This Day, November 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

November 23

912: Birthdate of Otto the Great, founder of the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy nor Roman. During his reign Rabbis living in the Rhineland addressed questions to the Rabbis in Palestine “concerning the reported appearance of the Messiah.” This report was based on information supplied by 12 century Rabbi Isaac ben Dorolo.

1220: Frederick II who granted the Jews a privilege, and the existence of community institutions such as a synagogue, hospital and slaughterhouse can be proven from the 14th century onwards. Vienna’s city law empowered a special Judenrichter (Judge of the Jews) to adjudicate in disputes between Christians and Jews, but this judge was not empowered to rule in conflicts between two Jewish parties, unless one party filed a complaint with him, began his reign today as Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany and Italy.

1221: Birthdate of King Alfonso X of Castile who had Yehudah ben Moshe translate several texts on magic into the national vernacular.

1248: In the long war to unite Spain, King Ferdinand III of Castile takes Seville from the Moors. Ferdinand is remembered as the king who refuses Pope’s demand that Jews be forced to wear special badge and clothing.  The reason given by the monarch is a fear that Jews would flee to Muslim Granada, which would be disastrous for the revenues of the kingdom. “The Jews have played a prominent part in Seville’s history since the 4th Century and after the Christian Reconquest, their community was concentrated in this part of the city and enjoyed a period of great prosperity until the end of the 14th Century. Jews were prominent bankers, tradesmen, doctors, writers, philosophers, and advisors to both Arab and Christian rulers. It is no coincidence that the Jewish quarter of Santa Cruz is located right next to the Royal Palace, the Alcázar. A street called “El Callejón de La Judería” (“The Little Street of the Jewish Quarter”) leads into the heart of the Santa Cruz neighborhood.”

1510: The Jews were expelled from Naples. Fifteen years earlier, the Spanish had conquered the island, and within a year had issued an order for the banishment of all Jews, which was never carried out. Now the community, which had existed since Roman times, was forced out. The only Jews remaining were the "New Christians" (who were to be expelled 5 years later) and 200 wealthy families who paid a new annual tax for such tolerance.

1584: Today, Giles Fletcher, the Eton and Cambridge educated “poet, diplomat and MP” who while serving as the English “minister of Musovy claimed to have discovered the Ten Lost Tribes among the Tartars” began serving as an MP “for Winchelsea, one of the Cinque Ports.”

 1584: The Sultan ordered an investigation into the number of synagogues in Safed. In his letter to the local administration, he wrote, "in the town of Safed there are only seven sacred mosques. But the Jews who in olden times had three synagogues have now thirty-two synagogues, and they have built their buildings very high."

1593: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Bucharest claiming the lives of many Jews.

1648: Coronation of old Frederick III, who said of the Jews, they “have stolen into Denmark contrary to long-standing custom, [since the days of the Reformation, the Lutheran creed had, according to the laws of Denmark, been compulsory throughout the kingdom], and have dared to traffic with jewels and the like” which led him “to order that no Jew should enter Denmark without a special passport ("Geleitsbrief"), and that those who were already in the country should be heavily fined if they did not leave within fourteen days” [Editors’ note: A few years later, Frederick III., being in need of funds for his wars, borrowed money from the Jew Abraham (or Diego) Teixeira de Mattos of Hamburg (known through his relations with the Swedish queen Christina), and gave as security crownlands in Jutland. Teixeira thereupon made such good use of his influence with the Danish king that, as early as Jan. 19, 1657, "the Portuguese professing the Hebrew religion" were permitted to travel everywhere within the kingdom, and to trade and traffic within the limit of the law. Teixeira himself gained little by his transaction with the Danish monarch. As his loan was not returned, he took instead the estates he held as security, selling them later at a great loss. The king acted similarly in his dealings with the De Lima family, who were in possession of the Hald estate from 1660 to 1703.”]

1700: Beginning of the Papacy of Clement XI who in 1704 issued a bull that “dealt with the education of potential converts, encouraged forced preaching to Jews, and emphasized the importance of providing financial assistance to Jews who converted” and “asserted that new converts were to be fully accepted into the Catholic community.”

1702(3rd of Kislev): Thirty six Jews were killed in an explosion in Lemberg, Poland

1777(23rd of Cheshvan): Rabbi Aaron Katzenellenbogen of Brisk, author of Minhat Aharon passed away.

1783(28^th of Cheshvan, 5544): Isaac da Costa, who “came to Charleston from London in 1750 and  became the first hazzan of Congregation Beth Elohim” after which as a supporter of the American Revolution he left the city while it was occupied by the British passed away today.

1783: At the end of the American Revolution the British left New York after which silversmith Myer Myers, who had moved to Connecticut in 1777 when the British took the city and his family returned where he practiced his craft until his death in 1795.

https://www.incollect.com/articles/myer-myers-jewish-silversmith-in-colonial-new-york

1794: In Savannah, GA, Judith De Lyon and Joseph Abrahams gave birth to Rachel Abrahams.

1800: In London, Dinah and Henry Henoch Myers and Michael Meir Myers.

1800: In Charleston SC, Sarah and Abraham Moise gave birth to Isaac Moise, the husband of Hetty Lopez.

1801: In Philadelphia, Leon van Amringe, Isaiah Nathan, Isaac Marks, Aaron Levi, Jr., Abraham Gumpert, and Abraham Moses took title to a plot of ground to be used as a place of burial for members of the newly formed Congregation Mickvé Israel.

1801: In Bridgetown, Barbados, Eliezer Montefiore and Judith Montefiore gave birth to Jacob Barrow Montefiore who “entered into business with his brother Moses, and when in the early thirties the movement for the financing of Australian colonization from London was incepted Montefiore, who had been connected with the Colonial produce trade, became active in the various public schemes as a member of the South Australian Colonization Association, organized to settle South Australia on the Wakefield system. He was also appointed member of the first board of commissioners entrusted by the British government with the administration of the colony. He visited the colony in the year 1843 and again in 1854. His reception on his first visit by the governor, Sir George Grey, and the people was enthusiastic. During his visit to South Australia in 1843 he acted as an agent for the Rothschilds, at the same time holding a partnership with his brother Joseph Barrow in the firm of Montefiore Brothers of London and Sydney. The township of Montefiore, at the confluence of the Bell and MacQuarrie rivers, in Wellington Valley, was founded by the brothers, and they contributed actively to the establishment there of places of worship for all denominations. The organization of the Bank of Australasia was largely due to their efforts. In Adelaide there is a hill named after them. In 1885, at the request of the directors of the Art Union Gallery of Adelaide, Jacob sat for the artist B. S. Marks, the portrait being hung in that gallery

1804: Birthdate of Franklin Pierce fourteenth President of the United States. Pierce is part of the unmemorable trio who served occupied the White House in the decade before the Civil War including Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan.  Among his few claims to fame is that he was the first and maybe the only President whose name appears on the charter of a synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress in 1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to enable the incorporation of the city's first synagogue, the Washington Hebrew Congregation.

1809: Copper manufacturer Harmon Hendricks, the son of Uriah Henricks, one of the founders of Congregation Shearith Israel and his Frances Isaacs, the daughter of Joshua and Brandy Isaacs gave birth to Justina Brandley Hendricks.

1812: Miriam Keyser and London born Barent Solomon Gompertz gave birth to Charlotte Gompertz.

1817(14^th of Kislev, 5578): German born Eleazar Joseph, the husband of Gertrude Joseph passed away today in Richmond, VA.

1825: Birthdate of Henriette Goldschmidt who married Rabbi Abraham Meyer Goldschmidt and was a leading educator, social worker and activists in the fight for the rights of German women.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldschmidt-henriette

1831: Jonas Engel married Sarah Louisa Barnett today.

1833: In Turek, near Kalish in Russian, Poland, Wolf Rosenthal and Esther Kolskey gave birth to “painter, engraver, etcher, lithographer and illustrator” and husband of Carolina Rosenthal who came to Philadelphia in 1849 where he pursued a career that included making illustrations of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War for the United States Military Commission, producing a collection of five hundred historical portraits and providing illustrations for “The Legend of Ben Levi.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Rosenthal#/media/File:New_Masonic_Hall_Interior_1855.jpg

1835: In Charleston, SC, Catherine Oppenheim, the daughter of Rachel and Joseph Moses and her husband Hertz Wolf Oppenheim gave birth to Julius Herz Oppenheim, the husband of Sarah Ann Oppenheim.

1836(14th of Kislev, 5597): Jacob Cohen Bakri, a wealthy French Jew who played a key role in the French acquisition of Algeria passed away today.

1838(6^th of Kislev, 5599): Sixty-seven year old Bohemian native Samuel Hyman and the husband of Elizabeth Hyman passed away today in Plymouth, England.

1840: Sixty-six year old Louis Gabriel Ambroise Bonald, the anti-Semitic “French philosopher, politician and author” who believed that most Jews were “parasites” and that before they could be emancipated they must adopt Catholicism, passed away today.

1841: It was announced that Albert Goldsmid had been promoted to the rank of Lt. Col. In the British Army.

1843: One day after he had passed away, 31 year old Isaac Abrahams was buried at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1844(12th of Kislev, 5605): Fifty-three year old “Austrian financier and philanthropist Hermann Todesco passed away at his native Pressburg, Hungary today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_19910.html

1845: Paul Julius Reuter married Ida Maria Elizabeth Clementine Magnus in Berlin completing a series of changes that had begun a month before when he arrived had arrived in London.  In that time he changed his name to Joseph Josephat, converted to Christianity and then changed his name again to Paul Julius Reuter.

1845: Forty-six year old Michael Solomon Alexander, the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem passed away.  An ordained Rabbi, he converted to Christianity in 1825.

1845: Forty-six year old Michael Solomon Alexander, a convert to Christianity who became the first Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem passed away today.

1847: The Ladies of the Society for the Religious Instruction in Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution of tribute at the passing of the British author, Grace Aguilar. Aguilar had died on September 16, 1847 at the age of 32. Aguilar's work had been championed by Philadelphia editor Isaac Leeser, who published Aguilar's books in the United States and included her writings in his monthly magazine, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. As a result, Aguilar was in many ways better known in the Jewish community of the United States than in England. In addition to historical romances (e.g. The Vale of Cedars) and reflections on Judaism (The Spirit of Judaism, 1842) Aguilar's influential book, The Women of Israel (1844), contested the claims by numerous Christian authors that Judaism denigrated women. Aguilar argued for Judaism's ancient and contemporary regard for women by detailing the strong and admirable women who appear in Judaism's essential defining text, the Bible. Aguilar returned the feeling of kinship that American Jewish women bore her. She even responded to an 1843 request from Savannah to contribute to a fair that local Jewish women were holding to raise funds to hire a rabbi. Aguilar sent along 2 purses, 6 needle cases, and 12 pincushions on which she had done the needlework, along with additional needlework pieces gathered from some of her friends. In mourning Aguilar's passing, the Charleston women truly felt they had lost one of their own. Aguilar's death at a young age evinced a strong response. Leeser observed that “there has not arisen a single Jewish female in modern times who has done so much for the illustration and adornment of her faith as Grace Aguilar.” The Charleston women expressed their appreciation for the “power and effect” of the “pen of this champion of our faith, against that giant Prejudice, whose shadow blackens the earth.” Citing her as the “moral governess of the Hebrew family,” the women of the Society resolved that her death “must be regarded as a national calamity; and that no demonstration of respect, however high, can convey an adequate sense of the exalted estimation in which we hold her character or of the profound regret with which we received the tidings of her dissolution.”

