This Day, January 13, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L
January 13
519 BCE: Darius had “a crown made for Zerubbabel out of
gold sent by Jews in Babylon.”
915: Birthdate of Al-Hakam II, the second Caliph of Cordoba
from 961 to 976 whose subjects included Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Enoch Ben Moses…
519 BCE: Darius had “a crown made for Zerubbabel out of
gold sent by Jews in Babylon.”
915: Birthdate of Al-Hakam II, the second Caliph of Cordoba
from 961 to 976 whose subjects included Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Enoch Ben Moses
both of whom were leaders of the Jewish community in Andalusia.
1151: Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis who in 1122 was granted
five houses belonging to Jews in Tours by King Louis VI, during whose “reign
jurisdiction over the Jews (and their revenues) gradually passed from royal
control to the hands of the Church” passed away today.
1334: Birthdate of King Henry II of Castile who “was
arguably the first ruler since the Visigothic King Ergica to utilise opposition
to Jewish activities in Iberian Peninsula as part of his policy.”
1435: Pope Eugene IV, who would issue an edict prohibiting:
building of synagogues, money-lending for interest, holding public office,
testifying against Christians, issued “Sicut Dubum,” a bull banning the
enslavement of inhabitants of the Canary Islands who had converted to
Christianity. Both measures had the same
purpose – the growth of Christianity at all costs.
1505: Birthdate of Joachim II Hector the Elector of
Brandenburg who allowed the Jews to return to his realm after he was told that
the charges of host desecration that had led to their expulsion were false.
1546(10th of Shevat, 1538): The responsa of Rabbi Nissim
ben Reuben Gerondi were printed for the first time in Rome. “Nissim ben Reuben
Gerondi (known from the acronym of Rabbenu Nissim as the RaN)” a 14th
century native of Barcelona, “was one of the most important Spanish Talmudists”
who was also known for his knowledge of medicine and astronomy.
1614(13th of Shevat, 5374): On January 13, Jacob Israel Belmonte, the
native of “the island of Madeira” arrived today in Amsterdam where he joined
with others including Jacob Tirado and Solomon Palache in founding that city’s
“Portuguese-Jewish Community.” He was
the husband of “Simḥah (Gimar) Vaz, whose picture by her son Moses is to be
found in David Franco Mendes' "Memorias do Estabelecimento . . . dos
Judeos Portuguezes," preserved in manuscript in the archives of the
Portuguese congregation at Amsterdam.”
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2840-belmonte-jacob-israel
1625: John Milton,
author of “Paradise Lost” is admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge at the age
of 16. During Milton’s lifetime, Jews were still officially not allowed to
settle in the British Isles. Like many
Puritans living in the England of Oliver Cromwell, Milton saw a connection
between his brand of Christianity and the Israelites. Until his eyes weakened, he read the Hebrew
Bible on a daily basis and expressed a positive view of Mosaic Law. Milton was a politician as well as a
poet. He served as a secretary to Oliver
Cromwell and, according to one of his biographers, was part of the group who
negotiated for the return of the Jewish community to England.
1635: Birthdate of German Protestant theologian Philipp
Jakob Spencer who differed with Lutherans on two major points one of which was
their belief that the conversion of the Jews was a required prelude to “the
triumph of the church.”
1691: George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of
Friends (Quakers) who probably never met a Jew but who believed that “the Jews
were descendants of the Pharisees and caused the death of Jews” passed away
today.
1726: Meyer Löw Schomberg German born physician who moved
to London and had been admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in 1722
today became a fellow of the Royal Society, which would lead to him being
admitted to the freemasons' lodge of the Premier Grand Lodge of England at the
Swan and Rummer, Finch Lane in 1730/
1733: James Oglethorpe and 130 colonists arrive in
Charleston, South Carolina on their way to found the colony of Georgia. The first Jews would arrive in Georgia with
the second boatload of colonists who will arrive in July of 1733.
1754(19th of Tevet, 5514): Jacob Ḥayyim de
Fonseca, the Hamburg born son of Joseph de Fonseca, who earned a medical degree
from Leyden University passed away today.
