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The Sephardi community of Canada came into being in the mid-twentieth century; it now comprises thirty-three thousand people, mostly in Montreal (21,500) and Toronto (8,500), with smaller pockets in Halifax and Vancouver (1,000 each), Ottawa, and Winnipeg. The vast majority came from Morocco (70 percent). Others came from Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq (1,370), Iran (200), Turkey (180), Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia (245), and scattered in Canada. Many attend the oldest Sephardi house of worship in Montreal, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, founded in 1768.The postcolonial exodus…

1. BukharaIn the mid-nineteenth century, after Bukhara came under Russian control, its Jews developed new contacts, both cultural and commercial, with Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere. Taking advantage of improved conditions for trade and travel, a cosmopolitan nouveau-riche class emerged, primarily engaged in financing, producing, and selling textiles. Between the 1890s and 1920s, small numbers of Bukharan Jews relocated from Central Asia. A thousand or so settled in Moscow, Paris, and London. Another  two thousand at most moved to Palestin…