From the Canadian Jewish News, 2017 From the moment in 1961 that he stepped into the role, Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut was always much more than rabbi of the esteemed historic Reform congregation, Holy Blossom Temple of Toronto. It was entirely Toronto’s gain and St. Paul Minnesota’s loss when Holy Blossom enticed Rabbi Plaut here,…
From Canadian Jewish News, July 2017 Simcha Simchovitch, a Polish-born Holocaust survivor and prominent poet and writer in both Yiddish and English, died in Toronto on July 12, 2017 at the age of 97. The winner of various literary prizes including several Canadian Jewish Book Awards and two I.J. Segal awards for Yiddish Literature, Simchovitch…
Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece By Devin E. Naar. Stanford University Press 2016. by Bill Gladstone Jews first arrived in the city of Salonica, formerly known as Thessaloniki, soon after their dispersal following the Roman conquest of ancient Israel. Salonica again became a prime destination for Sephardic Jews after Spain expelled…
Above: Screengrab of Reclaim the Records homepage. This fall (2016), a U.S.-based grass-roots organization called Reclaim the Records (RTR) celebrated its first major victory by opening a website (www.nycmarriageindex.com) to allow the public to search the indexes of New York City marriage records from 1950 to 1995 for free. The records were previously accessible only…
Wonder of wonder and miracle of miracles, the new production of Fiddler On The Roof at the Broadway Theatre in New York — directed by Bartlett Sher and freshly choreographed by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Schechter — is good enough to make seasoned theatregoers forget that they ever saw a previous production of Fiddler or…
One good thing about matzah is that even after the passage of many months, it often tastes no more stale coming out of the box than when it was first baked. In a parallel vein, I hope the following tales concerning an early matzah factory in Toronto won’t seem too stale even if they go…
From AVOTAYNU, 2009 “Zhlobin — Market Street” reads the caption of this rare postcard photograph, circa 1900, of the Belarussian shtetl where my great-grandparents lived before bringing their children to Canada about 1910. The postcard was part of an incredible collection of more than 100 old family-related photos from Russia and Toronto from the 1890s…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2016 “Location, location, location,” they say, are the three most important things in real estate. If so, the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA) has scored a wonderful coup by securing the Urbanspace Gallery in the majestic loft building at 401 Richmond Street West as the venue for an exhibition in…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2016 The powerful Holocaust movie Son of Saul, which is up for the “best foreign film” prize at the Academy Awards on February 28, presents a gut-wrenching view of Auschwitz-Birkenau from the point of view of a sondercommando: part of a group that herds prisoners into the gas chamber, processes…
From InsideToronto Blog, December 2015 Although my client’s late father had always been told he had been born in Montreal, we ultimately found his birth record in Toronto. Why the purposeful deception? Turns out my client’s grandmother was trying to cover up the fact that her husband had been exposed as a bigamist in a…
