by Mordecai Hirshenson from the “Canadian Panorama,” Canadian Jewish News, August 12, 1960 NEW SYNAGOGUE MERGER Another synagogue merger is taking place in Toronto — the city’s second in a period of only months. The Shaw Street — or more formally the B’nai Israel — is fusing its identity and membership with an uptown congregation,…
Abayudaya congregants carry Torah scrolls, their prayer shawls bright against the embroidered velvet mantles of the sifrei Torah in procession in Nabagoye, Uganda. In the hills of eastern Uganda, Judaism is carried quite literally—on shoulders, in song, in stitched velvet and polished wooden rollers. The people in this photograph are the Abayudaya, the “people of Judah,”…
Genealogists sometimes encounter a maddening problem when a relative seems to vanish under the name you know. Sometimes it’s because the surname has been legally changed, or an alias used for employment, business, military service or just convenience. In many cases the person who changes their name still keeps at least a few anchors: an…
The heading, Have Yichus, Will Travel, might have appeared above the following notice which attracted the attention of the city’s Jewish community when it ran in The Toronto Star on various dates in 1957 and the late 1950s: “GRAND RABBI J. RABINOWICZ. “Kishinower Rabbi, one of the world famous rabbis from Europe, now in New…
A look back at the CJN from more than 50 years ago: From the Canadian Jewish News, March 6, 1974 Spry Ben Sherman has no thought of retiring, and plans to work a full day in the hardware store he founded 55 years ago, the Canadian Jewish News reported in March 1974. Sherman’s family wasn’t…
From Globe, September 24, 1901 SACRED SCROLL THREATENED Excited Jews Besiege a Burning Synagogue The sacred scroll in the Austrian Jewish Synagogue in Chestnut street, containing the laws as set down by Moses, was threatened with destruction at 1.30 o’clock this morning. Fire broke out in the rear of the edifice and when the Jews…
From The London Jewish Chronicle, August 11, 1916 ◊ BG Intro: Rabbi Moses Avigdor Chaikin (1852–1928) was a distinguished rabbinic scholar, teacher, and communal leader whose life reflected the intellectual vitality and migratory experience of Eastern European Jewry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Shklow, in the Russian Empire, and raised…
By “A. I.” David ◊ Note: This article is written in the style of a newspaper report that might have appeared at the time the following events took place. Damascus, August 4, 1840 After a protracted international drama, the Ottoman authorities in Damascus have released their remaining Jewish prisoners, bringing an end to one of…
From the Toronto Sunday World, May 31, 1914 Saturday May 30, Decoration Day, has been looked upon as one of the most American of all American holiday, for it is on Decoration Day that the grand army of the republic past and present is honoured by the entire nation. Recently, however, attention has been called…
by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much the same as it did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. The same kind of old-fashioned haggling still goes on between the employers and the handful of tense harassed business agents – former pressers, operators, and…
