Davida Noyek Handler, who lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, once owned a translation company, but gave it up in the early 1980s to concentrate on researching her family tree. Thanks largely to her research skills and perseverance, some 175 Noyek family members from six countries attended a first-ever family gathering at the Holiday Inn Yorkdale…
Hear Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City
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Beneath the giant dome of the Mormon Tabernacle, the harmonious voices of the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir rise into the air, melding sweetly. Whether it’s a Biblical hymn or a medley from The Music Man, each selection sung by the 330-member choir reverberates with a rare purity in this hallowed hall. Established in 1847, the…
Bin Laden’s long career of evil
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If you have trouble sleeping, don’t read Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America. The book, an in-depth study of the criminal mastermind who tops the world’s most wanted list, was written by Yossef Bodansky, a former consultant to the U.S. Departments of Defense and State. It first appeared two years ago and…
From plague to comedy: filmmaker Ric Bienstock
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Toronto film producer-director Ric Bienstock says that she missed many comforts of home when she shlepped all over China, India and Egypt to make a series of three hour-long TV documentaries featuring Penn and Teller, a celebrated pair of stage magicians from Las Vegas. But the veteran filmmaker, whose previous works include an acclaimed documentary…
Review: The Bible Is History
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Anyone attempting a serious book about the Bible’s status as history steps wilfully into a morass of difficulties. The first is what is meant by the word “Bible”? Is it the Tanach of the Jews (consisting of the 24 books of the Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim)? Does it include the later Christian testaments? The solution,…
Stewart Bell: Keeping tabs on terrorists
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A new book on Canada’s role as a haven for international terrorism provides alarming details on how border and immigration authorities here have repeatedly slipped up and allowed known Middle Eastern and other terrorists to enter the country and even attain citizenship. In his new book Cold Terror, author Stewart Bell documents how the country’s…
Profile: artist Aba Bayefsky (1923-2001)
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It was the 1936 movie Rembrandt starring Charles Laughton that persuaded then-14-year-old student Aba Bayefsky to switch from an academic stream to the art department at Toronto’s Central Tech High School, but it was his experience as an official war artist in Europe during and immediately after WWII that instilled a deep and permanent sense…
McCaul Synagogue Golden Anniversary (1938) – Section D
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THIS Golden Anniversary book was published in 1938 to mark the first 50 years of the Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Chevra Tehillim of Toronto, which was founded in 1887 and moved into the McCaul Street Synagogue about 1905. The Congregation published its Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary book in 1938. In the early 1950s it merged with the…
Artist Karla Goldberg triumphs over adversity
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Although it usually doesn’t host art exhibitions, The Baycrest Geriatric Centre has made a rare exception in the case of Karla Goldberg, an 84-year-old Toronto artist who trained herself to make art with her left hand after a stroke paralyzed the right side of her body two years ago. The exhibition “Creative Strokes of the…
Bases (and basement) loaded for Peter Seidman
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Give Peter Seidman a book about baseball that he doesn’t already have and you’re likely to score a bases-loaded home run with the Montreal-born collector of baseball paraphernalia. But chances are you’ll strike out in the attempt, because the 57-year-old teacher and administrator for the Toronto board of education has already amassed more than 4,000…
