This year Benjamin’s marks more than a century of dedicated service to the Toronto Jewish community.
Our Jewish Traditions are especially important when a death occurs. They comfort us as we grieve and are a source of spiritual healing as we mourn. At Benjamin’s we make these rites and rituals meaningful for each family.
This sacred trust is the foundation on which Benjamin’s has been built. It has been for generations past and will continue to be in the generations to come.
Here, on this website, we share the most updated information on services, shivas, and unveilings. You will also find a wealth of information on our time-honoured Jewish mourning traditions.
If we can assist you in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Henry Benjamin came to Canada at the turn of the last century from Russia. He owned a grocery store on College Street in Toronto and had a wagon that he used to deliver groceries. Wagons were rare in the Jewish community at that time, so Henry was asked by Toronto’s first
Chevra Kadisha to help by using his wagon to deliver bodies for burial. At first, he did this because he felt a responsibility to his community. Over time, he became more and more deeply committed to the work of the
Chevra Kadisha.
When his son, Joe, was a young man, Joe helped his father prepare bodies for burial, and his father impressed upon him that taking care of the dead was a “sacred trust.”
That trust has been handed down to the third generation, Michael Benjamin and now to his children, Marc, Jordan, and Barbi, who are the fourth generation to honour and protect that trust. After university, Marc and Jordan qualified for their Funeral Director licenses, while Barbi gained her certificate of Human Resources. They are now forming the core executive team under Michael helping to guide Benjamin’s into the future.
In 1922, the Ontario government passed a law to regulate funerary services. From then, the cultural traditions of all ethnic and religious communities had to be practiced under the auspices of a licensed funeral home.
That year, H. Benjamin and Sons was established on Spadina Avenue to provide the proper legal framework for continued service by the members of this
Chevra Kadisha.
Joe Benjamin took over the company in 1939 and continued that sacred trust. He put the Chapel on a firm financial footing, assuring its continued service to the community.
While Henry’s worldview had been local, focused within a few square blocks in Toronto, Joe’s was much wider. He was an active participant in the Jewish Funeral Directors of America, expanding his expertise and helping to develop many of the standards of communication, practice, process, philosophy, and values that are characteristic of the North American Jewish funeral home.
In Joe’s 40 years, the chapel was known as H. Benjamin and Sons, Park Memorial Chapel, and finally Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel.
After university, Michael Benjamin, Joe’s son, studied to become a licensed funeral director in Ontario. He enhanced his training at Yeshiva University in New York and the Institute of Funeral Services in Evanston, Illinois. He studied Jewish ethical issues around burial with the late Rabbi Felder. He pursued an ambitious dream for a new funeral facility, custom-designed to meet the highest standard of care for the Jewish community.
Toronto’s Jewish community had spread up the “Bathurst spine” to the suburbs and across the city. What is more, the culturally and religiously homogeneous Judaism then practised started to splinter through immigration and new religious movements. Benjamin’s followed the community north and built a new Chapel within the city, the first designed specifically for Jewish funeral rituals.
Benjamin’s Park Memorial Chapel opened in 1977 on Steeles Avenue near Dufferin.
The Chapel has many unique and innovative features to better serve the growing community, providing the uniquely Jewish approach to burial.
Benjamin’s has now been serving the Toronto Jewish community for more than 100 years.