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No 10, 16 July 2006, 20 Tammuz 5766
From Binationalism to Multiculturalism to the Open Society:
The Impact on Canadian Jews
Michael Brown
- The experience of Canadian Jews has been shaped to a large degree by the
country's binationalism (English-French) and multiculturalism and increasingly
by the open society.
- Under binationalism, Canadian Jews suffered from prejudice and exclusion, but
the situation fostered group cohesion. Under multiculturalism, ethnicity was
recognized and many of the barriers that had earlier kept Canada's Jews partially
ghettoized came down. The legitimation of group identity, however, in some ways
encouraged Jewish affiliation and activism.
- With multiculturalism falling out of favor, many in Canada and elsewhere now
laud the individualism of the "open society." Declining communal participation
and rising intermarriage rates among Canadian Jews, however, indicate that both
multiculturalism and even binationalism were more conducive to Jewish group
survival.
It might well be argued that a multicultural society provides the ideal setting for
Jewish life in the Diaspora. And yet, in Jewish and non-Jewish circles, especially among
conservatives, multiculturalism and diversity are now in disfavor. A recent column in
the Toronto Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente, a columnist who is invariably sensible
and humane, moderately conservative but without the disregard for the disadvantaged
exhibited by many conservatives, is illustrative.1
Titled "End of the Multicultural Myth," the column opens with a description of
a family Wente happened upon at an airport: a father and two children "dressed in
western clothes" and a mother "shrouded all in black from head to foot, with a narrow
slit for her eyes...even her hands...covered with black gloves." Wente goes on to
assert her readiness to live with difference, with, as she puts it, "multiculturalism - up
to a point," but she also expresses her unwillingness to accept immigrants to the West
who reject Western values, including the equality of women.
The column speaks favorably of recent efforts in the Netherlands to teach
immigrants to be tolerant toward Dutch mores, not only regarding women's rights
but more contentious issues as well, such as gay marriage. Wente also praises a
Rotterdam bylaw designed to discourage speaking languages other than Dutch in
public, a regulation potentially much more draconian than
Quebec's Bill 101.2
Wente's is, of course, a selective renunciation of
diversity. Gay marriage is acceptable, but the burka is not.
But, as noted, she is a selective and thoughtful conservative
with her own values. And her discontents are just one,
rather mild indication of the growing public reaction
against multiculturalism in many countries including Israel
and Canada. The discovery in Canada of a huge cache of
weapons and explosive materials and the subsequent arrest
of seventeen suspected terrorists in early June 2006 excited a
far stronger reaction against multiculturalism in the rightwing
National Post, published in Toronto. "Did we really
think," columnist Lorne Gunter asked rhetorically, that "the
world's jihadis would fall for our multicultural bumph?"3
What lies behind the outcry is, to a certain extent, the
politically very incorrect fear of the other, especially Islam,
but not only that. Islam is a relatively unknown quantity in
Europe and North America. In general, moreover, people who
walk about hiding their faces, whether in burkas or balaclavas,
arouse unease. Unease has turned to fear and hostility with
the incidents of recent years: the riots in Paris and other
French cities in fall 2005: the underground bombings in July
2005 in London; the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh
in November 2004 in Amsterdam and the train bombings
of March 2004 in Madrid; to say nothing of 9/11 and the
exploits of Osama bin Laden. And there is a "demographic
threat" in Europe as well as in Israel.
The foregoing issues are not the focus here. Rather, they
are part of the background for discussing a perceived political
and social shift in Canada away from multiculturalism,
and the probable impact of that shift on Jews and the
Jewish community there. To analyze that phenomenon,
it is necessary to review some of Canada's social and
constitutional history relating to Jews, a history that may
be divided into three periods, the last of which is (or possibly
is not) in its beginning stages.
The first was the binational period, which stretched
essentially from the British conquest to the 1960s.4 For the
Jewish community this was a time of life on the margins
and in between the cracks. Then came the much shorter
multicultural period of almost full belonging for the Jewish
and other ethnic groups. It began in the 1960s and is still
extant, although showing signs of petering out. Finally, there
is the dawning era of the open society a mono- or bicultural,
monolingual society in which groups count for little, in which
status and wealth can (ostensibly) be achieved by all, and
may the best person win.
The Binational Era
From the British conquest in the mid-eighteenth century
until well after World War II, Canada was a binational,
bireligious, bicultural, bilingual country. Anglo-Canadians
originated in the British Isles and were English-speaking,
tied culturally and politically to England, and Protestant by
religion except for Irish Catholics. French Canadians were
culturally French and Francophone, had family roots in
France, and were universally Roman Catholic.
Those unfortunate enough not to come from either
Britain or France were, in the parlance of twentieth-century
Canadian immigration guidelines, "nonpreferred." People of
color, southern and eastern Europeans, and Jews were more
nonpreferred than others. The dual nature of the country
was enshrined in the quasi-constitution, the British North
America Act of 1867. To a considerable extent, both of
the official nationalities sought to preserve in their New
World setting the traditions of the Old World. The mindset
in binational Canada, unlike that in the more freewheeling
United States, was conservative and traditional.
