Learning The Lessons Of History
Antisemitism Threatens Jewish Canadians. Indifference Threatens Canada.
The Danger Facing Canada is Indifference
I have spent much of my professional life assessing risk. One of the first principles of risk management is that warning signs should not be ignored simply because the worst outcome has not yet occurred. A threat does not become serious only after someone is killed, a building is destroyed or a community is driven away.
As a Jewish Canadian, I find myself applying that same principle to what is happening in this country.
Antisemitism is increasing, and Jewish Canadians are experiencing its consequences. Schools, synagogues, businesses and community institutions have been threatened and attacked. Many now require levels of security that most Canadians would find extraordinary at their own places of worship or their children’s schools.
What concerns me almost as much as the antisemitism itself, however, is the limited response from much of mainstream Canadian society.
I do not believe most Canadians are antisemitic. I do not believe most wish harm upon Jews or consciously regard Jewish safety as unimportant. The problem is more complicated—and, in some ways, more difficult to confront.
Antisemitism explains why some people target Jews. It does not fully explain why so many others appear detached from what is happening. That wider indifference may be driven by social distance, selective empathy, political discomfort, public fatigue and an inability to relate to the experience of a very small minority.
A society does not have to hate a minority to fail it. Sometimes it merely has to decide that what is happening to that minority is not its problem.
A Tiny Population Carrying a Disproportionate Burden
Canada’s Jewish population is smaller than many people realize. In the 2021 Census, approximately 335,000 people reported Judaism as their religion, representing about 0.9 per cent of the population. That is roughly 900 people for every 100,000 Canadians. Statistics Canada also reported that approximately 282,000 people identified Jewish as an ethnic or cultural origin, illustrating why Jewish identity cannot be measured solely through religious affiliation.[1]
Against that demographic background, the hate-crime statistics are difficult to dismiss. Statistics Canada recorded 920 police-reported hate crimes targeting Jewish people in 2024. Jews were the targets of 70 per cent of all police-reported hate crimes motivated by religion that year, even though people reporting a Jewish religious affiliation represented less than one per cent of the Canadian population.[2]
Using the census religious-affiliation figure as an illustrative denominator, that amounts to approximately 275 police-reported anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents for every 100,000 people who reported Judaism as their religion.
That is not an individual victimization rate. A hate-crime incident may target a person, synagogue, school, business or organization. The comparison also uses 2024 crime data and 2021 census data because the census remains the most recent comprehensive national count.
Those qualifications matter, but they do not change the central fact: a community comprising less than one per cent of Canada’s population is experiencing a profoundly disproportionate share of religiously motivated hate.
That should be a national concern. Too often, it is treated primarily as a Jewish one.
What Feeling Under Siege Actually Means
To say that Jewish Canadians feel under siege is not to claim that every Jewish person is in immediate physical danger. It means that the possibility of hostility has become part of ordinary Jewish life in a way that most Canadians do not experience.
At many Jewish institutions, controlled entrances, surveillance cameras, security guards, protective barriers and emergency procedures have become routine. These measures are not there because Jewish organizations enjoy spending money on security. They are there because the threat cannot responsibly be ignored.
The federal government has acknowledged the rise in antisemitic incidents, threats and hate crimes and the urgent need to ensure that Jewish Canadians can feel safe in their schools, synagogues and communities. It has also expanded security assistance for institutions considered vulnerable to hate-motivated crime.[3]
Most Canadian parents do not pause before sending a child to school and consider whether the building could be attacked because of the students’ religion. Most Canadians do not expect to encounter guards or controlled access when entering a place of worship.
For Jewish parents and worshippers, these considerations are no longer exceptional. They are increasingly normal.
Perhaps that is part of the problem. The rest of the country has also begun to see them as normal.
Jewish Canadians Are Saying That Something Has Changed
Police statistics tell us how many incidents have been reported and classified. They do not tell us what it feels like to belong to the community being targeted.
The Canadian Jewish Barometer 2026, written by sociologists Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton, was based primarily on a survey of 3,062 Canadian adults conducted between January 15 and February 11, 2026. The research included oversamples of Jewish, Muslim and Quebec respondents and examined changes in attitudes toward Jews and Israel, as well as the effects of those changes on Canadian Jews.[4]
Among Jewish respondents, 88 percent said they felt less safe in Canada than they had five years earlier. Approximately 26 per cent reported that they had seriously considered moving to another country or had made plans to do so because of antisemitism.
These are survey findings, not a census of every Jewish Canadian. They do not mean that one-quarter of the country’s Jewish population is about to leave.
