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Historical Introduction to the Jewish Community of Quebec Professor Ira Robinson, Department of Religion, Concordia University The Jewish community has been a vital part of Quebec society for well over two centuries. Jews inaugurated the first synagogue in Montreal, Shearith Israel, in 1768. In doing so, they constituted the first non-Christian, non-aboriginal community in what would become Canada. The people who made up this community came here from countries which did not extend most political and civil rights to Jews. In the developing societies of North America, however, the restrictions which characterized the situation of European Jewish communities had become less relevant. By the end of the eighteenth century, Lower Canada, as Quebec was then called, faced the then controversial issue of whether Christians alone were to enjoy full political rights or whether these rights could be extended to others, such as Jews, as well. Ultimately, in 1832, the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada voted to politically enfranchise Jews. Quebec was the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to do this, over a quarter century in advance of England in this regard.
To explore more of Montreal's Jewish history,
visit the Interactive Museum of Jewish Montreal. The Jews who came to Quebec in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries found a generally welcoming environment, and contributed significantly to Quebec’s social and economic advancement. The community, however, remained fairly small in numbers. As late as the Canadian Dominion Census of 1871, the Jewish community of the Province of Quebec numbered less than 500 souls. This situation would change drastically at the very end of the nineteenth century. At that time a massive wave of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, seeking economic betterment and equality of opportunity came to Canada as it came to the United States, England, Argentina, and other countries hospitable to immigration. Because governments at that time did not offer a comprehensive system of social welfare, but rather left institutions like hospitals and orphanages to be directed by religious communities, the Jewish community early on developed its own “social safety net” of clinics and mutual aid societies along with an impressive list of religious and cultural institutions such as synagogues, schools, libraries, and newspapers. These institutions fostered a Jewish religious and cultural creativity which made Montreal into a Jewish community that contributed significantly to the development of Jewish culture in North America and worldwide. It was the enormity of the Holocaust, perpetrated by the racist antisemitism of Nazi Germany against the Jews of Europe, that served to alter for the better the attitudes of many in Quebec toward their Jewish neighbours. The late 1940s saw a significant renewal of Jewish immigration to Quebec by survivors of the Holocaust, who greatly contributed to the growth of the Jewish community demographically, economically and culturally. In the 1950s, Quebec began to absorb yet another major wave of Jewish immigration, this time not from Europe but primarily from North Africa. These Jews were bearers of a significantly different Judaic culture, Sephardic, than that of the overwhelmingly European, or Ashkenazic culture of the Quebec Jewish community. Moreover, these new Sephardic immigrants were speakers of the French language, and their presence required the Jewish community to adjust its language of discourse and its ways of doing things. It also required the general community of Quebec to change its image of Jews as being solely Anglophone. Smaller but significant immigrations of Jews from the Former Soviet Union, Israel, Argentina, and other places in the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first further increased the diversity of the Jewish community. The tremendous changes which have characterized Quebec in the latter part of the twentieth century, including the Quiet Revolution, Bills 22 and 101, and the Referenda of 1980 and 1995, have had a significant effect on the Jewish community. The Jewish population of Quebec peaked at approximately 120,000 in 1971, and stands presently at about 93,000, nearly all of whom live in the Greater Montreal area. This demographic diminution has caused some basic changes that have had the effect of reorienting the community. It is now more Francophone than previously, and its Sephardic Francophone component, now numbering more than 20,000, is being successfully integrated into the community’s leadership that historically had been almost entirely Ashkenazic in composition. Its younger generation–both Ashkenazic and Sephardic–is more fluently bilingual than in the past. Its Hasidic community makes up a greater percentage of its demographic base than previously. It is nonetheless recognizably the same Jewish community whose traditional strength and cultural creativity make it the envy of other similarly-sized North American Jewish communities. A Brief Historical Chronology of the Jewish Community in Montreal
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