British authorities in the 1700s and 1800s encouraged Jews to come to the New World and help develop the colonies, according to a new ground-breaking academic work that is “the first extensively documented study of the early history of the Jews in Canada,” according to Sheldon Godfrey, who with his wife Judith wrote the fine…
Category: History
The de Solas: A Distinguished Sephardic Lineage
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When Abraham de Sola arrived in Montreal in 1846 to serve as spiritual leader of the city’s Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, he carried a letter from his father, David de Sola, rabbi of London’s Bevis Marks synagogue, beseeching the community to look after him because he was only 19 years old. Abraham de Sola was…
Patai’s history of Hungarian Jews
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The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Wayne State University Press) by Raphael Patai is a monumental 720-page treatise that traces the history of the Jews of the Carpathian basin from their origin in Roman times to their near-obliteration in 1944 and beyond, right up to the present moment. Patai, who died recently at 86, was…
Gluckel’s ‘Seven Little Books’
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If, as historian Jacob Shatzky once observed, catastrophe of one sort or another has been the usual impetus for the bulk of Jewish autobiographical writing, the celebrated chronicles left to us by Gluckel of Hamelyn (1646-1724) under the title The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hamelyn are no exception. The pious Gluckel took up her quill…
