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There are only about 90,000 people in Australia who identified as Jewish at the last census, about 0.4 % of the population. The biggest number live in Melbourne.
This community have had unbelievable success compared with its size. In so many areas. Our current treasurer is Jewish, so many business leaders, a former Governor General, probably our most famous military leader from WW1.
I presume more people did not come because the US is generally regarded as more desirable.
Why? Because Jews were not aware that the US was heavily involved in the planning of the Holocaust, a German-American joint venture. See books by Edwin Black.
Montreal and Toronto were definitely major Jewish migration destinations in a fairly similar way that cities of the US NE were.
In the case of Montreal many Jewish families actually arrived at Ellis Island and made their way north to Montreal by train.
It's extremely common for Jews in Canada's two biggest cities to have relatives in the US NE.
Also, Jewish populations in places like LA and Miami are more the result of secondary migrations of people already settled in the US NE than people who went directly there from Europe.
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Originally Posted by Bluefox
Well, those are all much smaller countries to begin with overall, and that’s part of it.
You left out Toronto and Montreal in your examples and instead listed Vancouver and Calgary to compare to New York and Chicago. Why? Toronto is over 3% Jewish and Montreal 2-3%. It’s not NYC levels but those are fairly significant numbers. There are also plenty of US cities with 1% or less Jewish population like my city, Seattle.
Metro Detroit has a very significant Jewish population, as well. It's roughly about the size of Montreal's.
Detroit suburbs like Huntington Woods have Jewish pops as high as 65% of the population. There are suburbs, like West Bloomfield, in which the school district recognizes all Jewish holidays. Schools are closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, just as they are for Christmas, and in Canada, for Good Friday.
There are only about 90,000 people in Australia who identified as Jewish at the last census, about 0.4 % of the population. The biggest number live in Melbourne.
This community have had unbelievable success compared with its size. In so many areas. Our current treasurer is Jewish, so many business leaders, a former Governor General, probably our most famous military leader from WW1.
I presume more people did not come because the US is generally regarded as more desirable.
4 of the 10 richest people in Australia have Jewish heritage, including 3 of the top 4.
Its fair to say the Australia would have hardly been on the radar at the time that most Jews immigrated to the USA from (about 1870 to WW1). Australia did not even exist as a country for much for much of that period.
Most of Australia's Jew arrived post world war 2, partly as a result of the strict immigration policies that USA had at the time.
Montreal and Toronto were definitely major Jewish migration destinations in a fairly similar way that cities of the US NE were.
I'll let you speak for Montreal, Acajack; but I do recall reading The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, by Mordecai Richler, which made it sound like a lot of the Montreal population was Jewish. It wasn't, but it did indicate that there was definitely a significant Jewish neighbourhood in Montreal. Hey, the best Montreal Smoked Meat sandwich I ever had in my life was at Ben's (sorry, Schwartz's ).
I grew up in Toronto, with a number of Jewish classmates at school. We didn't live far from Toronto's Jewish community, which stretched along Bathurst Street, between Eglinton Avenue and Wilson Street, roughly; and went east and west from there. It was common to see store signs in Hebrew and English in that neighbourhood. The Jewish community moved north from its former home on Spadina, leaving a couple of Toronto stalwart delis stranded: Shopsy's and Switzer's. Shopsy's (after the founder, Harry Shopsowitz), created a line of food products that could be sold in supermarkets, and a chain of Jewish delis in the Toronto area. Switzer's didn't, or couldn't, and eventually, went out of business; after being crowded out by Toronto's downtown Chinatown.
I've never lived in Vancouver, but I have lived in Calgary (and Edmonton and Lethbridge), and while there are Jewish people in those cities, there seem to be very few. Not as many or as prominently as I remember in Toronto, or in Montreal when I visited there.
The Arabs, whose Semitic language is similar to that of the Jews, and north African groups took over large swathes of the Roman/Germanic Empire, namely in north Africa and a substantial portion of Spain/Portugal, as well as Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, and threatened France and southern Italy. These fledgling Europeans viewed many Jews who remained in those territories as allies of the new invaders/occupiers, a view that continued into the times of the European/Roman reconquest of England, Spain/Portugal, southern Italy, and their attempts to reconquer the eastern Mediterranean (where Greek, Slavic, and Semitic-speaking Christians fared no better on either end of the stick, but that's another story).
Similar view applies to Jews of the former Polish-Lithuanian Empire, sandwiched between the expanding European/German Empire and Russian Empire, and in many cases forced to either choose sides or flee.
By the way, this coincides with southern Italian emigration to New York City where census records show them and these former German/Polish-Lithuanian/Russian Jews living side by side on apartment building floors, even sharing a single bathroom per floor. I have personally been affected by many a marriage during that period.
Anyway, Westerners have favorable views of Jews today because they were natural allies against the Germans and for entrenching a beach head and gendarme on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.
Back on topic, I would not conclude that the US had a greater force of attraction for Jews than other English-speaking countries until any data is adjusted on a proportional per capita basis, going and coming, and broken down chronologically in greater global context.
Good Luck!
Not sure why you changed my post from religious conflict to political, as many countries were run by Monarchy rather than politicians. The Reformation was the big turning point, which saw a split with Rome and the Catholic Church.
The separation of the Church of England from Rome occurred under Henry VIII, beginning in 1529 and being completed in 1537.
The later struggle between the Monarch and Parliament, was a factor in the later English Civil War.
4 of the 10 richest people in Australia have Jewish heritage, including 3 of the top 4.
I was just reading a list of well known Australians of Jewish heritage. Wow, I had no idea most of them were or are Jewish. Immigration goes right back to the First Fleet.
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