{"id":78,"count":19,"description":"<strong>Building the Jewish Community and Claiming \u201cHalf the Kingdom\u201d:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>Women\u2019s Work, Diversity, and Social Justice in Montreal, 1917-2017<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>Mary Anne Poutanen<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<em>Mary Anne Poutanen is a social\u00a0historian,\u00a0member of the Montreal History Group and of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal,\u00a0and teaches interdisciplinary studies at McGiill\u00a0in the Programme d'\u00c9tudes sur le Qu\u00e9bec and at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.<\/em>\r\n\r\nFor the past 100 years, Jewish women have been instrumental in building a community in Montreal responsive to the needs of its members notably in the areas of social welfare, public health, urban reform, labour politics, equality rights, and culture. Women\u2019s obligations to do good deeds - embodied in <em>tsedakah<\/em> (charity) and in their economic and spiritual responsibilities in the family - meant that they stepped into a role left vacant by the state to ensure their community had a social safety net. This <em>mitzvah<\/em> also took them to the factory floor. Their efforts resulted in the creation of philanthropic organizations, hospitals, clinics, orphanages, in services such as vocational training, in the drive to unionize garment workers, and in advocacy of women\u2019s and human rights.\u00a0 Women have also been cultural icons in literature, visual arts, theatre, and the media.\r\n\r\nWhile there are many celebrated women - community fundraiser Toba Kaplan, labour leader and social activist Lea Roback, architect Phyllis Lambert, and media personality Sonia Benezra - we salute the countless unsung heroines who are unknown. \u00a0Consider the Russian-born sisters Eva and Rose Ditkoff who worked tirelessly in union activities: standing at factory entrances to encourage garment workers to unionize; ensuring fair treatment of women in the workplace; and, protecting strikers on the picket line. Social class demarcated the Jewish community, the membership and goals of organizations, and whose voices were most often heard.\r\n\r\nJewish women did not speak with a single voice; they were differentiated by income, age, and outlook [Kosmin, 26].\u00a0 Divisions in social class, cultural origins, language, religious beliefs and practices, and political orientation \u2013 indeed differences in identity and in the importance given to integration into the host society - reflected the diversity, agendas, and recipients of the organizations and institutions they established. In other words, whether Zionist, socialist, liberal or conservative, each faction interpreted the causes of social ills differently, initiated dissimilar strategies, and targeted particular people. Charity work was seldom impartial. Middle-class women sought to transform working-class Yiddish-speaking newcomers into Canadian citizens while maintaining their own privileged position [Myers, 181].\r\n\r\nWomen\u2019s philanthropic, political, and cultural orientations were also shaped by events far from home that included migration, world war, the Holocaust, the creation of the state of Israel, and the de-colonization of Morocco, and by local experiences with anti-Semitism, industrial capitalism, nationalism, the women\u2019s movement and so on. In this context, Jewish women worked for an international union to organize workers in garment factories often owned by local Jewish capitalists, to fight gender inequalities in the workplace, and to coordinate labour resistance. They created organizations framed by their class identity and political outlook that had local, national, and international objectives: from treating tuberculosis sufferers, establishing summer camps for impoverished women and children, settling Holocaust survivors, and integrating migrants from Europe and North Africa to pressuring the USSR to give Soviet Jewry visas and assisting women and children living in Palestine and later in Israel funding programs and opposing domestic violence.\r\n\r\nHere at home, upper middle-class women founded the Montreal Council of Jewish Women in 1918 to furnish a range of local, national, and international services aimed at both the Jewish and broader communities.