Is Civility Just a Mask?
Every so often there is a reminder that Montreal, for all its history as a capital of Jewish culture in North America, still has a problem with anti-Semitism. In the past year alone, a molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jewish school on Van Horne and a bomb exploded outside of a Jewish community centre on Victoria Avenue. It wasn’t so long ago that a Jewish school’s library was destroyed in a vicious firebombing.
Just the other day, a friend told me about this piece of graffiti on Clark Street, between St. Viateur and Fairmount. Someone has scribbled the likeness of a Hasidic Jew with the inscription “Parásit.” It might seem harmless in and of itself, but these thoughtless displays of racism are usually symptoms of a much larger and more insidious problem. If we accept the legitimacy of messages such as this, aren’t we tacitly accepting their message?
Montreal is home to one of the world’s largest communities of Hasidic Jews. Numbering about 15,000, they live mostly within one kilometre of Van Horne Street between Mile End in the east and Côte St. Luc in the west. Historically, since the Hasidic population started growing in the 1980s, there have been some tense moments in the relationship between Outremont’s Hasidim and their mostly French-Canadian neighbours. Some Outremonters have fought against every one of the Hasidic community’s attempts to make a home for themselves by building new schools, synagogues and businesses.
For the most part, though, day-to-day relations between the Hasidim and non-Hasidim are civil. (I wrote about this last winter in “My Heimishe Bakery.”) That’s what makes it so disheartening to see this kind of graffiti. It makes me wonder: is that civility just a mask?
I wrote about this yesterday on Spacing Montreal, which prompted Vila H. at The Smoking Section to draw an analogy with some comments uttered on Monday night’s reasonable accommodation hearing in St. Jérôme, a far-flung Montreal suburb on the edge of the Laurentians. The surrounding area is a popular vacation spot for Montreal’s Hasidim; lately, some residents of the Laurentians have grown tired of their seasonal neighbours. That much was evident in what was said on Monday:
“It’s really a mentality that’s separate,” St. Hippolyte resident Lise Casavant said, adding that immigrants should sign a new Quebec citizenship charter “or choose another province,” a sentiment several other speakers also evoked.
Émile Dion said that [kosher food] made him angry because he believes the cost of getting a rabbi’s blessing raises food prices by as much as 10 per cent. “Why should I pay 10 per cent more for the Jews?” he asked during his comments, which went on for several minutes. “It forces us to eat kosher, and I don’t want to,” he said.
Lise Provencher, of St. Jérôme, said immigrants are “buying their way in” to Quebec and that Jews are the worst because they’re “the most powerful. … It’s always been said that the Jews are the trampoline of money in the world.” After she spoke, the crowd applauded.
I’d like to think that Montrealers — especially those who live in culturally diverse neighbourhoods such as Mile End, Outremont, Côte des Neiges and Snowdon, where the Hasidic community is concentrated — are more sophisticated than people in the Laurentians. But are they really? To what extent do my ostensibly cosmopolitan neighbours agree with their country cousins?
Montreal Apartments
aj says:
When I first saw the “side-curls-on-speed-bump” graffiti I thought it was of the “it’s funny because it’s true” school of humour, and a neat piece of détournement of an otherwise invisible piece of traffic signage. The one you show is hateful and hurtful.
Compared to most neighborhoods in Montreal — Westmount included — Outremont would seem to be solidly old-school francophone. I might be wrong, but its level of diversity might be as low as Quebec’s rural outposts.
It’s basic Star Trek philosophy to say that fear of the unknown is the greatest factor in human conflicts, and here we would seem to have not one, but two groups that essentially keep to themselves, engaged in a not-so-subtle turf war that’s now going on 100 years old. I think it’s time for some cultural dialogue to go on, but that would require some compromise — the ultra-orthodox are going to have to become just a tad more worldly and acknowledge their neighbors, and the Outremontians are going to have to learn to negotiate ;)
September 26th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Patrick Donovan says:
I fear that these Bouchard-Taylor hearings will bring out the worst people from every region to vent their insignificant rage on “the other.” Furthermore, the media is likely to focus solely on the nuttiest nuts because it makes for a more entertaining story. This exercise will lead to a warped perception of cultural relations in Quebec because it excludes the quiet majority who won’t go to these hearings since they have nothing to complain about in the first place. The whole thing is counter-productive.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Zvi says:
Certain Quebeckers seem to have replaced the old dogmatism of the Catholic Church with an equally dogmatic form of Secularism - any exhibit of religious belief is to be suppressed. And they think that this is enlightenment. On occasion I try to point out the fallacy of this approach. For example, during the Eruv debate in Outremont many people were against the idea because they proclaimed that we must maintain a complete separation of “church and state”. I pointed out that they don’t generally call the police when the church bells ring, so what exactly is the problem with allowing a symbolic string to encircle their block from existing wires?
Anyway, I was discussing with a Quebecois neighbour the recent car-free day event and we both agreed that in order for this to really have an impact it needs to be a far more regular activity, for example every weekend. He suggested that we should close Hutchison/Durocher between Fairmount and Bernard every Shabat! He was serious. Granted he & I are more on the ‘lunatic fringe’ when it comes to transportation issues, but this could be a wonderful case of symbiotic accommodation.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Ian says:
aj points out that “Outremontians” and the Hasidim will have to engage in dialogue to overcome a lack of cultural diversity… but I’d like to point out that this anti-semitic graf is in the heart of Mile-End, arguably one of the most culturally diverse neighbourhoods in Montreal. This isn’t just an “old school Francophone” issue, racism exists in every neighbourhood, and quite simply, the Hasidim are a visible minority and as such are an easy target.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:14 am