Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal

The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue — formally Congregation Shearith Israel — is located in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[1] The congregation moved to this location in 1947.[1] Its 500-seat main sanctuary was completed in 1960.[2][1] A smaller chapel seating 150 serves daily prayer and lifecycle events and contains a wooden ark handmade in 1867 for an earlier synagogue building.[1]

The congregation is identified as Canada's oldest Jewish congregation.[3][4] It is formally Orthodox and follows the Sephardic rite.[3] Historically, its membership did not always match its rite: one study describes a period when most members were of Ashkenazi descent, while later growth included Sephardim from the former Ottoman Empire.[3][2] At the congregation's 250th anniversary in 2018, it comprised five semi-autonomous groupings — Moroccan, Iraqi, Lebanese, Spanish/Portuguese, and Ashkenazi — each holding separate High Holiday services while sharing communal activities throughout the year.[1]

It is also listed as a notable Canadian synagogue among institutions representing the country's Jewish religious streams.[5] Canada's Jewish community is predominantly Ashkenazi, while Montreal has a sizable Sephardic minority that includes immigrants from North Africa.[5]

Jews were excluded from Canada during French rule and first arrived in Montreal with British soldiers during the French and Indian War in the early 1760s.[5] Jews came to Montreal in 1760 as officers and associates of General Amherst's British Army; several settled there after Montreal surrendered to the British on September 8, 1760, and established themselves as merchants and army suppliers.[6] Another account dates the beginning of permanent Jewish settlement in Canada to the British defeat of the French in 1759 and notes that within nine years enough Jews had reached Montreal — some travelling from New York — to form a congregation.[2]

By December 1768, enough permanent Jewish residents were present to organize Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation.[6] One reference account dates a formal gathering of fifteen Jews to December 30, 1768; it says the congregation took its name from New York City's Shearith Israel and looked to London for religious personnel and guidance in its early decades.[7] The founding group was also known as the Corporation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Its establishment began a continuous process of Jewish institution-building in Canada, where Jewish life remained concentrated primarily in Montreal and Quebec until the mid-nineteenth century.[8] A 1969 article in American Sephardi commemorated the congregation's bicentennial and described it as the oldest Jewish congregation in Canada.[9]

Early members included people from England and the British colonies in North America, including families linked to Germany, Poland, and Holland.[6] Stern describes the founding group as entirely Ashkenazic in descent, though its members adopted the Sephardic rite; Rosenberg characterizes some early founders as being of Sephardic origin and others as descended from Jews whose parents came from Germany, Poland, or Holland, including officers in the British Army's German Legion and members of Jewish merchant families in England or the New England colonies.[2][6] The Jewish Virtual Library names Ezekiel Solomon and Aaron Hart as founders and reports that twelve families moved from New York to Montreal in December 1768, following the Sephardic tradition of the New York synagogue, although all founding members were Ashkenazi Jews of Dutch, British, and German origin.[4] The congregation took its name from — and modelled its practices on — New York's Shearith Israel, while maintaining strong ties with the Jewish communities of New York, Philadelphia, and London.[7]

The character of that Sephardic identity is illustrated in a detail documented by Marc D. Angel: none of the seven men who signed Shearith Israel's earliest minutes, dated 1778, had a Spanish or Portuguese name, nor did any of the thirteen men who signed its bylaws that same year.[10] Angel presents this as evidence that the congregation's Sephardic character was shaped by culture and religious practice rather than simply by ancestry.[10] This reading is consistent with the congregation's formal 1837 resolution to continue using the "Portuguese Service of Prayers and Ceremonies from now on" — a deliberate reaffirmation of rite at a moment when its identity might have drifted.[2]

Before constructing its own building, the congregation worshipped in a hall on St. James Street.[11] In 1775, Shearith Israel purchased its first cemetery site on St. Janvier Street; the first person buried there was Lazarus David, whose remains and original tombstone, dated 1776, were later moved to the Mount Royal Cemetery when that cemetery closed.[11] The stone has been identified as marking the oldest Jewish grave in Canada.[11]

In 1777, the congregation erected its first purpose-built synagogue on land belonging to congregant David David, at the junction of Notre Dame and St. James streets.[6][12] The building stood on the site of today's Palais de Justice, a few blocks from City Hall, and has been described as the first non-Catholic house of worship erected in Montreal.[1] A 2001 census analysis describes it as the first non-Catholic house of worship built in Quebec, though it dates construction to 1778 rather than 1777.[13] Sources thus agree that the congregation was founded in 1768 and agree broadly on the building's significance; the one-year discrepancy concerns the building's construction date.

