History of the Jews in Canada

Settlement (1783–1897)[edit]

Prior to the British conquest of New France, Jews lived in Nova Scotia. There were no official Jews in Quebec because when King Louis XIV made Canada officially a province of the Kingdom of France in 1663, he decreed that only Roman Catholics could enter the colony. One exception was Esther Brandeau, a Jewish girl who arrived in 1738 disguised as a boy and remained a year before she was returned for refusing to convert.^[10] The earliest subsequent documentation of Jews in Canada are British Army records from the French and Indian War, the North American part of the Seven Years' War. In 1760, General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst attacked and seized Montreal, winning Canada for the British. Several Jews were members of his regiments, and among his officer corps were five Jews: Samuel Jacobs, Emmanuel de Cordova, Aaron Hart, Hananiel Garcia, and Isaac Miramer.^[11]


The most prominent of these five were the business associates Samuel Jacobs and Aaron Hart. In 1759, in his capacity as Commissariat to the British Army on the staff of General Sir Frederick Haldimand, Jacobs was recorded as the first Jewish resident of Quebec, and thus the first Canadian Jew.^[12] From 1749, Jacobs had been supplying British army officers at Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1758, he was at Fort Cumberland and the following year he was with Wolfe's army at Quebec.^[13] Remaining in Canada, he became the dominant merchant of the Richelieu valley and Seigneur of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu.^[14] Because he married a French Canadian girl and brought his children up as Catholics, Jacobs is often overlooked as the first permanent Jewish settler in Canada in favour of Aaron Hart, who married a Jew and brought up his children, or at least his sons, in the Jewish tradition.^[13]


Lieutenant Hart first arrived in Canada from New York City as Commissariat to Jeffery Amherst's forces at Montreal in 1760. After his service in the army ended, he settled at Trois-Rivières, where he became a wealthy landowner and respected community member. He had four sons, Moses, Benjamin, Ezekiel and Alexander, all of whom would become prominent in Montreal and help build the Jewish Community. Ezekiel was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada in the by-election of April 11, 1807, becoming the first Jew in an official opposition in the British Empire. Ezekiel was expelled from the legislature with his religion a major factor.^[15] Sir James Henry Craig, Governor-General of Lower Canada, tried to protect Hart, but French Canadians saw this as an attempt of the British to undermine them and the legislature expelled Hart in both 1808 and following his re-election in 1809. The legislature then barred Jews from holding elected office in Canada until the passage of the 1832 Emancipation Act.^[16]


Most of the early Jewish Canadians were either fur traders or served in the British Army troops. A few were merchants or landowners. Although Montreal's Jewish community was small, numbering only around 200, they built the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal, Shearith Israel, the oldest synagogue in Canada in 1768. It remained the only synagogue in Montreal until 1846.^[17] Some sources date the actual establishment of synagogue to 1777 on Notre Dame Street.^[18]


Revolts and protests soon began calling for responsible government in Canada. The law requiring the oath "on my faith as a Christian" was amended in 1829 to provide for Jews to refuse the oath. In 1831, prominent French-Canadian politician Louis-Joseph Papineau sponsored a law which granted full equivalent political rights to Jews, twenty-seven years before anywhere else in the British Empire. In 1832, partly because of the work of Ezekiel Hart, a law was passed that guaranteed Jews the same political rights and freedoms as Christians. In the early 1830s, German Jew Samuel Liebshitz founded Jewsburg (now incorporated as German Mills into Kitchener, Ontario), a village in Upper Canada.^[19] In 1841 Isaac Gottschalk Ascher arrived in Montreal with his family, including sons Albert (who later in 1856 together with Lewis Samuel a British Orthodox Jew would rent the upper floor of Coombe’s Drug Store at the corner of Yonge Street and Richmond Street in Toronto for High Holy Day services which became only the second temple in Canada), Isidore a highly acclaimed Canadian poet and novelist, Jacob A Canadian Chess Champion (1878, 1883). By 1850, there were still only 450 Jews living in Canada, mostly concentrated in Montreal.^[20]


Toronto’s first Jewish prayer services were held on Rosh HaShanah, September 29, 1856, initially with a Sefer Torah borrowed from Canada’s only other synagogue, the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of Montreal. A year later in 1857 a permanent Torah arrived as a gift from Albert Ascher's (Asher) parents in Montreal (Isaac Gottschalk Ascher & Rachel Altmann) inscribed in Hebrew to “The Holy Congregation, Blossoms of Holiness [Pirchei Kodesh], in the city of Toronto.” The name resonated amongst the congregants, and on July 23, 1871, the synagogue officially adopted the name פרחי קדש — Toronto Holy Blossom Temple .


Abraham Jacob Franks settled at Quebec City in 1767.^[21] His son, David Salesby (or Salisbury) Franks, who afterward became head of the Montreal Jewish community, also lived in Quebec prior to 1774. Abraham Joseph, who was long a prominent figure in public affairs in Quebec City, took up his residence there shortly after his father's death in 1832. Quebec City's Jewish population for many years remained very small, and early efforts at organization were fitful and short-lived. A cemetery was acquired in 1853, and a place of worship was opened in a hall in the same year, in which services were held intermittently. In 1892, the Jewish population of Quebec City had sufficiently augmented to permit the permanent establishment of the present synagogue, Beth Israel. The congregation was granted the right of keeping a register in 1897. Other communal institutions were the Quebec Hebrew Sick Benefit Association, the Quebec Hebrew Relief Association for Immigrants, and the Quebec Zionist Society. By 1905, the Jewish population was about 350, in a total population of 68,834.^[22] According to census of 1871, there were 1,115 Jews living in Canada with 409 in Montreal, 157 in Toronto, and 131 in Hamilton with the rest living in Brantford, Quebec City, St. John, Kingston and London.^[20]