From Monkton to Squamish

Plaut, W. Gunther

from monkton to squamish w.gunther plaut The Question "I'd like you to write an article about Canadian Jews," the editor said. "Yes," I responded, "I'd like that. I know the country, and I know...

...For all the differences, we're also seeing some "American" type problems...
...He lived in central Germany where his family had resided for many hundreds of years, fled to England before the war broke out and eventually made it to America, where he is buried...
...Add to this the recent patterns of immigration...
...One thinks of Isaiah (Sy) Kenen, for many years the director of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington...
...from the descendents of 18th century immigrants to Soviet Jews who arrived last week...
...Because Jews have been in Canada a relatively short time, they also lack something of the sense of security that American Jews profess to have...
...And there is Israel, as central to Jewish consciousness in this national community as anywhere in the Diaspora...
...There was no "all-Canadian girl" who lived next door or "spirit of Canadianism" that dwelt in the breasts of its citizens...
...These three are home to 250,000 of our 310,000 Jews, but we also have small communities in places like Monkton or Thunder Bay or Saskatoon which require attention...
...More than in the United States a good number of young and brilliant professionals have given themselves full time to the Jewish community, making the executive ranks of Canadian Jewry second to none in Jewish knowledge and secular education...
...So, except for the smaller communities where things are of needs different, the urban Jew does not worry overly much about the five o'clock shadow that separates him from his Gentile neighbor...
...I know the country, and I know my people...
...It is easy for a Jew to feel at home in Canada and still be Jewish...
...When I had hung up I knew I had been hasty or foolish or both...
...Its professionals and many of its business people are already bilingual, and tomorrow all its Jews will be...
...The pluralism in language reflects a pluralism of culture...
...For many (though for fewer than the leadership would like) Jewish education presents an important concern, and the support of Jewish institutions here and abroad constitutes a strong commitment...
...It has lessened the pressure on minorities to acculturate and amalgamate into the mainstream of the country, to attenuate their culture...
...On the Canadian Jewish Congress: There's really no American counterpart to the CJC...
...Because they are fewer and their history is briefer...
...That they could do so was in part due to the fact that each community had a central address and that all of Canada is conjoined under the umbrella of a single roof organization, the Canadian Jewish Congress...
...European roots remain strong...
...We are officially mandated to represent Canadian Jewry in all its aspects to the government, the public, the media...
...My successor as President of Canadian Jewish Congress, Professor Irwin Cotler of McGill Law School, is a prime example of this kind of leadership, which represents the Jewish component of Canadian citizenry at its very best...
...Founded after the First World War and resuscitated in the wake of Hitler's threat, Canadian Jewish Congress became what American Jewish Congress never succeeded in being, the cultural and political voice of the total community from coast to coast...
...and scholars like Harry Orlinsky and Lawrence Hoffman...
...Where yesterday Jews were almost absent from public positions, they are now found everywhere, from the Chief Justice of Canada to Cabinet posts in the Federal and Provincial governments to prominence in the arts...
...Parts of Florida are I filled with visitors from the Maple Leaf country, who may also be j found in Arizona and southern Cali-' fornia by the thousands...
...Some sessions are carried out entirely in Yiddish, and in some instances there's a good amount of Hebrew or French being spoken...
...In addition to being Jewish, most of them speak English...
...Going into your own shell of cultural isolation is something you need not apologize for...
...On the contrary...
...In the religious sphere it has, however, featured a regrettable degree of internal Jewish polarization...
...This development deeply influenced all minority experiences...
...Canada was wide open after the end of the last war...
...We are just another part of the Canadian mosaic...
...With voluntary isolation, if that is the proper term, comes also a greater intensity in asserting one's selfhood, a sentiment that is reinforced by the background of our Jewish population...
...In this respect the small communities do far better than the large ones...
...Except for the 20,000 to 30,000 North African Jews who cling to French as their mother tongue, Jews are part of the English cultural ambience...
...There was no "un-Canadian" to rival the "un-American" of the southern neighbor...
...Yet, because of economic conditions and the always overwhelmingly strong attraction of the American marketplace, there has been a continuous brain drain on our people...
...Whatever overt nationalism existed was negatively based, a response to the fear of the American presence...
...In Toronto and Montreal the survivors suddenly began to play an important role...
...It is part of the Canadian expectation and the country's social texture...
