. Among all Jewish men nationally, 17.3 percent had incomes of $75,000-plus, compared to only 4 percent of Jewish women. This trend is evident at lower income levels as well. Almost two out of three (63.1 percent) Jewish women aged 15 and over in Canada had incomes below $25,000, compared to 41.6 percent of Jewish men. (See table 15.) CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 239

Although the gaps between men and women have been narrowing, they are still wide. Women remain the primary family caretakers and therefore appear less frequently than men in the paid workforce. When they do, they are less educated, are less likely to have professional jobs, and earn less money. Women are poorer than men and are substantially more likely to live below the poverty line.

INVISIBLE POVERTY The economic success of Canadian Jews as a whole coupled with their long history of support for a broad network of communal, including social-welfare, institutions, tends to mask the presence of persistent poverty in the Jewish community. The poverty rate for Jews has become virtually indistinguishable from that for all Canadians. One out of six Jews (15.7 percent) lived below the Statistics Canada poverty line or were marginal to it in 1991.3 The corresponding figure for all Canadians was 18.6 percent. In both communities, a substantially higher percentage of the poor are women, people who live alone, single-parent families, and the elderly. A large percentage of men and women who are poor in both communities are employed. Poverty among Jews is particularly prevalent at the higher age levels. Although the elderly (65-plus) comprised only 17 percent of the total Jewish population in 1991, they accounted for one out of three Jewish poor persons. In the youngest age group, 13 percent of all Jewish children under 14 lived in poverty. This age group constituted 21 percent of all Jews but only 18 percent of all the Jewish poor. (See table 16.) Poverty continues to affect women more than men: 56 percent of all the Jewish poor in 1991 were women. This trend intensifies among the elderly. One out of three elderly Jewish women lived below the poverty line in 1991, compared to one out of five Jewish men. Single-parent families and persons who live alone are at much greater risk of being poor. Among the Canadian population as a whole, almost half of these two groups lived below the poverty line. Among Jews, three out of ten persons in single-parent families and almost four out often persons who lived alone in 1991 were poor. This pattern is intensified among women who are elderly: 52 percent of all Jewish women aged 65 and over who lived alone in 1991 lived in poverty. The corresponding figure for Canadians as a whole was 60 percent.

'Data were obtained by utilizing the Statistics Canada poverty line in both 1981 and 1991. The marginal line adds about 2 percent to the Jewish poverty rate as well as to the poverty rate for the entire population. This marginal line was first introduced in 1975 and has been utilized to analyze poverty among Jews in the 1971, 1981, and 1991 censuses. It was developed from a consensus among Jewish federation decision makers that the additional costs related to maintaining a Jewish life-style (e.g., keeping a kosher home) needed to be added to the Statistics Canada poverty line. The marginal line has been utilized in both the 1981 and 1991 demographic series. 240 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 Two Significant Subgroups

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Holocaust survivors have played a pivotal role in the institutional and cultural development of the Canadian Jewish community. In contrast to the portrayal of Holocaust survivors primarily as victims overwhelmed by physical and psychologi- cal traumas, they have in fact shown great resiliency as they rebuilt their lives in Canada, demonstrating strong love of family and community. They revived or created organizations and became integral members of already existing organizations, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress, bringing to them a richness of "belief, tradition and culture" derived from their countries of origin." In census terms, Holocaust survivors are denned as persons who were born prior to 1945, in countries that were occupied by the Nazis, and who immigrated to Canada after 1939. To identify those individuals, three sets of census data were analyzed: age, year of immigration, and place of birth. For example, if a person was 75 in 1991, had entered Canada in 1949, and was born in Poland, we assume that she or he is a Holocaust survivor. Further, child survivors are denned as persons who were 16 or under at the end of World War II in 1945, or between the ages of 46 and 62 in 1991. There are some obvious limitations to the definition. It includes persons who left the subsequent Nazi zone before the war and lived in other safe countries before arriving in Canada. For example, persons whose place of birth was Germany, but who went to the United States in 1928 and arrived in Canada in 1951 are still considered Holocaust survivors by our definition. Also, in order to retrieve uniform information, we defined the earliest year of immigration to Canada as 1939. This results in omitting from our count those few Austrian and German Jews who managed to escape Nazi terror and to enter Canada between 1933 and 1939. Despite these limitations, we feel that the present definition is sufficiently encompassing to allow us to provide the first census-based demographic profile of Canadian Holo- caust survivors. Overall, there are more than 27,000 Holocaust survivors in Canada, representing 7.7 percent of the total Jewish population. Montreal initially received the largest number of survivors, but in line with the mobility patterns characterizing all Cana- dian Jews, population shifts occurred.5 In 1991, 46.8 percent of all survivors lived in Toronto and close to one-third in Montreal. Montreal's Jewish community included 8,340 survivors, or 8.3 percent of its Jewish population; Toronto had 12,685 survivors, or 7.8 percent of its Jewish population. (See table 17.) The four most frequent countries of birth for Holocaust

