EPICURUS was a third century BCE Greek religious skeptic. He taught that the good life is characterized by happiness, tranquility, and freedom from suffering, most of which is caused by the irrational fear of divine retribution and punishment after death. Taking a dim view of the Hellenization of some of their coreligionists, devout Jews of the era developed an eponymous term to refer to any Jew who deviated from strict religious observance: epikoros (Hebrew) or afker (Aramaic), later rendered as apikoyres in Yiddish.
The persistence of this denigrating term testifies to the fact that, for millennia, some Jews have widely regarded religious defection as a threat to Jewish continuity. That’s why a 1964 cover story in Look, a then-popular weekly magazine, caused such a furor. It was titled “The Vanishing American Jew.” Its author, Thomas B. Morgan, claimed there would be hardly any Jews left in the US by the year 2000, due largely to intermarriage. Look ceased publication in 1971. Morgan passed away in 2014. In contrast, American Jews now number between 6.3 and 7.5 million according to the latest estimates by leading American and Israeli experts on the subject — testament to the hazards of forecasting the future, especially perhaps when it comes to Jews.
Even today, much social scientific research on diaspora Jewry is motivated by the desire to assess the extent to which acculturation — involving a departure from religious observance and normative nonreligious Jewish behaviour — weakens the foundations of Jewish communal life. Some researchers view acculturation as a force that undermines the continuity of Jewish communities. Others view acculturation as an adaptive mechanism that permits Jewish communities to survive and flourish in modern environments.
What do Canadian data show? If we examine census figures, we can see that both forces are at play, but, on the whole, the trend favours continuity: secularization may preserve rather than threaten that continuity. Acculturation can cause Jewish communities to dissipate, but it can also help to ensure their continuity. In fact, both processes often operate simultaneously. The difficulty is in figuring out which force predominates in a given time and place.
Who Is Counting?
THE CANADIAN CENSUS requires all residents to state their religion (if any) every decade, and their ethnicity, culture, or ancestry every five years.
Charles Shahar, chief researcher for Federation CJA in Montreal, has for decades been the foremost demographer of Canadian Jewry. He adopts what he calls the “standard” census definition of Canadian Jews. According to this standard, Jews are individuals who either specify their religion as Jewish or say they have no religion but include Jewish among their ethnic, cultural, or ancestral identifiers. By this definition, even individuals with no religion who list Jewish as their fourth, fifth, or sixth ethnic, cultural, or ancestral identifier are counted as Jews. People who identify as Jewish by ethnicity, culture, or ancestry but identify with a non-Jewish religion are not considered Jewish by this definition.
Sergio DellaPergola, former chair of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is widely regarded as the dean of demographers of world Jewry. He uses a more restrictive definition than Shahar does. In addition to excluding individuals who identify with a non-Jewish religion yet identify as Jewish by ethnicity, culture, or ancestry, he does not count as Jews those Canadians who say they have no religion and list their Jewish ethnic, cultural, or ancestral origins fourth, fifth, or sixth. In DellaPergola’s view, the Jewish identity of such individuals is too weak to allow them to be counted as members of the community.
There is no right or wrong here. Note, however, that both Shahar’s and DellaPergola’s definitions exclude people who identify as Jewish to some degree, and there is a cost to doing so.
For example, neither definition is entirely sensible when applied to immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU), who comprise the largest category of Canadian Jewish immigrants and, with their Russian-speaking offspring, as much as 12 percent of Canada’s Jewish population by the standard definition. Some of these individuals identify as Christian by religion yet identify as Jewish by “nationality” (natsional’nost’ in Russian).
Natsional’nost’ occupies roughly the same conceptual space as ethnicity in English. The self-definition of some FSU immigrants as Jewish by natsional’nost’ was made real and reinforced by the internal passport system of the Soviet-era administrative apparatus, which allocated choice educational opportunities, managerial/administrative jobs, and the right to reside in certain locales based on ethnic quotas. From the 1960s on, the internal passport system was used to systematically discriminate against Jews in order to make room for other nationality groups in the upper reaches of the Soviet stratification system. Apart from state-sanctioned anti-Jewish discrimination, strong memories of the Holocaust kept Jewish identity alive in the Soviet Union, even among Jews by natsional’nost’ who considered themselves Christian.
The Shahar and DellaPergola exclusions are also less than helpful if one wants to understand the implications of the Jewish population count for Jewish continuity. The approach that I regard as the most valuable approach for that purpose lets Canadians speak for themselves by counting as Jewish all those who consider themselves Jewish in any way.
