School funding crisis revealed ugly pools of
anti-Semitism Innuendo and invective demonized Montreal's Jewish community
by Gil Troy
The Montreal Gazette, January 24, 2005
The Quebec government's attempt to fund Jewish schools equitably certainly was debatable, like most government initiatives. But the controversy that erupted - and killed the program - was repulsive.
Rather than debating the program's merits, too much innuendo and invective demonized the Jewish community, revealing ugly pools of anti-Semitism festering provincewide.
Cartoonists depicted Quebec's Education Minister as a big-nosed Hasidic Jew. Editorialists complained that a rich community which donates $15 million annually to Israeli schools should not be grabbing $10 million from Quebec's deserving, desperate schoolchildren.
Politicians warned that such unfair payoffs to the Jews would feed resentment against the community - then professed to be shocked when told that such warnings themselves fed the resentment. And educators spoke ominously about a "special" community getting "special" funds - loosely translated as a foreign community that thinks it deserves special treatment.
Once again putting the "cow" in coward, Premier Jean Charest followed the herd and cancelled the program. When one of his predecessors, Lucien Bouchard, saw anti-Semitism in his own party, he repudiated it eloquently. Not this premier. Charest missed an opportunity to ennoble democracy by denouncing the ugly attacks. Instead, he tried ducking controversy by retreating.
Simultaneously, Jewish community leaders put the "ham" in ham-handed, appearing piggish by failing to contextualize the program as a long overdue catch-up attempt at securing equitable funding, rather than compensation for the United Talmud Torah bombing, or a payoff for Jewish Liberal Party support (which, considering the separatist alternative need not be purchased).
If "the Jews" are as clever, powerful and monolithic as charged, they should have done a better PR job. Amid the firestorm, key leaders had "no comment" - feeding the impression they had something to hide.
Weeks earlier, Jewish leaders should have taken the time to educate fellow citizens about the program's rationale while finding opinion leaders who could have forged a coalition for equity in education funding.
Instead, the critics dominated the discussion, and a deep-seated hostility to the Jewish community surfaced. The old stereotypes of "the Jews" and "the Jewish community" as too wealthy, powerful, greedy, grabby, foreign, and insular, live on in Quebec.
Apparently, Jews are tolerated as long as they make no waves and no demands. The insulting charge that by getting the kind of equitable funding the Greek community already enjoys. "The Jews" were triggering anti-Semitism, confused cause and effect, victim and victimizer.
Quebec logic follows Middle-Eastern logic. Just as Israelis are blamed when terrorists target them, Quebec's Jews are blamed when anti-Semites demonize them.
Further blaming the victim, now Quebec's Jews are accused of being hypersensitive. This charge is particularly amusing in a thin-skinned province that deemed comedian Conan O'Brien "racist," when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog indulged in predictable French-Canadian stereotypes in the benign context of late -night television, as opposed to the stereotypes and code words slung during a toxic political debate.
Does anyone count the money immigrant groups send back to their home countries against the social welfare or educational benefits they enjoy as Canadian taxpayers? Did any critics tally how much money Jewish philanthropies donate to serve the entire community through such organizations as Montreal's Jewish General Hospital? Moreover, are women, blacks, gays, Greeks blamed for fomenting hatred against themselves when the government earmarks funds or programs for them?
Given Canada's commitment to multiculturalism, particular ethnic groups and cultural communities occasionally will be treated as distinct constituencies with certain needs. No program, no community, is immune from criticism. But every program should be judged in context.
Coming from the United States, where most American Jews oppose any kind of state connection to religion, I understand the objections to the government funding private schools - although an American-style wall separating church and state does not exist in Quebec, and Jewish schools, like other denominational schools, already receive some funding.
Purists here must acknowledge Quebec's patchwork quilt of partial fundings and exceptions, reflecting a complicated history, politics over the last 20 years, and continuing ambivalence about the role of religion in education and society. Still, I cannot fathom - nor can I accept - the fervour of the critics, the crudeness of the stereotypes, the implicit message treating Jews as guests, on probation, tolerated as long as they do not rock the boat.
This contemptible attitude is more European than American. Such antagonism - juxtaposed against the comforts, freedoms and prosperity of so many Jews in Quebec - evokes what Count de Clermont-Tonnerre told the French National Assembly of 1789: "The Jews must be granted everything as individuals - but nothing as a nation."
Canada might have more to learn from the United States than Europe, and most certainly from France, regarding this issue - and maybe even regarding other issues as well.
Gil Troy teaches history at McGill University.
C The Gazette (Montreal) 2005
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