Jewish‐Canadian ethnic identity and non‐native language learning: A social‐psychological study

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine perceptions of Jewish ethnic group identity relative to attitudinal/motivational processes in the learning of Hebrew, the ancestral language, and French (an official language of Canada) and in some cases Yiddish, by anglophone Jewish‐Canadian high school and university students in Montreal and Toronto (N = 501). Students from Montreal were involved in Hebrew and French immersion simultaneously whereas Toronto students were involved in Hebrew immersion and nominal French instruction. Some noteworthy findings were (a) that in schools where the students received less Hebrew instruction there were significantly weaker student perceptions of Pro‐Israeliness and ‘integrativeness'; (b) that the Canadian subidentity of the students did not correlate with their Jewish subident‐ity, suggesting that Jewish‐Canadians value the compartmentalisation of subidentities as a possible strategy for group survival; (c) that the Toronto day high school students indicated somewhat less confidence in their Hebrew and French skills and were more dissatisfied with the communicative aspects of their Hebrew language programme and were less positive about language learning in general as compared to their Montreal peers; (d) that Israel appears to be replacing Jewish ritual in the minds of the non‐Orthodox and secular students in this study; support of Israel has become the salient symbol of their Jewish identity and ingroup distinctiveness.