*M. Giberovitch, "The Contributions of Montreal Holocaust Survivor Organizations to Jewish Communal Life" (M.A. thesis, McGill University School of Social Work, Montreal, 1988), p. 110. See also J.J. Sigal and M. Weinfeld, Trauma and Rebirth (Montreal, 1989). 'J. Kage, With Faith and Thanksgiving (Montreal, 1962). CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 241 survivors in Canada are Poland (37.5 percent), USSR (20.5 percent), Romania (13.8 percent), and Hungary (12.6 percent). (See table 18.) Almost 70 percent of Holocaust survivors are over the age of 65; the balance are "child" survivors (aged 46-62 in 1991). In contrast to the Jewish elderly overall in Canada, there are more elderly male Holocaust survivors in Canada than females. Elderly male survivors made up 34.2 percent of all Jewish elderly males, while elderly female survivors accounted for only 27.5 percent of all elderly Jewish women. This difference may be attributed both to different survival rates of men and women in the Holocaust and to immigration policies in the 1940s and 1950s that limited immigration to persons of specific occupations, generally favoring males.6 Fertility rates of elderly survivor women are substantially lower than those of elderly Jewish women in general. Whereas 9.9 percent of all elderly Jewish women in Montreal had four or more children over the course of their lives, only 3.7 percent of elderly women survivors had four or more children. Many factors can account for this lower rate of fertility, including interrupted family life, medical experimenta- tion conducted by the Nazis, and the harsh conditions that may have seriously affected women's reproductive capabilities. Elderly Holocaust survivors are more likely to live in families than elderly Jews in general: 76.3 percent vs. 70 percent. This difference undoubtedly relates to the strong emphasis survivors place on the nuclear family and the sense of responsibility their children feel, given the great losses their parents experienced. For survivor families and their children, institutionalization or living alone is considered to be a last resort. Among those elderly survivors who did live alone, women outnum- bered men: 34.8 percent vs. 13.1 percent.

SEPHARDIC JEWS Jews categorized as "Sephardic" have become a significant minority in the Cana- dian Jewish community, especially in Montreal. Analysis of this group is compli- cated by problems of definition, however. Strictly speaking, according to the Ency- clopaedia Judaica, the term refers to "descendants of Jews who lived in Spain or Portugal before the expulsion of 1492." After their expulsion, these "Sephardim" (from the Hebrew word for Spain) dispersed throughout the Middle East, as well as to France, Holland, England, and Italy, and to Eastern Europe. Bringing their traditions with them, they developed a distinct language (Ladino), literature, and religious customs. In recent times the term has been extended to include, and is most often applied to, Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, though this designa- tion is often erroneous. Many Sephardim in Canada originated in French-speaking North Africa, Mo-

'Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933- 1948 (Toronto, 1982). The authors note that only specific categories of "war orphans" and persons with specialized trades such as furriers were allowed to immigrate. 242 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 rocco in particular. With the deterioration of conditions for Jews in Morocco after the creation of the State of Israel, most Jews moved to Israel. Others moved to France, and a smaller number immigrated to Canada, where the largest concentra- tion is in Montreal. Not all Sephardim, however, are from North Africa, and not all Sephardim speak French. Moreover, there are many Jews whose mother tongue is French but who are Ashkenazi Jews. And, while most Middle Eastern Jews follow Sephardic rituals, an important percentage do not. There is also the question of how to identify children resulting from marriages between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews or children of Sephardim who moved to Israel and then to Canada and who may have lived in other countries, such as the United States. Since the census does not ask about Sephardi or Ashkenazi origin, Sephardic identity must be inferred from the data. The three items on the census that can be utilized for this purpose are place of birth, mother tongue, and year of immigration. Each of these is problematic, however. Places of birth that are likely to be Sephardic include Middle Eastern countries and North Africa. However, France and Israel, approximately half of whose Jewish populations are Sephardic, should also be taken into account. As noted above, there is also the question of children born in Canada or the United States to North African parents. Mother tongue may be a second indicator of Sephardic identity. Jews who indi- cate that their mother tongue is Spanish or Arabic are likely to be Sephardim, but these persons are a small minority in the Canadian Jewish community. French is a better indicator of Sephardic identity, since Morocco is the largest single source of Jewish immigration to Canada, and Moroccan Jews are primarily French-speaking. Jews from France and Belgium, whose mother tongue is French, may or may not be Sephardic. Again, persons whose mother tongue is Hebrew — half of whom may be of Sephardic origin — could conceivably be included. Period of immigration is the third factor that can be used to approximate who is Sephardic. The major French-speaking Sephardic immigration to Canada occurred between 1958 and the mid-1970s; however, it is harder to pinpoint other population movements before and after that include Sephardic Jews. How many Sephardic Jews live in Canada? Given the limitations of the data, we have developed an estimated range of between 18,870 and 25,805 Sephardic Jews living in Canada in 1991. The lower figure is based on the place-of-birth variable, and the higher on mother tongue. By either criterion, 75 to 80 percent of all Sephardim in Canada live in Montreal. Because of their numerical strength and their centrality to Montreal Jewish life, the subsequent analysis will be limited to that population. Age Structure: The analysis of age structure is based on mother tongue rather than place of birth, since most persons in the youngest age range were born in Canada and would not otherwise be counted. Jews with a mother tongue of French or Hebrew are considerably younger than the Montreal Jewish community as a whole. Among Jews whose mother tongue is CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 243

