Ruth Wisse, the noted author and professor of Yiddish literature, told a large gathering at the Leah Posluns Theatre during the 16th annual Jewish Book Fair that she was greatly influenced in her salad days by a circle of New York liberal intellectuals that included Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Harold Rosenberg as well as “my…
On the Warsaw Ghetto
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In the decades before the Holocaust, the Jews of Warsaw believed that they were on the eve of a great positive transformation, according to an Israeli professor of Jewish history who took part in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Jews of Warsaw were poor, often living in one-room flats where lively discussions of religion, politics…
Visiting a hill tribe in northern Thailand
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The mini-van had made it safely up the red mud slopes and Sam, our well-spoken Thai guide, said we’d get back okay provided the heavens didn’t burst. “If it rains, the road will become a sea of mud,” he said indifferently. “We’d get stuck for sure. Maybe even slide off a cliff.” The sky was…
Tapper’s Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Jews
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Between 1897 and 1914 — the period between the rise of Zionism and the start of the Great War — a quality English-language fortnightly newspaper captured the flavour of Jewish life in Canada. Published in Montreal, The Canadian Jewish Times functioned as a community bulletin board for the several thousand Jews then resident in Canada…
Restoration of old Mount Sinai Hospital
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Although most of the old Mount Sinai Hospital on Yorkville Avenue is gone, a prominent architectural firm has agreed to restore the only wing of the hospital still standing. The wing, built as an addition around 1928, was used as a nursing home after Mount Sinai moved to its present location on University Avenue in…
At Innisbrook, a Florida golf resort
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“A subtle dog-leg to the left”: that’s how golf pro Matt Hurley describes the 10th hole of Sandpiper — which is to say that it bends ever so slightly. Our golf-cart is idling in a shady grove at Innisbrook, a posh 21-year-old golf resort in Tarpon Springs, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Its well-landscaped 1,000 acres…
Bathurst Manor memory: frog hunting in the creek
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There were bull-frogs in the creek on the other side of Wilson Heights, Jackie told us: monstrous bull-frogs, the biggest he had ever seen. He had brought one home like a warrior returning from battle with a spoil. But he said the granddaddy of them all, the Moby Dick of bull-frogs, was still in the…
Old synagogue one of Curacao’s many attractions
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Situated in the Caribbean some 63 kilometres from Venezuela, the Dutch island of Curacao is a rugged, hilly outcropping with some 160,000 inhabitants. Although most are Catholic, they represent about 80 nationalities and speak four official tongues: English, Dutch, Spanish and Papiamentu, the native lingo that is a smorgasbord of Old Dutch, Portuguese and African…
The Jews of Bangkok, Thailand
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Sam Cohen, a petroleum geologist from Calgary, left Canada to work on a large oil field in the Gulf of Thailand about 1983. When his contract expired during an industry slowdown several years later, he chose to remain in the bustling capital city of Bangkok, where a forest of cranes along the skyline suggests an…
Many at funeral of Flora Draimin (1842-1925)
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This obituary appeared in the Toronto Evening Telegram, November 2, 1925. Many at funeral of Mrs. Draimin Deceased Was One of First Jewish Citizens of Toronto In the death of Mrs. Flora Draimin, aged 83 years, wife of the late Jacob Draimin, who died at the home of her son, Archie Draimin, at 80 Beverley…
