Although his name may be little known even within the Canadian Jewish community, Meyer Joshua Nurenberger was an internationally-known Jewish…
Jewish Toronto
M.J. Nurenberger founded the CJN
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A ‘robust, new’ history of Jews in Canada
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Seeking the Fabled City: the Canadian Jewish Experience, by Allan Levine (McClelland & Stewart) Proficient, prolific, and preternaturally talented, Winnipeg-based…
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut: An Appreciation
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From the Canadian Jewish News, 2017 From the moment in 1961 that he stepped into the role, Rabbi W. Gunther…
Obit: Simcha Simchovitch, eminent Yiddish writer (2017)
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From Canadian Jewish News, July 2017 Simcha Simchovitch, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor and prominent poet and writer in both Yiddish…
A Matzah Factory on Ontario Street
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One good thing about matzah is that even after the passage of many months, it often tastes no more stale…
PUBLISH OR PERISH: How I Got The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Saga into Print
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From AVOTAYNU, 2009 “Zhlobin — Market Street” reads the caption of this rare postcard photograph, circa 1900, of the Belarussian…
Books gather dust in Toronto’s ghostly Jewish Public Library
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From Canadian Jewish News, November 2015 Ever since the great exodus of Montreal Jews to Toronto began some 40 years…
Chestnut Street fracas: the day the police came to shul
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By Henry Papernick From the Beth Tzedec Bulletin, 1976 The downtown area of Toronto bounded on the north and south…
Landsmanschaft societies stretched forth their helping hands
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From the Canadian Jewish News, Spring 2015 In a series of articles in the Canadian Jewish News about four decades…
From the DP Camps to Canada via the Tailor Project
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From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2015 In late 1947 and early 1948, representatives of the Canadian garment industry organized…
Mount Sinai Hospital had humble beginnings
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When Dr. Daniel Drucker of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital receives the US$150,000 Manpei-Suzuki prize for groundbreaking diabetes research this February…
Toronto
Detective Benny Cooperman turns 30 (2010)
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Some thirty years ago, writer Howard Engel gave the world Benny Cooperman, a new made-in-Canada literary detective whom the Globe…
All in a day’s work: Census takers in ‘the Ward’
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“The Lot of the Census Taker in the Ward is Anything But an Easy One” is the title of the…
A Toronto baseball team from 1880
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From the Toronto Evening Telegram, April 1919 Thirty-nine years ago up on the the old grounds in Queen’s Park, near…
Ing Quong, Chinese magnate, in his last procession (1912)
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As “John Bull” he celebrated the inauguration of the Chinese Republic Guards Band Played Him Home Funeral of Well-Known merchant…
Helen Keller at Massey Hall, 1914
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A WONDER WOMAN AT MASSEY HALL Helen Keller Spoke to Large Audience Who Were Spellbound. HER FAMOUS TEACHER Mrs. Macey…
Ups & downs of a department store elevator (1900)
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From the Toronto Star, 1900 Character Sketches Among the Throngs Who Travel Up and Down in the Big Departmental Stores…
Panic at Yonge Street crossing (1910)
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A Little Panic at Yonge St. Crossing — Crowd Burst Around Behind One Train and Ran in Front of Another…
Davisville hotel to disappear (1928)
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Photostory From the Toronto Evening Telegram, June 1928 Old North Toronto landmark at southeast corner of Yonge and Davisville has…
First Home of Heintzman Piano Factory
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From Toronto Evening Telegram, 1928 When King Street, from Yonge Street to the Market, was Toronto’s busiest shopping district, Heintzman’s…
Toronto’s ‘400’ Sometimes Visit Pawnbrokers (1914)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, June 13, 1914 “It is a great mistake,” said a local pawnbroker, “to imagine that…
Archaeology of Toronto’s ‘Ward’
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The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life, edited by Holly Martelle, Michael McClelland, Tatum Taylor, and John Lorinc. (Coach…
Judische Familienforschung: World’s first Jewish genealogy society?
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by Henry Wellisch In the early 1920s Dr. Arthur Czellitzer, a Berlin ophthalmologist, founded the Gesellschaft fur Judische Familien Forschung, the “Society for Jewish Family Research.” It is now recognized as the world’s first society dedicated to Jewish genealogy in the modern era. The society had regular meetings in Berlin and published a newsletter entitled, Mitteilunngen…
The oldest family tree in the world
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 24, 2004 You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein’s new book listed on national best-seller lists, but the noted genealogist — with his tongue halfway in his cheek — compares it to the popular thriller “The Da Vinci Code.” Both books, the noted American genealogist and surgeon said, deal in…
Toronto’s Jewish ‘Unknown Soldier’ from WWI
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◊ An item in the Toronto Star from 1936 explains a certain inscription on a tombstone found at the Pape Avenue Cemetery, Toronto’s oldest Jewish cemetery. George Sorblum, Toronto’s “unknown soldier,” died in 1919 but his family only learned what happened to him in 2007. * * * From the Toronto Star, November 7, 1936 Some…
Review: Alison Pick’s Between Gods
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Seven years ago, as Toronto author Alison Pick began researching and writing what would become her prize-winning novel Far to Go, she realized that the seeds of two different projects — one a fictional manuscript, the other a closely allied memoir — were struggling for dominance within her mind. Giving priority to the novel, she…
Two views of Bristol house, 1911 & 2014
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Angell and Janey Lester (nee Alexander) were living in this house at 4 Radnor Rd., Bristol, in 1911 when this photo was taken. Janey is standing outside the house holding her infant son, Lionel Lester, with her four-year-old daughter, Ida, standing in front. Janey’s younger sister, twelve-year-old Dora Alexander, stands beside them in the dark…
