Bernard Wasserman and Renata Moon, the central characters in Benevolence, are a middle-aged, childless couple straining to regain their former closeness even as they struggle with barriers that separate them from their clients in their professional lives, he as a doctor who assesses patients involved in organ transplants, she as a psychotherapist who helps patients…
New story collection from Nathan Englander
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You remember Nathan Englander. He’s the former yeshiva bocher turned short story writer who dazzled the critics about a dozen years ago with For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, a debut collection of stories that inspired raves and comparisons to Babel, Malamud and Singer. Not even his subsequent novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, could…
Dr. David Eisen was a dedicated historian
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Dr. David Eisen had a passionate interest in the history of Toronto Jewry From The Jewish Standard, November 1990 IT SHOULD NOT come as a surprise to those who knew him that, in his youth, Dr. David Eisen had wanted to become a professional historian. Eisen, who died in Toronto in 1988 at the age…
Tikkun Olam: Ve’ahavta intent on ‘repairing the world’
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Representatives of Ve’ahavta, a Canadian Jewish humanitarian and relief organization, are being credited with pioneering a method of treatment that drastically reduces HIV transmission from infected mothers to newborn babies in sub-Saharan Africa. Ve’ahavta medics in field clinics in Zimbabwe have devised a system for administering the anti-HIV drug AZT that costs about (US) $5…
Mature writer Jacqueline Park scores with first novel
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After a distinguished career as a television scriptwriter and a professor of dramatic writing, Winnipeg-born Jacqueline Park, at 72, has achieved every writer’s dream: an acclaimed and commercially successful first novel. The book, a sweeping historical epic of the Italian Renaissance, is called The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi. Published by the prestigious American…
Medical condition leads to genealogy breakthrough
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Stanley Diamond, a semi-retired Montreal businessman who ran a company that manufactured decorated ceilings, has become a medical-genealogical detective in a bid to defuse what he calls a “ticking time bomb” and prevent potential suffering and death caused by thalassemia, a genetic disease. Common among Sephardic Jews, Greeks, Italians and other Mediterranean peoples, the gene…
Jewish Toronto: miscellaneous photos from the olden days
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MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING ON BLOOR STREET (illustration, above) : New structure to be erected on the old Sweny property at northeast corner of Bloor and St. George stret by a group of Toronto physicians. The site was acquired from the Toronto General Trusts Co., executors of the Sweny estate, and has 140 feet frontage on…
Exhibit offers colourful look at Toronto’s garment industry
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Through a series of colourful panels, photographs, display cases, clothing racks, and stand-alone artifacts such as a 1917 Singer treadle industrial sewing machine, the exhibition, A Common Thread, which opened recently in the Reuben and Helene Dennis Museum of Beth Tzedec Synagogue, offers a lively and compelling look at the history of Toronto’s garment industry from the early…
McCaul Synagogue Golden Anniversary Book (1938)
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THIS Golden Anniversary book was published in 1938 to mark the first 50 years of the Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Chevra Tehillim of Toronto, which was founded in 1887 and moved into the McCaul Street Synagogue about 1905. In the early 1950s it merged with the Goel Tzedec Congregation on University Avenue to become the present Beth…
Many highlights for repeat visitors to Montreal
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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 each other, potent symbols of the durable dialectic between religion and commerce that has helped shape this dynamic French-and-English-speaking city founded on an island in the St. Lawrence more than 350…
