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. The Congregation published its Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary book in 1938. In the early 1950s it merged with the…
Category: Jewish Toronto
Artist Karla Goldberg triumphs over adversity
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Although it usually doesn’t host art exhibitions, The Baycrest Geriatric Centre has made a rare exception in the case of Karla Goldberg, an 84-year-old Toronto artist who trained herself to make art with her left hand after a stroke paralyzed the right side of her body two years ago. The exhibition “Creative Strokes of the…
Bases (and basement) loaded for Peter Seidman
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Give Peter Seidman a book about baseball that he doesn’t already have and you’re likely to score a bases-loaded home run with the Montreal-born collector of baseball paraphernalia. But chances are you’ll strike out in the attempt, because the 57-year-old teacher and administrator for the Toronto board of education has already amassed more than 4,000…
McCaul Synagogue Golden Anniversary (1938) – Section C
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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. The Congregation published its Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary book in 1938. In the early 1950s it merged with the…
David Eisen, the doctor who loved history
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Dr. David Eisen, Toronto’s first Jewish radiologist, was always intrigued with Jewish history. The youngest son of a Galician peddler who came to Toronto about 1902, David Eisen attended the University of Toronto’s medical school from 1917 to 1922, and joined the Mount Sinai Hospital after graduating. A quarter of a century ago, Eisen published…
Old news is new again
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At some point in their lives, nearly everyone in our modern world gets into the newspaper, even if only for a birth, marriage or death announcement. That’s why the newly-emerging searchable electronic archives of publications like the New York Times, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail constitute a giant leap forward for genealogists,…
Obit: comedian Frank Shuster (1916-2002)
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Frank Shuster, the straight man in the legendary comedy team of Wayne and Shuster, has died in Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital of pneumonia at the age of 85. He and his partner Johnny Wayne, who died in 1990, performed as a comic duo for 56 continuous years since first teaming up together for some comic…
Obit: Meyer Joshua Nurenberger (1911-2001)
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Meyer Joshua Nurenberger, an internationally-known Jewish writer and publisher who founded the Canadian Jewish News, has died in Toronto at the age of 90. During a journalistic career that stretched from the 1930s into the 1990s, Mr. Nurenberger interviewed Albert Einstein, covered the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, and was editor of the Morgen Journal, a…
A study of Toronto’s Orthodox Jews
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Etan Diamond, an American academic, has written a full-length study of the Orthodox Jewish community of Toronto and its pioneering movement northward from the inner city into the suburbs in the postwar era. Published recently by the University of North Carolina Press, Diamond’s And I Will Dwell in Their Midst: Orthodox Jews in Suburbia devotes…
H. Halpern Esq. continues long family tradition
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“The name Halpern has been over the doors of men’s wear stores in this city for more than 75 years,” says Meredith Halpern, manager of H. Halpern Esq., an upscale boutique for gentlemen in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel on Toronto’s Front Street W. Generations of Torontonians bought their bar-mitzvah suits at the original…
