Historical records that have been uncovered and consulted suggest that the actual construction of the sanctuary that we use even now was completed in the early spring of 1925. However, the work on the Aron HaKodesh, which obviously could not begin until all else was completed, only began after that. It must have been a huge financial undertaking for the some 35 families resident in St. Catharines at the time to find the resources to underwrite such a huge undertaking as the building of a synagogue. To show just how hard it must have been, on Kol Nidre Night sometime around the end of the ’70s, a campaign was begun to find the donors to help build a new synagogue for Congregation B’nai Israel on Glendale Avenue. The synagogue had been left $100 000 in the will of Samuel Tomarin to be used to the beginning of construction of a new synagogue provided it was begun within 12 months. The sanctuary at the time of the campaign pitch ws filled all the way up to the back row of the Women’s balcony, meaning there were some 350 people seated inside, up and down. Even then, when times were pretty good, the money was not pledged. It was just too big an undertaking. Imagine that what it was like for some families in 1920, only in Canada for less than two decades, determining to build a synagogue. The picture above indicates a group of women sitting at a table at the St. Catharines Armories, newly erected to meet the needs of World War One. No one knows for sure about who is in the picture. It is not very easy to identify, but I am sure my grandmother, Sarah Slepkov, is there in the back row.
The view below shows the Aron HaKodesh completed in time for Yom Tov, 1925. We know this because on the bottom on the two sides of the tablets of the Ten Commandments, is written in Hebrew, “donated by the women’s auxiliary in September, 1925. When you visit, imagine how proud those original 35 or so families, new immigrants all, working to make ends meet six days a week, managed to undertaken the construction of such a magnificent structure.
