Were it not for these Yidden. I highly doubt that even a basic like kosher food (IE Meat) would be available today in Montreal. The Montreal Jewish community has taken a hit ever since the seperatist Parti Quebecois took power in 1976. The community has shrunk since and were it not for the Sephardi Jews in Montreal and their dedication to Yiddishkeit, the Montreal Jewish community would have been long gone by now. Thank goodness, these yidden didn't fold.

While your comments about the Sephardi community are certainly welcomed, the fact that you refer to them as "yidden" is, in a way, a failure to recognize their own rich culture...in which the Yiddish language, and Eastern European traditions, don't play a role, other than as part of the larger Jewish culture. But their language (Ladino) is Judeo-Spanish and not related to Yiddish and their traditional foods are nothing like what we tend to think of as "Jewish food" which is Ashkenazi in origin.

I am fully aware of that you have stated. In your case..I'll refer to the 'naar'. Making a mountain out of a molehill.

I'm pretty sure that most of the Sephardic Jews of Montreal actually don't speak Ladino. Most of them have roots in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) etc...and although a dialect of Judeao-Spanish called Haketiya was spoken by Jews in Moroccan cities like Tangiers or Tetuan, few Moroccan Jews speak it today--so most of the Sephardic Jews in Montreal speak French (the older generations speak the continental French they learned in Morocco,Algeria,Tunisia etc-- the younger kids speak Quebecois), English and Hebrew They know Hebrew if they have gone to yeshiva. But Sephardic Ladino-speakers were spread mostly in Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia--maybe a few of them migrated to Montreal, but not too many.

I remember the Montreal of the 50s and 60s. There were multiple public school systems, French Catholic, English Catholic, English Protestant. 25% of the students in English Protestant were Jewish. Crossover of religions was difficult. Teachers were not allowed to crossover. When the Moroccans arrived, there was a new problem - they spoke French but were required to go to English Protestant schools. To go to French Catholic schools had a hefty charge. Those days are gone - public schools have no religious label, they are French or English. No longer do Jews pay 5x the school tax as Catholics or 2.5x as Protestants, as was published in the annual report of the City of Montreal.