This Day, May 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
May 22
334 BCE: The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great
defeated Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. This was the first
step of a “journey” that would lead to the turning Egypt and Asia Minor (a
territory that included Jerusal…
May 22
334 BCE: The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great
defeated Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. This was the first
step of a “journey” that would lead to the turning Egypt and Asia Minor (a
territory that included Jerusalem and Judea) into bastions of Hellenistic
culture. This would create a collision
course with Jewish values that would lead to the Maccabee Revolt followed by
decades of internecine fighting that would really not come to an end until the
Second Temple was destroyed.
124 BCE (23rd
of Iyar, 3618): Simon the Hasmonean,
drove the “Greeks” – the Syrians and their Hellenized Jewish allies – out of
the citadel which was their last stronghold in Jerusalem. While Jews celebrate
Chanukah, it is this victory, 40 years later, under Judah’s youngest brother
that marks the defeat of the Syrians that led to an independent Jewish state
under the Hasmonean dynasty.
337: Constantine, known as the first Christian
Emperor of the Roman Emperor for legalizing the practice of Christianity in the
Roman Empire passed away. As the following entry shows, Constantine not only
promoted Christianity, he was instrumental in the creation of hostile
environment for the Jewish people. “Constantine instituted several legislative
measures regarding the Jews: they were forbidden to own Christian slaves or to
circumcise their slaves. Conversion of Christians to Judaism was outlawed.
Congregations for religious services were restricted, but Jews were allowed to
enter Jerusalem on Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the
Temple. Constantine also supported the separation of the date of Easter from
the Jewish Passover stating in his letter after the First Council of Nicaea:
"... it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most
holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously
defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted
with blindness of soul. ... Let us then have nothing in common with the
detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different
way." Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History 1.9 records the Epistle of the
Emperor Constantine addressed to those Bishops who were not present at the
Council: "It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the
custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their
hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are
necessarily blinded. ... Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews,
who are our adversaries. ... avoiding all contact with that evil way. ... who,
after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are
guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their
innate madness carries them. ... a people so utterly depraved. ... Therefore,
this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have anything
in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. ... no single
point in common with the perjury of the Jews."
1176: Murder attempt by the Hashshashin (Assassins)
on Saladin near Aleppo. This attempt on the Muslim Warrior-King was part of the
on-going clash between sects of Islam.
From the Jewish point of view, Saladin’s survival is good news. After capturing Jerusalem from the Crusaders,
Saladin allowed the Jews to return to the City of David during a century long
ban imposed by the Christians. The event
was eloquently described by the Jewish poet Al-harizi in 1190. Saladin reportedly hired Moses Maimonides to
serve as his personal physician.
1370: After
killing a rich Jew in Brussels, Belgium, the perpetrators tried to cover their
tracks by accusing the Jews of host desecration. The perpetrators escaped in
the ensuing confusion. A few hundred Jews were killed and the rest banished
from the country. A holiday was declared by the local churches.
1377: Pope
Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English
theologian John Wycliffe. Wycliffe’s doctrines were part of the heresies
threatening Papal authority throughout northern Europe. This is the same Pope
Gregory who had ordered the burning of Jewish books a year earlier in 1376, an
act that might be seen more as a way of enforcing Papal authority and the
primacy of the Roman Catholic Church.
1549: Queen
Bona Sforza rendered a decision today issued “regulations modifying and
defining the rights of the Jewish community of Grodno” including a requirement
that Jews “pay 17 percent of the taxes the government assessed against the
city” while freeing the Jews “from special taxes paid in kind” but denying the
Jews to “buy a house from a citizen without royal permission.
https://www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/lists/je_grodno.htm
1608: Jacob
Wolfgang, a German Jew who converted to Christianity became a reader at the
Bodleian Library today.
1649:
Birthdate of “German Orientalist,” Matthew Frederick Beck, the Augsburg
“preacher” who “published a translation of the Targum on Chronicles” and the
translator of “several other works from including a description of “the travels
of Benjamin of Tudela.” (As reported by Joseph Jacobs and Richard Gottheil)
1753(18th
of Iyar 5513): Lag B’Omer
1753: The
Jewish Naturalization Act 1753 passed the House of Commons
1760(7th of
Sivan, 5520): Second Day of Shavuot
1760: Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Rubin of Linsk and his Beila the daughter of Rabbi Yitzchak
Halevi Horowitz of Hamburg gave birth to Rabbi Naftali Zvi Horowitz of
Ropshitz, “the first Ropshitzer Rebbe”
1760(7th of
Sivan, 5520): Rabbi Israel (Yisroel) ben Eliezer (רבי ישראל בן אליעזר better
known as the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chasidic Judaism, passed away.
[Hopefully this brief entry will spur readers to find out more about a person
who had such an impact on the Jewish people.]
http://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/388609/jewish/The-Baal-Shem-Tov.htm
1768(6th
of Sivan, 5528): Shavuot
1771: Today
Moses de Lyon married Rose Solomons in New York City.
1779(7th
of Sivan, 5539): Shabbat and the Second Day of Shavuot
1779:
Birthdate of Hyam Jonas, the son Lyon Jonas, who died a month after his birth.
1787: In
London, Daniel Cohen D'Azevedo, the son of Haham Moses Cohen d'Azevedo and Sara
de Haham Moses Cohen D'Azevedo and his
wife Ester Rodriques Cohen D'Azevedo gave birth to Abagail Daniel Cohen De
Azevedo
1793(17th of
Iyar 5553): Rabbi Ezekeil Landau passed away. Born in 1713, in Prague, he was a
brilliant Talmudist and Halachic authority. Landau was also unusual in that he
endorsed the idea of leaning math and science, and supported the traditionalist
element within the Maskilim (Enlightenment) movement. Landau helped to
establish the first Jewish school in Prague. His magnum opus is called the
Nodeh B'Yehuda which is still very popular today. It contains eight hundred and
fifty-five Responsa divided into two volumes.
1796(14th
of Iyar, 5556): Pesach Sheni observed for the last time during the Presidency
of George Washington.
1799: In
Paris, Le Moniteur Universal published a short statement sent from the French
forces besieging Acre that: "Buonaparte a fait publier une proclamation,
dans laquelle il invite les juifs de l'Asie et de l'Afrique à venir se ranger
sous ses drapeaux, pour rétablir l'ancienne Jérusalem; il en a déjà armé un
grand nombre, et leurs bataillons menacent Alep." This has been translated
in English as: "Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites
all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to
re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great
number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo.”
Unbeknownst to the newspaper, Napoleon had already abandoned the siege
of the Acre, leaving it in the hands of the Ottomans and surrendering his
designs to create a French empire in the Orient.
1800: In
Hamburg, Germany, Jette and Nathan Levy gave birth to Moses Nathan Levy who was
the husband of Sophie and Haanchen Levy with whom he had seven children.
1802:
Birthdate Bavarian poet Leopold Feldmann.
1804:
Birthdate of Pharmacologist Jonathan Perieira, the native of London whose “book
on Materia Medica was the first great English work on Pharmacology.”
1806(5th
of Sivan, 5566): Erev Shavuot observed as Lewis and Clark made their way
through what is now Montana on their way to the Pacific coast.
1809(7th of
Sivan, 5569): Second Day of Shavuot
1811:
Birthdate of Leopold Löw, Hungarian rabbi and theologian.
1813:
Birthdate of composer Richard Wagner.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Wagner.html
1814: Birthdate
of Joshua Heschel Schoor, “Galician Hebrew scholar, critic, and communal
worker.”
1817(7th
of Sivan, 5577): Second day of Shavuot; Yizkor for the first time during the
Presidency of James Monroe.
1820:
Birthdate of Isidor Binswanger, a leader of the Philadelphia Jewish community
who served as President of Maimonides College, the first Jewish institution of
higher learning in the United States and the father of Fanny Binswanger
Hoffman.
1823: In
London, Abraham Jacob Mocatta and the former Miriam Brandon gave birth to
Miriam Mocatta.
1825(5th
of Sivan, 5585): Erev Shavuot celebrated for the first time during the
Presidency of John Q. Adams.
1835:
Sixty-eight year old Isaac Lazarus was buried today at the Brady Street Jewish
Cemetery.
1836(6th
of Sivan, 5596): Shavuot is celebrated for the last time under the Presidency
of Andrew Jackson.
1838: In
Manchester, England, Phillip Solomon and Catherine Hart gave birth to Jacob P.
Solomon, who studied at Notre Dame and earned a law degree from Columbia before
marrying Frances Stitch and becoming the editor of several publications
including the Jewish Record and the Hebrew Leader while also writing
“Chronicles of the Rabbis” “Chips from Masonic Quarries” and “The Modern
Wandering Jew.”
1839(9th of
Sivan, 5599): Yisroel ben Shmuel Ashkenazi of Shklov, a disciple of the Vilna
Gaon who “became the head of the German and Polish congregations of Safed and
then of Jerusalem” passed away today at Tiberias
1842: Two days
after she had passed away, Esther Norden, the daughter of Jacob Norden and
Catherine Jacobs was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road ) Jewish
Cemetery.”
1843: “The
first major wagon train” heading for that part of the Northwest Territory now
known as Oregon…”departs from Elm Grove, Missouri traveling along the Oregon
Trail. According to Scott Cline, author
of Community Structure on the Urban Frontier: The Jews of Portland, Oregon
Jacob Goldsmith and Lewis May who arrived in Portland, Oregon in 1849. They
were the first Jewish settlers in Portland and possibly in all of Oregon.
1843:
Birthdate of Adolf Aron Baginsky, a leading German physician who was a staunch
defender of his people against the growing anti-Semitism in his homeland. “He
is also the author of an essay entitled, "Die Hygienische Bedeutung der
Mosäischen Gesetzgebung," in which he comes forward as a stanch defender
and enthusiastic admirer of the hygienic laws of Moses” and as a leader of the
Berlin Jewish community opposed moving Sabbath services to Sunday.
1846: One day
after she had passed away, Catherine Barnet, the wife of Godfrey Barnet, was
buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”
1846: A wagon
train owned by Albert Speyer left Independence, MO today headed for Santa Fe
New Mexico. A native of Prussia, Speyer
had been operating wagon trains since 1843.
Two of the 25 wagons making this trip were reportedly filled with Yager
rifles and ammunition that had been ordered by Angel Trias, the governor of
Chihuahua, Mexico. At this time, Santa
Fe was still a part of Mexico and Speyer had no way of knowing the United
States was about to go to war with its neighbor to the south.
1847(7th
of Sivan, 5607): 2nd Day of Shavuot, Yizkor observed for the first
time during the ministry of John Russell
in the United Kingdom.
1848: In Bavaria,
Ephraim and Lea Kopple Waldstein gave birth to Zadok “Oskar” Waldstein, the
brother of Sophie Waldstein.
1848:
Birthdate of Elise Lehmann who was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Morgan
City, LA, when she passed away in 1923.
1850: The
following article published today entitled “Paris—Foundation of a Jewish
Hospital” described work being done to establish a Jewish hospital in Paris and
provided a snapshot of the French Jewish community.