French or Hebrew, 22.7 percent and 23.7 percent, respectively, were under the age of 14 in 1991, compared to a 19-percent average for all Jews in Montreal. Similarly, only 10 percent of Jews whose mother tongue is French and only 6 percent whose mother tongue is Hebrew were over the age of 65 in 1991, compared to 22.4 percent for all of Montreal's Jews. Jews whose mother tongue is Arabic or Spanish are somewhat older than the Jewish community as a whole. These persons in fact represent an older generation, and their mother tongues are not being passed on significantly. Still, Sephardim as a whole are considerably younger than the Jewish community average. Household Structure: Fewer Sephardic Jews live alone than the Montreal Jewish average: 10.1 percent of Moroccan-born Jews lived alone, compared to 14.1 percent of the Jewish community as a whole. Similarly, Moroccan-born Jews tend to have larger families: 44 percent of all households headed by a person born in Morocco consisted of four or more people, compared to 22.1 percent of all Montreal Jewish households. A similar pattern obtains for households headed by persons whose mother tongue is French or Hebrew: 32.6 percent of all French mother-tongue households and 34.2 percent of all Hebrew mother-tongue households consisted of four or more persons. Education and Income: Persons with a mother tongue of French have somewhat lower levels of educational attainment than the Montreal Jewish average. The proportion of all Jews currently enrolled in university or who had completed a bachelor's degree or higher in 1991 was 42 percent, compared to 37 percent of persons whose mother tongue is French. (See table 19.) Jews whose mother tongue is French have smaller incomes than the Montreal Jewish community as a whole, and these differences are most noticeable at both the high and low ends of the income range. Almost twice as many Jews overall had incomes over $75,000 as Jews whose mother tongue is French (9.1 percent vs. 5.0 percent). Similarly, 37.8 percent of Jews whose mother tongue is French earned less than $10,000, compared to 31.3 percent of the entire Montreal Jewish community aged 15 plus and living in families. (See table 20.) Poverty levels are higher as well. One out of four Jews born in Morocco or Israel lived below the poverty line in 1991, compared to one out of five in the community as a whole.

Patterns of Jewish Identification and Intermarriage

INTERMARRIAGE Information on intermarriage is based on the count of self-reported Jewish persons living in families in which at least one spouse was not Jewish, based on the standard definition utilized throughout this study. (The census data do not allow for distinctions between Jews by birth and converts, those who became Jews by choice.) In 1991, 16.4 percent of all Jewish persons living in married households 244 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 reported one non-Jewish spouse.7 Nationally, 14 percent of all Jews, or nearly 47,000 persons, lived in intermarried families. This represents a substantial increase in the last ten years, when the rate was 9.7 percent. Younger Jews have higher intermarriage rates than older Jews: 18 percent of all 19-39-year-olds living in married households were part of intermarried families. In the 25-39-year-old age group — the group with the highest likelihood of recent marriages, the intermarriage rate was 20.9 percent, over 7 percentage points higher than the Canadian rate overall. By contrast, 14 percent of all persons aged 40-64 and 5 percent of persons aged 65-plus lived in intermarried families. As in 1981,8 Jews who marry non-Jews had higher levels of educational achieve- ment than Jews who marry other Jews: 34.6 percent of all persons over age 19 in Canada in 1991 were either studying at university at the bachelor's level or had already received a B.A. degree, compared to 37 percent of Jews in the same age range living in intermarried families. At the graduate level, 17.3 percent of all Jews over age 19 had completed a graduate degree, compared to 23 percent of that age group in intermarried families. Similarly, a somewhat higher proportion of Jews who marry non-Jews have incomes of $45,000 or over: 20.8 percent of all Jewish persons in intermarried families, compared to 19.4 percent of all Jewish persons in families. At lower income levels, 16.6 percent of Jews in intermarried families in Canada had incomes below $10,000, compared to 21.4 percent of all Jewish families. In terms of origins, intermarriage is far more common among persons born in Canada and other countries of the West than among persons born elsewhere; Russians and other Eastern Europeans have far lower intermarriage rates than persons born in Canada, the United States, or Western Europe, as do persons born in North Africa (i.e., Morocco). Substantially more Jewish men than Jewish women marry someone who is not Jewish. Among all intermarried families, 49 percent included Jewish men married to non-Jewish women and 42 percent Jewish women married to non-Jewish men. This despite the fact that the gender mix in the Canadian community is 49.4 percent male and 50.6 percent female. The remaining 9 percent of persons in intermarried families represent Jewish children living in families where the head of the household is a single non-Jewish parent. This situation most likely pertains to children of intermarriage who, upon the divorce of their parents, continued to live with the non-Jewish parent.

