Jewish Archives & Historical Society of Edmonton & Northern Alberta

There are very few canonical Hebrew manuscripts worldwide known to have been written by a female scribe — this Esther Scroll is one of them.

Written on the 10th of Adar 1, 5527 (February 9, 1767) by Roman 14-year-old Luna Ambron, the richly decorated parchment sheet contains the ceremonial blessings and liturgical poems read on Purim. It is the centerpiece of our current exhibition, The Girl who Wrote: Luna Ambron’s Esther Scroll, bringing together the only three known Esther Scrolls and Purim blessing sheets signed by women, all produced in Italy. They are displayed alongside a selection of rare Hebrew manuscripts penned by female scribes, highlighting women’s often-overlooked contributions to Jewish manuscript culture.

Learn more about Luna Ambron and these manuscripts during an English-language gallery talk with curator Anna Nizza-Caplan on Tuesday, June 9 at 18:15. The talk is included with the cost of admission, please register in advance on the museum website.

[Esther Scroll and blessings sheet for Purim scribed by Luna, daughter of Leone Ambron. Rome, 1767. Handwritten on parchment; ink and tempera. The Israel Museum Collection: Purchased through the gift of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation to American Friends of the Israel Museum, in honor of Daisy Raccah-Djivre. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Zohar Shemesh]

In 1790, George Washington wrote a letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, that changed the meaning of America. 🕍✍️

He didn't just promise tolerance. He promised something far greater: "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Those words, borrowed from the congregation's own letter to him, became one of the most powerful statements of religious freedom in American history.

The Touro Synagogue, built in 1763, is the oldest surviving synagogue in North America. It was founded by Sephardic Jews, many of them descendants of families expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492, who had made their way through the Caribbean and finally to the shores of Rhode Island, a colony founded on the radical idea of religious liberty.

They built something extraordinary: a Georgian colonial masterpiece that looked like its New England neighbors on the outside, and felt like a piece of Jerusalem on the inside.

What does it mean that one of America's most sacred documents of religious freedom was written to a Jewish congregation? Drop a ✡️ in the comments if this is part of your story.

As we celebrate Jewish Heritage Month, we honour the individuals whose leadership and community spirit have built Jewish life in Edmonton. Their journeys include stories of immigration and new beginnings, perseverance in difficult times, families creating opportunity and people whose dedication strengthened the community we know today.

One of these stories belongs to Robert Rosen, whose life reflects the values of service and commitment to community. These same values informed his leadership as president of City Lumber, an Alberta-based manufacturing and supply company that grew under his steady direction.

Robert’s contributions are featured in the book, Leadership and Legacy: Notable Jewish Edmontonians, a new publication from the Jewish Archives & Historical Society of Edmonton & Northern Alberta. His story is part of a collection that honours individuals whose efforts supported Jewish life in our city.

Wednesday, May 27
7:30 p.m.
Audreys Books (lower level)

Jewish communities have been part of Canada for over two centuries, contributing to the country’s social, cultural and civic landscape, and these contributions feel especially significant as we celebrate Jewish Heritage Month. Enshrined by Parliament in 2018, this month also serves as a reminder of the ongoing need to combat antisemitism.

Within this context, the life of Senator Paula Simons offers an important perspective. Growing up in a family with deep roots in Alberta’s Jewish community, she was introduced at an early age to stories of displacement and persecution. These experiences continue to inform how she approaches public conversations about Jewish identity and antisemitism, and they shape the respect she brings to discussions about cultural heritage.

Her story appears in Leadership and Legacy: Notable Jewish Edmontonians, a new publication from the Jewish Archives & Historical Society of Edmonton & Northern Alberta. A closer look at her work, including her interventions on issues related to antisemitism in her senatorial role, reflects her commitment to ensuring that the lessons carried through her family’s history remain part of Canada’s public dialogue.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the launch on Wednesday, May 27.

7:30 p.m.
Audreys Books (lower level)

Space is limited. Please RSVP by May 20 at [email protected] or 780 489 2809

Today landmarks across Canada will shine blue in honour of Canadian Jewish Heritage Month.

Here in Edmonton, the Alberta Legislature will be illuminated—thank you to the YourAlberta (Government of Alberta) for marking this important moment and celebrating the contributions of Jewish Canadians.

Take a moment to visit, share, and celebrate Jewish pride in our community and across the country.

Celebrating Jewish Heritage Month offers an opportunity to recognize the many ways Jewish Edmontonians have contributed to the life of this city across generations. Their work has advanced medicine, law, public service and the broader community in lasting ways.

Among these individuals, Justice Mel Binder and Dr. Anne Fanning Binder stand out for their shared commitment to public responsibility. Their devotion to the law and to public health reflects a partnership grounded in social justice, ethical leadership and a belief in contributing to the common good.

To learn more about their contributions, you are invited to the launch of Leadership and Legacy: Notable Jewish Edmontonians, the new publication from the Jewish Archives & Historical Society of Edmonton & Northern Alberta that includes their story along with those of many others who have enriched Jewish life in this region.

Wednesday, May 27
7:30 p.m.
Audreys Books (lower level)

Space is limited. Please RSVP by May 20 at [email protected] or 780 489 2809

It's time! We're joining institutions across Canada and sharing our collections. April's theme is !