1848(27th of Cheshvan, 5609): Twenty-six year old Hermann Jellinek, the younger brother of Rabbi Adolf Jellinek was executed today for his role in the Vienna Uprising in October, 1848

1848 (27th of Cheshvan): Rabbi Meir Benjamin Danon, author of Be’er ba Sadeh, passed away.

1850: Birthdate of Vienna native and award playwright  Carl Karlweis the convert to Christianity who was the father of Oskar Karlweis and the author of “The Little Man.”

1852: An article published today entitled “Trial for Arson In the First Degree’ described the trial of Aaron Diamond on charges of arson. Mr. Morrison appeared as counsel representing Aaron Diamond, a German Jew who does not speak English in the case of the People vs. Aaron Diamond.  The case revolved around an allegation that Diamond and Joshua Feller had set fire to the dwelling of John Nally.  Morrison demanded that Diamond be tried separately. When several of the prosecution’s witnesses failed to show up, the District Attorney said that it would “unsafe” to convict the defendant and the Jury was directed by the court to render a verdict of not guilty.

1852: The discovery of Asteroid 21 Lutetia by Hermann Goldschmidt was published today.

1853: Two days after he had passed away, 99 year old Levy Alexander, the husband of Prussian born Fanny Alexander, was buried today at the “Exeter Jewish Cemetery.

1853: The Hebrew Benevolent Society celebrated its 32^nd anniversary this evening with a dinner attended by 350 gentlemen at the Chinese Assembly Rooms on Broadway. 

1854(2^nd of Kislev, 5615): Fifty year old Belarus native Meshulam Zalman Feiwel Friedland, of Slutsk, the “son of Shmuel Zanvil (Zavel) Friedland and Itke Friedland” passed away today in Latvia.

1855: Seventy-four year old French statesman Louis-Mathieu Molé the opponent of Jewish emancipation who was the official named by Napoleon to bring together the Sanhedrin in 1806 and 1807 passed away today.

1856: Isaac and Julie Judith Josephine Mautner gave birth to Rosa Perlhefter.

1862(1^st of Kislev, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1862(1^st of Kislev, 5623): Julia Levy, the New York City born daughter of Simeon Levy and the wife of John Solomons passed away today in Washington, D.C.

1863: Two days after she had passed away, Rachel (Isaacs) Ansell, the wife of Jacob Ansell with whom she had had eleven children, was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”

1867: Birthdate of Edgar D. Peixotto, the native New Yorker and son of Raphael Peixotto who became a successful lawyer in San Francisco, CA.

1868: In Chicago, Illinois, Julius Rosenthal and Jette Wolfe gave birth to attorney Lessing Rosenthal the graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern Law School and husband of Mrs. Lillie Frank Myers who combined a distinguished legal career with service to the Jewish community including serving as director of the Jewish Training School in Chicago.

1870: It was reported today that Thanksgiving Services will be held at the 44^th Street Synagogue after which children from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum will enjoy a holiday dinner provided by the Trustees.

1870(29^th of Cheshvan, 5631): Augusta Feuchtwanger nee Levy, the wife of Lewis Feuchtwanger, passed away today in New York.

1870: Lewis Hart married Adelaide Levy at the New Synagogue today.

1871: Birthdate of Morris Masskov, the native of Odessa who gained fame American character actor Maurice Moscovitch whose last film may have been his most famous – Charlie Chaplain’s “The Great Dictator.”

1871: Ignatz Ratzsky was released from Sing Sing Prison after having served nine years for the robbery-murder of a German Jew named Sigismund Fellner.  Ratzsky had originally been sentenced to death, but Governor Fenton commuted his sentence based his judgment that the conviction had been based on circumstantial evidence.

1873: In New York, founding of the Société Israélite Française de Secours Mutuels de New York which met on the fourth Sunday of each month, provided money for sick, death and burial benefits and owned burial grounds at Bayside, Long Island.

1874: Carl Schurz will deliver a lecture this evening sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association on “Educational Problems” at Steinway Hall in New York.

1875(25^th of Cheshvan, 5636): Seventy-five year old Benjamin Lazarus, the son of Marks Lazarus who married Cornelia Cohen in 1840 passed away today.

1876: In Washington, DC, “Zody and Sarah (Ullman) Strasburger gave birth to Georgetown University trained attorney Milton Stasburger, the husband of Elsa Coblenzer who “served in the office of the Adjutant General during World War” and who was a member of Washington Hebrew Congregation.

1877: It was reported today that two men have been charged for their role in stealing furs from A.T. Stewart & Co. Robert Kyle was charged with stealing the first while Seligman Hirsch, who was described as a “Hebrew” fur dealer, was charged with receiving the stolen firs. Why or how the reported knew that Hirsch was Jewish is not stated nor is any reason given for not identifying any of the other characters by their religious affiliation.

1880: It was reported today the lower house of the Prussian Diet debated the proposals by the anti-Semitic party to limit the activities of Jews in Germany.  The anti-Semites reflected the views of Reverend Stecker, the Court Chaplin who wants legislation adopted that will “keep the Jews from any post of authority.”  The opponents including members of the Liberal Party defended the Jews and “contended that it was breach of the Constitution to deny that Jews were Germans.”

1881: In Pinsk, Yetta and Zvi Hirsch Masliansky  gave birth to Phillip Maslinasky, who as Phillip Maslansky married Harriet Maslansky with whom he raised two children Dorothy and Lawrence  while working as an import-export merchant and servig as a member of the American Jewish Committee (Some sources show his birthdate as 1882)

1882: In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment distributed funds to a variety of charitable institutions including $1,680 to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1882: In Pinsk, Talmudist and Zionist leader Rev Zwi Hirsh Maslansky and Yetta (Rubinstein) Maslansky gave birth import-export merchant Phillip Maslansky who in 1896 came to the United States where he founded the New York Merchant Company and married Hattie Hattenbach with whom he had one daughter, Dorothy and who was active in the Jewish community as can be seen by his help in building the Washington Heights Synagogue and his membership on the American Jewish Committee.

1882: In Mayfield, OH, Esther Goodman and Michael Frankel gave birth to University of Minnesota trained attorney  and long-time Assistant Attorney General of Minnessota Hiram David Frankel, the husband of Irene Page Solomon and “active Jewish layman who reached the rank of Major while serving with Minnesota National Guard and  who wrote United States Army and wrote Company “C”, First Infantry, Minnesota National Guard.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/company-c-first-infantry-minnesota-national-guard-its-history-and-development-hiram-david-frankel/20525726

1883: It was reported today that Spanish in Morocco tried and convicted twelve Jews accused supplying guns to the Berbers.

1883: Henry Irving will play Shylock, one of his signature roles in tonight’s performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Star Theatre.

1883: According to a report that appeared in today’s edition of the Hebrew Standard, Hugh O’Neill is quoted as telling a Jew in New York, “We don’t want any of your people in our employ.”

1884: It was reported today that the friends of Mrs. Max Rosenberg, the former Miss Jennie E. Lyman, were surprised to hear that she has filed for divorce especially since most of them did not she had gotten married several months while visiting New York.  In her petition, Mrs. Rosenberg accused her husband of “extreme cruelty.”  Rosenberg disputes his wife’s claims and says that the cause of the problem is her father’s dislike for him because he was Jewish.

1885: Birthdate of Valerian Dovgalevsky, the Ukrainian born “son of Zaiwel Dovgalevsky and Berta Dovgalevsky, an “intimate of Lenin” and a participant in the October Revolution who served as the Soviet Union’s Ambassador to France in the 1920’s.

1885: Birthdate of Alexander “Alex” Trachtenberg the native of Odessa who was active in the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party USA.

1885: It was reported today that this year’s Hebrew Ladies Benevolent Fair raised over $7,800.

1886: Warrants are expected to be issued today for those who have violated Massachusetts “Sunday Closing Laws.”  Several Jews and their customers are expected to be named since up until last week, it had been considered permissible for the Jews to operate their businesses on Sunday since they were closed on Saturday for their Sabbath observances.

1886(25th of Cheshvan, 5647): Sixty-four year old author and historian Leopold Kompert, best known for his role in the “Kompert Affair” in which he and Heinrich Graetz “were brought to court in Vienna for publishing ideas that were heretical to Catholic faith, in addition to contradicting Jewish tradition.”

1888:  Birthdate of Harpo Marx, one of the famous Marx Brothers.

1889: Jacob Levy arrived in New York City from Poland today and moved in with his brother at 83 Norfolk Street in NYC.

1889: Sanitary officers “seized some unwholesome meat and vegetables in the sidewalk markets in the Hebrew quarter in the Tenth Ward.”

1889: “The Red Hussar,” a comedy opera in three acts by Edward Solomon, with a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens, which opened at the Lyric Theatre in London tonight.  Solomon was the prolific Ango-Jewish composer and conductor who died prematurely at the age of 29.

1890: Seventy-three year old William III of Netherlands who in 1855 appointed Aron Mendes Chumaceiro chief rabbi of the colony of Curaçao and intervened on behalf of “the persecuted Dutch Jews of Coro, Venezuela” passed away today.

1890: Today’s New Publication List includes a review of a novel entitled The Jew, translated from the Polish of Joseph Ignatius Kraszewski by Linda Da Kowalewska

1890: “Catholic Spain” published today provided a detailed review of Chapters From The Religious History Of Spain Connected With The Inquisition by Henry Charles, a subject near and dear to the hearts of Jews in general and Sephardic Jews in particular.

1891: In Savannah, GA, founding of the Daughters of Israel whose members including Miss Maria Minis, Mrs. M.G. Ehrlich and Miss Maud Hendricks.

1891: Two days after he passed away, 73 year old Aaron Levy, the husband of the former Marianne Hart and the father Alexander and John Arthur Levy, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1892: In Romania, Rabbi Ezekiel Paneth, the son of R’ Moshe Paneth and Milka Paneth and his wife Rivka Paneth gave birth to Giza Paneth who would tragically pass away at the age of eight months.

1893: In Milikov, Karl and Rosa Low gave birth to Helene Low who became Helene Neubauer when she married Karl Neubauer and who died at Treblinka.

1894: At today’s meeting of the Tenement House Committed that was held in the Old Criminal Court Mr.Rice and Mr. Tuska of the United Hebrew Charity expressed their agreement with Reverend John B. Devins that tenement residents do not prefer filth, “that there should be public lavatories and that “every saloon should have an outside drinking fountain.  They also believe that tenements should be better lit, have water on each floor and house kindergartens.

1895: This evening in Richmond, VA, the Paradise Lodge of B’nai B’rith “began a movement for the Jews of the United States to give tangible evidence of the debt they owe to the memory of Thomas Jefferson as father of religious liberty” in the United States.