'The 1990 National Jewish Population Survey conducted by the Council of Jewish Federa- tions found an intermarriage rate of 28 percent in the United States. The two data sets are not exactly matched. The Canadian data include all persons living in the household, while the U.S. study reports only the religion of the married couple. 8J. Torczyner, The Jewish Family in Canada (Council of Jewish Federations-Canada, 1985). CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 245

PATTERNS OF JEWISH IDENTIFICATION As previously mentioned, the definition of "Jewish" in this study is based on the interplay of the ethnic origin and religion variables. What cannot be determined from the census is what the individual responses (religion alone, religion and ethnic origin, ethnic origin and no religion) mean in terms of the strength or content of the respondent's Jewish identity. Still, an analysis of the data suggests that ethnic identification alone reflects weaker Jewish ties and commitment than ethnic combined with religious identification. Looking at the data on Jews who identify only on the dimension of ethnic origin, with no religion (approximately one out of ten Jews), an interesting pattern of geographic variation emerges. (See table 2.) Montreal has the lowest rate of "non- religious identification" at 4.4 percent, followed closely by Toronto at 7.1 percent. Vancouver's rate, by contrast, is close to 26 percent, followed by Halifax and Ottawa at 10.9 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively. The same geographic pattern obtains for the close to 50,000 persons who identified with a religion other than Jewish while indicating at least part of their ethnic origin to be Jewish: the lowest proportions were in Montreal and Toronto, the highest in Halifax and Vancouver. When the two ethnically identified groups ("no religion" and "other religion") are combined, they account for 9 percent and 13 percent of the Jewish population in Montreal and Toronto and 48 percent and 44 percent in Halifax and Vancouver. There is a strong correlation between type of identification and intermarriage rates: those communities in which a higher percentage of Jews identified by ethnic origin without religious affiliation also had higher rates of intermarriage. Montreal had the lowest intermarriage rate (6.6 percent) and Vancouver the highest (24.3 percent). (See table 21.) The marked differences across Canada in both intermarriage rate and type of identification are associated with both the size and the institutional completeness of the different communities. The two largest Jewish centers have the lowest rates of intermarriage (Montreal, Toronto), while generally speaking, smaller Jewish population centers have higher rates of intermarriage. Data on communities with fewer than one hundred Jews point to intermarriage rates so high that often there is not a single family in which both husband and wife are Jewish. The situation in small communities reflects two mutually reinforcing phenomena: on the one hand, young Jews who wish to find Jewish partners leave small communities and move to bigger centers — leaving behind those persons who are more assimilated and less concerned about this issue. Simultaneously — leaving aside Toronto for the moment — it has been the smaller communities that have experienced the most rapid growth, often from young people who may also be less concerned about marrying another Jew. "Institutional completeness" refers to the number, variety, and nature of institutions in a community. Such institutions as schools, synagogues, community centers, and the like serve as important communal reference points and provide opportuni- 246 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 ties for persons to meet and interact. Obviously, larger communities have more people and greater resources with which to support institutional life, and communities with a longer history are likely to have a greater repertoire of institutions. Thus, the older community of Winnipeg — despite the fact that it has fewer Jews than Vancouver — has a lower rate of intermarriage than the younger community. Rapidly developing communities have fewer institutional resources. Existing resources become strained in attempting to identify new members and respond to their needs. As suggested above, communal affiliation may not be a priority for persons who move to cities with small Jewish populations and few institutional resources. At best, there is a considerable time lag before rapidly expanding communities can establish a more elaborate institutional framework. Thus, Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, which have experienced rapid growth within a relatively short historical period, have high rates of intermarriage. (The fact that intermarriage rates are lower in the upper age ranges also helps to explain the lower rates in cities like Montreal, Windsor, and Winnipeg, which have higher percentages of elderly.)

