Understanding Canada’s Jews

In Canada, Jewish identity is hard to measure but still strong

TO GET a sense of the ambivalence, and also the residual strength, of Jewish identity in Canada, meet Itamar Shani and his business partner Rotem Tal, who run a vegan restaurant in Vancouver. 

Mr Shani grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Israel but proved insufficiently devout to satisfy his family. Mr Tal likes the teachings of Buddhism, but the tattoo on his forearm speaks of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), and he wears a Star of David on a beaded necklace. The food they serve may not be classic kosher cuisine but there is plenty of Israeli-style hummus. Their establishment attracts young Jews who are not especially religious but want some connection with their heritage.

Like those restaurateurs and their clients, many Canadians of Jewish origin sit somewhere on a spectrum between a full embrace of their forebears’ identity and faith, and assimilation into the country’s mainstream culture. On the west coast, in particular, this allows for mix-and-match experimentation that makes the size and profile of the Canadian Jewish community hard to assess. 

The most recent Canadian census showed an astonishing decline in the number of self-identified Jews: from 309,650 in 2011 to 143,665 in 2016.  That seems like an unbelievable development, but there is in fact, a simple explanation. In both surveys, Statistics Canada, a government agency, asked respondents to give their ethnic or cultural origin and offered a long list of possible answers. “Jewish” was among the suggested options in the first census, but not in the second one.  So, presumably, many Jews simply identified themselves by the country where they or their forebears had lived most recently. A campaign has started for a Jewish option in the 2021 census.  

Two social scientists, Robert Brym of the University of Toronto and Rhonda Lenton of York University, are now embarking on a wide-ranging study that they hope will provide a more accurate picture. It will ask up to 80 questions about matters such as child-rearing, attitudes to Israel and experience of anti-Semitism. In some ways it will be Canada’s answer to an influential study of American Jews from 2013 that found 22% of self-identified Jews (and 32% of those born after 1980) professed “no religion”.

As with the United States, Canada’s Jewish population began growing in the late 19th century because of pogroms and turmoil in eastern Europe. One stereotype holds that at least in the eastern provinces, Canada’s Jews stayed closer to their old-world roots than American ones. The survey will test that and also look at whether migration to the west is a path out of active Judaism. Mr Brym has said he is prepared to find some extremes of assimilation and religious devotion.  Ms Lenton says they want to discover whether, for Jews in general, Canada lives up to its self-image as a mosaic (a land where different groups keep their identity) as opposed to the American “melting-pot” where there is pressure to assimilate.  

The survey’s sponsors have also cited more specific concerns. Jewish leaders in Toronto want to know more about recent-ish arrivals from Russia, who were classified as Jewish under the Soviet system but may have little connection to faith; their counterparts in Montreal are concerned about the numbers migrating to the Pacific. 

But, as is noted by Richard Menzies of the University of British Columbia, the Pacific community’s growth, which started in the 1980s, is not merely a phenomenon of footloose Canadians. Vancouver’s free-wheeling atmosphere also attracts people of Jewish origin from other places, like South Africa.

Among the survey’s starting points is an estimate by community leaders that around 400,000 Jews live in Canada. That estimate amounts to less than 2% of the total Canadian population, but it would give Canada the world’s fourth-largest Jewish community after Israel, America and France. Numbers may have been boosted recently by Francophone Jews moving from Europe to Quebec, and possibly by some American Jews moving north. About half the Canadian total are thought to live in the Toronto area and a quarter in Montreal. British Columbia’s total comes to less than 10%.  

The realities of Judaism on Canada’s west coast are a confusing mixture. Lisa Oppenheim, an arts educator, says that when she moved to Vancouver from Calgary, neighbours were surprised by the mezuzah or Hebrew scroll she affixed to her door. Some were Jewish and  told her they were nervous about proclaiming their identity. “They asked me, wasn’t I afraid?” she recalls. “I learned…that there are still people here in Canada who are scared to say they are Jews.” Joshua Sorin, an accountant, notes that economic pressures often force Jews to move to outer suburbs of Vancouver with no synagogues. “This is an easy place not to be Jewish,” as he puts it.    

Rabbi Shmulik Yeshayahu, who moved to Vancouver from Israel 15 years ago, has had a more positive experience. At first he had to contact dozens of people to persuade them to dine and pray at his home, and only seven (less than the 10-strong quorum for a public act of prayer) accepted his first invitation. But now his Friday evening services bring in up to 100 young adults as well as older people and children.

He agrees that Jews can lose their identity in Vancouver, a “colder place” in several senses than Israel, but people have responded well to the collective warmth of the community he has built up.  One of the characteristics of a spectrum is that you can move along it in either direction.