From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 24, 2000 (JTA) The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto is trying to keep pace…
Jewish Toronto
Toronto’s Jews Think Big As Their Population Grows (2000)
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The CBC’s shame (1987)
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From the Canadian Jewish News (editorial), 1987 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Founded half a century…
Toronto’s May Day parades of yesteryear (1955)
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by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much…
Mutual Benefit: Toronto’s ‘Society’ doctors
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by Irving B Rosen, MD, FRCSC Society doctors, like Harley Street specialists, evoke the image of the sought after, affluent…
History of Beth Lida Forest Hill Congregation
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Note: In 2012, Beth Lida commissioned Bill Gladstone to write a detailed history of the congregation since its founding in…
Fond farewell to Frydman-Kohl after 25 years
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◊ After the departure of Rabbi Benjamin Friedberg from Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Synagogue in the early 1990s, the congregation turned…
The Keeping of Jewish Records in Ontario
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Above: Current OJA executive director Dara Solomon stands beside image of early Passover seder, the sort of historic photo the…
Samuel Sachs, long-time Goel Tzedec rabbi (1989)
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From the Canadian Jewish News, January 22, 1989 TORONTO – Rabbi Samuel Sachs died recently in Santa Monica, California at the…
Profile: Dorothy Dworkin, nurse & Mount Sinai founder
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Dorothy Goldstick (later Dworkin) donned the modest white cap of a maternity nurse in 1909, but her accomplishments ranged into…
M.J. Nurenberger founded the CJN
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Although his name may be little known even within the Canadian Jewish community, Meyer Joshua Nurenberger was an internationally-known Jewish…
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…
Genealogy
1931 Census is Coming Soon!
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26 May 2023 Census enumerators across Canada were busy on June 1, 1931, going door to door to gather 40…
Update on ‘The Unbroken Chain’ (2023)
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New Volumes Published March 30, 2023 Dr. Neil Rosenstein, author of the newly-updated The Unbroken Chain recently announced publication of…
Breakthrough: Jumping Back 36 Generations
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From Inside Toronto (2017) My niece Katie gave birth to her first child recently (a boy) and she suddenly realized…
Ontario puts new restrictions on birth records (2016)
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From Inside Toronto, 2016 As if attaining genealogical records wasn’t already hard enough, genealogists now have to face a steep…
Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews (review)
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Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews: A Collection of Biographical Reflections, by Maisie J. Meyer, author and editor. Large format, 480 pages, softcover.…
Jewish Glasgow: An Illustrated History
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Jewish Glasgow: An Illustrated History. By Kenneth Collins, Harvey Kaplan and Stephen Kliner. Published by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.…
Review: ‘Our Litvak Heritage’
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Our Litvak Inheritance, Volumes One and Two of Our Litvak and South African Jewish Inheritance, compiled by David Solly Sandler.…
Adeline Moses Loeb and her early American Jewish Ancestors
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Book Review: An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb (1876-1953) and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors. Contributors are John L. Loeb,…
Protected: Ekstein-Wlosko Family Tree
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Jewish Name Changing in America
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A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America, by Kirsten Fermaglich, New York University…
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…
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…
History
Ben Gurion in Nova Scotia
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by Dr Stuart E Rosenberg From The Canadian Jewish News, 1972 Here’s an interesting footnote to Jewish Canadiana. A very unusual episode, full of portent and prophecy for the future of Jews everywhere, was played out in a remote corner of the country, at an army base in Windsor, Nova Scotia. It was there that a man who, thirty years…
The Baghdadi Jews of Bombay (Mumbai)
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Book Review: Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Heritage, by Dr. Shaul Sapir. Large format, hardcover, 290 pages; full-colour interior, lavishly illustrated with large four-panel foldout map. $50. Published by Bene Israel Heritage Museum and Genealogical Research Centre, India, 2013. There are four distinct historic Jewish communities in India — the Cochin or Malabar Jews, the Bene-Israel Jews, the Bene-Menashe Jews of northeast…
Baby born at sea amidst Ukrainian rescue
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by Gaye Applebaum From the Canadian Jewish News, 1983 As the SS Hamilton Scandinavian docked at Quebec City on Aug. 21, 1921, a tremor of excitement surged through the rain-drenched crowd. On the ship’s deck huddled 108 frightened but excited Ukrainian Jewish children – all of them rescued war orphans from the devastated Polish Ukraine. Also on deck was Lillian…
Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey
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Book Review: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, by Mikhal Dekel. Hardcover, 418 pages. Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. In September 1939, as Nazi militias approached their town of Ostrow Mazowiecka in northeastern Poland, the author’s paternal grandparents, like many others, were faced with a momentous decision: stay or flee eastwards into Russian-occupied eastern Poland, then the vast…
Sledgehammer: An ambassadorial account of the Abraham Accords
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Book review: Sledgehammer: How Breaking With The Past Brought Peace To The Middle East, by David Friedman, former US Ambassador to Israel. HarperCollins, 2022. In Sledgehammer, lawyer-turned-ambassador David Friedman offers some excellent background to the important story of the Abraham Accords, which stand as the most significant development in Middle East peace since Israel’s treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Representing…
Rediscovered
Ontario puts new restrictions on birth records (2016)
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From Inside Toronto, 2016 As if attaining genealogical records wasn’t already hard enough, genealogists now have to face a steep new barrier when it comes to getting Ontario birth records. Quietly, on the sly and when no one was looking, the Ontario Registrar General changed its longstanding rule about how…
Ben Gurion in Nova Scotia
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by Dr Stuart E Rosenberg From The Canadian Jewish News, 1972 Here’s an interesting footnote to Jewish Canadiana. A very unusual episode, full of portent and prophecy for the future of Jews everywhere, was played out in a remote corner of the country, at an army base in Windsor, Nova…
Rhea Clyman chronicled Soviet famine
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Rhea Clyman, an accomplished journalist born to a Jewish family in Toronto in 1904, wrote many front-page newspaper stories in the late 1920s and 1930s about political events and their tragic human consequences in Russia, Ukaine and Germany, but died in near-obscurity in New York in 1981. Clyman wrote rare…
A glimpse into the early days of the Queen’s Hotel
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Sixty Years’ Changes, As Hotelman Has Seen Them — The Queen’s Has Been “An Institution” of Toronto, Like the Parliament Buildings or St. James’ Cathedral — Glimpses of ‘60s & ‘70s — View of Bay Fetched Topnotch Price for Rooms — Nickel-plated Self-feeder Supplied Luxury of Heating — Tin Bath When Asked — First…
Canadianizing the foreigners with ‘Settlement Work’ (1914)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 1914 By Julia K. Lamont “But is she a dainty cook?” “No-o; not especially, but an excellent worker.” “Won’t suit,” declared the settlement superintendent. “The children must have dainty dishes.” “Why, what children?” “Why, the neighbourhood children for our summer camp.” Elegance and simplicity…
