Why the Journal took a look at the Hasidim
This week The Gazette printed an opinion piece by Allan Nadler (“Le Journal’s exposé of Hasidim was incendiary,” April 24). I would like to respond to Mr. Nadler’s piece.
First, the impression Mr. Nadler leaves is that there is some sort of connection between the Journal’s stories, which began on April 15, and vandalism in Val Morin at 15 Hasidic-owned homes that occurred prior to publication. It is hard to see how our stories retroactively caused vandalism.
Second, Mr. Nadler says the Journal, to “alarm” readers, intentionally doubled the number of Hasidim in Quebec to 20,000 and said the community would number 49,000 in 2030. These figures come from a study done by the Coalition d’organisations hassidiques d’outremont and quoted by Université du Québec à Montréal professor Julien Bauer in a book called Les Communautés juives de Montréal, a scholarly text edited by Pierre Anctil and Ira Robinson.
The stories by reporter Émilie Dubreuil were not an exposé of the Hasidic community, as any reader of the three-day series would have grasped. Nor did she attempt to explain the entire world of Quebec’s Hasidic community. The stories focused on one specific issue – that of young people who decided to leave the community.
Four men decided to talk about making that difficult choice and why. They left behind parents, spouses, children and community. And they did it knowing they would be ostracized, as a spokesman for the Hasidic community confirmed in the stories.
Our reporter gave these men space to talk about what their former lives meant to them and how they are living now. What we reported were their thoughts, actions and feelings. Very personal, very emotional, very human.
And we made it clear that a very small minority decide to leave.
On the second day, we dealt with the issue of education in some, not all, Hasidic communities. Government reports criticize the lack of formal training, which does not meet basic provincial requirements. That lack of education was one of the main criticisms of all four of the men who talked with us. One describes how he knew little English, math, algebra and history until leaving.
Mr. Nadler writes that the stories portray the Hasidic community as a clear and present danger to Quebec society and culture, and that its presence threatens the social fabric of Quebec’s modern and enlightened culture of laïcité. I challenge him to find any reference to such a danger or threat in the series. No such idiotic blanket statements were made anywhere. The stories were about humans, not ideology.