Landsmanshaften & Mutual Benefit Societies in Toronto

Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 8.00 pm 
Place: Temple Sinai
Speaker: Bill Gladstone

Review: It's amazing how what we once took for granted is now history. Most of these societies served struggling, lonely, new immigrants. There is no need for them today. Young people join those that still exist to get a burial plot.

Bill showed us photos of historic buildings taken by Steve Speisman in the 1960s and 70s. Many were no more than houses converted for public use. Bill's own large family has its own (historic) society and he showed us a Super 8 film from a party in 1958.

Bill's Recommended Reading:
World of Our Fathers
Imposing Their Will

Of interest online:
Canada's Jews: A People's Journey
Some Toronto Landsmanschaften
United Jewish People's Order
Workmen's Circle
Lodzer Landsmanschaften
The Present State of the Landsmanschaften - 1939

Trello - Simple Project Management Tool

This is a free online tool designed to help people collaborating on projects coordinate their work.

It could be used, for instance, by the executive of the Jewish Genealogy Society or by any project team within the society

You can watch a how-to video on Youtube by clicking here..

It can be used by individuals as well.
Here is a video by an individual user
Here's another individual user video.

Click here to download TRELLO.

Organizational History of Jewish Toronto

Bill Gladstone reviews Imposing Their Will: An Organizational History of Jewish Toronto, 1933-1948 by Jack Lipinsky

Read the full review

From the Publisher:

In the 1930s and 1940s, Toronto's Jews were transformed into an organized and cohesive community. Imposing Their Will examines the achievements of Toronto's Jewish community leaders and the organizational infrastructure they established during the Depression and the Second World War.

Showing how issues such as immigration restrictions, poverty, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust contributed to cooperation between institutions and individuals, Jack Lipinsky provides insights into the formation of one of the world's great Jewish communities.

He studies the re-emergence of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the establishment of the Toronto Free Hebrew School, the rise of professionalism in the various philanthropic organisations, and traces the community's shift away from the influence of Montreal.

Jack Lipinsky holds a PhD in history from the University of Toronto, lectures in its School of Continuing Studies, teaches at Robbins Hebrew Academy, and is the spiritual coordinator of the Stashow-Slipi Congregation.

Canadian Jews in the 1960s - Troper, Herzog

Shira Herzog on Harold Troper's The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s

Read the full review: 

Canadian Jews in the 1960s - Troper, Fulford

Robert Fulford on: Harold Troper, The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s

Read the full review

Google Books has previews - see the bottom of the page

Jews of Holland

Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, chief rabbi of the Netherlands, describes the history of the Jewish people in Holland from medieval times until the present day. See the video

Skinhead Reformed by Genealogy

Pawel Bromson grew up in Poland. He was a skinhead and he didn't like Jews.

"But Bromson’s life changed forever 14 years ago after his young wife visited a genealogical institute in Poland.

"His wife suspected she had Jewish roots and while sifting through papers, she noticed the names of Bromson’s maternal grandparents on a register of Warsaw Jews."

Read the rest.

Video of Bromson speaking in Oxford.

A Strange Return

Evan Kaufmann is a Jewish hockey player from Minnesota. His grandfather came from a village called Wittlich, located three hours south of Düsseldorf in the wine-making region of the Moselle River Valley in Germany.

After the war, Evan's grandfather moved to the United States. Now, Evan plays hockey for Germany.

Read the article.

Jewish Culture in Contemporary Poland

Strange Bedfellows - Nate Bloom

Zach Braff is related to the Mormon Presidential candidate Mitt Romney by way of Rebecca Nurse, a Puritan who was accused of practicing witchcraft in the Salem witchcraft trials. She was hanged in 1692.

Braff’s mother, who converted to Judaism, is from an old New England family.

Read more on The Schmooze and Nate Bloom.

Bloom's Celebrity Jews column is almost nothing but genealogy as he explains the family histories of somewhat Jewish celebrities. For instance, in the same column we find that: 

Melissa Gilbert’s adoptive mother is Jewish, and she grew up celebrating Jewish holidays and wed one of her two (non-Jewish) ex-husbands in a Jewish ceremony.

On the other hand, she calls herself “Jew-ISH” in her recent autobiography because she had no religious training, her family also celebrated Christmas, and she discovered as an adult that her mother never had her formally converted to Judaism.

Actress Sara Gilbert, 37, is Melissa’s half-sister. Melissa’s adoptive mother is Sara’s birth mother.

And this:

In the 1960s and ’70s, Richard Boone (1917-’81) traveled to Israel at least eight times to help build up the young Israeli film industry. He also starred in the first film made in Israel that was set in a different location (the American West).