English Canada was more diverse than French Canada in
these years, but it was at the same time a rather unforgiving
melting pot. The spirit of the period, in the colonies as well
as the mother country, was captured by W. S. Gilbert: "It was
greatly to [their] credit" that Anglo-Canadians were almost
all of UK origin.5 People who came from places other than the
British Isles were accepted on condition that they become
British by culture, allegiance, temperament, and language.
Often tolerance did not extend even to French Canadians. In
1890, the nationalist and imperialist spokesman of English
Canada, D'Alton McCarthy, pronounced Canada "a British
country." The "sooner we take up our French Canadians and
make them British," he declared, "the less trouble will we
leave for posterity."6
In the melting pot7 of the United States, immigrants
from everywhere adopted as their putative ancestors the
Pilgrim Fathers. In English Canada, the unifying figure was
the living British monarch. In French Canada, it was the
actual ancestors of the population, hence the very high
value placed there on "racial" purity - being pure laine - and
the near impossibility of acculturation. In English Canada,
outsiders - those who came from the European continent
and even Jews from Britain - understood the terms of
accommodation. On the occasion of the visit to Canada in
1901 of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (the
future King George V and his wife), the Canadian Jewish
Times proudly proclaimed that "our loyalty is...British not
Jewish."8
Assimilationist Pressure on Jews
Clarence DeSola (1858-1920) provides an instructive
example of a Jew responding to the assimilationist pressure
of English Canada. His family had deep roots in Britain. His
father, Abraham DeSola, was Canada's first ordained "rabbi";9
he was also a McGill professor and the first Jew in the Empire
to be awarded an honorary doctorate. Clarence himself had
made and inherited enough money to take his place among
the plutocrats of Anglo-Montreal. But religious prejudice,
the pressure to conform, and his own insecurities left him
aware of his incomplete Anglo identity.
To fix the flaw, he invented for himself and the other
Jews of Canada an inflated and largely false British Sephardi
background like that of his father - but not his mother and
not even Canada's founding Jewish family, the Harts.10 DeSola
also became a staunch Zionist. He was the first president
of the Federated Zionist Societies of Canada, and his close
associates in the organization included "the most active
and most respected section of [Canadian] Jewry," as Zionist
leader Nahum Sokolow noted.11
Such an involvement was almost unthinkable in most
other countries, especially the United States, for a man of
DeSola's wealth and position. With its sights fixed on the
Land of Israel, Zionism was almost always the doctrine of
admitted outsiders. Indeed, Aaron Aaronson, the Zionist
pioneer, agronomist, and organizer of the Nili spy ring that
aided the British during the Palestine Campaign of World War
I, recognized the poseur in DeSola. In his diary, Aaronson
described the Canadian Zionist as "a charlatan and an egotist,
in the full sense of the word, a liar."12
Outsider Status
In fact, in binational Canada, Jews did not really fit in. Until
well after the turn of the twentieth century, they were merely
a very small and relatively inconspicuous appendage of
Anglo-Canada. As late as 1901, there were just over sixteen
thousand Jews in all of Canada.
Jews' position in the educational system is indicative:
Canadian schools before World War I and beyond were either
Protestant or Catholic. For a time at the beginning of the
twentieth century, Jews in Quebec were actually deemed
legally Protestant for school purposes. Otherwise they would
have had no right to public schooling at all. Jews in Quebec
could not vote in school board elections until well after
World War II, much less stand for office.13
In Ontario, the Protestant schools became "public"
after World War I; the publicly funded Catholic schools
have remained separate to the present day. In Toronto
neighborhoods with a strong Jewish presence, Jews could
and did stand for public school director in the early decades
of the twentieth century. Ida Siegel was one who did so
successfully. But very few Jews were hired as teachers in
Toronto or elsewhere until decades later, and in most places,
even the more open western provinces, the Protestant tone
of the educational system prevailed for many decades.14
After the turn of the twentieth century when their
numbers in Canada were increasing, Jews acknowledged in
many ways their outsider status in the country, their existence
as a third solitude, as Montreal novelist Hugh MacLennan
might have put it.15 In 1884, Yosef Eliayahu Bernstein, an
erstwhile correspondent for the East European, Hebrew language
newspaper Hamelitz, reported from Montreal that
the city was divided into parties: French, English, Scottish,
Irish, Protestants, and Catholics. The only thing they agreed
on, according to Bernstein, was hatred of the Jews.16
In 1910, tensions between French and English Canadians
were again heating up over a number of issues, and both
groups were flexing their nationalist muscles. Montreal's
Yiddish newspaper, the Keneder Odler, commented that,
"A lot of people think that in Montreal there will be a war
between the Protestants and the Catholics. If there is," the
paper predicted, "we Jews will be the first to suffer, from
both sides..."17
The most common way for Canadian Jews to
acknowledge their outsider status over the years was by
affiliating with Zionism, like Clarence DeSola. In the pre-
World War I years, Canada was one of three countries in
the world with the highest per capita membership in the
Zionist movement. The other two were Belgium and (white)
South Africa.
