Based on article from the Canadian Jewish News, Sept. 20, 1984 Sam Shopsowitz, the pastrami and hot dog king whose Shopsy’s deli on Spadina at Dundas was a city landmark for more than half a century, died last week of a heart attack at age sixty-three. His wife Lillian, also sixty-three, predeceased him by only…
Abridged from The Canadian Jewish News Harry Rosen, known across Canada as a master craftsman in the art of tailoring, describes himself as “just an old fashioned schnider [tailor] who believes in old fashioned high quality.” At fifty-three, Rosen was celebrating his thirtieth anniversary as a retailer. He and his brother, Louis Rosen, opened the…
This directory of organizations of Toronto’s Jewish community is from the Toronto Jewish City Directory for 1931. Click on the thumbnails below to read the contents, then use your “back” button to return as necessary. ♦ …
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.…
This list of names appears in the program of a Negev Dinner Tribute that took place at the Royal York Hotel, November 1956. The list may help genealogists determine the presence of an ancestor or relative in Toronto at that time. The list is five pages long; a thumbnail of each page appears below; please…
For the genealogist, these membership lists from Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim synagogue may help establish the presence or confirm the identity of a relative or ancestor. The pages have been copied from the 50-year history of the synagogue, published in 1978. The synagogue is located on Glencairn Avenue east of Bathurst Street in midtown Toronto. The…
THE following feature profile of Jacob Cohen, a retired Toronto businessman who became Toronto’s first Jewish justice of the peace in 1907, appeared in the Toronto Globe of March 12, 1910. * * * SNUGLY settled in the heart of Toronto reposes a little Hebrew nation sixteen thousand strong and growing rapidly. It has its…
The following lists originate in the 1938 Dedication Booklet of the Holy Blossom Temple on Bathurst Street, Toronto. (Cover of the booklet is shown at right.) The lists could prove useful for genealogists researching Jewish families in Toronto in the late 1930s. Holy Blossom was then the best-known and probably the largest congregation in Toronto.…
From Toronto Star Weekly, February 12, 1916 The Jewish Free School at the corner of Cecil and Beverley streets is doing a unique work in Toronto. It was eight years ago that Mr. Edmund Scheuer took over this Sabbath School, under the auspices of the Zionists of Toronto. There were then twenty-one children on the…
From The Globe and Mail, July 28, 1921 ◊ The writer of this sympathetic and thoughtful article seemed to want to demystify the Jewish people for the benefit of the general Christian reader. The writer interviewed some Toronto rabbis and sought to describe some of the beliefs and practices of the Jewish people as reflected in…
