Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., November 01, 2007 Cheshvan 20, 5768 | | Israel Time: 23:49 (EST+7)
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Montreal's Jews aren't going anywhere
By Yoni Goldstein
tags: anti-Semitism, Nativ 

The history of Russian Jews in Montreal, Canada, began more than a century ago, when a coalition of Jews and Christians in the city raised funds to help Jews escape from the Russian empire in the wake of an onslaught of pogroms triggered by the assassination of czar Alexander II, in March 1881. There are widely varying estimates on the current size of the Russian Jewish community in Montreal: The local Jewish federation believes there are fewer than 10,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the city, while Russian community officials claim the actual number is more than double that figure. In either case, a community center and a Russian-language biweekly newspaper attest to the fact that Russian Jews have established a vibrant community in the city (whose total Jewish population is about 100,000).

Of course, as in virtually every city outside Israel where there is a Jewish presence, life for the Jews of Montreal is not without challenges. The city has been home to some minor-league anti-Semitism in the past, and the province of Quebec is proving to be mildly hostile to anyone who can't speak in French and isn't willing to learn how. But the biggest threat to Montreal Jews, the Quebec sovereignty movement of the 1970s and then later, in the early-1990s, has more recently lost favor in the eyes of more Quebecois than ever before. Now is a good time to be a Jew in Montreal.

Apparently, Nativ, the formerly clandestine organization that since the 1950s has shared responsibility for bringing Jews from what is now the Former Soviet Union to Israel, and Israel's minister of strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, don't agree. According to recent stories in Haaretz and the European Jewish Press service, having apparently run out of Jews still living in the FSU to bring to Israel, Nativ is planning to make a new push in North America to recruit Russian Jews there to make aliyah. Target No. 1: Montreal.
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It's a peculiar strategy: aiming to do business in a country that has two significant, settled communities of Russian Jews (the other being Toronto, where some 90,000 live); a country that is safe for Jews and where Jewish communities have long prospered; and a country, moreover, to which disadvantaged immigrants flock and where they are welcomed in droves, where they can experience multiculturalism and inclusiveness. When you're trying to convince people to leave peaceful, thriving Canada for a better life in the Middle East, you know you're in trouble of some kind.

The only ones that look bad in this story are Nativ and Lieberman. The decision to recruit in Montreal is, at best, misguided. Worse, it demonstrates that the brand of covert immigration missions that were Nativ's bread and butter between the 1950s and 1990s is no longer needed. For 30 years, the organization was solely responsible for assisting countless Jewish escapees from the Soviet scourge, but that very important work is now finished. Jews who, under the hammer and sickle, were unable either to express themselves Jewishly, or to leave for someplace else where they would be free to do just that, are now at liberty to choose where they want to live, including Israel.

In fact, Nativ's decision to choose Montreal's as its first stop in North America proves just how out of touch the organization is. (Already in Germany, Nativ has provoked a protest from Jewish communal leaders because of similar efforts there to lobby Russian-immigrant Jews to depart for Israel.) According to estimates from the city's Jewish federation, 80-85 percent of Russian Jews living in Montreal actually moved there from Israel. These people have already been the beneficiaries of Nativ once, and yet, at some later point, they decided that Israel wasn't the right place for them after all. There's no reason to think that they would consider moving back now, no matter how hard aliyah-liaison officers try to convince them.

Nativ's venture into Montreal is doomed to fail because the organization's brand of cloak-and-dagger aliyah recruitment simply isn't suited to today's Jewish global village. Its employment of old-style Zionist tactics, which depict the State of Israel as representing the final stronghold against a world of Jew-haters doesn't connect with people anymore. There are, after all, other perfectly suitable homes for Jews. Montreal is one of those places.

Perhaps the time has come for Israel in general to reevaluate its relationship with Diaspora Jewry and acknowledge that there are other places in the world perfectly suited to Jewish living. Once it takes that first step, the next job would be to recognize that the overall relationship between Israel and the Diaspora must change. Instead of looking at the Diaspora as a temporary home for those Jews who can't or aren't ready yet to make aliyah, Israel should invest in forming bonds with Jewish communities around the globe. Nativ, which has been reorganized and reportedly has a fat new budget, might even consider investing some of its cash in making those communities healthier, much in the same way those communities have long invested in the welfare of Israel.

Montreal's Russian Jews aren't going anywhere and neither are the vast majority of Jews - Russian-speaking or otherwise - in North and South America and Europe. The sooner the Israeli government realizes that fact, the sooner it can begin to forge a new, symbiotic relationship with all the Jews outside Israel who are quite content to stay right where they are.