All were binational states where, during the frequent
periods of strife between the two official nationalities
when each group revved up the nationalist engines, Jews
were squeezed between both. They were neither French nor
English in Canada, neither French nor Flemish in Belgium,
neither Afrikaner nor English in South Africa.18 As a result,
they turned to Jewish nationalism. As late as 1956, the
American sociologist David Riesman noted that wealthier
Toronto Jews were largely "other directed," their sights set
"towards London, towards Hollywood-New York, and towards
Tel Aviv."19
Jewish Communal Life under Binationalism
The upside of outsiderness coupled with Canada's
conservative Zeitgeist was that Jews turned inward and
developed a vibrant communal life of their own. The
intermarriage rate was for a long time infinitesimal, and the
aliyah (emigration to Israel) rate to this day has generally
been double that of the United States.20 Traditional Judaism
sustained itself rather better in Canada than in most places,
certainly than in the United States, where an Americanized,
less separatist Judaism emerged, a faith more in line with
American Jews' ability to join the American mainstream.
Until the mid-1950s, there were only three Reform
synagogues in all of Canada, while Zionism, as noted, has
been hugely popular.
In fact, unlike the United States and Europe, there has
been little anti-Zionism in Canada, except among some Jews
on the communist fringe in the 1930s and the Hasidic fringe
today. Among mainstream Jews, Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath
of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto spoke out forcefully
against the concept of Jewish statehood in the 1930s and
early 1940s. But Eisendrath was an American, and he was
eventually sent back where he came from. To balance him,
there was Montreal's longtime Reform rabbi, Harry J. Stern.
Stern was also an American, and he devoted much of his
career in Montreal to interfaith work. (His middle initial was
said to stand for Jesus, both because of his involvement with
Christians and because of his charismatic preaching.) At the
other end of the Zionism spectrum from Eisendrath, Stern
was an admirer of Jabotinsky and of Revisionist Zionism.21
So, if Jews were neither British nor French and neither
Protestant nor Catholic in binational, bireligious Canada,
as the country was de facto from 1759 and de jure from
1867, they were intensely Jewish. If one is a proponent of
Jewish communal life or a Jewish survivalist, this was not a
bad tradeoff. In the interwar years, Zionist emissaries and
fundraisers from the Land of Israel were enthusiastic about
visiting Canada. They could not collect a lot of money because
Canadian Jews were still mostly not-well-off immigrants, but
they appreciated the warm reception in a community that
understood why the Zionist enterprise was essential for the
Jewish people. Almost all of them, from Berl Katzenelson and
Yosef Baratz of the Labor Movement to Arthur Ruppin and
Menachem Ussishkin of the Zionist bureaucracy (although
not Jabotinsky), saw great differences between American
and Canadian Jews. They reported home positively about
the Jewish community in Canada and negatively about the
one in the United States in words that might have sounded
harsh to American Jewish ears.22
Although Jabotinsky was unenthusiastic about
Canadian Jews, he believed that the country's political
system might be a model for Palestine. In a Montreal speech
during a fundraising tour for his New Zionist Organization, he
suggested that Palestine might eventually achieve Dominion
status within the British Empire with rights for Jews and
Arabs similar to those of French and English Canadians in
Canada.23
The Perils of Prejudice
On the other hand, if one were a Jew who wanted to be
a teacher, or studying medicine and in need of a hospital
in which to intern, life in Canada could be stifling. And if
one were a child who was harassed and possibly beaten by
gentile children on the way to and from school, it also did
not seem appealing.
(In a memoir of his late father, the poet Irving Layton,
Max Layton tells of a day he was playing with a group of boys
and discussing family origins. After a while, he ran upstairs
and told his father that one of the boys was French and the
others were of different backgrounds, and all were proud
of their families. "Daddy, what am I?" Max asked. "You,"
the father said, "are Jewish," the scion of rabbis, scholars,
and even warriors, a people with a long and distinguished
history. Max ran downstairs to deliver the good news of his
exalted heritage. On hearing it, his "friends" joined together
in beating him up.)24
And if one were a refugee from Nazi Europe hoping to
save his family by emigrating to Canada, the country did not
look good at all. Canada took in fewer Jews per capita during
the Nazi era than any other country in the Western world.25 For
the individual Jew, opportunity was often limited in Canada
and prejudice sometimes seemed unlimited. But that was the
price to be paid for extraordinary communal vitality.
The Era of Multiculturalism
By the 1960s, the winds of change were blowing in
Canada. Light breezes had been felt before. In 1938, John
Murray Gibbon published a book called The Canadian Mosaic:
The Making of a Northern Nation.26 Gibbon's claim was that
Canada was not a melting pot like the United States nor
even a tight duality of peoples, but rather a social mosaic
that nurtured the diversity of its peoples, the uniqueness
of each ethnic tile. Gibbon's depiction of Canada, however,
was more wishful thinking than a sociological portrait or
a description of political reality at that stage. It should be
seen in part, at least, as a book of its time, namely, the runup
to World War II, when unity - or at least lip service to
unity - was increasingly desirable.
