One day this month, members of an ultra-orthodox Jewish congregation in Montreal threw open the doors of their small synagogue to invite neighbours in for a rare glimpse behind the curtain of their normally insular community.
Amid the aging prayer books and cramped quarters, congregants had a plan: Overcome suspicions and gain support for a minor expansion at the back of their building.
On Monday morning, however, the congregation had a rude awakening. Despite the outreach effort, neighbours rejected the synagogue’s expansion plan in a referendum ”“ a setback not only for the Gate David congregation, but for the uneasy relationship between Montreal’s expanding Hasidic community and its secular neighbours.
With any news from Quebec you are always left wondering whether language issues are at stake. When the proposal for independence was narrowly defeated in the last referendum, the nationalists blamed the defeat on English-speaking immigrants tipping the balance. Since then the language laws have been tightened to make sure that immigrants send their children to French-language schools. The synagogue building request that was defeated seems so minor that you are left amazed at the resentment it aroused. Something more is at work here, methinks. Sounds to me like the Hasidim are being thought of as not kosher Quebecers.
Pierre Lacerte’s weblog
This would be the weblog mentioned in the article. It is unfortunately written in French. I used the ‘translate page’ function (for what it is worth) and discovered the following Q&A from the blog post (dated June 19) right before the election.
[blockquote] Q 7: Is it true that the number of members of this community has not increased since the synagogue s’ is installed at this location as claimed by the leaders of the synagogue?
A: FALSE. According to their own 2005 statistics, the ultra-Orthodox community has an average of 5.6 persons per family. The same study suggests that ultra-Orthodox community will double in 15 years.[/blockquote]You wonder if this isn’t the real (if unspoken) motivation behind the opposition. “We must stop this now, or these people will breed our place into an Hasidic community, and we will be subject to them and the rules of their reactionary religion.”
carl
Why haven’t we heard this?:
[blockquote] “We must stop this now, or these people will breed our place into an [i] Islamic [/i]community, and we will be subject to them and the rules of their reactionary religion.†[/blockquote]
I think the real problem here is that you reap what you sow. A one day open house does not overcome years of insular behavior. When you treat those outside your religious community as well, outsiders. They will treat you that way as well. More conservative/fundamentalist Christian groups have run into this kind of reaction as well when they have not shown they care for others with charitable works, help for the poor, etc. The reverse example of this that comes to mind was Mthr. Theresa. The Indian people loved her in spite of there being undercurrents of hostility to Christianity in India. She loved them first and the Indian people loved her in return.
It’s sad and frightening to overhear these kind of conversations. “If only they have assimilated more…they’ve brought it on themselves”. Good Lord, did we learn nothing.
There is a palpable xenophobia among French-speaking Quebecois. Couple that with the growing general anti-religious attitude in Canada and, well, this is not terribly surprising.
episcoanglican:
“More conservative/fundamentalist Christian groups have run into this kind of reaction as well when they have not shown they care for others with charitable works, help for the poor, etc.”
This is a very broad brush with which you paint. Who are these c/f Christian groups?
I agree with Ian+. A Canadian friend has told me how perpetually unhappy French-speaking Quebec is. It seems to me that they’re the folks who want to be insular. Doesn’t the “watchdog” group have anything better to do than watch the Hasidic community and gather “evidence” against them? Sheesh!
I read an article yesterday about how hostile Quebec is over the upcoming visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The Canadian PM is begging them to be respectful.
Reading the comments on the newspaper’s site I was struck by the large number of comments deleted because they did not meet the newspaper’s standards or because the poster had been banned. I was also struck by the large number of antireligious comments that the paper did pass.