One of the most interesting and unusual items pertaining to the Jewish history of confederate and pre-confederate Canada is a two-centuries-old diary in the custody of the National Archives of Canada. The diary belonged to Samuel Jacobs, a European merchant whose ship, the Betsy, was known to have plied the St. Lawrence carrying trade goods…
One hundred years ago this week (April 2003), reports reached the West from St. Petersburg of severe anti-Jewish riots that had occurred in Kishinev, capital of the Russian province of Bessarabia. The first news was sparse. Twenty-five Jews had been killed and 275 wounded in the attacks, newspapers reported, but eventually the death toll would…
The number of Jews who fought in the First World War has always been difficult to tally because Jews fought on both sides and in multiple armies involved in the conflict. On the Allied side, at least 500,000 Jews served in the Russian Army, about 250,000 served in the United States Army, roughly 50,000 in…
His name was Moses; he was a leader of his people; he spent much time in Egypt and the desert; he wandered incessantly; he is associated with a fiery mountain and the holiday of Passover; and his life lasted longer than a century. These traits describe the biblical Moses, of course, but they also refer…
From the Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopedia Judaica) Rafah (Ar. Rafaḥ; Heb. Rafi’ah) is a town near the Mediterranean coast at the southern end of Gaza where it borders with Egypt. Rafah is first mentioned in an inscription of the pharoah Seti I (c. 1300 B.C.E.) as Rph; it also appears in other Egyptian sources, in…
A windowless, doorless chamber, set high up into the wall of an antiquated synagogue and accessible only by ladder, is not normally the sort of place to which a traveller dreams of arriving. However, it was precisely such a room that Solomon Schechter, a Cambridge professor of Talmudic literature, was determined to reach when he…
Originally appeared in The Canadian Jewish News The Rothschilds had one. The Disraelis had one. The Montefiore, Mocatta and Sassoon families each had one. And so, according to some interpretations, did each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Popular with the Jewish aristocracy in Europe since medieval times, Jewish coats of arms once seemed a…
Report from the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 1919 Ukraine, the Scene of Wholesale Murder Since Last November. Whole Communities Wiped Out. Troops of Petliura and Grigorieff Principal Culprits. Bolshevik Troops Kill Many in Spite of Rigorous Measures of Their Commanders Authentic reports have reached this country of a series of massacres which have raged in the…
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…
