The morning after firefighters quenched a late-night arsonist’s blaze at Toronto’s Anshei Minsk Synagogue, congregants arrived to a chilling sight: thousands of prayer and holy books, charred by fire and soaked by firefighters’ hoses, were littered across the building’s front steps and the adjoining sidewalk. While the building sustained damage estimated at several thousand dollars,…
Tag: toronto
Obit: Dr. Nestor Yanga, Toronto SARS victim (1948-2003)
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As the first doctor in North America to die of SARS, Toronto physician Nestor Yanga may have gained more prominence in death than by anything he had accomplished in life. He was a dedicated general practitioner, church volunteer and family man who was passionate about everything he did, according to friends. A former president of…
Obit: Nancy Wade Stadler, Toronto librarian (1948-2002)
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When it came to literature and children, Nancy Wade Stadler was like an open book: she loved reading and she loved transmitting the joy of reading to young minds. Stadler worked as a children’s librarian and branch head throughout the Toronto Public Library system for 20 years. She had an extensive knowledge of literature and…
Kaminkers come together in Toronto
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About 220 relatives of the Kaminker family, all descended from a common ancestor born about 1806 in Pomuran, Galicia, are preparing to come together for a four-day reunion this weekend in Toronto. Besides Toronto, participants are coming from Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Dallas and other American cities, as well as from Argentina, France, Ukraine…
Pierre Berton’s ‘No Jews Need Apply’
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Pierre Berton’s column “No Jews Need Apply,” which originally appeared in Maclean’s in November 1948 and was reprinted in last week’s CJN, offered a penetrating look at the discreet, country-club-style antisemitism that was rife in Canadian society. Berton, who died last month, pointed out that people with names like Greenberg were frequently denied job interviews,…
Jews and the Lord’s Day Act
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Deputy Magistrate Kingsford of Toronto had his hands full one October day in 1900 when two Jewish butchers and a Jewish baker appeared before him, all charged with violating the Lord’s Day Act by pursuing their callings on a Sunday. One of the butchers was actually Rabbi Isaac Helpern, spiritual leader of the Austrian Jewish…
Genealogy as a labour of love
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“I’m working on a book of family history,” Sara Edell Kelman declares, as she shows me her massive collection of archival documents, ketubot, photographs, Yiddish letters and other family memorabilia, spilling out of diverse albums, binders and boxes. “No, it’s more than one book — it’s a series of books. There’s a lot of stuff…
The sound of no hands clapping
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What is the best sort of critical reception to give a newly-published book of revisionist history that exonerates Hitler, minimizes the evil of the Holocaust, and knowingly perpetrates other intellectual frauds? For Michael R. Marrus, the author and professor of European history at the University of Toronto, the answer is simple: no critical reception at…
Miscellaneous theatre notes
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Wallace Shawn is known to many for his roles in movies like My Dinner With Andre (which he co-wrote), The Princess Bride and several Woody Allen films. He is also an avant-garde playwright whose latest work The Designated Mourner (Noonday Press, $14) opened in London last year and has been made into a film starring…
Al Waxman is ‘Lost in Yonkers’
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With the production of Lost In Yonkers that opened Feb. 4 at the Atlantis Theatre, director Al Waxman has delivered his third theatrical hit in as many years to the Toronto theatre-going public. This production of Neil Simon’s Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning 1990 play is solidly put together, delivering all the laughs, drama, pathos and…