1896: “A Radical Chicago Rabbi” published today summarized the view of Dr. Emil G. Hirsh, the rabbi Temple Sinai on the Windy City’s south-side, including his beliefs that observing Shabbat on Saturday “and the hope of the return to the Holy Land” are “relics of an attractive tradition but entirely out of keeping with advance and progress of modern ideas.

1896: In Philadelphia, the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women hosted a reception for the National Board at the Mercantile Club.

1896(18^th of Kislev, 5657): Forty-one year old Ella Heyman, the native of Wheeling, West Virginia, passed away today in St. Louis.

1896: Birthdate of Polish native Rabbi  Moses Meyer Yoshor, who in 1921 came to the United States where he attended CCNY and Reits Yeshiva before going to serve as President of the Vaad Harabonim and as a member of the executive committee of the Union and Orthodox Rabbis and who was  the author of The Chafetz Chaim : The Life and Works of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin

https://www.gettextbooks.com/author/Moses_M_Yoshor

1897: The Ladies Committee of the Home and Hospital for Jewish Incurables met this afternoon in London.

1897: The Apprenticing Committee of the Jews’ Hospital and Orphan Asylum met at Hamilton House this morning.

1897: Charles Schapiro was being held in the Tombs today after having killed Louis Lieberman and wounded his girlfriend Yetta Gordon yesterday.   Gordon whose wounded eye was bandaged is being held in the House of Detention as a material.  She had rejected Schapiro because he did not earn enough money.  And he was angry because she would not return the twenty-five dollar ring he had “bought for her with money she had lent him.”

1898: Today “Marcus Aaron who worked for his father at the Louis I. Aaron Company and in 1911 would succeed his father at the Homer Laughlin China Company married Stella Hamburger with whom he had two children – “Marcus Lester and Fannie Hamburger Aaron.

1898: In Pécs, Hungary, the local cantor and his wife gave birth to opera singer Dezső Ernster who survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

1899: Birthdate of Parisian Israel Moshe Blauschild, the son of Romanian immigrants who as Marcel Dailo the movie actor who spent WWII in Hollywood before returning to his native country to pursue his career.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/23/obituaries/marcel-dalio-83-film-actor-dead.html

1900(1^st of Kislev, 5661): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

1900: “The anti-Semites and a number of Conservatives have introduced a bill in the Reichstag against the immigration of Jews.”

1900: Birthdate of Columbia Law School trained attorney George J. Hirsch, “a leading trial lawyer who also specialized in corporate reorganization and the husband of the former Sylvia Epstein and the father of Mrs. Samuel P. Grinder, Jr. and George A. Hirsch, the publisher of New York Magazine.

1901: In Chicago, Edward Morris, the Jewish born son of Sarah and Nelson Morris and the President of the Morris and Company (Meatpackers) and the former Helen Swifts gave birth Wellesley College graduate and leading psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner Buttinger and wife of Joseph Buttinger whom she met while studying medicine at the University of Vienna.

1902: Birthdate of New York native Aaron Bank, the U.S. Army Colonel considered by some to be father of what eventually became “the Green Berets.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/business/col-aaron-bank-101-dies-was-father-of-special-forces.html

http://www.cedu-diver.com/aaron.htm

1903: Forty-five year director of the Educational Alliance and future Manhattan Borough President Marcus M. Marks wrote a letter today to President Roosevelt in which he “discusses the Republican situation for the 1904 presidential campaign,” the potential for an “industrial depression,” “the economic impact of labor strikes, and the liberalization of liquor laws in New York.””

1904: The names of some of the prominent victims of the recent riots at Warsaw that have just been made known included “Baroness Hirsch who was shot while she was driving by in a carriage.”

1905(25^th of Cheshvan, 5666): Sixty-eight year old German born American actor Daniel Edward Bandmann, the son of Solomon and Rebecca Bandmann turned Montana rancher passed away today after which he was buried in Missoula.

https://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentCenter/View/739/Bandmann-Daniel?bidId=

1905: As of today, it was reported that the committee which is collecting funds for the relief of Jews suffering from the Russian massacres has raised $660, 756 including $51from the Orthodox Congregation of Erie, PA, $15 from the New London (CT) Ladies’ Aid Society and $720 from the citizens of Wheeling, West Virginia.

1905: “In view of the very great demand made upon the Jews of America to relieve the sufferings of the victims of the Russian savagery, the Committee on the Celebration of the 250^th Anniversary of the Settlement of Jews in the United States has resolved to abandon the project of a commemorative monument and will return to the donors to the monument fund all contributions thus far received” with the hope that the money will then be donated to help the Jews of Russia.

1905: In New York, “not a seat was to be had” during the matinee showing of “The Riots of Kishneff” (Kishinev) which raised $1,506.06 for the relief fund aid the Jews of Russia.

1905: Tonight, Jacob P. Adler oversaw a production of “King Lear” which raised $1,500 for the Jews of Russia.  Adler gave a speech at the end of the third act in which he asked how they could go with the play “when our minds are upon the atrocities committed our countrymen?  Will we leave out the fourth act?” to which the audience responded with cheers and cries of “yes, yes!”

1905: A “procession arranged by Joseph Barondess, Abram Wattman and Dr. Simonoff organized “what was probably the most remarkable demonstration that has ever been known on the east side…when fully one hundred thousand Jews turned out” today “to join a procession…formed to mourn the dead slain in the Russian anti-Semitic riots.”

1905: It was reported today that as the violence against the Jews has continued Percival Menken said “There is far more in this massacre of our race in Russia than is apparent on the surface.  Not until the Jews are restored to their native land and have their own armies and battleships will these persecutions cease. (This is nine years after the First Zionist Congress met and forty years before the Shoah came to an end.)

1905: It was reported from St. Petersburg, that “dispatches from Southwestern Russia indicate that the Zionist movement has obtained a powerful impetus from the anti-Jewish disorders.”

1906: The St. Petersburg correspondent of The Times of London reported that “the Reactionary threats of pogroms if concessions are granted to the Jews are treated by the Government with contempt” while “Premier Stolypin has forbidden the police to expel Jewish students from St. Petersburg.”

1907(17^th of Kislev, 5668): Parashat Vayishlach

1907: “Rider Haggard In Mighty Deeds” published today provides a detailed reviews of Margaret, H.R. Rider Haggards set in the London of Henry VII and Spain that features a heroine who “is the daughter of John Castell, a London merchant of immense wealth whose father was Marano who concealed “his Jewish origin” and the Marquis of Morella whose main mission is “to ferret out wealthy and secretly faithful Jews so they can be turned over to the Inquisition.

1908: It was reported today that the “new annex to the Home of the Daughters of Jacob” cost $200,000.

1908: It was reported today that Max Stern and Johanna Posin were two of the speakers at the 20^th anniversary celebration of the Kaiserin Elizabeth Lodge of the Independent Order of B’rith Abraham whose “400 women members” are led by their President Mrs. Samuel Sommers.

1909: The annual meeting of the Civic Federation which features a discussion of old age pensions by a panel including Samuel Gompers came to a close in New York City.

1910: Twenty-three year old Adelphi Academy trained painter and engraver Edmund Weill, the New York born son of Marx and Caroline married Carolyn Weinstock.

https://www.askart.com/artist/Edmond_Edmund_Weill/110161/Edmond_Edmund_Weill.aspx

1911(2^nd of Kislev, 5672): Eighty-five year old Rabbi Jacob Hamburger, “the sole author and editor of the first explicitly Jewish Encyclopedia” passed away today.

1911(2^nd of Kislev, 5672): Seventy year old Imperial Councilor and Chief Cantor Josef Singer passed away today.

1912(13^th of Kislev, 5673): Parashat Vayishlach

1912(13^th of Kislev, 5673): Seventy year old Wolfe Londoner, the New York City born son of Rachel Hearts and Herman Londoner and Republican Mayor Denver  who was forced to leave office because of election irregularities passed away today.

1912: It was reported in today’s edition of The Reform Advocate that Congressman Jefferson M Levy has announced that will combat the efforts now being made to acquire Monticello… which he owns, for the United States government and he will not and cannot be forced to part with is property.

1912: “This evening a memorial meeting for the late David Blaustein is scheduled to take placed at the Educational Alliance under the auspices of the Society of Jewish Social workers of Greater New York.

1912:  The British Consul in Jerusalem continued to complain to the British Ambassador in Constantinople about the British born Jews arriving in his city.  Of the latest batch of 20, only six had means to support themselves while twelve of them were living off of contributions supplied by local Jewish charities.

1912(2^nd of Kislev, 5672): Ninety one year old General Sir Charles D’Aguilar, the son of Lieut. Gen. Sir George D’Aguilar who had “held high office at Bevis Marks” passed away today leaving  an estate valued at £200,000 to be shared by his two daughters.

1913: Albany Law School trained attorney Isadore Bookstein,  the Albany, NY born son of Lillian Gallop and Hyman Bookstein and member of the law firm of Dugan and Bookstein who was also a trustee of the Albany Jewish Home Society, married Edith Friedman today

1913: Birthdate of Hanna Ellenbogen, the Polish born daughter of a produce daughter in Rozwadow and the wife of Zygmunt Gozdinski, a young man who had fled to Lvov from German-occupied Kielce, who was never from again after she “was taken in a German roundup of Jews in Kielce.”

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/hanna-ellenbogen

1913: Supreme Court Justice Seabury has ordered the sale in foreclosure of the Bijou theatre property on Broadway in a suit brought by Felix M. Warburg, Isaac N. Seligman, Paul M. Warburg and Mortimer L. Schiff as trustees under the will of Alfred M. Heinsheimer against the Bijou Real Estate Company.

1914: During WW I “A Reuter dispatch from Constantinople by way of Sofia” says that the Porte (Turkish government) has decided to permit Russian Jews resident in Turkey to become Ottoman subjects provided that they do not revert to their former nationality at the end of the war.”  (This had special meaning for the Jews living in Palestine, since a large number of them had come from Russia and were viewed suspiciously by the Turks)

1914: Birthdate of actress Ellen Drew, the second wife of Ukrainian born author and screenwriter Sy Barlett, co-author of Twelve O”Clock High.

https://www.dustjackets.com/pages/books/6913/beirne-lay-jr-sy-bartlett/twelve-oclock-high

1914: In New York, The Evening Telegram reported that when German troops “reached the neighborhood of Pabiantze” they appeared to feel already at home” since it “is large people German colonists” and “the rest of the inhabitants are exclusively Jews.”

1914: Otto Bauer who had saved his company from being wiped out at the battle of Szysaki, for which he was awarded the Military Cross of Merit 3rd Class was taken prisoner of war by the Russians.

1914: The Petrograd (Russia) correspondent of the Morning Post wired London today about friction between the Germans and their Austrian Allies as could be seen by “a stormy council” presided over by the Kaiser during which after “mutual ruminations” had been exchanged the Germans “demanded that Austria should give up every man in defense of East Prussia” while the Austrians demanded “that the Germans should make a serious attempt to save Cracow.”  (Most people think about WW I as being fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Here is a reminder of the fighting on the Eastern Front – fighting which took an unbelievable toll on the Jewish populations of Russia and Austria since the combat was waged in the lands where they were living.)

