ble for the declining population of ethnic Jews who have con- verted 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 an- tisemite 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 fol- lowing the October 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom. A similar cor- relation 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 in- clined 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 wide- spread 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 secu- lar 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 spir- ituality. It does imply that a person lacks a connection to organized religion. And the plain fact is that many Canadi- an 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 ma- jor 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 im- portant 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 per- cent said no and 14 percent were unsure or refused to an- swer 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 Sur- vey 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 propo- nent of the secularization thesis was Max Weber. One of the founders of sociology as an academic discipline, We- ber held that science, and rationalism more generally, is “disenchanting” the world, replacing supernatural under- standings and explanations of natural processes and hu-
Composition of Canadian Jewry
74% Jewish by religion 18% Jewish by ethnicity or culture; no religion 8% Jewish by ethnicity or culture; non-Jewish religion
2021
Jews in Canada: Current Trends
+2%
335,295
329,500
+44%
-18%
80,240
55,850
46,910
38,445
Jews by religion
Secular Jews
Ethnic Jews who converted out
2011
2021
Belief in God or a universal spirit (2018 Survey of Jews in Canada)
62% Yes 24% No
2018
14% Other/ don’t know
40 SPRING 2025
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