Dan Behat, the former chief archaeologist of Jerusalem, served as a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and has also taught extensively in Canada. He has lectured to Christian groups around the world on Jerusalem in the time of Jesus and was once invited by Pope John Paul II to do so at the Vatican. He…
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2002 One year after passing anti-terrorism legislation, Canada’s Liberal Government has responded to an intense barrage of criticism by adding the Lebanese-based Shi’ite group Hezbollah to its list of outlawed terrorist entities. After months of insisting that the so-called “social” wing of Hezbollah does not deserve the terrorist label because…
From the Globe and Mail, November 1999 Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Birmingham Temple, Detroit, asserts that all of the patriarchs and prophets of ancient Israel are only myths — and so is the God of the Jewish people. Heretical utterances for a rabbi? Certainly, in any previous age. But today Rabbi Wine is the founder…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 8, 2020 Note: I compiled this quiz for the Canadian Jewish News, and it ran as the cover story on the very last issue that was published. Answers appear below. ♦ QUESTIONS 1. What wartime Canadian novel dealt centrally with Jewish characters and themes and won a Governor General’s…
Dr. David Eisen, Toronto’s first Jewish radiologist, was always intrigued with Jewish history. The youngest son of a Galician peddler who came to Toronto about 1902, David Eisen attended the University of Toronto’s medical school from 1917 to 1922, and joined the Mount Sinai Hospital after graduating. A quarter of a century ago, Eisen published…
This colourful portrait shows a group of Jewish men in the Old Yishuv or Jewish community in Palestine of the British Mandate. The glass slide, produced by a Toronto company (Screen and Sound Service Limited) on King Street, was part of a large collection of glass slides that were evidently used in talks to Christian…
Toronto’s mean streets of a century ago recalled in old police register — Documents found in former police headquarters on College Street Genealogist Bill Gladstone looked through a number of thick handwritten criminal registers that turned up some years ago in a forgotten alcove of the Stewart Building, the former police headquarters on College Street, and…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, 2016 Harry Musicar and Selma Musicar attended High Holidays services as usual this year at Beth Sholom as they have annually for most of the last six decades. Harry and Selma have been members of Beth Sholom for nearly 60 years, but their association with the shul’s founding rabbi, David…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, 2013 Morton Brown is sitting in the Beth Sholom board room beneath two long rows of photographic portraits of former presidents of the shul. Having first joined the board in 1970, Morton attended board meetings regularly and served on various committees, as treasurer, second vice president, board chairman and president…
I recently used the genealogy website MyHeritage to drastically improve the colour and clarity of an old Toronto postcard showing the historic Goel Tzedec Synagogue (at lower right in above image). This rare postcard provides an excellent view of the synagogue in situ on University Avenue in the 1920s. The synagogue was built about…
