The first Jewish Congregation in Canada west of Montreal.

In 1849 the trustees of the Toronto Hebrew Congregation purchased a site in Toronto from the Honorable John Beverley Robinson for the first Jewish cemetery west of Montreal. Regular religious services were not held in Canada West until 1856 when seventeen Jewish families in England and Continental Europe formed a congregation in Toronto. This group, after acquiring the cemetery in 1858, became known at as the Toronto Hebrew Congregation – Holy Blossom. They held services in a building on the southeast corner of Yonge and Richmond Streets until construction of their first synagogue in 1876 at 25 Richmond Street East. In 1897 they moved to 115 Bond Street and in 1938 to the present site.

The late Heinz Warschauer, once the synagogue’s director of education, determined the source of the synagogue’s name. He learned that the yad on the synagogue’s first Torah bears a Hebrew inscription which says the yad, scroll and all of the Torah ornaments have been given to “Pirchay Kodesh” in Toronto by Montreal’s Asher family. It so happened that the first meeting, held to form the congregation, was in the Asher family home. The translation of Pirchay Kodesh is Holy Blossoms. The reference appears to be to young men preparing for the priesthood who are sometimes referred to as Holy Blossoms. .

Holy Blossom has more than 6,500 members and celebrated its 155th anniversary in 2011. Although the Romanesque Revival style exterior is not unusual, that the building was constructed using concrete and other modern building materials, was unusual for a pre-World War II building. Because of the then innovative use of materials by architects Chapman and Oxley, the synagogue’s interior is uninterrupted by intrusive interior columns.