\u00a0 Hadassah, created in 1917 by middle-class women more comfortable with traditional gender roles, raised funds for special projects in Palestine and in Israel by holding teas and bazaars.\u00a0 Working-class Zionist women established the Pioneer Women\u2019s Organization in 1925 [presently Na\u2019amat] \u201cto educate children in Labour Zionist tradition and promote women\u2019s participation in building the Jewish state\u201d [Draper and Karlinsky, 80].\u00a0 Meetings were held after work and on weekends to accommodate wage-earning mothers. In communal organizations, women became skilled in fundraising, administration, and public speaking; these activities got them out of the house, forged ties, and built self-confidence.\r\n\r\nConventional assumptions about women\u2019s role meant that such organizations were viewed as \u201cadjuncts to the main Jewish communal structure\u201d [Tulchinsky, 420].\u00a0 When the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies was created in 1917, five of the 12 founding agencies were women\u2019s organizations. Although four women were named to the executive committee, none was appointed chair of any of the 16 committees. [Minutes, 26 March 1917]. Clearly, women found it difficult to access male power structures of philanthropy. Elite women, as historian Elizabeth Kirkland has shown, had the ear of influential, wealthy men when it came to funding their charities. Since newcomers needed help dealing with poverty, inadequate housing, illness, language acquisition, and burial as well as family breakdown, violence, and crime, these \u201cmothers of all children\u201d justified their attempts to regulate family life. In juvenile justice, for example, Jewish women carved out a critical role as caseworkers; because elites blamed the juvenile delinquency problem on immigrants, engaging with philanthropic agencies to avoid sending Jewish children to juvenile court meant not drawing unwanted attention from the host society [Myers, 177].\r\n\r\nNonetheless, Jewish women had much in common with their Protestant and Catholic counterparts.\u00a0 They fashioned links to solve widespread municipal problems of public health and urban reform and thus better serve all Montrealers; they also joined national organizations such as the Red Cross. Jewish women benefited from women\u2019s expanding rights in Quebec following the Quiet Revolution. Feminism provided the means to fight against gender inequality in all aspects of Jewish communal life including recognition of their public contribution, accessing education as well as power, and de-colonizing the women\u2019s movement with respect to discrimination against Jews.\r\n\r\nBy the 1980s and 1990s, a combination of factors contributed to Jewish women\u2019s growing resistance to male power and to social and religious barriers: social mobility; increasing numbers of women in the professions; a profound desire for gender equality; and concern that younger generations of women would not accept being \u201crestricted to either women\u2019s organizations or to enabling roles\u201d [Medjuck, 340]. As tensions between career aspirations and domestic responsibilities grew, feminism was seen as a threat to conventional gender roles and to women\u2019s responsibility as transmitters of Jewish values, identity, and religious traditions, which served as a bulwark against assimilation [Cohen and L\u00e9vy, 271]. Many argued that they could be both feminists and Jews and refused to accept their ghettoization in traditional female organizations. That said, the Canadian Jewish Congress was reluctant to integrate women into its leadership; of the 19 elected presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress only two were women (Dorothy Reitman, 1986-1989 and Goldie Hershon, 1995-1998) [Zylberberg, 171]. Federation CJA had voted for its first female president, Dodo Heppner, three years earlier. Since feminism was understood to enrich Judaism, others demanded greater involvement in traditional prayer and ritual activity [Medjuck, 328]. Women also reminded the community that not all of its members fit the traditional nuclear family model - widows, unmarried, single Jewish mothers, lesbians