Jewish Glasgow: An Illustrated History. By Kenneth Collins, Harvey Kaplan and Stephen Kliner. Published by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. Hardcover, large format, fully illustrated in colour, 192 pages. www.sjac.org.uk Jews have been in Scotland for a little more than three centuries, but in Glasgow for just about two centuries, and the Jewish community in…
Jews Responded Splendidly to England’s Cause Sons of Israel in Great Britain Gave Themselves and Their Fortunes to the Cause EDMUND SCHEUER RETURNS TO TORONTO From the Toronto World, August 31, 1914 Mr. Edmund Scheuer, the well known Yonge street merchant, has returned to Toronto after spending some time on the continent. Mr. Scheuer was…
William Tutte, the mathematician who deciphered the complex codes by which the Nazi high command encrypted their military communications during World War II, has died in Waterloo, Ontario at the age of 84. Although the accomplishment has been called “the greatest intellectual feat of the war,” and was described as such on the citation for…
Angell and Janey Lester (nee Alexander) were living in this house at 4 Radnor Rd., Bristol, in 1911 when this photo was taken. Janey is standing outside the house holding her infant son, Lionel Lester, with her four-year-old daughter, Ida, standing in front. Janey’s younger sister, twelve-year-old Dora Alexander, stands beside them in the dark…
For years the magazines sent him rejection letters, inferring that his short stories about a pair of Jewish cloak and suit makers in New York were about as unmarketable as last year’s suits and dresses. But in the early 1900s Montague Glass broke through to the big time as major American magazines like The Saturday…
Samuel Koteliansky was never a major figure in the Bloomsbury circle. Author Leon Edel never even mentions him in Bloomsbury: A House of Lions, his masterful portrait of the loose affiliation of writers and artists associated with the London-based Bloomsbury circle. Neither is Koteliansky mentioned in the other books about Bloomsbury on my shelf. We…
The 100th anniversary of the S.S. Titanic disaster is almost upon us. The legendary British ship sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard perished in the tragedy, which has been memorialized in books, popular…
A. D. Benjamin is Dead Well-Known Business Man and Citizen Passes Away Suddenly To-day LEADER IN THE SYNAGOGUE One of Toronto’s Most Wealthy and Generous Hebrews — A Popular Employer From the Toronto Daily Star, January 8, 1900 The business portion of the city was surprised this morning to learn of the sudden death of…
The Leventon family reunion, held recently in Dublin, Ireland, brought together 127 direct descendants — including 28 from Canada — of Rosa and Rabbi Israel Leventon, who lived in the 19th century. Rabbi Leventon served as the last spiritual leader of Dublin’s Mary’s Abbey Synagogue, which closed in 1892, and he was the first spiritual…
Boasting numerous gems of Georgian architecture, this hilly, former spa town, set in the Peak District of the English Midlands, has been recognized since Roman times for its warm mineral springs — as musicians who venture into the orchestra pit of the Buxton Opera House know only too well. Alec Guiness, Laurence Olivier, Anna Pavlova…