1914: According to reports published today the American Jewish Committee contends that 5,000 Jews in Jaffa had applied for permission to become naturalized Turkish subjects out of a total of 25,000 Russian Jews living in the region of Palestine.

1915: In London, a French delegation led by François-Georges Picot, a professional diplomat with extensive experience in the Levant, and a British delegation led by Sir Arthur Nicolson met to discuss plans for the post-war partition of the Ottoman Empire which would eventually result in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.  (Editor’s Note – You cannot understand what is going on in the Middle East today if you do not understand the origins and nature of this agreement)

1915: In Patterson, NJ Edith Stern Levine and Jules C. Levine, a “business manager of The News,” gave birth to Robert Haines Levine, the longtime news editor of The Patterson News and husband of “the former Shirley Stapleton” with who had had five children - Robert, John, Marjorie, Elizabeth and Marianne.

1915: “Praise Sisterhood’s Work” published today included the positive comments made by Chief Magistrate McAdoo about the work done by Sisterhood of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue under the leadership of Mrs. Mortimer Menken “to help wayward Jewish girls in the police courts” as well as to aid neighborhood settlement houses in their activities.

1915: Twenty-four year old chemist turned violinist and orchestra leader Ben Bernie, the New York born son of Julius an Anna Bernie married Rose Harris today in New York City.

1915: It was reported today that based on information provided by Jacob H. Schiff and Dr. J.L. Magnes American Jews must raise at least thirty million dollars to aid the approximately five million Jews in who are suffering from the effects of the World War in Russia, Poland, Galicia and Palestine.

1915: In the manner of a Shiva Minyan, a memorial service will be held again this morning and this evening in honor of Professor Schechter of blessed memory which will be led by the students and faculty of JTS.

1915: Birthdate of Olmütz native Anton Hare, a passenger on board the St. Louis who survived because he was allowed to disembark in England.

1916: A wireless message of sympathy was sent by the executive committee of the American Federation of Galician and Bukowinian Jews and the American Federation of Hungarian Jews to the Austrian imperial family following the death this week of Emperor Franz Josef.

1916: “At a meeting this evening of the executive committee of the American Federation of Galician and Bukowinian Jews and the American Federation of Hungarian Jews it was decided to issue a proclamation calling upon all Jewish congregations and federated bodies to set aside the day of the burial of Emperor Francis Joes for the observation of appropriate services and exercise.”

1916: Birthdate of Rose Vessel, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland who gained fame as Rose Mattus who along with her husband Reuben founded Häagen-Dazs ice cream business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/obituaries/01mattus.html

1917: As Imperial forces struggle with the weather and the Ottoman forces in the Judean Hills, the “60^th (London) Division commanded by Major General John Shea arrived at Latrun to provide relief for the units that have been worn down by the elements and combat.

1917: In Roslavi, Russia eight Jews were killed and twenty were wounded during an anti-Semitic riot when the mob looted Jewish opened shops.

1917: Kozlov and Tiraspol, Russia were the site of “grave anti-Jewish riots.

1917: A pogrom in Tambov “leads to the total ruin of businesses established by Jewish refugees from the war zone led the Jewish leaders to ask authorities to give official sanction to a plant to arm a Jewish self-defense corps.”

1917: Izvestia and Pravda published the full text of Sykes-Picot Agreement which exposed the plans of the French and British to carve up the Ottoman Empire after the World War ended. 

1917: It was reported today that the recipients of the funds raised by the Federation of Jewish Charites included Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the Hebrew Technical Institute, the Jewish Big Brothers, the Motefiore Home, the Educational Alliance and many sisterhoods associated with local synagogues and temples.

1918: In New York Rose Gussin, a shopkeeper and her husband, gave birth to Zelma Gussin who gained fame as California architect Zelma Wilson

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-05-14/local/me-4057_1_michael-wilson

1918: Kurt Eisner “leaked documents from the Bavarian plenipotentiary in Berlin during July and August 1914 that he thought proved that the war was caused by "a small horde of mad Prussian military" men as well as "allied" industrialists, capitalists, politicians, and princes.”

1918: After three days, the Lemberg Pogrom came to an end with 50 to 150 Jewish dead, hundreds more injured and untold loss of property thanks to looting carried out by Polish soldiers and local civilians.

1918: Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, announced that organization's decision to hold its New York City campaign designed to raise $5,000,000 to aid Jewish war sufferers during the week starting on December 8 and ending on December 15.

1919: In Durham, NC, Fredrick and Loretta Koch gave birth to University of North Carolina and Princeton graduate and the holder of two Master of Fine Arts Degree Robert Alan Koch who was one of the “Monuments Men.”

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/koch-lt-robert-a

1919: Twenty-three year old Rabbi Edward L. Israel, the Cincinnati, OH born son of Charles and Emma (Linz) Israel, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew College who served “overseas as a worker for the Jewish Welfare Board during World War I and who began serving as the spiritual leader of Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore in 1923 married Amelia Dryer today.

1920: The New York section of the National Council Women is scheduled to meet today.

1920: Birthdate of poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan who used the pseudonym of Paul Antschel.

Death is a gang-boss aus Deutchland his eye is blue

he hits you with leaden bullets his aim is true

there's a man in this house your golden hair Margareta

he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky

he cultivates snakes he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland

(from 'A Death Fugue')

1920: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver “an address on ‘Henry Ford’s Challenge and a Jew’s Reply’” today at “the regular monthly meeting of the New York Section council of Jewish Women” being held at Temple B’nai Jeshurun.

1920: “Mrs. Frederick Wakeham, the historian of the Society for Political Study” is scheduled to deliver the first of a series of lectures to the New York Section of the Council of Jewish Women that will help them understand their role in voting.

1921: Churchill offers to send a warship to help Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner, collect the fines levied against the Arabs in Jaffa who had rioted and attacked Jews in villages surrounding the ancient port.

1922: The silent movie, Hungry Hearts  produced by the Goldwyn Company and based on a book of the same name written by Anzia Yezierska opened in New York City on Thanksgiving.

1922: At today’s session of the Conference of Lausanne which was supposed to modify the Treaty Sevres which dismembered the Ottoman Empire, Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary clashed with Ismet Pasha a member of the Turkish delegation that included Chief Rabbi Nahum.

1923: Birthdate of Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock, an American musical theatre composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1965 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.

1924: The Price of a Party featuring Dagmar Gadowsky the daughter of Leopold Godowsky.

1924: Herzliya was founded as a moshav. It has since become a flourishing town on the Mediterranean coast. 

1924: In Irvington, NJ, Fannie and Harry Yablonsky gave birth to sociologist Lewis Yablonsky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/us/lewis-yablonsky-provocative-sociologist-dies-at-89.html

1925: In New York, opera singer Hannah Mandel and garment manufacturer Albert Mandel gave birth to award winning composer and arranger Johnny Mandel whose work include the theme for M*A*S*H ---“Suicide Is Painless”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/arts/music/johnny-mandel-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1925: Birthdate of Griffin, GA, native Doris Middlebrooks, the Southern Bapitst who converted to Judaism and became Doris Massell when she married Sam Massell, the first Jewish mayor of Atlanta.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-obituaries/doris-massell-mayor-wife-was-ease-with-everyone/cr9I9ZbtCW7lPWaPq6EkgL/

1926: At Kibbutz Ein Harod, “Noach Hantman, a farmer and poet and Yehudit Volwelsky, a social activist” gave birth to Rafi Eitan, the leader of the Mossad operation that led to the arrest and trial of Adolf Eichman.

https://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/state/personalities/pages/rafi%20eitan.aspx

1926: Sophie Tuckers hit song “Some of These Days” began a five week stink at the top of the pop charts today.

1927: It was reported today that “the American School of Archeology has resumed its sounding at Beth-EL and has struck a massive city wall resembling the one discovered in April at Tel Elnasbieh on the reputed site of Mizpah.”

1927: “ A report charging racial animosity at King’s County Hospital was presented by a special investigating committee to the New York Board of Jewish Ministers at a meeting” today at Temple Beth El.

1927: “Charles A. Levine was presented with two golden tablets bearing the Ten Commandments in Hebrew by the Brooklyn Jewish Centre at a dinner tonight given in honor of his transatlantic flight” where the speakers included Clarence D. Chamberlin “who said he was writing a book on his flight with Levine.”

1927: While Budapest is quite and the universities have opened as usual, in other town including Szegedin and Pec a few more student demonstrations were reported today with several Jews having been beating and “one university student was injured.”

1928: In New Haven, CT, George Bock and the former Peggy Alpert gave birth to Jerrold Lewis Bock, the man who composed such Broadway hits as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Fiorello!” and “She Loves Me.”

1929: In Berlin, Hungarian born bookkeeper Serena Roney and Austrian born mechanical engineer Max Roney who fled Nazi Germany  gave birth to “Marianne Mantell, who in her early 20s helped start the audiobook revolution by co-founding a record company that turned recordings of countless literary giants, including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Dylan Thomas, into mass-market entertainment…” (As reported by Alex Williams)

Remembering Marianne Mantell and the Birth of the Spoken Word Recording Industry | Now See Hear! (loc.gov)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/arts/marianne-mantell-dead.html

1929: After 407 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Whoopee!” a musical with lyrics by Gus Kahn and starring Eddie Cantor as “Henry Williams.”

1930(3rd of Kislev, 5691): Eighty-three year old Russian born American “Hebrew Poet” Israel Fine who was “an intimate friend of President Roosevelt” and the author of “Ode to America” which was “written in Hebrew on the occasion of the centennial celebration of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in 1914” passed away today.

https://www.jta.org/1930/11/26/archive/israel-fine-poet-zionist-friend-of-roosevelt-dead

1931: Today  “The problem of helping Jewish institutions in Palestine through the world depression held attention of the semi-annual meeting of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis” which is meeting in Cincinnati, OH.

1931: “A plea on behalf of blind men and women in Palestine was made today by Miss Helen Keller before nearly 200 Jewish women at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue and Sixty Fifth Street.”

1932: “Dr. Finley Honored As Friend of Jews” published today described banquet in which Dr. John H. Finely, the associate editor of the New York Times was awarded the American Hebrew Medal which goes to the American who has done most to promote better understanding between Christians and Jews in the United States during 1932.

1932: In Paris, Berthe Haardt and Pierre David Weil a partner in the family firm, Lazard Frères & Company, part of what later became Lazard Ltd  gave birth to Michel David-Weill, who at the age of 8 left Paris to escape the Nazis which going into hiding the south of France and converting to Catholicism and went to be an investment banker and scion of the Lazard banking dynasty who helped shape Lazard into a powerful global banking institution. (As reported by Lora Kelly)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/business/michel-david-weill-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

1932: “The Wonderful Day” a comedy film produced by the brothers of Bernard Natan and Emile Natan was released today in France.

1932(24^th of Cheshvan, 5693): Fifty-seven year old CCNY and Columbia trained Electrical Engineer Solomon David Benoliel, the New York Born son of Pauline-Berthe Wassermann and David Jacob Enoliel and father of David, Jean and Louis Benoliel passed away today in Philadelphia.

1933: Morris Rothenberg, announced that “the administrative committee of the ZOA has voted to contribute $40,000 to make possible the establishment of the first colony in Palestine to be inhabited exclusively by American members of the Jewish Legion,” the British united that “fought under General Allenby and aided in capturing Palestine from the Turks.”

