Like Everyone Else . But Different: The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and co-author
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Infl

Morton Weinfeld is a sociologist at McGill University and the leading
scholar of contemporary Jewish life in Canada. His most recent book
attempts—and largely succeeds—to explain why Jews have done well in
Canada, to understand their “paradoxical” success. His study traces
the different kinds of Jews who immigrated to Canada at various periods
(not least after World War II) examines their religious practices, and
explores how and why so many “made it” in the new land despite
anti-Semitic prejudice. He devotes substantial space to education (a
strong Jewish trait), to efforts to create a Jewish community in the
country, and to the contribution Jews have made to various aspects of
Canadian life. Weinfeld devotes a chapter to “Sticks, Stones, and
Social Relations” that focuses on the continuing fight against racial
prejudice, a struggle that sometimes run into freedom-of-speech
activists, many of whom are Jews. Because of Canadian Jewry’s fervent
support for Israel, whatever its actions, the ongoing strife in the
Middle East is likely to increase anti-Semitic incidents in Canada.

Weinfeld can be refreshingly direct in his judgments. He worries over
the emphasis on the Holocaust in Canadian and Jewish education, fearing
that it “risks reducing a complex rich Jewish heritage into a vale of
tears.” There is some name-dropping (to capture the book-buying
public), but this is a scholarly study, not an effort to chart the
travails of the first Jewish dentist in Moose Jaw. Indeed, there is
rather more humor than one usually finds in “serious” books of this
sort, and Weinfeld makes his scholarship enjoyable.