Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin…
Jewish Toronto
Book offers pieces by Kayfetz, Speisman on Toronto Jews (2013)
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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…
Lewis Samuel arrived in Toronto in 1844
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by Dr. Stephen A Speisman Lewis Samuel, merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1827 at Kingston upon Hull, England. He…
Photo: Toronto Poalei Tsion Youth Club (1918)
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Here is a photo showing the youth group Poalei Tsion in Toronto, 1918, with names translated, below. Courtesy, Ontario Jewish…
Doing genealogy at the Ontario Jewish Archives
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from Canadian Jewish News (2015) When Cantor Bernard Wladowsky was lured from Chicago to Toronto in March 1912 to begin…
Memories of Good (Jewish) Eats on Eglinton & Downtown
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by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto baby boomer, undoubtedly you have fond…
Toronto’s Jews Think Big As Their Population Grows (2000)
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 24, 2000 (JTA) The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto is trying to keep pace…
The CBC’s shame (1987)
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From the Canadian Jewish News (editorial), 1987 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Founded half a century…
Toronto’s May Day parades of yesteryear (1955)
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by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much…
Mutual Benefit: Toronto’s ‘Society’ doctors
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by Irving B Rosen, MD, FRCSC Society doctors, like Harley Street specialists, evoke the image of the sought after, affluent…
History of Beth Lida Forest Hill Congregation
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Note: In 2012, Beth Lida commissioned Bill Gladstone to write a detailed history of the congregation since its founding in…
Recent & Popular
Some Famous Captures by Toronto Police (1903)
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Notorious Criminals Whom the Detectives Have Arrested at the Request of Distant Authorities From the Toronto Star, December 5, 1903…
Solomon Schecter and the Cairo Genizah
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A windowless, doorless chamber, set high up into the wall of an antiquated synagogue and accessible only by ladder, is…
Jordan Peterson’s journey to ‘We Who Wrestle with God’
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Book Review: We Who Wrestle With God (2024) Almost a decade ago, Jordan Peterson listened to his own “still, small…
MyHeritage to delete all Russian accounts
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MyHeritage, the large Israel-based family-tree and DNA genealogy service, announced that it was ceasing operations in Russia and that all…
Jewish coats of arms
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Originally appeared in The Canadian Jewish News The Rothschilds had one. The Disraelis had one. The Montefiore, Mocatta and Sassoon…
Report of 30,000 Jews massacred in Ukraine (1919)
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Report from the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 1919 Ukraine, the Scene of Wholesale Murder Since Last November. Whole Communities Wiped Out.…
Galilean museum showcases the Jesus Boat
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Originally appeared in The Toronto Star Yuval Lufan has the craggy face and rough hands of a fisherman who goes…
The Maccabees & the Temple Mount
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Dan Behat, the former chief archaeologist of Jerusalem, served as a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and has also taught…
Anti-Jewish riots at Crystal Beach, Ont (1942)
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Editor’s Introduction: Anyone who searches the phrase “Crystal beach racial disturbance” will come up with details of a brief race…
Canada outlaws Hezbollah (2002)
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2002 One year after passing anti-terrorism legislation, Canada’s Liberal Government has responded to an intense…
Secular Humanism: Jews without God (1999)
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From the Globe and Mail, November 1999 Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Birmingham Temple, Detroit, asserts that all of the patriarchs…
100 Q&A’s: Whiz Quiz on Canadian Jews
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From the Canadian Jewish News, April 8, 2020 Note: I compiled this quiz for the Canadian Jewish News, and it…
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…
History
Anti-Jewish riots at Crystal Beach, Ont (1942)
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Editor’s Introduction: Anyone who searches the phrase “Crystal beach racial disturbance” will come up with details of a brief race riot that occurred in the Ontario summer resort town in the summer of 1956. But news of an earlier “disturbance” — in the summer of 1942 — does not seem to come up at all. The story below was…
Book offers pieces by Kayfetz, Speisman on Toronto Jews (2013)
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Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen A. Speisman — is a prolifically illustrated book featuring 18 evocative articles by two notable historians of Toronto’s Jewish community. Culled from a variety of sources, the pieces in Only Yesterday focus on old downtown community —…
Jewish invasion alarms New York (1907)
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From The Toronto Star, January 5, 1907 The Greatest Hebrew Community Ever Assembled, Over 800,000 Souls. ARE BUYING UP MANHATTAN Real Estate and Clothing Favorite Fields – Will Starve to Gain End – Poverty to Affluence New York – The Jews of New York City have recently celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of their settlement on Manhattan island.…
Lewis Samuel arrived in Toronto in 1844
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by Dr. Stephen A Speisman Lewis Samuel, merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1827 at Kingston upon Hull, England. He married Kate Seckelman in 1850 and they had eight children including Sigmund, a prominent philanthropist and patron of the arts in Toronto. He died on May 10 May 1887 at Victoria, B.C. and was buried 18 May 1887 in Toronto.…
The Jews of Nagasaki
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The 60th anniversary of the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month (August 2005) provides an occasion to recall the small but thriving Jewish community that once existed in the southern Japanese port city of Nagasaki. Nagasaki’s Jewish colony was founded by a few Jewish refugees fleeing the Russian pogroms of the 1880s; the town had long been frequented…
A Nazi Rally in Montreal, 1938
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As reported in The Montreal Gazette (1938) This shocking photograph was taken at a fascist rally on Wellington Street, Montreal, on May 11, 1938. Inspired by Germany’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party and Italy’s Fascists, Quebec’s National Socialist Christian Party was a strongly antisemitic and anticommunist group led by Adrien Arcand. Party enforcers were called blueshirts, after Hitler’s brownshirts and Mussolini’s…
Rediscovered
Ontario puts new restrictions on birth records (2016)
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From Inside Toronto, 2016 As if attaining genealogical records wasn’t already hard enough, genealogists now have to face a steep new barrier when it comes to getting Ontario birth records. Quietly, on the sly and when no one was looking, the Ontario Registrar General changed its longstanding rule about how…
Rhea Clyman chronicled Soviet famine
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Rhea Clyman, an accomplished journalist born to a Jewish family in Toronto in 1904, wrote many front-page newspaper stories in the late 1920s and 1930s about political events and their tragic human consequences in Russia, Ukaine and Germany, but died in near-obscurity in New York in 1981. Clyman wrote rare…
A glimpse into the early days of the Queen’s Hotel
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Sixty Years’ Changes, As Hotelman Has Seen Them — The Queen’s Has Been “An Institution” of Toronto, Like the Parliament Buildings or St. James’ Cathedral — Glimpses of ‘60s & ‘70s — View of Bay Fetched Topnotch Price for Rooms — Nickel-plated Self-feeder Supplied Luxury of Heating — Tin Bath When Asked — First…
Canadianizing the foreigners with ‘Settlement Work’ (1914)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 1914 By Julia K. Lamont “But is she a dainty cook?” “No-o; not especially, but an excellent worker.” “Won’t suit,” declared the settlement superintendent. “The children must have dainty dishes.” “Why, what children?” “Why, the neighbourhood children for our summer camp.” Elegance and simplicity…
North Toronto annexation occurred 100 years ago (1912)
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Promise Many Things for New Part of City From the Toronto World, November 25, 1912 Alderman and Controllers Seeking Re-Election Open Campaign for North Toronto Votes — They Say Transportation Problem Must Be Solved at Once — Are All Favourable to Annexation Since North Toronto is destined to become part…