...Leaving or staying—while in Jewish history this has ail too often been the question, Canadian Jews have found that their problems have different dimensions...
...and the man who was perhaps the greatest though largely unsung hero of Jewish prose and poetry in the English language, A. M. Klein, lived and died as a Jewish civil servant in Montreal...
...And about a third of us here are Holocaust survivors, which affects both our sensitivities and our agenda...
...It cannot be a one-person job...
...Let it be added, however, that anti-Semitism has played no part in this, certainly not until now, and Jewish education has been liberally supported...
...National organizations, local synagogues, and everything in between all have the right to send delegates, through a rather complex formula...
...Today the small towns are losing their Jewish populations...
...When you come to a CJC convention, there are four official languages—Yiddish, Hebrew, English and French...
...Canadian Jews probably visit Israel in somewhat larger numbers (proportionately speaking) than American Jews, but they too don't stay to settle...
...On the Canadian Jewish agenda: There is an increasingly interlocking character to the general Canadian agenda and the Jewish agenda...
...Mixed marriage was rare and divorce practically unknown a generation ago...
...from survivors of the Holocaust to those who don't want to know that it ever occurred...
...They took to the streets, they were not satisfied with briefs and submissions and back door diplomacy and high class shtadlanut...
...But I think the process can be arrested through a real engagement with the process of change...
...There's no dichotomy between being a good Jew and being a good Canadian...
...And everyone accepts that CJC is the formal voice of the community...
...In 1980, Canadian Jews would find this kind of substitution unacceptable...
...Several years ago my wife and I were at a wedding reception for members of my own congregation...
...If, for example, we are dealing with a matter relating to Israel, we must bear in mind that we are not making the case for Israel or for Israelis...
...We eveniiave American war resisters...
...We have our Israelis who form Hebrew speaking enclaves and on the whole have little desire to integrate themselves into the community at large...
...Nairn Kattan is a key figure among the francophone literati...
...The points of similarity are strong and numerous...
...Here, at best a few ridings (as the election districts are called) have a preponderant Jewish voice...
...In some Provinces like Manitoba and Quebec, Jewish schools are also funded by the State...
...Points of Difference But there are divergencies also, and it is these that give our community its special flavor and dimension...
...Toronto has 500,000 Italian-speaking people, 200,000 German-speaking people, 100,000 East Indians and Sikhs, 100,000 Blacks and more than 100,000 Jews—plus large numbers of Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese...
...First Impressions My notes reveal that I was first and foremost impressed with the near absence of Canadian nationalism...
...There is an important Yiddishist element to Canadian Jewry...
...If Jews participate in that change, we will come to feel at home in Quebec...
...federal funds are granted to a thousand groups that want to maintain their heritage, be they Mennonites or Ukranians, Greeks, Chinese or Jews...
...We are probably a composite of all your national representative agencies rolled up into one...
...Because of their numbers and their cohesion they transformed the temper of Toronto and Montreal, and that in turn communicated itself to every other city...
...And I'm also the first person who has had extensive relations not just with the State of Israel, but also with the Arab countries...
...Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, Miriam Waddington and Eli Mandei purvey their poetry in Canada...
...Accents abound...
...Jews go ? yachting and skiing, and the ' wealthier ones have their own boats : and chalets...
...Perhaps, but then again perhaps not...
...And the rest of the problems with which you are so familiar—assimilation, zero population growth and so on—are part of our concern as well...
...On the west coast, Vancouver— new, brassy and shining—has attracted some of the finest young people from around the country...
...There is one quick way to speak about these, 300,000 people living from coast to coast, who range from the fully assimilated to the totally isolated...
...The strain, of course, is a result of the fact that I am not of the "leisure class," and I have to hope that those people who supported my candidacy at the plenary will also involve themselves in the work of the organization between plenaries, so that the job can be done...
...The nation therefore was never conceived as a melting pot...
...All this was outside of the Canadian experience...
...I was the first person under 40, and the first academic, to be elected to the presidency of the CJC...
...While the United States still operated on an immigration law that dated from the 1920s, Canada welcomed tens of thousands of DPs into its land...
...And in the west there are viable communities with special problems—such as Edmonton, where a few thousand Jews face some 30-40,000 Arab citizens in town...
...Quebec first of all...
...out-groups...
