Devotion of Workers in Sweat Shops and Other East Side Hebrews to the Drama – The Productions of the Official Playwrights – Ways of the Yiddish Actors. From The New…
Read more →It has been nearly half a century since American literary critics Irving Howe and Leslie Fiedler each cited a remarkable forgotten novel, Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, during a symposium…
Read more →Wolfe (right) with author Kathy Kacer Born in Germany to Holocaust-survivor parents after World War Two, Toronto publisher Margie Wolfe has for many years been engaged in the pivotal task…
Read more →Ambitious in scope and masterful in execution, Allan Levine’s panoramic portrait of our city from its beginnings to the present is sweeping and opinionated, judicious and clever, insightful and gossipy…
Read more →From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 24, 2004 Artist’s rendition of Napoleon visit to European village, 1812 You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein’s new book listed on national best-seller lists,…
Read more →Photo: Section of the Ward, ca 1910s, from Louisa & Albert Streets at lower left, the Armouries at centre, and the old University Avenue Synagogue seen from the back (it…
Read more →There were bull-frogs in the creek on the other side of Wilson Heights, Jackie told us: monstrous bull-frogs, the biggest he had ever seen. He had brought one home like…
Read more →Herman Kempinski was evidently a first cousin once removed to my great-great-grandfather, Rafael Glicenstein, and both came from the town of Konin, Poland. Herman, born about 1854, was one of…
Read more →From the Toronto Star Weekly, August 1914 An artist and photographer for the Toronto Star Weekly captured these “unprecedented scenes” in Toronto in August 1914 as the city and the…
Read more →Shmuel Mayer Shapiro The following passages have been excerpted from The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community, by Shmuel Mayer Shapiro (1877-1958), the late editor and publisher of the Toronto…
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From The Jewish Standard, April 1, 1966 The author, in an earlier article, wrote of the career of Mr. Charles Kahn, Toronto’s first Jewish dentist.…
Back in 1938, two Jewish boys posed for a photo on the steps of Toronto’s Ostrovtzer Synagogue on the north side of Cecil…
◊ 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.…
From the Jewish Standard, January 1937 The most remarkable thing about the late Mr. Elazar (Louis) Rotenberg, who died on Thursday, December 31, 1936, was…
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…
From Growing Up Jewish: Canadians tell their own stories (1997) My earlier recollection goesback to the very early 1920s, sitting on the stoop of our…
The following passages have been excerpted from The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community, by Shmuel Mayer Shapiro (1877-1958), the late editor and publisher of…
◊ The following articles describe a tragedy that unfolded in Toronto’s Jewish district on Adelaide Street West near Spadina in 1914. I was particularly riveted…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 5, 2014 Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, by Stuart Ross (ECW Press) I hadn’t heard of Stuart Ross before reading Snowball,…
TORONTO SAGES is a booklet compiled and published in 2004 by Mayer S. Abramowitz, a grandson of Toronto cantor Nosson Stolnitz. Its full title is…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 1, 1977 Sarah Gitel Salsberg, long a colourful, vivacious figure in the Toronto Jewish community, died this past weekend…
A look back at the CJN from 40 years ago: From the Canadian Jewish News, March 6, 1974 Spry Ben Sherman has no thought of…
From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Fall 2012 In 1933, Toronto residents Philip and Sally Latchman were surprised by the birth of triplets — three identical boys,…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, November 11, 1938 Rebbetzin Lifsha Gordon, wife of the late Rabbi Jacob Gordon, died, after a brief illness on Monday,…
From the Globe and Mail, April 18, 1908 Objecting to a Reference to Kosher Meat, Shier Herman Pulled Rabbi Levi from the Altar and a…
◊ The Jew in Canada (first published 1926) offers hundreds of personal profiles as well as history capsules of Jewish communities from coast to coast as…
Condensed from The Canadian Jewish News, August 4, 1983 When the cucumber harvest is in, the Strub brother’s facility in Dundas, Ontario goes into their…
Condensed from The Canadian Jewish News, July 28, 1983 Sam Sterling was named Man of the Year of the Fashion Industry by the Fashion Division…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Toronto, Spring 2013 It is a busy day for Gerald and Naomi Goldenberg as they help plan some last-minute details…
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 12, 1972 For some time now it has been open season for Toronto’s Spadina Avenue and its off-shoot the…
Born in Germany to Holocaust-survivor parents after World War Two, Toronto publisher Margie Wolfe has for many years been engaged…
Photo: Section of the Ward, ca 1910s, from Louisa & Albert Streets at lower left, the Armouries at centre, and…
Ambitious in scope and masterful in execution, Allan Levine’s panoramic portrait of our city from its beginnings to the present…