1933: Last night, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, internationally known suffragist and peace advocate, received the American Hebrew Medal for 1933 for the promotion of better understanding between Christians and Jews in the United States.

1934: It was reported today that “in an effort to curb excessive rentals” the Municipal Council of Tel Aviv “passed a regulation for the fixing of a maximum rate of rent for all business and residential property in the community.”

1934: “Nothing More Than a Woman” starring Berta Singerman was released in the United States today.

1934: Today “while the rest of the team was playing in Omiya, Moe Berg went to Saint Luke's Hospital in Tsukiji, ostensibly to visit the daughter of American Ambassador Joseph Grew. Instead, Berg went up to the roof of the hospital, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and filmed the city and harbor with his movie camera. This provided American intelligence with rare photos of the city.

1935: In New York City, Milton and Abby Goldsmith gave birth to “critic and classical pianist” Harris Goldsmith.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/arts/music/harris-goldsmith-classical-pianist-and-critic-dies-at-78.html

1935: “Stars Over Broadway,” a musical produced by Samuel Bischoff, with a screenplay co-written by Jerry Wald and Julius Epstein was released in the United States by Warner Brothers.

1936(9^th of Kislev, 5697): Sixty-two year old Samuel Jacob Jatzkan, the Lithuanian born rabbi turned publisher who was an early support of Herzl passed away today after suffering a heart attack in Paris.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E06E5DC173EEE3BBC4C51DFB767838D629EDE

1936: Life, the photojournalism magazine, created by Henry R. Luce, was first published. In the days before television, webcams, the internet and the myriad of other ways we have a recording and sending pictures, Life, with it large splash, creative or documentary like images was the major window on the world for millions of Americans.  It was the photographers who made Life the magazine it was and some of the most famous were Jewish including Alfred Eisenstaedt who shot “The Kiss,” Robert Capa who shot “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” as well as the first still photos of first wave at Omaha Beach, Cornell Capa who photographed Grandma Moses and Margaret Bourke-White who snapped “Working Atop the Chrysler Building.”          

1937: In the tenth day of the Arnold Bernstein’s trial before the Hamburg Emergency Court, the German-Jewish shipping magnate is charged by the the prosecution with “exchange irregularities in connection with 2,000,000 marks loaned by the Chemical National Bank of New York.  The trial was part of a ploy by the Nazi government to assume control of Arnold Bernstein & Red Star Line.

1938: In a memorandum to Winston Churchill correspondents in Europe quote Hitler as saying, “he wanted eliminate from German life the Jews, the Churches and suppress private industry.  After that, he would turn to foreign policy again.”

1938: It was reported today that, “The movement started only a week ago by Palestine Jewry to adopt children from Germany is spreading with amazing rapidity.  Following a suggestion made by Israel Rokach, Mayor of Tel Aviv…to members of the Jewish Women’s Labor Federation” have already “volunteered to adopt refugee children.”  The National council of Palestine Jewry had set a goal of adopting 5,000 children but given the quick positive response the goal will be met and exceeded.

1938: Violinist Mischa Elman played “Larghetto Lamentoso” during Leopold Godowsky’s funeral which was held in Manhattan today.  Godowsky was the composer of this piece of music. Music critic Leonard Liebling described the late composer as “a citizen of the world” and “a great and patient teacher of music…” (Godowsky, Elman and Liebling were all Jewish.)

1938: In a column published today Leopold Godowsky was described as “a unique figure among al his contemporaries: a phenomenal pianist and a musician of the most exceptional attributes.”

1939: At 2:30 pm WEVD is scheduled to present a program of “Jewish Melodies.”

1939: “Measure Meets Strong Opposition in Upper House” published today described the split in Hungary with House of Deputies approving the government’s Land Reform Bill which would first be felt by non-resident Jews whose estates would be the first to be broken up and those in the Upper House who oppose the bill that “would allot 1,500,000 acres to small tenants.”

1939: In Baltimore, at the annual convention of the Junior Hadassah, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise told his audience “that American Jews who really believed in democracy had no choice but to support the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.”

1939: “Jung Denies Link to Nazi Organizations” published today described testimony by Harry A. Jung, an American anti-Semite before the House Committee on un-American Activities in which he claimed never to have corresponded with Oscar C. Pfaus and Anna Bogenholm who wanted to start a paper called The National American Patriot that would play a key role “in recovering our country from control of the Jews..”

1939: “The National Catholic Welfare Council said today” that during the two years since January, 1937 the Episcopal Committee from Refugees from Germany has handled the cases of 2,756 refugees “the majority of whom “are of Jewish extraction.”

1939: In Nazi-occupied Poland, Frank ordered that “All Jews and Jewesses within the Government-General who are over ten years of age are required to wear . . . the Star of David.

1940: All Jewish professors of the Utrecht University were dismissed, among them the Dutch mathematician Julius Wolff.

1940: “Horse Fever,” produced by Alexander Yokel opened on Broadway today at the Mansfield Theatre.

1940: Newspaper people visited Abu Sinan, a village north of Nazareth, where they investigated reports that Helen Yussef Nicola, an 8 year old Arab girl whose parents are devout Greek Orthodox, has been responsible for miraculous healings including cures “of a crippled Arab boy and a crippled Jewish boy from Tel Aviv.”  Over the last two weeks, “hundreds of Christians, Moslems and Jews have visited Helen and come away allegedly convince of her curative capacities.”

1941:  Cherna Berkowitz describes the arrival of refugees at Dorohoi at Transnistria. "The deportations resumed. Women, elderly people and so many children in the freezing cold. With each passing day their numbers dwindle as more of them die.” Dorohoi, people say, “We send the children to give the newcomers some warm tea. They return with horror stories. The men were all at work when they deported the women and children. We have one woman with three small children, one of whom is not yet weaned. All she has are rags and a few pennies in her pocket. The soldiers round up the arrivals and order them to march on."

1941: Thirty thousand Jews are killed at Odessa, Ukraine. "

1942(14^th of Kislev, 5703): Seventy-eight year old the Netherlands native Louis Sachs, the son of Jacques Löehman Sachs and Rebekka de Jonge and husband of Emma Sachs was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz

1942: After having been extracted at Port Miou during Operation Watchman, Captain Isidore Newman reached Britian today.

1942: Hitler: Man of Strife by Ludwig Wagner the first full-length biography about the Nazi dictator to appear in the United States since the publication of “Hitler” by Konrad Heiden in 1936 was published today.

1942(14^th of Kislev, 5703): Two weeks after she had been transported from Berlin to Terezin, seventy-six year old Bertha Gottschalk was murder today at Terezin.

1942: “My Sister Eileen,” a comedy written by Joseph A. Field and Jerome Chodorov and produced by George S. Kaufman which had opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre, transferred to the Ritz Theatre where it opened tonight.

1943: One hundred and fifty Jewish partisans escape from Occupied Kovno, Lithuania, and head eastward into the Rudninkai Forest.

1943: In one of the most bizarre moments in WW II the following a British bombing raid on Berlin, the damage report of the police commissioner of the Nazi capital recorded a strike on the New Synagogue. 

1943: Birthdate of Andrew Goodman.  Goodman worked as a volunteer in the voter right’s registration movement in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. He and two of his fellow volunteers would be murdered that summer in Neshoba County.  It would take years to finally bring their killers to justice.  This brutal murder was one of the many events that helped bring about the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.  That fall, Mississippi would show its displeasure with this change in events by voting for Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President who opposed the Civil Rights Act.  This election would mark a turning point in American history providing the Republican Party with its political base.  

1944: “Three Is a Family” a comedy based on a play by Henry and Phoebe Ephron was released in the United States today.

1944: In New York City, “Selma Judith (née Levy), a president of The League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC and  Irwin Lionel Toback, a stockbroker and former vice president of Dreyfus & Company” gave birth to “screenwriter, director and author” James Lee Tobck

1944: Over the next four days, Swiss consulate officials Leopold Breszlauer and Ladislaus Kluger issue about 300 protective documents to Hungarian Jews gathered at the Hungarian-Austrian border.

1944: Birthdate of Joe Eszterhas, the Hungarian-American author, who cut his father out his life entirely what at age 45 he learned “his father had concealed his collaboration in the Hungarian Nazi government and that he had "organized book burnings and had cranked out the vilest anti-Semitic propaganda imaginable."

1945: Ruth and Moshe Dayan give birth to Asaf "Assi" Dayan, an Israeli film director, actor, screenwriter and producer.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-remake-heads-to-hollywood/

 

1945:  Birthdate of comedian Steve Landesberg.  Born in the Bronx, Landesberg is best known for his portrayal of Dietrich, the cerebral detective on in the television sitcom, Barney Miller.

1946(29^th of Cheshvan, 5707): Parashat Toldot

1946: Fawi Husseini, cousin of Arab Higher Committee chairman, is killed by Arabs for selling land to Jews.

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1947: Der Tog (The Day) began publishing a serialized version of Oyf Fremde Vegn (On Foreign Roads), a novel of Jewish life in America, today

1947: U.S. Army chaplain, Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz married Holocaust survivor Rachel Abramowitz married at Berlin.  They had first met at one of the DP camps General Eisenhower had established for Jewish survivors of the Shoah following clashes in camps shared between survivors and those they recognized as murderers. To Eisenhower’s credit, he found that “The situation was unbearable” and moved to remedy it.

1947:  Eliezer Sukenik an outstanding archaeologist and text expert on the faculty of Jerusalem's Hebrew University first received word of the existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The documents, dating between 200 BC and AD 70, had been accidentally discovered earlier that winter by two Bedouin shepherds in the vicinity of Qumran.  Sukenik was able to purchase three of the scrolls they had found, the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Scroll and a small Scroll of Isaiah.  The Great Scroll of Isaiah had already been purchased the Metropolitan Stephen, of St. Mark’s Church.  In one of the strange twists of fate, Yigal Yadin, Sukenik’s son, would arrange for the purchase of the Scroll of Isaiah and three other scrolls in 1954.  The purchase began with a simple newspaper ad in the Wall Street Journal, “Miscellaneous For Sale…Four Dead Sea Scrolls.” Yadin knew the importance of the items and arranged for a loan of a quarter of a million dollars (a large sum in those days, especially for the infant state of Israel) to bring them back to their ancestral home.  The secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls are still being unlocked by scholars to this day.  Considering that the acquisition of the scrolls began against the backdrop of the Partition of Palestine and the Israeli War for Independence, there is enough adventure here for an Indiana Jones style movie.

1948: In today’s session of the UN General Assembly's Political and Security Committee, Dr. Philip C. Jessup suggests that both Bernadotte and UN partition plans be considered in fixing Israeli boundaries. Israel would keep Galilee and pan: of Negev.

1948: Sharp tongued journalist H.L. Mencken whose diaries revealed a streak of anti-Semitism which did not keep him being “close friends” with Alfred Knopf and Ben Hecht, praising the work of Ayn Rand or that asserted that “books such as Caught Short! A Saga of Wailing Wall Street by Eddie Cantor (ghost-written by David Freedman) did more to pull America out of the Great Depression than all government measures combined” “suffered a stroke, which left him aware and fully conscious but nearly unable to read or write and able to speak only with difficulty.”

