Back to Shul

My latest for the Globe’s weekend Toronto section is about Forest Hill, orthodox Judaism, and what a bunch of jerks the Nazis were. Read it here, or pick it up on newsstands if today is Saturday, October 8. You may also grimace at my headline, which I am both embarrassed by and proud of.

A few things of note that weren’t in the piece:

• How Jewish is Forest Hill, exactly? According to 2006 census data, which the city conveniently broke down into neighbourhoods, Forest Hill North had 3,950 out of 12,270 people who self-identified as Jewish (32.2%), and Forest Hill South had 3,070 out of 10,650 (28.8%). Bear in mind that self-identifying as Jewish doesn’t make one devout, or even practicing.
• This is what the new synagogue, modeled after the one knocked down in Jaslo.
• One thing that Rabbi Elie Karfunkel and I spoke a lot about is the tension between being an orthodox congregation, on one hand, and that orthodoxy not really manifesting itself or seemingly being strictly enforced (in how people dress, for instance) on the other. He said that “we do not compromise our orthodoxy.” But: “Everyone [in the congregation] is Jewish. Some people do twenty percent, some people do forty percent, some people do eighty percent. The job is just to do a little percentage better tomorrow….no-one feels like this place is not for me because I’m a twenty-percenter.”
• Rent for commercial space in Forest Hill is expensive. (Or, again from the rabbi: “Forest Hill ain’t cheap.”) Back in 1999, the centre was paying $6000 for its space; now, for a larger space, it’s paying $11,000.
• The Starbucks has officially outlasted the synagogue at its current location: the coffee chain has been at that location in Forest Hill since January 20, 1996.
• One of the reasons why a fourth home was purchased on Spadina Road was that the city had concerns about accommodating parking. The rabbi will move across the street to live in the house when construction’s done—he lives directly across the street now—but under the new plans “he doesn’t really have a backyard, cause there’s parking in the back yard,” John Kaplan told me. Oy.