The Canadian Jewish Congress reported today that it has authorized a study to determine why a large number of Canadian Jews regularly report to census takers that their religion is Jewish but not their ethnic origin as Jews.
The Canadian Government census each ten years asks every resident of Canada both his religion and his ethnic group. The Congress pointed out that by definition of the census, Jews are an ethnic group, which is described as distinct from citizenship or land of birth. Most persons who are Jews by religion, the organization added, are descended from Jewish parents, except for those who are converts to Judaism.
The Congress said that the census reports showed that “tens of thousands of Canadian Jews who gave their religion as Jewish to the census enumerators, and therefore made no effort to hide their Jewish affiliation, gave some other answer to the question on their ethnic origin.”
The Canadian Jewish Congress Committee on Research discussed the issue and authorized the start of an investigation. The committee asked the Dominion Bureau of Statistics to supply a cross classification by age, education and country of origin of all Canadians who gave their religion as Jewish but some other ethnic origin.
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