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I'd like to begin this by apologizing for my lateness in participating in Jonathan Edelstein's Arrival Day blogburst, this year commemorating the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jews in the North American continent. In my defense, I can claim that my participation last year was early, so early that I can claim a couple of days slack this year.
The Arrival Day posting I made last year was concerned with the near-complete lack of Jewish visibility on Prince Edward Island when I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s. This year, I found myself stuck trying to figure out what I'd write this year until I noticed that the percentage of Jewish bloggers I have links to, whether on my Livejournal friends list or on the blogs I've got listed on my blogroll, is quite high, at least 5% of the total. I hinted last year that the technologies associated with globalization have enabled me, an unexceptional Gentile from the depths of rural Canada, make the acquaintance of far more Jews than I could ever have hoped to meet without. Globalization in all of its manifestations, virtual and actual, has had that effect generally on non-Jewish Canadians. Canada's Jewish community has, in many ways, benefitted enormously from globalization.
( Canada's Jewish community is exceptionally dynamic. )
( The problem with all this? )
( The Jewish Question in Canada. )
Canada's Jewish community faces a future that's uncertain. It's some comfort, I'd hope, to know that this future is uncertain in the best way possible. The way lies open for Canada's Jewish community, going from strength to strength as it has for the past century, to change radically, to make a radical break with existing trends as they are projected indefinitely into the future. I hope that it isn't misplaced Canadian nationalism to expect that this community to be able to do that. Whether it actually will or not ultimately remains up to the members of the community themselves.
( Counter )
The Arrival Day posting I made last year was concerned with the near-complete lack of Jewish visibility on Prince Edward Island when I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s. This year, I found myself stuck trying to figure out what I'd write this year until I noticed that the percentage of Jewish bloggers I have links to, whether on my Livejournal friends list or on the blogs I've got listed on my blogroll, is quite high, at least 5% of the total. I hinted last year that the technologies associated with globalization have enabled me, an unexceptional Gentile from the depths of rural Canada, make the acquaintance of far more Jews than I could ever have hoped to meet without. Globalization in all of its manifestations, virtual and actual, has had that effect generally on non-Jewish Canadians. Canada's Jewish community has, in many ways, benefitted enormously from globalization.
( Canada's Jewish community is exceptionally dynamic. )
( The problem with all this? )
( The Jewish Question in Canada. )
Canada's Jewish community faces a future that's uncertain. It's some comfort, I'd hope, to know that this future is uncertain in the best way possible. The way lies open for Canada's Jewish community, going from strength to strength as it has for the past century, to change radically, to make a radical break with existing trends as they are projected indefinitely into the future. I hope that it isn't misplaced Canadian nationalism to expect that this community to be able to do that. Whether it actually will or not ultimately remains up to the members of the community themselves.
( Counter )