U.S.-CANADA COMPARISON By whatever method intermarriage rates are calculated, those in Canada are substantially lower than those in the United States. Three factors are suggested to explain the differences. One is immigration. A higher percentage of Canadian Jews are immigrants, and immigrants have lower rates of intermarriage. According to the 1990 U.S. National Jewish Population Study, 92 percent of all American Jews were born in the United States.' Only 67 percent of all Canadian Jews were born in Canada. Among Jews who immigrated to Canada between 1981 and 1991, only 8 percent lived in families in which one of the partners was not Jewish. Not only are immigrants less likely to intermarry, they are more likely to live more traditional Jewish life-styles, have larger families, and live in cities with well-developed Jewish institutional networks. In the last ten years, 80 percent of Jewish immigrants to Canada settled in Toronto or Montreal. A second factor is population density: almost three out of four Canadian Jews live in the major urban centers of Toronto and Montreal (74 percent), and in each of these cities intermarriage rates are substantially lower than the Canadian average. These cities have Jewish populations of over 100,000. In the United States, only half of Jews live in cities with Jewish populations of 100,000 or more persons. As we have already indicated, there is a strong correlation between lower intermarriage rates and communities that have larger Jewish populations and a broader network of Jewish institutional life.

'Barry A. Kosmin et al., Highlights of the CJF1990National Jewish Population Survey (New York, Council of Jewish Federations, 1991). See also Sidney Goldstein, "Profile of American Jewry: Insights from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey," AJYB 1992, vol. 92, pp. 77-173. CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 247

The third factor is ethnic identification. In general this is stronger in Canada and not just among the Jews. Canada has distinct French and English cultures and traditions as well as a policy of multiculturalism that encourages expression of ethnic identity. While the census does not provide data on qualitative aspects of Jewish identification, other studies have examined this dimension. In particular, data from the "CRB Study," as analyzed and published by Federation CJA (formerly known as Allied Jewish Community Services),10 point to demonstrably higher levels of Jewish identity and practice in Montreal, which are in part related to the heightened awareness of ethnic and religious identity in that city. The report states that "the proportion of Orthodox Jews in Montreal is higher than those of other Jewish communities across the continent. For instance, at 24% it is higher than New York (13%), Miami (11%), Toronto (10%). . . ."" According to these data, synagogue attendance and membership rates are very high, rates of Jewish education are second only to Dallas in North America, and levels of ritual observance — such as attending a Passover seder, lighting Sabbath candles, and fasting on Yom Kippur — are substantially higher than in Toronto and in the United States overall.

Some Conclusions and Implications Largely as a result of immigration, between 1981 and 1991 the Canadian Jewish community grew by 14 percent — a more rapid growth rate than that of the Cana- dian population as a whole. As a result of the increase, Canada now has the fifth largest Jewish population in the world. Canadian Jews maintain high levels of Jewish identity and are increasingly well educated, professional, and economically successful. Even though Jewish continuity appears secure, demographic changes confront Canadian Jewry with a number of challenges. While some communities have grown dramatically, others have lost population. Whereas Toronto and Montreal were in the past of similar size and shared comparable influence, Toronto has grown by 70 percent in the last 20 years and is now home to nearly half of Canadian Jews. Increasingly, national and international Jewish attention and power are focused in Toronto, with Jewish organizations moving to or establishing their headquarters in that city. Because of Canada's more decentralized governance (compared with the United States) and the delicate relations between English and French Canada, the decline of Jewish population and influence in Montreal has definite political implications. With Jewish numbers and influence more and more concentrated in Ontario, the Jewish community may well have difficulty maintaining equitable representation and relationships in Quebec and other regions. In the west, Vancouver is the most rapidly expanding Jewish community and is

