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…
When Ancestry.com fails: a Toronto street guide to the 1911 census
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Problem: you know your Jewish ancestors or relatives lived in Toronto in 1911 — you even know their street address — yet you can’t find them in the 1911 census. No matter how many times you search, they do not show up in Ancestry.com’s database of the 1911 census. Frequently the problem occurs because a family…
Obit: Eva Rothblott (1918-2012)
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From Beth Sholom Newsletter, 2008 Eva Rothblott [who died on December 7, 2012] was born on Baldwin Street in Toronto in 1918 — ninety years ago — and has been associated with Beth Sholom Congregation “from the very beginning,” she told me when I met with her recently at her retirement home on Sheppard Ave.…
Capernaum is rich in Christian history
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In the ancient fishing village of Capernaum, above the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, visitors may examine a partially reconstructed 2nd- or 3rd-century synagogue and glimpse portions of the underlying remains of an earlier synagogue in which Jesus is said to have preached. The town’s name derives from the Hebrew name K’far Nachum,…
Michael Chabon celebrates pop culture in Telegraph Avenue
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Not surprisingly, American author Michael Chabon originally developed the premise, story and characters for his latest novel, Telegraph Avenue, as the script for a 1999 television pilot that never got off the ground. Like many of his previous books, including his 2000 Pulitzer-prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Telegraph Avenue is brimming…
Great-granddaughter writes wonderful bio of Jacob Gordin
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◊ Finding the Jewish Shakespeare, The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin, by Beth Kaplan, has been newly released in paperback by Syracuse University Press, Spring 2012. One of the great moments in Yiddish theatre occurred the evening the curtain opened upon actor Jacob Adler in the role of “the Jewish King Lear,” as envisioned by…
Growth of a Kensington grocery store (1987)
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From The Canadian Jewish News, November 19, 1987 If you trace the path of the Toronto Jewish community for the past fifty years you will be taking a snapshot of Goodbaum’s grocery stores as they marched north, eventually under the name of Sunnybrook Foods. “We were at 180 Baldwin Street, 188 Baldwin Street, 374 College…
Conversation with Alex Serota (2009)
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From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Spring 2009 Alex Serota was a founding member of the Shaarei Tefillah Congregation on north Bathurst Street in the late 1950s, but left to join Beth Sholom about 1963 because of the latter’s “magnificent USY movement” that was so important for his two sons. I met recently with Alex and his…
