Jun 18, 2009 -- The YU in Canada convocation and dinner held in Montreal on June 15 proved just how strong the bond is between Yeshiva University and its extended Canadian family. With almost 600 in attendance, including YU staff and noted members of Canada’s rabbinate and Jewish and broader communities, the event at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Westmont drew the largest turnout of any YU program held in Canada to date. “Yeshiva University represents a community of communities. It was with great joy that YU and Montreal celebrated this week,” said President Richard M. Joel. “There is something special about an academic convocation that both focuses us on our purpose and gives us purpose.” President Joel conferred honorary degrees on three leaders in the Canadian Jewish community: Rabbi Howard S. Joseph ’61Y, ’64R, ’64BR, spiritual leader of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Montreal; the Honorable Justice Morris J. Fish, a judge in the Supreme Court of Canada; and the Honorable Yoine J. Goldstein, Senator for Quebec (Rigaud). “Individually and as a group the three honorees embody the traits and ideals of our University,” President Joel said. Rabbi Joseph is the longtime rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Montreal. Rabbi Joseph moved to lead his synagogue, the oldest in Canada, in 1970, establishing it as a major foothold of Modern Orthodoxy and building its membership from 300 to 900 families. Justice Fish was a partner in several prominent Canadian law firms and served as a lecturer in various law schools before being appointed to the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1989. In 2003, he became the first Quebec Jew to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Senator Goldstein is the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, who taught law at the University of Montreal for 25 years, becoming an authority on bankruptcy and insolvency law and the only Canadian lawyer to be elected a fellow of both the American College of Bankruptcy and the American College of Trial Lawyers. In 2005, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate on the advice of Prime Minister Paul Martin. The senator has served on the Board of Directors of YU's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The event also honored Montreal lawyer Donald S. Davis ’65Y with the Distinguished Alumnus award. A partner at the law firm Luterman Davis LLP, Davis is an officer of CFYU and the Canadian alumni chairman. He has served in numerous lay leadership roles in Jewish education, including president of the Hebrew Academy from 1986-1990, the Association of Jewish Day Schools from 1996-1999 and the President’s Council of All Agencies of Federation CJA from 1999-2002. Davis currently serves as a member of the Executive of Federation CJA. Mo Lidsky ’06Y, national director of Canadian Friends of Yeshiva University (CFYU) who organized the event with Dr. Herbert C. Dobrinsky, vice president for university affairs, paid tribute to the event’s co-chairs—Samuel E. Aberman, Morton Brownstein, C.M., and Renee Lieberman—as well as CFYU president Robert Eli Rubenstein and chairman Samuel Z. Eltes. “The caliber of leadership that this special convocation and dinner had was unprecedented, and the success of the evening was due in great measure to their dedicated efforts,” said Lidsky. “Thanks to each of them, this event was a historic occasion that will renew and strengthen the long-standing relationship between the Montreal community and Yeshiva University.” Dobrinsky reported that the occasion raised just over $1 million, most of which will be used for scholarships for Canadian students. Of the more than 200 Canadians who are enrolled in Yeshiva’s undergraduate programs, approximately 92 percent receive significant scholarships from YU. “Yeshiva University’s Torah Umadda education is crucial to the Jewish communities of Canada,” stressed Dobrinsky. “There is nothing close to our caliber of higher education in Canada. It is therefore our responsibility to enable young Canadian men and women to study at our New York campuses.”