1773: In Mackinac, Marie Elizabeth Louise Dubois and
Ezekiel Solomons gave birth to Sophie Solomons
1777: During the American Revolution, Lewis Bush, a Jew
from Philadelphia, was transferred from the 6th Pennsylvania
Battalion to Colonel Thomas Hartley’s Additional Continental Regiment.
1778: In London,
Rachel Kijser and Asher Aron Goldsmid gave birth to Sir Isaac Goldsmid, a
Sephardic Jew, who was a prominent London banker, a founder of the University
of London and the husband of Isabel Goldsmid with whom he had eleven children.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777606
1781(16th of Tevet, 5541): Parashat Vayechi
1781(16th of Tevet, 5541): Treinela bat Mose,
the wife of Lipman ben Joseph passed away today in the United Kingdom.
1784: Birthdate of
Newport, RI native Richa Isaacs, the daughter of Moses saacs
1791: In Baden, Chaya Hirschburger and Isaac Kaufmann gave
birth to Abraham Kaufman who was married to Lea Gutkind with whom he had four
children and Regina Sinsheimer with whom he had ten children.
1797: Birthdate of Emanuel Schwab the native of Roedelheim,
Germany who married Sophie Hirsch in 1862 and served as a rabbi for
congregations in Schenectady, New York and Bridgeport, CT.
1799(7th of Shevat, 5559): Shlomin Moshe Jacob
passed away today in the United Kingdom.
1800: Birthdate of English native Mary A. Levy, the wife of
Amsterdam native Lewis A. Levy who eventually settled in Texas.
1800: Twenty-seven-year-old Rachel Judah, the New York City
born daughter of Hillel Judah married Zalma Rehine today.
1803: Birthdate of Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, Chief Rabbi of
the British Empire and one of the most prominent Jewish clerics of the 19th
century.
1807 (4th of Shevat, 5567): Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov passed
away. Born in 1745, Rav Moshe Leib was a disciple of Rabbi Shmelke of
Nikolsburg, who was in turn a disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch. As the many
stories about his life demonstrate, Rav Moshe was committed to all three forms
of love as enumerated by the Baal Shem Tov: love of God, love of Torah and love
of Israel.
1809: “The Grand Duke Karl Friedrich von Baden. who
recognized the Jews of his country as a denomination and equated them with the
Christian denominations in religious matters, but not in terms of civic rights”
issued an edict today creating “the Oberrat of the Isaeliten” which was to be
the governing body for Jews of his realm in religious matters.
1810: Birthdate of Ernestine Louise Polowsky, the daughter
of a wealthy Polish rabbi who gained fame as Ernestine Louise Rose, the
American feminist and abolitionist.
1814: Birthdate of Michael H. Godefroi, the native of
Amsterdam and Dutch minister of justice who was the first of his people “to
fill a cabinet position in Holland.”
1818: Birthdate of Abraham Stein, the Prussian born rabbi
who became the leader of the Meisel Synagogue at Prague when in 1864 “it was
changed to a modern temple with choir, organ and sermon.”
1818(6th of Shevat, 5578): Johanna bas Abram
Grunebaum, the wife of David Jacob Felsenthal and he mother of Beier, Benjamin,
Jacob, Jeannette, Abraham and Emanual Felsenthal passed away today.
1821: In London, an unnamed visitor came to the Exchange
and reported to Mr. Rothschild that he was the intended victim of an
assassination plot, one possibly being hatched in Austria. Rothschild
gave no credence to the threat and was prepared to let the man depart.
Others insisted that he be held. He was taken into custody, questioned by
authorities and then released. The name of the informant has not been
made public.
1825: Prior to his death Czar Alexander I expelled all the
Jews from Mohilev and Vitebsk.
1828: In the Netherlands, Salomon Levie Goudsmit, the son
of Levie Emanuel Goudsmit and Magdalena Hartog Goudsmit and his wife Aleida
Leentje Abraham van Raalte gave birth to
Johanna Goudsmit, the wife of Alexander van der Velde.
