Multiculturalism Jews And Identities In Canada

Some have called Canada, the first post-modernist society. Canada is widely acclaimed as a multicultural and immigrant experiment. In this lively collection of essays, Canadian scholars provide a wealth of information and analysis on how those abstractions actually operate in practice. The history of immigration to Canada and the legal decisions, legislation and policies that have created Canadian multiculturalism are succinctly presented. Recent constitutional debates and the 1992 federal referendum focusing on Quebec as a distinct society are analyzed. In all cases, the significant roles of Jews and Jewish organizations and the impact on them of those critical events in Canadian national life are dissected. These developments have not been without tensions and controversies. Anti-semitism arose in the provocative Show Boat affair."

In 1971 Canada was the first nation in the world to establish an official multiculturalism policy with an objective to assist cultural groups to overcome barriers to integrate into Canadian society while maintaining their heritage language and culture. Since then Canada s practice and policy of multiculturalism have endured and been deemed as successful by many Canadians. As well, Canada s multiculturalism policy has also enjoyed international recognition as being pioneering and effectual. Recent public opinion suggests that an increasing majority of Canadians identify multiculturalism as one of the most important symbols of Canada s national identity. On the other hand, this apparent successful record has not gone unchallenged. Debates, critiques, and challenges to Canadian multiculturalism by academics and politicians have always existed to some degree since its policy inception over four decades ago. In the current international context there has been a growing assault on, and subsequent retreat from, multiculturalism in many countries. In Canada debates about multiculturalism continue to emerge and percolate particularly over the past decade or so. In this context, we are grappling with the following questions: What is the future of multiculturalism and is it sustainable in Canada? How is multiculturalism related to egalitarianism, interculturalism, racism, national identity, belonging and loyalties? What role does multiculturalism play for youth in terms of their identities including racialization? How does multiculturalism play out in educational policy and the classroom in Canada? These central questions are addressed by contributions from some of Canada s leading scholars and researchers in philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, education, religious studies, youth studies, and Canadian studies. The authors theorize and discuss the debates and critiques surrounding multiculturalism in Canada and include some very important case studi

Ethnic groups in Canada may be successful, persecuted, cohesive, or endangered; only Canada's Jews appear to embody all of these characteristics simultaneously. Canadian Jewry is enduringly fascinating, worth knowing about because the community is an archetype of multiculturalism as it confronts the difficulties and advantages of ethnicity in the modern world. By examining the achievements of the community, and the challenge of its attempt to survive the exigencies of modern life, The Jews in Canada clarifies not only the evolution of Canada's Jewish community but also the evolution of ethnicity in Canadian society.

Liberal democratic societies with diverse populations generally offer minorities two usually contradictory objectives: the first is equal integration and participation; the second is an opportunity, within limits, to retain their culture. Yet Canadian Jews are successfully integrated into all domains of Canadian life, while at the same time they also seem able to retain their distinct identities by blending traditional religious values and rituals with contemporary cultural options. Like Everyone Else but Different illustrates how Canadian Jews have created a space within Canada’s multicultural environment that paradoxically overcomes the potential dangers of assimilation and diversity. At the same time, this comprehensive and data-driven study documents and interprets new trends and challenges including rising rates of intermarriage, newer progressive religious options, finding equal space for women and LGBTQ Jews, tensions between non-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews, and new forms of real and perceived anti-Semitism often related to Israel or Zionism, on campus and elsewhere. The striking feature of the Canadian Jewish community is its diversity. While this diversity can lead to cases of internal conflict, it also offers opportunities for adaptation and survival. Seventeen years after its first publication, this new edition of Like Everyone Else but Different provides definitive updates that blend research studies, survey and census data, newspaper accounts and articles, and the author’s personal observations and experiences to provide an informative, provocative, and fascinating account of Jewish life and multiculturalism in contemporary Canada.

With contributions from some of Canada's leading historians, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists, this collection examines the transnational practices and identities of immigrant and ethnic communities in Canada. It looks at why members of these groups maintain ties with their homelands -- whether real or imagined -- and how those connections shape individual identities and community organizations. How does transnationalism establish or transform geographical, social, and ideological borders? Do homeland ties affect what it means to be "Canadian"? Do they reflect Canada's commitment to multiculturalism? Through analysis of the complex forces driving transnationalism, this comprehensive study focuses attention on an important, and arguably growing, dimension of Canadian social life. This is the first collection in Canada to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of transnationalism. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in issues of immigration, multiculturalism, ethnicity, and settlement.

The 1960s witnessed a radical transformation in the Canadian Jewish community. The erosion of longstanding barriers of anti-Semitism resulted in increased access for Jews to the economic, political, and social Canadian mainstream. Arguing paradoxically that even as Canada became more accepting, Canadian Jews became more focused on Jewish identity, The Defining Decade examines how the 1960s redefined what it meant to be a Canadian Jew and a Jewish Canadian. Domestic events such as the Quiet Revolution, the eruption of Neo-Nazi activity, the election of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and the promise of multiculturalism combined with international affairs such as the Six Day War, Arab rejectionism with regards to Israel, and the explosion of Soviet Jewish activisim to radically reshape Canadian Jewish priorities. In tracing the rapid changes of this tumultuous decade, Harold Troper draws upon a wealth of historical documentation, including more than eighty interviews, to demonstrate that the expression of Canadian Jewishness was an increasingly public - and political - commitment.