By the 1960s, however, the mosaic notion of Canadian
society really was taking hold. In the immediate postwar
years, it was easier for a Ukrainian veteran of the Waffen SS
to immigrate to Canada than for a "non-preferred" Jewish
veteran of the death camps.27 But soon immigration policy
became less and less restrictive, and immigrants were far less
pressured than earlier to conform to Canadian norms.
One of the reasons, as Lorraine Weinrib and others have
argued, was that Canadians were increasingly ashamed of
their behavior toward Jews during the Nazi years.28 The extent
of Canadians' discomfort with their past was demonstrated
by the popularity of None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews
of Europe, 1933-1948,29 a scholarly account by Profs. Irving
Abella and Harold Troper of Canada's refusal to admit Jewish
refugees even after the war. When the book came out in
1982, the authors and publisher were very surprised that it
became a bestseller, something almost unprecedented for
an academic volume. Indeed, the work had been rejected
by other publishers as "un-Canadian" and unlikely even to
recoup publication costs.30
There were other influences for change as well. The
American Black Power movement raised the flag of ethnic
solidarity and separateness in the great melting pot to the
south. French Canadian nationalists like Pierre Vallières came
to view their situation in Canada as analogous to that of
American Blacks and drew strength from their example.31
Sentiment grew in Quebec for separation, that is, the
province's independence from Canada.
Seeking a New Paradigm
As enthusiasm for Separatism gathered strength, and as
more and more immigrants of non-British, non-French
origin came to Canada, politicians and political scientists
sought alternatives to the binational conception of the
Canadian polity. A royal commission on bilingualism and
biculturalism was established to study the issue and to
suggest a new policy.32 One of the eventual results of the
revisioning of Canada was the country's first constitution
adopted in 1982.
The first part of that document, the Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedoms, provides in Section 27 that the
Charter "should be interpreted in a manner consistent with
the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural
heritage of Canadians." The statement is vague, and it has
had limited impact. More significantly, the Charter contains a
provision (Section 33) unique to Canadian constitutional law
known as the "Notwithstanding Clause." The clause allows a
province to override legislation or court rulings in order to
protect the collective rights of its residents. It may do so even
at the expense of fundamental rights such as the right to life,
liberty, security of person, and equality, the right to freedom
of expression, conscience, association, and assembly, and the
right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and
from arbitrary arrest and detention.
Some rights may not be overridden: democratic, mobility,
language, minority language education (English in Quebec
and French elsewhere), gender equality, and multicultural
heritage rights, as well as the right to denominational (i.e.,
Catholic and Protestant) schooling. From the start, the
Notwithstanding Clause has been controversial because of
the provision for sweeping abrogation of individual rights
in order to protect group rights. It has been used sparingly,
mostly by the province of Quebec to protect French-language
use and education.
Although the Notwithstanding Clause has been useful
to Quebec in maintaining cultural distinctiveness within the
Canadian confederation, it seems to offer little to the smaller
ethnic groups. Sections 16-21 of the constitution enshrine
French and English as the country's official languages. The
only group rights with meaningful, specific constitutional
protection other than those of French and English Canadians
are those of the aboriginal peoples.33
A more significant result of the constitutional deliberations
for groups other than the French and the English was the
government's "Announcement of the Implementation of a Policy
of Multiculturalism within the Bilingual Framework" in October
1971 and the enactment of the federal Multiculturalism Act in
1985. These steps legitimized the preservation of languages and
cultures other than those of Britain and France and of religions
other than Protestantism and Catholicism. Not incidentally, it
was hoped that multiculturalism would provide a means for
satisfying French Canadian aspirations without the breakup
of the country.
A junior ministry, the Department of Canadian Heritage,
was established in Ottawa to promote the new approach.
Funds were appropriated for the teaching in after-school
programs or sometimes as part of the regular curriculum
of so-called "heritage languages," that is, the languages
of immigrants' "old countries." Money was now also made
available for cultural programming, such as folk dancing,
in the ethnic communities, and for some thirty university
chairs of ethnic studies that were established across the
country. Each of these, including a Canadian Jewish Studies
chair split between York University in Toronto and Concordia
University in Montreal, specializes in a different one of the
country's ethnic groups.
The Impact on Jews
For Jews, multiculturalism has meant, in addition to the
university chair, heritage programs in Yiddish and Hebrew
paid for by public funds, (provincial) public funds for day
schools in every province where there were day schools
except Ontario,34 a proliferation of Jewish Studies programs
in Canadian universities, and other opportunities. Perhaps
the most significant tangible result of the new approach has
been manifested in the field of education. Today well more
than half of all Jewish children receiving a Jewish education
in Canada go to day schools, a proportion many times greater
than in the United States.
In less concrete terms, multiculturalism has meant that
in strengthening their own institutions and culture, Jews
were no longer acting as outsiders but rather as exemplary
Canadians. The shift from binationalism to multiculturalism
in Canada has meant, then, that Jews no longer fell into a
constitutional lacuna. Instead, they were full-fledged members
of the Canadian polity.35 To be an involved Jew - or an involved
Italian, or Chinese - was now to be a better Canadian.
