Tag: census

Canadians Jews doing well

Prof. Dr. Morton Weinfeld was the latest speaker in Kolot Mayim’s 2022/23 series. (photo from Twitter)

On Feb. 5, Morton Weinfeld, a professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal, presented the talk The Jewish Glass Is Half Full, as part of the 2022/23 Building Bridges Zoom lecture series put on by Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria.

Weinfeld, the child of Holocaust survivors from Poland and the author of Like Everyone Else But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, started teaching at McGill in 1977 and has seen more than 4,000 students participate in his course on the sociology of North American Jewry.

The course, Weinfeld explained, formed the basis of his book, in which he uses Jews as a case study for the challenges in Canada of identity, culture and acceptance of the country’s multicultural position. By his own description, he tends to take a more liberal stance on Israel.

Weinfeld confessed at the beginning of his talk that the track record for predicting the future has been, and remains, dismal. The same is the case for sociological studies of the Jewish community, he asserted. As an example, he noted that the social sciences in the 20th century missed the mark on predicting the Holocaust, the triumph of Zionism, and the revival of orthodoxy in North America, among other things.

“Thus, I am doing this presentation with humility, in case anyone thinks I can predict the future,” he stated at the outset.

Accentuating the positive at first, Weinfeld praised Canadian multiculturalism. “Canada is committed to helping promote and enhance cultures, and Canada also will try to offer these cultures maximum participation in Canadian society. So, if you want to be a professor at McGill, or you want to run for a cabinet post in any government, you are free to do that. Canada will remove the barriers that prevent you from achieving that.”

In Weinfeld’s view, the Canadian Jewish community is currently doing quite well in this regard, particularly when compared to other minority groups in Canada and Jewish communities elsewhere in the world.

“One of the reasons why Jews have done well in diasporic settings [like Canada] is because they have been at it for such a long time,” he said. “For at least 2,000 years, since the Roman exile, Jews have had no choice but to learn how to live in a variety of the diasporic settings. Practise makes perfect. Other Canadian minority groups have not had anything like this.”

Weinfeld offered another piece of news: that the Canadian Jewish population is growing. While the number of Jews self-identifying as ethnically Jewish decreased from the 2011 Census to the 2021 Census, the number of Jews self-identifying as Jewish by religion increased from 329,500 in 2011 to 335,295 in 2021. In the context of this statistic, he referred to a 1964 cover story in Look magazine called “The Vanishing American Jew,” which painted a bleak future for North American Jewry, with intermarriage being among the main concerns. Look is no longer around, he noted, but the number of Jews in North America has grown and, “over the past two decades, the fears of assimilation have become muted.”

Further, the pluralism seen in the Jewish community, from liberal denominations to orthodoxy, is a source of strength, said Weinfeld. Together, he said, the different groups combine to make Jews in Canada far more interesting and viable, despite the lack of understanding each group in the community may have for one another.

Weinfeld characterized Jews in Canada as having a high-degree of voluntary self-segregation; that is, each group tends to congregate more within its own circles. However, he said, the comfort of one group can lead to a bolstering of overall Jewish identity.

“Those doom and gloom predictions for Jewish disappearance, certainly in the United States and Canada, have been excessive,” he said.

Weinfeld then spoke about the presence of antisemitism in modern North American society, pointing out that, just a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable for a former American president to dine with an unabashed antisemite like Kanye West.

“There is no question that antisemitism is a reality in Canadian Jewish life,” Weinfeld said, referring to surveys and polls showing that millions of Canadians believe in conspiracies theories, often with Jews as the masterminds behind them.

Canada, according to surveys by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is worse than Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands when it comes to levels of antisemitism, but fares better than France and Germany.

Regarding the situation at Canadian universities, Weinfeld said, “I think that, on campuses today, there is a tendency to dismiss the concerns of those Jewish students that like to support Israel. And I’m not speaking of the extreme right, I’m speaking of very liberal, progressive Jewish students who want to also retain Israel’s right to exist.”

Later in his talk, Weinfeld warned, “I think that we may be in for a rocky period – with regard to antisemitism and its links with Israel, Israeli policy and Zionism, in part because of the new Israeli government. But I want to be very clear, the seeds of all of that predate the current Israeli government.”