and the transgendered \u2013 drawing attention to these inequalities. Philanthropic organizations such as Jewish Women International [formerly B\u2019nai Brith Women] transformed their agendas to end violence against women. Women\u2019s claim to \u201chalf the kingdom\u201d as full members of the Jewish community including participation in religious services pushed women to successfully overcome many of the obstacles. [Zuckerman and Goldstein]\r\n\r\nToday, women still speak with multiple voices shaped by difference; and, there is no unanimity in Jewish ideas. Many seek to make the values of Judaism relevant in their lives. To attract the next generation of women to take over from their mothers, an adjunct status is unacceptable. For those who pursue greater participation in religious rituals, new opportunities have been created in the hiring of female rabbis in Reform temples and in growing opportunities in congregations from Reconstructionist to Traditionalist. That the ultra Orthodox communities elected Mindy Pollack to the Outremont council is momentous. And, poor, ill, elderly, and battered women continue to access a range of social services thanks in large part to Jewish women in Montreal.\r\n\r\n<strong>Bibliography<\/strong>\r\nAnctil, Pierre. <em>Tur Malka:\u00a0 Fl\u00e2neries sur les cimes de l\u2019histoire juive montr\u00e9alaise<\/em>. Sillery: Les \u00e9ditions du Septentrion, 1997.\r\nCohen, Yolande and Joseph Yossi L\u00e9vy. \u201cWomen in the Moroccan-Jewish Community of Montreal\u201d in in Sarah Silberstein Swartz and Margie Wolfe (eds) <em>From Memory to Transformation: Jewish Women\u2019s Voices<\/em>. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1998: 267-275.\r\n\r\nDraper, Paula J. and Janice B. Karlinsky, \u201cAbraham\u2019s Daughters:\u00a0 Women, Charity and Power in the Canadian Jewish Community\u201d in Jean Burnet (ed) <em>Looking into My Sister\u2019s Eyes:\u00a0 An Exploration in Women\u2019s History<\/em>. Toronto:\u00a0 Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1986:\u00a0 75-90.\r\n\r\nGottheil, Allen.<em> Les juifs progressistes au Qu\u00e9bec<\/em>. Montr\u00e9al:\u00a0 \u00c9ditions par ailleurs, 1988.\r\n\r\nGottlieb, Amy. \u201cNot in My Name.\u201d A Jewish Feminist Challenges Loyalty to Israel\u201d in Linda Carty (ed) <em>And Still We Rise: Feminist Political Mobilizing in Contemporary Canada<\/em>. Toronto:\u00a0 Women\u2019s Press, 1993:\u00a0 53-72.\r\n\r\n\u201cHalf the Kingdom.\u201d documentary film directed by Francine E. Zuckerman and Roushell N. Goldstein, National Center for Jewish Film, 1989.\r\nHart, Arthur Daniel. <em>The Jew in Canada: A Complete Record of the Canadian Jewry from the Days of the French R\u00e9gime to the Present Time<\/em>. Montreal: Jewish Publications Ltd., 1926.\r\nJewish Public Library Archives, Federation CJA Collection, Fonds 1001;1, <em>Minute Books and Annual Reports, 1917-2010.<\/em>\r\nJoseph, Norma Baumel, \u201c<em>Zakhor<\/em>: Memory, Ritual and Gender\u201d in Silberstein Swartz and Wolfe <em>From Memory to Transformation<\/em>:\u00a0 177-187.\r\nKaye\/Kantrowitz, Melanie. \u201cDiasporism, Feminism and Coalition\u201d in Silberstein Swartz and Wolfe <em>From Memory to Transformation<\/em>:\u00a0 241-255.\r\nKirkland, Elizabeth. \u201cMothering Citizens:\u00a0 Elite Women in Montreal 1890-1914\u201d PhD Thesis (McGill University, 2011).\r\n\r\nKosmin, Barry A. \u201cThe Political Economy of Gender in Jewish Federations.\u201d <em>Contemporary Jewry<\/em> Vol. 10 (1989):\u00a0 17-31.\r\nLipsitz, Edmond Y. (ed) <em>Canadian Jewish Women of Today:\u00a0 Who\u2019s Who of Canadian Jewish Women 1983<\/em>. Downsview, Ont.: J.E.S.L. Educational Products, 1983.\r\n\r\nMedjuck, Sheva. \u201cIf I Cannot Dance to It, It\u2019s Not My Revolution:\u00a0 Jewish Feminism in Canada Today\u201d in Robert J. Brym, William Shaffir, and Morton Weinfeld (eds) <em>The Jews in Canada<\/em>. Don Mills, Ont.:\u00a0 Oxford University Press, 2010:\u00a0 328-343.\r\n\r\nMyers, Tamara. \u201cOn Probation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Women's Anti-Delinquency Work in Interwar Montreal\u201d in Bettina Bradbury and Tamara Myers (eds) <em>Negotiating Identities in 19th- and 20th-Century Montreal.<\/em> Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005: 175-201.