Brought from Morocco, kept in Toronto.
Tiferet Israel, תפארת ישראל, means “the glory of Israel.” The congregation is as old as the community that built it.
1965, near Bathurst and Wilson
Moroccan Jews began settling in Toronto in the late 1950s. They arrived speaking Spanish and French, into a Jewish city that prayed in an Ashkenazi accent, and they wanted what any newcomer wants on Shabbat morning: the service they grew up with.
In 1965 a group of those newcomers formed Tiferet Israel in the Bathurst and Wilson area. It would be twenty-three years before the doors opened on Sheppard Avenue.
The rest of this chapter belongs to the families who were there. If yours was one of them, we would like to add your names, your photographs and your stories to this page.
756 Sheppard Avenue West
The lot is purchased on November 24.
The groundbreaking ceremony takes place in May.
The synagogue is inaugurated on September 5.
The building is red brick with arched windows, on the north side of Sheppard between Bathurst Street and Faywood Boulevard. The sanctuary is on the main floor, with separate seating for men and women. Downstairs are the kitchen and the hall, where the congregation eats together after a berit, a bar mitzvah or a nahala.
How we pray
We are Orthodox and Sephardic, and our customs are Moroccan. Every Friday evening we read Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, as Shabbat comes in. The melodies are the ones sung in the synagogues our families left.
You will hear Spanish, French, English and Hebrew in the same row, sometimes in the same sentence.
We call ourselves a big family, and the congregation is small enough for that to be true: most of us have known each other for a very long time.