Endangered Yiddish Sign Is Saved
Image by Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre UJA Federation of Greater Toronto
It looks like Toronto’s now-famous Yiddish window sign will survive after all.
As on Friday, the last vestige of Yiddish in the Kensington Market neighborhood was papered over by a new tenant.
Furious neighbors, who thought workers had scraped the letters off the storefront window, relentlessly pursued the owners of the bubble-tea shop set to occupy the space. The goal: To keep the window in place or save it.
They succeeded.
“We met with the owner of FormoCha, who is a part-owner in the franchise on Baldwin,” Dara Solomon, director of the Ontario Jewish Archives, told the Forward in an email.
“He was very kind and understanding. He understands the significance of the glass sign to the Jewish community. He offered to give it to us and to fully cooperate with its removal. When asked if he would consider leaving it in place, he said he would discuss with his partner and designer,” Solomon wrote.
Solomon had led the charge to save the window, which once graced Mandel’s Creamery before John’s Caffe, an Italian restaurant, arrived. John’s kept the sign. ForMocha almost didn’t.
“This is all good,” she said. “We are relieved!”
But ForMocha’s owner did reveal that his contractors scraped off one letter before they realized what it was, Solomon said.
Michael Kaminer is a contributing editor at the Forward.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ includes 17% tariffs on Israeli imports, even as Israel cancels tariffs on US goods
-
Fast Forward Hillel CEO says he shares ‘concerns’ over campus deportations, calls for due process
-
Fast Forward Jewish Princeton student accused of assault at protest last year is found not guilty
-
News ‘Qatargate’ and the web of huge scandals rocking Israel, explained
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.