Adath Israel Congregation — Synagogue in North York Toronto

Reviews of Adath Israel Congregation

• Penelope

  Added 2016.09.30

  Conservative shul with lots of kids programs.
• Maverick

  Added 2015.09.28

  When I was in Toronto just after my father passed away, I wanted to go to services on an early Friday evening to say Kaddish for my father at Adath Israel. My family used to belong to this synagogue years ago and it was close to where I was staying at my son's house. The whole experience was a disappointment from start to finish. First I had to walk around a huge building to find the one entrance that had a security guard to let me in. (I can understand this one). Then I had to meander through hallways until I could find the small chapel where the service would be held. No signs pointing the way were in evidence. There were pews facing the front. Behind the pews there were two large boardroom type tables. A bunch of men were sitting around the two tables. Nobody looked up. Nobody welcomed me. Finally I went over and sat down in the back row of the pews. I was early and the service was not scheduled to start for another twenty minutes. It was a good fifteen minutes before a man (one of the rabbis I think) came over to say hello and ask me if I was there to say Kaddish. I said that I was because our Shiva had lifted for the weekend at noon. Rather than making me feel welcome, he told me that the service would start shortly and then walked back to a group of men (the in-crowd, I am guessing) and sat back down with them. When the tenth man arrived so that there was a minyan, all of the men remained at the tables except the one man who ran the service from the front. I wasn't invited to the tables (and this is a Conservative, not an Orthodox synagogue) and was left sitting alone in the pews. Another woman showed up at the very last minute and sat in a pew across the aisle. I reached out to her; nobody else did. While I didn't expect huge outpourings of welcome or sympathy, I did expect more than I received, especially since I was in mourning and the one man who came up to me knew that. I can assure you that at my synagogue in Victoria (Congregation Emanu-El) nobody would be ignored or left to their own devices if they had walked in off the street the way I did at Adath Israel. The men at the tables were so caught up with impressing each other with how well they knew the prayers and the service that they didn't have the where-with-all to reach out to a stranger in their midst. How sad for them and for your shul. They certainly dropped the ball in being good ambassadors for Adath Israel.
• Savannah

  Added 2013.06.14

  The best shul ever!!