My Month in the Archives

By Eli Sol

This July and August, I had the absolute pleasure of working in the Holy Blossom Archives with the committee of volunteer archivists (Susan Cohen, Sheila Smolkin, Susan Mogil, Howard Roger, Michael Cole, Judy Winberg and Ruth Ellen Greenwood). The idea was first pitched to me in an academic context. For the final paper of my “History of the Jewish People” class this past April at the University of Toronto, I elected to write about the influence of lay leadership on Holy Blossom’s musical journey in the early days. The archivists were kind enough to accommodate my research needs and provided all the materials as well as an invitation to work there over the summer.

I travelled to Israel with Birthright in June and July, and once I returned to Toronto, I was ready to get to work in the archives. The main task was digitally cataloguing the mountain of musical materials left to us following Cantor Maissner’s retirement, which laid the groundwork for the new Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library. This new section of our archive library includes both digital and physical copies of posters, event programs, photographs, service plans, commissioned works, tapes, CDs, books, folders, pamphlets, and everything in between. The current plan is to store a selection of the physical materials in a designated cabinet of the Max Enkin Library on the main floor.

I had the privilege of interacting with an impressive scope of manuscripts. The materials mostly came from Cantor Maissner’s own 41-year career, not only as Holy Blossom’s cantor, but also as the head of the LACHAN community chamber choir, and a powerful, internationally recognized Jewish musical voice. Two of my favourite sources are Beny’s original, used, and annotated vocal score of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony No. 3” and a Kabbalat Shabbat service of Hassidic tunes arranged for mixed choir by Sol Zim —the inside cover of which bears a lovely note to Beny from Sol Zim himself.

Many of the exciting musical documents in Cantor Maissner’s library predated him, revealing a wealth of inherited Jewish music dating as far back as the 1880s. Some highlights include:

• a 1961 revival service made entirely of music composed by the Jewish Renaissance violinist and composer, Salomone Rossi;
• Cantor Maissner’s predecessor, Cantor Sheldon Merel’s personal annotated 1955 Union Hymnal;
• two of Sara Barkin’s personal copies of choral arrangements (she was our soprano soloist in the 1950s-1960s and sister to the celebrated Cantor Jacob Barkin who was at Holy Blossom from 1966 to 1969);
• countless collected songs, prayers, and services by the internationally renowned Jewish liturgical composer Ben Steinberg (Steinberg was music director at Holy Blossom before moving on to Temple Sinai; we have an original piece in honour of his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in 1987 and a piece he dedicated to Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Gunther Plaut);
• Union Hymnals dating back to 1897;
• a 1946 collection of Yiddish folk songs complete with musical score published in Toronto;
• and a 1935 collection of German Jewish folk music for “everyday and festivals” with no indication of how it survived the war or how it ended up in Holy Blossom’s archive.

I would be remiss not to mention Jill Kamin and Gillian Rosenberg’s separate but related venture to digitally scan the complete corpus of Cantor Maissner’s musical career which will soon be housed in the National Library of Israel. Their project has been instrumental in filling out the digital side of The Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library and is more than deserving of praise.

If you are curious about exploring this new branch of the Holy Blossom archives, or about our exciting investigations into Holy Blossom’s extensive history, I encourage you to get in contact with our archivists. If you are just looking to dip your toes in, several artifacts of Holy Blossom history are displayed year-round throughout the Schwartz Reisman Atrium for exactly that purpose.

High Holidays Past

By the Archives Committee

Holy Blossom’s Archives Committee has spent August exploring High Holiday highlights from the past for publishing on Instagram and Facebook. In the lead up to the High Holidays this year, we’d like to share them with our whole Holy Blossom congregation.

Holy Blossom’s first Rosh Hashanah service, held on the third floor over this drugstore. Jewish year 5616

Did you know that it was only towards the middle of the 19th century when Jews began to find their way to Toronto? In his authoritative history of Toronto Jewry, Stephen Speisman tells us that an 1846 census recorded just 12 Jews here. They came primarily from England, but also Germany and the United States, and many returned to those places too. By 1849 those early settlers established the first Jewish communal organization, a burial ground which came to be called “Jews Cemetery”. The land was legally purchased but the initial organization behind it faded from the record.

