From Canadian Jewish News, July 2017 Simcha Simchovitch, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor and prominent poet and writer in both Yiddish…
Jewish Toronto
Obit: Simcha Simchovitch, eminent Yiddish writer (2017)
by •
A Matzah Factory on Ontario Street
by •
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
by •
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
by •
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
by •
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
by •
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
by •
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
by •
When Dr. Daniel Drucker of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital receives the US$150,000 Manpei-Suzuki prize for groundbreaking diabetes research this February…
Landsmanshaft and Jewish mutual benefit societies of Toronto
by •
The following is an abridgement of a talk that Bill Gladstone gave to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada (Toronto)…
Michael Blume, Toronto’s first Jewish pharmacist (1866)
by •
From The Jewish Standard, April 1, 1966 The author, in an earlier article, wrote of the career of Mr. Charles…
Cecil Street Reunion: former shul receives plaque
by •
Back in 1938, two Jewish boys posed for a photo on the steps of Toronto’s Ostrovtzer Synagogue on…
Toronto
First Home of Heintzman Piano Factory
by •
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)
by •
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’
by •
The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life, edited by Holly Martelle, Michael McClelland, Tatum Taylor, and John Lorinc. (Coach…
Toronto City Guide befits a great city
by •
Toronto Architecture: A City Guide (McClelland & Stewart) From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2018 In 1985, when architectural journalist…
OJA exhibit pays homage to Benjamin Brown
by •
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2016 “Location, location, location,” they say, are the three most important things in real…
Infuriated Toronto Youths Riot Over Showing of Swastika (1933)
by •
Police Rushed to Willowvale Park After Ball Game to Restore Order From The Montreal Gazette, August 17, 1933 Toronto August 16…
Saving the Babies of Toronto’s Poor—Pure Milk Depots Doing Grand Work (1911)
by •
From the Toronto Star Weekly, August 26 1911 Enterprise of the Household Economic Association Has Achieved Wonderful Results—Little Ones so…
Toronto had 3,000 cars in 1911 (Star Weekly)
by •
Hamilton man owned first motor in Canada J.C. Eaton of Toronto Bought the Second – Wonderful Development of the…
Christian missions proselytized Jews in ‘the Ward’
by •
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Having recently marked its 25th anniversary, the organization Jews for Judaism continues to counter…
Is Toronto Troubled by ‘Too Much Sunday’? (1914)
by •
Above: Some 3,500 Torontonians protested at Massey Hall when City Council refused to allow the use of slides at High Park…
Toronto’s oldest building gives way, modern structure to rise (1911)
by •
Frame Store on South Side of King Street between Yonge and Bay Is Being Torn Down — Quebec Bank Will Erect…
Jewish Name Changing in America
by •
A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America, by Kirsten Fermaglich, New York University Press, 2018. Although Jewish name-changing was widespread throughout the United States and Canada throughout much of the 20th century, no one has studied this interesting phenomenon at book length until now. The author, Kirsten…
All in a day’s work: Census takers in ‘the Ward’
by •
“The Lot of the Census Taker in the Ward is Anything But an Easy One” is the title of the first story; its subtitle is “The Foreigners There Have No Idea of the Months of the Year, and It Takes a Long Time to Convince Them That the Information Is Not for the Tax Collector.”…
PUBLISH OR PERISH: How I Got The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Saga into Print
by •
From AVOTAYNU, 2009 “Zhlobin — Market Street” reads the caption of this rare postcard photograph, circa 1900, of the Belarussian shtetl where my great-grandparents lived before bringing their children to Canada about 1910. The postcard was part of an incredible collection of more than 100 old family-related photos from Russia and Toronto from the 1890s…
The Forgotten ‘Fusgeyers’ from Romania
by •
Curious about your Jewish ancestors from Romania? Read Jill Culiner’s ‘Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers’ Between about 1900 and 1914, multitudes of impoverished Jewish refugees sold their meagre possessions, joined into large groups for protection, and trekked hundreds of miles out of Romania on foot. The exodus of the Jewish “Fusgeyers” — Yiddish…
Judische Familienforschung: World’s first Jewish genealogy society?
by •
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…