The editor of
the “Archives Israelites,” in his May number, says: “Among the establishments,
the most imperiously demanded is a Jewish hospital. Let the individual opinions
of each of us concerning our ceremonies, especially those which concern
dietetic laws, be more or less rigid, it is nevertheless the duty of an Israelitish
administration to take care of those under their charge, who would sooner die
than enter an hospital, where the observance of their religious rules is
impossible. Moreover, when we think of the interference of the clergy, who seek
to fish for souls, and who often find auxiliaries against the tolerant wishes
of the directors of hospitals, in the sisters (of charity) who attend on the
sick, no one can deny that a Jewish hospital is necessary.”—After some farther
remarks he continues: “Thanks to Mr. James Rothschild, Paris will have a Jewish
hospital. He has just purchased a piece of ground in Rue Picpus, Nos. 62, 64,
and 66, measuring 7,500 metres, of which 800 are occupied by buildings, and the
other 6,700 are laid out in gardens, walks, &c. The buildings consist of
three houses contiguous to each other. The price of the purchase, with the
expenses and building, will reach nearly 120,000 francs, about $22,800. A large
portion of the land can be taken, independently of the hospital, for the use of
the poor class.” The consistory of Paris very properly called on Mr.
Rothschild, on the 22d of May, to thank him for his generosity. Dr. Cahen, in a
few, well-chosen words, expressed the gratitude felt by the whole community,
and used this remarkable phrase: “God has given you wealth, but He has also
given you a heart to make, so charitable a use of it as this is.” Mr. R. was
greatly moved by the act, and the words addressed to him; and made a suitable
reply. His wife was present, and active as she is in all that is charitable,
she took part in the conversation which afterwards sprang up between them and
the deputation, and Mr. R. made particular inquiries after many matters of
interest to the congregation, and showed himself ready to continue them his
kindness.—It is not often, our readers will confess, that we praise the rich;
but such an act of true benevolence as this just exhibited by Mr. Rothschild of
Paris richly deserves to be recorded in our magazine; and we hope to hear that
he has found imitators in this country; for though we have none who control
such ample resources, there is no lack of means among us, if their possessors
could once be persuaded that they could devote a considerable portion of their
wealth to worthy objects of charity without robbing their families, the usual
1851(20th of
Iyar, 5611): Mordecai Manuel Noah, author, diplomat and one of the most
influential Jewish leaders in the first half of the 19th century passed away.
Born in 1785, he was a diplomatic representative for the U.S.in North Africa
when the new nation was making its foray into the Moslem world. In a later episode he gained the support of
Adams, Jefferson and Madison (all founding fathers and U.S. Presidents) in
reiterating the American belief in the separation of church and state. He may best be remembered for his attempt to
create a utopian refuge for displaced European Jewry on an island on the
Niagara River called Ararat. [Editor’s
note: this blog does not have a enough space to do justify to the life of this
fascinating Jewish American leader who set the tone for American Jewry – proud
to be both Jewish and a citizen of the United States.]
1851: In
Luxembourg, Rabbi Samuel Hirsch and his wife gave birth to Emil Gustav Hirsch,
the American Rabbi was a major leader of Reform Judaism.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1952_04_02_00_martin.pdf
1852:
Birthdate of Emil Gustav Hirsch the son of Rabbi Samuel Hirsh and the
son-in-law of Rabbi David Einhorn who was a major leader in the Reform movement
in the United States.
1853(14th
of Iyar, 5613): Pesach Sheni
1853(14th
of Iyar, 5613): Hebraist Marcus (Maier) Fisher, the Vienna born son Rabbi Moses
Fischer and author of the history Toledot Yeshurun Taḥat Malke
Moritaniyya passed away today in Prague.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/6149-fischer-marcus-maier
1853: In
Baden, Germany a local brewer and his wife gave birth to William Simon, who at
the age of 18 came to the United States where worked for different brewers
before settling in Buffalo in 1888 and
in 1894 becoming the sole
proprietor of the John Schusler Brewing Company while raising two sons and
three daughters with the former Theresa Bronsetetter.
1854: At
Freetown, Prince Edward Island, Robert and Lydia Schurman gave birth to Jacob
Gould Schurman who in 1905, while serving as President of Cornell University,
sent a check to Jacob H. Schiff, the treasurer of the Jewish Relief Fund along
with a letter that said, “I enclose herewith my check for the fund in relief of
the suffering Jews of Russia, whose terrible condition appeals to the universal
heart of mankind.
1855(5th
of Sivan, 5615): Erev Shavuot observed on the same day a tornado touched down
in Norwood Park killing three and injuring six in what was one of the Chicago
area’s earliest severe weather events.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-05-22-0505220066-story.html
1856:
Astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt discovered asteroid 41 Daphne.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13959-spielmann-marion-h
1858(9th
of Sivan, 5618): Maimonides scholar David Ottensosser passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0015_0_15272.html
1859(18th of
Iyar, 5619): Lag B’Omer
1859: Lipman
Nathan and Phoebe Silver were married today in London.
1860: Today,
“in the United States Senate” Louisiana Senator “Judah P. Benjamin spoke in
scathing terms of Stephen A. Douglas and lauded Lincoln, the question under
consideration being measures introduced by Jefferson Davis on the subject of
States Rights and Slavery.” (Benjamin was Jewish – the rest were not.) http://web.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/history/lincoln_jews.pdf
1861: In
Philadelphia, Abraham and Cecilia (Adler) Goldmsith gave birth to Milton
Goldsmith the President of Goldsmith – Tobias Advertising Agency and the author
of Rabbi and Priest and A Victim of Conscience who was the husband of
Sophie Hyman.
1864: During
the Civil War, the Red River Campaign in which Colonel H. Newbold of the 14th
Iowa was killed came to an end.
1866: Daniel
DeLeon arrived in Hamburg from Curacao.
1867: One day
after he had passed away, 56 year old Asher Jacobs the son of Isaac and
Catherine Jacobs and the husband of Caroline Cohen was buried today in
Sheerness, at the “Halfway (Queensborough) Jewish Cemetery.”
1869:
Ferdinand Esterhazy, the real villain in the Dreyfus Affair began his military
career by joining the Roman Legion today having failed the entrance exams for
Saint-Cyr.
1871: In
Detroit, Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at Beth-El Congregation and the former
Johanna Einhorn, the “third daughter of leading Reform Rabbi David Einhorn”
gave birth to Max James Kohler, the Columbia Law School graduate and assistant
U.S. District Attorney who was a leader of the American Jewish community and an
advocate for immigrant rights, regardless of their nation of origin.
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/max_/Max%20James%20Kohler.pdf
1871(2nd
of Sivan, 5631): Thirty-seven-year-old Paris born French Army Captain Jules
Benjamin Brandon, the “scion of an ancient Sephardic family that went to France
from Spain after the expulsion in 1492” and the nephew by marriage of Jewish
historian Joseph Salvador who was
captured by the Prussians at Sedan was killed today by “a stray bullet” while
leading his artillery battery in Paris after which he was eulogized “as one of
the best and bravest officers of the second army corp.
1871: Reverend
Howard Crosby chaired a meeting at New York’s Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church
where plans were discussed to explore the area along the Jordan River this
October. The explorers hoped to find
tombs of the Israelite Kings, the Ark of the Covenant and/or the tablets of
stone. Crosby pointed out that a
previous expedition had found a large Moabite stone with letters that were more
like English than ancient Hebrew.
1872: “Another
Influential Southerner Declares For Grant” published today described the
decision of Georgia General Henry C. Wayne to support the man who defeated the
Confederacy because he did not want to support a party “being carried in the
pockets of a foreign Jew banker” referring to August Belmont.
1873:
Birthdate of Polish native Herman Gessner who was chosen to serve on the National
Executive Committee at the Convention of the ZOA held in Cleveland in 1921:
1874(6th
of Sivan, 5634): Shavuot
1875:
Henrietta Held joined the people of Israel in conversion ceremony held
following afternoon services at a the synagogue located on Sixth Street near
Second avenue in New York City
1877:
Birthdate of Rangoon native and barrister Elisha Arakie Cohen the first husband
of journalist Ruth Collie whom he married in 1908 in Cambridge, England.
1878: The
funeral of Rabbi Samuel M. Isaacs took place this morning at Shaari Tephila on
West 44th Street in New York City.
Rabbis A.S. Solomon, Menes and Morais of Philadelphia participated in
the service. Burial took place at Cypress
Hill Cemetery
1880(12th
of Sivan, 5640): Controversial reforming Rabbi Joseph Aub passed away in
Berlin.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2104-aub-joseph
1880:
Birthdate of Posen native Felix Pinner, the German “economist and journalist”
who came to the United States as a refugee in 1937
1880: In
Hungary, Jacob and Chaia (Blum) Klein gave birth to David Klein, the holder of
a Ph.D from NYU and member of the English Department at CCNY who was the
husband Hannah Heerschorn as well a member of the Jerusalem University Library
committee and the Jewish Publication Society.
1883: One
hundred thirty houses belonging to Jews were destroyed during a riot tonight at
Rostoff. The riot began after it was
reported that an unnamed Jew had murder a Russian.
1884: In St.
Louis, Sarah Greengard and Lee Myers gave birth to “College of Physicians and
Surgeons” trained ear, nose and throat surgeon Eugene Lee Myers, the husband of
Faletia Ray and bronchoscopist at the Jewish Hospital in St. Louis who was the
“assistant auto-rhino-laryngologist at the Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and a
member of B’nai El Congregation.
1885: In
Illinois, Max and Sophia Reens Brunwasser gave birth to Jacob H. “Jack”
Brunwasser, the third of their six children.
1885: French
author Victor Hugo passed away. His works included “Cromwell,” a play about the
English leader that included a portrayal of Manasseh Ben Israel that was “a
grotesque travesty, ” “Marie Tudor” a
play that includes a “despicable Jewish ursuer” and “Toquemada,” a play about
the Spanish Inquisition that was really “a protest against the Pogroms in
Russia” that were occurring at the time of the play’s production.
1886(17th
of Iyar, 5646): Parashat Bechukotai
1886(17th
of Iyar, 5646): Seventy-six-year-old Martha Ezekiel, the Dutch born daughter of
Hanna Rebecca Israel and Ezekiel Jacob Ezekiel and the wife Jacob Abraham Lev
with whom she had eleven children, passed away today after which she buried in
Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond, VA.
1887: In
Providence, R.I., “Herman and Sarah (Eisenberg) Boas gave birth to Brown,
University of Chicago and Harvard educated English professor Ralph Boas and
husband of Louise Schultz who gave birth to mathematician Ralph Boas, Jr while
teaching at Whitman College and who taught at Holyoke where his son spent his
gap year.
1889: In Dombrad,
Hungary, Chana Moskovitz and her shoemaker husband Vilmos Maltz gave birth to
Herman Maltz, the founder Maltz Furniture Company in Los Angeles, CA.
1889:
Newspaper coverage published today described the new building of the Moses
Montefiore Congregation in Bloomington, Illinois “as, not only the handsomest
and most unique in design of any building in the city, but comparable to the
best of any Jewish synagogue in the West” and went on to say that the
construction “was accomplished by a group of 24 members.”
1890(3rd
of Sivan, 5650): Fifty year old Edmund H. Abrahams, the son of Alexander and
Hannah Abrahams, the husband of Cecelia Solomons Abrahams and father of Edmund
H. Abrahams passed away today.
1891(11th
of Sivan, 5762): Louis Raphael who had shot his fiancée Rachel Weinberg before
turning the gun on himself died today from the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
1891(14th
of Iyar, 5651): Pesach Sheni
1891: Two days
after he had passed away, three days after he had passed away, Alfred Goldsmid,
the son of Alexander Goldsmid and Eliza Israel and the husband of Constance
August Mocatta, was buried in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1891: Sir
Robert Fowler who in 1883, while serving as Lord Mayor of London refused to
allow Adolf Stocker, the German “Jew-baiter” to lecture at the Mansion House
passed away today.
1891: “Dr.
Henry M Leipziger” published today described the career of the newly elected
Assistant Superintendent of the New York Public Schools who had become the
Director of the Hebrew Technical Institute in 1884 where he transformed the
school in “a model institution of this kind.”
