ABSTRACT
The experience of the Jewish community of Montreal provides a good example for exploring the various alternative approaches and conceptions of immigrant integration. This chapter looks at the issues surrounding the role of ethnic/cultural communities in the integration process and, specifically, in the provision of culturally sensitive services to immigrants. To the extent that immigrants have integrated at all, they have done so mainly within their own pre-existing communities. Ironically, the Canadian literature on services for immigrants suggests that the Jewish experience may not be seen as relevant to the case of non-European immigrants. Maximal ethnic match, in theory, might be the case of a Jewish social worker working in a Jewish immigrant service agency and counselling Jewish clients based on Judaic precepts and guidelines. New concerns for the provision of culturally sensitive services have raised to prominence the option of ethno-specific services or, more generally, the option of “ethnic match.”.
