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Concept
History of the Jews in Canada
Summary
Canadian citizens who follow Judaism as their religion and/or are ethnically Jewish are a part of the greater Jewish diaspora and form the third largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel and in the United States. As of 2021, Statistics Canada listed 335,295 adherents to the Jewish religion in Canada. This total would account for approximately 1.4% of the Canadian population.
The Jewish community in Canada is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented and include Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Bene Israel. A number of converts to Judaism make up the Jewish-Canadian community, which manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions and the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance. Though they are a small minority, they have had an open presence in the country since the first Jewish immigrants arrived with Governor Edward Cornwallis to establish Halifax, Nova Scotia (1749).
Prior to the British conquest of New France, Jews lived in Nova Scotia. There were no official Jews in Quebec because when King Louis XIV made Canada officially a province of the Kingdom of France in 1663, he decreed that only Roman Catholics could enter the colony. One exception was Esther Brandeau, a Jewish girl who arrived in 1738 disguised as a boy and remained a year before she was returned for refusing to convert. The earliest subsequent documentation of Jews in Canada are British Army records from the French and Indian War, the North American part of the Seven Years' War. In 1760, General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst attacked and seized Montreal, winning Canada for the British. Several Jews were members of his regiments, and among his officer corps were five Jews: Samuel Jacobs, Emmanuel de Cordova, Aaron Hart, Hananiel Garcia, and Isaac Miramer.
The most prominent of these five were the business associates Samuel Jacobs and Aaron Hart.
Official source
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