They do establish something deeply troubling: a significant number of Jewish Canadians are questioning whether the country in which they built their lives will remain safe for them and their families.
The number who ultimately leave may be small. That is not the only measure that matters. A country should be concerned when its citizens begin contemplating departure because they no longer trust that they can live openly and safely as members of a minority.
Canada prides itself on multiculturalism. That pride rings hollow when members of one of its smallest communities begin wondering whether they still belong.
Antisemitism Does Not Explain Everyone Who Looks Away
There are people in Canada who plainly hate Jews. They repeat conspiracy theories, celebrate violence, threaten Jewish institutions and hold Canadian Jews collectively responsible for events thousands of kilometers away.
Those people are antisemites, and we should not be afraid to call them what they are.
But they are not the entire problem.
The broader concern is the much larger group of Canadians who do not hate Jews but appear unable or unwilling to grasp the seriousness of what is happening. They may oppose antisemitism in principle while remaining silent when it occurs. They may condemn hatred generally but hesitate to identify anti-Jewish hatred specifically.
Some fear becoming involved in a politically contentious subject. Others assume Jewish organizations, police or governments are already dealing with it. Many simply have no personal connection to Jewish life and cannot imagine what it feels like to send a child to a guarded school or enter a synagogue through a secured door.
This is not the same as hatred. It can nevertheless leave the targeted community feeling abandoned.
That distinction matters. If every failure to speak is automatically labelled antisemitic, we lose the opportunity to reach people who are not hostile but are disengaged.
Indifference may be less malicious than hatred, but it is not harmless. It creates the space in which hatred can operate with limited resistance.
The Empathy Gap
People generally respond more readily to suffering they recognize. A threat feels more immediate when it affects our neighborhood, our children, our faith or people whose experiences resemble our own.
Because the Jewish community is so small, many Canadians have little meaningful contact with Jewish life. An attack on a Jewish school or synagogue may register as disturbing without feeling personal. It is seen as something happening to “the Jewish community,” rather than to Canadian children, Canadian families and Canadian institutions.
That emotional distance matters.
It does not necessarily mean people believe Jewish lives are worth less. It may mean they have not made the civic connection between an attack on a Jewish institution and an attack on the values Canadians claim to share.
We often speak about the importance of listening to the lived experiences of minorities. That principle should apply equally when Jews describe fear, exclusion or intimidation. It should not disappear because Jewish identity does not fit comfortably within someone’s preferred political or social narrative.
When Every Discussion Becomes About Israel
One reason many Canadians hesitate to address antisemitism is that almost every conversation involving Jews now risks becoming a debate about Israel and Gaza.
Israel may be criticized. Its government, military decisions and policies may be examined as rigorously as those of any other country. Criticism of Israel is not, by itself, antisemitic.
But Canadian Jews should not have to answer for Israel before anyone will care about their safety in Canada.
A synagogue in Toronto is not the Israeli government. A Jewish school in Montreal does not make military policy. A Jewish-owned business in Canada is not responsible for decisions made by a foreign state. A Canadian wearing a Star of David is not a spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu.
When a Jewish institution in Canada is threatened, the first question should not be where its members stand on Israel. The first question should be whether Canadians can worship, attend school, operate businesses and identify openly without fear.
The Middle East is complicated. The right of Jewish Canadians to live safely in Canada is not.
Yet political discomfort becomes a convenient excuse for inaction. People tell themselves the subject is too contentious, the language too difficult or the competing claims too complex. Silence then begins to feel like neutrality.
It is not neutrality to remain silent while Canadian citizens are intimidated because they are Jewish.
Do Jews Still Qualify for Social Justice?
Canada has spent years teaching the importance of recognizing prejudice and listening to minorities. That is valuable work. Canadians should listen when Indigenous people describe discrimination, when Black Canadians describe racism, when Muslims describe Islamophobia and when LGBTQ+ Canadians describe hatred or exclusion.
The same standard must apply to Jews.
Yet Jewish Canadians often occupy an uncertain place in contemporary social-justice thinking. Jews may be viewed as too successful, too established, too educated, too influential or too closely associated with whiteness to be considered genuinely vulnerable.
These assumptions are simplistic and dangerous.
A minority does not lose its right to protection because some of its members have achieved professional or financial success. Education does not prevent a school from being targeted. Community organization does not protect a synagogue from attack. Perceived privilege does not neutralize hatred.
