TORONTO — Congregation B’nai Torah will kick off its 50th anniversary year with a gala dinner Oct. 6 and follow up with a mission to Israel this winter, among other activities.
Rabbi Yirmiya Milevsky
B’nai Torah members broke ground for an addition to the shul in 1982. With shovels, from left, are the late Hymie Weinberg, Gerry Barron and Izzy Kaplan, along with 50th anniversary celebration chair Jack Kahn. Rabbi Raphael Marcus is at far right, front.
TORONTO — Congregation B’nai Torah will kick off its 50th
anniversary year with a gala dinner Oct. 6 and follow up with a mission
to Israel this winter, among other activities.
The north Toronto congregation, located on Patricia Avenue, is made up of a warm group of people who get along well despite differing philosophies and who are well-educated Jewishly but still want to learn, said Rabbi Yirmiya Milevsky, who will be installed officially at the event.
Rabbi Milevsky became the Orthodox shul’s leader 13 months ago. His predecessor, Rabbi Raphael Marcus, died in 2007 of cancer after having served B’nai Torah for 27 years.
Rabbi Marcus’ legacy lives on at the shul, Rabbi Milevsky said. “He was concerned for the welfare of every individual. He developed a sense of responsibility for one another among the congregants… He was very warm, very caring, a very special individual.”
Longtime members recall previous rabbis going back to Rabbi Shlomo Jakobovits, brother of the late former British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits. Rabbi Sholom Gold followed him, and then Rabbi Shmuel Stauber.
Founding member Marvin Wenner, 73, a board member and past president, remembers the days before the shul had a rabbi, when as a young married student he attended services in a nearby apartment.
“We had enough people to start a minyan every Shabbos,” he said. Within a year or so, they moved to a storefront on Transwell Avenue.
Mark Lane and his family moved into the area in July 1961, when Bathurst was just a narrow road north of Finch Avenue. “We would walk up to Steeles to see the cows,” he said.
Lane, now 81, recalls attending the congregation’s first High Holiday services at Pleasant Avenue Public School, for “the grand amount of $5 a ticket.”
He remembers his introduction to the shul on a sunny day just after he moved in, when two of the shul’s founders, having noticed the mezuzah on his door, approached him and his wife as they played with their two young daughters in their front yard.
Over the next few years, the congregation grew, and it shared the storefront with Eitz Chaim Schools before the school opened a branch just west of the shul’s current location.
When the fledgling congregation purchased its land, a decision was made that it would be “a small institution,” said Wenner. “It was always intended to be a walk-to place… We wanted to keep it small so we could pay for it.”
The congregation used a pre-fab structure before its own synagogue was built about 40 years ago.
For financial reasons, the women’s balcony was added at a later date, and, at first, the congregation had moveable chairs on a concrete floor in the sanctuary, said Wenner. Some of the pews now in the men’s section were given to B’nai Torah by Shaarei Shomayim Congregation when it sold its building on St. Clair Avenue West, he added.
B’nai Torah’s membership has declined from up to 350 families at its height to between 200 and 250 in recent years, in large part because of one of the values it espouses.
A strongly Zionist congregation, B’nai Torah has many former members and children of members living in Israel. Wenner is a case in point: all four of his children have made aliyah.
Part of the 50th-anniversary Israel trip, scheduled for Feb. 20 to March 3, will be a reunion with former members and children of members who have made aliyah.
Jack Kahn, chair of the 50th anniversary celebrations and a past president of the congregation, said the shul claims the largest such group in the city, numbering in the hundreds.
The shul is also planning “a major Shabbaton,” inviting former members who have moved north to Thornhill or farther south in the city, said Kahn, a member for 42 years.
B’nai Torah is “still a vibrant congregation,” said Lane. “We’re always looking for new members.”
Shul president Jack Martell – 65, and also a longtime member – was particularly enthused by this year’s Rosh Hashanah services.
“This was an effort to try to get the whole congregation excited and singing along, and it worked beautifully,” he said of the davening led by a few members who had made a CD of the tunes they would use. The CDs were distributed to congregants so they could become familiar with them before the holidays.
In the past few years, Martell and his wife have been involved in a different type of musical endeavour at the shul, arranging classical music concerts, some featuring musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
“We want [the shul] to be a pleasurable place for learning, for davening and for socializing,” he said. “We are far from moribund.”
Although there are not a lot of young families now, Martell said, “we still have a wonderful community with one of the best adult education programs in the city.
The congregation is “working on many different fronts to attract new young families,” he added.
Among the initiatives are mortgage assistance, get-togethers and rabbi’s classes, beginning in November, geared to young families.