...Board membership in synagogues is no longer the number one prestige occupation for volunteers...
...Funded or not, Day Schools have a much higher profile than they have in most cities of the United States...
...Quite a few among them were Jewish—though they rarely showed up in Jewish institutions...
...But in the post-war boom the immigrants prospered, and by the mid-60s they had become sufficiently rooted to make themselves heard as an important part of the community...
...Equality is a more recent experience here and in some quarters (as for instance in Quebec in the '30s) anti-Semitism had a semi-official tinge...
...After the early battles had been fought between the English and the French it became a two-nation country with two distinct languages and traditions...
...Now, for the first time, there is a genuine encounter between the French fact and the Jewish fact, and that creates short-run difficulties, but there is no reason, if the encounter is genuine, that the Jewish future in Quebec should be any less Jewish or any less creative...
...Winnepeg has been an island of Jewish identity in the midst of the prairies, with a strong Yiddish speaking component and a secular national inclination, both of which are notable when one considers the geographic isolation of that community...
...But the separationist tendencies in Quebec have taken their toll of the Jewish community...
...L?vesque might have been replaced by a strong Left-wing radical faction, with distinct Third World leanings, strongly anti-Zionist...
...Why would Canadian Jews provide a more pliable topic...
...Its Jewishness has a tinge of the unique—and until the recent diminution of its numbers the city was perhaps the Finest example of Jewish spirit anywhere in the Diaspora...
...the children move away or intermarry...
...Put differently: We seek support for Israel's cause not on the grounds that it is a Jewish cause but on the grounds that it is a just cause...
...They reacted vigorously to even the smallest rumblings of anti-Semitism and in short order gave to the two Jewish communities an activist bent neither had had before...
...The country had never had its Joe McCarthy, and for anyone who had lived through the American agony that very absence betokened something important...
...Canadians were much more relaxed about their existence...
...We have to be sensitive to the reality there, the reality of Quebec becoming more French and the reality of the Jewish feeling of powerlessness...
...Canadian policy in very diverse areas has a Jewish dimension—and so, too, what Canadian Jews say and do about things like the Middle East or Soviet Jewry has consequences for Canada at large...
...The majority of our children receive something of a Jewish education and community monies are heavily invested in educational buildings and enterprises...
...On the contrary, multiculturism is an attitude which has been raised to the level of national policy...
...Some notes from that conversation: On Canadian Jewry: Canadian Jewry is still predominantly an immigrant community...
...Now it is the Federation or the United Jewish Appeal, the hospital and the various Israeli university societies that provide outlets for the energy of community leaders...
...Beyond that, Montreal has something of the French verve and sparkle...
...We have our share of golf clubs and tennis clubs that cater primarily to Jews and Gentile golf and tennis clubs 1 which exclude them...
...Also, there was always the danger that, had Quebec opted for independence and had such separate status actually been achieved, the moderate separa-tionists now led by Ren...
...We are also, fo,r obvious reasons, very concerned by the situation in Quebec...
...If we seek to speak in the name of Canadian Jewry, we must insure that Canadian Jewry feels itself part of the process—and that means, specifically, actively reaching out to elements of our community that haven't, traditionally, felt any special tic to the CJC...
...This knowledge has waned significantly, but at public Jewish meetings it is agreed that in the debate, one may speak Yiddish, and there are certain events which will always feature at least one Yiddish speaker...
...They, like everyone else, worry about the recession, inflation, energy and Canadian unity...
...But not all the talent went or stayed away...
...Canadian Jews are distinctly middle-class...
...That is especially remarkable in view of the fact that the "Jewish vote" cannot compare in importance with New York, Los Angeles and the other large American urban centers...
...from the utterly poor to the super-rich...
...It has to do with the fact that Canada was the product of two cultures which expected to exist side by side...
...Mordecai Richler has come home...
...It is not quite the same way anymore, but what both ails and distinguishes Canada to a significant degree is the low flame of nationalist fervor on any discoverable level...
...Our surveys show that 60 percent of Montreal Jewry has visited Israel, a far higher proportion than in the United States...
...The organizing motif in Canada has always been multi-culturalism, as distinct from the idea of the melting pot...
...It occurred to me that the best way to approach my recalcitrant subject was to recapture my frame of mind when, 19 years ago, my family and I first crossed the border from the United States and took up residence in this land...
