Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen A. Speisman — is a prolifically illustrated book featuring 18 evocative articles by two notable historians of Toronto’s Jewish community. Culled from a variety of sources, the pieces in Only Yesterday focus…
Tag: memoir
Book review: The Dentist of Auschwitz
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From The Canadian Jewish News, 2001 SS commander Otto Moll had a tooth-ache, and so visited the dentist of Auschwitz, a Jewish inmate from Dobra, Poland named Berek Jakubowicz. Settling into the chair, the pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the emaciated attendant. “Don’t try anything stupid, dentist,” he warned. “Herr Hauptscharfuhrer,” the…
How not to cross the Allenby Bridge
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From the Canadian Jewish News, 1989 Since the recent declaration of peace between Jordan and Israel, and the opening of the Arava border-crossing point between Eilat and Aqaba, it is now a simple matter for visitors to cross freely between these two spectacular Middle Eastern countries. Until these most welcome innovations, tourists frequently faced considerable…
Glimpses of Jewish Baltimore
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It has been 50 years since a group of rabbis in Baltimore staged a protest against the racial segregation that was still a sad fact of life in many parts of America, including various restaurants in Baltimore. In February 1962, a time of heightened civil rights protests, the rabbis decided to target two local restaurants,…
Rabbi Schild’s memoir of an ‘uncertain passage’
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From Books in Canada, 2002 One evening some months ago, a crowd of about 600 people gathered in Toronto’s Adath Israel Synagogue for the launch of Rabbi Erwin Schild’s latest book, The Very Narrow Bridge: A Memoir of an Uncertain Passage. The hall in the synagogue was packed (standing room only) as the rabbi delivered…
Nine books celebrated at Canadian Jewish Book Awards
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Eli Pfefferkorn says he was walking in the park one day, thinking about the story he had been longing to tell, when suddenly he experienced a rare and startling revelation. “I found the voice,” he said. “One day, one morning, I heard the voice from inside coming . . . a voice I had not…
From Belarus to Cape Breton & beyond
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From the Canadian Jewish News, May 15, 1997 In the early part of the century, our parents sailed to this country from many parts of Europe, and their history is interwoven with Canada. Now along comes a book about Whitney Pier, Cape Breton Island, one of the most fascinating settlements of early Jewish life. The…
The Doctor’s Office: A Secretary’s Memoir
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From The Canadian Jewish News, January 14, 1999 Ruth Mather, who for 44 years was secretary to Dr. Sidney Carlen, Toronto’s first Jewish cardiologist, has written a tribute to his pioneering and sensitive medical practice. It is an unvarnished and historically accurate account of the Jewish doctors who started their practices in Toronto in the…
King of Spadina, Harry Henig dies at 91 (2000)
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Known as the “King of Spadina,” Harry Henig operated a women’s wear store for 30 years and then began a second career as an author. He died recently (2000) at the age of 91. Henig retired from the Fashion Centre at St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street in 1980 and proceeded to write seven books.…
Orchestrating the American dream
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Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…
