The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community

The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community paints one of the most colourful and authentic portraits yet to emerge of what is now Canada's largest Jewish community, from its earliest days to about 1950, highlighting its strong immigrant and Yiddish flavour.

Here are vivid thumbnail sketches of many early synagogues, "anshei" congregations, landsmanschaft organizations and immigrant aid societies, along with a gallery of key personalities from the community's formative period. The author, himself a prominent figure in his day, brings Toronto's vanished Ward neighbourhood back to life with vivid descriptions of the soup kitchens, soda parlours, steamship agents, coffee houses and Christian missions that once graced its predominantly Jewish streets.

The narrative also offers detailed accounts of the evolution of the local Yiddish press, Jewish labour unions and indigenous garment industry on Spadina Avenue, as well as of the consequential garment workers' strike at the T. Eaton Company in 1912. The text is enhanced with many period photographs and illustrations, a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, and an afterword by the late Benjamin G. Kayfetz.