1892: It was
reported today that in 1891 The Maimonides Library circulations amounted to
47,471, an increase of 20 per cent over that of 1890 and 30 per cent over that
of 1888.
1893: A number
of the Polish and Russian Jews who arrived yesterday aboard the SS Amalfi are
being held at Ellis Island because they are destitute which means they may not
be able to enter the United States.
1893: In an
interview with a reporter from the New York Times, Rabbi Adolph Rabin denied
accusations that he had not provided solace and comfort to convicted murders
Isaac Rosenwig and Harris Blank before their execution in Pennsylvania. He claimed that the difficulty in meeting
with them arose from the fact that the killers wanted him to help them commit
suicide.
1894: The
first conference of Hebrew and Christian Workers Israel in the United States
and Canada was held today at Park Street Church in Boston, MA.
1894: The
first American Congress of Liberal Religious Societies met at Temple Sinai in
Chicago, Illinois.
1895: The
Monte Relief Society, which was founded by Mrs. Sofia Monte Loebinger, is
scheduled to host a fund raising festival today at the Grand Central Palace.
1898: In
Vienna, 30 year old Siegfried Reginald Wolf married Ida Wolf.
1898: In
Philadelphia, “Mayer Sulzberger delivered the decennial address” today at the
annual meeting of the Jewish Public Society of America at Keneseth Israel.
1898: Dr.
Stephen Wise is scheduled to officiate at the funeral services for 62 old year
Herman Phillips “a teacher connected with the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian
Society” who previously served as a rabbi at synagogues in Boston and Toronto,
Canada.
1898: During
the Spanish-American War, Sergeant Max J. Heinberg and Private William L. Hahn
of Tampa, FL of Company H of the 1st Florida Volunteer Infantry were
mustered into federal military service today.
1898: During
the Spanish-American War, Texans Sam Cooper, Company A, Gus L. Berkman, Company
C, , Herman H. Blum, Company M, Max Blumberg, Company B, Walter Falk, Captain’s
Orderly Company A, Morris Farber, Company L, Henry Perlman, Company D, Charles
Fischl, Company E, Harry Friedman , Hospital Corps Company M, Sol Gordon,
Company K, H.S. Hyneman, Company F, Charles C. Jacobs, Company M and Joseph
Levy, Regimental Band Company M all of the 1st Volunteer Infantry were among
those who were mustered into federal service today at Galveston, TX.
1898: The
Grand Lodge No. 1 of the Independent Order Free Sons of Israel hosted a
patriotic service tonight at Temple Rodolph Sholom.
1898: “In
Foreign Lands” published today described the “about-face” taken by French
journalist Henri Rochefort, a leading anti-Dreyfus leader. At first he accused Dreyfus and his family of
being responsible for the Spanish-American War.
Now he claims that the Dreyfus family and the Rothschilds are
responsible for the support shown by the French press for the cause of Spain.
1899: The
Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls opened its doors on New York's East 63rd
Street.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/may/22/1899/clara-de-hirsch
1899: The
widow of Leopold S. Levy who died when ruffians fractured his skills is still
hospitalized in New York Hospital following a failed attempt to take her own
life. According to a note that was
found, she was despondent and depressed by the death of her husband.
1900:
Anti-Semitic riots came to an end at Stolp and Butow
1900:
Birthdate of Voronezh, Russia native Dr. William Dameshek, the graduate of
Harvard Medical School who became “the preeminent hematologist of our time.”
http://www.hematology.org/About/History/Legends/2077.aspx
1901: Over
three thousand people attended the ceremonies marking the laying of the
“cornerstone of the new building for Mount Sinai Hospital.”
1902: Today, a
week after “20,000 women on the Lower East Side broke into kosher butcher shops
and rendered the meat inedible by taking it into the street, soaking it in
gasoline and setting it on fire” in protest against the jump in the price of
meet “under pressure from their customers, the Retail Butchers Association once
more aligned itself with the boycotters and refused to sell kosher beef in
member shops.” (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library)
1902: In
Newark, NJ, “fish and eggs were at premium today in the Jewish quarter” because
none of the 2,000 or 3,000 chickens usually killed by kosher butchers on what
is known as Chicken Day because all of the butchers are still closed following
the riots that took place earlier this week.
1903: “Arnold
Kohn the Treasurer of the Central Committee said today that he had received
$500 from the Federation of Zionists and a ‘substantial check from New York
Mayor Low.”
1904: “Pacers
furnished the best of” this morning’s “sport on the Harlem River Speedway”
today with footing being ideal for fast work when Nathan Strauss driving his
owner Joseph Meyer took on the winner of the 1903 Speedway Pacing championship.
1905: It was
reported today the newly elected officers of the Jewish Publication Society
are: President – Edwin Wolf; First Vice President – Henry M. Leipziger; Second
Vice President – Sol Blumenthal; Trustees Cyrus Adler, Henry M. Leipsizer,
Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Edwin Wolf and Morris Newburger.
1905: In
Crowborough, the former Amy Bell and John James Street Drieberg gave birth to
Anglian churchman, journalist and member of Parliament Tom Driberg who visited Buchenwald with the first
official allied delegation and who wrote the official report of that visit
styled “Buchenwald Camp: The Report of a Parliamentary Delegation” which
submitted to Parliament in April of 1945 “by Command of His Majesty”
1906:
Birthdate of comic Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers. Born Harry Joachim, Harry
was the 'middleman' of the Ritz Brothers and was an inspiration for Danny Kaye
and Sid Caesar. In 1934, The Ritz Brothers appeared in their first film,
"Hotel Anchovy". The team worked for Fox and later Universal. He died
of cancer in 1986
1907:
Birthdate of Harry Ritz, the youngest of the “Ritz Brothers.”
1908:
Birthdate of Sheboygan, Wisconsin native and University of Wisconsin Law School
trained attorney David Rabinovitz who served as Judge of the United States
District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin during the Presidency of
Lyndon Johnson.
https://www.fjc.gov/node/1390336
1909(2nd
of Sivan, 5669): Parashat Bamidbar
1909:
“According to a special imperial order just issued Jews will be admitted to the
health resorts in the Caucasus” which reserves the order issued six weeks ago
denying Jews admission “to the Caucasus during the coming season.
1910:
“Answering a recent pulpit utterance of the Rev. Dr. Magnes of Temple Emanu-El,
Dr. Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue in West Eighty-First Street ardently
defended the Jewish reform movement this morning.”
1911: In “Dr.
Wise Attacks Fifth Avenue Clubs” published today the distinguished rabbi said
of the New York social clubs that banned Jewish members, “It is honoring to be
shut out of some Fifth Avenue clubs in our city – the qualifications for admission
to these being apparently a capacity for unlimited idleness and for an almost
unlimited measure of strong drink.”
1912(6th
of Sivan, 5672): Shavuot
1912(6th
of Sivan, 5672): Brigadier General Morris Horkheimer, the Commissary General of
the West Virginia National Guard, who was also a successful businessman and
civic leader passed away today at Atlantic City, NJ where he was visiting in
attempt to improve his failing health.
http://www.ohiocountylibrary.org/wheeling-history/4279
1912: In
London, “Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhitomir, Pearl (née Gorinstein) and
Charles Brovarnik, a hardware store manager and carpenter gave birth to Herbert
Brovarnik who gained game as Herbert Brown, the American chemist who earned a
B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, shared the Nobel Prize for
Chemistry in 1979 with George Witting, while giving public credit to the
support given to him by his wife Sarah Baylen
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2004-12-21-hbrown-obit_x.htm
1913:
Britain’s King George V who as Prince of Wales had attended a Seder in
Jerusalem and would be the first English monarch to reign the Yishuv, Germany
Kaiser’s Wilhelm II who would blame the Jews for him losing his throne and WW I
and Russian Tsar Nicholas II the last in a long line of anti-Semitic rulers
gathered in Berlin to attend the wedding the wedding Princess Luise, the
Kaiser’s daughter.
1914: The
Becker-Rosenthal trial in which Charles Becker and members of the Lenox Avenue
Gang faced charges for having murdered bookmaker Herman Rosenthal came to a
close.
1914(26th
of Iyar, 5674): Rabbi Joshua Coblentz passed away today in Bath Beach, NY.
1914:
Birthdate of Lipman “Lipa” Bers, the native of Riga who became an award-winning
American mathematician and human rights activist.
http://www.ams.org/notices/199501/bers.pdf
1915:
President harry Hersh was the toastmaster at “the fourth annual Banquet of the
Wisconsin Menorah Society” which “was held today in the Women’s Building of the
University.”
1915: It was reported today that Judge Arthur G.
Powell, a former member of the State Court of Appeals in Georgia who has
already written to the governor expressing his belief in the innocence of Leo
Frank has “said he understand other prominent lawyers would write letters
asserting their belief that Frank was not guilty, or at least that his guilt
had not been sufficiently established.”
1915:
According to reports published today, the Atlanta Journal is scheduled to
publish “an editorial demanding clemency for Leo M Frank.”
1915: “The
final effort to save the life of Leo M. Frank is in the hands of William W.
Howard of Augusta, an ex-Congressman, who has been selected by friends of Frank
to present the case to the State Prison Commission.”
1915: In
Macon, GA, “Governor-elect Nat E. Harris announced this afternoon that if it
should fall to his lot to render the final decision in the case of Leo M.
Frank, he would deal with the matter from a purely Georgian standpoint.”
1915: “The
petition for the life of Leo M. Frank to which a million names are to be signed
before it is sent to the Governor of Georgia and the Pardoning Commission of
that state, is nearing completion according to an announcement made” tonight “by
the members of the Woman’s Peace Society who are procuring the signatures at
Booth 3 in the Cosmopolitan Garden
1916: In
Chicago, at a meeting of the Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior, Henry
Morgenthau, the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, described “the conditions
which led to the massacre by the Turks of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
and Syrians” and said “that the remaining half million people of these races
now face death by starvation and exposure unless immediate was given to them.”
1916: In an
interview at Chicago, Henry Morgenthau said “No Republican will elected this
year” since Wilson who enjoys the highest respect in Europe “will nominated and
elected” because his “the best President” the United States “the can select in
this crisis.”
1916: Henry
Morgenthau said tonight that he had “good reason to believe that following this
war the Turks can be persuaded to sell Palestine” and that Jews of the world
should not buy Palestine, but rather “Jews and Christians should jointly unite
in the purchase of this sacred land” which should then be turned “into a small
free republic…”
1916: The
Senate Committee on the Judiciary today distributed a letter from Dr. Charles
W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, endorsing Louis D. Brandeis
of Boston for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Dr. Lowell, President of
Harvard, has signed a memorial opposing Mr. Brandeis's confirmation on the
ground that he was unfit for the Supreme bench. The confirmation process for
Brandeis was a bruising affair laced with anti-Semitism.
1917(1st
of Sivan, 5677): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1917(1st
of Sivan, 5677): “Attorney, cotton broker and President of the Jewish
Immigration Information Bureau” Felix Bath, the German born son of Abram Bath,
passed away today after which he was buried at the Hebrew Rest Cemetery in Ft.
Worth, TX.
1917: In
Brooklyn, Yiddish comedian Isidor Meltzer, the brother of screenwriter Lewis
Meltzer and his wife gave birth to Sidney Meltzer who gained fame character
actor Sid Melton – a name you might not know but a face you will not forget.
1917: In
Chicago, funeral services are scheduled to be held for Adolph J. Meyers, the
brother of Mrs. Abe Adler and Mrs. H. J. Marks.
