It was February 1967 when former Beth Tzedec Congregation spiritual leader Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg sat with Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion on his kibbutz in the Negev, pressuring him to visit the Toronto Jewish community.
Ben-Gurion made that promise on the condition that he could speak, in Hebrew, to the community’s school-aged children.
This is just one of the many highlights of Beth Tzedec’s rich history that has been documented in The History Of Beth Tzedec Congregation, a coffee-table book published earlier this year, full of archival photos that date back to the 19th century, written by author, CJN contributor, journalist and genealogist Bill Gladstone.
In March 1967, just three months before the Six Day War, “some 4,000 schoolchildren occupied every seat in the [Beth Tzedec] sanctuary and the adjoining banquet hall. Speaking in both Hebrew and English, Ben-Gurion brought many of them to their feet, cheering and applauding wildly,” the book states.
“‘There can be no Israel without the children of Israel,’ he told them. ‘Learn Hebrew, visit Israel, go there to live, and help to make the Negev fertile.’”

Beth Tzedec’s modern congregation, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, has a history that dates back to the 1880s.
Two of the first and oldest Jewish congregations in Toronto, Goel Tzedec and Beth Hamidrash Hagadol, amalgamated in 1955, creating Beth Tzedec, which boasts the largest Canadian congregation with about 7,000 members.
“This tells the history, not only of the 60 years since Beth Tzedec’s merger, but also of the 130 plus years since the founding of the congregations, and it really gives a good tapestry of the Jewish community in Toronto,” Gladstone said.
In addition to interviewing people whose involvement with the congregation goes back more than a century, he also consulted archives that include old documents, photographs, artifacts, record books hand written in Yiddish, and minute books of board meetings from the earlier part of the synagogue’s first century.
He said documenting this chapter of Canadian Jewish history is important and worthwhile.
“I think, in general, we are so consumed by the recent era, which we live through and know about more intimately, that we forget the glorious past of many of our Jewish institutions. Toronto has a long and fascinating history of the community so what I found fascinating were the early histories of both the congregations and the personalities that helped them survive difficult times…Of course, the modern era, and getting to know the rabbis, from the current rabbi, Baruch Frydman-Kohl, back to the accomplished and yet controversial Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg [who resigned from his post in 1976 due to bitter disputes with the shul’s members of the board] – there are many fascinating stories that are a part of the history.”
He credited Dorion Liebgott, the curator of the Beth Tzedec Rueben and Helene Dennis Museum, for championing this book and helping to co-ordinate the efforts of the editor, the designer and himself.
Liebgott joked the process of having the book produced has a history of its own, that dates back to 2009.
She said the first step was to get the archives updated by the Ontario Jewish Archives to make it easier for whoever was commissioned to write the book to do the research.
From there, a book committee was formed to help organize and edit the material Gladstone had produced.
Liebgott said Gella Rothstein, another member of the committee, with whom she worked very closely to organize the book and get it published, deserves recognition for her hard work.
But it was the late Bob Cohen, former shul president and the committee chairman who pushed Liebgott to see the project through to the end.
“He was such an enthusiastic and caring person who just wanted this thing to be done. He died very shortly before it was published and it was just the saddest thing for everybody,” she said.
“Even a week or two before he died, I was invited to his home and I told him, ‘Bob, don’t you worry, we’re going to dedicate this book to you because of all the energy and care you put into it.’”
She said one of the reasons the book took so long to produce was because the members of the board wanted to include an epilogue about what the future would hold for Beth Tzedec.
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“But they were making plans for the renovations, and bringing in new staff to work with young people… so they weren’t ready.” She said the book was shelved for a number of years, but “every six months, Bob would call me and say ‘What’s happening with the book? What’s happening with the book?’”
She said the committee was able to convince the board to tie the release of the book in with the 60th anniversary celebrations.
She said that as for the desire to put together an epilogue that looks to the future of the congregation, the last chapter tackles that subject.
“I think you see it come through based on what we’ve done in the last four or five years. I think you see that in the last chapter.”
Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of the book should contact Beth Tzedec.