'"Montreal Jewish Community: Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviours. Allied Jewish Community Services, Community Planning Department, Montreal, 1991. "Montreal Jewish Community, p. 22. 248 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995 now the third largest Jewish community in Canada. Vancouver also has the highest rates of intermarriage in Canada, the highest percentage of unaffiliated Jews, and the weakest measures of Jewish identity. As the Jewish population is likely to continue growing, the challenge to the national Jewish agenda is to create institutional resources in that city and an enriched Jewish community that may stimulate increased identification. The intermarriage rate of Canadian Jews is lower than that of American Jews, but it is increasing. The data do not at present suggest that the Canadian experience will parallel the American one, but communal attention should clearly be directed toward relevant age groups and Jews in particular cities. Cities with declining Jewish populations like Winnipeg and Montreal have the highest percentages of Jewish elderly. They face issues of youth retention, attracting immigrants, responding to the needs of the elderly, and maintaining necessary institutional infrastructure. Although the community has been ambivalent in its response to Russian and Israeli immigrants — based on the feeling that Israel should be their home — the fact is that they constitute the majority of Jewish immigrants to Canada. Distinct Russian, Israeli, and North African Jewish communities, for example, are being formed in various parts of Canada, suggesting that the issue of inclusion and representation of these emerging groups needs to be addressed. For the significant minority of Sephardic Jews, maintaining community cohesion and enriching their institutions are priorities. Communal concern is also needed for the growing number of single parents and their children and for women who are in the workforce and responsible for both children at home and aging parents. Remaining social and economic barriers to women's equality also require advocacy. One of the most pressing concerns is "invisible" poverty, with one out of six Jews in Canada living below the poverty line — which is comparable to the poverty rate among all Canadians. The Jewish poor are a minority among Jews because they are poor and a minority among the Canadian poor because they are Jews. They have virtually no representation in Jewish communal bodies; yet, with likely cuts in governmental social benefits, their needs will inevitably increase. Project Genesis, funded by the Montreal Federation, is a model program in which volunteers assist the poor to develop new services and advocate for government assistance. The Jewish community in Canada has undergone a profound and unparalleled demographic transformation in the past two decades. Despite increasing concerns about rising rates of poverty and intermarriage and changes in family status, the prospects for the future of Canadian Jewry remain decidedly positive. The number of Jews has steadily increased, Jewish identity is still relatively strong, and the proportion of children continues to rise. By responding positively and creatively to the changing needs of an increasingly diverse Jewish population, the organized CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 249 Jewish community can help to insure a thriving Jewish life in Canada well into the 21st century.

JIM L. TORCZYNER SHARI L. BROTMAN 250 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 1. POPULATION GROWTH, JEWISH AND TOTAL, CANADA AND SELECTED CITIES, 1981-1991

Jewish Jewish Total Total Population Population % Population Population % Location 1981 1991 Change 1981 1991 Change

Canada 312,060 356,315 +14.2 23,797,380 26,994,045 +13.4

Halifax 1,455 1,755 + 20.6 269,890 317,630 + 17.7 Montreal 103,425 101,210 - 2.1 2,774,000 3,091,115 + 11.4 Ottawa-Hull 9,130 11,555 + 26.6 711,915 912,095 + 28.1 Toronto 128,650 162,605 + 26.4 2,954,910 3,863,110 + 30.7 Hamilton 4,650 5,145 + 10.6 534,380 593,800 + 11.1 London 2,330 2,670 + 14.6 277,540 376,720 + 35.7 Windsor 2,125 1,785 -16.0 241,600 259,290 + 7.3 Winnipeg 16,050 15,050 - 6.2 572,210 645,610 + 12.8 Calgary 6,065 7,155 + 18.0 580,585 748,210 + 28.9 Edmonton 4,665 5,430 + 16.4 643,795 832,160 + 29.3 Vancouver 14,795 19,375 + 31.0 1,235,855 1,584,115 + 28.2 CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 251

TABLE 2. CANADIAN JEWS BY IDENTITY DEFINITION, CANADA AND SELECTED CITIES, 1991

Location JROE % JRJE % NRJE % Total %

Canada 36,390 10.2 281,680 79.1 38,245 10.7 356,315 100.0

Halifax 90 6.3 1,175 82.7 155 10.9 1,420 100.0 Montreal 9,980 9.9 86,735 85.7 4,500 4.4 101,210 100.0 Ottawa-Hull 1,200 10.4 8,710 75.4 1,645 14.2 11,555 100.0 Toronto 17,370 10.7 133,745 82.3 11,485 7.1 162,605 100.0 Hamilton 625 12.1 3,830 74.4 685 13.3 5,145 100.0 London 375 14.0 1,815 68.0 475 17.8 2,670 100.0 Windsor 240 13.4 1,325 74.2 225 12.6 1,785 100.0 Winnipeg 645 4.3 12,685 84.3 1,720 11.4 15,050 100.0 Calgary 650 9.1 4,805 67.2 1,695 23.7 7,155 100.0 Edmonton 445 8.2 3,595 66.2 1,385 25.5 5,430 100.0 Vancouver 1,965 10.1 12,400 64.0 5,015 25.9 19,375 100.0

JROE Jewish religion, other than Jewish ethnic origin JRJE Jewish religion, Jewish ethnic origin NRJE No religion, Jewish ethnic origin

TABLE 3. IMMIGRANTS AND INTERPROVINCIAL MOVERS, CANADA AND SE- LECTED CITIES, 1991

Percentage of Location Immigrants Percentage of Movers

Canada overall 8.5 13.0

Halifax 1.7 3.3 Montreal 7.5 1.0 Ottawa-Hull 3.8 3.8 Toronto 10.6 2.0 Hamilton 4.0 .7 London 5.0 0.0 Windsor 7.2 0.0 Winnipeg 2.2 1.1 Calgary 12.2 3.0 Edmonton 13.5 2.5 Vancouver 6.0 6.0 252 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 4. BIRTHPLACE OF JEWISH IMMIGRANTS, 1981-1991