But "there's the rub!" Ethnic legitimacy eliminated
many of the barriers that had previously kept Jews and other
outsiders partially ghettoized, somewhat removed from the
mainstream of Canadian life. In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre
Elliot Trudeau appointed the first Jew ever to the federal
cabinet - a development that had occurred in the United
States in 1905 and in Britain in 1909.
Since then, other Jews have served in the federal
cabinet. The most recent was Irwin Cotler, a human rights
activist who played a major public role in freeing Natan
Sharansky from his Russian prison, and a staunch Zionist
with intimate connections to Israel. Jews have also served as
provincial premiers; Supreme Court judges, including Rosalie
Abella, an incumbent on the Court who is the daughter
of Holocaust survivors; university presidents; ambassador
to the UN; provincial lieutenant governor; and virtually
everything else.
In Quebec, a large influx of Francophone Jews from
North Africa since the 1960s has for the first time accorded
a measure of legitimacy to Jews in French Canada as well.
A sign of their acceptance - and of their rejection by the
primarily Ashkenazi established community - was the high
intermarriage rate between North African Jews and French
Canadians beginning in the 1960s.36 In other words, the
multicultural society has led directly to the open society
in which every individual is free to participate as he or she
wishes or can, a society potentially very much like that of
the United States.
A constitutional reflection of the transition can be
found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As noted
previously, the Charter largely focuses on the individual
thereby vitiating the assumptions and practices of earlier
eras that protected group rights. The 1985 Multiculturalism
Act goes further, deriving group rights - other than those
of French and English Canadians - specifically from the
Charter's guarantee of the equality of individuals. And, in
general, the Supreme Court has accepted the notion that
the Charter was intended mainly to protect the individual
and not the group.37
The Open Society on the Horizon
In recent years, there seems to be a growing sense
in Canada and elsewhere that the only really democratic
society is the open society in which individual rights and
freedoms are paramount. Many observers point to a creeping
Americanization of Canadian society that would further
undermine the commitment to meaningful multiculturalism.38
Over time, Canadian governments, perhaps accepting the
logic of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and presumably
reflecting the perceived will of the electorate, have lost much
of their enthusiasm for multiculturalism.
The Department of Canadian Heritage was never more
than a junior ministry. A glance at its website39 in mid-2006
indicates that the mission of promoting the activities of
Canada's multicultural communities is no longer primary.
Multiculturalism has been downgraded to just another
of the Department's branches and is now combined with
Human Rights. Other (more important?) branches have
been established to promote antiracism and women's
rights, among other activities. "Ethnic group" programming
is advertised for only two groups: Blacks and Asians.
Budget constraints are undoubtedly part of the
picture. More likely, however, support has declined because
multiculturalism is no longer seen as a way to defuse Separatist
sentiment among French Canadians, and also because of the
growing reservations about multiculturalism mentioned here
at the outset. Although some Jews, especially the conservatives
among them, applaud the shift, there are good reasons for the
Jewish community to be anxious about it.
Good for the Jews?
As individual Jews, no longer outsiders, move into the
Canadian mainstream, their Jewish activities generally
diminish. (Cotler is an exception in this respect, as is Myra
Freeman, the immediate past lieutenant governor of Nova
Scotia.) It is not that anyone feels obliged or pressured to
be less actively Jewish. But priorities shift and time, energy,
and money are limited.
Canadian Jewish women offer an excellent example of
what the shift from the multicultural to the open society
means. In earlier periods, Jewish women in Canada lived in a
double ghetto, a gender one and an ethnic one. Presumably
they always had the talents and energy they demonstrate
today, but there were fewer outlets for them, fewer means
of self-expression. So they went to work for the Jewish
community in those domains deemed appropriate for women,
chiefly charitable work and social work. Today, however, as
women enter the workforce almost on an equal basis with
men, as impediments to involvement in general or gentile
or formerly all-male organizations fall away,40 talents and
energy once devoted to synagogue sisterhoods, women's
Zionist organizations, and Jewish charitable or educational
endeavors are no longer available to the Jewish community.
The career of Sylva Malka Gelber illustrates the process.
She came from a wealthy Toronto Jewish family that was at
once acculturated and highly active in Zionist affairs and the
Jewish community. When she applied to Barnard College in
the early 1930s, she was refused entry because "the Jewish
quota [for that year] was already filled." For a time, Gelber
worked as a journalist for a Toronto Zionist newspaper, and
she also dabbled in theater.
Unfulfilled, she left Canada for Palestine in 1932. There
she enrolled in the new Va'ad Le'umi School of Social Work.41
Gelber was its first graduate and became a close colleague
of Henrietta Szold. Later she worked in the social services
of the Mandatory Government. In 1948, she left Palestine
for personal and political reasons and returned to Canada, a
country with more and increasing opportunities for women
and for Jews than the one she had left sixteen years before.