This month, we've selected archival materials related to or depicting workers to honour those who contributed to Alberta's various labour industries:

Logging in Mayerthorpe, c1932; Wolochow family fonds
Taking a Break, c1950; David Pasternak fonds
Playing Horseshoes in the Field, c1950; David Pasternak fonds
Alberta Polytubes Limited, c1950; Soifer family fonds
Plastics Factory, c1950; Soifer family fonds

September 1943. The Greek island of Zakynthos.
When Germany seized control from retreating Italian forces, their orders arrived immediately — the same orders they had carried out across Poland, France, Hungary, and a dozen other occupied territories.
Find the Jews. List them. Deport them.
Zakynthos had a small, established Jewish community — roughly 275 people. Families who had lived on the island for generations. Shopkeepers, fishermen, teachers. Neighbors.
The German commander summoned the two men who ran the island: Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the senior Greek Orthodox bishop, and Mayor Loukas Karrer. His demand was simple.
Deliver a complete list of every Jewish resident within twenty-four hours.
This was standard procedure. Use local leaders to do the paperwork. Force them to betray their own people. Make the machinery of genocide run on local hands.
Chrysostomos and Karrer had one day to decide.

The next morning, they returned.
They handed the commander a piece of paper.
According to the survivors and families who carried this story forward for decades, there were exactly two names on it.
Metropolitan Chrysostomos. Mayor Loukas Karrer.
If Jews are to be deported from this island, start with us.
Whether that exact confrontation happened precisely as remembered — historians have debated the details — the documented truth is beyond dispute: both men refused to provide names. They refused to cooperate. And then they did something that would define Zakynthos forever.
They sent word across the entire island.
Hide them.

And 7,000 people listened.
Every Jewish family disappeared — not into silence, but into the embrace of an entire community that had decided, together, that these were their neighbors and no order from any occupying force would change that.
Some families were hidden in mountain villages. Others with farmers in the countryside. Fishermen concealed people in boats and coastal caves. Children were taught Christian prayers to recite if questioned. Jewish families were introduced to soldiers as distant relatives displaced by war.
The risks were not abstract. N**i policy was explicit: harboring Jews meant ex*****on — not just for the individual, but for entire households. Collective punishment. Whole villages destroyed for a single act of defiance.
The people of Zakynthos knew this. They chose solidarity anyway.

The Germans searched.
House-to-house inspections. Interrogations. Rewards offered for information. Threats issued for deception.
They found no one.
Because when an entire community makes the same choice — when fishermen, farmers, priests, and teachers all agree to protect the same secret — even the Gestapo runs out of doors to knock on.
The N**is couldn't arrest 7,000 people. They couldn't execute an entire island. They couldn't torture a whole population into breaking.
So the Jewish families stayed hidden. For over a year.

When Allied forces liberated Zakynthos in the autumn of 1944, all 275 men, women, and children emerged from hiding.
Every single one. Alive. Safe.
Across Greece during the Holocaust, roughly 90% of the Jewish population was murdered. The ancient Jewish community of Thessaloniki — one of the largest in Europe — was nearly wiped out entirely.
On Zakynthos: 100% survived.
Not because of luck. Not because the N**is were less thorough there.
Because an entire island decided that their neighbors' lives mattered more than their own safety.

In 1978, Yad Vashem — Israel's Holocaust memorial — recognized Metropolitan Chrysostomos and Mayor Karrer as Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust.
But two names felt incomplete.
So in 1979, Israel planted the Zakynthos Forest — thousands of trees — in honor of the whole island. Because 275 people didn't survive because of two brave men.
They survived because 7,000 ordinary people made an extraordinary choice.

We remember individual heroes because single protagonists are easier to tell stories about.
But Zakynthos had 7,000 heroes.
Every farmer who shared scarce grain. Every neighbor who kept the secret one more day. Every fisherman who said nothing when soldiers came to the shore.
Most of us will never be in a position to single-handedly change the course of history.
But all of us can be part of a community that chooses protection over silence.
That's what Zakynthos proved — and what it still proves today.
When everyone protects their neighbor, there is no list to hand over.
When 7,000 people say no together, even the Third Reich has to walk away.

In honor of Yom Hashoah, we are sharing the story of Ilona Kellner, known as Ica, who saved more than 600 Jewish recipes during the holocaust.

For Ica, recipes were an act of resistance in the darkest of places.

During the last year of World War II, when she was imprisoned at Auschwitz and later a subcamp of Buchenwald, Ica and the women she lived with were fed scraps, barely enough food to survive. But “in the evenings, they huddled together in the barracks and talked about food,” says her daughter Eva Moreimi.

“Talking about food and remembering beloved family dishes gave them hope and a will to live. It was essential for their survival,” Eva writes in the memoir “Hidden Recipes.” As a prisoner, Ica worked in the Hessisch Lichtenau munitions factory as a translator and messenger.

While cleaning the factory one day, she found a stack of paper in the trash and discreetly grabbed them. On one side were munitions orders, discharge bills, inventories and memos, but the other was blank. Along with a small pencil she found, Ica started to write down the recipes the women shared in the evenings.

She often wrote the name of the person who shared it, noting the name Piri next to a recipe for sweet buns called darázsfészek, which means wasp nest in Hungarian.

From August 1944 to the spring of 1945, Ica collected more than 600 recipes, which she carefully hid from the guards in a small pouch she made and tied to the inside of her coat. She carried them with her, even on a death march where on one of the final days before the women were liberated, Piri was shot by an SS guard.

“The recipes my mother wrote and collected during the Holocaust were very precious to her,” Eva writes. She brought them back to her hometown of Plešivec in Czechoslovakia and finally to the United States.

“Throughout her life, when she was in the mood to bake, which was often, she looked through the recipe collection to help her decide what to make.” By baking recipes like the darázsfészek, she kept the legacy of women like Piri alive.

You can find Ica's wasp nest recipe here: bit.ly/icawaspnest