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The Shaarei Tzedek Congregation was founded by new Russian immigrants around 1901. The congregation’s first shul was situated originally on 29 Centre Avenue, south of Dundas on the east side of the street, in the vicinity of present-day Nathan Philips Square. Louis Gurofsky (1871-1934), a prominent member of the Jewish community and a business man, lived in a house at 397 Markham Street with his family. In 1937, following Gurofsky’s death in 1934, Shaarei Tzedek occupied the Markham Street house of the Gurofsky family and renovations were soon undertaken to convert the residence into a synagogue, designed by Benjamin Swartz.
Shaarei Tzedec Congregation, 1937-present
- Address
- 397 Markham Street
- Source
- Landmarks
The Shaarei Tzedek Congregation was founded by new Russian immigrants around 1901. The congregation’s first shul was situated originally on 29 Centre Avenue, south of Dundas on the east side of the street, in the vicinity of present-day Nathan Philips Square. Louis Gurofsky (1871-1934), a prominent member of the Jewish community and a business man, lived in a house at 397 Markham Street with his family. In 1937, following Gurofsky’s death in 1934, Shaarei Tzedek occupied the Markham Street house of the Gurofsky family and renovations were soon undertaken to convert the residence into a synagogue, designed by Benjamin Swartz.
- Address
- 397 Markham Street
- Time Period
- 1937-present
- Scope Note
- The Shaarei Tzedek Congregation was founded by new Russian immigrants around 1901. The congregation’s first shul was situated originally on 29 Centre Avenue, south of Dundas on the east side of the street, in the vicinity of present-day Nathan Philips Square. Louis Gurofsky (1871-1934), a prominent member of the Jewish community and a business man, lived in a house at 397 Markham Street with his family. In 1937, following Gurofsky’s death in 1934, Shaarei Tzedek occupied the Markham Street house of the Gurofsky family and renovations were soon undertaken to convert the residence into a synagogue, designed by Benjamin Swartz.
- History
- Following the Second World War, a second wave of Russian immigrants, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, found spiritual refuge at the Markham Street shul, and membership again began to rise. In the 1950s the shul employed the services of Rabbi Israel Frankel, a prominent Jewish scholar and one of the founders of the Toronto Jewish Public Library. As the Jewish community increasingly moved to the northern and outlying suburbs of Toronto, this general trend began to take its toll on the membership of the Shaarei Tzedek into the 1960s. The congregation was obliged to declare bankruptcy in 1968. However, a concerted fund-raising effort by Jewish community leaders in the area re-established the congregation in 1970, under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the shul’s president, Dr. Joseph Greenberg.
- Category
- Architecture
- Religious
- Source
- Landmarks