Gelber never again had much to do with the Jewish
community. Among other civil service positions, she was
the first head of the Women's Bureau of the Canada
Department of Labour. From 1970 to 1974, she represented
Canada on the UN Commission for the Status of Women.
She was a member of the "Group of 78," an advisory group
of prominent Canadians concerned with foreign policy, and
one of the few Jews to sign its "Statement on Canadian
Foreign Policy in the 1980s." Before her death in 2003, she
endowed the Sylva Gelber Award in Music.42
The same process can be seen in the area of philanthropy,
and recent developments in Toronto are illustrative. In the
last few years, several wealthy Toronto Jews have given large
sums of money to the business schools at York University and
the University of Toronto. The new opera house in Toronto, a
performing arts center there, and the Art Gallery of Ontario
have also received large grants from Jewish donors, some of
whom also give generously to Jewish and Israeli institutions,
and some of whom do not. In an earlier era, most of these
funds probably would have gone to Jewish causes.
Yet another indicator of decreasing involvement in
Jewish affairs in the open society is the intermarriage rate.
Traditionally the rate of intermarriage in Canada has been
considerably lower than in the United States. One source
reports a rate of 7 percent in 1961 and 25 percent in 1984,43
a radical, but not surprising, jump, as the Canadian Jewish
community became more rooted in Canada than earlier, and
as the restrictiveness of the binational period eased in the
era of multiculturalism. Indications are, however, that more
recently the rate has begun to approach that in the United
States and perhaps to exceed it in some localities.
A questionable source reports that in Ottawa in 2005,
48.3 percent of "couple households" with at least one Jewish
member were intermarried couples, and 82.1 percent of such
households under the age of thirty were intermarried.44
A more reliable source based on the 2001 Canada Census
reports that in Winnipeg 62.5 percent of couples under age
thirty with at least one Jewish member were intermarried,
39 percent of couples aged thirty to thirty-nine, and 20
percent of couples forty and over.45
It seems, then, that the era of multiculturalism
characterized by Canadians' devotion to their ethnic group
of origin is drawing to a close. Perhaps it would have died
a natural death, because in legitimizing ethnic difference,
multiculturalism reduced prejudice and ended outsiderness,
paving the way toward the open society. Perhaps the example
of nearby America is irresistible. And perhaps it should be said,
as well, that mindless devotion to diversity and an apparent
hesitation to ensure even minimal adherence to Western
cultural norms and values on the part of immigrants have
not been helpful to the cause of multiculturalism. On the other
hand, the often thoughtless and overgeneralized criticism of
diversity and multiculturalism voiced by many conservatives
today is hastening its demise, perhaps unwisely.
To be sure, segregation - and that was what it was - had
drawbacks. Prejudice and the stifling of dreams and talent
were two of them. But multiculturalism and binationalism
did serve to reinforce Jewish communal life, making available
to the community such people as the uncrowned monarchs
of Jewish Canada in the interwar period, Archie and Lillian
Freiman. The Freimans were wealthy and acculturated; they
were on personal terms with Prime Minister Mackenzie King,
though it is now known that he did not care for them much
or any other Jews for that matter.
Archie Freiman headed the Canadian Zionist
Organization for more than two decades, and Lillian presided
over Hadassah/WIZO during the same years. They were an
extraordinary duo who might well have spent their money
and energy on the general society if it had been more open
and accommodating. The open society on the American
model discourages loyalty to subgroups and, though it is
often less open than it claims to be, extends a standing
invitation to all citizens to participate equally.46 In an open
society, Theodor Herzl might have been Ted Koppel; Tzipi
Livni might have been Madeleine Albright; and Irwin Cotler
might have been Henry Kissinger.
A Loss of Cohesion
Perhaps before celebrating the demise of multiculturalism
or assisting in its suicide, it would be worth recalling
historical precedents. Monoculturalism has often not been
good for the Jews. In the democratic melting pot it can
lead to assimilation; in a totalitarian society like communist
Russia to the suppression of minorities and especially Jews;
in ethnically or religiously homogeneous societies, like
contemporary Saudi Arabia or post-1492 Spain, to the
exclusion of Jews; and even in Israeli Jewish society, to
repression and forced conformity with long-term negative
consequences, as in the case of Yemenite and Moroccan
immigrants and other groups.
On the other hand, multiculturalism has shown some
potential in the places where it has been tried. In interwar
Poland, the constitution guaranteed Jews and other
minorities national rights regarding language, cultural
institutions, and schools. The era began in a promising way,
although Poles' nervousness over their tenuous hold on the
country and their traditional prejudices torpedoed the hopes
and expectations.
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, multiculturalism
worked well, although the Empire collapsed partly because
its nationalities insisted on political independence as well
as cultural autonomy. In Canada, multiculturalism, despite
its contemporary excesses, and even its predecessor
binationalism, with all of its negative features as far as
individual Jews and the Jewish group were concerned,
often served the Jewish community and many Jewish
individuals (and other communities and individuals) well.
Both frameworks served to reinforce group loyalty and to
provide an outlet for the energies of talented Jews to the
benefit of those individuals, of the Jewish community, and
of the Canadian people at large.