Yoni Goldstein is an editorial writer at Canada's National Post, and a columnist at the Canadian Jewish News.
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  1.   MUCH ADOO? 18:33  |  JOJO 26/10/07
  2.   Montreal`s Jews 18:54  |  Sam 26/10/07
  3.   no reserves for them. 19:35  |  Billy Jack 26/10/07
  4.   Russian Jews 20:24  |  Gene 26/10/07
  5.   Euro Jews 20:49  |  Danite 26/10/07
  6.   Why are Jews sensitive to this?...JOJO 20:50  |  Tipton 26/10/07
  7.   Not everybody wants to live in a war zone 20:54  |  Natallie Durson 26/10/07
  8.   numbers do not seem right 21:33  |  sambo 26/10/07
  9.   get real natalie 21:38  |  vildechaye 26/10/07
  10.   #5 Danite - Canada "Jewish paradise" ? 22:22  |  Smadar 26/10/07
  11.   #5 Danite - Canada "Jewish paradise"? Part 2 22:31  |  Smadar 26/10/07
  12.   Last paragraph makes no sense 22:35  |  Slibovitz 26/10/07
  13.   other possibility 22:39  |  realism 26/10/07
  14.   To Yoni: Thanks for "helping" Israel - With Zionists lie you we d 22:41  |  Bob 26/10/07
  15.   Indeed 22:51  |  Axel 26/10/07
  16.   Smada you`re in the wrong province 22:56  |  peter 26/10/07
  17.   tipton #6 23:21  |  JOJO 26/10/07
  18.   Untrue! 23:33  |  Murray of Montreal 26/10/07
  19.   Why live in a racist State? 23:50  |  Don Camillo 26/10/07
  20.   #5 Danite...Forgotten about David Icke & the Red Indian leader ?? 00:07  |  Anthony Fallon 27/10/07
  21.   #13 Axel 00:16  |  Smadar 27/10/07
  22.   Goldstein: just one more anti-Zionist 00:54  |  Bob 27/10/07
  23.   #20 Anthony 01:23  |  from Canada 27/10/07
  24.   Montreal vs Jews vs Russians vs Israel 02:34  |  avrumiye 27/10/07
  25.   Smadar 06:30  |  Danite 27/10/07
  26.   Anthony Fallon 06:33  |  Danite 27/10/07
  27.   Anthony 07:43  |  Gordon 27/10/07
  28.   #19 camillo and nelson have one thing in common 08:16  |  victor hardman 27/10/07
  29.   Why should they leave Montreal?? 08:21  |  Aaron 27/10/07
  30.   MILK AND HONEY YES ITS TRUE.... 08:34  |  S.Kandal 27/10/07
  31.   In Israel I`d be poor, in Australia I can be rich. 09:25  |  Yered Shmuel 27/10/07
  32.   Ex-Russian Israeli CANADIANS 10:31  |  Jordan 27/10/07
  33.   SHMUEL YERED #31 POOR ISRAEL RICH AUSTRALIA 10:41  |  Jordan 27/10/07
  34.   Returning Jewish Families? 12:30  |  Jordan 27/10/07
  35.   Returning Jewish Families? 12:36  |  Jordan 27/10/07
  36.   Like I said 14:10  |  Chris Linthwaite 27/10/07
  37.   victor hardman 28 15:19  |  realism 27/10/07
  38.   More Israelis Move to Canada than Jews 15:24  |  ARTH 27/10/07
  39.   I thought Montreal was a Jewish city 15:54  |  Avrum 27/10/07
  40.   I don`t blame them. 17:43  |  Deborah 27/10/07
  41.   Natalie Durston 17:44  |  Nerys 27/10/07
  42.   ISRAEL=HOME 20:45  |  Joel 27/10/07
  43.   Berlin 1920 were also prefectly suited for Jewish living 22:06  |  Nathan 27/10/07
  44.   North America is Heaven 22:23  |  dan 27/10/07
  45.   Yoni, Just Go and Convert to Christianity 23:02  |  Yoram 27/10/07
  46.   DON CAMILLO`s "RACIST STATE" 23:10  |  Brant 27/10/07
  47.   The should all be sent to Israel 23:15  |  Canadian 27/10/07
  48.   #19 Don Camillo 00:51  |  Jo Jo 28/10/07
  49.   yoram-then why aren`t you in Israel? 04:41  |  abc 28/10/07
  50.   Liberman in Montreal 04:52  |  Gershon Ron 28/10/07
  51.   GIVING LAND TO TERRORISTS AND INVITING JEWS TO HOLYLAND? 05:09  |  VOICE of MOSHIACH))) 28/10/07
  52.   #25 Danite 05:39  |  Smadar 28/10/07
  53.   What Lieberman fails to realize - how can Jews living in Montreal 05:46  |  Smadar 28/10/07
  54.   Smadar 06:10  |  Danite 28/10/07
  55.   Why should Russian Jews leave Canada? 07:19  |  Shoshana Thomasson 28/10/07
  56.   settle or not to settle in israel 08:56  |  Kris 28/10/07
  57.   Ein li eretz acheret, gam im admati bo`eret.... 09:36  |  zmogus 28/10/07
  58.   Parasitic Jews in Montreal 15:22  |  Bonheur 28/10/07
  59.   Bonheur... thank you for highlighting why jews should come home.. 16:27  |  Nathan 28/10/07
  60.   this says it all! 16:52  |  eric 28/10/07
  61.   Haaretz is transparently anti-Zionist 17:01  |  Jake 29/10/07
  62.   Yoni Goldstein`s call to end Aliyah 18:13  |  Jeffrey 29/10/07
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