Canada’s Jewish community is growing—but also becoming more diverse, more intermarried and older.

As the 2026 census gets underway this month, Canadian sociologist Rachel Margolis explains why filling it out—especially the long form questionnaire—matters, and what it will reveal about Jewish life in Canada today.

The census gathers data on religion, ethnic origin, languages spoken at home and household composition—information researchers use to track key demographic shifts.

According to Margolis, a sociology professor at Western University in London, the most recent census shows 83 per cent of Canadian Jews identify religiously as Jewish, down from 89 per cent two decades ago, while the share identifying as Jewish by ethnic origin only has risen to 17 per cent (from 11 per cent). She also finds that 50 per cent of couples in households with at least one Jewish partner are now interfaith—up from about 40 per cent 20 years ago.

Margolis expects the next census to show an even more diverse community, shaped in part by recent immigration from Israel following Oct. 7, as well as from Ukraine and Latin America.

On this episode of The CJN’s flagship North Star podcast, Margolis joins to talk up the new census and reveal more of her fresh data about what Jewish life looks like now.

Related links

• Learn more about Rachel Margolis’ research into the Jewish demographics of her adopted home in London, Ont.
• The 2021 Census showed Jewish population growing slightly but costly housing prices were pushing young families out of Toronto, in The CJN.
• Robert Brym analyzed what he learned about Canada’s Jewish community in the 2021 census, in The CJN .

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner )
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzy Helenchilde (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here )
• Watch our podcasts on YouTube.
• Help others find this podcast by leaving us a review for “North Star” on Apple Podcasts via your iPhone or iPad device, or with your Android. (Spotify allows only starred ratings but you can do that, too!)

Retired Toronto homicide inspector Hank Idsinga’s new memoir about the systemic problems inside Canada’s largest police force contains disturbing allegations about the force’s persistent in-house discrimination and racism, including antisemitism. He also spells out for the first time his own family’s Jewish and Holocaust roots – a history he’s kept private for decades, while he oversaw some of the most high profile and gruesome murder cases in recent Canadian history.

Idsinga insists he did speak up about his encounters with anti-Jewish bigots while he was still carrying a badge, long before he left the force in the fall of 2023, but to no avail. That’s why despite Toronto’s police chief and other officials now vowing to investigate his evidence, Idsinga holds out little hope of seeing changes anytime soon, be it about antisemitism, anti-Black racism or other problems.

And despite recent public examples of the force’s efforts to show solidarity with Jewish employees, including holding Hanukkah candle lighting ceremonies in the lobby of police headquarters, designing a regulation police kippah, appointing a new Jewish chaplain and a Jewish liaison committee, Idsinga calls all that “window dressing”.

The veteran detective also draws a link between a unnamed senior staff member who he personally heard using antisemitic slurs, more than once, to the force’s tepid response to the violence and hate crimes targeting Canada’s largest Jewish community since Oct. 7, 2023.

In today’s wide-ranging interview with The CJN’s North Star podcast host Ellin Bessner, Idsinga shares his own family’s Holocaust trauma that saw his grandfather murdered in a gas chamber and his mother and her siblings hidden in convents. He reveals why he wanted to be a Nazi hunter before he decided to go into policing.

Related stories

• Learn more about retired police inspector Hank Idsinga’s book The High Road , published this week by Simon and Schuster Canada.
• Read Hank Idsinga’s interviews about the 2017 Honey and Barry Sherman murders, in The CJN archives .
• Will the Sherman murders ever be solved? Watch our conversation from 2023 with reporter Kevin Donovan who wrote a book on the investigation which Idsinga’s division was in charge of.

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner )
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here )
• Watch our podcasts on YouTube.
• Help others find this podcast by leaving us a review for “North Star” on Apple Podcasts via your iPhone or iPad device, or with your Android. (Spotify allows only starred ratings but you can do that, too!)

A new documentary is challenging assumptions about one of the most visible—and most misunderstood—traditions in Orthodox Jewish life.

Sheitel: Beauty in the Hidden, by Halifax-native director Lynda Medjuck Suissa, explores why many Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair after marriage—and why many say it reflects not oppression, but identity, faith and choice. (And, yes, also a more genuine relationship with their husbands in the bedroom.)

Medjuck Suissa is Modern Orthodox herself. She snagged interviews with 30 well-known Orthodox women from Canada, the U.S. and Israel, including “The Challah Mom” Anat Ishai; rebbetizins Nechama Dubrawsky of Toronto’s Yorkville Jewish Centre, Faygie Kaplan of Chabad of Flamingo, and Rivky Gansburg of Chabad on Bayview; Mindy Pollak, a former Montreal city councillor; and Toronto educator Adrienne Gold Davis of the organization Momentum.

On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, director Lynda Medjuck Suissa joins to explain why her late sister inspired the new film, and how she hopes it will lead to understanding and tolerance.

Related stories

• Learn more about “Sheitel” the documentary and find upcoming screenings in Vancouver May 6, Manhattan May 11, Winnipeg May 15, and Toronto June 15 and 22.
• Read about Orthodox Jewish female singers performing “For Women Only” concerts, in The CJN.
• https://thecjn.ca/arts-culture/jessica-roda/ The CJN’s Phoebe Maltz Body on Jewish Orthodox fashion dilemmas, in The CJN .

Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner )
• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
• Music: Bret Higgins

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here )
• Watch our podcasts on YouTube.
• https://www.youtube.com/@TheCJN Help others find this podcast by leaving us a review for “North Star” on Apple Podcasts via your iPhone or iPad device, or with your Android. (Spotify allows only starred ratings but you can do that, too!)