1917: In
Chicago, funeral services are scheduled to be held for Caroline Newman, “the
wife of the late Adolph Newman” with internment at Graceland cemetery.
1917: The
Annual meeting of the Chicago-Winfield Tuberculosis Sanatorium is scheduled to
be held this evening at the Standard Club at Michigan Avenue and 24th
Street.
1918: “Dozens
of important people lined the staircase” at Beit Yehudayoff, known as “the
Palace” “in a fabulous reception for General Allenby.”
1919: The
Rumanian government granted citizenship to all native-born Jews.
1919: To
prevent the Paris Peace Conference’s imposition of naturalization of Jews,
Ionel Bratianu wired to Bucharest the text of a law (promulgated as a decree today
according to which citizenship could now be obtained by a declaration of intent
in writing to the law court, the latter being obliged to make out a certificate
of confirmation that conferred the exercise of political rights.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/romania-virtual-jewish-history-tour
1919: The
annual meeting of the Jewish Aid Society, of which Mrs. Ralph J. Rosenthal is
secretary, is scheduled to take pace this afternoon at the Standard Club on
Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
1920(5th
of Sivan, 5680): Parashat Bamidbar; erev Shavuot
1920: The
Dearborn Independent, owned by Henry Ford, began publishing the “Protocols of
the Elders of Zion.”
1920: Birthdate of astrophysicist Thomas Gold. Gold
was bron in Austria and educated in Switzerland and Great Britain, In early
1959, when Cornell University offered him the opportunity to set up an
interdisciplinary unit for radio-physics and space research, and take charge of
the Department of Astronomy, he accepted the appointment. He remained at Cornell
until his death.
1921: Attack
of Henry Ford and others on Jews were decried as a form of treason” tonight in
Baltimore “at the First Methodist Episcopal Church by the pastor, Dr. William
H. Morgan who delivered a sermon on “Race Prejudice: Why Does Anti-Semitism
Exist?”
1922: Birthdate of Quinn Martin, head of Quinn
Martin Productions.
1922: Today’s
Dallas News reported that 789 Klansman had participated in their march through
downtown Dallas which increased the feeling of fear among the Jewish community
of Dallas whose mayor was said to be a Klan sympathizer, whose “police was
thought to be a Klansman,” whose “district attorney was on the side of the KKK”
and whose police and fire departments were home to “a high percentage of Klan
members.”
1922: “Silver Wings”
produced by William Fox and photographed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg
was released in the United States today.
1922: In
Manhattan, Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Klein gave birth to Judith Klein whom the world
would come to know as film critic Judith Crist.
1923(7th
of Sivan, 5683): Second Day of Shavuot observed for the last time during the
Presidency of Warren Harding who would die before completing his first term in
office
1924:
Cornerstone laying ceremony for the construction of the building housing the
Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva began today.
1924: In Romania
students hired a servant girl to run through the street screaming, "My
Jewish employers dragged me down into the cellar and wanted my blood for ritual
purposes." This had the result of
causing attacks on Jews in the country. Several months later in Aleppo, Syria,
the same charges of "blood ritual" surfaced against the Jews.
1924: In
Chicago, the ransom note mailed by Nathan Leopold yesterday arrived at the home
of Robert “Bobby” Franks the teenager was already dead.
1925: With the
approach of summer Beth-El Congregation in Camden, NJ held the last of its
“late services on Friday evening.
1926: It was
announced today that Mrs. Bertha V. Guggenheimer of Lynchburg, Va., has a
established a $50,000 trust fund that will build playgrounds in Jerusalem, Haifa
and Tel Aviv, as well as other cities and farming settlements in Palestine. The
playgrounds will operate on a non-sectarian basis meaning they are open to
Christian, Moslem and Jewish children.
1926: Dr.
Lewis Browne the English born American author who was an ordained Reform Rabbi
set sail today aboard the steamship Leviathan a tour that will include visits
to England, France, Switzerland, Germany. Belgium, Holland, Poland, Lithuania,
Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Italy and Spain after
which he will write articles for the Jewish Daily Bulletin describing “the
Jewish situation in each of these countries.”
1927(20th
of Iyar, 5687): Sixty-one year old Louis Bandes, the journalist who wrote under
the name of Louis Miller passed away today.
http://www.yiddishkayt.org/miller-bandes/
1928: “Unveil
Tablet At First London Synagogue Site” published today described the ceremony
under the leadership of Sir Francis Montefiore, where a “where a wall tablet
marking the site of the first London synagogue which was used in the days of
Cromwell” was unveiled followed by Rabbi David Bueno de Mosquita’s prayer
“offered in memory of the founders of the modern London Jewish community.”
(JTA)
1929: “The
Brandenburg Arch” produced by Joe Pasternak was released today in German.
1930: The
Jewish community in Palestine begins a general strike to protest the blocking
of immigration
1930:
Today “iron manufacturer, builder and
realtor: Harris Uris, the Latvian born son of Mendel Uris and Leah Elkin
married Mary Schacht, the daughter of Barnet Schacht and Eva Bojarsky after te
death of his first wife Sadie Coplan with whom he had four children.
1930: In
Woodmere, NY, William Milk and Minerva Karns gave birth to Harvey Milk, San
Francisco’s first openly homosexual member of the City Council who along with
the Mayor of San Francisco was brutally gunned down in 1978 by a political
rival who would get off on the Twinkie Defense.
1931(6th
of Sivan, 5691): Shavuot
1931: In
Camden, NJ, Rabbi Nachman S. Arnoff officiated at Confirmation Services this
morning where Ruth Kaplan, the President of the Confirmation Class presented
the class gift to the synagogue.
1931: Dr.
Phoebus A. Levene of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York,
tonight received the Willard Gibbs medal, one of the highest distinctions in
chemical science, from the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society.
1931(6th
of Sivan, 5691): One day before his 66th birthday Solomon Barnato
Joel, one of the nephews of Barney Barnato who made a fortune in the diamond
mining business which enabled him to become an owner and breeder of
thoroughbred racehorses passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joel-solomon-barnato
1931:
“Svengali,” a horror film featuring Carmel Myers, the daughter of a San
Francisco rabbi was released in the United States today.
1931: After
enlisting in the 1st Heavy Brigade of the Austrian Garrison
Artillery, in 1927, Paul Alfred Cullen received his commission today
1931: In
Camden, NJ, Ruth Kaplan offered the “Opening Prayer” to start Confirmation
Services at Congregation Beth-El
1932: The
Hakoah All-Stars rallied in the second half to gain a tie with the German
All-Stars in what was billed as goodwill soccer game at the Polo Grounds. The
contest was sponsored by leading Jewish and German citizens as a means of promoting
interracial understanding. Mayor Walker, honorary chairman of the sponsoring
committee kicked off the ball at the start of play. At half time, Carol
Sherman, former Attorney General of New York Stated presented medal to the
Americans who had competed in the International Jewish Olympics recently held
in Tel Aviv.
1932:
Birthdate of Yosef Haim Yerushalmi, a groundbreaking and wide-ranging scholar
of Jewish history whose meditation on the tension between collective memory of
a people and the more prosaic factual record of the past influenced a
generation of thinkers.
1933(22nd
of Iyar, 5693): Fifty-nine year old Sandor Ferenczi, the noted Hungarian
psychoanalyst and friend of Sigmund Freud passed away today .http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/ReviewSFerenczi.shtml
1933: “Irving
Wexler, better known as Waxey Gordon, wealthy beer distributor and all-around
racketeer” spent tonight in the Federal House of Detention after having
“pleaded not guilty to income tax evasion today.
1934:
Birthdate of Ya'acov Ra'anan, the native of Vienna who made Aliyah in 1939, who
served as the commander of the INS Dakar on its last voyage.
1934: Photo of
Dr. George Gordon, the Director of the Minneapolis Talmud Torah who “began his
career as a Jewish education at the first Hebrew Free School on Minneapolis’s
north side, where as a twenty-year old he helped to the teach the Hebrew
alphabet to young students.”
http://reflections.mndigital.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/jhs/id/165/rec/3
1934: Mrs.
Samuel W. Halprin, “the national president of Hadassah” who has recently
returned from a trip to Palestine, is
scheduled to this evening “on the weekly radio program of the Jewish Daily
Bulletin on the subject of “Palestine in 1929 and 1934.”
1935(19th of
Iyar, 5695): Max Hans Kohn, a Jewish student died in Dachau. Reportedly he was
the first Jew to die there in 10 months.
1936(1st
of Sivan, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
1936(1st
of Sivan, 5696): Seventy-three year old Richard Gottheil the son of Rabbi
Gustav Gottheil, and a noted scholar, Zionist leader and the founder of Zeta
Beta Tau (ZBT) passed away today.
http://jewishmag.com/118mag/richard_gottheil/richard_gottheil.htm
1936:
Jewish-operated buses were again fired at today on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Road,
but there were no casualties and the curfew in Jerusalem was extended starting
a half hour earlier (6:30 p.m.) in response to escalating Arab violence.
1936: Based on
information based on “hints in the German press” it was reported today that
“negotiations are now under way to explore the possibilities of the emigration
of no fewer than 20,000 German Jews to Ethiopia” which has been cruelly
conquered by the Itlanians.
1936: British
aircraft “flew over Jaffa and helped police to search the hills adjoin the
Jerusalem-Jaffa road for Arabs involved in the ambush of Jewish bus in which
two Jews and a British soldier were wounded.”
1937: According
to a report “made public” today by the American Joint Distribution Committee,
there are 35,500 “refugees from Germany…in other European countries” of whom
“about 29,000 ae Jewish and 6,500 are Aryan or non-Aryan Christians” and that
of the less than 400,000 Jews in Germany, “100,000 are jobless and in need of
aid.
1938:
Birthdate of actor/ director Richard Benjamin whose work includes Goodbye
Columbus and He & She.
1938: As Arab
terrorism escalated, The Palestine Post reported that the Government forces
practically occupied Arab villages in Galilee in an effort to check the
increasing terror and lawlessness. Jewish settlements of Ein Hazorea and
Mishmar Haemek came under a concentrated Arab terrorist fire. The Iraq
Petroleum Company pipeline was cut once more and set on fire near Nazareth.
1938: The
Palestine Post published a special, 20-page Palestine-British supplement to
mark the Empire Day.
1938: In New
York City drama coach Lee Strasberg and actress Paula Strasberg gave birth to
Susan Strasberg who was the original Anne Frank.
1938(21st of
Iyar, 5698): Rabbi Simon Glazer passed away.
Born in 1878 at Kovno Russia, Glazer the Chief Rabbi of the United
Synagogues in Montreal (1907-1918); Chief Rabbi of Kansas City (1920-1923);
Rabbi of Beth Hamidrash Hagadol in NYC (1923-1927); Temple Beth-El in Brooklyn
(1927-1930); Maimonides Synagogue of NYC starting in 1930. Glazer had also served as President of the
Central Council of Rabbis of America and Chairman of its Executive
Committee. He wrote or translated 26
books including a “History of Israel” and translations of the works of
Maimonides and the High Holiday prayer books.
1939: Germany
signs a "Pact of Steel" with Italy.
This is one more step on the road to World War II.
1939(4th of
Sivan, 5699): Ernst Toller, a German-Jewish playwright and active anti-fascist,
who had fought for the Kaiser in World War I and whose sister and brother had
been taken to a concentration camp, hung himself at the Mayflower Hotel. W.H. Auden memorialized him with a poem
entitled “In Memory of Ernst Toller” published in 1940 in an anthology called
Another Time.
1940(14th
of Iyar, 5700): Pesach Sheni
1940(14th
of Iyar, 5700): Hyman I Vener, the recently elected president of the Southern
California Public Health Association passed away today.