Just a few years later, an 1851 census noted 57 Jews in Toronto and 77 more in the vicinity of the city. In 1856 local merchant Lewis Samuel and 16 other founding members decided to create a formal synagogue to support that growing Jewish life. In the space of three weeks they canvassed other Jews, rented a third-floor room above a drug store at the southeast corner of Richmond and Yonge Streets, borrowed a Torah scroll, and on September 29th held Rosh Hashanah services. It was the Jewish year 5616.

Rosh Hashanah 5784
168 years strong, still blowing the shofar and still growing along with a growing Toronto Jewish community

That congregation was Holy Blossom, the first lasting Jewish communal organization in the city of Toronto. According to census figures for Toronto, Jews in the city now number almost 190,000 and are almost half of the entire Jewish population of Canada. Toronto is one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel and larger even than many Israeli cities.

By Susan Cohen

As we approach Holy Blossom’s annual Pride Shabbat on June 14th, we look back at 1980s Toronto and the rise of HIV-AIDS. Toronto seemed safe, growing, multicultural, even a little innocent. But under Rabbi Dow Marmur, Holy Blossom championed emerging social issues. One of the most challenging was HIV-AIDS, a disease which emerged first among gay men and left many not just ill and dying but ostracized from their communities.

The synagogue took on the task of galvanizing the broad Jewish community. An extraordinary group of volunteers from the synagogue partnered together to bring AIDS support out in the open. Acting on Jewish tradition and the belief that people with AIDS “should not become strangers in their own land”, Holy Blossom created the first direct Jewish community support program, AIDS: A Jewish Response, in Canada.

With partners such as 519 Church St. and Jewish Family and Child Service, Holy Blossom trained volunteers to offer support ­– financial, practical, social and spiritual. One of the most important initiatives was The Third Seder, a community-wide Passover meal with a unique Haggadah. It ran for almost a decade and at its height, attracted more than 250 people.

Holy Blossom created an Aids Assist Outreach buddy system and held special memorials to acknowledge and honour those who lost their lives. Temple Brotherhood and Sisterhood provided funds and volunteers while HABSTY members proudly helped at events. Today Pride Shabbat at Holy Blossom celebrates an inclusive Jewish identity and Holy Blossom members and staff march in the annual Pride Parade.

Two treasures in Holy Blossom’s archives from that era are a special hand-stitched quilt and rainbow suspenders.  The late Sybil Geller created the colourful quilt in honour of Yale Aaron Lampe, her son-in-law’s brother. Yale died in 1991, relatively early, and the family wanted to bring attention to the people behind the statistics. The rainbow suspenders were worn at the Pride Parade in 2015 by the late Nancy Ruth, a former president of the temple.

(The Archives Committee receives inquiries regularly. We invite you to contact us about this or other areas of interest at:  [email protected].   We are always interested in learning and sharing more about our remarkable history.  We also encourage you to examine the archival displays in the Schwartz-Reisman Atrium.)

Remembering Heinz Warschauer z”l

By Ruth Ellen Greenwood, member of Holy Blossom Temple Archives Committee

Heinz Warschauer was born in 1913 in Berlin, Germany and educated in public school and university there. He studied under Rabbi Leo Baeck and was a leader of the German Jewish Youth Movement of Berlin. Political journalism and teaching interested him all his life. In 1938, following Kristallnacht, he was interned in Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1939, he managed to get to England, and from there to Canada in 1940. Ironically, he was sent to an internment camp in Sherbrooke, Quebec as a German enemy alien.

