The City Solicitor of Outremont, a Montreal suburb in which Jews are a majority of the residents, is studying a proposal to plan municipal meetings and elections to avoid conflict with Jewish holidays, it was reported today.
The proposal was an outgrowth of an impasse which developed this spring when municipal elections were held on the first day of Passover after the City Council reported it had been unable to find any way to avoid an unforeseen and undesired disfranchisement of Jewish voters. At that time, the City Council instructed the City Solicitor to study the possibility of a charter amendment to avoid such conflicts.
The National Joint Public Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith reported that at a July 6 meeting the Outremont City Council accepted a letter from Rabbi M.S. Cohen, chairman of the Religious Welfare Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress, containing a calendar of Jewish holy days “for use in planning meetings and elections in view of religious inhibitions.”
The Outremont City Clerk was instructed to inform Rabbi Cohen “that the City Solicitor has already been instructed to study this matter and to advise the City Council as to the possibility of presenting a bill” to resolve the problem.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