For more than half of the congregation's first seventy years, it lacked a permanent rabbi, hazzan, shokhet, mohel, Hebrew teacher, or other religious functionary.[6] Following the death of David David in 1824 or 1825, the synagogue's land reverted to his estate and the building had to be demolished.[11][2] Worship then moved to a hall adjoining Benjamin Hart's home at Recollect and St. Helen streets.[11] In 1826, Hart, then the congregation's president, appealed for a new synagogue and reorganization.[11] The congregation purchased land on Chenneville Street in 1835 and dedicated its second synagogue there in 1838; the building was planned by Moses J. Hays, a congregation trustee and nephew of David David.[11] The dedication ceremony was officiated by Myer Levy.[12]

In 1811, Rabbi Lyons and Mr. Seixas of New York's Shearith Israel visited Montreal and Three Rivers to perform religious rites, reflecting the close ties between the two congregations during a period when Montreal's congregation lacked permanent clergy.[12] The Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London donated the congregation's first two Torah scrolls in 1768; these scrolls were already very old at the time and remained in use for many subsequent decades.[11]

The congregation's earliest recorded minister was Jacob Raphael Cohen, who served as its spiritual guide from 1778 to 1782.[11] Cohen's tenure ended acrimoniously: he sued Parnas Levy Solomons over unpaid salary, won an initial judgment, but saw the verdict reversed by the appeal court in 1784, after which he departed for Philadelphia.[12] The congregation then went without a permanent rabbi for a period, relying in part on visits from the spiritual leader of New York's Portuguese Jews.[12] Myer Levy and then Isaac Valentine temporarily held the position before David Piza was appointed minister, serving for six years beginning in 1840.[11]

A major nineteenth-century leader was Abraham de Sola (1825–1882), elected rabbi in 1846, who arrived in Montreal at the beginning of 1847.[14] De Sola ministered to the congregation for more than 35 years and was simultaneously a scholar of Oriental languages and theology; in 1853 he was appointed professor of Hebrew and Oriental literature at McGill University.[14] At the request of London's Sephardic rabbi, de Sola published a new edition of Sephardic prayerbooks in 1878.[2] After his death in 1882, his eldest son, Rev. Aaron David Meldola de Sola (1853–1918), succeeded him as rabbi.[2][11] Meldola de Sola was Canada's first native-born minister.[2]

Under Meldola de Sola's leadership, the congregation grew substantially and moved to a larger building.[11] At the 1901 cornerstone-laying ceremony for the Baron de Hirsch Institute, he appeared alongside Rabbis Aaron Mordecai Ashinsky, Bernard Kaplan, and Elias Friedlaender. The event effectively marked the recognition of four "official" rabbis in Montreal.[3] In 1907, Meldola de Sola's position at the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation was raised in discussions surrounding Rabbi Simon Glazer's claim to the authority of chief rabbi of Montreal.[3]

Following Meldola de Sola's death in 1917 or 1918, the congregation passed through two short-term successors and experienced a serious decline in membership.[2] Plans for a new building to follow Montreal's westward-moving Jewish population could not be realized until after World War II.[2]

As the congregation grew under Meldola de Sola's leadership, it moved in 1890 from its Chenneville Street building to a new synagogue on Stanley Street.[11] The building was designed in a Judaeo-Egyptian style by Clarence I. de Sola.[11] In 1890, Shearith Israel also obtained a new act of incorporation from the Quebec legislature.[11]

The building fund for the Stanley Street synagogue received a notable gift from the congregation's New York namesake, conditional on Shearith Israel's continuing adherence to the Orthodox Sephardic rite.[2] Around the same time, the congregation changed its corporate name from "Portuguese" to "Spanish and Portuguese"; Stern suggests this change may have been prompted by preparations for the 1892 celebrations marking the quadricentennial of Columbus's voyages.[2]

An account of Montreal around 1904 places Shearith Israel among the congregations worshipping in the western part of the city and identifies it as formally organized in 1768. It describes Montreal's congregations at that time as Orthodox except for Temple Emmanuel.[15]

Shearith Israel was Montreal's only synagogue for the better part of its first eight decades.[3] In 1846, a second congregation formed under the name Congregation of English, German, and Polish Jews; it ultimately became Shaar Hashomayim.[3] Many Jewish immigrants before the 1880s arrived through England and identified themselves as "English" Jews even when their origins lay elsewhere.[3] The 1846 breakaway group also produced Montreal's first formally Ashkenazic congregation.[2]

By the early 1880s, a Reform congregation — Temple Emanu-El, founded in 1882 by Jews who came to Montreal from the United States — had joined Shearith Israel and Shaar Hashomayim to form a trio of synagogues serving the city at the onset of mass Eastern European Jewish immigration.[3] The two Orthodox congregations maintained their ritual within a genteel, acculturated ambience that was unfamiliar to newly arriving Eastern European immigrants, who consequently began building their own religious institutions.[3]

