Level

Item

Item

6014

Material Format

graphic material

Date

May 1990

Physical Description

1 photograph

Notes

Aquired May 1990.

Name Access

Nemal ha-te ufah Ben-Guryon

United Jewish Appeal

Subjects

Airports

Immigrants--Israel

Jews--Soviet Union

Repro Restriction

Copyright may not be held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain permission prior to use.

Places

Israel

Accession Number

1991-9-1

Source

Archival Descriptions

Level

Item

Item

6015

Material Format

graphic material

Date

May 1990

Physical Description

1 photograph

Notes

Acquired May 1990.

Name Access

Nemal ha-te ufah Ben-Guryon

United Jewish Appeal

Subjects

Airports

Immigrants--Israel

Jews--Soviet Union

Repro Restriction

Copyright may not be held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain permission prior to use.

Places

Israel

Accession Number

1991-9-1

Source

Archival Descriptions

Level

Item

Item

6016

Material Format

graphic material

Date

May 1990

Physical Description

1 photograph

Notes

Acquired May 1990.

Name Access

Nemal ha-te ufah Ben-Guryon

United Jewish Appeal

Subjects

Airports

Immigrants--Israel

Jews--Soviet Union

Repro Restriction

Copyright may not be held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain permission prior to use.

Places

Israel

Accession Number

1991-9-1

Source

Archival Descriptions

Level

Item

Item

6018

Material Format

graphic material

Date

May 1990

Physical Description

1 photograph

Notes

Acquired May 1990.

Name Access

Nemal ha-te ufah Ben-Guryon

United Jewish Appeal

Subjects

Airports

Immigrants--Israel

Jews--Soviet Union

Places

Israel

Accession Number

1991-9-1

Source

Archival Descriptions

Level

Item

Item

3054

Material Format

graphic material

Date

1943

Physical Description

2 photographs : b&w (1 negative)

Scope and Content

This is a composite photograph.

Name Access

Workmen's Circle

Arbeiter Ring

Arbeter Ring

Repro Restriction

Copyright is in the public domain and permission for use is not required. Please credit the Ontario Jewish Archives as the source of the photograph.

Places

Toronto (Ont.)

Accession Number

1979-4-5

Source

Archival Descriptions

Part Of

Isaac Matenko fonds

Level

Fonds

Fonds

89

Material Format

graphic material

textual record

Date

1911-1971, predominant 1911-1935

Physical Description

6 cm of textual records

17 photographs

Admin History/Bio

Isaac Matenko (1874–1960) was a founder, teacher, and principal of the I. L. Peretz School. He worked tirelessly to preserve and promote secular Jewish culture and the Yiddish language in Toronto. He was also a prominent member of local Jewish organizations, such as the Socialist-Territorialist Club and the Yiddish Kultur Gesellshaft.

Isaac was born on 1 February 1874 in the town of Makariv, located in the Kyiv Oblast (province) of Ukraine. He married Elke Yelia Moshkevitch (1878–19 November 1953) on 4 August 1900 in Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro). They immigrated from czarist Russia to Toronto in 1906, passing first through New York with their two children, Percy (30 June 1901–May 1987) and Theodore (1903–1906, died of measles at Ellis Island), and Yelia’s three sisters, Dvora, Bracha, and Celia, and Isaac’s younger half-brother, Paul Frumhartz. They had two more children after arriving: Abraham (14 August 1908–October 24, 1989) and Shoshana (Sue) (1911–2001). Although he had been a teacher in Russia, Isaac worked as an operator in a cloak factory in Toronto, where he was instrumental in forming the union (likely the Cloakmakers’ Union of Toronto, which later affiliated with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union).

As a child, Isaac received a traditional Jewish education. This, combined with his self-taught secular education and the teachings of Yiddish nationalist Dr. Chaim Zhitlovski, informed his future career and philosophies. He was described as an idealist by his friends, whose dedication to Yiddish culture and language motivated him to bring this knowledge to a younger generation.

On 11 July 1911, Isaac and his fellow Socialist-Territorialist members established the Toronto Yiddish National-Radical School. By 1916, it had been taken over by the Workmen’s Circle and renamed the I. L. Peretz School, after the well-known Yiddish author and playwright. The school began in a rented room at the Zionist Institute on Simcoe Street, moving to larger locations on Richmond Street West, then Beverley Street as it grew. Eventually, several more branches opened, such as the Maria Street school that Isaac was affiliated with. He taught at the school for free in the evenings after working during the day in a shop. His brother Paul was also a founding teacher at the school.

Isaac was described by family, friends, and community members as a passionate teacher with an iron will. He was well-versed in Jewish knowledge, with a desire to pass it on to a younger generation and his fellow union members. He remained involved in the school and in teaching, even after retirement. He died on 2 June 1960 at the age of eighty-six.

Custodial History

These records were donated to the OJA by Sue Levy, daughter of Isaac Matenko.

Scope and Content

Fonds consists of records documenting Isaac Matenko's involvement with the Workmen's Circle and other Jewish organizations. Included are photographs, programmes, certificates, I. L. Peretz School jubilee books, a songbook, a yearbook, articles, and newsclippings.

Fonds has been arranged into one series for the Workmen's Circle. There are also two files attached to the fonds-level. The records are described at the series and file-level, with some item-level descriptions.

