The Three Harrys

Julie Rekai Rickerd is a Toronto-based broadcaster and public-relations
consultant.

This memoir by the award-winning filmmaker Harry Rasky features his
recollections of growing up in a large immigrant Jewish family in
Toronto in the late 1920s and 1930s. With barely enough money to feed
their large brood, Rasky’s parents nevertheless found the means to
raise a close, loving, religious family. Butchering and preparing
chickens in the kosher way for resale to the Jewish community was the
family’s sole means of support. The entire family participated in the
enterprise: father as holy butcher, mother as plucker and cleaner, and
the children as deliverers.

Apart from the daily struggle for survival, the Jewish community was
faced with rabid anti-Semitism. Medical and hospital care for Jews was
limited (a circumstance that led to the founding of the Mount Sinai
Hospital), and there was a Jewish student quota at the University of
Toronto. Despite the hardships, the Raskys slowly improved their lives
through a dint of hard work and determination.

In this bittersweet tale of an extraordinary life, Harry Rasky creates
images as vivid as those he produces with his camera. The abundance of
typos and misspellings is an unfortunate distraction in an otherwise
excellent memoir.