at Oak Street and 11th Avenue. The Talmud Torah school annex moved into the Centre that same year. The Congregation Beth Israel was formally founded in 1932 and held services in the centre. In 1937 the Schara Tzedeck congregation decided to move to the Fairview area but was hampered by economic depression and war. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, many upper-class families left the West End for the new neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and Point Grey. The Jewish Administrative Council was established in 1932 to coordinate the Free Loan Association, Community Chest, and Community Centre. 1940s By the 1940s, Jewish population and community life began to centre on Oak Street in central Vancouver, south of the first Jewish Community Centre. The Talmud Torah school established its first independent facility in 1943 on West 14th Avenue between Oak and Cambie Streets. The Orthodox congregation Beth Hamidrash B'nai Ya'acov began in 1943, so its members could be within walking distance of their Fairview homes. The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, previously known as the Vancouver Peretz Institute or Shule, was established in 1945 near Oak Street as a secular-humanist educational and cultural centre. A home for elderly Jews was founded nearby in 1946, partly funded by American comedian Eddie Cantor. The Schara Tzedeck congregation finally dedicated its new synagogue here in 1948, as well as the Beth Israel synagogue in 1949. The Talmud Torah school moved to a new Oak Street campus in 1948 and became a day school for elementary grades. A Vancouver branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress was established in 1941. In 1944, the first Jewish funeral chapel was opened by Schara Tzedeck. Post World War II The post-World War II period saw a greater influx of central and eastern Canadian Jews, as well as the first wave of Sephardic Jewish immigration to British Columbia. The Council of Jewish Women was key in assisting and aiding the various refugees that came post-war, including forty-seven children orphaned by the Holocaust who came in 1948. In addition to Holocaust survivors, the next decades brought Jewish immigrants from Iraq, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. The first Sephardic High Holy Day services were held in 1966 at the Jewish Community Centre. A Sephardic congregation soon formed and used the Beth Hamidrash synagogue, whose membership had been shrinking. In 1979 the Sephardic congregation merged with the Beth Hamidrash Ashkenazic congregation. 1960s and 1970s The