1940: This
afternoon at the White House, FDR met with a group of military leader and one
civilian, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
1941: Jews in
Croatia are forced to wear yellow badges.
1941: Germans
stole a 16th century Torah scroll from the Sephardic community at
Salonica. This Torah was said to have
come from Spain. The Germans then burned all the books and three Sefer Torahs.
When the chief rabbi returned, he found all of the libraries and Jewish
manuscripts destroyed.
1942(6th of
Sivan, 5702): First Day of Shavuot
1942: Herbert
Baum and his wife Marianne were arrested today for their part in “an arson
attack on an anticommunist and anti-Semitic propaganda exhibition prepared by
Joseph Goebbels at the Berliner Lustgarten.”
1942(6th of
Sivan, 5702): In an exercise conducted in a forest outside Mielec, Poland,
Gestapo agents "cast" Jews as partisans, beat and mutilate them, and
then kill them.
1942(6th of
Sivan, 5702): Three hundred children are taken away and sent to Chelmno where
they were gassed to death.
1943(17th
of Iyar, 5703): Parashat Behar
1943: It was
reported today that ant-Semitic elements in French North Africa that do not
like the policies of General Henri Honore Giraud’ “doctrine of racial equality
have” rallied around General de Gaulle’s standard with one woman in Tunis
saying, “The French follow de Gaulle, the Jews are for Giraud.”
1944:
Birthdate of Durham, NC native and U.of Wisconsin PhD Christopher Robert
Browning a “specialist on the Final Solution and the author of such works as
Ordinary Men and The Origins of the Final Solution who raised two children with
his wife Jennifer Jane Horn.
1944: George
Mandel-Mantello, a Jewish diplomat who, while working for the Salvadoran
consulate in Geneva, Switzerland, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by
providing fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers and by publicizing the
deportation of Jews from Hungary to the death camps” left Switzerland for
Bucharest.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/MandelMantello.html
1944: In London, the Bevis Marks Synagogue held a
“Service of Mourning and Prayer for the Martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto” where
Rabbi Joseph delivered a sermon “The Battle of Warsaw.”
1944: As part
of the campaign to convince the West, that the Soviet Union was a benign
partner in the fight against fascism, a campaign in which Stalin used many Soviet
Jews whom he later liquidated, “the Communist International” or Comintern was
dissolved today.
1944(29th of
Iyar, 5704): For five days Jews readied for rail transport from Munkács,
Ukraine, and from the Hungarian town of Sátoraljaújhely resist being loaded.
Some are shot. Resistance began on May
22 and ended on May 27.
1945(10th of
Sivan, 5705): Polish freebooters stopped a train in the Bialystok region of
Poland and beat and abduct a Jew named Mejer Sznajder. This took place after
V.E. Day and the end of Holocaust.
1946: Karl
Frank, Nazi protector of Bohemia-Moravia, was executed in Prague.
1946(21st of
Iyar, 5706): Two Jews were killed and another fifteen were injured in pogrom
begun because a crowd of Hungarians in Kunmadras believed the Jews had made
sausage out of Christian children.
1947: It was
learned today that “the Russian military administration has granted permission
to the American Joint Distribution Committee to send food to Jewish communities
in the Russian zone” of occupied Germany.
1947: In Rome,
“Jacob I. Trobe, director of Italian operations for the American Joint
Distribution Committee called attention to the plight of 25,000 displaced Jews
in Italy” for whom no arrangements have been made when “UNRA ceases operations”
on June 30.
1948: David
Ben-Gurion ordered Yigal Yadin, the Chief of Staff, to launch an attack on the
police fort at Latrun “without delay.”
Ben-Gurion wanted Yadin to use the Seventh Brigade for the attack. Yadin was opposed to the attack. The brigade was composed of 2,000 troops
several hundred of whom were Holocaust survivors who had just gotten off the
boat from the Cyprus detention camps.
They had little or no training.
Many of them did not speak Hebrew.
In other words, the Seventh Brigade was a brigade in name only. Yadin knew they were not a fighting force and
sending them to attack a hilltop fortress manned by the Jordanian Arab Legion
was a recipe for disaster. To make
matters worse, the Seventh lacked basic equipment, including water bottles or
canteens. Considering the heat, a lack
of water would hamper even veteran troops.
Ben-Gurion’s stubborn insistence must be seen against the backdrop of
the times. Despite a great deal of
criticism, Ben-Gurion had accepted the partition plan even though it meant
Jerusalem would not be part of the Jewish state, Instead it was to governed by an
international body. The Arabs rejected
this concept and turned Jerusalem into a battleground. They laid siege to the city and sought to cut
it off from the rest of the Jewish state.
Ben-Gurion was determined to do whatever it took to ensure that
Jerusalem would be Jewish. The hilltop
fortress of Latrun was the main obstacle to opening the road to from the coast
to Jerusalem. Hence his insistence on
the attack even if it flew in the face of the best advice from is commanders.
1948: Troops
from the Carmeli Brigade took up positions at Masada and Sha'ar HaGolan in
expectation of a counter-attack from the Arabs that did not come. After a week, despite their edge in armor and
artillery, apparently, they had had enough.
1948: The
fighting that had begun on May 15 known collectively as the Battles of the
Kinarot Valley came to an end. The most memorable fighting took place between
the Israelis and the Syrians at Dagania Alef and Degania Bet. Words cannot
describe the heroism of the Jewish fighters who stood their ground against
overwhelming odds.
1948: It was
reported today that Thomas C. Wasson, the U.S. Consul General for the United
States in Jerusalem had attempted to stop the Arab Legion shelling of the
Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University on Mount Scopus: "The American
Consul is reported to have contacted the Legion requesting it to stop firing on
Jewish positions in and around the buildings. The Legion Commander replied that
the buildings were being used by Jewish forces to mortar and machine-gun the
Arab-occupied Sheikh Jarrah quarter and handed the Consul surrender terms to
convey to the Jews. The Commander asked that all fighting Jews in the hospital
and University surrender as prisoners of war and that all doctors, nurses,
professors, and scientists be handed over to the Red Cross.”
1948: “Just
after 2.00pm, Consul General Thomas C Wasson was shot while returning to the US
Consulate from a meeting of the UN Truce Commission at the French Consulate in
Jerusalem. While crossing Wauchope Street (now Abraham Lincoln/Hess) to enter
the alley leading to the Consulate, he was shot by a .30 caliber rifle. The
bullet entered his chest via his right upper arm and left level to his second
costal cartilage
1948: To the
amazement of everybody, it was reported today that of the five Armies and Air
Forces “now fighting on the borders and within Palestine only the Arab Legion
has made any important advances” and that “in the north, none of the armies has
been able to keep its forces in Israel’s territory and the Syrians are now
digging in on their own side of the border.”
1949(23rd
of Iyar, 5709): Russian born Sarah Eckstein Fishman, the wife of Abraham
Fishman with whom she had two children – Bernard and Dorothy – passed away
today after which she was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Commerce City, CO.
1949: In “A
Communist’s Career: The Story of Eisler,” Ira Henry Freeman recaps the career
of “Gerhart Eisleer…the professional, international, Communist revolutionary.”
1950(6th of
Sivan, 5710): First Day of Shavuot
1950: Russian
spy Harry Gold confessed to the FBI.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that
according to the Jordanian complaint, Israel occupied three Arab villages in
the Jordanian-occupied Latrun area and two in the Tulkarm District. Israel
denied all such allegations, but claimed frequent Jordanian marauders'
infiltration.
1953: The
Jerusalem Post reported that Mr. Shimon Peres, the Director-General of the
Ministry of Defense, claimed at an exhibition of the locally manufactured
products, that few countries in the world produced as wide a variety of
armaments as Israel.
1954(19th
of Iyar, 5714): Parashat Bechukotai.
1954: Bar
Mitzvah of Robert Zimmerman who gained fame as Bob Dylan.
1955: “The
television play ‘A Catered Affair,’ written by Paddy Chayefsky, was first shown
on television as part of the Philco Television Playhouse.”
1955: Mrs.
Anne Kassow, the wife of the late Dr. Israel Kassow announced the engagement of
her daughter Judith to Charles Bensimon.
1955: Final
broadcast of the “Jack Benny Program” on CBS radio. Benny, whose real name was
Benjamin Kubelsky, would continue to broadcast on television until 1965.
1956(12th
of Sivan, 5716): Sixty-eight year old mezzo-soprano Maria Winetzkaja passed
away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E04E6DB1F3BE333A05750C2A9639C946792D6CF
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/winetzkaja-maria
1959(14th
of Iyar, 5719): Pesach Sheni
1959:
Birthdate of David Blatt, the Princeton graduate who played for and coached
several Israeli basketball teams.
1959: Final
performance of “Tall Story” “based on the 1957 novel The Homecoming Game by
Howard Nemerov featuring Marian Winters as “Myra Solomon.”
1961(7th
of Sivan, 5721): Second Day of Shavuot
1961: “Jacob
Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and his wife Serena Dunn Rothschild” gave
birth to their “eldest child” Hannah Mary Rothschild the documentarian and
author whose first novel was The Improbability of Love.
1962(18th
of Iyar, 5722): Lag B’Omer
1965(20th
of Iyar, 5725): Parashat Behar
1965(20th
of Iyar, 5725): Sixty-six year old Samuel Cooke the founder and chairman of the
Penn Fruit Company which opened its first store in 1927 using the
“revolutionary self-service concept” and an active supporter of the Jewish
Farmer School who raised two daughter – Lily Beth and Geraldine – with his
wife, “the former Doris Beyer” passed away today.
1965:
Birthdate of Shlomo Lahiani, the Israeli political leader who has served as
mayor of Bat Yam.
1966: Today
Rabbi Jacob Rudin officiated at the marriage of Linda Halpern, the
granddaughter of the late Judge David L. Weill and stockbroker Freeman Arthur
Shore.
1966: Toady,
at the Roslyn Country Club Rabbi Alvin Rubin officiated at the wedding Greta Ruth
Haaran to Michael G. Elliot, who has changed his surname and is the son of Mr.
and Mrs. Louis A. Goldman.
1966: This
afternoon, at the Beth-El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, NY Rabbi David I
Golovenskt officiated at the wedding of Phoebe Kazdin and Dr. Howard Joel
Schnitzer.
1967: In
violation of international agreements, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran,
blocking all Israeli shipping from the south, thereby raising tension in the
Middle East. In Israel, a broad based coalition was formed under Levi Eshkol
with Menachem Begin and Yoseph Sapir and Moshe Dayan who became the Minister of
Defense. Under international law, blockade is an act of war and this action by
Egypt actually gave Israel the legal right to go to war, a fact conveniently
ignored at that time and by the current generation of revisionist historians.
1967: Two
months after being released in the UK, “The Honeypot” a comedy directed and
written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz was released today in the United States.
1969(5th of
Sivan, 5729): Erev of Shavuot
1969: Female
Palestinian artist Mona Saudi, Iraqi Suheir Razzak and Swede Rolf Svensson were
imprisoned in Copenhagen on suspicion of plotting to murder David Ben-Gurion.
http://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/The-Danish-connection
1969: U.S.
premiere of “Winning” starring Paul Newman.
1969: Mayor
John V. Lindsay greeted his Jewish constituency today on the eve of Shavuot,
which begins tomorrow. Speaking of the Jewish people's receiving of the Torah,
which the holiday celebrates, the Mayor said: "From that hallowed event on
Mount Sinai, through the ages, from the days of ancient Palestine, and up to
our times and the rebirth of the State of Israel, the Torah has been at the
very heart of the Jewish experience. Moses...stands as a towering figure not
only in the life of the Jewish people but in the life of our
civilization."
