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…