Canadian Jewish Congress Clarifies “mystery” in Census on Jews

The mystery of how 26,203 persons in Canada were recorded in the last government census as being of non-Jewish origin but professing the Jewish religion has been cleared up by the Canadian Jewish Congress following discussions with officers of the Census Branch of the Canadian Government in Ottawa. A report to this effect issued by the CJC reads:

“According to the census statistics there are 204,836 Jews by religion as compared with only 181,670 who reported themselves as Jews by origin. This can be broken down further as follows – 178,633 persons recorded themselves as being Jewish both by origin and religion in Canada in 1951, 3, 307 recorded themselves as being Jewish by origin but not by religion and 26,203 were recorded of non-Jewish origin but Jewish by religion. The spread between the number of Jews by origin and the number of Jews by religion in Canada has never exceeded 1, 1 percent in the period from 1901 to 1941, whereas 26,203 persons in Canada are now recorded as being of non-Jewish origin but professing the Jewish religion.

“It would appear that the error has occurred because of a change in the wording of the instructions given to numerators in the 1951 census. Numerators were told in their official instructions that if they had any difficulty in securing a reply to the question, ‘What is your ethnic origin?’ they were to follow up with a question, ‘What was the language you first heard spoken in your home as a child?’

“Evidently, in a very large number of cases the term ‘ethnic origin’ was confused with ‘first language spoken in the home,’ as a result of which more than 9,000 people were recorded as being of Russian ethnic origin but of Jewish religion in Canada in 1951, and a large number of Polish origin and Jewish religion, English origin and Jewish religion, etc. For all practical purposes we can accept the number of 204,836 Jews by religion in 1951 as being the correct figure.”