by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much…
Jewish Toronto
Toronto’s May Day parades of yesteryear (1955)
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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…
Esther Greenberg, age 7, accidentally shot (1915)
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From the Toronto Star, Jan. 15, 1915 Esther Greenberg, a seven-year-old child, was shot by a stray bullet from a…
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Resources for Genealogists All searchable/viewable on this site (links below) Searchable Databases >> Births (1907-1917) Marriages (range 1905 to…
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…
Toronto
Toronto had 3,000 cars in 1911 (Star Weekly)
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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’
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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)
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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)
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Frame Store on South Side of King Street between Yonge and Bay Is Being Torn Down — Quebec Bank Will Erect…
Benjamin Brown: Restoring an architect’s legacy
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From Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Toronto architect Benjamin Brown (1890-1974) designed many elegant edifices across the city, including the…
Praise & Admiration for Toronto Police (1903)
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TORONTO POLICEMEN ARE MODELS OF POLITENESS Their Clubs Are Merely Ornamental, But They Manage to Enforce the Laws – How a Police…
Exhibition Of 1889 Only One He Missed
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Ex-Alderman Edward Galley Has Been Going to Them Since the Year 1852 HOW C.N.E. HAS GROWN SINCE THE EARLY DAYS…
Street directory of Toronto’s “Ward” — 1913
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Photo: Section of the Ward, ca 1910s, from Louisa & Albert Streets at lower left, the Armouries at centre, and…
Review of ‘Toronto: Biography of A City’ (Allan Levine)
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Ambitious in scope and masterful in execution, Allan Levine’s panoramic portrait of our city from its beginnings to the present…
Toronto City Council, 1907
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The illustration appeared in the Toronto Star on January 15, 1907, as the city welcomed a new city council into…
Torontonians who have vanished (1913)
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Torontonians who have vanished to the four corners of the globe From the Toronto Star Weekly, November 29, 1913 By…
‘Old’ City Hall has lovely interior
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This beautiful and huge stained glass window was made for Toronto’s then-new City Hall at Queen and Bay streets when…
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…
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…
Silas Hardoon, richest man in Asia
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Silas Aaron Hardoon was born into a poor Jewish family in Baghdad in 1851, but when he died in Shanghai China 80 years later, he was regarded as the wealthiest man in Asia, leaving behind a fortune worth as much as $15 billion in today’s dollars. When Hardoon arrived in Shanghai as a youth of…
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. Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong, 2015. Shanghai’s community of Ashkenazic Jews, who arrived from Poland and elsewhere in Europe in the early 20th century and in advance of the Holocaust, is already fairly well-known. What is…
The Most Tenacious of Minorities: the Jews of Italy (review)
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Review: The Most Tenacious of Minorities: The Jews of Italy, by Sara Reguer. Hardcover, 190 pages. Boston: published by Academic Studies Press, 2013. www. academicstudiespress.com The Jews have been booted out of so many places during their history, it seems only natural that they should have a long and colourful past in the Italian “boot.”…
A Moravian Tax List of 1808
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The Neu-Raussnitz Tax Book by Dr. Heinrich Flesch, translated, adapted and with an introduction by Patrick Gordis & Henry Wellisch Some 90 years ago, a Moravian rabbi and historian, Dr. Heinrich Flesch (1875-1942), annotated a list of Jews from Neu-Raussnitz, Moravia, who paid taxes in 1808, then used the annotated list as a basis for a…