...Rabbi Morris Kertzer, publicist and lecturer...
...Jews are doubly out...
...Every three years we have a plenary assembly, with representation from every element of the community...
...In the early years the survivors did what all immigrants do when they first come to a strange land—they struggled with language and the stark needs of making a living...
...Yiddish...
...Our intermarriage rate is below yours still, but it has quadrupled in the last two decades...
...He felt never at home in the States, but I think Canada might have appealed to him a little more because he was first and foremost a European, and there are still European traces one can discern here and sometimes experience...
...To counteract these powers of the deep, McCarthy called on the good and noble (and usually white) "founders and patriots" and proceeded to irrigate the soil of the land with suspicion and hatred...
...On the whole it has found governments, both Federal and Provincial, readily accessible...
...They think of Canada and Israel, of Ottawa and Jerusalem—and believe they are very fortunate that their lot has fallen in so pleasant a place...
...And 25 percent of Quebec Jews speak Hebrew, which reflects the role of Jewish education in the community...
...I believe in the intrinsic morality of the Israeli case, and I believe that there is a basic convergence of interests and values between Canada and Canadian Jewry with respect to Israel...
...We've also got a very elaborate internal agenda...
...But so far its traditions have not proven sufficient to withstand the blandishments of acculturation and mixed marriage...
...Shortly after his election, moment spoke with him...
...The 200 guests, except for us, all spoke Arabic as their native tongue, another reminder of the multiplicity of strands that go into the fabric of Canadian Jewry...
...Points of Similarity At first blush Canadian Jews appear to be much like their co-religionists to the south...
...So one could go on and describe the smaller communities that have struggled to maintain their identity: in St...
...In Quebec, of course, the matter is reversed: There, the Catholics are the norm and the Protestants the-protected...
...Many American institutions have gained from Canadian emigration...
...In many ways, the most distinctive feature of Canadian Jewry, one that dramatically distinguishes it from the American community, is the role here of Holocaust survivors...
...A Special Flavor Each community has of course its own particular character...
...we're dealing with serious people on serious matters, and we will not help our cause to be merely passionate without being well-informed...
...But our mandate extends beyond "foreign policy"—that is, beyond the representation of Jewry to the external world...
...In Montreal, for example, more than half of the 110,000 Jews have had some Jewish school education, and 40 percent of them attended a day school...
...Thick volumes have been produced about them and most of them not too successfully...
...So, some 15,000, mostly young, Quebec Jews have left recently...
...In Toronto today, 50 percent of the population is foreign born...
...Three-fifths of all Canadian Jews live in Montreal and Toronto...
...If younger people continue to leave, there could be a real sense of dislocation...
...As a result, our advocacy of this position or that position must be an informed advocacy...
...There was a time when Jews lived everywhere, even in the farthest reaches of the country, in northern Manitoba or in the little towns of central Saskatchewan (where my daughter-in-law was born and her father was a country doctor...
...Still, the French consider themselves as the in-group and everyone else as the While the United States still operated on an immigration law that dated from the 1920s, Canada welcomed tens of thousands of DPs into its land...
...Our people feel an innate uneasiness when it comes to a highly nationalistic society with monolithic cultural trends, and that is what Quebec has become under the leadership of the Parti Qu?becois...
...Canadian Jewry—in 3000 words...
...Soviet Jewry has been a deep and vocal concern, though the integration of Soviet Jews into the Jewish community has run into the same snags as in the States...
...The majority came in three big waves: after, the turn of the century, after the first war, after the second war...
...If the case cannot be made on its merits, it should not be made...
...Separationism has also affected some of the western Provinces, but Jewish issues are not at stake there because—such at least is the talk— the aim of the currently still small group of separationists is to join the United States, a prospect which does not cause western Jews any anxiety...
...Our advocacy must be "Cana-dianized," lest it fall on deaf ears...
...McCarthyism was firmly grounded in a mystical sense of American destiny which, as the Senator from Wisconsin proclaimed, was threatened by dark forces both from within and without...
...What they feared was total francisation which would cut their children off from a thorough knowledge of English language and culture, something they want them to have, because they want them to be part of the life-stream of the 5,500,000 American Jews to the south...
...The small remainder live in towns with a few dozen Jewish families or a lone survivor who is the sole guardian of a now deserted synagogue...
