Category: Current & Featured

Toronto’s Jews Think Big As Their Population Grows (2000)

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 24, 2000 (JTA) The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto is trying to keep pace with the city’s growing Jewish population through a massive building and revitalization project. The most recent is a $150-million Jewish campus in the York region, the area just north of the city that is home…

1931 Census is HERE!

26 May 2023 Census enumerators across Canada were busy on June 1, 1931, going door to door to gather 40 fields of personal information about 10,376,379 Canadians, including family names and relationships, age, gender, occupation, employment status, racial origin and whether the family had acquired a radio. Having sat in a vault for the past…

The Jewish Community of Rouyn-Noranda

NEWLY PUBLISHED MAY 2023 The Jewish Community of Rouyn-Noranda is a professionally produced, 254-page softcover book featuring more than 40 stories about the life and history of our small Jewish community in northern Quebec, remembered by those who lived there. Jews were present in Rouyn-Noranda from its earliest pioneer days in the 1920s and were…

Update on ‘The Unbroken Chain’ (2023)

New Volumes Published March 30, 2023 Dr. Neil Rosenstein, author of the newly-updated The Unbroken Chain recently announced publication of new volumes in the massive work. Rosenstein is one of the foremost Jewish genealogists in America today, with an internationally acclaimed expertise in the genealogy of rabbinic dynastic families. The Unbroken Chain deals uniquely with…

Famous personalities in The Unbroken Chain

as compiled by Dr. Neil Rosenstein Karl Marx, German philosopher, critic of political economy, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary; Helena Rubinstein (“cosmetic queen”); Moses Mendelssohn (famous philosopher) and grandfather of composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy; Lawrence Zox, American artist, painter and printmaker Charles Mendelssohn-Horsfall, British societal portrait painter and his works were widely exhibited…

Breakthrough: Jumping Back 36 Generations

From Inside Toronto (2017) My niece Katie gave birth to her first child recently (a boy) and she suddenly realized how little she knew about her ancestors, especially on her father’s side. Since I’m the family genealogist and a professional one to boot, I gladly volunteered to research her antecedants. Little did I realize that…

The Baghdadi Jews of Bombay (Mumbai)

Book Review: Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Heritage, by Dr. Shaul Sapir. Large format, hardcover, 290 pages; full-colour interior, lavishly illustrated with large four-panel foldout map. $50. Published by Bene Israel Heritage Museum and Genealogical Research Centre, India, 2013.  There are four distinct historic Jewish communities in India — the Cochin or Malabar Jews, the Bene-Israel Jews,…

Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey

Book Review: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, by Mikhal Dekel. Hardcover, 418 pages. Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. In September 1939, as Nazi militias approached their town of Ostrow Mazowiecka in northeastern Poland, the author’s paternal grandparents, like many others, were faced with a momentous decision: stay or flee eastwards into Russian-occupied…

Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews (review)

Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews: A Collection of Biographical Reflections, by Maisie J. Meyer, author and editor. Large format, 480 pages, softcover. Blacksmith Books, Hong Kong, 2015. Shanghai’s community of Ashkenazic Jews, who arrived from Poland and elsewhere in Europe in the early 20th century and in advance of the Holocaust, is already fairly well-known. What is…

The Most Tenacious of Minorities: the Jews of Italy (review)

Review: The Most Tenacious of Minorities: The Jews of Italy, by Sara Reguer. Hardcover, 190 pages. Boston: published by Academic Studies Press, 2013. www. academicstudiespress.com The Jews have been booted out of so many places during their history, it seems only natural that they should have a long and colourful past in the Italian “boot.”…