From Canadian Jewish News, 2003 He was a British soldier and she was a Jewish nurse in British-mandate Palestine: they met in Egypt about 1940. She was killed in an accident and he vowed to let her family know. But how to find them? He — the British soldier — knew that she had been…
David Crombie reflects on a century of change in Toronto
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Exclusive Report, February 3, 2013 Former Toronto Mayor David Crombie easily charmed a full-house audience at a January 30th meeting of the North Toronto Historical Society in Northern District Library. Although Crombie’s advertised topic was “North Toronto 1912, Then and Now,” references to North Toronto were few and far between. But it didn’t seem to…
Toronto shul exhibits photos of Polish shtetl
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From the Canadian Jewish News, October 3, 2012 TORONTO — A series of old historic photographs from the Polish shtetl of Staszow has been quietly wowing visitors since being installed in the Stashover-Slipia Synagogue on Sultana Avenue in Toronto. The photographs are to remain on permanent display in the shul’s lobby. “Everyone notices them when they…
Review: Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being
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From the Canadian Jewish News, ca 2001 For The Time Being (Knopf, $22) is Annie Dillard’s personal meditation on eternity, morality, mortality, the nature of divine justice and other philosophical issues. The book is a spiralling intellectual investigation that moves from the birth ward of a modern hospital to an archaeological dig in China to…
Book review: The Dentist of Auschwitz
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From The Canadian Jewish News, 2001 SS commander Otto Moll had a tooth-ache, and so visited the dentist of Auschwitz, a Jewish inmate from Dobra, Poland named Berek Jakubowicz. Settling into the chair, the pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the emaciated attendant. “Don’t try anything stupid, dentist,” he warned. “Herr Hauptscharfuhrer,” the…
How not to cross the Allenby Bridge
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From the Canadian Jewish News, 1989 Since the recent declaration of peace between Jordan and Israel, and the opening of the Arava border-crossing point between Eilat and Aqaba, it is now a simple matter for visitors to cross freely between these two spectacular Middle Eastern countries. Until these most welcome innovations, tourists frequently faced considerable…
Review: The Gershwins & Me, by Michael Feinstein
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For those who love the classic tunes of the so-called American “songbook” and particularly the timeless melodies and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin, Michael Feinstein’s new book, The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs is much more than heartfelt homage by an outsider or Johnny-come-lately to a remarkable musical era that is…
Swept away at Niagara Falls: a cautionary tale
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The Niagara Falls Visitor and Convention Bureau recently gave me an envelope filled with complimentary admission tickets to local museums and fun houses, and for a couple of hours I was like a kid again as I visited them all in succession. The Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum, the Guinness Book of World Records…
Photo exhibit portrays early Jewish immigrants to Toronto
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“Picturing Immigrants in the Ward,” a recently installed exhibit at the City of Toronto Archives, offers many tantalizing glimpses of Jewish, Italian and other recently arrived immigrants in the congested “Ward” neighbourhood of downtown Toronto as it existed from about 1905 to 1930, focusing mostly on the era before the First World War. The Ward…
Finding an unclaimed fortune in the family tree
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My uncles, aunts and cousins on the Glicenstein [Gladstone] side always perk up when I mention the huge unclaimed fortune that is supposedly hidden somewhere in our extended family tree. Their eyes grow big when they hear that an alleged distant cousin of ours, a wealthy brewery owner, supposedly died intestate (without an heir) in…
