JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
MONTREAL (JTA) — Quebec passed its so-called secularism law that bans certain public employees — teachers, judges and police officers, among them — from wearing religious symbols including kippahs, turbans and hijabs at work. Bill 21 passed Sunday in a 73-35 vote following a marathon legislative session over the weekend that featured contentious debate. Polls…
The mayor of the most heavily-Jewish city in Canada is refusing to back down in the face of criticism over his comments about a controversial bill in the Quebec legislature that would ban teachers and other government employees in positions of authority from wearing religious clothing. William Steinberg, the mayor of the Montreal suburb of…
MONTREAL (JTA) — Quebec’s incoming government wants to ban some public servants from wearing religious symbols to work, spurring concerns from Jewish groups. The proposed ban by the Coalition Avenir Québec government is ostensibly to make Quebec public institutions more secular and “neutral” religiously. It would bar police, prison guards, public school teachers and some…
Born into a French-Canadian family and educated by nuns, Lise Ravary makes an unlikely Jewish voice. But since converting to Judaism nearly two decades ago, Ravary’s widely read opinion columns have brought a singular perspective to Quebec’s complex politics. By pulling no punches — in a place where sensitivities around language and identity run deep…
MONTREAL (JTA) — A Quebec court ordered a group of Hasidic Jews to leave their summer homes by the end of the month because they are too noisy and slovenly. The Quebec Superior Court ruled that the approximately 50 Hasidim living in the town of Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, 60 miles north of Montreal, must leave by July 26…
MONTREAL (JTA) — A separatist Quebec legislator backtracked after criticizing a fellow parliamentarian for wearing a kippah in the legislative chamber on Holocaust Remembrance Day. During a raucous session, Opposition leader Jean-François Lisée of the Parti-Québécois criticized David Birnbaum, the only Jewish legislator of the governing Liberal Party, for wearing the skullcap. Lisée said doing…
Are you surprised to learn that the Quebec City mosque attack suspect is, among other things, an anti-feminist troll? Me neither. This particular hate overlap reeks of common-sense of course, and is also consistent with what we know about the relationship between mass shootings and misogyny. And yet Islamophobia’s proponents do enjoy portraying themselves as…
Jacques Parizeau, the former separatist Quebec premier who blamed the Jewish and other ethnic communities for the narrow defeat in a bitter provincial referendum on seceding from Canada, has died. Parizeau died Monday. He was 84. Parizeau later acknowledged that in the razor-thin loss on Oct. 30, 1995, for which he blamed “money and the…
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