Tag Archives: Canadian Jews

Jews of the Week: Marcel and Sylvan Adams

Canadian-Israeli Mega Donors

Marcel Adams and Sylvan Adams

Meir Marcel Abramovici (1920-2020) was born to a traditional Jewish family in Romania and became a leather tanner like his father. After three years in Nazi labour camps, he escaped to Turkey, and then to Israel, where he fought in the War of Independence. A few years later, he moved to Canada and got a job working at a Quebec tannery, where his boss told him to change his last name to “Adams”. Once he saved a little bit of money he began investing in real estate. In 1958, Adams became a full-time real estate investor and founded Iberville Developments. Today, the company has over 100 shopping centres, residential buildings, and industrial properties across Canada and the US. Before he passed away, Adams was the world’s second-oldest billionaire, and a noted philanthropist. He established Tel Aviv University’s Adams Institute for Business Management Information Systems and the Adams Super Center for Brain Research.

His son Sylvan Adams (b. 1958) took over Iberville Developments in 1990, and served as its CEO for the next 25 years, until making aliyah and settling in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, he took up professional cycling and in 2017 won the World Masters Championship in England. The following year, he opened the first indoor velodrome in Israel (and the entire Middle East). He gave 80 million shekels to bring the 2018 Giro d’Italia, one of cycling’s prestigious Grand Tours, to Israel, marking the first time that the tournament was held outside Europe. Adams has signed the Giving Pledge and is a huge philanthropist. He donated 100 million shekels to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center in 2019, and financed a new children’s hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. Earlier this week, he announced $100 million to Ben-Gurion University in the Negev to “rebuild and strengthen” the south of Israel following the October 7 massacre. His foundation provides doctoral scholarships at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and funds the Nefesh b’Nefesh “Bonei Zion Prize” for immigrants to Israel who make a profound impact on the country. He also donated $5 million to SpaceIL to develop Israel’s nascent space program and put an Israeli spacecraft on the moon. Adams is still cycling, and earlier this year won the UCI Cycling World Championships in his age category.

Chanukah Begins Tonight – Chag Sameach!

Chanukah & the Light of Creation

Words of the Week

We must support the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, and visit the gentile sick along with the Jewish sick, and bury the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, for the sake of peace.
Talmud, Gittin 61a

Jews of the Week: Esther Brandeau and Esther Abrahams

First Jews in Canada and Australia

Esther Abrahams, first Jew in Australia

Esther Abrahams (c. 1767-1846) was born in London, England to a poor Jewish family. As a struggling pregnant teenager, she was arrested for petty theft and sentenced to seven years in the new penal colony of Australia. Two months later, Esther and her baby were aboard the First Fleet: 11 ships of settlers, colonists, and prisoners headed for Australia. She arrived in Sydney in January of 1788, becoming the first Jewish person on the continent. During the voyage, she had met a British officer named George Johnston, and the two fell in love. They married and had seven children. In 1808, her husband led the Rum Rebellion in overthrowing the local British governor. Johnston became the new lieutenant-governor of the colony. While he was away for four years to defend himself against charges of mutiny, Esther ran his vast estate and business operations. Among her descendants are a number of notable Australian military and political leaders.

On the other side of the world, another Esther was the first Jew to set foot in Canada. Esther Brandeau (b. 1718) was born near Bayonne, France. To escape intense antisemitic persecution in France at the time, she dressed up as a Catholic man and got hired as a sailor for a voyage to the French colony of Quebec. Eventually, her true identity was discovered and she was arrested. Jews were forbidden from settling in Catholic Quebec at the time, and her desperate pleas for refuge were rejected. She was given an option to convert or be expelled. Brandeau chose the latter, and was shipped back to France. What happened to her afterwards is unknown. Her story has inspired at least three different novels and a play.

Words of the Week

Israel became the people conceived in slavery so that it would never cease to long for liberty…
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Jew of the Week: Two-Gun Cohen

The Jewish General Revered in China and Taiwan

Moszek Abram Miączyn (1887-1970) was born in Poland to a deeply religious Jewish family. When he was two years old, the family moved to England and changed their last name to Cohen. Growing up in poverty, he got into a lot of trouble and was sent to a Rothschild-funded school for wayward youth. In 1905, his parents sent him to Canada to work on a farm, hoping it would strengthen and mature the young man. Now known as Morris Cohen, he became a typical “cowboy” and, when not raising livestock, spent his time in saloons, playing cards, shooting guns, and ending up in jail on several occasions. Cohen befriended Chinese immigrants working on the Canadian Pacific Railway. At the time, racism and abuse against the Chinese was rampant, and Cohen soon gained a reputation as the only white man who stood up for them. This eventually brought him an invitation from Sun Yat-sen, renowned philosopher and freedom fighter, who led the resistance in overthrowing the Chinese monarchy and who is today revered as a founding father in both China and Taiwan. Cohen and Sun Yat-sen became close friends. Meanwhile, Cohen enlisted in the military during World War I, fighting valiantly and rising to the rank of sergeant. When he was shot and injured in his right arm, he decided he needed to learn how to shoot with his left, too, and carried a revolver on both sides, earning the nickname “Two-Gun Cohen”. Upon his return to Canada, Cohen found himself without money or work. He headed to China and rejoined Sun Yat-sen, becoming his advisor and aide-de-camp. He helped in building China’s railways, and at the same time trained Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary troops. Cohen became Sun Yat-sen’s personal bodyguard, and was given the Chinese name Ma Kun. After Sun Yat-sen’s passing, Cohen continued to work for the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party), and was given the rank of major-general in the Revolutionary Army. During World War II, Cohen fought alongside the Chinese against the Japanese. He was captured in one battle, imprisoned and tortured, and was only freed in December 1943 in a prisoner exchange. He settled in Montreal and got married. In 1947, as the UN vote on the partition of Israel approached, Cohen heard that China planned to oppose, so he reached out to his contacts and made sure the Chinese government would abstain, which they did. Cohen remained neutral during the China-Taiwan split in 1949, and was one of the few people in the world permitted to travel directly between the two countries, as he was admired in both. At his funeral in Manchester, England’s Blackley Jewish Cemetery in 1970, delegations from both China and Taiwan arrived, marking one of the rare occasions when the two governments appeared together in public. Cohen’s life inspired at least three films, including The Gunrunner, where Cohen’s character was played by Kevin Costner.

Words of the Week

Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.
– Heinrich Heine