For the genealogist, these membership lists from Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim synagogue may help establish the presence or confirm the identity of a relative or ancestor. The pages have been copied from the 50-year history of the synagogue, published in 1978. The synagogue is located on Glencairn Avenue east of Bathurst Street in midtown Toronto. The…
Category: Jewish Toronto
Magistrate Jacob Cohen profiled in Globe, 1910
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THE following feature profile of Jacob Cohen, a retired Toronto businessman who became Toronto’s first Jewish justice of the peace in 1907, appeared in the Toronto Globe of March 12, 1910. * * * SNUGLY settled in the heart of Toronto reposes a little Hebrew nation sixteen thousand strong and growing rapidly. It has its…
Lists of Holy Blossom members, donors & pupils, 1937-38
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The following lists originate in the 1938 Dedication Booklet of the Holy Blossom Temple on Bathurst Street, Toronto. (Cover of the booklet is shown at right.) The lists could prove useful for genealogists researching Jewish families in Toronto in the late 1930s. Holy Blossom was then the best-known and probably the largest congregation in Toronto.…
Making girls of Jewish birth into good Canadians (1916)
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From Toronto Star Weekly, February 12, 1916 The Jewish Free School at the corner of Cecil and Beverley streets is doing a unique work in Toronto. It was eight years ago that Mr. Edmund Scheuer took over this Sabbath School, under the auspices of the Zionists of Toronto. There were then twenty-one children on the…
The Jews — A Tenacious People of Faith (1921)
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From The Globe and Mail, July 28, 1921 ◊ The writer of this sympathetic and thoughtful article seemed to want to demystify the Jewish people for the benefit of the general Christian reader. The writer interviewed some Toronto rabbis and sought to describe some of the beliefs and practices of the Jewish people as reflected in…
Gas poisoning in hotel at York & Adelaide, 1909
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From The Toronto Star, September 9, 1909 Boscol Moses, a young farmer from Audbury (sic), Ontario, celebrated his first night in the city by half suffocating himself in the New York Temperance Hotel at the corner of York and Adelaide streets. Moses, who knew nothing about gaslight, made the well known mistake of trying to…
Growth of a Kensington grocery store (1987)
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From The Canadian Jewish News, November 19, 1987 If you trace the path of the Toronto Jewish community for the past fifty years you will be taking a snapshot of Goodbaum’s grocery stores as they marched north, eventually under the name of Sunnybrook Foods. “We were at 180 Baldwin Street, 188 Baldwin Street, 374 College…
Rabbi Halpern dead, founder of synagogue (1922)
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Note: Rabbi Isaac Halpern came to Toronto from New York about 1888 and at first collected rags. He was one of the founders of the Galician Synagogue, Shomrai Shabboth, which first met in a room on Chestnut Street. Halpern fulfilled many rabbinical duties until the arrival of Rabbi Yoseph Weinreb about 1900. When the Shomrai…
Conversation with Alex Serota (2009)
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From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Spring 2009 Alex Serota was a founding member of the Shaarei Tefillah Congregation on north Bathurst Street in the late 1950s, but left to join Beth Sholom about 1963 because of the latter’s “magnificent USY movement” that was so important for his two sons. I met recently with Alex and his…
A visit with Moishe and Gert Kerbel (2009)
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From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Chanukah 2009 Moishe (Maurice) and Gert Kerbel joined Beth Sholom 40 years ago, a couple of years before their son Jeffrey was to be bar-mitzvahed, and have remained active members to this day. Moishe Kerbel was for many years ritual chairman of the shul. He handed out the “aliyot” and…