Name Access

Arbeiter Ring

Arbeiter Ring Schools

Arbeter Ring

Camp Yungvelt

Frumhartz, Paul

I.L. Peretz

Matenko, Isaac, 1874-1960

Matenko, Percy

National Radical School

Peretz Shule

Workman's Circle

Workmen's Circle

Subjects

Schools

Teachers

Yiddish language

Related Material

For additional Workmen's Circle records, see: accessions 1979-4-4, 1980-2-2, 1983-6-3, 1984-10-1, 1986-4-1, 1992-1-2, 1997-2-1, 1998-3-32, 2004-5-41, 2004-5-105, and fonds 30.

For additional Camp Yungvelt records, see: accessions 1979-4-4, 1986-4-1, 1991-12-4, 1993-6-6, 1999-5-1, 2004-5-37, 2005-6-4, 2006-12-3, photographs # 2964, # 4014, # 6021, MG2N1K, Benjamin Brown fonds 49, and Dorothy Dworkin Fonds 10 (item 14).

Creator

Matenko, Isaac, 1874-1960

Accession Number

1987-11-4

1991-4-2

2007-5-3

2007-6-28

Source

Archival Descriptions

Part Of

United Jewish Welfare Fund fonds

Level

Fonds

Fonds

67

Material Format

multiple media

Date

1936-2010, predominant 1938-1976

Physical Description

14.3 m of textual records

5593 photographs, 25 x 20 cm and smaller, and other media

Admin History/Bio

The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Toronto (FJPT) was incorporated in Ontario in March 1917 to coordinate the fundraising activities of Jewish charitable, philanthropic, and social service agencies in Toronto. In 1918, ten separate agencies were funded by the FJPT. By 1937, fourteen agencies were funded. The Great Depression of the 1930s and the development of several newer Jewish aid, education, and medical care organizations created both increased need for resources and growing competition for ever-more scarce dollars. Within a very few years, this funding crisis forced a major review of the organization.

During 1936, a series of special meetings of leading individuals were held to examine the income and expenditures of all Toronto Jewish agencies and also to speculate about the need for a new Toronto Jewish "community chest" as the sole fund-raising organization for a federation of all Jewish agencies, including the FJPT. In 1938, the new United Jewish Welfare Fund was formally constituted. Added to the FJPT's previous list of Toronto client agencies in 1938 were: the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Hebrew National Association, the Jewish Immigrant Aid Association, the Mizrachi Society, the Toronto Free Loan Association, the Geverkshaften, and Old Folks Home, and the United Palestine Appeal, raising the total number of agencies to twenty-two.

When the State of Israel was established in 1948, the UJWF's annual fundraising campaign was combined with the CJC's United Palestine appeal to form a new, combined campaign named the United Jewish Appeal (UJA). In 1967, the UJA name was legally changed to the United Jewish Appeal of Metropolitan Toronto.

In mid-1976, the organization's public name was changed to the Toronto Jewish Congress. Although initially thought of as a merger between the UJWF and the CJC, the actual result was the expansion of the UJWF responsibilities to include local education and welfare services previously shared with the Canadian Jewish Congress, Central Region. The UJWF, however, remained the legal senior entity.

In 1991, the public name was again changed to the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto and, in 1999, to UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. By this date, over thirty beneficiary and affiliated agencies, forty-nine affiliated schools and five federation departments were fully or partly funded by the federation.

In June 2010, the organization altered its legal structure, with the senior legal entity becoming the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

Scope and Content

Fonds consists of 25 series: Annual Meetings, Annual Reports, Board of Directors, Constitution Committee, Executive Committee, Officers Committee, Budget and Finance Committee, Administration Committee, Social Planning Committee, Committee on Capital Needs and Planning, Central Committee on Scholarships in Aid, Joint Committee of the BJE and UJWF Study on Jewish Education, Nominations Committee, Pension Fund Committee, Coordinating Committee, Special Ad Hoc and Temporary Committees, Annual Campaign, Client Agencies, Joint Committee of the CJC and the UJWF, Committee on Community Organization, Sub-Committee on Construction and Administration of Community Schools, Joint Committee on Fundraising, Personnel Committee, Community Leadership Development Council, and Israel at Fifty Community Celebration.

Over 4500 photographs and a variety of other media are managed within Series 17, Campaign records.

Notes

For exact details about the contents of individual series and sub-series, please review their scope and contents notes.

Name Access

United Jewish Welfare Fund

Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Toronto

United Jewish Appeal

Toronto Jewish Congress

Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto

UJA Federation of Greater Toronto

Subjects

Charities

Fund raising

Access Restriction

Partially closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA director prior to accessing some of the records.

Related Material

For records of the predecessor of the UJWF, see Fonds 66, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Toronto fonds.

Further detailed documentation of the proposed merger between the UJWF and the CJC (creation of the TJC) may be found in Fonds 67, Sub-sub-series 5-5-1, Files 171 and 221.

Further documentation on the United Jewish Welfare Fund may be found within Fonds 9, Series 7, records of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society.

For further detailed records of a key community leader's involvement with the UJWF see Accession 1982-8-8, the records of Samuel Godfrey, 1943-1972.

Creator

United Jewish Welfare Fund (1938-)

Places

Toronto (Ont.)

Source

Archival Descriptions