1970: In
Boston, Penny Hollander Feldman and Roy E. Feldman gave birth to Yale trained
attorney Noah Feldman, “The Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at
Harvard Law School and chairman of the Society of Fellows at Harvard
University” and brother of Simon and Ezra Felman.
https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10257/Feldman
1970(16th of
Iyar, 5730): Arab terrorists killed 9 children and 3 adults on a school bus
1971(27th
of Iyar, 5731): Parshat Behar-Bechukotai
1971(27th
of Iyar, 5731): Seventy-seven year old Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading,
Baroness Swanborough, the secretary to the wife of the Viceroy of India, Rufus
Isaacs, 1st Earl Reading who married him shortly after her became a
widower who went to a life of public service including the founding of the
Women’s Voluntary Service which played such a vital role during WW II, passed
away today.
http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/stella_isaacs,_marchioness_of_reading
1972: Time
published “Israel: Battle of Flight 517.”
Sabena Flight 517 from Brussels to Tel Aviv was
20 minutes out of Vienna last week when two Arabs waving pistols rushed the
cockpit. "As you can see," Captain Reginald Levy calmly informed his
90 passengers, "we have friends aboard." The friends—the men and two
women, who produced explosives from under their skirts—were members of a
Palestinian guerrilla organization called Black September.* Their audacious
plan: to land the Boeing 707 at Tel Aviv and embarrass Israel by threatening to
blow up the plane on a Lod Airport runway unless 317 imprisoned fedayeen were
released. Levy's radioed alert that his
plane had been commandeered rang top-level alarms in Israel. Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff General David Elazar hurried to the airport to
supervise the troops mustered to meet the jet. As soon as Levy touched down in
the Tel Aviv dusk and rolled to an isolated runway, mechanics at Dayan's orders
immobilized the plane by deflating its tires and draining the hydraulic system. After presenting their demands for the
prisoners' release to Lod's control tower, the skyjackers were alarmed to
discover that they could not take off again. Emotionally, they kissed one
another goodbye and prepared to detonate the explosives. Levy started a
conversation to calm them down, and kept on chatting through the night. "I
talked about everything under the sun," he said later, "from
navigation to sex." Next morning,
in response to Levy's plea, Dayan promised to prepare the plane for takeoff and
produce the fedayeen. A group of bogus prisoners were shown to the skyjackers
from a distance and Dayan had an airplane taken out to a runway, supposedly to
fly the released fedayeen to Cairo. From the control tower, one of the
"prisoners"—actually an Arabic-speaking Israeli soldier—lulled the
skyjackers: "They tell me I'm being sent to Cairo. Is that true? Praised
be Allah." Meanwhile, out of sight, commandos were practicing assault
tactics on a 707. When they were able to force the doors, swing aboard and
start shooting in 90 seconds, Elazar deemed them ready. His "ground
crew" approached the jet, allowed themselves to be frisked by Red Cross
negotiators who had been called in at Arab request. No pistols turned up in the
search; they had been hidden in boots or tool boxes. Suddenly the
"mechanics" burst into the plane with guns blazing. The two male
skyjackers died from bullets in the head and one of the two women was wounded.
In all, the action took precisely 90 seconds.
Israelis hailed the jet's recapture as a military victory—and as an
example of how other nations ought to handle skyjacking. Dayan himself was host
at a dinner for Levy, a British citizen with a Jewish father and a Christian
mother who was celebrating his 50th birthday. Prime Minister Golda Meir later
threw a second dinner for all the participants. She kissed Levy and cried,
"We love you." Publicly, Mrs. Meir justified the recapture, citing
"the terrible significance of submission" to terrorism. Elsewhere the response was less enthusiastic.
The International Air Line Pilots Association protested the danger to
passengers in such go-for-broke shootouts. As it happened, three aboard Flight
517 had been wounded. One 22-year-old Israeli was in critical condition; she
had leaped up in panic when the firing started and was shot in the head by a
commando who mistook her for one of the Arabs. The International Red Cross
angrily cried that it had been duped by the Israelis. Arabs nevertheless
accused the agency of complicity. In Beirut, where Red Cross week was in
progress, volunteers soliciting donations were attacked on the street by Black
September supporters. The leader of the group, who called himself Captain
Rafat, was later identified as Ali Tasha, 34, a onetime Jerusalem tour guide
and seasoned skyjacker. In 1968 he helped
divert an El Al jet to Algeria.
1973: Avner
Shaki left the National Religious Party and continued to sit as an Independent
in the Knesset until the election in 1974
1975:
Seventy-four year old historian George W. F. Hallgarten the grandson of Charles
Hallgarten and the great-grandson of Lazarus Hallgarten passed away today.
1976: NBC
broadcast “Call of the Wild” a made for television adaptation of the novel of
the same name with music by Peter Matz this evening.
1977(5th of
Sivan, 5737): Erev of Shavuot observed for the first time during the Presidency
of Jimmy Carter.
1978: “The
Off-Broadway production” of “Torch Song Trilogy” a collection of three plays by
Harvey Fierstein opened today at the Players Theatre.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel
empowered the Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff to discuss with U.N.
and UNIFIL the arrangements aimed to prevent the terrorists in South Lebanon
from attacking Israel and harming local inhabitants. The UNIFIL assured the
Christian leader, Major Saad Haddad, that it is prepared to recognize his
600-men strong force and that the humanitarian "Good Fence", which
allowed Lebanese villagers to receive aid and work in Israel, will continue
even after the complete Israeli withdrawal.
1978: ABC
began broadcasting “The Bastard” a mini-series co-starring Lorne Greene as
“Bishop Francis” William Shatner as “Paul Revere” and Tom Bosley as “Benjamin
Franklin.”
1979: Funeral
services are scheduled to be held today the Riverside Chapel in Brooklyn today
for 77 year-old Brooklyn Law School trained criminal lawyer and retired state
Supreme Court Justice Hyman Barsnay, the son of Russian born tailor who at the
age of seven came to the United States where he worked his way through night
law school and married the former Ruth Koeppel with whom he had one daughter,
Joan Birnbaum.
1980(7th
of Shavuot, 5740): 2nd day of Shavuot, Yizkor for the last time during the presidency of
Jimmy Carter
1981(18th of
Iyar, 5741): Lag B’Omer
1981(18th
of Iyar, 5741): Fifty-eight year old movie director Boris Segal passed away
today. (As reported by Shawn G. Kennedy)
1981: “The
Outland” a sci-fi thriller directed and written by Peter Hyams, with music by
Jerry Goldsmith and featuring Steven Berkoff was released today in the United
States.
1981: Jack
Lang began serving as Culture Minister of France for the first time.
1981: “The
Four Seasons,” a romantic comedy produced by Martin Bregman was released today
in the United States.
1981: Antatole
Boyard reviewed Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories by Israeli
author Amos Oz.
1983: “An
estimated 180,000 people took part in a New York rally on the occasion of the
12th annual Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry.”
1983: The New York Times featured a review of Art
& Ardor by Cynthia Ozick.
1985: “Rambo:
First Blood Part II” co-starring Steven Berkoff as “Lt. Col. Podovsky” and with
music by Jerry Goldsmith was released in the United States.
1985: “The
play ‘White Rose’ by Scottish playwright Peter Arnott that portrays Lydia
Litvyak's imagined political thoughts, with her character discussing war and
Soviet women's resistance against Nazism. It was first performed today at the
Edinburgh Festival, in the Traverse Theatre.”
1986: In
Redwood City, California, Angie and Francis Edelman gave birth to Boston
Patriots wide-receiver Julian Edelman
1986(13th
of Iyar, 5746) Seventy-three year old Martin Gabel the Philadelphia born Jew
known both for his film career and being the husband of Arlene Francis with
whom he appeared on “What’s My Line?” passed away today.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-24/local/me-7505_1_broadway-actor
1986: In
Philadelphia, PA, “Nina Zebooker and William Ephraim gave birth to Princeton
University graduate Molly Ephraim who pursued a career in acting which included
six years playing the role of “Mandy Baxter” the middle daughter in the sitocom
“Last Man Standing.”
1988(6th of
Sivan, 5748): First Day of Shavuot
1990: In The Los Angeles Times, Sheldon
Teitelbuam reviewed A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers
by Lawrence Weschler, the grandson of Viennese-Jewish émigré composer and
Pulitzer Prize-winner Ernst Toch.
1990: For the
first time CBS broadcast “A Killing in a Small Town” starring Barbara Hershey
who “won a 1990 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries
or a Movie” for her performance
1991(9th
of Sivan, 5751): Ninety-one-year-old Professor of Entomology Abe Ezra
Michelbacher, the Riverside, CA native and holder of Ph.D. from UC Berkley and
the husband bacteriologist Martha Meyer passed away today.
https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/auth_per_fbr_eacp219
1992: “Alien3”
a sci-fi thriller with music by Elliot Goldenthal was released today in the
United States.
1992: On the
final episode of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson which was aired
tonight, Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra closed the show with "I'll
Be Seeing You" a popular song, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by
Irving Kahal published in 1938, because “it was one of Carson's favorite
songs.”
1992: “Encino
Man” a comedy co-starring Pauly Shore and featuring Richard Masur was released
in the United States today.
1992: “Far and
Away” co-produced by Brian Grazer and filmed by cinematographer Mikael Salomon
was released in the United States today.
1993: NBC
broadcast “Saved by the Bell” a sitcom co-starring Dustin Diamond.
1993: For the
first time ABC broadcast “Deadly Relations” the made for television movie
co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow as “Carol Ann Fagot Applegarth Holland”
1995: “Brian
Kowitz hit a 1-2 pitching into right field for a single with two out and the
bases loaded in the 10th inning giving the Richmond Braves a 2-1
victory over the Norfolk Tides in the International League. (As reported by Bob
Wechsler)
1998: The Times of London included a review of
Israel by Martin Gilbert which like all of his work is historically
accurate while having the flow of a well written novel. If you read no other book about the history
of the Jewish state, this is the one you must read.
1998: The Baltimore Jewish Times described the
New Yorker who is the first rabbi to win honor from pope
As another in
a series of recent Roman Catholic overtures toward the Jewish community,
Baltimore's Cardinal William H. Keeler last week presented a papal honor to a
New York rabbi long active in Catholic-Jewish relations. In an afternoon
ceremony at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Rabbi Mordecai
Waxman of Great Neck, N.Y., became the fifth Jew, and the first rabbi ever,
named a Knight Commander of Saint Gregory the Great. Pope John Paul II bestowed
the award on Waxman "in recognition of his extraordinary leadership over
the past several decades in fostering improved relations between the Jewish
people and the Catholic Church," Keeler said. Waxman, 81, is chairman of
the National Council of Synagogues and a past chairman of the International
Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, where he did much of his work
toward healing Catholic-Jewish relations, according to Keeler. In 1987, when
Waxman was president of the Synagogue Council of America, the predecessor to
the National Council, he and then-Bishop Keeler began a tradition of regular
meetings between rabbis and Catholic bishops that continues today, Keeler said.
Waxman helped prepare the pope's visits with American Jewish leaders in 1987,
and he addressed the pontiff on behalf of the Jewish community in Miami that
year. "Over the years, Rabbi Waxman has been a consistent peacemaker and
worked for reconciliation between the Jewish people and the Catholic
Church," Keeler said. Waxman praised the pontiff for his interest in
Catholic-Jewish enterprises, including the Vatican's recent statement of
repentance for the Holocaust. "That he has undertaken to honor Jews for
such activities and has bestowed such recognition upon several of my
co-religionists for their notable contributions is typical of the innovative
thinking which he has brought to world affairs," Waxman told an audience
of more than 100, including scores of his congregants who traveled from Temple
Israel, where the rabbi has presided for 50 years. The Order of St. Gregory the
Great was created by Pope Gregory XVI in 1831 in honor of his predecessor, Pope
St. Gregory. It has several classes, the highest being the Grand Cross.