Birthplace Percentage

USA 14.0 West, North, South Europe, Scandinavia 9.4 East Europe excl. USSR 7.2 USSR 24.2 Middle East excl. Israel 2.0 Israel 19.2 South Africa 11.0 Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia 7.3 Asia 1.2 South America 2.3 Other 1.2 Total 100.0

TABLE 5. AGE DISTRIBUTION, CANADIAN JEWS, 1981 AND 1991

1981 1991 Change

All Ages 312,060 356,325 + 14.2 0-4 19,795 25,895 5-9 18,785 25,925 + 2.3 10-14 19,145 23,035 15-19 20,640 22,180 -2.0 20-24 23,330 20,560 25-29 27,015 21,735 -5.0 30-34 29,700 25,305 35-39 21,165 30,460 + 5.7 40-44 15,275 31,975 45-49 15,110 22,205 + .7 50-54 15,935 15,715 55-59 19,125 14,335 -3.4 60-64 17,760 15,665 65-69 18,275 18,335 -1.2 70-74 15,160 15,910 75-79 9,090 13,715 + 1.9 80-84 4,675 8,760 85-89 1,610 3,515 +.7 90+ 460 1,100 CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 253

TABLE 6. FERTILITY RATES, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, BY AGE, 1991

15-34 35^4

Number of children 1 2 3 4 + 1 2 3 4 +

Canadian 10.6 10.6 3.2 1.5 14.6 40.8 18.1 5.9 Jews All 11.1 11.3 4.0 1.2 15.3 39.6 19.3 10.0 Canadians

45-64 65 +

Number of children 1 2 3 4 + 1 2 3 4 +

Canadian 10.6 38.0 28.2 13.0 17.1 38.1 21.8 9.9 Jews All 10.2 27.2 22.2 27.7 12.1 20.4 16.8 33.6 Canadians

TABLE 7. MARITAL STATUS, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PER- CENTAGES)

Marital Status Jews All Canadians

Married 48.6 48.8 Divorced/separated 5.0 5.2 Widowed 5.6 4.4 Single 40.9 41.6 Total 100.0 100.0 254 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 8. FAMILY STATUS, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PER- CENTAGES)

Family Status Canadian Jews All Canadians

Husband-wife families 76.1 74.3 Single-parent females 5.8 7.5 Single-parent males 1.4 1.5 All other families 1.9 3.6 Unattached persons 14.2 12.3 Total persons 100.0 100.0

TABLE 9. EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADI- ANS, AGED 15 + , 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

Education Jews AH Canadians

Less than high school 23.8 38.1 High school 11.9 14.8 Trade certif. 16.4 26.3 Univ. to B.A. 32.3 16.8 Above B.A. 15.5 3.9 Total 100.0 100.0 CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 255

TABLE 10. INCOME, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PERCENT- AGES)

Income Ranges Jews All Canadians

< $10,000 26.4 34.0 $10,000-524,999 26.2 31.0 $25,000-$44,999 23.0 24.0 $45,000-574,999 14.5 8.6 $75,000-5124,999 6.2 2.1 $125,000+ 4.0 .6

TABLE 11. INCOME OF CANADIAN JEWS, BY OCCUPATION, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

510,000- 525,000- 545,000- 575,000- Occupation < 510,000 524,999 544,999 $74,999 $124,999 $125,000 + Total

Manager 6.1 14.1 28.6 27.0 14.1 10.1 100.0 Architect, 10.0 14.9 30.4 34.6 8.5 1.5 100.0 engineer Human 19.0 24.2 27.4 21.9 5.9 1.6 100.0 services Clerical 25.8 36.5 28.7 7.0 1.5 .3 100.0 Sales 22.7 23.7 26.9 15.1 7.8 3.6 100.0 Manual 35.0 30.1 23.5 9.2 1.5 .6 100.0 Accountant, 5.4 11.1 24.1 25.7 18.4 15.3 100.0 notary, lawyer Doctor, 3.2 5.5 11.3 17.9 27.9 34.2 100.0 dentist 256 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 12. LABOR-FORCE STATUS, BY AGE, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADI- ANS, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

15-39 40-64 65 +

Canadian Jews In labor force 77.9 83.6 21.9 Out of labor force 22.1 16.4 78.1

All Canadians In labor force 79.6 73.9 9.2 Out of labor force 20.4 26.1 90.8

TABLE 13. EDUCATION BY GENDER, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

Jewish Jewish Canadian Canadian Education Women Men Women Men

Less than high school 24.9 22.6 38.5 37.7 High school 14.0 9.8 16.4 13.1 Trade certif. 17.8 15.0 25.5 27.2 Univ. to B.A. 31.6 33.1 16.7 17.0 Above B.A. 11.6 19.5 2.9 5.0 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 257