To help understand the implications of these definitions for an examination of Jewish continuity, it will help to look at some figures from the most recent census. They describe three categories of Jews:
- Jews by religion. In 2021, people who declared themselves Jews by religion comprised nearly 74 percent of Canadians who declared themselves Jewish in some way.
- Secular Jews. In that same year, close to 18 percent of Canada’s Jews said they do not identify with any religion but do identify as Jewish by ethnicity, culture, or ancestry. Many of these people listed one or more other ethnicities, cultures, or ancestries.
- Converted Jews. Finally, under 9 percent of Canadian Jews said they identify as Jewish by ethnicity, culture, or ancestry and simultaneously with a non-Jewish religion.
Change Over Time
THINGS GET INTERESTING when we examine how the three categories of Canadian Jews have changed over time. In brief:
- Jews by religion increased in number by just under 2 percent between 2011 and 2021.
- Secular Jews increased in number by nearly 44 percent during this period.
- Converted Jews decreased in number by 18 percent over the decade in question.
To summarize: the number of ethnic Jews with a religious identity other than Jewish shrank, the number of Jews by religion grew slightly, and the number of ethnic Jews with no religious identification grew considerably. The question is: Why did the size of these three categories change in the ways they did between 2011 and 2021, and what are the implications of these changes for Jewish continuity?
Canadian Jewish women of child-bearing age are expected to give birth to an average of 1.8 children (high compared to Jews in other countries except Israel, where the comparable figure is 3.0). However, some Orthodox and most haredi women of child-bearing age far exceed this number, contributing disproportionately to the increase in the number of Canadian Jews by religion. For example, Canadian haredi women are expected to give birth to 3.5 children on average. That is an important reason why haredim represent a relatively quickly growing sector of Canadian Jewry, now making up nearly 9 percent of Canada’s Jewish population, including almost 23 percent of the Jewish population of metropolitan Montreal.
Understanding why the third group, converted Jews, shrank over the same time period is more difficult. We don’t know the expected number of children for converted women who regard themselves as Jewish by ethnicity, culture, or ancestry. However, we do know from the census that ethnic Jews who convert to a non-Jewish religion exhibit a wide range of social and economic characteristics that closely mirror those of non-Jews. I therefore suspect that the fertility rate of ethnic Jews who have converted to a non-Jewish religion is close to the 1.3 average for all Canadian women. This lower fertility rate likely accounts at least in part for the decline in the number of people in this category of the country’s Jewish population.
I also suspect that growing antisemitism may be responsible for the declining population of ethnic Jews who have converted to a non-Jewish religion in Canada. Let me explain.
Often, increasing animosity toward Jews strengthens Jewish identity. In his 1944 reflection on the Nuremberg Laws, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre captured this tendency when he wrote (hyperbolically) that “the antisemite creates the Jew.” We see the operation of Sartre’s generalization today, as enrolments in Jewish day schools and summer camps, and memberships in synagogues rise in tandem with a spike in police-recorded hate crimes following the October 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom. A similar correlation has been noted in the US.
However, I believe Sartre’s generalization is only a half-truth. When the going gets tough, some Jews may be inclined to “pass” as non-Jews. Today, even a religious Jew may be careful to keep his Magen David necklace tucked under his shirt; my guess is that passing is especially widespread among people who have converted to a non-Jewish religion. When antisemitism is on the rise, why would an Anglican who happens to have a Jewish grandfather insist on declaring herself part-Jewish when that might lead to trouble?
Secularization
WE NOW ARRIVE at the category of Jews that grew by far the most between 2011 and 2021. The number of secular Jews — those who say they identify with no religion but think of themselves as Jewish ethnically, culturally, or by ancestry — increased by nearly 44 percent. The growth of this category of Jews reflects a trend in the population at large: religious identification is declining across the board.
In the 2021 census, almost 35 percent of Canadians said they have no religion, up more than 10 percentage points since 2011. For Canadian Jews, the numbers are smaller, but the trend is the same. In 2011, nearly 13 percent of Canadian Jews, excluding ethnic Jews who converted to a non-Jewish religion, said they have no religion. Ten years later, the comparable figure was more than 19 percent.
Having no religion does not mean a person lacks spirituality. It does imply that a person lacks a connection to organized religion. And the plain fact is that many Canadian Jews — even some who say they are Jewish by religion — lack such a connection.
