Growing up in very different homes, we learned the importance of community from divergent approaches. For Steve, learning about community at an early age was unavoidable. It was in his genes; it was, as they say, besheret.
Steve learned from his parents, both of whom were extremely active i…
Our family organization, the Agudas Hamispoche, was formed in 1928 by dozens of cousins from the Rubinoff, Naftolin and Arnoff families who came to Toronto from "White Russia" (now Belarus), beginning about 1905. Many treasured friends and in-laws were also "adopted into the mispoche" over t…
I am a child of immigrants. My father, Zelig came from Zhitomir in Russia, and my mother, Annie from Pzemszyl in Galicia. They met in Toronto and were married in the early 1920's.
My father was a barber, and my mother a hand-sewer in a garment factory on Spadina Avenue. My sisters, Rita and…
