In Memorium: Irving Ungerman, born February 1, 1923, died October 27, 2015 From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, June 2010 Irving Ungerman remembers the way it was growing up in the old Kensington market neighbourhood and being attacked by bullies because he was Jewish. “Guys used to hit me all the time — I was a…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Having recently marked its 25th anniversary, the organization Jews for Judaism continues to counter the activities of missionary groups in Toronto that deceptively target Jews for conversion. However, Christian missions to the Jews are certainly nothing new in this city. In the era before the First World War, a…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2008 Howard Nightingale, a Toronto lawyer, has been the driving force behind the restoration of an old abandoned Jewish cemetery in Siedleczka, Poland, that will be officially rededicated in a ceremony set for August 17th [2008]. Nightingale and representatives of numerous other Toronto Jewish families plan to be in attendance,…
Max Glickman, the fictional Jewish cartoonist who is the narrator of Howard Jacobson’s 2006 novel Kalooki Nights, freely admits that he views the Jewish people as “an immoderate, overemphatic people, much given to exaggeration” and adds: “So what? I call it giving value for money myself. You prick us so we bleed profusely.” In his…
Little Failure, by Gary Shteyngart. Published by Random House From the Canadian Jewish News, May 2015 In this funny, self-deprecating memoir, Gary Shteyngart tells the story of his family’s migration from Russia to America in 1979, when he was seven years old, and his subsequent transformation not only into a fully-grown Americanized Jewish male, but…
Review of Empire of Deception: From Chicago to Nova Scotia — The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation. By Dean Jobb (Harper Avenue) From the Canadian Jewish News, June 2015 Five years ago, while researching a book on the history of the Jewish community of London, Ontario, I…
From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Summer 2014 Barnet Markson, who died in March 2014 just three weeks shy of his 100th birthday, was a founding member of Beth Sholom Congregation. Born in Toronto in 1914, Barney became a pharmacist and built a store, Markson’s Pharmacy, at the corner of Westover Hill Road and Eglinton in 1945,…
From the Canadian Jewish News, Spring 2015 In a series of articles in the Canadian Jewish News about four decades ago, the late CJN columnist J. B. Salsberg reminisced with great affection about the “Apter Shteeble” in downtown Toronto that he had frequented in his youth during the First World War. The Apter Society —…
From Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Toronto architect Benjamin Brown (1890-1974) designed many elegant edifices across the city, including the Balfour and Tower Buildings on Spadina Avenue, the former Primrose Club on Willcocks Avenue, the former Beth Jacob Synagogue on Henry Street, the Hermant Building (eastern tower and annex) in Dundas Square, and scores of…
REVIEW: My Grandfather’s Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War, by Anne Sinclair (Farrar Strauss & Giroux) Born in New York in 1948, the prominent French-Jewish journalist Anne Sinclair says that while the heroic stories of her paternal grandparents, who had stayed in France during wartime, had always resonated deeply within her, she…