In 2018, Keith Neuman of the Environics Institute, Rhonda Lenton of York University, and I conducted a major survey of Jews in Canada, in the course of which 2,335 Jewish adults were interviewed. We found that 42 percent of respondents said they do not belong to a synagogue or other prayer group. When asked “what being Jewish means to you,” 37 percent said that attending synagogue is not important to them; 35 percent said the same about observing Jewish law. Just 12 percent of Canadian Jews said that, for them, being Jewish is “mainly a matter of religion.” When asked if they believe in God or a universal spirit, 24 percent said no and 14 percent were unsure or refused to answer the question, some of them perhaps because they were embarrassed to admit uncertainty or disbelief to the interviewer.
In short, secularization is not restricted to secular Jews. It is also evident among Jews by religion. Thus, the 2018 Survey of Jews in Canada found that more than 14 percent of Canadian Jews who belong to a synagogue admit they don’t believe in God or a universal spirit and just shy of 14 percent say they don’t know or decline to answer the question.
The Secularization of Jewish Life in Canada
SOCIOLOGISTS HAVE BEEN analyzing secularization since the nineteenth century. The foremost early proponent of the secularization thesis was Max Weber. One of the founders of sociology as an academic discipline, Weber held that science, and rationalism more generally, is “disenchanting” the world, replacing supernatural understandings and explanations of natural processes and human affairs with understandings and explanations based on systematic empirical observation. Although the secularization thesis had to be qualified beginning in the 1970s because of the rise of religious fundamentalism in the United States and elsewhere, secularization continues apace. This results in a more polarized religious landscape between those who identify with a particular religion and those who do not.
In this context, non-religious Jewish organizations, both formal and informal, have proliferated in Canada, partly to meet the growing demand of secular Jews. And it is not just secular Jews who belong to secular organizations. Jews by religion populate them, too. Think of Jewish community centres, libraries, film festivals, literary award lecture series, baseball, basketball, and hockey teams, concert series, khavurot (discussion groups), Hebrew and Yiddish conversation circles, organizations leading the fight against antisemitism, and university courses on secular Jewish subjects including ancient and modern Jewish languages, Jewish history, Jewish art, and the sociology of the Jews. Since I call United Bakers in Toronto my uptown office — I frequently meet people there to discuss academics and politics over pea soup and a whole wheat bagel — I’m even tempted to include Jewish restaurants on this list.
All this buzz takes place outside the traditional centre of Jewish life: the synagogue. Secularization has not involved the abandonment of Jewish life so much as recasting it in a new mould to meet new, nonreligious needs.
Traditionalists may object to relatively new non-religious Jewish organizations that threaten their hegemony, but they are growing nonetheless.
Consider the four Canadian Zionist organizations that strongly support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel, yet are openly and often highly critical of certain aspects of Israel’s government: ARZA Canada, the Zionist voice of Canada’s Reform movement and a critic of the near-monopoly of Orthodox Judaism in Israel and the political parties that support it; Canadian Friends of Peace Now, which backs the Israeli peace movement; the New Israel Fund of Canada, which regularly sends millions of dollars to fund projects in Israel that promote social and economic justice, religious freedom, civil and human rights, and democracy; and JSpaceCanada, which champions a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. These organizations have roughly 15,000 followers combined. Between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023, New Israel Fund of Canada’s followers increased in number by 33 percent, donors by 71 percent, and donations by 91 percent. For JSpaceCanada the upward trend was even steeper, with followers increasing in number by 90 percent, donors by 206 percent, and donations by 210 percent.
These organizations experienced especially rapid growth after the most right-wing government in Israel’s history took power in December 2022. And it’s a good thing for Jewish continuity, too. A 2024 survey of 588 Canadian Jewish adults shows that younger Canadian Jews are significantly less emotionally attached to Israel than are older Jews. If progressive Zionist organizations were not around to mobilize them, younger Jews might well drift farther from Jewish life.
In sum, notwithstanding fears about the threat of losing Jews to secularization, evidence shows that secularization involves adaptation to the modern world more than it involves assimilation to the non-Jewish mainstream. Secularization facilitates the growth of Canadian Jewry. It is not, however, the only source of growth.
Looking to the Future
BETWEEN 2020 AND 2021, the Canadian Jewish population matching Charles Shahar’s “standard” definition — the one that includes all Jews by religion, ethnicity, or ancestry, except those who have converted to a non-Jewish religion — increased by about 0.4 percent. (I arrived at this figure by estimating the annual excess of Jewish births over deaths and the annual excess of Jewish immigration over emigration). Supposing that growth rate holds steady, I estimate that Canada’s Jewish population is around 410,000 in 2025, and will be close to 419,000 in 2030.
