Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

The author of one our recently acquired books passed away a few days ago according to the notice I received on Sunday:

I regret to let you know about the passing of Dr. Stephen Speisman z”l this morning. Steve was the former director of UJA Federation’s Ontario Jewish Archives and, most recently, Toronto Hebrew Memorial Park, which is responsible for the Pardes Shalom community cemetery. Steve was a man of enormous intellect and distinguished decency who will leave an enormous vacuum as a true servant of the Jewish community and an authority on the history of Jewish Toronto. The funeral will take place tomorrow at Steeles College. The time is not yet available.

His book “The Jews of Toronto; A history to 1937” is still on our new non-fiction arrival shelf. Here are the opening paragraphs of the preface of this 380 pages long, well-indexed and researched volume:

This is the story of Toronto Jewry’s first century. Its principal theme is the adjustment of the Jew to a new land and his effort to build a community which would serve his needs and in which he might feel comfortable. It represents perhaps the first attempt of this scope at analysing an urban Jewish community in Canada.
In examining the evolution of local Jewish institutions, I sought to answer a number of perplexing questions. How, for example, did a community develop in a city often the immigrant’s second choice for settlement? How did Toronto Jews fashion a relatively unified communal structure despite their heterogeneity? To what extent was this development influenced by local events or externalfactors?
Some aspects of community life have been treated in detail; others, such as social mobility, the entry of Jews into the professions, and the development of the Jewish labour movement, had, because of limitations of space, to be considered only incidentally as they bear directly on the major theme. Like Samuel Johnson, I ask that “when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much is likewise performed.”