Jewish identity is also more complex than a single racial or religious category. Jews may be white or racialized, religious or secular, recent immigrants or members of families that have lived in Canada for generations. Jewish identity may include religion, culture, ancestry, ethnicity and peoplehood.
Antisemitism adapts to these contradictions. Jews can be portrayed as outsiders who do not belong while also being accused of possessing excessive power and influence. They can be treated as an alien minority in one setting and dismissed as privileged members of the majority in another.
This may be one reason antisemitism is poorly understood. It does not always resemble the forms of prejudice Canadians have been taught to recognize.
But social justice cannot be selective. Its credibility depends on whether the same principles are applied when the minority involved is unfamiliar, unpopular or politically inconvenient.
Indifference Has Consequences
I am not suggesting that someone who fails to post a statement on social media is morally equivalent to someone who threatens a synagogue. That would be unreasonable.
There is, however, a broad range of conduct between committing an act of hatred and meaningfully opposing it.
An employer can respond when a Jewish employee reports intimidation. A university can protect Jewish students without suppressing legitimate political expression. A political leader can name antisemitism instead of hiding behind generalized statements about hate. A neighbor can show concern when a local synagogue requires police protection.
These are not dramatic acts. They are expressions of normal civic responsibility.
Indifference lowers the social cost of hatred. Those promoting antisemitism notice when their conduct produces carefully qualified condemnations, institutional hesitation and a public that quickly turns its attention elsewhere.
They learn that the community they are targeting is largely on its own.
Hatred becomes more confident when decent people oppose it only in private.
Imagine That the Minority Were Not Jewish
Imagine a Canadian minority representing less than one per cent of the population but accounting for 70 percent of all police-reported hate crimes motivated by religion.
Imagine that its schools and places of worship require extensive security, its institutions have been threatened and attacked, and many of its members are reconsidering whether it is safe to identify themselves openly.
Now imagine that 88 percent of surveyed members of that community say they feel less safe than they did five years earlier, while approximately one-quarter have seriously considered leaving Canada or made plans to do so because of hatred directed at them.
Would Canadians consider that a social-justice issue?
I believe most would.
The answer should not change when the minority is identified as Jewish.
This Is Not a Competition for Sympathy
Drawing attention to antisemitism does not diminish the hatred experienced by other communities. Statistics Canada recorded 229 police-reported hate crimes targeting Muslims in 2024, making Muslims the second-most frequently targeted religious population that year.[5]
Canada has witnessed devastating anti-Muslim violence, anti-Black racism, attacks on Indigenous people, anti-Asian hatred and violence directed at LGBTQ+ Canadians. Each deserves a serious response.
Communities should not have to compete for empathy. The safety of Jewish Canadians does not come at the expense of Muslim Canadians, and concern for either community does not reduce the importance of protecting others.
Social justice is strengthened by consistency. It is weakened when people decide which victims deserve recognition according to political preference.
What We Are Becoming Accustomed To
Canada remains a successful multicultural democracy. Most Canadians are not antisemitic, and portraying the country as universally hostile toward Jews would be inaccurate.
My concern is not only about those who actively hate Jews. It is about the much larger number who may be becoming accustomed to what is happening.
We are becoming accustomed to Jewish schools with armed security, synagogues behind barriers and locked doors, and demonstrations that cross the line from political protest into intimidation.
What once would have shocked us is becoming familiar. What becomes familiar eventually risks being accepted as normal.
It is not normal for a minority comprising less than one per cent of the population to experience 70 per cent of police-reported religious hate crimes. It is not normal for parents to worry about sending their children to school because they are Jewish. It is not normal for people to wonder whether wearing a visible symbol of their identity will make them a target.
And it should never be considered normal for Canadians to contemplate leaving their country because they no longer feel safe here.
Canada’s Test
Most Canadians already possess the values required to respond. They believe minorities should be protected, religious freedom should be respected and children should be safe at school. They believe Canadians should not be held collectively responsible for the actions of foreign governments.
The problem is not always an absence of values. It is the failure to recognize when those values must be applied.
Canada’s commitment to social justice is not tested when we defend people whose experiences are familiar to us or whose causes are politically comfortable. It is tested when a small minority tells us that it feels threatened and the rest of the country must decide whether to listen.
Antisemitism explains why Jewish Canadians are being targeted. It does not fully explain why so many others seem willing to look away.
The danger facing Jewish Canadians is antisemitism.
The danger facing Canada is indifference.
Sources
[1]
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm
[2]
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260330/dq260330a-eng.pdf
[4]
https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/view/40699
[5]
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260330/cg-a005-eng.htm
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