Ontario Jewish Archives

Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre

Image of an architect exhibition. There are people walking around looking at art work and displays. There are brick walls surrounding the room with blue painted garage doors on the right side of the room, illuminated with bright lights on top. There is a big, black sign hanging from the ceiling that reads "Urbanspace Gallery."

Benjamin Brown: Architect exhibition, 2016, Ontario Jewish Archives, a community heritage organization nominated for the 2021 Heritage Toronto Awards. Image by Michael Rajzman.

Image of three people sitting at a table set up with plates, napkins, cups with bottles of drinks. There is a laptop with someone face timing. They are seated in a dining room inside a house.

Passover seder, 2019, Ontario Jewish Archives, a community heritage organization nominated for the 2021 Heritage Toronto Awards. Courtesy of the Ontario Jewish Archives.

A woman wearing blue gloves packing orders sitting on a chair at a table in a room.

Processing collections, Ontario Jewish Archives, a community heritage organization nominated for the 2021 Heritage Toronto Awards. Courtesy of the Ontario Jewish Archives.

A vault storage room filled with labelled brown boxes.

Ontario Jewish Archives Vault, a community heritage organization nominated for the 2021 Heritage Toronto Awards. Courtesy of the Ontario Jewish Archives.

Since 1973, the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA), Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre has been preserving the stories of Ontario’s Jewish community. It is the largest repository of Jewish life in Canada, containing millions of individual documents, photographs, films, posters, artifacts, oral histories, and architectural drawings. Reaching all the way back to the 1850s, the historical records explore virtually every aspect of Jewish daily life in Ontario. By making their collections publicly accessible, the OJA hopes that their resources can be useful to students, teachers, academics, artists, and families exploring their own heritage.

The OJA holds a number of public events throughout the year, all relating to the education and awareness of Jewish experiences in Ontario. This includes walking tours, exhibits, podcasts, webinars, and special projects focused on acquiring new valuable materials. The OJA also partners with community organizations to hold additional educational programming and highlight under-represented Jewish identities such as Jews of Colour, the B’nai Israel community, LGBTQ2S+ Jews, and the South African Jewish community.