From the Holy Blossom Temple Archives Committee

Rabbi Feinberg and Heinz Warschauer Come to Holy Blossom

By Michael Cole

In 1943, at the height of World War Two, two people came to Holy Blossom who would hugely influence the direction the Temple would take in the post-war years, the years of greatest growth in its history.

Rabbi Feinberg gives words of wisdom to Heinz Warschauer at the latter’s retirement dinner in 1976.

Rabbi Abraham L. Feinberg and Heinz Warschauer came from very different backgrounds. Rabbi Feinberg was the son of a poor Orthodox chazzan from Lithuania. He grew up in a small coal mining town on the Ohio River. Heinz (as he was known to young and old) was the son of a physician and grew up in Berlin. They each had a checkered and colourful career before coming to Holy Blossom. And they each possessed a colourful and memorable personality.

Together, Rabbi Feinberg and Heinz Warschauer made Holy Blossom Temple, and its Religious School, into an iconic institution in Toronto and among Reform synagogues worldwide.

Rabbi Feinberg made late Friday night services the cornerstone of our worship, and he made music and a cantor central to these services. Later, he instituted daily services. He made Bar Mitzvah, along with Confirmation, an important rite of passage and introduced the Bat Mitzvah celebration to our congregation.

Heinz Warschauer, who soon became Director of Education, instituted a rigorous teacher training program into our Religious School and undertook extensive development of its curriculum. He encouraged students to attend the newly-established Reform camps in the United States.

Both Rabbi Feinberg and Heinz were passionate Zionists who believed that Israel was a central part of our Jewish identity.

Over the next several weeks, we will explore in more detail the lives of Rabbi Feinberg and Heinz Warschauer in this column and in our Atrium display cases. We look forward to remembering these two gentlemen eighty years after their arrival in Toronto.

If you have any items of archival interest that you wish to donate, please email us at [email protected].

You may wish to visit the Archives Committee displays at the far end of our atrium as well as the Living Museum display by the elevator.