Above: Current OJA executive director Dara Solomon stands beside image of early Passover seder, the sort of historic photo the…
Jewish Toronto
The Keeping of Jewish Records in Ontario
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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…
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…
Toronto
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…
Toronto City Guide befits a great city
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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
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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)
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Police Rushed to Willowvale Park After Ball Game to Restore Order From The Montreal Gazette, August 17, 1933 Toronto August 16…
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 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
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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?
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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…
