Ira Robinson. A History of Antisemitism in Canada.

Weinfeld, Morton

Ira Robinson. A History of Antisemitism in Canada. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015. 300 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $38.99 sc.

This book is a most valuable addition to the writing in the field of Canadian Jewish Studies, and as such, to the broader area of Canadian ethnic studies. It is a well written, engaging work of synthesis, a chronology that provides the first coherent and lucid overview of antisemitism in Canada. Robinson displays a mastery of all previous historical writings on the subject. He is not presenting a full history of Canadian Jewish life. Rather he focuses on the specific issue of antisemitism in Canada.

Studies of diaspora Jewish life have often wrestled with two polar foci. The first is to stress the negative, the long history of various forms of discrimination and oppression--what has been termed by the eminent historian of the Jews, Salo Baron, a "lachrymose" conception of Jewish history. The other has been an attempt to focus on the culturally rich and adaptive stories of many diasporic communities before, during and after episodes of acute distress. Obviously this book tilts towards the former, but with a balanced perspective. And of course, diaspora communities vary a great deal in the type and extent of antisemitism directed at them. In fact, looking at the historical record, one can easily argue that North American Jews, or the Anglosphere more generally, have experienced by far the least antisemitism of any community on the planet over the past two hundred years.

But still, the story needs to be told. Indeed, the Jewish case is in a sense iconic, in terms of the struggles of many immigrant groups for full acceptance in Canada. In 1808 Ezekiel Hart was denied his seat in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, because he swore his oath with a kippa and on a Hebrew Bible. Two hundred years later, a Niqabi Muslim woman was nearly denied citizenship because of her religious apparel during the public swearing-in ceremony.

Robinson begins this volume with a helpful definition of antisemitism. Jews, after all, are a religious group as well as an ethnic group. There is today a multidimensional and pluralistic Jewish religion, as well as various forms of Jewish culture, Jewish languages, etc. Christian antisemitism has been the foundation of Western and Canadian antisemitism. Robinson explores this in some detail, and then devotes an important chapter to antisemitism in England and France. This puts the later discussion of anglophone and francophone antisemitism in Canada in a helpful context, particularly since both countries embark, in their own way, on a form of liberal-democratic tolerance that creates space for Jews, and eventually others.

The entire book wisely differentiates the case of Quebec/French Canada from that of the rest of the country. The differences are sharp. The "Jewish Question" in Quebec remains unanswered in a way that is still not the case in English Canada. Consider: in post-war Ontario, there have been three Jewish leaders of the major provincial political parties--Stephen Lewis, Stuart Smith, and Larry Grossman, for trivia buffs. None in Quebec. There have been three Jewish mayors elected (not appointed) in Toronto--Phil Givens, Nathan Phillips, Mel Lastman. None in Montreal.

Robinson presents a revealing portrait of the social and institutional antisemitism that prevailed in English and French Canada in the interwar period, from restricted clubs, to unwelcoming businesses, professions and universities. Indeed the 1930's through the war years were rocky for Canadian Jews. Robinson also skillfully illustrates the way in which Jews were caught in the web of the ideological clashes involving communism and fascism. Canadian Jews were suspected--in part because of Jews who were associated with socialist and communist movements--of seeking to drag Canada into war. Jewish refugees were denied entry to Canada in the 1930s, as has been documented earlier in the volume None is too Many. And even during World War Two, Jews remained objects of some suspicion. Robinson quotes from Montreal's Le Devoir in 1943: the paper recognized the catastrophe befalling Europe's Jews but wondered whether "the Jews are not exaggerating these numbers in an oriental or Talmudic fashion" (98).

Robinson then documents the slow but steady process of the opening up of Canadian society in the post-war period. Slowly the glass moved from empty to half full. By the 1960s, significant changes could be seen in education and occupation and within Canadian culture. Even as a small band of neo-Nazis made some Jews uncomfortable, informal quotas were discarded, and Jews found increasing employment in both the private and various public sectors. Jews and Jewish concerns found greater acceptance in public discourse and in broader spaces, though less so in Quebec than in English Canada. Intermarriage rates began to increase among Canadian Jews in the 1960s and 1970s, a sign of acceptance as well as assimilation.

Robinson ends the story with a review of two of the more recent manifestations of antisemitism. The first is Holocaust denial. Certainly landmark cases like that of Ernst Zundel or Jim Keegstra helped shape the evolution of Canadian thinking and jurisprudence in areas of hate speech. And the shadow of the Holocaust continues to loom over all diasporic communities, including the Canadian. The second, and more serious, is the emerging expression of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views and actions, such as the BDS movement found in many Canadian campuses. The issue for Robinson and for most mainstream Canadian Jews is not criticism of specific Israeli policies, but a wider concern about a possible demonization and delegitimation of the Jewish state. This issue also revives a historic staple of antisemitism, in which Jews are accused of being a suspect minority with loyalties beyond their state of citizenship.

This excellent book succeeds in conveying the ongoing ambiguities of diaspora Jewish life, even in Canada where objective and relative conditions seem so favorable: If things are so good, why are they so bad?

Morton Weinfeld

Department of Sociology, McGill University