Holy Blossom Temple

Holy Blossom Temple is Toronto's oldest Jewish congregation and today its largest Reform synagogue, located on Bathurst Street near Eglinton Avenue. The congregation traces its founding to 1856, when a small group of English and German Jewish immigrants organized Toronto's first synagogue, initially meeting in rented rooms on Richmond Street. For its first several decades the congregation followed a traditional, Orthodox-leaning practice, before shifting gradually toward Reform Judaism through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rabbi Brickner and the Bathurst sanctuary

The most consequential period came under Rabbi Barnett Brickner, who led the congregation from the early 1920s and pushed it firmly into the Reform mainstream, expanding its social and educational programming. As Toronto's Jewish community grew and shifted north and west through the early 20th century, Holy Blossom followed, eventually building its present domed sanctuary on Bathurst Street, which opened in 1938 and remains in use today as one of the largest and most recognizable synagogue buildings in Canada.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Holy Blossom Temple
• Wikipedia — Holy Blossom Temple

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