Upon his release, Heinz began his studies at the University of Toronto where he earned a Masters Degree in Modern History and a Bachelor of Social Work. Starting as a part time teacher at Holy Blossom Religious School, Heinz became the full time Director of Education in 1947, a position he held until his retirement in 1976. Among his major contributions to Jewish education were curriculum development and the use of group work in Religious School and Adult Education. Heinz also created a Post-Confirmation Program which included a teacher training program and a club leadership program. He wrote a comprehensive account of the history of Holy Blossom Temple, and he authored the grade 9 Religious School syllabus of UAHC (now URJ).

In 1960, Heinz was the first Canadian elected as President of the National Association of Temple Educators. From 1967 to 1976, he was member of the Commission on Jewish Education of the Reform Movement. A member of the faculty of NFTY (National Federation of Temple Youth), Heinz was made a lifetime member in 1971. He also inaugurated camp weekends for Junior and Senior High School students and encouraged them to go to the Reform Camps in the United States prior to the establishment of Camp George in Muskoka, Ontario. Heinz was an ardent Zionist and maintained a lifelong interest in Middle Eastern Affairs.

He was always Heinz to everyone – never Mr. Warschauer – just Heinz, and we all knew who we were talking about. He was a unique and unforgettable individual who left a profound and lasting impact on all who studied and worked with him.

As he explained in his own words, “I am a teacher, a group worker, but not specifically a religious educator . . . I would develop a ‘Centre’ for our children as a proper group work agency . . . I would concern myself with the children as people rather than merely vessels to be filled with knowledge.”

He told the Confirmation Class of 1961, “. . . religion provides for constant challenge and assurance through its ‘seasons of gladness,’ its holy days, and its call to learning. It also provides for fellowship, for Judaism is not the possession of the hermit, but of the ‘Chevra’, the group, the brotherhood, which experiences, learns, suffers at times and eventually rejoices – together! ‘Hinnay Mah Tov Umah Na-eem!’”

When Heinz retired in 1976, Joe Kronick z”l wrote, “I probably learned more from him about how to work with people, how to sidestep conflict while at the same time ‘diving in’ head first. There was no compromising on the quality of the educational process . . . He and everything he touched have enjoyed a seal of quality approval . . . the Young Couples Club, Adult Education, Experimental Programs, the Youth Activities Program, All-Day Blitzes, and the placement of students from the School of Social Work. In essence, anything that touched upon the growth and change and identification of people with the Temple and all that it stood for, were part and parcel of Heinz’s driving energy.”

Rabbi Plaut z”l wrote about Heinz, “ To me he was not only unforgettable, he was also inspiration, support, and best of all a friend. . . . He was an irascible bachelor and a passionate educator and was often totally unpredictable. . . . He questioned and taught his students to question. He considered social commitment and action an ineluctable part of the religious quest. He believed in standards – and once the curriculum was set he demanded of his students that they achieve its goals. . . . He was a master teacher. For him there were no children that mattered, there was only the child. Teachers en masse didn’t count, but the individual teacher did. He was a historian at heart: the knowledge of one’s roots was essential to him and he loved to teach history. . . when in Germany, he was interned because he was a Jew and in England because he was a German. The double tension deeply affected his later outlook on life and made him doubly committed to the exploration of his identity and the firming up of the commitment to which he gave his best years. . . The thousands who not only respected him but considered him their spiritual mentor bear vivid testimony to the possibility of teaching as one of the greatest professions.”

I was fortunate to reap all the benefits of being a student at Holy Blossom Religious School when Heinz was the Director of Education. After Confirmation, I enrolled in his student teacher training program. Heinz had enough faith in me to allow me to split the Thursday afternoon teacher training seminars with my practice schedule for the Oakwood Collegiate Senior Orchestra. I left practice half an hour early and arrived half an hour late for the seminar. And because Heinz believed in me and validated my commitment to both activities, I became a successful teacher and enjoyed a long career in the best profession there is – preparing young individuals to take up their responsibilities when they become the adults of our world. Heinz always saw the individual whether a student, a student teacher, or a teacher. He always encouraged group work as a method for achieving the best results whatever the project. Heinz had no children and no family: the students of Holy Blossom Religious School were his children, and the members of Holy Blossom Temple were his family. May his memory forever be for a blessing.