From Canadian Jewish News, July 2012 The phrase “gallows humour” has a particular resonance in regard to Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s famous 1928 play The Front Page, which is punctuated by the recurrent testing of a gallows in a courtyard of the Chicago courthouse in which death row prisoner Earl Williams is due to…
Glimpses of Jewish Baltimore
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It has been 50 years since a group of rabbis in Baltimore staged a protest against the racial segregation that was still a sad fact of life in many parts of America, including various restaurants in Baltimore. In February 1962, a time of heightened civil rights protests, the rabbis decided to target two local restaurants,…
Yiddishkeit, a graphic celebration of Yiddish culture
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In lieu of baseball cards, some American Orthodox boys have turned in recent decades to collecting Torah personality trading cards that feature images of revered “Gedolim” (Giants) from Moses Maimonides to Rabbi Moishe Feinstein, with lists of famous published works on the back in lieu of batting statistics. The happy invention of a Baltimore accountant,…
Rabbi Schild’s memoir of an ‘uncertain passage’
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From Books in Canada, 2002 One evening some months ago, a crowd of about 600 people gathered in Toronto’s Adath Israel Synagogue for the launch of Rabbi Erwin Schild’s latest book, The Very Narrow Bridge: A Memoir of an Uncertain Passage. The hall in the synagogue was packed (standing room only) as the rabbi delivered…
Nine books celebrated at Canadian Jewish Book Awards
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Eli Pfefferkorn says he was walking in the park one day, thinking about the story he had been longing to tell, when suddenly he experienced a rare and startling revelation. “I found the voice,” he said. “One day, one morning, I heard the voice from inside coming . . . a voice I had not…
New director for Ontario Jewish Archives
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It is perhaps fitting that Dara Solomon began her new job as director of the Ontario Jewish Archives at the beginning of May [2012], which has been designated Jewish Heritage Month in Ontario. Not only does the experienced museum curator bring a new face to the Archives, but she is also intent on setting up…
Toronto Jewish Film Festival turns 20
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From The Canadian Jewish News, April 2012 The 20th annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival opens Thursday May 3, 2012 at the Cineplex Odeon Varsity with the English-Canadian premiere of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, a France-Canada co-production about a teenaged Israeli girl who receives an email response from a young Palestinian who calls himself…
Re-enacting the War of 1812 near Long Point
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From the Globe and Mail, July 2000 Painted a bright red, the 201-year-old John C. Backhouse Mill seems as conspicuous against its background of grass and trees as the British Redcoats must have been when engaged in combat with the Americans during the War of 1812. A historic property that was restored to pristine condition…
Hot Art: Knelman probes secret world of stolen art
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Some years ago, while researching an article for Walrus Magazine on art theft, Joshua Knelman interviewed a convicted art thief in a local restaurant. While providing some quotable patter, the thief threatened to break Knelman’s legs if he used his real name, and handed him some rolled-up items, which proved to be stolen artworks, now…
Orchestrating the American dream
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Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…