* * *
Notes
1. Margaret Wente, "End of the Multicultural Myth," Globe and Mail,
18 March 2006.
2. Bill 101, Charte de la langue française, passed in 1977 by the
Separatist government of the province of Quebec, established
French as the sole official language of the province for almost
all facets of public life. Adjustments to the bill have been made
from time to time, most significantly in the area of education.
On the Rotterdam bylaw, see "The Dutch News in January 2006,"
Expatica website, www.expatica.com.
3. Lorne Gunter, "It Was Only a Matter of Time," National Post, 5 June
2006. See also Christie Blatchford, "Ignoring the Biggest Elephant
in the Room," Globe and Mail, 5 June 2006.
4. Under the French colonial regime, Jews and other non-Catholics
were officially barred from settling in Canada.
5. "For He Is an Englishman," in HMS Pinafore.
6. Quoted in Oscar Douglas Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid
Laurier, vol. 1 (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1965), 128.
7. In his play The Melting Pot (1908), Israel Zangwill employs
two metaphors for the United States: the melting pot and the
orchestra. The melting pot is a crucible used in steelmaking. In it,
various metals - that is, immigrants from various places - become
molten and are blended together to create a new metal that is
superior to any of its now indistinguishable components. In the
orchestra, each instrument - again, immigrants from various
countries - has its own part to play but all play together to create
a new composition.
8. 29 March 1901.
9. Although he was known in North America as Rabbi DeSola,
as a Sephardi religious leader his title really should have been
"Hacham."
10. On DeSola's historical revisionism, see Michael Brown, Jew or
Juif? Jews, Anglo-Canadians, and French Canadians, 1759-1914
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), 64-65. Additional
information on DeSola can be found in Gerald Tulchinsky, Taking
Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community (Toronto:
Lester Publishing, 1992), 40-60.
11. Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism, vol. 2 (London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1919), 355.
12. Aharon Aharonson, Yoman, ed. Yoram Efrati (Tel Aviv: Karni,
1970), 362, diary entry for 2 December 1917, 362. [in Hebrew]
13. See Brown, Jew or Juif? 239-43, 257-58, 318-19, 321-22, and
the sources cited there.
14. See Michael Brown, "From Gender Bender to Lieutenant
Governor: Jewish Women in Canada, 1738-2005," in A Maturing
Community: Jewish Women and Seniors (Toronto: York University
Centre for Jewish Studies, 2005), 6.
15. MacLennan's book, Two Solitudes (Toronto: Collins, 1945)
describes the separate worlds of Montreal's French and Anglo
populations.
16. "The Jews in Canada (North America)" Hamelitz, 11 Iyyar 1884.
[in Hebrew]
17. "The Strong Word," Keneder Odler, 23 October 1910. [in
Yiddish]
18. Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Schocken,
1976), 162.
19. "Introduction," in John R. Seeley, R. Alexander Sim, and Elizabeth
Loosley, Crestwood Heights: A Study in the Culture of Suburban
Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), xi.
20. Cf. Michael Brown, "The Push and Pull Factors of Aliyah and the
Anomalous Case of Canada: 1967-1982," Jewish Social Studies,
Vol. 48 (spring 1986): passim.
21. On Eisendrath in Toronto, see Meyer W. Weisgal, So Far, an
Autobiography (London and Jerusalem: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1971), 92; Stephen Speisman, The Jews of Toronto: A History to
1937 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979), 241-42. Although
there are numerous press clippings of the time relating to Stern's
career as well as his own publications, he awaits his biographer.
22. See, e.g., Yitzchak Eleazari-Volcani [A. Zioni], "From Traveling
Abroad," HaPo'el HaTza'ir, 8 October 1920 [in Hebrew]; Shmaryahu
Levin, New York, letter to Menahem Ussishkin, Meech Lake,
Canada, 19 July 1927, in Iggrot Shmaryahu Levin-Mivhar (Tel Aviv:
Dvir, 1966), 421-22 [in Hebrew]; Arthur Ruppin, Memoirs, Diaries,
Letters, trans. Karen Gershon (London and Jerusalem: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1971), 202-09, diary entry, Chicago, 31 December
1922; Yosef Baratz, "MiCanada," HaPo'el HaTza'ir, 1 May 1931 [in
Hebrew]. On Jabotinsky, see Michael Brown, "A Case of Limited
Vision: Vladimir Jabotinsky on Canada and the United States,"
Canadian Jewish Studies 1 (1993): 1-26. On Katznelson, see idem,
The Israeli-American Connection: Its Roots in the Yishuv, 1914-
1948 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), passim.
23. See Brown, "Limited Vision."
24. Globe and Mail, 7 January 2006.
25. See Irving M. Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many:
Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948, 3rd ed. (Toronto:
Lester Publishing, 1991), passim.
26. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1938.
27. See Harold Troper and Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds: Jews,
Ukrainians, and the Hunt for Nazi War Criminals in Canada (Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press and Markham, Ont.:
Viking Press, 1988), passim, and other sources.