These are, however, estimates: the figures use to produce them are approximations. And several factors may cause the growth rate to change.
For one thing, the fertility rate is gradually declining practically everywhere and among nearly all religious and ethnic groups, and Canadian Jewish women are no exception. For another, the Canadian Jewish population is aging. In 2011, the median age of Canadian Jews was 40.2, rising to 41.6 in 2021. Consequently, the annual excess of Jewish births over deaths is likely to decline in the coming years. Therefore, the number of Jews in Canada will increasingly depend on more Jews immigrating to Canada than emigrating from it.
The US and Israel are the destinations of the great majority of Canadian-Jewish emigrants. The level of Canadian-Jewish emigration in a given year depends chiefly on the difference between Canada’s unemployment rate versus the unemployment rates of Israel and the US. If Canada’s unemployment rate rises relative to the unemployment rates of the US and Israel, more Jews leave Canada. If Canada’s unemployment rate falls relative to the unemployment rates of the US and Israel, more Jews immigrate to Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, the main source countries for Jewish immigrants to Canada are Israel (32 percent of the total between 2011 and 2021), the US (18 percent of the total), Russia and Ukraine (a combined 18 percent of the total), and France (4 percent of the total).
Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than six million Ukrainians and nearly one million Russians have left their homelands. As long as the war continues, Canada may experience an increase in Jewish immigration from these countries, particularly Ukraine, since Canada eased residency requirements for Ukrainian nationals shortly after the invasion began.
Similarly, in October 2023, the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas resulted in increased immigration from Israel, encouraged by an easing of Canadian residency requirements for Israeli nationals. Based on actual immigration figures up to June 2024, Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS) anticipated that about 1,000 Israelis would immigrate to Canada in 2024. An unknown number of additional Israelis will have immigrated without JIAS assistance. In the first 11 months of 2024, 7,850 Israelis received temporary Canadian work visas, nearly five times more than in the preceding 12 months.
American politics also shapes immigration trends. There was a noticeable increase in American migration to Canada during Donald Trump’s first presidency (2017–21). It is not inconceivable that Canada will witness another such increase during Trump’s second term. Since about 70 percent of American Jews vote Democrat, and are therefore more likely to be dissatisfied with the Republican Trump regime than are non-Democrats, a disproportionately large number of American immigrants to Canada may be Jews. On the other hand, Trump’s tariffs may cause Canada’s unemployment rate to rise relative to the US unemployment rate, in which case there will be no uptick and perhaps even a decline in the immigration of US Jews to Canada.
Finally, antisemitism in France has risen to a level unknown in any other country with a substantial Jewish population, and has led to considerable Jewish out-migration in recent years. The great majority of émigré French Jews have migrated to Israel. However, Quebec, with its majority French-speaking population and relatively large French-speaking Jewish population in Montreal, has also become an attractive destination for some French Jews.
What does all this add up to? At present, Canada’s Jewish population is the fourth largest in the world, exceeded by the Jewish populations of Israel, the US, and France. However, France’s Jewish population has been shrinking due to emigration, a low total fertility rate, and an aging population. If France’s Jewish population continues to decrease at its current rate, and Canada’s Jewish population continues its slow increase, then early in the next decade Canada’s Jewish population will exceed that of France.
Of course, this is just an interpretation and extrapolation of recent trends. It’s impossible to know what will actually happen. But what we do know is that by far the fastest growing category of Jews in this country consists of secular Jews. Secular Jewish organizations continue to grow apace to meet their demands, and also the demands of religious Jews. To be sure, acculturation is taking place, enabling Jews of all stripes to adapt to today’s world. But far from all acculturated Jews are epikorsim, lost to the community forever.
This article is based on several of the author’s recent scholarly works: “Twelve degrees of Jewish identity” (with Feng Hou, in The Ever-Dying People? Canada’s Jews in Comparative Perspective, edited by Robert Brym and Randal F. Schnoor, published by University of Toronto Press in 2023); “Jewish continuity and the Canadian census” (published in the Fall 2024 issue of Canadian Jewish Studies/Études juives canadiennes); and “Canada’s Jewish population 2024: Focus on attitudes toward Jews and Israel” (in press in American Jewish Year Book 2024, published by Springer). Our thanks especially to Canadian Jewish Studies for their support of our aspirations to develop a non-academic version of the article they originally published.
