Ethnic Jewishness in Canada and Our 2001 Census Data

ABSTRACT/RESUME Few groups in Canada are enumerated on the census as both a religious denomination and an ethnic-origin category, but Jews are. Given the widespread consensus on the unreliability of ethnic-origin census data, demographers studying the Jewish community in Canada rely mainly on the Judaic or religion counts. However, the ethnic data from Canada's 200l Census, released earlier, permit some comparison with previous censi and may suggest trends that can only be confirmed as valid when other data become available. The 2001 Jewish ethnic-origin counts and the religious-denomination trends for Canada's largest cities are presented and discussed in relation to 1991 census data. The rise in multiple-response (vs. Jewish only) totals is considered, and some explanations are suggested. Peu de groupes au Canada figurent au recensement a la fois sous la rubrique de la religion et sous celle de l'origine ethnique, mais c'est le cas pour les juifs. Du fait du consensus assez general quant a la non-fiabilite des donnees relatives a l'origine ethnique, les demographes qui etudient la communaute juive au Canada se basent principalement sur les chiffres indiques sous la rubrique juive ou selon la religion. Or, les donnees sur les groupes ethniques du Recensement du Canada de 2001, publiees par anticipation, permettent de faire une certaine comparaison avec les recensements precedents et semblent indiquer des tendances dont la validite ne pourra etre confirmee qu'une fois que d'autres donnees seront disponibles. Le present essai presente et discute les chiffres de 2001 pour l'origine ethnique juive dans les villes les plus importantes du Canada par rapport aux donnees du recensement de 1991. II examine l'augmentation des totaux des reponses multiples (a la difference de ceux sous la rubrique juive seulement) et propose certaines explications. INTRODUCTION The Canadian Census of 2001 released (in January 2003) the ethnic origin counts for the entire country and each of its cities, while the religious denomination numbers were issued later (in May 2003). This essay will examine the ethnic Jewish numbers, comparing 1991 with 2001 results, so as to arrive at some assessments of what is happening in this demographic area, i.e., how we might reasonably interpret and utilize the ethnic counts in studying the recent evolution of Canadian Jewry and our major metropolitan communities. Although the figures on Jews as a religious denomination (Judaists, we should say) are probably much more reliable from census to census, we will examine the ethnic origin numbers for 1991 in relation to the religion counts on that census, and then attempt to derive some tentative conclusions from the 2001 ethnic and denominational Jewish data, with a fuller understanding of how to interpret the ethnic-Jewish trends when the religion numbers are also examined (Csillag, 2003). One important development regarding census data on ethnic origin is the presence of single vs. multiple responses to the appropriate question. If the respondents report one ancestral group only, that is a single response case; when they report multiple groups, the data are in a multiple response category. In earlier censi, respondents would typically pick one ethnic ancestry only, and if they filled in several, Statistics Canada would not record all of them (Statistics Canada, 2002:16; White, et al., 1993:241). Currently, however, our census does allow the reporting of multiple origins, which produces the distinction between single-response ethnic Jews and multiple-response ethnic Jews, whose ancestors apparently include Jewish and other cultures presumably not of the Judaic faith. This may, however, be more deceptive than informative, as we now attempt to show. Among the many fascinating possibilities of multiple-response ethnicity is the relatively new category of Canadian. Introduced a few decades ago for this census question, this response has become increasingly popular on the Canadian census (Boyd, 2001; Kalbach and Kalbach, 1999). …

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