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…
Category: Current & Featured
Cowan reminisces about the old Ward 4, 1930 to 1935
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Torontonian Norman Cowan reminisced about hanging out on College Street around Becker’s, Altman’s, Wellt’s and the Eppes Essen Restaurant during the Depression years in an article by Frank Rasky that appeared in the Canadian Jewish News on November 4, 1982. Then a 73-year-old retired estate planner, Cowan delivered an address titled Reminiscences of Ward 4…
The Standard theatre becomes a movie house, 1935
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This article, which appeared under the title “Gone to the Movies” in the Canadian Jewish Standard of March 14, 1935, tells the sad tale not only of the demise of the Standard Yiddish Theatre at Spadina and Dundas in Toronto, but of the Yiddish language in general across North America. Younger, more assimilated and acculturated…
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…
Toronto Jewish community celebrates 100 years (1956)
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When Judah Joseph, an English-born Jew, settled in Muddy York in 1838 and set up shop as an optician and watchmaker, little did he dream he was the forerunner of a vigorous community of 75,000, the third largest Jewish community in the British Commonwealth. It is now (in 1956) celebrating its 100th anniversary as an…
Opening of the Standard Yiddish Theatre, 1922
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The Standard Theatre Successful Opening of New Yiddish Temple of the Drama Last Night The opening ceremony and initial performance at the Standard Theatre, the latest addition to the places of amusement of the city, passed off very successfully last night. His Worship the Mayor snatched a half-hour from his duties at the City Hall…
Marriage of Yiddish actors attracts 3,000 in 1913
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THE following stories attest to a theatrical event within Toronto’s Jewish community that drew a crowd of 3,000 people in June 1913. The occasion was the actual marriage of two actors on stage after the Saturday evening performance of a Yiddish melodrama at the Lyric Theatre at Terauley and Agnes (now Bay and Dundas). The…
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…
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…
The House of the Living (Excerpt)
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THE following is the beginning of The House of the Living, a “long” short story by Bill Gladstone. It is a romance-mystery of Jewish genealogy. Genealogist David Lazarus assists a married lady named Sarah Blum to discover what happened to an uncle who disappeared from her family, and changes his life in the process. Originally…