28. Lorraine Eisenstat Weinrib, "'Do Justice unto Us!' Jews and the
Constitution of Canada," in Daniel Elazar, Michael Brown, and
Ira Robinson, eds., Not Written in Stone: Jews, Constitutions, and
Constitutionalism in Canada (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
2003), 33-70.
29. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982.
30. Lecture by Harold Troper, one of the book's authors, Toronto,
November 2005.
31. See Pierre Vallières, White Niggers of America (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 1968).
32. See the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and
Biculturalism (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1969).
33. See esp. Peter Johansen and Philip Rosen, "The Notwithstanding
Clause of the Charter," Parliamentary Information and Research
Service, February 1989 (rev. September 1997).
34. Ontario has been condemned by the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights for funding Catholic schools but not those of
other faiths. The province has ignored the rulings.
35. Among the many works on multiculturalism and the Jews
of Canada are: Howard Adelman and John H. Simpson, eds.,
Multiculturalism, Jews and Identities in Canada (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1996); Bernardo Berdichewsky, Cultural Pluralism
in Canada: What It Means to the Jewish Community (Vancouver:
Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, 1996); Nora Gold,
"Voices from the Field: Multiculturalism as Experienced in Jewish
Social Service Agencies," in Marla Brettschneider, ed., The Narrow
Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Press, 1995), 236-46; Saul Hayes, "Multiculturalism as a
State Policy," in Chaim Spilberg and Yaacov Zipper, eds., Canadian
Jewish Anthology (Montreal: Canadian Jewish Congress, National
Committee on Yiddish, 1982), 48-58; Stuart Schoenfeld, "Canadian
Jewry in a Multicultural Canada: Assimilation, Intermarriage and
Jewish Identity," in Edmund Y. Lipsitz, ed., Canadian Jewry Today:
Who's Who in Canadian Jewry (Downsview, Ont.: J.E.S.L. Publications,
1989), 92-98; Morton Weinfeld, "Canadian Cultural Pluralism and
Its Implications for the Jewish Community," Shofar, Vol. 5 (1987):
1-7; idem, "Canadian Jews and Canadian Pluralism," in Seymour
Martin Lipset, ed., American Pluralism and the Jewish Community
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1990), 87-106.
36. See, among other sources, Evelyn Bloomfield-Schachter and
Jean-Claude Lasry, "Jewish Intermarriage in Montreal, 1962-
1972," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 37 (1975): 267-78; Ronald D.
Lambert and James E. Curtis, "Québècois and English Canadian
Opposition to Racial and Religious Intermarriage, 1968-1983,"
Canadian Ethnic Studies, Vol. 16 (1984): 30-46; Morton Weinfeld,
"Intermarriage: Agony and Adaptation," in M[orton] Weinfeld,
I[rwin] Cotler, and W[illiam] Shaffir, eds., The Canadian Jewish
Mosaic (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 1981), 365-82.
37. See, among other sources, Lorraine Weinrib, "Canada's Charter
Rights Protection in the Cultural Mosaic," Cardozo Journal of
International and Comparative Law, Vol. 4 (1996): 395-422.
38. See, e.g., Michael Adams, Fire and Ice (Toronto: Penguin, 2003),
a polemic against Americanization and for the uniqueness of
Canada.
39. www.pch.gc.ca.
40. A good example is Prof. Judy Rebick, who headed NOW (the
National Organization for Women).
41. Now the Paul Baerwald Faculty of Social Work at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
42. See Sylva Gelber, No Balm in Gilead: A Personal Retrospective
of Mandate Days in Palestine (Ottawa: Carleton University Press,
1989), and other sources.
43. The reliable website Multicultural Canada, www.multiculturalca
nada.ca/ecp/content/jews.html.
44. Jewish Outreach Institute website, http://joi.org/blog/
index.php?p=121. The figures are questionable because they
are given no context, such as an overall rate or the percentage
of marrieds in the various categories. The Institute, moreover,
was created to fight intermarriage and cannot be considered a
dispassionate reporter.
45. Myron Love, "Rabbi Urges Fight against High Intermarriage
Rates," Canadian Jewish News, 25 May 2006. The report is based
on the work of Montreal demographer Charles Shahar.
46. On the effect of inherited wealth and status in Canada's "open"
society, see John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social
Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1985).
* * *
Michael Brown is professor emeritus at York University in Toronto.
In 2006, he was visiting professor at the Halbert Center for Canadian
Studies and the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. Among his recent works is Not Written
in Stone: Jews, Constitutions, and Constitutionalism in Canada
(Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2003), written and edited with
Daniel J. Elazar and Ira Robinson.
Manfred Gerstenfeld, Publisher • Chaya Herskovic, Editor • Howard Weisband, Associate Editor • Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (Registered Amuta), 13 Tel-Hai St., Jerusalem 92107, Israel; Tel. 972-2-5619281, Fax. 972-2-5619112, Email: jcpa@netvision.net.il • In U.S.A.: Center for Jewish Community Studies, 5800 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21215 USA; Tel. (410) 664-5222, Fax. (410) 664-1228 • Website: www.jcpa.org • Copyright. ISSN: 0792-7304
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