1948: During the War for Independence, Israeli forces launched Operation Lot in the “eastern Negev and Arava.”

1948: Aubrey S. Eban (Abba Eban) defended Jewish claims to both the Galilee and Negev.

1948: Israel forms a reserve forced made up of men aged 40 to 45.

1949: One day after he had passed away funeral services were for Dr. Nathan Krass, the rabbi emeritus at Temple-Emanuel, a congregation he had served for nine years.

1949: Israeli forces made their way through the Negev Desert to the isolated outpost at Sodom (the Biblical Sodom) on the Dead Sea which had been cut off from any overland contact for more than six months.  Their success in reaching Sodom extended the boundaries of the new state of Israel 20 miles further south and east.

1950: As of this date 80,000 Jews were reported to be waiting to leave Iraq.

1950: In Brooklyn, exterminator Abraham Schumer and the former Selma Rosen gave birth to Charles Ellis Schumer better known as New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

1950: Gloria Gerson married Stanley Scholem,  the son of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Scholem today at the Hamilton Hotel in Paterson, NJ.

1951: In London Diana, née Schneiderman and Mark Rapport, “a taxi driver” gave birth to David Stephen Rapport.

http://davidrappaport.co.uk/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/04/obituaries/david-rappaport-character-actor-38-seen-on-la-law.html?scp=8&sq=la%20law&st=cse

1951: “Superman and the Mole Men” a film directed by Lee Sholem and based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster was released in the United States today.

1952(5^th of Kislev, 5713): Sixty-three year old Polish born Yiddish writer “Ber (Berl) Lapin” who split his adult life between the United States and Argentina passed away today.

http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2017/02/ber-berl-lapin.html

1953: “Three Sailors and a Girl,” a musical film based on George S. Kaufman’s “The Butter and Egg Man” produced by Sammy Cahn who created the music along with Sammy Fain and with a script co-authored by Devery Freeman was released today in the United States.

1954: Today David Winters (the London born of Sadie and Samuel Weizer) performed on Broadway in “Sandhog.”

1954(27^th of Cheshvan, 5715): Seventy-two year old Harry Affelder, the New York born son of Leopold and Rebecca Kahn Affelder, the brother of Jeanette, William and Minnie B. Affelder passed away today after which he was buried at Mount Neboh Cemetery in Glendale, NY.

1955(8^th of Kislev, 5716): Today, on his way home from a boxing match sixty year old  Shemp Howard suffered a fatal heart attack and/or cerebral hemorrhage.

http://www.shemphoward.com/biography.html

1955: A campaign to save the building where Anne Frank and her family had been hidden  and to list it as a protected monument was started by the Dutch paper Het Vrije Volk today in an attempt to save the edifice from demolished so a factory could built on the site.

1956 (19th of Kislev): Birthdate of Elliot R. Wolfson, author of Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

1956: The weightlifting competition at the 1956 Summer Olympics during which Isaac Berger won a gold medal, opened today.

1956(19th of Kislev):On Friday night, Rabbi Schneerson, "The Rebbe," delivers "a learned discourse on kabbalistic themes to mark the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev...the Lubavitch 'Day of Redemption.'"

1956: "An inflammatory proclamation was read in all mosques in Egypt declaring 'All Jews are Zionists and enemies of the State.'"

1957: “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein,” a “cult classic” co-produced by Herman Cohen and Iowa native Samuel Z. Arkoff was released today in the United States.

1958: Birthdate of Jerusalem native Izhar Ashdot, the singer-songwriter and co-founder of the rock bank T-Slam.

1958(11th of Kislev, 5719): Fifty-four year old comedian Harry Einstein, who had begun his career writing for Eddie Cantor died from a heart attack at a Friars Club of Beverly Hills Roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz today in Los Angeles, California.

1958: “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” a biopic for which Mark Robson “received an Academy Award for Best Director nomination” was released today in the United States.

1959: “Fiorello!” a musical about New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia whose mother was Jewish and who spoke Yiddish when he campaigned for Congress with music by Jerry Brock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and a book by co-authored by Jerome Weidman opened on Broadway today at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1959: David Susskind produced The White Stage, this week’s selection for “The Play of the Week.”

1961: At the Corydon, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein officiated at the wedding of Ellen Carole Price to George Gluck.

1963: Congregants of Agudas Achim in Austin, TX who had been planning to dedicated their new building today – an event that was to include a visiting from Vice President Lyndon Johnson – “gathered to mourn the death of John F. Kennedy and pray for their old friend Lyndon Johnson;”

1963:  Birthdate of George Washington University graduate and magazine editor Deborah Needleman, the wife of political journalist and former editor of Slate Jacob Weisberg, the sister-in-law of Joe Weisberg and the daughter-in-law of Judge Bernard Weisberg and Lois Weisberg, “the first Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Chicago.”

1964(12^th of Kislev, 5681): Eighty-year-old Fannye Kramer Kempner, the daughter of Henry and Rahel Kornfield Kramer and the sister of Helen, Sarah and Israel Kamer passe away today after which she was buried at the Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.

1964: “Bajour” a musical featuring Herschel Bernardi and Herbert Edelman opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre.

1964(12^th of Kislev, 5681): Abraham Lieber, the father of Ronald and Dr. Leon Lieber passed away today in Ponca City, OK.

1967: Edward and Peter Bronfman made the opening statements at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim when the Library Museum, which was a gift in honor of their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Allan Bronfman was formally opened today.

1965: In London, Eve Smith and American film producer Carl Foreman gave birth to a son tonight.

1968: After 1, 234 performances, the curtain came down on the Broadway production of “Cactus Flower” a farce written by Abe Burrows.

1969(13^th of Kislev, 5730):Fifty-seven-year-old Saul Winstein, an award winning Canadian born chemist and  professor at UCLA who discovered the “Winstein reaction,” suffered a fatal heart attack while swimming in his pool at his Bel Air home.

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8q2nc88n/

https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/tribute-professor-saul-winstein/

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/11/26/79439057.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1970: Birthdate of Oded Feher.  Born in Tel Aviv he lived there until he was age 18 when he joined the Israel Navy for 3 years. At the completion of his National Service duty, he went to Europe to pursue a business career but instead of business, he discovered acting. He went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England. Oded appeared as Don Juan in a production of Don Juan Comes Back From War at the Courtyard Theatre in London.  He has also appeared in both The Knock and Killer Net on British Television.  In his Breakout Role, Fehr played the role of Ardeth Bay in his first major screen role, The Mummy, a 1999 Universal release.

1972: Birthdate of Christopher James Adler,an American drummer, best known as a member of the metal band Lamb of God. He is the older brother to bandmate and guitarist Willie Adler.

1973(28th of Cheshvan, 5734): Mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel passed away. Leonard Bernstein paid her tribute in a eulogy at her funeral, saying, ‘when Jennie opened her mouth, God spoke.’”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/09/1967/jennie-tourel

1973: Following a cerebral hemorrhage that he suffered on November 18, David Ben Gurion stopped improving and his condition began to deteriorate today.

1974(9^th of Kislev, 5735): Parashat Toldot

1974(9^th of Kisev, 5735): Eighty-six-year-old  New York native, Yale graduate and Johns Hopkins trained cardiologist Dr. Robert L. Levy, the husband of Beatrice Straus with whom he had three children – Gerald, Barbar and Jessic – who as “a Captain in the Medical Corps during World War I” touring Army camps in France during the influenza epidemic and who received the Selective Service Medal for his work as a consultant in cardiology for the Secretary of War during WW II passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/24/archives/dr-robert-levy-cardiologist-86-heart-pioneer-diestaught-at.html?sq=pioneering%2520biologist%2520dies&scp=25&st=cse

1974: During the height of the Cold War and the fight to “free Russian Jews,” “at a meeting in Vladivostok, USSR, U.S. President Ford and Soviet leader Brezhnev negotiated arms control.”

1975: Dr. Mikhail Stern was reported to be seriously ill in prison.

1976: Soviet authorities searched the apartments of “the organizers of the symposium on Jewish culture including Benjamin Fain, Vladimir Prestin, Pavel Abramovich, Vladimir Lazaris, Iosif Begun and Eliyahu Essas.

1978(23^rd of Cheshvan, 5739): Ninety-year-old Lithuanian born “Dr. Harry S. Linfield, an ordained rabbi and the executive director of the Jewish Statistical Bureau for more than half a century, and the husband of the former Sadie Laporte died in his sleep today at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/11/30/archives/harry-s-linfield-rabbi-and-head-of-jewish-statistical-bureau-90.html

https://archives.cjh.org//repositories/3/resources/2751

1982(7^th of Kislev, 5743): Forty-four year old Chicago born and Northwestern trained violist Ascher Mark Temkin, the music director of the Brockport Symphony passed away today.

1983: Seventy-nine year old Ukrainian poet Mykola Bazhan whose 1943 poem “Babi Yar” “explicitly depicted the infamous massacre in the ravine” but does not mention the fact that the victims were Jews passed away today.

http://polyhymnion.org/lit/bazhan/

1986: Birthdate of Hod HaSharon native Adi Altschuler, the founder of the “Krembo Wings’ youth movement who has been described as a leader of the next generation by Time magazine

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-is-time-next-generation-leader/

https://www.schusterman.org/users/adi-altschuler

1987: About 100 Soviet Jews, united by their inability to emigrate, crowded into a two-room apartment today to discuss state secrets: the secrets that keep them from leaving the Soviet Union, the secret process by which the holders of secrets are identified, and the reason the secrets themselves are secret. The gathering, the culmination of months of research by would-be emigrants from the ranks of Soviet scientific and technological professions, was an attempt to collate bitter individual experiences, an attempt by people whose professional lives were once permeated with logic to explain a fate they find irrational. ''State secrets have been a skeleton in a closet,'' Tatyana Ziman, one of the organizers, said in an interview after the meeting. ''We want to break the spell that hangs over this word 'secret.' We were thinking of the thousands of people who are hanging between earth and sky not knowing what will happen to them.'' Security considerations have been cited in the cases of the vast majority of Soviet Jews who have been denied exit visas this year. Estimate of Visa Denials It is not known how many Soviet Jews have been told they are security risks by visa authorities, who almost never provide written verification of what they say. Conference organizers put the number between 2,000 and 10,000. The Soviet authorities appear to have taken a more liberal attitude toward Jewish emigration this year, allowing more than 6,000 Jews to go so far in 1987, more than six times the total for all of 1986, and have announced creation of a high-level commission to review contested visa decisions. However, some Soviet Jews say they feel that ''state security'' is still being invoked to deny exit visas in many cases in order to justify an official approach that remains intentionally capricious. Many Soviet citizens seeking to emigrate have said in the past that the practice of keeping would-be emigrants in limbo for years, while taking away their jobs and sometimes hindering their children's education, serves to strongly discourage those toying with the idea of applying. Few Written Explanations Also, in the absence of written explanations for administrative decisions, which are almost never offered by visa authorities when they turn down an application, a would-be emigrant has great difficulty knowing exactly what knowledge in his possession is considered secret by authorities. ''I wish I knew what it is I know, so I could tell,'' Ida Nudel said several months ago, before she was granted the long-sought permission to emigrate to Israel in October. In an interview with French television in 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, said that the maximum term during which state security could be cited as a reason to deny permission for emigration would be 10 years. But in a news conference at the Foreign Ministry some months later, a leading Soviet spokesman, Gennadi I. Gerasimov, clarified Mr. Gorbachev's remarks saying that in some cases -he cited the case of Naum S. Meiman, a mathematician, in particular - the duration of the secrecy rule might have no limit. Classified Work in 1950's Mr. Meiman did classified calculations while working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in the early 1950's. Many of those barred from emigration argue that virtually any kind of work can make a person a ''security risk.'' During the seminar today, Mrs. Ziman read a paper drafted by her husband, Yuri, examining the differences between United States and Soviet emigration policies. To leave the Soviet Union, specific permission is needed, the difficulty of obtaining permission depends on the country of destination, and the decision-making process is done on an administrative basis with severely limited opportunities for appeal. In addition, Yuri Ziman's paper said, the Soviet Government claims a right to control the movements of its citizens overseas, including where they go and how long they stay. Leaving the country without permission is a crime, and attempts to do so are viewed as serious crimes, for which the death penalty can be invoked. According to one seminar organizer, Pavel Abramovich, the group wanted to analyze various aspects of the state security system that has kept them in limbo for 10, 13, or even 17 years. But the first question put to Mr. Abramovich after he finished his preamble reflected the group's success in gaining both attention and participants. ''Could someone open a window?'' asked a spectator from the middle of the rush-hour like crush in the two rooms.

