September 13, 1963
CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
7
to the jail at Sherbrooke. A complication arose as to who had a legal right to petition for his release on "habeas corpus," so as to make possible his deportation.
It waa. only Mr. Jacobs' wide reading in law which enabled him to recall an old and little-known English case in 1810, which was similar to the one in question. Relying on it as a precedent, judgment was rendered which made possible Thaw's deportation. (13 Dominion Law Reports, p. 712). Associated with Mr. Jacobs in this case were Mr. William Travers Jerome, who had been the District Attorney in the City of New York, in charge of the prosecution of Thaw for the murder of Stanford White some years before; and Mr. Franklin Kennedy, Attorney-General for the State of New York. They, of course, were not permitted to plead personally before the Canadian courts.
Early in his professional career, Mr. Jacobs manifested his interest in the Jewish welfare, by giving gratuitously of his legal talent in order to defend the Jewish name and to obtain such legislation as waB necessary to safeguard Jewish rights. On several occasions adventurers who attempted to make a profitable game out of anti-Semitism, were sent scampering from the city by threats from him that he would bring them to justice. The most interesting of such cases he was called on to plead is known as "The Quebec Libel Caie", or "Ortenberg vs. Plamondon et al."
In 1913 the Jewish population of the city of Quebec was greatly disturbed by occasional expressions of anti-Semitism in the French press, with seemed to have the blessing of the Catholic Church. The matter came to a head when Plamondon, a Quebec notary, delivered a lecture on the Jews in one of the church halls in which he repeated all the stock slanders current since the Middle Ages. He made charges against the Talmud and its teachings and accused Jews of using Christian blood in their Passover ritual. The Quebec Jewish Community turned to Montreal for assistance, and Mr. Jacobs instituted a libel suit in the name of Ortenberg, a Jewish citizen of Quebec. When the case came to trial, it received unusual publicity. It was far from flattering to Quebec that the Beilis Trial, involving similar issues, happened to be proceeding in Russia about the same time. The defendant produced as expert witnesses some of the leading dignitaries and scholars of the Catholic Church. There were dramatic moments, when Mr. Jacobs, in cross-examination, submitted to these experts the papal bulls condemning the blood accusation, and asked them to translate them from the Latin for the benefit of the court.
It required courage to bring the case into a Quebec court, the very heart of the enemy's camp. It was lost in that court; but Was won in appeal. The final judgment was
rendered December 28, 1914, and created a precedent in law, in that It held:
"A writing attacking a Jewish population composed of 76 families out of a total population of 80,000 persons, in terms which would be libellous if addressed to an individual, is not addressed to a group so large as to lose its identity in the mass, and must be considered as defamatory. In this case one of the members of this Jewish population is entitled to institute an action in damages against the author of the libel." (This judgment is reported in 24 K. C, page 69).
As early as 1903, Mr. Jacobs interested himself in a case that proved historic, as it brought forth a decision involving the question of Jewish educational rights in the Province of Quebec. The case is known as Pinsler ve. the Protestant Board of School Commissioners,
In the Province of Quebec, the public school system is divided between the Catholic and Protestant Panels. When this School Law was formulated, the Jewish population in the province was negligible, and no provision was made for separate Jewish schools, or for education of Jews in the existing schools. As their numbers increased,, however, Jews, made it a practice to send their children to the Protestant Schools and also to pay their school taxes to the Protestant School Panel.
Jewish children received equal treatment in these schools, except that they were not considered eligible for prUes or scholarships. Mr. Jacobs undertook to test in the courts the "legality of this discrimination. He took the Pinsler case, in which Pinsler, "the petitioner, a British subject, resident in Montreal, applied for a writ of mandamus, to compel the Protestant Board of School Commissioners to grant his son a scholarship, which, by reason of his success in his classes and in the examinations, would in the ordinary course have given him a right to a High School course, free of tuition fees, but this scholarship had been refused to him on the ground that a Jew was ineligible therefor."
The judgment of Mr. Justice Davidson, February 14, 1903, (reported in 23 Superior Court, p. 365) held, that the admission of the petitioner's son into the Protestant Schools was by grace, and not as of right; and he was, therefore, subject to special regulations of the Board, to wit, his ineligibility for a scholarship. This case initiated the long battle for the educational equality of Jews, which was carried through the highest Canadian courts, and to the Privy Council in London. A settlement was reached in 1931. Whether that settlement will prove permanent, only time will tell. The episode constitutes a separate chapter in Canadian Jewish history.
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ROSH HASHONAH
1963
9The ffiontreal Stat
// it's News - it's in The Star"