The new Jewish exodus — to Canada
Canada is increasingly seen as a safe haven for Jews wanting to escape anti-Semitism in Europe,
When a gunman stormed into a kosher supermarket in Paris, seizing hostages and killing four people, Julien Catan felt tremors all the way to Montreal. A Paris native, he had walked the streets around the Hyper-Cacher market thousands of times. His fiancée’s mother had been shopping there 20 minutes before it was attacked.
“What happened in January was a real shock, like never before,” Catan said in an interview. “I think the impact it had is very profound, and I think the Jewish community has taken a real hit.”
The murderous targeting of shoppers buying groceries before the Sabbath, two days after an attack on the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, came amid a surge in anti-Semitism that has Jews questioning how long they can remain in France. More than ever, Canada is seen as a safe haven, and leaders of Montreal’s Jewish community are only too happy to extend a welcoming hand.
It was love that brought Catan, 28, to Montreal last year when he joined his fiancée, who had moved from France five years ago to pursue her studies. But the rise of anti-Semitic hatred back home makes the Jewish couple reluctant to return as they contemplate raising a family. Among their circle of Jewish friends in France, many are planning to leave. “It was perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Catan said of the January attacks. “It will lead people who were thinking of leaving to take action.”
Like Catan, Adam Scheier was shaken by news of the January terror attacks in Paris. The senior rabbi at Montreal’s Congregation Shaar Hashomayim was at an event in Nashville, and instead of returning home, he flew immediately to Paris as an expression of solidarity. “I found fear,” he said in an interview. “Parents were telling me how terrified they were to send their children to school.”
For Scheier, the sight of heavily armed soldiers guarding Jewish schools clashed with the safety felt by North America’s Jewish communities. Since his return, he has been pushing to make that North American safety available to French Jews. “I think Quebec should proactively be looking to welcome Jews from France who are looking to leave,” he said.
“This is a Jewish community that has western liberal values that are consistent with our Canadian values. This is a Jewish community that is filled with professionals, people of achievement in law, in business, medicine, sciences and the arts. This is a vibrant, dynamic community that could make a contribution to our country, and this is a community that speaks French, which is something that is very attractive for the Quebec government.”
Montreal Jewish organizations have recently created a task force in response to a steep increase in requests for information from French Jews interested in moving to Canada. Monique Lapointe, manager of immigration services for the social services agency Ometz, said her organization alone received 70 such requests in the three months since the January attacks, double what it would normally receive in a year. The task force is looking at how the community can smooth immigration from France, starting by helping potential immigrants navigate the bureaucracy and letting them know what services are available once they arrive.
Scheier said he is in contact with officials of the provincial and federal governments about the plight of French Jews, and though he declined to go into detail, he called the government response encouraging. “We’ll certainly look to the government to offer assistance,” he said.
But even though France’s Jews represent an attractive pool of potential immigrants for Quebec, the issue is delicate. They are not refugees, and the official line from the Jewish community is that asking the government to speed an immigration process that typically takes two years has been ruled out. “If you do that, it’s a double-edged sword,” Lapointe said. “It’s not a good thing.”
Whatever hurdles immigrants have to overcome, Frederic Saadoun says it is worth the trouble. He moved from Paris to Montreal with his wife and young children 10 years ago, as anti-Semitism began to rise in France. There were assaults on Jewish children, antiSemitic graffiti near Jewish schools and advice from a rabbi not to wear Jewish symbols in public.
This is a Jewish community that has western liberal values that are consistent with our Canadian values.
“We preferred leaving before things got worse,” Saadoun, 46, said in an interview.
At the time, fellow Jews in France criticized him for leaving, but now the same people tell him he did the right thing. “There are not a lot of countries where you die because you are Jewish, but it happens in France,” he said citing the Hyper-Cacher attack and the 2012 assault on a Jewish school in Toulouse by an Islamist terrorist who murdered three children and a rabbi.
“There is a physical threat, but what is even more terrible — because in the end, there is little chance of dying — is to be assaulted in daily life,” he said. “My father, who lives in southern France, faces verbal and physical abuse when he leaves synagogue. That sort of thing happens every day.”
He said his son and daughter, 17 and 15, are now perfectly at ease displaying their Jewish identities in public. It is when they return to France to visit family that he has to warn them.
“I tell them to be careful. In the metro, don’t show your Star of David. Don’t display any distinctive symbol showing you are Jewish. They no longer understand, because here they have no problem, they feel safe,” he said.
“Canada is peaceful and they do not at all feel threatened as Jews. We have to teach them when they go to France how to behave as threatened Jews.”
To some it may seem paranoid, but the numbers do not lie. The latest annual report on anti-Semitism in France, compiled by the Jewish Community Security Service in conjunction with France’s Interior Ministry, found that anti-Semitic acts more than doubled in 2014, rising to 851 compare with 423 in 2013. Of the total, 241 were classified as violent acts while 610 were threats. While France’s roughly 500,000 Jews represent less than one per cent of the population, they were the targets of 51 per cent of all racist acts committed in 2014, the report said.
