By Gary Rotto
TORONTO, Canada –It was 20:00 and I was waiting at a restaurant for a chicken shishkebab. Make that a kosher shishkebab. Clearly I was not in San Diego County because other than when I join my parents at Seacrest Village Retirement Communities for Shabbat, nowhere can I find a restaurant that serves a kosher meat meal on any day or at any time.
After a full day of touring Toronto, my daughter and I arrived at our home base, that being the home of my friends Eileen and Mark Jadd. Kelila and I were still stuck between San Diego and Toronto times. As Eileen needed to chair a meeting of the Board of Directors for the Toronto Heschel School, I waited to see if Mark would come home for dinner or would just work straight through at his office. By 19:00, (which I mistakenly thought was 8 p.m., but hey, I’m a civilian not a military man from California) Mark was quite ready to put aside the legal reference books and get something to eat.
In what we would consider a commercial industrial area sits a Kosher restaurant, Dr. Laffa’s, that is open to 10pm (which I think is 22:00, but I’m still working on that). What a treat! I understand that the schwarma is to die for, which accounts for the hour-long lines. However, by the time we could place our order, the schwarma was long gone. But there was plenty of Laffa, that warm, somewhat crispy on the bottom, Iraqi special bread for our meal. The restaurant is owned by a family that emigrated from Iraq in 1951. Fortunately, when they left for Toronto, they brought many family recipes along – especially the laffa.
A large proportion of the Jewish community of Toronto can be found along Bathurst Street, which has served as the heart of the Jewish community for many decades. It’s a very stable community that numbers about 250,000, making it one of the largest in the Diaspora. My friends explained that, in the context of Jewish religious life, Toronto’s practices are about a generation behind the US – especially regarding the conservative community. For example, most Conservative congregations here still do not allow women to read from the Torah.
There are advantages and disadvantages in each community. For example, Toronto enjoys the critical mass for many things that are not as plentiful in other communities. This means that there are many more families that keep kosher and therefore, enough of a market to support several kosher meat restaurants. It also means that Jewish day schools have greater attendance.
Mark and Eileen have been in the community for 25 plus years. Eileen left Houston to take a job early in her career with B’nai B’rith Women of Canada, and she has adapted to life here. Mark moved with his family to Toronto from Buffalo as a kid, so Toronto and its customs were very familiar to him.
Eileen is a feminist, but also very diplomatic by nature. Going through social work school for a degree in Jewish communal service gave her tools to help the community to grow and evolve.
Both my friends are real students and observers of the community. And, I’m happy to report, that understanding allowed us to find that elusive schwama the next night at yet another kosher restaurant.
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Rotto is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at gary.rotto@sdjewishworld.com