A few paces over the line between east and west, the American Colony is reputedly the finest hotel in Arab East Jerusalem, and no less steeped in legend and lore than its more famous counterpart, the King David Hotel, in the western, more prosperous section of the city. Part of the exclusive Relais & Chateaux…
Month: December 2011
Inside Sotheby’s, famous London auction house
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Inside a large public room at Sotheby’s, the famous auction house on New Bond Street in Central London, workers are painstakingly reconstructing another room: an Islamic-style chamber that has been disassembled and shipped here from an Arabian palace. Having once graced the ancestral home of an anonymous sheik, the wood-carved ceiling, walls and floor of…
In the footsteps of Shakespeare of London
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The play is again the thing in the Southwark district of London as a newly-built replica of the Globe Theatre, where some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays debuted almost 400 years ago, is set to open in late August (1997) for a three-week dramatic season. Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,…
Letter from a Druze village
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The town of Isfiya, in the Carmel Mountains of Israel, is so close to Haifa as to be considered almost a suburb. Yet it is markedly different. Built on the site of an ancient Jewish village, Isfiya is a Druze village, and 80 per cent of its 9,000 inhabitants are followers of the secretive, mystical…
The Bible and modern cosmology in perfect harmony
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The Biblical account of the creation of the universe is in “complete and remarkable agreement” with the latest findings of modern cosmology, notes a leading Israeli physicist who has written a book on the subject. “At least regarding the first chapter of Genesis, the era of contradiction between Torah and science is over,” says Professor…
Seeking new prospekts in St. Petersburg
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Our first day in St. Petersburg, Russia, we took a tour that showed off the magnificence of this city of exquisite palaces, cathedrals, prospekts and Venetian-style canals. We saw the Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Admiralty, the Church of the Resurrection, Nevsky Prospekt, Smolny Cathedral, miscellaneous grand palaces, Palace Square and the…
Snapshot of Jewish education in Toronto, 1917
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From the Toronto Daily Star, August 11, 1917 Toronto Jews Foster the Higher Education Schools Many, and No One Is Neglected Among the City’s 35,000 Hebrews AND LIBRARIES TOO Hebrew and Yiddish Taught, and a Yiddish Paper is Published Although the Jewish population in Toronto forms but one-sixteenth part of the entire city’s population, there…
Obit: Rabbi Moses B. Clavir (1857-1928)
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From a Toronto newspaper, October 27, 1928. Well-known Rabbi Dead Tribute paid by 3,000 at funeral of rabbi Nearly 3,000 persons crowded in and around McCaul Street Synagogue yesterday to attend the funeral services for Rabbi Moses B. Clavir, acclaimed one of the most erudite general scholars and greatest authorities on the Talmud on this…
Edmund Scheuer and the Toronto Jewish Free School
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The Toronto Star Weekly of February 12, 1916, carried this report on the Jewish Free School sponsored by Jewish philanthropist Edmund Scheuer. Making Good Canadians Out of Girls of Jewish Birth Splendid Work Being Done at the Jewish Free School Tolerance for Creeds of Others Taught Loyalty to King and Country Strongly Emphasized. The Jewish…
Book Review: The Hare with Amber Eyes
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Edmund de Waal, London-based author of The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss, has described this memorable book as “a biography of a collection and the biography of my family.” The collection he refers to is an assortment of some 264 netsuke, tiny elegant figurines carved by Japanese craftsmen in…
