MONTREAL — Jewish doctors in Montreal have not had a fraternal organization since the Montreal Clinical Society, founded in 1923, ceased activity almost 20 years ago.

The newly launched Maimonides Society, which is informally associated with Federation CJA, does not aim to replace the Clinical Society, but does hope to provide physicians with an opportunity to get together away from the clinical setting and to encourage them to take an interest in community affairs, including donating their fair share to Combined Jewish Appeal.

Dr. Hartley Stern, executive director of the Jewish General Hospital, one of its co-chairs, provided the impetus for the creation of the society. The Toronto native came to Montreal via Ottawa eight months ago.

Stern noted that there are about 50 Maimonides societies in North America, including Toronto.

Stern said doctors often are not that conscious of the necessity of giving back to the community because their profession involves giving so much to their patients and students, and many perform their duties with a sense of fulfilling Jewish values.

“We walk the talk,” he said, but the result is doctors become somewhat estranged from the community.

When they get an annual cold call from a CJA canvasser, there is a feeling that “we already gave at the office,” he said.

The Maimonides Society’s goal is to foster camaraderie and a sense of belonging to the community, Stern said.

Doctors should remember that they are very lucky to have interesting and rewarding work, and that they are not exempted from contributing outside of their jobs, he said.

Dr. Seymour Mishkin, another co-chair, a gastroenterologist associated with the Royal Victoria Hospital and longtime CJA volunteer, said no minimum donation to CJA is required of those wishing to belong to the Maimonides Society.

The Maimonides Society is named for the 12th-century Jewish physician Moses Maimonides, who was also a philosopher and Torah scholar. Stern said Maimonides provides a model of the “great healer and teacher, who was a proponent of tzedakah in its purest form.”

Unlike in most other cities, the society is open to academics as well, not necessarily from health-related fields, paralleling CJA’s health and academia division. Its other two co-chairs are McGill astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi and former McGill University vice-principal Morty Yalovsky, now a management professor.

The society’s launch was held at McGill’s law faculty and featured a cocktail hour and a talk by history professor Gil Troy titled “Welcome to the World of Obama: Blessings and Curses.”

The turnout for the widely publicized event was modest, about 60, and only a minority were doctors.

Mishkin is not discouraged; he knows how hard it is to get doctors to come out to anything, beyond what directly concerns their work.

Troy, a native of Queens, N.Y., has been teaching modern American history at McGill since 1990 and specializes in the presidency. He also has a strong interest in Israel and is the author of Why I Am a Zionist.

If people want to know what president-elect Barack Obama really thinks about Israel and Zionism, Troy pointed to an interview he gave to Jeffrey Goldberg, published in The Atlantic magazine in May.

Troy finds one response particularly telling: asked if he felt Zionism has justice on his side, Obama replied that his feelings about Israel took shape when he was in sixth grade and had a Jewish camp counsellor who had spent time in Israel.

“He shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people has been uprooted, with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was my upbringing, to be travelling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.”

Troy does not believe Obama has any firm Middle East policy at this point, because circumstances are so fluid, but he appears to have pulled back from an earlier campaign statement that he would meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions. “I think he is now in line with Israel on the seriousness of the threat of a nuclear Iran.

“But Mumbai should have sent a sobering message and make him understand the depth of hatred in the Islamic threat,” Troy said.