TABLE 14. OCCUPATION BY GENDER, AGES 15-64, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

Jewish Jewish Canadian Canadian Occupation Women Men Women Men

Manager 11.0 19.2 6.2 10.6 Architect, engineer 1.7 5.8 1.3 5.1 Human services/teaching 22.0 12.5 14.4 6.4 Clerical 22.2 6.5 23.8 6.5 Sales 11.0 16.3 7.3 8.0 Manual 7.2 16.3 18.8 47.3 Acct., notary, lawyer 2.7 8.1 1.5 1.8 Doctor, dentist 1.1 4.6 .2 .5

TABLE 15. INCOME BY GENDER, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

Jewish Jewish Canadian Canadian Income Range Men Women Men Women

< $10,000 20.9 31.7 23.7 43.7 $10,000-524,999 20.7 31.4 27.5 34.7 $25,000-$44,999 22.2 22.8 30.3 17.0 $45,000-$74,999 18.9 10.0 14.6 3.7 $75,000-$ 124,999 10.1 2.9 2.9 .5 $125,000 + 7.2 1.1 1.1 .1 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 258 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 16. POVERTY RATES BY AGE AND GENDER, CANADIAN JEWS AND ALL CANADIANS, 1991

Canadian Jews All Canadians % of % of Age % of Poor % of % of Poor % of & Entire Age Entire Entire Age Entire Gender Number Pop. Group Poor Number Pop. Group Poor

0-14 74,345 21.0 13.4 17.9 5,615,405 21.0 19.8 22.4 15-34 89,040 25.1 15.6 25.0 8,556,365 32.0 19.1 32.9 35-54 99,885 28.2 10.7 19.2 7,259,040 27.2 13.1 18.9 55-64 29,890 8.4 12.6 6.7 2,364,075 8.9 18.6 8.9 65-74 34,075 9.6 22.0 13.5 1,830,805 6.9 23.6 8.7 75 + 27,130 7.7 36.3 17.7 1,082,280 4.1 36.6 8.0 Male 175,140 49.4 14.0 43.9 13,160,835 49.3 16.7 44.1 Female 179,225 50.6 17.4 56.1 13,547,135 50.7 20.5 55.9 M 65 + 28,045 7.9 22.1 11.1 1,244,630 4.7 21.4 5.3 F65 + 33,160 9.4 33.6 20.0 1,668,455 6.2 33.7 11.3

TABLE 17. HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS, NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF ALL JEWS (MONTREAL, TORONTO, CANADA), 1991

Number Number Survivors of All Location of Survivors of All Jews Jewish Persons

Montreal Male 4,485 48,705 9.2 Female 3,855 52,050 7.4 Total 8,340 100,755 8.3 Toronto Male 6,760 79,700 8.5 Female 5,925 82,145 7.2 Total 12,685 161,845 7.8 Canada Male 14,185 175,140 8.1 Female 12,945 179,225 7.2 Total 27,130 354,365 7.6 CANADIAN JEWS: PROFILE FROM THE CENSUS / 259

TABLE 18. HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS BY PLACE OF BIRTH, 1991

Place of Birth Number Percentage

Austria 610 2.3 Belgium 260 1.0 France 495 1.8 Netherlands 100 .4 Germany 1,055 3.9 Albania & Greece 15 .06 Italy 45 .2 Yugoslavia 110 .4 Czechoslovakia 1,535 5.7 Hungary 3,415 12.6 Poland 10,180 37.5 Romania 3,750 13.8 USSR 5,560 20.5 Total 27,130 100.0

TABLE 19. EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, FRENCH-SPEAKING JEWS AND ALL JEWS IN FAMILIES, MONTREAL, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

Less Than Trade University to High School High School Certificate B.A. Above B.A.

French- 21.0 17.0 25.0 26.8 10.3 speaking All Jews 25.0 15.0 17.2 29.6 12.3 260 / AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, 1995

TABLE 20. INCOME, FRENCH-SPEAKING JEWS AND ALL JEWS IN FAMILIES, MONTREAL, 1991 (PERCENTAGES)

$10,000- $25,000- $45,000- < $10,000 $24,999 $44,999 $74,999 $75,000+

French- 37.8 25.6 21.1 11.4 5.0 speaking All Jews 31.3 26.0 20.1 14.1 9.1

TABLE 21. INTERMARRIAGE RATES, CANADA AND SELECTED CITIES, 1991

Location Percentage Intermarried

Canada overall 12.9 Calgary 20.3 Edmonton 22.9 Halifax 19.1 Hamilton 16.3 London 17.4 Montreal 6.6 Ottawa-Hull 17.1 Toronto 9.0 Vancouver 24.3 Windsor 12.0 Winnipeg 12.0