Beach Hebrew Institute

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The Beach Hebrew Institute is a :synagogue in The Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1919 as an Orthodox Jewish congregation, the members purchased their current building—a former church—in 1920, and renovated it in 1926.Following World War II the congregation declined. The members considered selling the building in the 1970s, but a campaign to save it led to its receiving much needed repairs, and the 1982 designation of the building as a site of historical importance by the City of Toronto. An influx of younger, more liberal families, led to the congregation becoming an unaffiliated egalitarian Conservative synagogue.Early historyThe Beach Hebrew Institute was founded in 1919 by Jewish residents in The Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which was then a largely Anglo-Saxon area in the east part of Toronto far removed from the Jewish neighbourhoods further to the west in The Ward and around Spadina Avenue. The forty or so Jewish families living in The Beaches at the time tended to be more prosperous and had either been born in Canada or immigrated at an early age and so spoke English as their first language, compared to the Yiddish speaking, impoverished, recent immigrants who predominated in the city's main Jewish neighbourhoods. Many of them either owned local shops in the area or summer homes.