Vancouver has the third-largest Jewish community in Canada, after Toronto and Montreal. As of 2021, there are 20,125 Jews in the city, with British Columbia home to the fastest-growing Jewish population in the nation.
The history of the Jews in Vancouver (also: Greater Vancouver and Metro Vancouver) in British Columbia, Canada has been noted since the mid-19th century.
Early Jewish settlers were isolated from established Jewish institutions and communities in eastern Canada and the United States. They were also often isolated from each other, scattered across the Greater Vancouver area. As the local cities developed, the Jewish community also grew and expanded beyond the original business districts to spread throughout the area. While some early Jewish settlers ran farms, poultry operations, and sawmills, most tended to work in merchant industries. Many started as street peddlers and worked their way up to running small stores, a few of which grew into retail empires.
Most of the early Jewish immigrants came from the United States and Britain. By the end of World War I immigrants from Eastern Europe formed the majority of the Vancouver-area Jewish community due to discrimination in their homelands, notably the pogroms in Russia, and changes in Canadian immigration policy.
Early Jewish life in Vancouver
Early Jewish settlers in Vancouver were concentrated in the stores of the Gastown area and the homes of the Strathcona neighbourhood: the East End of Vancouver. The first Jewish businessman in Vancouver was Louis Gold, who opened a general store on the waterfront in 1872. His wife and son were also prominent businesspeople, and his son Edward willed valuable land to the Jewish community for charities and building projects. Edward was also elected Councilor in South Vancouver in 1914.
One notable early settler was David Oppenheimer, who moved to Vancouver in 1885. As the city's second Mayor (1888–91), he was responsible for starting much civic infrastructure and industry. Oppenheimer also secured a Jewish burial area in the city-owned Mountain View Cemetery and offered land to the community for a synagogue. He and his brothers were prominent in real estate, groceries, and transportation; their grocery business is still operating as The Oppenheimer Group. Another prominent settler was Zebulon Franks, who arrived in 1887 and opened a hardware store by 1896. Parts of his business still survive as Y. Franks Appliances and Y. Franks Parts & Service. Franks was also involved in the development of Vancouver Jewish religious and community institutions, hosting the first Orthodox prayer services and serving as a founding member of B'nai B'rith. Along with Henry Sigler, he also negotiated the purchase of the land for the first synagogue in Vancouver.
Development of synagogues
In the city's early years, its nearest synagogue was Temple Emanu-El in Victoria. Agudas Achim (Orthodox) was the first congregation in Vancouver, active from 1891 to 1906. A semi-Reform congregation soon followed, as Temple Emanu-El started in 1894 and was active through 1917. In 1907 a new Orthodox congregation appeared, named B'nai Yehudah (also known as Sons of Israel). However, the first Vancouver synagogue did not appear until 1911, when B'nai Yehudah was built at the corner of East Pender and Heatley Streets. Though it seated 200, larger halls had to be rented for High Holy Days. The building also housed several community organizations. Children's Judaic classes began shortly after the opening in nearby homes. In 1914, during an economic depression, the synagogue was saved from foreclosure by an emergency fundraising campaign. In 1917 B'nai Yehudah was incorporated as a society by the name of Schara Tzedeck. The Vancouver Hebrew School/Talmud Torah started at the synagogue in 1918. After thirty years as a boys' club and vocational school, the synagogue was developed into residences and was honoured with a Vancouver Centennial plaque in 1986.
Formation of community organizations
Local Jewish community organizations founded in the early 20th century included the Young Mens Hebrew Association (1909), the Ladies Aid Society (1907; later Schara Tzedeck Ladies' Auxiliary and the Sisterhood), B'nai B'rith (1910), the Hebrew Aid and Immigrant Society (1910), the Zionist and Social Society (1913), and the Hebrew Free Loan Association (1915). Samuel Davies Schultz was appointed to Vancouver County Court in 1914, making him Canada's first Jewish judge. Max Grossman was the first Vancouver Jew to be appointed King's Counsel, as a lawyer, in 1917. Grossman was involved in many community organizations and was a major force in the first Schara Tzedeck Synagoge, the Vancouver Hebrew School, and the first Jewish Community Centre.
Increase in affluence
More affluent Jewish families began to settle in the West End area in the early 20th century, centered around Congregation Temple Emanu-El. The congregation started raising funds for a semi-Reform synagogue in 1911, but World War I and economic depression interrupted their efforts. The congregation stopped services in 1917. Shortly afterwards, the rearrangement of European boundaries following the Russian revolution and the Treaty of Versailles led to a wave of Eastern European Orthodox Jewish immigrants. The Jewish population of Vancouver was still too small to support multiple synagogues; therefore in 1919–1921 the remnants of the Reform congregation joined with the larger Orthodox congregation, Schara Tzedeck, to build a new synagogue in the East End for all Vancouver Jews. However the Temple Emanu-El Ladies Auxiliary continued to hold separate social and charitable events in the West End, as well as a children's Sabbath school, until the congregation dissolved entirely in 1932.