In the States, Boone was a stalwart of Israel Bonds campaigns, and in 1979 was honored by Yitzhak Rabin as one of nine Americans who contributed to the rebirth of the Jewish state.

Yes, this was the same actor who starred in the huge 1950s hit Western show “Have Gun — Will Travel.” Boone was the son of a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother. The decorated World War II veteran was never religious and didn’t talk about his “Jewish side.” 

And, still in the same column:

Also dancing is William Levy, a beefcake actor born in Cuba who stars in Spanish-language soap operas.

Levy’s paternal grandfather is his sole Jewish grandparent. Levy was raised without religion and formally converted to Catholicism in 2009.  

Historic Yiddish Newspaper Now Online

Founded in Warsaw in 1908, Haynt was the most widely read Yiddish newspaper in Eastern Europe, with a readership in the tens of thousands.

The paper continued to be published (under different names, including Nayer haynt and Der Tog), even after the outbreak of World War II. The final issue appeared on September 22, 1939, just days before Warsaw surrendered.

It is now being posted on the Historical Jewish Press website. It will eventually include about 1 million pages.

The next Yiddish paper to be added to the site is Literariche Bletter which was also published in Warsaw in the 1920s and ‘30s. 

From The Arty Semite blog. Read more here.

Read the history of paper at Haynt.org 

Nigella Lawson

Nigella Lawson was on Who Do You Think You Are.

Watch the Video 
Background info

Here is an interesting article about Nigella's family.

Here is an update about her father who was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Doris Drucker Memoir

I was looking for something to read the other day and came upon a book I didn't know I had.

I think I must have bought it the day Chapter's closed at Yonge and Steeles. They were selling the leftovers for $5 a box.

I didn't expect much from such a random choice but I've been pleasantly surprised. The book is called Invent Radium or I'll Pull Your Hair. 

It's a memoir by Doris Drucker. I didn't recognize the name but I see now that she was married to Peter Drucker, one of the most famous business writers of the 20th century.

Parts of the book were serialized in The Atlantic Monthly in August 1998. You can find them online here: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3.

You can also read selections on Google Books (see the chapter links at the bottom of the page. And, of course, the book is also on Amazon

You can see Doris on YouTube, here.

Doris was born in Germany in 1911. When I started reading, I found her background confusing. She starts off by describing a family funeral in 1932 that runs into a bunch of pugnacious Nazis.

The German family members are used to this sort of thing and find it of no consequence but a cousin from Holland is very disturbed and invites Doris to live with him. She tells us that this saved her life so I assumed that she was Jewish but then nothing about her family seemed to be Jewish so I thought that I had misunderstood.

Finally, she explains that her mother's family, the Lahnstein's, were "ethnically Jewish" but non-practicing. Her mother, apparently, saw herself as a child of the Enlightenment belonging to no religion but when required to send her children to religious education she chose the Lutheran program.

This slim volume is jam-packed with fascinating information about a way of life that was surprisingly different from ours although most of us had grandparents and parents who were young back then.

See, for instance, the description of the servants included below.

Finding my Sephardic Roots

Below is a note requesting assistance in family research.

Please reply to president@jgstoronto.ca if you think you can assist the individual who, at this time, wishes to remain anonymous. 

I am researching a Sephardic link to my family background. I believe that my maternal side of the family may be Jewish. 

The last name is Violante. From what little I know, they are of Spanish descent and came to Italy during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. 

They came from Catalonia Spain, then moved to Rome and later settled in Bari, Puglia Italy. 

As far as I know, Jews have been living in the region for over 2000 years. The region is also a very important link between East and Western Europe. 

In my research, there are burials in Sephardic Jewish cemeteries in Europe where that name is found.

Many people have asked me whether I am Sephardic. They tell me that I have strong features ie. Olive skin complexion etc. However, I am not sure.

Any help in whatever capacity would be welcome.

Writing About Family Secrets

On March 4, 2012 we had Lil Blume lead a workshop called: Writing Ancestor Biographies.

When I read about this workshop my attitude was, "What's there to say about that?". I didn't have much interest and March 4 was a very cold Sunday. I only went because I'm the society's doorman but once the program started I immediately knew that I'd been wrong.

It was a very interesting and entertaining 3 hour session.  We sat around in a circle, Lil gave us a topic to write about for about 5 minutes and then we went around the group reading what we'd written and commenting. We did this about 3 times.

That barebones description might sound dry but it wasn't. Didn't Tolstoy say that all literature is high class gossip? Well, I thought he did but Google tells me it was Truman Capote and he didn't say it was high class.