Previous Jewish recipients include Sir Sigmund Sternberg of London, a recent
Templeton Prize winner; the late Joseph Lichten, who was European director of
the Anti-Defamation League; Gerhardt Riegner, a former general secretary of the
World Jewish Congress; and, most recently, conductor Gilbert Levine, one of
Waxman's congregants. For his part, the rabbi acknowledged and tried to assuage
the continuing suspicion many Jews hold toward the Catholic Church, despite 30
years of papal teachings against anti-Semitism. But he said future generations
will see the fruits of the current efforts. "That perhaps is what the
Talmud means when it says, `There are things that take fruit of which a man
enjoys in this world...but the capital endures for all time. And among these is
the effectings of peace between man and his fellows.'"
1998(26th of
Iyar, 5758): Seventy-two year old Yitzhak Moda’I passed away. Born in Tel Aviv
in 1926, he became an Israeli political leader who served in the Knesset and
who held several cabinet positions including Minister of Justice and Minister
of Economics which is fitting for a man who studied both at the London School
of Economics.
1998: “The
Opposite of Sex” co-starring Lisa Kudrow was released in the United States
today.
1998: “Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas” a movie version of the novel by the same name
featuring Ellen Barkin, Laraine Newman and Jeanette Goldstein was released
today in the United States
1999(7th
of Sivan, 5758): Shavuot is observed for the last time in the 20th
century.
2000: “Prime
Minister Ehud Barak recalled his peace negotiators from Sweden today after a
firebomb critically wounded a 2-year-old Israeli girl in a car passing through
the sleepy Palestinian-ruled city of Jericho.”
2001: The BBC broadcast “Britannia
Incorporated” the 10th episode of “A History of Britain a
documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama” which began its
second season tonight.
2002(11th
of Sivan, 5762): Sixteen year old Elmar Deshabrielov and 65 year old Gary
Tauzniaski were killed and forty people were wounded “when a suicide bomber
detonated himself in the Rothschild Street downtown pedestrian mall of Rishon
Lezion.” (Jewish Virtual Library)
2002: Final
broadcast of “Felicity” a television series created by J.J. Abrams.
2002: David
Blaine began another of his highly publicized “feats” when a crane lifted him
“onto a 100-foot (30 m) high and 22-inch (0.56 m) wide pillar in Bryant Park,
New York City.”
2003: Hamas
claimed responsibility for today’s bus bombing at Netzarim where nine people
were injured.
2004(2nd
of Sivan, 5764): Parashat Bamidbar
2004: It was
reported today that IDF has announced it was redeploying some of the forces it
had sent into Gaza earlier this week as part of a major operation it said was
intended to sever weapons-smuggling routes in tunnels from Egypt” following the
killing of 13 Israeli soldiers last week.
2005: The Wolf
Prizes were awarded by the President of the State of Israel Mr. Moshe Katzav at
the Chagall Hall at the Knesset, in the presence of the Minister of Education
and Chairperson of the Wolf Foundation Council, Mrs. Limor Livnat, the Speaker
of the Knesset MK Reuven Rivlin and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mr.
Zeev Schleisner
2005: The New York Times included reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The
Good, The Bad, And Me In My Anecdotage by Eli Wallach and The Boy Who
Loved Anne Frank by Ellen Feldman, an appealing and inventive novel about
Peter van Daan, one of Anne Frank’s companions in the secret annex that
imagines what his life might have been like if he'd survived to take on a new
identity as a gentile in postwar America.
2006: Haaretz
reported that the Dan David Prizes went to cellist Yo-Yo Ma, four journalist
and two medical researchers. The Dan
David Prizes are distributed annually to people who embody realms of human
achievement related to the past, present and future. They are endowed by the Dan David Foundation
headquartered at Tel Aviv University.
2007: Nineteen
tombstones were toppled in the Jewish cemetery in Chernigov, an eastern Ukraine
city.
2007: As part
of Jewish Heritage Month, the National Archives presents a lecture entitled
“Einstein: His Life and Universe” during which Walter Isaacson will discuss his
latest work, Einstein: His Life and Universe.
2007(5th of
Sivan, 5767): Erev of Shavuot – Confirmation Ceremony at Temple Judah in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa. Those reaching this milestone are Zach Burstain, son of Jennifer
and Todd Burstain; Nathan Cooper, son of Mary and Bob Cooper; Kelsey Fisher,
daughter of Ann Hagie; Joel Gasway, son of Julie and Scott Gasway; Cassy
Novick, daughter of Denise Novick and Don Novick of blessed memory; Josh
Siegel, son of Kris and Ken Siegel. This
is an impressive number for a “small community” on the banks of the Cedar
River. Am Yisroail Chai – The Jewish People
Lives!
2007: A rare
Torah scroll fragment from the Book of Exodus dating back to the 7th century
that includes the famous “Song of the Sea” is put on display at the Israel
Museum in Jerusalem, The manuscript, which is a fragment of a Torah scroll from
the Book of Exodus (13:19-16:1), comes from the six-hundred year period from
the 3rd through 8th centuries known as the "silent era," from which
almost no Hebrew manuscripts have survived.
2008: The JCC
Manhattan and The Museum of Biblical Art in New York presents “The History and
Legacy of Greek Jews” during which Steve Bowman, Professor of Judaic Studies,
University of Cincinnati Professor Bowman looks at the history of Jews in
Greece - their ancient origins, their contribution to Jewish culture, and fate
within the larger Christian community.
2008: Today, ,
at a ceremony held at the US State Department in Washington, DC,” eighty-eight
year old Max “Kampelman was presented by
the National Endowment for Democracy with its Democracy Service Medal in
recognition of his lifetime achievement in advancing the principles of freedom,
human rights, and democracy.”
2008: As part
of the celebrations of Israel at 60, The Quad Cities Jewish Federation sponsors
a recital by Carmel Harel, Israeli Shlicha of New Hampshire. A graduate of
Israel Art and Science Academy in Jerusalem, she will play the piano and sing
Israeli songs from the last 60 years.
2008: In
Israel's answer to the Woodstock Festival, nearly half a million people gather
on a Galilee mountaintop, where they pitch tents and engage in 24 hours of
feasting, singing and ecstatic dancing.
2008: The
Cedar Rapids Jewish community watches with pride as Ben Handler and Vanezzia
Levi take part in the graduation ceremonies at Washington High School.
2009(28th of
Iyar, 5769): Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Reunification Day
2009: Opening
of Conference 2009 hosted by The Philadelphia Kehila for Secular Jews
2009(28th of
Iyar, 5769: Funeral services are held at Temple B’nai Israel in Little Rock,
AR, for Mrs. Joyce Ehrenberg, “dear and loving wife of Mr. Harry L. Ehrenberg,
Sr. of blessed memory, and deeply proud mother of Harry L. Jr., and his sisters
Linda and Terry. A consummate promoter in helping those that were less
fortunate, Mrs. Ehrenberg lived a richly meaningful life.”
2009: IDF
forces killed two armed terrorists who approached a security fence in southern
Gaza before dawn today.
2010(9th of
Sivan, 5770): At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Shannon Williams is called
to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah.
2010: “Jacob’s
House” August Schulenburg’s play based on the life of the Biblical character is
scheduled to have its final performance the Access Theater in New York.
2011: To avoid
desecration of Shabbat, the traditional Sephardi bonfire in Meron marking Lag
B’Omer will be lit tonight instead of last night.
2011: The
AIPAC Policy Conference is scheduled to open today in Washington, D.C.
2011; The
Jewish community of metropolitan Washington, DC, is scheduled to celebrate
Israel’s birthday at Israel@63.
2011: In
Cincinnati, Ohio, Rabbi David Ellenson, president of HUC-JIR, is scheduled to
speak about the important place of the Jewish seminary in American life and
scholarship in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month and the 100th
anniversary of the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion.
2011: Chabad
Lubavitch of Iowa City is scheduled to hold the grand opening of Iowa City’s
Kosher Co-op, the first such emporium in the Iowa City – Cedar Rapids Corridor.
2011(18th of
Iyar, 5771): Lag B’Omer
2011(18th
of Iyar, 5771): Seventy-three year old composer and one-man movie making
machine Joseph Brooks whose jingle “You’ve got a lot to live, and Pepsi’s got a
lot to give” was known to millions even his name was not passed away today.
2011: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including
“The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life” by Harold Bloom, “2030:
The Real Story of What Happens to America” by Albert Brooks and “The Convert: A
Tale of Exile and Extremism” by Deborah Baker which tells the story of “how a
Jewish girl from Larchmont became an Islamic polemicist.”
2011:
President Obama addressed American Israel Public Affairs Committee this
morning.
2012: The
annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan featuring a speech
by Arthur Horwitz, President of Renaissance Media and former publisher of the
Detroit Jewish News and presentation of the Leonard N. Simons History Award is
scheduled to take place this evening at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, MI.
2012: In
recognition of the contributions of Jewish Americans to literature, poet Jody
Bolz, editor of Poet Lore, America's oldest poetry magazine, is scheduled to
read her work in Washington, DC.
2012(1st of
Sivan, 5772): Rosh Chodesh Sivan
2012: “The Bad
Guys” featuring Raviv “Ricky” Ullman opened at a theatre on the Upper West Side
in New York City.
2012(1st
of Sivan, 5772): Fifty-three year old Aharon Zandi a mechanic from Sarna and “a
pillar of Yemen’s dwindling Jewish community” was murdered today. (As reported
by Elhanan Miller)
2012: Israeli
radio reported today that 24 year old Nadav Ben Yehuda went to the aid of a
stranded climber which put an end to attempt to become the youngest Israel to
reach the summit of Mount Everest.
2012: Israel
responded with immediate skepticism to reports that the UN had concluded an
agreement with Iran to probe that country’s suspected nuclear site
2013: The
American Jewish Historical Society and Beta Israel of North America are
scheduled to present a screening of “Leah,” a documentary that depicts the
experiences of Ethiopian Jews trying to adjust to life in Israel.
2013: In
Denver, CO, the Mizel Institute is scheduled to present Pat Bowlen, the owner
of the Denver Broncos with its 2013 Community Enrichment Award.
2013: The
Matlz Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host a panel discussion
entitled “How We Survive.”
2013:
“Juadica,” the first ever Jewish film festival to be held in Lisbon is
scheduled to open today.
2013: Rashad
Hussain, the United States Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC) will join newly appointed Special Envoy for Monitoring and
Combating Anti-Semitism Ira Forman will leave for Poland today “to visit Jewish
communities, the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
and other Holocaust historical sites.” JPost)
2013: Anthony
Weiner announced today that he was running for Mayor of New York City
2013: City
Councilman Eric Garcetti defeated Controller Wendy Greuel to become next mayor
of Los Angeles after a campaign in which he depicted his rival a pawn of
powerful labor bosses. With all precincts reporting today, the city councilman
grabbed 54 percent of the votes against his fellow Democrat. Greuel had 46
percent.
2014: The final full day of the 4th International
Writers’ Festival is scheduled to open with dancer Ohad Naharin and Nicole
Krauss discussing the language of writing and of movement followed by
encounters and conversations with Marilynne Robinson, Jake Wallis Simons, and
Jan-Philip Sendker, and a final one between Krauss and David Grossman. (As
reported by Jessica Steinberg)
2014: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host “an
intimate evening” with Israeli cantor and stage performer Dudu Fisher.
