Founding Families
In 1903, Aaron Rosen arrived in Berlin (now Kitchener) with two single men and a married couple. They found two Jewish families already living there, including John Lewis, who was by this time an established businessman. In 1904, Morris Taraday came from England. He married Rebecca Borovoy of Salem (near Elora, Ontario) in 1909 and they settled in Berlin, raising three sons and two daughters. Like Aaron Rosen, Jacob Cohen emigrated from Russia. When he came to Berlin in 1904, there were only nine or ten Jewish men there, barely a minyan. Jacob brought the rest of his family from the old country in 1906.
Between 1905 and 1913, many Jewish immigrants came to Canada, fleeing pogroms, the aftermath of recent war between Russia and Japan, and economic instability in Eastern Europe. Fourteen families came to Berlin during this period, five of them in 1906 alone. Four of these five – the families of C. Florance, Lazarus Yessen, Harry Jernberg and Charles Glass – were Russian; the Glasses had made a go of it in England before moving on to Canada. Other settlers who arrived at the turn of the last century included Morris Taraday and Jacob Silverstein. They also came via England, having tried to make a life there, while Benjamin Krammer had resided in the United States first. The Harry Gluckstein and Max Caliskey families, who settled in Berlin in 1904 and 1907 respectively, were British-born, though the Glucksteins were originally from Germany. Harry brought his parents Morris and Augusta over in 1906, and they moved in next door to him at 20 Maynard Avenue. Jac Jacobs’s family was also from Germany, while Jacob and Rachel Brown were Austrian.
Not all of these families remained in Berlin (Kitchener) and Waterloo; many were transient, coming for two or three years to try their luck, and then moving on in search of a new life and livelihood. The Rosen, Cohen, and Taraday families, however, were longstanding members of the Berlin (Kitchener) Jewish community. Aaron Rosen and Morris Taraday lived out their lives in the city and saw their grandchildren grow up there. The Bierstocks were another founding family. Samuel Bierstock and his wife Dora raised a family of seven children and still have descendents in the city today.
