Once a man sat down and thought to himself: “The Canadian Jewish community needs an organization to help the Jews of eastern Europe following World War I, ride the wave of Jewish nationalist and Zionism and represent our people to the government.”

Out of this very real moment came the creation of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), Canada’s oldest and most prestigious organization.

Who was this man? He was Yehudah Kaufman of the Labour Zionist movement, and he was joined by Reuben Brainin, a scholar and editor. Both volunteers, they co-ordinated the first plenary of CJC held on March 16 to 19, 1919, in Montreal. Magnificently, the Jewish Immigrant Aid Service (JIAS), an organization that has assisted eastern European Jews escaping pogroms, Holocaust survivors, Bosnian refugees and a multitude of other Jews from around the world, was the creation of that plenary.

We are all aware of late great lay leaders such as Samuel Bronfman, the national president of the CJC from 1939 to 1962. Who, however, were the Jewish professionals who spent hours, if not days, away from their families ensuring our community and the Jewish people of Canada were safe? Who were these men and woman who hand in hand with our brilliant volunteers changed the course of our lives?

Are you familiar with the name of Hananiah Caiserman, the very first CJC national general secretary from 1919 through to his death in 1950? Where might we find this man’s name memorialized, knowing that, according to CJC archives, Caiserman “was Congress from a professional staff perspective as he kept the aims of the organization alive from his office in Montreal’s iconic Baron de Hirsch building?”

What were the names of some very tenacious Jews on the community’s payroll who launched an effort to provide support for the Jews of Hungary in the 1950s and Soviet Jews in the ’70s and ’80s? Where might any of us find a plaque on federation grounds, or a picture on the walls of our cherished organizations, paying tribute to Ben Lappin, the executive director of CJC, central Ontario region, from 1941 to 1955?

We won’t, which is a shame, because Lappin, according to professor emeritus and author Gerald Tulchinsky, was in a most important position in a time when the Jewish world was very much in transition. CJC archivists wrote that Lappin “knew the Toronto Jewish community extraordinarily well, especially the multitude of political organizations, labour unions, sick-benefit societies, synagogues and family associations that were affiliated with the Congress.”

One can only imagine the challenges Lapin faced in in that environment. He wrote: “Some old socialists succumbed to economic opportunity: pressers and cutters metamorphosed into prosperous clothing manufacturers and carpenters became developers;  along with the establishment of the State of Israel the old pre-Zionist ideology and organizational structures weakened.”

Lappin’s work was onerous. He invites us into his professional Jewish world and its shifting structure in an article in Commentary in 1955. He wrote: “The complexion of Toronto’s Jewish community was changing, with many Holocaust survivors and other immigrants, most of whom had little patience with ideology, stressing more traditional forms of identity and setting communal agendas that were in many respects markedly different from those of their predecessors.”

Lappin, rest in peace, was an extraordinary human being and Jewish community professional who, among other things, produced ground-breaking articles on the rehabilitation of the 1,116 child Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Canada after 1945.

Our Jewish community professionals deserve a place in the annals of history and to have their names and pictures on display in a Jewish community professional hall of fame. Unlike in the United States, Jewish professionals are seldom recognized for their work in Canada. It’s impossible to find an award given exclusively to a Jewish civil servant in Canada. Why? Stay tuned for Part 2.

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