Jewish Institutional Revival in Downtown Toronto: What, How and Why

• In Event: Urbanism, Urban Jews and Jewish identity: part 2, Qualitative Research and Social History

Abstract

It seemed in the 1950s and 60s that postwar prosperity was permitting Jews to leave their crowded neighborhoods in downtown Toronto for the newly developing suburbs. Synagogues and schools relocated, one after the other. Kosher bakeries, bookstores, restaurants either closed or moved. By 1970, the Jewish institutions in what had been the heart of the downtown neighborhood had been reduced to the JCC building that had opened in 1953, a handful of poorly attended synagogues, the Hillel serving University of Toronto students and a small parent coop Sunday school. It was conventional wisdom that Jewish life downtown was dying and the institutions were moving.

By the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the Jewish institutional map of downtown Toronto was very different. Declining synagogues had been revived. New congregations and schools had been created. The federation had invested in creating a much more active JCC and supported a branch of the Jewish Family and Child Service.

This paper places this institutional revival in the context of changing residential pattern in North American cities, especially the emergent appeal of central city living. It asks what were the motivations of those involved in institution building, what they saw and still see as challenges to success, their strategies to meet those challenges and how they see the opportunities for Jewish life in Toronto’s downtown core.

author

• Randal F. Schnoor, York University