Jewish Community Council

One of the suggestions made by the Canadian Jewish Congress to the small communities of Ontario was that they set up Community Councils. Kingston’s Jewish community found the idea attractive and useful. At a meeting held 19 May 1947, the Council was formally constituted. Its purpose was to act as the voice of Kingston’s Jews, secular and religious, synagogue-affiliated or not. An important part of the organization’s role has been to centralize fundraising efforts. This was first accomplished in the late 1940s by founding President, Sheldon Cohen, who created Kingston’s United Jewish Appeal (UJA). An Allocations Committee was set up to distribute the funds collected and the money was given to deserving Zionist, charitable, cultural, educational, arts, Jewish and non-Jewish organizations. The UJA, together with Kingston’s Israel Bonds campaign, thus became the sole focus for giving for the Kingston Jewish community.

Over the years, the Council has acted both on behalf of its own members and to help others. In 1968 it obtained special consideration for the Jews of Kingston who wanted to apply for residence in Toronto’s Baycrest Jewish Home for the Aged.  In the early 1970s, it organized Kingston’s participation in a march on the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa to protest the treatment of Jews in Russia. As a public gesture in 1973, it donated a set of Enyclopedia Judaica to the Kingston Public Library. Other KJCC activities have included organizing an Israel Art and Essay contest, sponsoring Indo-Chinese refugees or “boat people” in the late 1970s, hosting Israeli students and supporting Holocaust education.

• Introduction
• Jewish Community Council
• Military Service
• Anti-Semitism
• Involvement in Community and Political Life
• Philanthropy