Montreal’s 90,000-strong Jewish community presents unique features that differentiate it from the Jewish populations of other North American cities. Even those aspects that it shares – a large Ashkenazic immigration in the early decades of the 20th century, broad and successful upward mobility, and the development of strong educational, cultural, and service institutions – have been achieved in a city once divided by language, religion, and geography (the English-speaking, largely Protestant business west versus the French-speaking, overwhelmingly Catholic proletarian and lower middle-class east), now a secular, multicultural metropolis whose official language is French but with the highest rate of citizens who speak at least three languages of any North American city. The departure of many Ashkenazic Jews in the 1970s and 80s in the face of the Quebec independence movement has been partially offset by the arrival, since the 1950s, of Sephardic Jews, at first from North Africa, and more recently from Israel and France. At the same time, Montreal received one of the world’s largest populations of Holocaust survivors and has become a world center for Hasidic Judaism. Today, Montreal Jewish institutions speak increasingly of the city’s Jewish communities, in recognition of this remarkable internal diversity. How do these developments challenge the vision and missions of Montreal’s historical Jewish institutions? How is the question of Jewish identity in Montreal shaped by the concern in Quebec for the flourishing of the French language and the codification into law of a concept of laïcité, or secularism, more in line with European views than with the prevailing notions of multiculturalism in North America? How do Montreal’s Jewish communities articulate their identities and sentiments of belonging in response to the range of ways, variously inclusive and exclusive, that Quebec identity is asserted in the linguistic, cultural, and political spheres?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Robert Schwartzwald is a professor in the Département de littératures et de langues du monde at the Université de Montréal, where he directed the graduate certificate program in Jewish Studies from 2016-2022. He received an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from Université Laval. His publications explore interfaces between literary and national articulations of modernity with special attention to issues of sexual representation. He is a former editor of the International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes and a recipient of the Governor-General’s International Award for Canadian Studies.