Jews and French Quebecers: Two Hundred Years of Shared History

by Jacques Langlais, David Rome, Barbara Young (Translator)

Overview

Jews and French Quebecers recounts a saga of intense interest for the whole of Canada, let alone societies elsewhere. This work, now translated into English, represents the viewpoints of two friends from differing cultural and religious traditions. One is a French Quebecer and a Christian; the other is Jewish and also calls Quebec his home. Both men are bilingual.

Jacques Langlais and David Rome examine the merging — through alterations of close co-operation and socio-political clashes — of two Quebec ethno-cultural communities: one French, already rooted in the land of Quebec and its religio-cultural tradition; the other, Jewish, migrating from Europe through the last two centuries, equally rooted in its Jewish-Yiddish tradition. In Quebec both communities have learned to build and live together as well as to share their respective cultural heritages.

This remarkable experience, two hundred years of intercultural co-vivance, in a world fraught with ethnic tensions serves as a model for both Canada and other countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780889209985
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	10/17/1991
Pages:	209
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Father Jacques Langlais was from the Holy Cross Congregation. He was the founder, in 1963, of the Monchainin Center (which became the Intercultural Institute of Montréal in 1990) and its director from 1963 to 1970. He dedicated his life to interreligious and intercultural dialogue.

David Rome was a Canadian historian and the director of the Montreal Jewish Public Library and was part of the Canadian Jewish Congress as the archivist and later historian of the organization. He was officially honoured on several occasions, recieving CJC’s H.M. Caiserman Award and being invested as a Knight in the Order of Quebec in 1987. In addition, he is also the co#8211;author of Les Juifs du Québec, bibliographie r#233;trospective annot#233;e (1979) and The Stones that Speak/Les pierres qui parlents (1992).

Barbara Young is the translator of this book.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents for
Jews and French Quebecers: Two Hundred Years of Shared History, by Jacques Langlais and David Rome, translated by Barbara Young

Foreword

Preface to the English Translation

The Ultramontane Influence

Confederation

The Quiet Revolution

Preface to the Original French Version

Relatives, Partners and Neighbours

Decades of Rupture

Post-War Liberations

I. Early Jewish Presence in Quebec, 1627–1882

Travel in New France Prohibited

The First Jewish Families

The First English Sephardic Community

Early Contributions to Political History

The Jews and the War in Quebec

Growth of the First Congregation: The de Solas

The 1882 Reform

The Associations: Emergence of a New Judaism

II. The Great Yiddish Migration, 1880–1940

From Shtetl to America

Insertion into Quebec

Early Challenges

III. The Reaction of French Quebec, 1880–1945

A New Phenomenon: Anti-Semitism

Precursors in Quebec

Jewish Schools

Anti-Semitism in the 1930s

IV. The Quiet Revolution of Jewish Quebecers, 1945–76

Cultural Revolution

Economic Emancipation

Church and Synagogue in Quebec

Religious Crisis

Arrival of the French-Speaking Jews

The 1976 Crisis

New Community Spirit

V. Where Is the Jewish Community Headed?

The Challenge of Continuity

Quebec Today

The Ambivalence of Nationalism in the 1970s

Exodus of Jewish Youth?

From Ethnocentric to Cultural Nationalism

The Future Belongs to Quebecers

Chronology: The Jews in Quebec

Notes

Bibliography