Growth during the 1920s
The 1920s were a time of further growth for the Jewish community. Schara Tzedeck Synagogue (Orthodox) was built in 1920 on the site of the old B'nai Yehudah synagogue in the East End. The old synagogue building remained for use by the Hebrew school and as a community hall. A Hadassah chapter was founded in 1920, Jewish Community Chest and Vancouver Council of Jewish Women in 1924, the Hebrew Athletic Club and early meetings for Congregation Beth Israel (Conservative) in 1925. The first Jewish regular newspaper, called the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, started in 1923. It later became the Jewish Western Bulletin, which published from 1930 to 2001. The Schara Tzedeck congregation, which had hosted and subsidized the Talmud Torah Hebrew school, took over the school's governance from 1928 to 1943.
A significant event was the 6–7 July 1921 visit by the Very Reverend Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Congregation of the British Empire. In 1922 visiting vaudeville performer Jack Benny met Sadye Marks at a Passover Seder in the West End. They married in 1927 and she went on to vaudeville, radio, and movie stardom as his partner Mary Livingstone.
Two prominent Jewish businesses were established during this period. First, in 1919, Sam Cohen opened the Army & Navy surplus and liquidation store. He built it into a mail-order and retail chain operating throughout western Canada; it is now run by his granddaughter Jacqui. Second, Ben and Morris Wosk started Wosk's in 1923 as an appliance store. It grew into a major publicly traded chain of furniture and appliance stores in western Canada, but is now defunct. The Wosks were also real estate moguls and philanthropists.
Into the 1930s
In the 1920s and 1930s, many Jewish families moved to new neighbourhoods south of False Creek, especially Fairview. The Talmud Torah Hebrew school opened an annex here, near Broadway and Cambie Street, in 1923. After a long period of fundraising, the first Jewish Community Centre was built in 1928 at Oak Street and 11th Avenue. The Talmud Torah school annex moved into the Centre that same year. The Congregation Beth Israel was formally founded in 1932 and held services in the centre. In 1937 the Schara Tzedeck congregation decided to move to the Fairview area but was hampered by economic depression and war. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, many upper-class families left the West End for the new neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and Point Grey.
The Jewish Administrative Council was established in 1932 to coordinate the Free Loan Association, Community Chest, and Community Centre.
1940s
By the 1940s, Jewish population and community life began to centre on Oak Street in central Vancouver, south of the first Jewish Community Centre. The Talmud Torah school established its first independent facility in 1943 on West 14th Avenue between Oak and Cambie Streets. The Orthodox congregation Beth Hamidrash B'nai Ya'acov began in 1943, so its members could be within walking distance of their Fairview homes. The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, previously known as the Vancouver Peretz Institute or Shule, was established in 1945 near Oak Street as a secular-humanist educational and cultural centre. A home for elderly Jews was founded nearby in 1946, partly funded by American comedian Eddie Cantor. The Schara Tzedeck congregation finally dedicated its new synagogue here in 1948, as well as the Beth Israel synagogue in 1949. The Talmud Torah school moved to a new Oak Street campus in 1948 and became a day school for elementary grades.
A Vancouver branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress was established in 1941. In 1944, the first Jewish funeral chapel was opened by Schara Tzedeck.
Post World War II
The post-World War II period saw a greater influx of central and eastern Canadian Jews, as well as the first wave of Sephardic Jewish immigration to British Columbia. The Council of Jewish Women was key in assisting and aiding the various refugees that came post-war, including forty-seven children orphaned by the Holocaust who came in 1948. In addition to Holocaust survivors, the next decades brought Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The first Sephardic High Holy Day services were held in 1966 at the Jewish Community Centre. A Sephardic congregation soon formed and used the Beth Hamidrash synagogue, whose membership had been shrinking. In 1979 the Sephardic congregation merged with the Beth Hamidrash Ashkenazic congregation.
1960s and 1970s
The Jewish population continued to shift south and west to the Oakridge area through the 1960s and 1970s. At Oak and 41st a new Jewish Community Centre was built in 1962 as well as the Louis Brier Home and Hospital for the aged in 1968. It is the only Jewish seniors' facility west of Winnipeg. Temple Sholom (Reform) was founded in 1965. Its first home was on West 10th Avenue. This building was destroyed by a fire bomb in January 1985; the Congregation built a new synagogue on Oak Street, which was dedicated in 1988.
Wealthy families also moved to the Point Grey and West Vancouver neighbourhoods. Leonoff's study of the Vancouver Jewish Community Telephone Directory suggests that only 10% of the local Jewish community lived outside Vancouver in 1960, though many families began moving to the suburbs as housing costs rose.Leonoff, Cyril (2001). Vancouver and its Outlying Jewish Communities. The Scribe: The Journal of the Jewish Historical Society of B.C., vol. XXI (No. 1&2), p.5.
While the development of community services and congregations has often been a cooperative process, with help from organizations in neighbouring cities, there are some accounts of suburban communities feeling ignored by central organizations. The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver was established in 1987 to develop a wider community across the area. It was born from the merger of the United Jewish Appeal and the Jewish Community Fund and Council.