Profile - Mordechai Richler)
Quebec's most famous author stirs a storm with allegations of anti-Semitism.
Montreal author Mordecai Richler, in his inimitably caustic style, has once again put the screws to his native province, this time in an article in the New Yorker magazine. The piece, which appeared in September, ridiculed the province's excessive and repressive language laws, while holding French Canadian society in general up to charges of xenophobia and acute parochialism. But it is his charge that widespread anti-Semitism - like the idea of sovereignty is "alive" which has provoked the greatest furor. For Quebecois nationalists, worried about their image in the United States, the mere fact that the witheringly condemnatory piece was published in so august an American magazine was infuriating. And the rancor generated by the flap is making some of the 89,000 Jews left in Montreal - described by Richler as a community "wary of the tribalism that has taken hold" in Quebec increasingly uncomfortable, following as it does some of the recent examples Richler himself recounts.
Among the incidents and examples Richler cited to illustrate perennial antipathy toward Jews in Quebec:
In 1989, a Quebec Liberal Party member opposing a Jewish candidate in a provincial election said the province's Jewish community risked a cut-off of funds to its public health and cultural institutions if the man was elected. A bid in 1986 by the 3,000-strong Vishnizer hasidic community in the Montreal suburb of Outremont to build a synagogue was blocked by the city council, one of whose members, a convicted Front de Liberation de Quebec terrorist, declared "We don't want Outremont to become a hasidic city." A study conducted in 1987 by Irving Abella - a history professor at Toronto's York University and author of "None is Too Many," a damning indictment of Canada's World War II immigration policy - showed that 84 percent of French Canadians harbor negative opinions of Jews, twice the rate among English Canadians.
One of the "patron saints" of Quebec nationalism, l'Abbe Lionel Groulx, a contemporary of the notoriously anti-Semitic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin in the U.S., was an ardently anti-Semitic fascist sympathizer during the 30s. Groulx, unlike Coughlin, Richler argues, "did not fade away, a blight limited to his times, but went on to become a major influence on many of Quebec's leading intellectuals," such that one called him after his death "the spiritual father of modern Quebec."
In April, 1990, Pierre Peladeau, the publisher of the French tabloid Journal de Montreal, rebuked his staff for running articles praising Jews. In the ensuing flap he countered critics saying, "I have a lot of respect for Jews, but," he added, "they take up too much space."
During World War II, "French Canadian society was actively on Hitler's side, through its church, its leaders and its public opinion and by any other measure you care to make," says Montreal-based Jewish historian David Rome, author of the just-published book "Jews and French Canadians."
But things have changed since then, though thousands of Jews have left since 1976, when the separatist Parti Quebecois won a general election. The Catholic Church in Quebec, responsible for propagating so much anti-Semitic sentiment, has declined dramatically since World War II. Quebecois politicians and successive provincial governments have strenuously denounced anti-Semitism. With each generation, there seems to be a perceptible decline in anti-Jewish sentiment among French Canadians.
Richler, though, didn't stress such distinctions, possibly because in his mind, as in those of most Montreal Jews, nothing has really changed. Quebecois editors and pundits were quick to respond to Richler's charges. La Presse editorialist Agnes Gruda called on Quebec's Jewish community to denounce the article's "insanities." Michel Belanger, a former bank chairman and the influential co-chairman of a prestigious constitutional commission, told reporters in New York that though "foreigner" was not the right expression with which to characterize Richler, "he doesn't belong." Reaction to Richler's piece within the Montreal Jewish community was muted, particularly at the organizational level. The Canadian Jewish Congress responded to growing pressure to denounce the article only by issuing a vague document condemning anti-Semitism in any guise. In fact, says Rome, most French-speaking Quebecois would probably be surprised to learn that "the overwhelming proportion (of Montreal Jewry) agrees with Richler, with what he said, what he thinks, and with his intentions."
One reason Richler's article made such waves is that it appeared at a stormy time. Canada's federal government has just unveiled a new plan to amend the constitution to redefine Quebec's place in the federation and head off its secession after last year's failure by Canada's 10 provinces to ratify the similarly intended Meech Lake accords. Many believe it to be a make-or-break effort whose outcome will prove decisive in next year's province-wide referendum on whether to declare Quebec's independence.
La Presse managing editor Marcel Desjardins characterizes Richler's broadsides as "inimical to Quebecois national aspirations." But he doesn't view them as particularly damaging, despite their appearance in the United States - merely unfortunate.