Growing a Community, Growing Business in Saint John
A plan started to help grow Saint John’s Jewish community is also growing business in the city.
In the 1950’s and 60’s the city had an active Jewish community of around 250 families. Norman Hamburg, former president of Saint John’s Shaarei Zedek Synagogue, remembers that time well.
“We had a really significant role at one time. Many worked as retailers and professionals as well. I’m in my 70’s and I lived through the heyday of our Jewish community being at the height of its numbers,” he says. “We had Jewish Boy Scouts, Jewish Cubs. We had rabbis and mentors within the religious side of our community. It was a very active community.”
But in the 1970’s, that community started to dwindle. People and families were moving away. About eight years ago, the community was on what Hamburg calls “life support.” Those left in the community were older with no children or had children who moved away.
It was then that Hamburg and others in the community knew it was time to do something.
“We started to investigate a way of rebuilding and rejuvenating our community here and we saw immigration as the only feasible way we could see a future,” he says.
With the help of an immigration agency in Israel, Hamburg says the community has helped bring in over 65 families in the last six year. Some have since moved to other parts of the country and 20 families are expected to arrive over the next year and a half. Humburg says around 30 have settled in the Saint John area to date. All the newcomers were interviewed and visited the city before immigrating.
Many who have settled in New Brunswick are working in the engineering and IT industries. Some are currently working to upgrade their certification to work in their field in Canada. But some have also chosen to pursue their own businesses.
Tal Goldenberg-Keren and Aviv Keren are two of them. The husband and wife duo are the founders of Chooka Media Group, a firm that offers graphic services, web design and e-learning course development. Chooka, which means “passion” in Hebrew, got its start back in Israel in 2008.
“When we decided to come [to Canada], it was pretty obvious to us that we were going to move the business here,” Tal says. “We saw an opportunity in Saint John to grow our business in many ways.”
Since officially becoming a Canadian business in November 2015, Chooka has secured clients big and small throughout Canada, the United States and Israel. They also recently hired their first New Brunswick employee, Andrew Hill, a young graphic designer. The company was also recently nominated for an Outstanding Business Award, hosted by the Saint John Chamber of Commerce.
“We chose Saint John because of the logistics of the area. It’s close to the United States, it’s close to Fredericton, Moncton and those areas,’ says Aviv. “When I came here and did an exploratory visit [before we moved], I met with some companies here … and I realized that we do have something to offer here as Chooka Media group.”
Another entrepreneur to come to Saint John is Amos Friling, who arrived in 2015 with his wife and three kids. He is currently working in IT for a pharmaceutical company back in Israel under a business he and his wife started called Friling Holdings Inc., He has aspirations to create another company in the future.
Like the team at Chooka, Friling is currently working out of ConnexionWorks, a co-working space in Saint John. He says the programs offered in the business community have played an important role in helping him set up shop in the province.
“If it weren’t for ConnexionWorks and Enterprise Saint John, I know I would have a significantly less chance to succeed,” says Friling. “I have friends from the Jewish community who recently arrived, and I want to bring them here [to ConnexionWorks], because they’ll be able to speak English with people and not just live among themselves. They will become a part of the community.”
Yet finding these helpful programs as a newcomer isn’t always easy. Tal and Aviv say one of the things New Brunswick can improve is better communication about what programs and services are available to newcomers, especially those looking to operate a business. They say there’s plenty of programs out there, but newcomers have to know the right questions to ask, otherwise many have to find it out by chance.
“People are nice. If you ask something specific … they will give you all the information you need,” says Aviv. “But if you don’t know what to ask, you don’t get the information.”
The problem is that knowing what you specifically want or need is hard when you’re new to a country.
“You start everything from scratch, from zero,” says Tal. “You don’t have a spoon. You have to get everything … it’s not that easy.”
Norman Hamburg also sees these roadblocks. Though there are things that need to be improved, he says the Jewish community is proud of the newcomers who’ve managed overcome these obstacles.
“We have great people and some who are able to battle through it and show the real positive stuff they bring,” he says. “We’re so proud of them. We’re just amazed, really.”
Friling and his family are now playing a role in helping bring more Israeli immigrants over to Saint John. He says it will not only grow the community that helped bring them over, but Canada as a whole.
“I have good friends in Israel, some of the brightest men that I’ve met that would love to come and work in Canada. That’s a win-win I think,” he says. “They and their families get to come over and experience the way of you guys have, and I’m sure Canada will truly get a benefit from them as well.”