Jewish Roots

The patriarch of all Arntfields in North America was Selig (later known as Henry) Ährenfeld who arrived
in Canada from present day Germany in 1852 at the age of 21, settling in Waterloo County, Ontario where many previous German immigrants had also put down roots. Since Selig was Jewish, something discovered only in recent decades, his 1852 arrival makes him one of the earliest Jews to have settled in Ontario.

Although Canada today is home to the fourth largest Jewish population (about 390,000) in the world, in 1851 there were only 450 Jews in the entire country, most of them in Montreal. Since in 1871 there were only 528 Jews in Ontario, over half of them in Toronto and Hamilton, it stands to reason that those twenty years earlier Selig was likely one of the first 100 Jews to arrive in the province, the earliest known not having settled there until the late1830s.

It is probably, however, a distinction that would have meant little to Selig. While his religion is given as “Isralite” on the 1871 census, that is the only Canadian census to have done so. Later census records give the religion of all family members, including Selig, as Evangelical Christian.  Having married a German Protestant once in Canada, he appears to have abandoned his Jewish faith. That no doubt helps explain why his descendants were never aware of their Jewish roots.

Archival records in Germany confirm the accuracy of the 1871 census “Isralite” notation. Selig’s parents and his then siblings are found on the 1819 census for Bützow, Mecklenberg where Selig was later born. The religion for the entire family is given as Jewish. Selig’s father was Abraham and his paternal grandfather almost certainly was Isaac whose 1821 death record again confirms that the family was Jewish. My DNA ethnicity estimate indicates that I am as a result two to five percent European Jewish.

The Ährenfelds were Ashkenazi Jews, a European Jewish diaspora who originally settled in present day France and Germany in the Middle Ages. Often experiencing persecution, much of the population over time shifted eastward until, again experiencing persecution, many chose to return to western Europe during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. It is not known if our Ährenfeld ancestors chose to remain in Germany once there or were among those who moved eastward before eventually returning.

Whatever the case, the Holocaust of World War II decimated the Ashkenazim in Germany, about 70 per cent of the entire population. No doubt some of those exterminated were unknown Ährenfeld descendants, distant relatives whose forefathers had not made the decision to emigrate as had my great great grandfather Selig had so many decades before.  It is a sobering and tragic reminder of the randomness of life and the often- profound consequences of life’s decisions.