The illustration appeared in the Toronto Star on January 15, 1907, as the city welcomed a new city council into…
Torontonians who have vanished to the four corners of the globe From the Toronto Star Weekly, November 29, 1913 By…
This beautiful and huge stained glass window was made for Toronto’s then-new City Hall at Queen and Bay streets when…
Opening of One-fare Trip to the City Limits Hailed With Joy / Triumph for Adam Beck / First Cars with…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, August 1914 An artist and photographer for the Toronto Star Weekly captured these “unprecedented scenes”…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 11, 1928 The T. Eaton Co. have called for tenders for the demolition of…
Today Forest Hill residents are just beginning to endure the noise and traffic jams associated with the construction of the…
From the Globe and Mail, 2001 Harry Barberian, who began his culinary career as a short order cook in a…
It has been 25 years since Canada’s leading publishing house McClelland and Stewart brought out A Basket of Apples and…
Suffering was Terrible — Little Children Lay Naked on the Bare Earth — Their Parents Half-Clad, Lay Beside Them —…
Recollections of Old Timer Forty Years Ago John Heenan ‘Tended Bar’ at the N.E. Corner of Front Street Many Changes…
From The Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Not long ago, a woman was caught red-handed in the act of shoplifting…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, May 6 1912 Note: This article describes the surprisingly high cosmopolitan character of the Toronto…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 9, 1922 Toronto is becoming a bungalow city. Entire streets of new houses built…
From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into…
They Were Used for Amusement by Dr. A. M. Rosebrugh, Who Secured Instruments from Dr. Bell, Inventor Wires Ran on…
I often get requests from researchers who have seen their family in the 1901, 1911 or 1921 census of Toronto…
Devotion of Workers in Sweat Shops and Other East Side Hebrews to the Drama – The Productions of the Official Playwrights – Ways of the…
More than half a century after the presidency of John F. Kennedy ended in a tragic hail of bullets, Ottawa historian and university professor Andrew…
From the Canadian Jewish News, 1996 David Rome was born and spent his first ten years in Vilna, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” This tells us…
Herman Kempinski was evidently a first cousin once removed to my great-great-grandfather, Rafael Glicenstein, and both came from the town of Konin, Poland. Herman, born…
Review of: The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, by George Prochnik (Other Press, New York) From the Canadian Jewish News, June…
Monuments Men, a new movie directed by George Clooney and starring Clooney and an impressive roster of A-list actors, tells the story of the special…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2002 Below the southwestern corner of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, near the archaeological feature known as Robinson’s Arch, lies a random assortment…
From Canadian Jewish News, October 22, 2001 Bushmeat, an hour-long television documentary soon to air on the Discovery Channel, is a riveting, tautly-edited expose of the…
From the Canadian Jewish Review, September 8, 1922 It will be remembered that Sarah Bernhardt was born in Paris in 1844 of Dutch Jewish parents…
In the year 1839, had you been a traveller along the road from Rzeszov to Cracow, you would have been obliged to show a passport…
My Father Is A Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud, by Janna Malamud Smith (Counterpoint Berkeley) One hundred years after his birth in 1914, acclaimed…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2014 As announced in obituaries in Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times and other publications, screenwriting guru…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 2014 Ninety years ago, New York newspaper editor Abraham Cahan was at the epicentre of international Jewish affairs —…
The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district…
Certainly you’ve seen of some of the movies that he wrote — the list includes Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934),…
In this riveting page-turner that reads like a murder mystery thriller, Erik Larson resurrects the legend of a forgotten American psychopathic mass murderer, the cold-blooded…
Archivist of Gothomania By Hye Bossin From the Canadian Jewish Standard, September 1936 New York’s prize piece of human curiosa is Walter Winchell. He climbed…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Toronto, Spring 2013 It is a busy day for Gerald and Naomi Goldenberg as they help plan some last-minute details…
From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some…
◊ In light of the passing of Paul Reichmann in Toronto on Friday October 25 at age 83, we bring your attention to this review of…
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…
◊ 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.…
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…
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…
From The London Jewish Chronicle, March 20, 1931 ◊ This shocking tale from the height of the depression focuses on a poor and desperate mother who,…
Some time in the late 1940s or 1950s, when my aunt and uncle moved from a house on Toronto’s Vaughan Road, they left behind several…