2014: In Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled today
“that 95-year-old Michael Karkoc’s service as a commander in the SS-led
Ukrainian Self Defense Legion made him the “holder of a German office” which
means that “Germany the legal right to prosecute him even though he is not
German, his alleged crimes were against non-Germans and they were not committed
on German soil.” (Times of Israel)
2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present
“War Children Just the Same.”
2014: Forty-eight year old Rainer Hoess, the grandson of
Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hosess, “tweet a picture of himself standing about
Tel Aviv’s marina today and described the location as ‘very nice.’”
2014(22nd of Iyar, 5774): Eighty-six year old Don Levine, the developer
of the G.I. Joe action figure passed away today.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/don-levine-who-developed-gi-706992
2015: In an
attempt to reassure American Jews of his support for Israel, President Obama
addressed 1,000 people at Washington’s Adas Israel – the large Conservative
synagogue – saying that the nuclear agreement with Iran did change the fact
“that the United States had an “enduring friendship with the people of Israel” and
“unbreakable bonds with the state of Israel” that could never be weakened.”
2015: Today
“The United States blocked a global document toward ridding the world of
nuclear weapons, saying Egypt and other states “cynically manipulated” the
process by trying to set a deadline for Israel and its neighbors to meet within
months on a Middle East zone free of such weapons.”
2015: The Eden
Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a concert at noon as part of the Israel
Festival.
2015: Among
the 11 Democrats and one Republican pledged to observe “Solidarity Sabbath”
which begins this evening is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate minority leader
and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), one of two Muslims in Congress. The sole
Republican so far pledged is Rep. Peter King (R-NY).
2015: Rabbi
Susan Grossman is scheduled to lead a discussion on the “Jewish View - To the
Huppah and Beyond: Egalitarian Marriage and Divorce in Jewish Law” at Beth
Shalom in Columbia, MD.
2016: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Paper:
Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky, The Romanovs:1613-1918 by
Simon Sebag Montefiore and The Politicians and Egalitarians: The Hidden
History of American Politics by Sean Wilentz.
2016: The
Jewish Museum of Florida – FIU is scheduled to present a “special edit-a-thon
in partnership with the Miami Book Fair” the goal of which is “to edit and
create Wikipedia pages about American Jewish Authors, Musicians, Artists and
other cultural influencers.”
2016: The YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research, Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and NYC Depart of
Cultural Affairs are scheduled to host “A Tribute to Sholem Aleichem.”
2016: In
Marion, Iowa at The Giving Tree Theatre the curtain is scheduled to come down
on Wendy Kesselmans’ adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” the three weeklong
performance of which has been sponsored by The Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund
which “was established in 1995 by Dr. David and Joan Thaler to provide support
for education about the Holocaust to residents and students at the local
colleges in Linn County, Iowa.”
2016: Adas
Israel is scheduled to host a ceremony adding Father Joachim Alexopoulous, who
in 1943 as Archbishop of Volos “devised a plan for hiding 700 Jewish residents
of Volos -- saving them from deportation and almost certain death” to is Garden
of the Righteous.
2016: In New
York City, the Jerusalem Post is scheduled to host its 5th annual
conference today with the theme of “Israel, the US and the Free World in the
Shadow of Terror.”
2016: The
Breman Museum is scheduled to host a tour of Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery which
will include an exploration of the history, burial customs and symbolism found
throughout the Jewish Grounds of this powerful city landmark” as well as a
recounting of the “stories of life and persistence as waves of Jewish
immigrants entered and adapted to the culture of Victorian America.”
2016:
“Sixty-Minutes” is scheduled to include a special memorial segment honoring
Morley Safer, the long-time CBS correspondent who considered himself first and
foremost a writer which makes last name, for those who know Hebrew, extremely
appropriate.
http://www.jta.org/2016/05/19/news-opinion/united-states/morley-safer-of-60-minutes-dies-at-84
2017:
President Donald Trump is scheduled to “touch down at Ben Gurion International
Airport” this
afternoon “for a 28 hour visit to Israel and the West Bank.”.
2017: Per the
orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all members of his cabinet are
scheduled to attend the airport welcome ceremony for visiting US President
Donald Trump
2017: The
Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to co-host a weekly interfaith
discussion looking at issues “from the perspectives of Judaism, Christianity
and Islam.”
2017: “After learning
that some of his ministers planned to skip the ceremony,” “Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu order all members of his cabinet to attend today’s airport
welcome ceremony for U.S. President Donald Trump.”
2017: Today,
Donald Trump “became the first sitting American President to visit the Western
Wall.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)
2017: Hallie
Bram Kogelschatz, the CEO of shark & minnow is scheduled to discuss the
need to modernize Judaism’s “mainstream identity” at Tribe Talk “an informal
discussion series at the Landmark Centre in Beachwood, Ohio
2017:
“French-Jewish celebrity intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy” “present a new
documentary – ‘The Battle for Mosul’ – at the annual Tel Aviv film festival
DocAviv.”
2018:
Choreographer Andrea Miller and Gallim are scheduled to begin their second
round of performances at The Met Breuer.
2018(8th
of Sivan, 5778): Eight five year old
award winning novelist Philip Milton Roth, the Newark born son of Herman Roth,
a frustrated life insurance agent and “the former Bess Frankel” and author of
such noted works as Portnoy’s Complaint, Goodbye Colum and Sabbath’s Theatre,
passed away today. (As reported by Charles McGrath)
2018: It was
reported today that images have been released showing a Lockheed Martin F-35
stealth fighter belonging to the IAF flying over Beirut which is the
“first-ever combat mission” flowing by the state of the art aircraft.
2018: “The
Australian wing of Toys "R" Us, part of the chain founded by Charles
Lazarus entered voluntary administration” today.
2018 Ailing PA
President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to remain in the hospital for one more
night amidst reports by Saeb Erekat “that Palestinian institutions are robust
enough to endure the post-Abbas era.” (As reported by Alexandra Lukash and Nir
Cohen)
2018: The YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “a concert featuring a
variety of chamber music by Joachim Stutschewsky and composers of his coterie
both in Russia and in Israel, as well as the premiere of a new composition by
Ofer Ben-Amots, commissioned by YIVO” preceded by a lecture by Neil W. Levin on
Joachim Stutschewsky’s life and work.
2019: JBI and
Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present “a tour of ‘Kindertransport
– Rescuing Children on the Brink of War’” which illuminates “the organized
rescue efforts that brought thousands of children from Nazi Europe to Great
Britain in the late 1930s” lead by curator Ilona Moradorf.
2019: The
American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a performance of
“Nabucco,” “the opera by Giuseppe Verdi, “adapted by and starring David Serero
as Nabucco” which builds “on the Biblical accounts of the Babylonian Exile
found in Jeremiah and Daniel” and which “combines political and love intrigues
with some of the greatest songs ever written (including “Va, pensiero, The
Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”).
2019(17th
of Iyar, 5779): Ninety-five year old British author Judith Kerr, the Berlin
born daughter of theatre critic Alexander Kerr and composer Julia Anna
Franziska Weismann, the sister of British jurist Michael Kerr and wife of Nigel
“Tom” Kneale passed away today.(As reported by Laura Holson)
2019: Today,
Tiffany Haddish “became a naturalized citizen of Eritrea while taking part in
festivities commemorating the 28th anniversary of Eritrean
independence Ethopia.
2019: In Edmonton, Alberta, the Edmonton
Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “From to the Cloud”
which tells the story of the World of the Cairo Geniza.
2020: Today
during a special LSJS Torah Show, Bidud Beyachad, celebrating Yom Yerushalayim.
Rabbi Zarum is scheduled to link LIVE to the Old City of Jerusalem to walk and
talk with expert tour guide and archaeologist, Rabbi Barnea Selavan.
2020: CJP’s
Boston-Haifa Connection is scheduled to host a special Kabbalat Shabbat program
marking Jerusalem Day and Memorial Day for Ethiopian Jews honoring the 4,000
Ethiopian Jews, known as the Beta Israel, who died during this mass
immigration.
2020: Via
Zoom, “Francesco Spagnolo, Curator of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and
Life, University of California, Berkeley, is scheduled to host a presentation
on the current exhibition “Threads of Jewish Life: Ritual and Other Textiles
from the San Francisco Bay Area” during which Spagnolo will explore early
Jewish life in San Francisco through the textiles and objects on view in the
exhibition, including the mysterious origins of the exhibition's extraordinary
Torah ark.
2020(28th
of Iyar, 5780): Yom Yerushalayim
2021(11th
of Sivan, 5781): Parashat Nasso;
2021: In Palm
Beach, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled to host an early morning Torah Study
session with Rabbi Feivel Strauss.
2021: The Eden
Tamir Center in Jerusalem is scheduled to host a “Millennium Ensemble with
Julia Gurvitch.”
The Guy Mintus
Trio is scheduled to give a CD release concert in celebration of their latest
album on ENJA Records, “A Gershwin Playground” which “offers a fresh and
contemporary take on the iconic repertoire of George Gershwin…”
2021: As the fragile cease fire between Hamas and Israel
appears to be taking affect, the political infighting in Israel begins again
with attacks on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the events of the last
eleven days as well as the events that preceded the fighting.
2021: In
Orange Village, OH, Temple Emanu El is scheduled to host a study of the weekly
Torah portion.
2021:
Manchester Community Theater in Manchester, N.H. is scheduled to host an
in-person screening of a new
musical, “Miriam, The First Woman Prophet.”
https://www.jewishboston.com/events/a-new-musical-miriam-the-first-woman-prophet/
2022: Striekcker’s Broadway Buzz features a
performance of “Funny Girl” which was revamped by Harvey Fierstein.
2022: JHMOMC is scheduled to present “Aging/Schmaging:
A Celebration of the Ages” performed by Singer/Songwriter Naomi Miller
2022: The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is
scheduled to present “Mizrahi Jews Sent to Live in the Desert: An Interactive
Session with Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute.”
2022: The Illinois Holocaust is scheduled to
host the premiere of “Speer Goes to Hollywood.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn1X2m2Tf-Q
2022: The Baltimore Jewish Film Festival is
scheduled to host the final screening of “Neighbours” and “Love and Mazel Tov.”
2022: The New York Times features
reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers
including Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes by
Jerry Z. Muller, The Familia Grande
by Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Dr. Bernard Kouchner and the recently
released paperback edition of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
2022: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is
scheduled to host a BBQ dinner followed by the annual congregational meeting.
2022: UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host the
final screening of “The Adventures of Saul Bellow.”
2022: “Health Minister and chief of the left
wing Meretz party Nitzan Horowitz” is scheduled to meet with Meretz MK Ghaida Rinawie Zoab today in an
attempt to salvage the coalition government.
2023: The Jewish Community of the North Shore
is scheduled to present JCCNS’ screening of “Barren.”
2023: In Palo Alto, the Oshman Family JCC is
scheduled to host “What a Surprise?”, play by L.A.-based The Braid (formerly Jewish
Women’s Theatre) that celebrates stories of life’s unexpected moments, from
joyous to deep losses and everything in between, followed by Q&A with
actors and artistic director.
2023: IPF Atid Boston is scheduled to present a
briefing with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Israel Policy Fellow Ely Sandler,
who will discuss cross-border cooperation on climate issues in the Middle East.
2023: No talks concerning the judicial reform
legislation are scheduled today, or for that matter for the rest of the week,
because, among other things, negotiations on the budget, which has to be
approved, are scheduled to take place.
