The Jewish Community of Canada

Cecil Hart (1883-1940), Canadian ice-hockey player, born in Bedford, Quebec, Canada, a direct descendant of Aaron Hart, one of Canada's first Jewish settlers.

Cecil Hart managed and played for the Star Hockey Club from 1900 to 1922. In 1910 he formed the Montreal City Hockey League and his team were the champions in 1914-1915 and again in 1916-1917. He organized the first international amateur hockey series between Canada and the USA. Entering professional hockey in 1921, Hart purchased the "Montreal Canadians" on behalf of a group of businessmen and became their manager.

Hanane Meier Caiserman (1884–1950), Jewish communal leader, born in Piatra-Neamt, Romania. Caiserman immigrated to Montreal in 1911. A lifelong Labor Zionist, Caiserman was also a union organizer for the Montreal clothing workers and Jewish bakers. During the 1910s, he took a leading role in the strikes for better conditions and union recognition. He also organized and actively promoted Jewish cultural activity, giving evening courses to workers on political economy.

In 1919 he helped organize the Canadian Jewish Congress and was named the organization's general secretary. When the Nazis came to power in Germany he was instrumental in a reorganization of the movement in order to help those refugees who came to Canada. In 1920 Caisermnan established the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada. He was closely associated with Jewish educational and cultural institutions and supported the establishment of separate Jewish schools in Quebec

Louis Rubenstein (1861-1931), figure skater and politician, born in Montreal, Canada, to parents who had immigrated from Poland. He represented Canada in the 1889 unofficial world championships for figure skating which were held in St Petersburg, Russia, and won the gold medal. Largely as a result of his efforts, the Amateur Skating Association of Canada was formed and he remained its president until his death. After retirement from skating in 1892, Rubenstein became involved in the sports of bowling, curling, and cycling. He was elected president of the Canadian Bowling Association in 1895, president of the International Skating Union of America in 1909. From 1913-1915 he was president of the Montreal amateur Athletic Association. In 1981 he was made a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
He was alderman in St. Louis ward of Montreal from 1916 until 1931.

Aaron Hart (1724-1800), businessman and early settler of Canada, born in London, England, of Bavarian parents. He emigrated to New York,USA, via Jamaica in about 1752 and may have been an officer serving with the British forces and on Amherst’s general staff during the conquest of Canada. Other sources claim that he was a purveyor of goods who followed the troops. A receipt dated 28 March 1761 indicates that he and Eleazar Levy had supplied merchandise to Samuel Jacobs. On 21 October1761 Jacobs wrote to Hart, and thereafter a regular correspondence confirms Aaron Hart’s presence in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada.

On 4 July 1762 a fire broke out in the town and it seems that “Hart, an English Jew suffered losses of [£]400 or 500.” On 23 August1763 the authorities opened a post office at Trois-Rivières “in the house of Mr.Hart, merchant” that was to remain there for seven years. In the summer of 1764 the governor wrote that “the group of British merchants in Trois-Rivières” was “composed of a Jew and of a sergeant and an Irish soldier on half pay.” Hart soon became interested in the fur trade. He engaged the best-known voyageurs in the region and the venture proved lucrative. On 7 February 1764, Aaron Hart acquired his first plot of land, “buying 48 acres from the Fafard de La Framboise estate for the attractive price of £350 in cash. Seven months later he purchased a large section of the seigneury of Bécancour.” As time went by many additional properties were acquired by him.

In 1767, determined not to marry outside the Jewish faith, he went to London to take a wife. On 2 February1768 he married his distant cousin Dorothy Judah. One of Aaron’s brothers, Moses, had already joined him in his ventures; another, Henry, had settled at Albany, New York, and a third, Lemon, was launching the London Red Heart Rum distillery in London. At least two of Dorothy Judah’s brothers, Uriah and Samuel, had gone to Canada ahead of her. Their correspondence indicates that “Mama Judah” lived in New York around 1795. The same letters give information about the close links which joined the couple to the large interrelated circle of Jews in New York. Upon his return from London in the spring of 1768, Aaron rejoined his brother Moses, who had kept watch over his business affairs in Canada. In 1792, after Hart's sons joined the family businesses, they opened a brewery and became active in running the town. By assigning large properties to his sons he forced them to establish themselves at Trois-Rivières. He was reputed to be the wealthiest man in the British colonies. The family remained in Trois Rivieres for some one hundred years.

"Beth Avraham Joseph" synagogue
in Toronto, Canada, 1984
Photo: Paul Philip Brown, Canada
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Paul Philip Brown, Canada)

The Orthodox Synagogue,
Winnipeg, Canada, 1984
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot)

'The Kosher Gourmet" and other Jewish businesses,
Toronto, Canada, 1984
Photo: Paul Philip Brown, Canada
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Paul Philip Brown, Canada)

Entrance of the Bialik Hebrew Sschool
in Toronto, Canada, 1984
Photo: Paul Philip Brown, Canada
(The Oster Visual Documentation Center, Beit Hatfutsot,
courtesy of Paul Philip Brown, Canada)

Emma Goldman (1869-1940), political activist, born in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1869, where she lived until 1882, when her family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. It was in St. Petersburg that Emma was first acquainted with revolutionary ideas that she would follow throughout her life. She immigrated to the United States in 1885, settling first in Rochester, NY, and after 1889 in New York City. Her experience as a laborer as well as the political unrest in Chicago in 1886 contributed to her adherence to Anarchist circles and becoming a political activist. Before long, she became involved in an assassination attempt and in 1893 was jailed following her call for the overthrow of the political and economic system. In the early 1900's, she started publishing Mother Earth - a radical journal that she used as a stage for advancing her ideas in favor of women's emancipation, birth control and other revolutionary ideas. Her opposition to WW1 and the American participation to it brought about her expulsion from United States in 1918 back to Russia, then in the middle of the Communist Revolution and the Civil War. However, Emma Goldman rapidly became disillusioned with the Soviet regime and returned to the West, obtained British citizenship in 1925 and then settled in Canada, from where she strove to return to the United States. During the 1930's, she endeavored in drawing the attention of the public opinion against the Nazi peril while lecturing both in Europe and in Canada.

Michael Saul Comay (1908-1987), Israeli diplomat, born in Cape Town, South Africa. He studied and practised law in South Africa and then served in the South African infantry during World War II. He saw action against the German army in the North Africa and reached the rank of major. From 1946 to 1948 he represented the South African Zionist Federation in the Jewish Agency's Political Department.

From 1948, after immigrating to the newly established State of Israel, he worked in Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Comay was Israeli Ambassador to Canada from 1953 to 1957. In 1960 he was appointed Chief Delegate to the United Nations, succeeding Abba Eban, and from 1970 to 1973 he was ambassador to Britain.