Marriage By Rabbi Held To Be Invalid He Was Not A British Subject at Time He Performed Ceremony Globe, January 15, 1925 (Canadian Press, Montreal) — Because a rabbi who conducted the ceremony was not a British subject, Mr. Justice Bruneau, in the Superior Court today, handed down judgment annulling a marriage conducted ten years…
Note (May 16, 2024): Several days ago, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow declined to attend the Jewish community’s flag-raising ceremony of an Israeli flag at City Hall, asserting that it was “divisive.” To be fair, such flag-raising ceremonies are frequent and the Mayor rarely attends them. However, it is telling that she was AWOL at an…
By Brian Mulroney Brian Mulroney, Canada’s prime minister from 1984 to 1993, was awarded the World Jewish Congress’s Theodor Herzl Award in New York on November 9, 2023. This is an edited transcript of his remarks (courtesy sapirjournal.org). In his book Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum tells of Hitler, just prior to his suicide, as the Third…
by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto baby boomer, undoubtedly you have fond memories of a time and place that lives only in our dreams. Let me take you back to where I’m constantly accused of living … in the past. If anything, it was cheaper. For myself…
After the death of her mother when she turned ten, Judith Friedland learned to be resilient. She met the expectations for upper-middle-class women in Toronto in the 1940s and 1950s, which included post-secondary education, marriage, and motherhood. While raising a family and supporting her husband’s academic career, she continued her formal education through part-time study…
From the Canadian Jewish News, Aug. 7 1980 Peter Sellers, the famed actor who died recently, often spoke proudly of the fact that he was Jewish, even though he never practiced Judaism. According to the Jewish Chronicle News Service, Sellers was once asked by an interviewer if he was half-Jewish. His reply: “I am fully…
NEWLY PUBLISHED MAY 2023 The Jewish Community of Rouyn-Noranda is a professionally produced, 254-page softcover book featuring more than 40 stories about the life and history of our small Jewish community in northern Quebec, remembered by those who lived there. Jews were present in Rouyn-Noranda from its earliest pioneer days in the 1920s and were…
New Volumes Published March 30, 2023 Dr. Neil Rosenstein, author of the newly-updated The Unbroken Chain recently announced publication of new volumes in the massive work. Rosenstein is one of the foremost Jewish genealogists in America today, with an internationally acclaimed expertise in the genealogy of rabbinic dynastic families. The Unbroken Chain deals uniquely with…
as compiled by Dr. Neil Rosenstein Karl Marx, German philosopher, critic of political economy, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary; Helena Rubinstein (“cosmetic queen”); Moses Mendelssohn (famous philosopher) and grandfather of composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy; Lawrence Zox, American artist, painter and printmaker Charles Mendelssohn-Horsfall, British societal portrait painter and his works were widely exhibited…
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,…
