Discovering a Homeland Abroad

In May 1967, as part of Expo ’67, Canada’s Jewish community proudly opened a Pavilion of Judaism that deliberately contained no mention of Zionism or Israel. The pavilion’s planners had taken pains to ensure no overlap with the official Israeli pavilion, which represented the young state as the “rebirth of a nation which, after 1900 years of adversity, has recovered and restored its homeland.”

Today, nearly four and a half decades later, no local or national Canadian Jewish event overlooks the community’s visceral commitment to and identification with Israel. In The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s, historian Harold Troper provides his explanation for the shift: shortly after Expo’s opening ceremonies, Egyptian and Syrian armies amassed on Israel’s borders. Three long weeks of unsuccessful diplomacy led to the outbreak of war...