Going Out into the World : the “Strategic Approach” of Jewish Members of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, 1900-1939

The author reminds us that the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE), founded in Montreal in 1900, was a national non-sectarian women's patriotic association that sought to bolster Canada's British character. During the interwar period, members dedicated themselves to the "canadianization" of non-British immigrants. She notes that though the IODE was overwhelmingly Anglo-Protestant, many established Jewish women joined, embodying a "strategic" approach to humanitarianism. The author concentrates on the participation of two Quebec City-born sisters, Irene Joseph Wolff (1885-1940) and Rosetta Joseph, who joined non-denominational IODE chapters, as well as Montreal's Jewish "Grace Aguilar" chapter. The author argues that by joining the IODE, these two women from elite Jewish families sought to establish a relation of imperial kinship that could influence dominant Anglo-Canadian perceptions of and policy towards the nation's Jewish citizens. The efforts of these women, the author concludes, suggests the limits and possibilities of a preservationist respectability politics: by the interwar period the IODE's original vision of British supremacy was increasingly obsolete and demographic changes had irrevocably transformed the character of Canadian Jewish life.

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes

Vol. 28

34-53

2019

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