\r\nNefsky, Judith L. \u201cWriting Women into History:\u00a0 Preliminary Notes for the Study of Canadian Jewish Women.\u201d unpublished paper c 1986.\r\n\r\nNemiroff, Greta Hofmann. \u201cA Feminist, First:\u00a0 Speculations of a Secular Jew\u201d in Silbersetein Swartz and Wolfe. <em>From Memory to Transformation<\/em>:\u00a0 93-109.\r\nRobinson, Ira. <em>A History of Antisemitism in Canada<\/em>. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015.\r\nRosen, Janice and Barbara Feldman. \u201cTwo Centuries of Jewish Life in Montreal\u201d from exhibit panels of <em>Tur Malka:\u00a0 Two centuries of Jewish Life in Montreal<\/em> presented by the Jewish Public Library of Montreal, CJCN Archives and other community organizations, 1992.\r\n\r\nSteedman, Mercedes, <em>Angels of the Workplace:\u00a0 Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940<\/em>. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997.\r\nTulchinsky, Gerald. <em>Canada\u2019s Jews:\u00a0 A People\u2019s Journey<\/em>. Toronto:\u00a0 University of Toronto Press, 2008.\r\nZylberberg, Sonia. \u00ab\u00a0La place des femmes dans le judaisme\u00a0: un chapitre distinct?\u00a0\u00bb dans Pierre Unctil et Ira Robinson (dir) <em>Les communaut\u00e9s juives de Montr\u00e9al\u00a0: Histoire et enjeux contemporains<\/em>. Qu\u00e9bec\u00a0: Septentrions, 2010\u00a0: 165-190.","link":"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/en\/category\/women\/","name":"Women","slug":"women","taxonomy":"category","parent":0,"meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Les femmes juives influentes de Montr\u00e9al et du Qu\u00e9bec \u2013 Juifs d\u2019ici<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"D\u00e9couvrez l\u2019histoire unique d\u2019une foule de femmes juives innovatrices ayant contribu\u00e9 \u00e0 la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise au cours du si\u00e8cle dernier.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Les femmes juives influentes de Montr\u00e9al et du Qu\u00e9bec \u2013 Juifs d\u2019ici\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Les militantes juives ont tout de m\u00eame beaucoup en commun avec les militantes protestantes et catholiques. Elles tissent des liens avec ces derni\u00e8res dans l&#039;objectif de r\u00e9soudre des probl\u00e8mes r\u00e9pandus, notamment en mati\u00e8re de sant\u00e9 publique et de r\u00e9forme urbaine, et d&#039;aider l&#039;ensemble des Montr\u00e9alais. Elles deviennent \u00e9galement membres d&#039;organisations nationales comme la Croix-Rouge. Les femmes juives savent tirer parti du d\u00e9veloppement des droits de la femme au Qu\u00e9bec, qui suit la R\u00e9volution tranquille. Le f\u00e9minisme leur donne les moyens de lutter contre les in\u00e9galit\u00e9s entre les sexes dans tous les aspects de la vie communautaire, comme les in\u00e9galit\u00e9s touchant la reconnaissance de leur contribution \u00e0 la vie publique ou encore l&#039;acc\u00e8s \u00e0 l&#039;\u00e9ducation et au pouvoir, et leur permet de s\u2019affirmer.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Juifs d&#039;ici - Quebec\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Women-Femmes.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Women-Femmes.jpg\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"CollectionPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/\",\"name\":\"Les femmes juives influentes de Montr\u00e9al et du Qu\u00e9bec \u2013 Juifs d\u2019ici\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/en\/#website\"},\"description\":\"D\u00e9couvrez l\u2019histoire unique d\u2019une foule de femmes juives innovatrices ayant contribu\u00e9 \u00e0 la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise au cours du si\u00e8cle dernier.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/category\/femmes\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/en\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Femmes\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.juifsdici.ca\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Juifs d&#039;ici - Quebec\",\"description\":\"Chaque grand Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois a son histoire. 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