The late eminent American genealogist Rabbi Malcolm Stern once observed that there is nothing so fascinating to a person as his own genealogical research, and…
Review of KRAKOW: A Guide to Jewish Genealogy, by Geoffrey M. Weisgard in association with Gesher Galicia. Softcover, 114 pages. Published 2011, www.geshergalicia.org Like JewishGen…
TORONTO SAGES is a booklet compiled and published in 2004 by Mayer S. Abramowitz, a grandson of Toronto cantor Nosson Stolnitz. Its full title is…
Genie Milgrom, the author of My 15 Grandmothers, was one of numerous captivating speakers at the five-day International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Boston in…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 2013 Some 70 years after he last saw his father, mother, brothers and sisters alive, a survivor of the…
Born as Tsvi Hirsh Glicenstein in Konin Poland about 1872, my great-grandfather came to London as a youth, married, then brought his family to New…
The photo shows the opening session of the 33rd international conference on Jewish Genealogy taking place August 4 to 9 at the Park Plaza Hotel…
“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…
As nearly correct as it is humanly possible to make it From the Toronto Star, February 6, 1912 ◊ This article describes a census conducted one…
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well who were drawing monthly pensions from the U.S. government as late…
The following pages are from the souvenir booklet published by the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society of Toronto in 1935 upon the commemoration of its 35th…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2003 He was a British soldier and she was a Jewish nurse in British-mandate Palestine: they met in Egypt about 1940.…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 1913 ◊ Note: This article describes the very diligent efforts that went into producing Toronto’s city directories of a century…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 30, 1992 Florence Hutner, who guided the United Jewish Welfare Fund through problem-filled war and postwar years as its…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2002 Below the southwestern corner of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, near the archaeological feature known as Robinson’s Arch, lies a random assortment…
In the year 1839, had you been a traveller along the road from Rzeszov to Cracow, you would have been obliged to show a passport…
The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district…
From the Canadian Jewish News, 1989 Since the recent declaration of peace between Jordan and Israel, and the opening of the Arava border-crossing point between…
The Niagara Falls Visitor and Convention Bureau recently gave me an envelope filled with complimentary admission tickets to local museums and fun houses, and for…
In the ancient fishing village of Capernaum, above the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, visitors may examine a partially reconstructed 2nd- or 3rd-century…
Seeking to extend their colonial holdings in the early 1800s, the major European powers considered the notion of dispatching expeditions through the forbidden Sahara Desert…
When your address is Hollywood and you’d like some murals in your synagogue, who are you going to call? L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple is a…
In Place d’Armes, an historic square in Montreal’s Old City, two opposing shrines — a loftily-domed church and a classically-pillared bank — face off against…
A special summer of activities highlighting Montreal’s historic Jewish community kicks off June 15 (2000) when a musical version of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of…
James Harris, a 19th-century dairy farmer, brought renown to the southwestern Ontario town of Ingersoll by exhibiting a mammoth piece of locally-produced cheese at world’s…
Boasting numerous gems of Georgian architecture, this hilly, former spa town, set in the Peak District of the English Midlands, has been recognized since Roman…
The largest urban park in Canada and the third largest in North America, Vancouver’s Stanley Park is still “half savage and half domestic” as writer…
Twice a day for nine days each August, 100 propane-fueled hot air balloons rise from 10 sites around the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and drift…
About the time Alberta-born Doug Webber moved to Churchill, Man., with his family in the early Sixties, the remote Hudson Bay community had a population…
Situated on a dramatic windswept cliff overlooking Vancouver’s Georgia Strait and the snow-capped peaks of the Coast Mountains, the University of British Columbia’s Museum of…
With factories, warehouses, train stations and other relics of the past strewn about central Manchester like so many children’s toys, the city where the industrial…
Insect chop suey, sauteed crickets, and pizzas slices loaded with mealworms were among the hors d’oeuvres served recently at a cocktail party at the Insectarium,…
One of the first and most persuasive successes of the League of Nations, the international political body that prefigured the United Nations, was the resolution…
Note: Written in the height of the Mubarak years, long before his overthrow during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. Bartering is a way of…