1988: “Cocoon – The Return” a sequel co-starring Jack Gilford and Steve Guttenberg was released in the United States today.

1988: “Scrooged” a comedic version “The Christmas Carol” directed and co-produced by Richard Donner with a screenplay co-authored by Mitch Glazer and music by Danny Elfman was released in the United States today.

1989(25th of Cheshvan, 5750): Ninety-three year old art dealer Sidney Janis passed away today. (As reported by Grace Glueck)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E5DB153AF93BA35753C1A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=

1990: “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” a film version of the novel with the same name starring Paul Newman and featuring Melissa Newman was released in the United States today.

1991: “Israel Has Its Nuclear Demons” published today provides a review of The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13217965.400-review-israel-has-its-nuclear-demons-/

1994(20^th of Kislev, 5755): Eighty three year old Oscar winning orchestrator and conductor Irwin Kostal passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/02/obituaries/irwin-kostal-83-orchestrated-music-for-hollywood-films.html

1994: “The Pagemaster” an animated horror film co-starring Leonard Nimoy and with music by James Horner was released in the United States today.

1994: “Angels in America: Perestroika” written by Tony Kushner opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre with Benjamin Mordecai as executive producer.

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Tuesday’s With Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom, Banjo Eyes: Eddie Cantor and the Birth of Modern Stardom by Herbert G. Goldman and A History of the Twentieth Century Volume 1: 1900-1933 by Martin Gilbert

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/reviews/971123.23gavint.html

2000(25th of Cheshvan, 5761): A powerful car bomb killed two Israelis and wounded scores during rush hour in the coastal city of Hadera this evening..

2000(25^th of Cheshvan, 5761):Sgt. Samar Hussein, 19, of Hurfeish, was killed when Palestinian snipers opened fire at soldiers patrolling the border fence near the Erez crossing.

2000(25^th of Cheshvan, 5761): Lt. Edward Matchnik, 21, of Beersheba, was killed in an explosion at the District Coordination Office near Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip.

2000(25^th of Cheshvan, 5761): Sixty-nine year old Clarence Yale Palitz, Jr. the Chairman of the Board  of Financial Federal Corporation and patron of the arts who is survived by his wife Anka passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/26/classified/paid-notice-deaths-palitz-clarence-yale-jr.html

2001(8^th of Kislev, 5762): Sixty-four year old major league pitcher Robert “Bo” Belinsky, whose mother was Jewish passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/sports/bo-belinsky-64-the-playboy-pitcher-dies.html

2001: An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at a van in the West Bank, killing Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, a leading member of Hamas, the Islamic terror organization.

2002: “At least four people were killed today, including a United Nations official, in violence that flared in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” while “grieving Israelis buried the victims of a suicide attack on” November 20^th.

2003: The Al Hirschfeld Theatre which had been renamed in honor of his talents and long career reopened on with a revival of the musical Wonderful Town. Hirschfeld was also honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

2003: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History by Adam Bellow and The Media and The War co-edited by Marvin Kalb

2004(10th of Kislev, 5765): Seventy-five-year-old  Rafael Eitan, a former Israeli Army chief of staff and government minister who was reprimanded after Lebanese Christian allies of Israel massacred Palestinian refugees in 1982, drowned today after being swept into stormy seas.. (As reported by Steven Erlanger)

2005: Labor Party MK Ophir Pines-Paz completed his service as Minister of Internal Affairs.

2005: Major General (Ret) Matan Vilnai completed his term as Science, Technology and Space Minister

2005: Ariel Sharon began his second term as Minister of Internal Affairs.

2005: Shimon Peres completes his term in office as Vice Prime Minister.

2005: Dalia Itzik, who will become the first women to serve as Speaker of the Knesset, completed her term as Communications Minister of Israel.

2005: Isaac Herzog completed his term as Minister of Housing and Construction.

2005: Eli Ben-Menachem completed his term as Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction

2005: After playing in the first ten games of the season, today, offensive lineman Lennie Friedman was placed on waivers by the Washington Redskins today.

2005: A decision by a federal appeals court opens the way for settlement payouts for Austrian Jews.

2005: The IDF unveiled the tombstones of five soldiers including two American volunteers, who fell in a battle for Latrun in the War of Independence at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery after positively identifying their remains which had been resting in a mass grave. The five soldiers being honored were Pvt. Menachem “Mendel’ Math, Cpl. Shlomo Berber, Pvt. Yehuda "Jerry" Kaplan, Pvt. Ya'akov Shnawiss (who changed his name to Sheleg Lavan), and Pvt. Moshe Hessman. Math and Kaplan were members of MACHAL

2006: Americans gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving. The holiday is based on two traditions: the English Harvest Home and the Biblical Sukkoth.  The Pilgrims were a deeply religious people who saw themselves as modern Israelites fleeing their own Pharaoh so they could worship their One true God.  The New World was synonymous with the Promised Land.  So it was only to be expected that when looking for a way of expressing thanks for a bountiful harvest, they would turn to the Bible and fashion a week long holiday in the manner of Sukkoth.

2006(2nd of Kislev, 5767): Betty Comden passed away at the age of 89.  She was a writer, who with longtime collaborator Adloph Green created the lyrics and the librettos for some of the most celebrated musicals of stage and screen

https://web.archive.org/web/20101023061431/http://songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C59

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/betty-comden

2006: “Nagasaki, an oratorio composed by Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke” the son of Frankfurt born Jewish journalist Harry Viktorovich Schnittke premiered in Cape Town, eight years after the composer had passed away.

2007: In Jerusalem, as part of the International Oud Festival, violinist and singer Sameer Makhoul performs with French double bassist Joelle Leandre.

2008: In a visit sponsored by Alive Productions, Randy Newman performs in Tel Aviv's Hamishkan Leomanuyot Habama (performing arts house).

2008: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following a dinner, Rabbi Lane Steinger, Regional Director, Union for Reform Judaism, Midwest Council, facilitates a discussion will concerning interfaith families and the challenges they may face with the upcoming winter holiday season.

2008: In Chicago, on the 500^th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the Spertus presents a lecture entitled “Calvin and the Jews” in which Dr. Dean Bell, Chief Academic University at Spertus, explores Calvin’s and his impact on Christian/Jewish Relations.

2008: At the Shirlington Branch Public Library, journalist Michaele Weissman discusses and signs her new book, God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee.

2008: The New York Times featured a the review of a biography of the Jewish born creator of the Follies entitled Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business by Ethan Mordden.

2008: The Washington Post book section included reviews of the latest addition to the Holocaust Literature genre, The Journal of Hélène Berr, translated from the French by David Bellos and two books that recount “the making of modern Hebrew”: Resurrecting Hebrew by Ilan Stavans and Yehuda Amichai” The Making of Israel's National Poet by Nili Scharf Gold.

2009 Lord Nigel Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a registered education charity

2009: The Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities and the Moline Public Library sponsor an address by Israeli Ambassador Asher Naim who will speak on “The Behind the Scenes Story of Operation Solomon: The Exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel”.

2009 (6 Kislev, 5770): Eighty-year old Fred Silberstein, a survivor of Auschwitz who gave evidence at the Nuremberg Trials passed away today in New Zealand. Silberstein, who was 14 when he was taken to Auschwitz in 1943, spent much of his life educating people in New Zealand about the horrors of the Holocaust and the subsequent dangers of racism. The president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, Stephen Goodman, described him as a righteous person. “For 60 years he worked tirelessly bearing witness to the horrors of the Holocaust,” Goodman said. “He was a modest and humble man.” Silberstein survived operations by Nazi “doctor” Josef Mengele, called the “Angel of Death,” and avoided near-certain death by telling camp guards he was 15 and able to do manual labor. His evidence at the Nuremburg Trials in 1946 helped to convict Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring and Rudolf Heß. He moved to New Zealand in 1948.

2009 (6 Kislev, 5770): Ninety-one year old Max Eisen, a Broadway press agent from the days when feeding tidbits of gossip to columnists like Walter Winchell and staging stunts were standard practice for stirring up a bit more box-office appeal, passed away today.  (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/theater/01eisen.html

2009: Israeli author Naomi Frenkel is to be laid to rest on Kibbutz Beit Alfa at 2 p.m. today three days after dying at Sheba Medical Center on her 91st birthday. 

2010: Kathleen Straus is scheduled to be honored with the Jewish Community Lifetime Achievement Award by the Detroit American Jewish Committee.

2010: Dwight Garner’s list of the “Top 10 Books of 2010” included books written by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “ Simon Wiesentahl: The Life and Legends”  by Tom Segev, “Letters” by Saul Bellow; edited by Benjamin Taylor, “Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance” co-authored by Nouriel Roubini, “Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, “Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory” by Ben Macintyre, one of the most successful disinformation operations of the 20^th century which was masterminded by Ewen Montagu, a leading member of the UK’s Jewish community.

2010: This afternoon at JFK airport in New York City, a Holocaust survivor was reunited with the Polish man who rescued her from the Nazis, after not having seen one another for 65 years. Wladyslaw Misiuna, 85, from Poland, and Sara Marmurek, 88, from Canada had not seen each other since the war.

2010(16th of Kislev, 5771): Seventy three year old Ingrid Pitt, long celebrated as the first lady of British horror cinema, who starred in sanguinary classics of the 1970s like “The Vampire Lovers,” “Countess Dracula” and “The House That Dripped Blood,” died today in London. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/arts/25pitt.html       

2011: The Israeli Folk Dance Thanksgiving Marathon is scheduled to begin at 9 pm at the 92^nd St Y in Manhattan.

2011: Rabbi Nava Hefetz, Educational Director at Rabbis for Human Rights is scheduled to be the  guest speaker at the first session of the Adult Education series at the West London Synagogue.

