The Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society

This post is brought to you by David C. Martin, a volunteer at the Ottawa Jewish Archives.

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Today, we’re going to briefly explore the legacy of mutual support and community self-sufficiency best exemplified by the Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society.

In their earliest days, many of Ottawa’s Jewish pioneers faced significant financial hurdles. Often impoverished and sometimes completely destitute, late nineteenth and early twentieth-century arrivals, together with the city’s handful of well-established Jewish families, came together to meet the social welfare needs of their community. As the foundations of Jewish Ottawa were truly being laid in the last two decades of the nineteenth-century, times were filled with both hope and hardship.

In the years between 1880 and 1914, the Jewish population of Canada grew from roughly 2,500 to 75,000. In Ottawa, a city with only ~20 Jewish individuals and virtually no community infrastructure in 1881, numbers reached just about ~3,000 by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.[1]

As the community grew, reaching ~400 by the turn of the twentieth century, it quickly became clear that the needs of newcomers were simply not being adequately met. Most of Jewish Ottawa’s late nineteenth-century arrivals came from the former Russian Empire, what is today, Lithuania, Belarus, and parts of both Poland and Ukraine.  These immigrants came with virtually nothing. Escaping widespread pogroms in Eastern Europe, they prioritized the imperative of physical safety over economic stability. Don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of these newcomers came from poverty beyond the ‘pale of settlement,’ still there was some degree of community and kinship support that they were forced to leave behind.[2]

In Russia, and indeed much of nineteenth-century Europe, Jews were excluded from most professions including the public service. Some worked in the clothing trade, others as cobblers or tailors, and still more as peddlers, collecting and then re-selling whatever they could. While land ownership was also broadly denied to the era’s Jews, many also worked as tenant farmers, plowing the fields, and tending the crops to eke out the most basic of livings.

What attracted some of these migrants to Ottawa – rather than to far-better-established Jewish communities of Toronto or Montreal – was the comparatively affordable ‘peddler licence’ fees offered in the nation’s capital. In Ottawa, a year’s licence went for about $9. Also available were 10-day licences sold at 25 cents each.  These allowed would-be peddlers to try their hand at the trade without any long-term commitment. In Montreal, licences cost $40 per year for a peddler on foot, $60 for those using a handcart and $100 for any peddler lucky enough to afford a horse-drawn wagon.[3]

Some early migrants managed to find immediate success, but most were lucky to earn a wage that could sustain themselves and their families. While Ottawa did provide refuge from pogroms, significantly improved living conditions, and no compulsory military conscription. (at least not until 1917), any idea of government welfare support was years away, and when hardship hit a family, it could prove catastrophic.

Thankfully, for many new arrivals, a longstanding tradition of intra-community self-help – a requirement for survival in the shtetls – inspired the more firm-footed pioneers of Jewish Ottawa to create organizations that could serve the needs of those more vulnerable.  The Ottawa Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded in 1897 by, among others, Bertha Rosenthal – who served as OLHBS president until her death in 1922 – brought significant change. In the organization’s own words, it was founded to:

“[…] care for sick and needy Jewish families of the community, and to do other social work such as finding employment for those women who must support themselves, and generally giving a helping hand to Jewish people having none of their own kin to help them.”[4]

A few years later, its counterpart, the Ottawa Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society, was begun by Aaron Rosenthal and Moses Bilsky. Together, the two organizations did their best to the care for the city’s Jewish poor, assisting the indigent as they re-established themselves in their new hometown. Often providing sustained support to help many meet basic needs, these institutions continued to provide an imperative lifeline to the community well into the twentieth century. In 1932, the two separate societies finally joined together to form the Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society, which continued the good works of years gone by, caring for the sick and needy of Ottawa’s still-growing Jewish population.[5]

To get an idea of the extent of OHBS efforts, we might take as an example one of their earlier reports. One statistical survey, published in September 1935 notes that, in the previous year, relief had been given to four single individuals and 35 heads of families, with a combined 142 dependents. Only two individuals who had received support the previous year, had their funding discontinued: one at his or her own request.[6] While that report does not provide financial information, a 1938 article published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin does. It states that in 1934, a total of $16,821.34 had been spent on relief efforts. For context, that sum equals roughly $370,000 in today’s money.[7]

While funds were most certainly not distributed evenly, as grants were always needs based, even my own rudimentary math skills are sufficient to say that, on average, $2,000 was given for the benefit of each man, woman and child supported by the society; a not insignificant contribution especially when given to cover basic needs of a family of four, five, or more.

A cursory look the society’s spending suggests that their year of greatest expenditure was 1933 when $19,122.37 (~$420,000) was provided for relief efforts. Each of the following years saw a decrease in spending, which fell to $10,147.38 (~$212,000) in 1937.[8]

To meet ever-changing needs and capacities of community life, the society shifted its focus several times. After the Shoah, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the OHBS assisted new arrivals from Europe who wished to file claims for indemnification of loss suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime; a service provided via regularly held clinics.[9] As the central welfare bureau of Ottawa’s Jewish community, the society also provided housing, goods and services to immigrants fleeing Soviet crackdowns in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). An article in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin states that even in 1978, the Society still received some 300 requests for “interest-free financial assistance” from “young and old, Jewish and occasionally Gentile,” and that ‘no-one [was] turned away.” By this point, the organization generally acted on an emergency basis, though small monthly pensions were still being provided to a handful of individuals, and several spaces at the Hillel Lodge and at Camp B’nai Brith were also being subsidized by the OHBS.[10]

In 1981, the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin carried a letter and report by Sol B. Shinder, President of Ottawa Vaad Ha’Ir in which he confirmed the following:

The changing scene of Jewish life and the emerge of the Jewish Social Services Agency has resulted in the evolution of more comprehensive delivery of social services in our community. The necessity to expand the Social Services Agency role in the United Way led the Vaad, the Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Social Services Agency to the conclusion that the two latter organizations should merge. This event took place earlier this year.[11]

With that announcement came the end of an era. To mark its legacy, and commemorate the dedication of its many volunteers, Vaad Officers voted to erect a tablet to honour the Benevolent Society’s 83 remarkable years of dutiful service. For the thousands of Jewish Canadians assisted by the Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society over its many decades in operation, we all owe its donors, volunteers and officers a great debt of gratitude.

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[1] Bilsky, Anna. A Common Thread: A History of the Jews of Ottawa. Renfrew, Ontario: General Store Publ. House, 2009. 13-16.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ottawa Jewish Archives. “Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society Fonds.”

[5] Ottawa Jewish Archives. “Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society Fonds.” The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network, 2024. https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn101377.

[6] Ottawa Jewish Archives. “Ottawa Hebrew Benevolent Society Fonds.”

[7] “Benevolent Society Elects Officers for Current Year.” Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. March 25, 1938, Vol. 1 edition, sec. Issue 23.

[8] “Benevolent Society Elects Officers for Current Year.” Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. March 25, 1938, Vol. 1 edition, sec. Issue 23.

[9] “To Assist Claimants in Filing Indemnification Forms.” Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. April 13, 1954, Vol. 17 edition, sec. Issue 5.

[10] “Benevolent Society Helps Needy in Number of Significant Ways.” Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. December 31, 1976, Vol. 41 edition, sec. Issue 7.

[11] Shinder, Sol B. “Vaad Report.” Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. May 29, 1981.