Tucked away in a comment on my blog post last week was an interesting question that got me thinking. It read: Do you feel like the Canadian Jewish community is on the whole further to the left than the American Jewish community?
I have been living in Vancouver for over a year now, and honestly, I’m not sure. The Jewish community here feels quite similar to the Seattle community in which I grew up. I suppose that is more of a regional thing. So the real answer to the question is somewhat complex.
For starters, Canada is more liberal than America in general. A glaring, and oft-pointed out difference is that (with the exception of a small minority), the conservatives up here support public health care. Politics here are charged with a light dose of socialism, and in the U.S. with semi-libertarianism.
But when it really boils down to it, the Jewish communities of these respective countries are virtually identical. You have some loud, vocal anti-Zionists. You have some loud, vocal ultra-Zionists. And from my observations, many of the rest are generally supportive of Israel but realize the state is not perfect. Although, Canadian media figure Ezra Levant wrote this blog post about a year ago. Its basic theme is about the Canadian Jewish exodus from the Liberal party, which occurred because of its stance on Israel. I guess we will have to wait until 2012 to see if American Jews follow suit.
An interesting anecdote while we are on the subject. An employee at Vancouver Hillel, who has worked for the organization for some time, had a theory about why the intermarriage rate in Canada was lower than in the U.S. He felt that because Jews immigrated to the U.S. en masse well before they hit the True North, they became more assimilated in America. He felt that this explained the varying intermarriage rates. Oh, and lots of Jews here speak French.