Montreal's Jewish population grew dramatically during the period in which Shearith Israel went from the city's sole congregation to one among many. The city had 409 Jews in the 1871 Dominion of Canada census, nearly 7,000 by 1901, and 58,000 by 1931.[3] By 1931, the average Montreal Jew was foreign-born or the child of foreign-born parents and was Yiddish-speaking or the child of Yiddish speakers — a demographic world distant from the congregation's English, Sephardi-rite origins.[3]

Despite this transformation of the surrounding community, Shearith Israel maintained its distinctive identity. The congregation joined New York's Shearith Israel and Philadelphia's Mikveh Israel in founding the Union of Sephardic Congregations in 1928.[10] Publication of Sephardic prayerbooks was the Union's main accomplishment; it also held conventions and promoted Sephardic rabbinic training, Jewish education, and a uniform Sephardic minhag.[10]

During the 1837–38 rebellion in Lower Canada, several members of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue fought on the Loyalist side. Two members of the David family served as cavalry commanders and participated in the battles at St. Charles and St. Eustache; Aaron Phillip Hart raised a militia company, while Jacob Henry Joseph and his brother Jesse served with troops on the Richelieu and at Chambly, with Jacob entrusted with carrying dispatches to Colonel Wetherell.[11]

The congregation moved to its current Côte-des-Neiges location in 1947, following Montreal's Jewish population as it shifted westward — a migration anticipated for decades but whose realization was delayed by World War II.[1][2] The move established the congregation's fourth home.[1] Its 500-seat main sanctuary was completed in 1960.[1] Completion of the sanctuary was followed by renewed growth, largely through the arrival of Sephardim from the former Ottoman Empire.[2]

A large wall facing the congregation was subsequently covered with Jerusalem stone brought from Israel by ship in 1998, creating a visible material link between the Montreal sanctuary and Israel.[1]

In 2018, the congregation comprised 750 member families, drawn from first- and second-generation immigrants originating in Iraq, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ethiopia.[1] Five semi-autonomous groupings — Moroccan, Iraqi, Lebanese, Spanish/Portuguese, and Ashkenazi — held separate High Holiday services and shared communal activities throughout the rest of the year.[1] The congregation's composition shifted substantially over its history: once predominantly Sephardic in ancestry, it later became mostly Ashkenazi and had returned to a Sephardic majority in the decades before 2018, reflecting broader demographic shifts within Quebec's Jewish community.[1]

A 1955 institutional listing placed Shearith Israel and its Talmud Torah at 5471 Lemieux Street.[6]

The congregation's material heritage mirrors the depth of its historical record. Its first Torah scroll was a gift from London's Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation in 1768; because of its age and historical significance, the scroll was safeguarded in Canada's national archives.[1] The Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London also donated a second Torah scroll in that founding year, and both scrolls were described as already very old at the time of the gift.[11]

In 2018, the congregation's president reported that it housed 60 Torah scrolls across four locations within the synagogue.[1] He attributed the collection to the congregation's exceptional longevity, to donations commemorating occasions or deceased relatives, and particularly to Torah scrolls brought out of Baghdad by Iraqi Jews, some of which were subsequently donated to Shearith Israel.[1]

The minor chapel, which seats 150 and is used for daily prayer as well as lifecycle ceremonies including small weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, circumcisions, and baby namings, contains a wooden ark handmade in 1867 for an earlier synagogue building.[1] Two marble tablets bearing the Ten Commandments and two brass menorahs are also associated with the congregation's original building.[1] These objects form a continuous material thread connecting the present congregation to its earliest decades.

Sources differ on when permanent Jewish settlement began. Rosenberg records Jewish arrivals in Montreal in 1760, while Stern dates permanent settlement in Canada to the British defeat of the French in 1759.[6][2] The accounts concern different milestones — the British victory in 1759 and Jewish arrival and settlement in Montreal in 1760 — rather than the congregation's 1768 founding.

Sources also diverge on the ancestral makeup of the congregation's founders. Stern characterizes the founding group as entirely Ashkenazic, while Rosenberg allows that some founders were of Sephardic origin.[2][6] The Jewish Virtual Library describes all founding members as Ashkenazi Jews of Dutch, British, and German origin, while the Jewish Encyclopedia holds that a large majority of early members descended from Jews exiled from Spain and Portugal.[4][11] Angel's finding — that none of the signatories of the 1778 minutes or bylaws bore a Spanish or Portuguese name — does not resolve the ancestry question but supports an interpretation of the congregation's Sephardic identity as primarily cultural and religious rather than genealogical.[10]

Sources also give slightly different dates for construction of the first synagogue building. Rosenberg and a historical chronology give 1777.[6][12] A Berman Jewish DataBank analysis gives 1778.[13] Whether the building should be called the first non-Catholic house of worship "in Montreal" or "in Quebec" likewise varies between accounts.[1][13] These differences do not affect the well-supported founding year of 1768 or the congregation's institutional continuity.