Some of stories we heard were about stuff you would hear in a eulogy at Benjamin's but a lot of it wasn't and people were concerned about what to make public so Lil has offered these suggestions:

Questions to ask yourself when you are wondering whether to write about family secrets and scandals:

1. Has this story come to my attention now because of my own personal explorations?
2. Will telling this story hurt anyone? If so, who? Why?
3. Can I put myself in the other person's shoes and think of three reasons why keeping this story secret is important?
4. Do I have empathy for those who want to keep the story secret?
5. Will telling this story help someone who is struggling with painful inconsistencies and mysteries?
6. Will telling this story shed some light on current family struggles?
7. Is my motivation to tell my own story and not let others tell it for me?
8. Is my motivation to give a complete and honest picture of the truth?
9. Am I motivated by anything besides truth: i.e. power, resentment, anger, revenge?
10. What will telling this story achieve?
11. Will telling this story connect you with others who have wondered?
12. Will leaving this out create an inaccurate portrait of the family?
13. Would the questionable event be more acceptable now?

Note from Lil:  There is no easy answer to the question of writing about secrets and scandals, especially when other family members prefer privacy.  We can explore this issue in a future workshop or roundtable discussion

See also: Ancestor Biography - Books and essays were recommended as interesting examples.

Ancestor Biography

From Lil Blume 

1. Here is the link to a wonderful example of ancestor biography:  The Life and Death of Zadie Avrohom Krolik by Canadian writer, Hal Niedzviecki, about his Montreal grandfather.  

Hal combines his personal reminiscence of his Zadie with the facts and myths passed down by the family.

2.  Sometimes our parents or grandparents can be a mystery.  The wonderful Jewish American novelist, Paul Auster, attempted to solve the mystery of his father and inadvertantly uncovered an enormous family secret of an event experienced when his father was a child.  

His story is called "Portrait of an Invisible Man" and is the first story in the book The Invention of Solitude.  Auster's research methods will also be fascinating to lovers of genealogy. A Review. NYT. 

3. Us and Them:  A Memoir of Tribes and Tribulations - By Sid Tafler

About growing up in Montreal in the 1950s. The story of a changing country, changing people and a new understanding of identity, belonging and the place we call home." Extracts. More Selections

4. A Bintel Brief:  Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward.

This book of letters from 1906 to 1967 provide an unofficial people's history of the Lower East Side.  You can read extracts on Google Books.

See also: Writing about family secrets

Family History Visit To Israel

David Laskin researches his grandfather's cousin who moved to Israel from Poland in 1924.

Read the story - New York Times - Sept 29, 2010

Steven Page - TV Genealogy

Steven Page of The Barenaked Ladies was on Who Do You Think You Are  
---------------------------------------
Watch on YouTube: Part 1 - 2 - 3
---------------------------------------
Article on CBC.ca

Zoe Wanamaker

Zoe Wanamaker was on Who Do You Think You Are.
------------------------------------
Watch on YouTube: Part 1 - 2 -3 - 4 - 5 - 6
------------------------------------
How her family history was traced.
Her mother was from Toronto.

Descendants of Converts in Majorca

The Majorcan community of about 20,000 people known as chuetas were isolated until a tourist boom that began in the late 1960s.

The descendants of Jews formed an insular community of Catholic converts that intermarried with eachother through the centuries because of religious persecution and discrimination that barred them from holding certain positions in the church.

Most carry the names of 15 families with ancestors who were tried and executed during the 17th century for practicing Judaism.      

A religious court in Israel sent a rabbi to the island to examine the family trees of some of the chuetas who trace lineage back 500 years.      

“Unlike other Marranos in Spain and Portugal, who lost their line of history, this particular community is unique and kept the pure line of history for the last 700 years, which means they are Jewish.”      

Read the article - New York Times - July 11, 2011

A Family History Visit to the Ukraine

Mordechai Twersky visits his grandfather's home in the Ukraine.

Read the article - New York Times - Aug 9, 2011

Weissensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin

In Heaven Underground is a documentary about the Weissensee Jewish Cemetery, one of the oldest (still active) in Europe.

The cemetery's website.
The movie's website.

Jewish Life in Iran

This article is peripheral to genealogy but provides an interesting glimpse into Jewish life in Iran.

Read it here - New York Times Feb 25, 2012.

World's Oldest Holocaust Museum

It's in London. It was founded in 1939.
Read the article -- New York Times: February 26, 2012.

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives

• The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a relief and rescue organization
• It is almost 100 years old. 
• The Joint’s archives contain over 500,000 names and 100,000 photographs
• They are going online.
• There will be a searchable index for every document, photograph and record card.

Read the article -- Find the archives here  -- Center For Jewish History -- YIVO  -- Leon Levy Foundation -- Wikipedia