Rabbi Suzanne Singer of Temple Beth El in California, a former journalist, will wrap up this year’s speaker series on April 9. With a history of leadership at Kolot Mayim, Singer will talk about Hope: How Do We Find Hope in a World with Unending Problems? To register for this talk, visit kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Trouble with the census

These are not easy days for print media, so it was with a bit of dark humour that your devoted scribes here at the Independent reacted to the latest tranche of Canadian census information released last week.

According to the census, the number of Jews in Canada fell to 143,665 in 2016 from 309,650 five years earlier – a precipitous decline of more than 50%. Looking on the bright side, we concluded that, by that measure, this newspaper’s circulation had just doubled based on the proportion of Canadian Jews who subscribe. Great news, right?

But the census figures are actually not a laughing matter. Governments at all levels rely on this information to make determinations about spending allocations, policy determinations and all manner of decisions. Likewise, nonprofit organizations, think tanks and academics base their research and outreach on the figures, providing Canadian society, decision-makers and legislators with evidence-based policy recommendations and solutions to tough problems.

The Jewish community in Canada faces a number of challenges, including assimilation, de-affiliation and low birth rates among most denominations. But a decline of 50% in five years does not reflect any or all of these issues. There is a larger structural concern. To have a population decline with such speed is clearly a sign of flawed science, an issue immediately identified by various experts when the numbers were released.

In 2011, during that census, Canadians were asked to identify their ethnicity and “Jewish” was among the 24 examples offered. More than 250 ethnic identities were reported, however, and the examples on the 2016 census form were determined based on the most prevalent responses from 2011. This did not include “Jewish.”

Without “Jewish” as a choice, some scholars and policy analysts suspect that many Jews selected “Canadian” as a response or may have entered their or their ancestors’ countries of origin, for example, “Russian” or “French.”

Calculating the number of Jews in North America has never been an exact science. A century ago, some jurisdictions estimated the number of Jews based on school absenteeism during the High Holidays.

But technology and systems for assembling and analyzing data have improved over time so that estimates of populations and identities should have become easier and more reliable. That said, we cannot expect to arrive at accurate answers if we do not ask the proper questions. No matter how advanced the systems, software or algorithms, bad data will result in bad analysis.

While it makes some sense that Statistics Canada failed to include “Jewish” as an example – given the reasonable explanation that the examples they chose were based on the most common responses from the previous census – the problem raises the issue of how much the prompts given, or the wording of the census questions in general, affect the results. It also raises concerns about the lack of understanding and consensus about Jewish identity. This confusion is not limited to government apparatchiks, but to many Jews ourselves.

Judaism is a religion. Jewish is an ethnic identity. There are Jews who are atheists and do not adhere to Judaism, but this does not negate their Jewish ethnicity. (This is additionally problematic, it should be noted, because identifying Jews – and using proscribed genealogical theorems to do so – has been a tool used to discriminate against us and in the service of genocide.) Even discussing ethnicity is a fraught topic today, with a hearty discussion taking place right now over the inclusion of Jews under the larger “white” umbrella.

If there is one thing we can perhaps agree on it is that ticking boxes on a form, by definition, literally forces people into figurative boxes. This may not raise difficulties if one identifies straightforwardly as, say, “French” and “Roman Catholic” or “Scottish” and “United Church.” It may be easy for an individual who is a religious Jew to identify themselves as Jewish both in religion and ethnicity. But those whose religious identity may not align precisely with their Jewish ethnicity can stare at a census form and choose an identity that does not entirely comport with their reality.

Even the foregoing statements, broad generalizations that they are, should raise some debate over the accuracy of self-definition and the meanings of the term “Jewish.” While we may not have captured everyone’s interpretation of what the term “Jewish” means to them, this is evidence of the larger case: that forcing people with complex identities to tick one box on a form is to force square pegs into round holes. It creates a challenge for Jewish Canadians. And, in a country that prides itself on encouraging self-expression and welcoming diversity, the census problem raises questions that go to the heart of multifaceted identities and Canada’s willingness to recognize them.

Before the next census, in 2021, Jewish Canadians should have a collective discussion that helps us clarify our own relationships with the terms “ethnicity” and “religion,” and then ensure that the government understands that counting populations accurately requires a recognition of the complexities.