Toronto's Jewish community is the most populous and one of the oldest in the country, forming a significant part of the history of the Jews in Canada.

[2] The community in Toronto is composed of many different Jewish ethnic divisions, reflecting waves of immigration which started in the early 19th century.

[citation needed] Mendel Ryman, who immigrated to Toronto from Jezierna, a town in the Austrian Empire, in 1903, built the first Jewish bathhouse and mikvah (shvitz) on Centre Avenue.

[11] Between Queen and Bloor Streets, toward Dovercourt, Jews established a distinct domicile, forming the ethnic majority in many areas.

Often, employment opportunities determined the areas in which the Jews settled, as in the case of the Spadina district, a hub of the textile industry.

With the election of the first Parti Québécois government in 1976 and the looming prospect of Quebec independence, many members of Montreal's largely anglophone Jewish community migrated to Toronto.

[12] Simultaneously, Toronto Jews left the crowded confines of the ethnic neighbourhoods within the city's core, retreating to the near suburbs along Bathurst Street.

[13] In the 1990s and early 2000s, many Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrated to Canada, approximately 70% of whom chose to settle in Greater Toronto.

As a result, only small groups of Austrian and German Jews fleeing Hitler found a safe haven in Toronto during this period.

[19] In 1849, Abraham Nordheimer purchased land for a cemetery on behalf of the Toronto Hebrew Congregation, an Orthodox synagogue that became known as the Daytshishe Shul.

[20] In the decades leading up to World War I, the community established Jewish afternoon schools, theatres, a newspaper, Benjamin's Funeral Chapel, and mutual-aid societies.