...When I arrived in 1961 someone could address my Board of Trustees in Yiddish and be understood by most...
...Because of this, a small and determined group fired by deep commitment and persistence could make a lasting impact on the totality of Jewish life...
...a dozen foreign newspapers grace the stands...
...the new arrivals haven't made it yet, but all going well they will—and soon...
...An American Jew would find all of this very familiar...
...There is of course a reason for this...
...W. Gunther Plaut is the Scholar-ln-Residence and Rabbi Emeritus at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto and immediate past president of the Canadian Jewish Congress...
...I think that my election reflects the involvement of a group of constituencies that have hitherto not been that involved, so that now, along with the traditional constituencies, we will be hearing more from people in the academic sector, from women, from Sephardic Jews, from younger people...
...A long-time activist in a variety of causes (Chairman, Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East, lawyer for Anatoly Shcharansky), Cotler is the youngest person to hold the CJC presidency...
...During the Vietnam period there were some 10,000 in Toronto, most of whom stayed on...
...The land lacked a sense of manifest destiny and national purpose, however mystical or ill-defined...
...John's, Newfoundland, in Halifax, or in Quebec City...
...Church and State are not separated here, there being no such principle ensconced in any Federal constitution...
...Affiliation with the synagogue runs about the same as in the States, and the attention or inattention to religion is not much different...
...Yet this love of Israel has not produced a phenomenal outbreak of aliyah fever...
...Because the two founding nations were not only different in language but also in religion, Roman Catholicism is firmly and legally protected everywhere and most of its parochial schools receive funding from the Provinces...
...And the context of our advocacy, as well as its content, must be appreciated...
...Many Sefardim speak Ladino as well as French...
...By strange coincidence I am writing these notes exactly 19 years after that day, and it happens also to be the 100th birthday of my late father...
...A hundred years ago, an American rabbi proclaimed, "America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem...
...Toronto was more recently established, is more democratic in its approach, and in many ways resembles Montreal in the intensity of its commitment...
...Rather, it is the high political involvement of Jewish leadership in all parties that have made the 300,000 Jews far more important than their small numbers—barely more than one percent of the total population—would warrant...
...F A Conversation with Irwin Cotler Irwin Cotler, 40, is the newly elected President of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the senior lay position in Canadian Jewry...
...Luminaries like the late Rabbis Maurice N. Eisendrath and Barnett Brickner received their training in Toronto...
...They are deeply attached to Israel, to a degree that makes them fairly hawkish on questions of Israel policy...
...There is a Minister of State for Multiculturism...
...we're making the case in Canada, and for a Canadian foreign policy...
...On the contrary, in Ontario an old provincial Act dating from 1944 still makes the teaching of (Protestant) Christianity normative, although not, of course, compulsory...
...the rest are distributed over a dozen of Canada's largest cities, from Vancouver and Winnipeg to Halifax...
...For many decades Montreal has felt th^jnflu-ence of a few "families" whose participation in the community has been a matter of noblesse oblige...
...Would anyone ask an author to write an article about American Jews in that space...
...We have a French radio and television station and one outlet that broadcasts continuously in two dozen foreign languages...
...For me it was a relief from the often phony and pretentious sentiment which passed for patriotism in much of American history...
...But to describe them is another thing...
...About 75 percent of Canadian Jewry is found in three cities—Toronto, Montreal and Quebec...
...Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau himself comes from a "Jewish" riding...
...Canadian society has always had a kind of tribal character, defined of course by the two founding communities, the Anglophone and the Francophone, and for us the consequence has been that Jews do not feel apologetic or defensive about giving expression to what might be called Jewish tribalism...
...Under such circumstances, the possibility of anti-Semitism could not be ignored...
...from those who participate in Alberta's energy boom to those who can't find a job in Newfoundland: they are all Canadians, they are all Jews...
...Now we have caught up with the United States or nearly so, and assimilation is making heavy inroads...
...My contemporaries are, for the most part, second—and even first—generation Jews, whereas my counterparts in the States are third and fourth generation...
...On any given night you can go to see a Chinese or Indian film or listen to a lecture in Italian or German...
...And we should expect a sympathetic and supportive response not because Jews are making the case but because of the intrinsic merits of the case...
...Politically, the Canadian Jewish community has had its ups and downs...

Vol. 6 • December 1980 • No. 1


 
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