2011: The IDF identified Beduin smugglers on the southern border trying to infiltrate Israel from Egypt, and a firefight erupted between the two sides tonight.

2011: Recent archeological excavations in Jerusalem show that, contrary to popular understanding, King Herod was not solely responsible for constructing the Western Wall."

2011: The threat of another political murder exists in Israel, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told the Knesset today

2012: “Oy Vey! The Play” a comedy about a wealthy widow, her three daughters, her son, her Rabbi is scheduled to be performed at The Lion Theatre in New York City.

2012(9^th of Kislev, 5773): Seventy-four year old Devorah Krinsky “ the wife of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, secretary to the late Lubavitcher rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson” whom she married in 1957 passed away. (As reported by JTA)

2012: "Seeds of Resiliency," a new film directed and produced by Susan Polis Schutz, the granddaughter of Russian Jewish immigrants is scheduled to open tonight at the Quad Cinema in NYC.

2012: Memorial services were held for Art Ginsburg, the American television chef known as Mr. Food, “were held at B'nai Aviv Synagogue in Weston” after which he was buried at Beth David Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Florida

2012: National Yiddish Theater Presents "The Golden Land" at the Baruch Performing Arts Center

2012: Rain fell from the North to the Negev today morning with scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms forecasted to continue throughout the day.

2012: Hamas Islamists enforced a fragile two-day-old truce on today by evacuating Palestinians from a "no-go" border zone after IDF gunfire across the Gaza border killed one Palestinian and wounded several others.

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a performance of the Klezmer Nutcracker Holiday Concert.

2013: As part of the Murra Blackman Memoril Weekend, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman delivers a Shabbat sermon “What is the Most Important Verse in the Torah?” followed by an afternoon talk “The Two Happiest Days in Judaism – What are they? A Taste of Talmud” (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News)

2013: Israeli soldiers “fired rubber bullets at a group of Palestinians who were throwing stones at them during a day in which three Arabs were arrested by Israeli forces near the security barrier separating the Jewish state from the Gaza after they had snuck across the border near Kibbutz Be'eri. (As reported by Gil Roen)

2013(20^th of Kislev, 5774): Seventy-seven year old philanthropist and businessman Dov Lautman lost his battle with ALS today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/philanthropist-industrialist-dov-lautman-dies-aged-77/

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4456867,00.html

2013(20^th of Kislev, 5774): Eight year old Peter B. Lewis, the former Chairman of Progressive Insurance Company passed away.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/longtime-progressive-ceo-peter-lewis-dies-at-80/

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris’ “novelization of the Dreyfus affair” and Memories of a Marriage by Louis Begley.

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to present “Poetry & Prose Workshop” with Willa Schneberg.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “No One Remembers Alone: Memory, Migration, and the Making of an American Family.”

2014: Eighteenth annual UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end.

2014: The Chabad Partners Conference is scheduled to be held at the Brooklyn Marriott Hotel

http://kinus.com/media/pdf/843/FiTl8434492.pdf

2014: A live broadcast from the Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, a group that includes Rabbi Pinchas Ciment who has been a lamplighter par excellence in Arkansas for over two decades, is scheduled to take place this afternoon.

http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/221818/jewish/Live-Broadcast-Conference-of-Chabad-Lubavitch-Emissaries.htm

2014(1^st of Kislev, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Kislev

2014(1^st of Kislev, 5775): Sixty-five year old Allan Kornblum, the founder of Coffee House Press passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/business/media/allan-kornblum-independent-publisher-dies-at-65-.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

2014: By a vote of 14 to 6 “the cabinet approved a controversial proposal today to define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people in a constitutional Basic Law.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)

2014: “Riots follow Sakhnin’s 1:0 victory over Beitar in soccer match.

2015: In Potomac, MD, Congregation Har Shalom is scheduled to host a lecture by Rabbi Reuven Hammer on “Akiva: Living and Dying for Love.”

2015: The New England Patriots football team observed a minute of silence before its game tonight in memory of 18 year old Sharon, MA native Ezra Schwartz who was murder by a terrorist while distributing food packages soldiers to Israeli soldiers. (As reported by Raoul Wootliff and Marissa Newman)

2015: “Thanksgiving – A Holiday of Family and Foods

https://www.jhsgw.org/blog/thanksgiving-a-holiday-of-family-and-foods?utm_source=Thanksgiving+%2F+In+the+Press&utm_campaign=Thanksgiving%2FIn+the+media&utm_medium=email

2015: In London, The Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a talk by curator Joanne Rosenthal on the exhibition “Blood” which “draws together manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera to present a rich exploration of how blood can unite and divide, reflecting on over 2,000 years of history.”

2016(22^nd of Cheshvan, 5777): Eighty-six year old British comedy start Andrew Sachs passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/television/andrew-sachs-hapless-waiter-on-the-bbc-sitcom-fawlty-towers-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2016: “The Tenth Man” and “The Last Laugh” are scheduled to be shown in Melbourne, Australia as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2016(22^nd of Cheshvan, 5777): Ninety-year old Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca, the son of an Italian born trolley car conductor and the former Kati Berger, a Jewish immigrant from what was then Hungary and Slovakia whose “uncle Jozsef Berger was killed at the Majdanek concentration camp, and his maternal aunt Irma died at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942” who was raised as a Roman Catholic and who is best known for serving up the pitch to Bobby Thompson as the “shot heard round the world” which cost the Dodgers the pennant passed away today.

2016: “The Settlers” and “Alone in Berlin” are scheduled to be shown in Sydney, Australia as part of the Jewish International Film Festival.

2017: “The Heir” and “A Quiet Heart” are scheduled to be shown at the 21^st UK International Jewish Film Festival.

2017: In the spirit of having something for everything, The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Chinese Night” for the hungry preceded by a continuation of a discussion of  Masechet Megilla as part of the in depth study Gemara study program

2017: In the United States – Thanksgiving

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/do-jews-celebrate-thanksgiving

https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2014/11/21/whats-jewish-about-thanksgiving

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/is-thanksgiving-kosher/

https://www.jhsgw.org/blog/thanksgiving-a-holiday-of-family-and-foods?utm_source=Thanksgiving+%2F+In+the+Press&utm_campaign=Thanksgiving%2FIn+the+media&utm_medium=email

2017: Jewish Book Month, an annual event that provides us with a chance to contemplate Jewish books and the lives of authors such as Jonathan Sarna whose works included American Judaism: A History and When General Grant Expelled The Jews continues today.

2018: Paula Vogel’s “Indecent” a play which “recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923” is scheduled to open at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

2018: “Professor Avigdor Shinan and invited guests” are scheduled to “join Israel Museum curators to bring the weekly haftarah to light.”

2018: The Village East Cinema is scheduled to host a screening of “Family in Transition” which tells “the story of a family in Nahariya…whose lives change after their parent comes out as a transgender woman.”

2018: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host the opening of the “9^th Annual Sigid Celebration” where attendees will enjoy a traditional Kosher Ethiopian Shabbat Dinner.”

2018: While Israelis may not officially celebrate Thanksgiving, they are scheduled to hit the shops for “Black Friday.”

https://www.timeout.com/israel/news/black-friday-2018-the-complete-guide-to-all-the-best-sales-on-israeli-brands-112118

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Black-Friday-seems-to-be-a-thing-now-in-Israel-572391

2019: The UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host a screening of “Solomon and Gaenor” in Newcastle (no need to bring coals)

2019: Today marks the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of noted scientist UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry professor Saul Winstein at age 57.

https://www.chemistry.ucla.edu/news/tribute-professor-saul-winstein/

2019: The Peninsula Jewish Community is scheduled to host “Rabbi Lavey’s Joyous Learning Table,” a tisch filled with stories and song.

2019: As part of “Reconstructing Judasim Shabbatton, Or Zarua is scheduled to host a Shabbat Service with D'var Torah and Conversation with Rabbi Deborah Waxman.

2019: In Berkley, CA, St. John’s Presbyterian Church is scheduled to host “Roses and Almonds” with Tres Hermanicas and Aquila which includes a mix of “centuries-old Sephardic music

2019(25^th of Cheshvan, 5780): Parashat Chayei Sarah

2020: Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies is scheduled to host a virtual Israel Studies Colloquium with Ben-Gurion U. professor Ayelet Harel-Shalev talking about her interviews with women in the IDF and her conclusions.

2020: Jewish Family Services of Columbus, OH is scheduled to host Zoom Movie where attendees will discuss Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

2020: Live on Zoom, the YIVO institute is scheduled to host “Avrom Sutzkever: Ten Poems” during which a three person panel discusses the work of this giant of Yiddish poetry.

2020: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host the penultimate session “The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.”

2020: The Jewish Museum in London is scheduled to host “Stories from the Stores” a tour via Zoom that provide a chance for a behind the scenes look at everything “from photographs of early 20th century lessons at the Jews’ Free School to unique items of Judaica.”

2021: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled present Manashe Khaimov lecturing on “A Bukharian Jew in Uzbekistan.”

2021: Congregation Beth Elohim is scheduled to present online Rabbi Mike Rothbuam lecturing on “Into the Water on Dry Land: Navigating the Sea of Social Just (Without Drowning.”

2021: The YIVO Institute is scheduled to present Ken Krimstein and Jeffrey Shanlder as they discuss, When I Grow Up , “a new graphic nonfiction book, based on six of the hundreds of autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens collected by YIVO on the brink of WWII, including those discovered in 2017 which had been hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar.”

2021: Temple Emanu-El’s Stettenheim Library is scheduled to present its fourth edition of Women on the Move, a series that welcomes female authors to discuss their latest work probing the intricacies of our lives, this time featuring a talk by novelist Naomi Ragen.

2022: The UK Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a screening of “Where Life Begins.”

2022: Starting today, “The Fabelmans,” a semi-autobiographical film directed by Stephen Spielberg, which had enjoyed a limited release on November 11 is scheduled to be available for viewing in theatres throughout the United States today.

2022: Jazz pianist and composer, Uriel Herman is scheduled to perform at the Jerusalem Theatre on David Marcus Street.

2022: In Tel Aviv, Jeremy Feldhamer is scheduled to present the “English Comedy Showcase.”

2022(29^th of Cheshvan, 5783): Sixteen year old Givat Shaul was murdered today and at least thirteen others were injured in a bombing at bus stop in Jerusalem.

2023: Thanksgiving, which some say is modeled after the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth is observed in the United States today

https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/celebrating-secular-holidays/whats-jewish-about-thanksgiving-lots

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/is-thanksgiving-kosher/

https://aish.com/6-ways-jews-shaped-thanksgiving/

2023: No lox or caviar today since Russ and Daughters is closed for Thanksgiving.

2023: As November 23 begins in Israel, fifty “abducted women and children” are scheduled to be released today in exchange for a “four-day pause in fighting” that came too late for Captain Liron Snir and Sgt. Eitan Dov Rosenzweig who are the latest casualties in the ground war and   the rest of the Hamas held hostages begin day 48 in captivity.

(Editor’s note: this situation is too fluid for this blog to cover so we are just providing a snapshot as of the posting at midnight Israeli time)