NP View: Canadian Jews deserve better

Two children look at the damage done to Nöam restaurant in a suspected arson attack, in Montreal on Aug. 1. Photo by John Kenney/Montreal Gazette

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It is so damn obvious that it feels unnecessary to say it: the Jewish people have given so much to Canada.

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Their names are on many of our leading institutions, some of our best-known literature, music and art, and on Nobel prizes. They are leaders of some of our most successful businesses. They are our doctors, our teachers, our lawyers. They are our friends and our family.

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Canada owes much to its Jewish community who, in recent decades at least, found this country to be among the very best places to live a full and openly Jewish life.

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And yet, all Canadians need to understand that the community’s future here is at risk. Many Jews say they are contemplating leaving, or have already left, because of the sudden and largely unchecked rise of antisemitism. How Canada responds will determine what kind of country this will be.

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The perversion of public perceptions of the Israel-Hamas war sparked by the October 7 massacre, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, has echoed around the world, but few places have changed as much as some Canadian cities.

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The stories are well-known: Jewish institutions and businesses have been firebombed and sprayed with bullets. People have been accosted in the street for being openly Jewish. Many Jews feel ostracized from their workplaces, especially if they work in academia.

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“None of this has ameliorated the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants or helped ‘free Palestine’ — whatever that means,” Torontonian Harry Khachatrian wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week in a story headlined, Canada Has An Antisemitism Problem.

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“Yet politicians at every level keep responding with the same platitudes: ‘Antisemitism is vile and unacceptable.’ ‘Hate has no place in Canada.’ Apparently it does. Antisemitism has secured a comfortable suite at the Four Seasons.”

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There is now a divide among Canadian Jews.

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There is a growing and noisy cohort who are leaving Canada amid rising antisemitism, or considering doing so. The Canadian Press reported this week that a group out of Oklahoma called Tulsa Tomorrow is aiming to recruit Canadian Jews to the city, amid calls for the Trump administration to offer asylum to concerned Jewish-Canadians.

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But there is another cohort that sees the same symptoms, and has decided to stay and fight.

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This dichotomy was illustrated this week in an exchange between two prominent Jewish-Canadians. Gad Saad, a best-selling author and academic, wrote on social media that he left for the United States, in part because “Jew-hatred” in Montreal “is palpable, at the soccer field, on university campuses, in street protests.”

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In response, Harley Finkelstein, the president of Shopify, Canada’s biggest tech company, acknowledged that his family had thought about leaving, but added: “We decided to stay because Jews do not secure a better future by abandoning it. We build it.”