“Today, anti-Semitic threats in France include persistent bias, sectarian stereotypes, deep hatred, but especially anti- Semitic jihadist terror,” the report said. “Men and young children are killed for the sole reason that they are Jewish.”
French authorities are trying to counter the rise in hatred. Last week, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced a 100 million euros ($131 million) program to combat “racism and anti-Semitism” over the next three years. Proposed changes would provide for stiffer penalties for hate speech. Jewish leaders welcome the effort but are pessimistic about the prospect of success.
Figures published in December showed that 7,000 French Jews left for Israel in 2014, more than double the number the number in 2013. Serge Benhaim, president of a Paris synagogue that came under attack last summer by participants in an anti-Israel march, estimated that another 3,000-5,000 left for other destinations.
“We are trying everything to keep people here, but we have a lot of difficulty because there are troubling signals in the short and long term,” he said. “We have a school that cannot manage to rent a space because people do not want a Jewish school in the building, because it becomes a target for terrorists. People are nice, they understand, but in reality there are problems. We are not very welcome. “Nobody is saying they want to put us in trains again. It’s not that. But we pose a problem. We pose a problem currently.”
Richard Prasquier, former president of France’s main Jewish organization, CRIF, said France is not an anti-Semitic country. But it does not know how to handle an anti- Semitic wave originating from its growing Muslim population. He gave the example of the comedian Dieudonné, whose popularity only grows the more he is taken to task for his anti-Semitism.
“We are democrats, but we know that democracy today does not have the proper tools to confront the rise of Islamist radicals and anti-Semitism,” Prasquier said. “We have trouble combating it.” That difficulty is about to cost him regular visits with his daughter and granddaughters. Béatrice Prasquier, 35, said she and her husband are planning to move with their two small daughters from Paris to Montreal. France’s stagnant economy was the primary motivation, but the rise in anti-Semitism also played a part. She said in an interview that practically all her Jewish friends are talking about leaving France. “These are people who are beginning their professional and family lives and yet still look at moving elsewhere,” she said. “It is pretty surprising and pretty unsettling to see that.”
She and her husband do not wear outward symbols of their faith, but they recently moved into a new apartment and had to decide where to put their mezuzah, a small box usually posted on the outside door frame indicating that a home is Jewish. Police told a friend whose home had been broken into that it was because she had a mezuzah outside.
“We preferred to keep it inside, which is not normal,” Prasquier said. After they moved in, her husband’s name was ripped off the intercom, leading them to suspect it was because the name — Benhamou — was Jewish.
A 48-year-old Paris businessman house-hunting in Montreal this week asked not to be named because the move is not finalized. He and his wife are Jewish, though not practising, and the current climate contributed to their desire to get out of France.
“I can tell you that there is not a single dinner in Paris where Jews are present that the principal subject of discussion is not around, ‘Where do we go?’ and ‘When do we leave?’ ” he said.
He does not feel personally threatened, but the mood is gloomy. “You say to yourself, ‘It has deteriorated incredibly in 10 years. What will it be like in another 10 years?’ Better to leave while you can, without being forced, instead of doing it in a panic.”
Laurent, a 30-year-old working in information technology in Montreal, moved from France last year with his wife. He said anti-Semitism was one factor among others that prompted them to leave. “I found my Jewish identity was not fully represented in France,” he said. “I could not walk in the street wearing a kippa.”
In Montreal he has been surprised by how open people are about their Judaism. “We feel we are flourishing with our Jewish identity, able to live it fully,” he said. Still, some old fears linger. He asked that his full name not be published in case co-workers or immigration officials judge him based on his faith.
“Maybe it’s a little paranoid,” he said. “Maybe it will be different in five years and I will laugh at this.”
Moshe Sebbag, rabbi at Paris’s Grande Synagogue, sees congregants leaving regularly, and after Israel, Canada is a popular destination. There is the “brilliant engineer” on his way to Montreal with his family, the young woman who went there and married and students who may or may not return to France. It pains him, but he recognizes the decisions are personal.
“As rabbi of the Grande Synagogue, I have to tell Jews to stay, that it’s going to pass, but I understand why people are worried,” he said. And he has no doubt that if Canada were to shorten immigration delays and roll out the welcome mat in Jewish publications in France, many more French Jews would choose it as a destination “There is a malaise today,” he said.
On Thursday, Saadoun took part in the annual march through downtown Montreal marking Israel’s independence day, and the only malaise was caused by unseasonably chilly weather. He said that such an event could never be held in Paris without heavy police protection for the marchers.
In Montreal, he said, “We can express ourselves as Jews. We feel safe.”
Nobody is saying they want to put us in trains again. It’s not that. But we pose a problem.