1830: When the Great Fire began in New Orleans today, the
Jewish community numbered little more than thirty members but had already
formed a congregation, Shaarai Chesed (Gates of Mercy), under the direction of
Jacob Solis.
1836: Judah Lyons married Rosetta Hart today at the Great
Synagogue.
1836: Henrietta Samuel
and Baron Salomon, Benedict de Worms gave birth to Ellen Henritta
1839: Jacob Hyam Nathan married Charlotte Benett today at
the Great Synagogue.
1842: Birthdate of Odessa native and Russian Jurist Karl
Ilyich Bernstein.
1844: Birthdate of “French journalist, writer and stage
author Albert Millaud” who wrote “under the pseudonym Oronte and who “was the
son of the banker Moïse Millaud, the founder of Le Petit Journal.”
1847: Birthdate of Morris Rich, founder of Atlanta’s Rich’s
Department Store.
1847: Birthdate of Berdichev native Osip Mikhailovich
Lerner also known as Y. Y. (Yosef Yehuda) Lerner, a 19th-century Russian Jewish
intellectual, writer, and critic who was the husband of Mariam Rabinovitch and father of pianist Tina Lerner.
1851(10th of Shevat, 5611): Amalie Male Marcus
Schoenfeld the daughter of Marcus Steinfeld and Caroline Raphael, the wife of
Moses Schoenfeld and other of Salomon Schoenfeld; Philip Schoenfeld; Raphael
Schoenfeld and Meyer Schoenfeld passed away today in Lower Saxony.
1853: Birthdate of Kingston, Jamaica native and Northwick
College (London) educated Rabbi I.P. Mendes who had served the Portuguese in
Richmond, VA for four years before becoming the spiritual leader of Mickva
Israel in Savannah, GA.
1854(13th of Tevet, 5614): Judah Touro passed away. A native of Newport, RI, born in the same
year as Lexington & Concord, Touro spent most of his adult life in New
Orleans where he was a successful businessman and real estate investor. Touro
also took part in the city’s signature event serving as a volunteer with Andrew
Jackson’s forces that defeated the British in 1815. Touro was one of the great philanthropists of
his time. Beneficiaries of his
generosity included Touro Infirmary in New Orleans, The Bunker Hill (MA)
Monument Fund and a residential settlement and almshouse in Jerusalem.
http://www.jewish-american-society-for-historic-preservation.org/images/Judah_Touro_-PDF.pdf
http://www.fau.edu/library/brody10.htm
1855(23rd of
Tevet, 5615): Parashat Shemot
1855(23rd of
Tevet, 5615): Sixty-nine year old Solomon J. Isaacs, the New York born son of
Joshua Isaacs and the husband of Elkalech Kursheedt passed away today in New
York.
1858: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Henry Jacobs officiated at
the marriage of Joseph Heilbrun of Baltimore to Lizzie L. Sommers.
1861: Fifty-eight-year-old Benjamin Kisch, the son of Simon
Kisch and Julia Cohen and the husband of Julia Kisch was buried today at the
“Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”
1863: In Poland, Louis and Rebecca Goldstein Rosenthal gave
birth to Isaac Rosenthal, the oldest of their nine children.
1864: In Russia, Abraham Rosenbaum and his wife gave birth
to Rabbi Jacob Rosenbaum who led congregations in Konigsberg, Germany and
Brooklyn before moving to Woodbine, NJ where he became the leader of
Congregation Agudath Achim.
1865: In Washington, D.C., Annie Graff and Sol Kahn gave
birth to Hattie Kahn who became Hattie Kahn Carb when she married realtor
Isadore Carb and who lived and died in Fort Worth, TX where she raised Gladys,
Meredith and David Carb.
1866: Birthdate of Rebecca Rosenthal Judah, the founder, in
1895, of the Louisville branch of the National Council of Jewish Women “and
vice president and treasurer of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association.”
https://explorekyhistory.ky.gov/items/show/341
1866: Former U.S. Senator and Confederate cabinet member
Judah P. Benjamin, who had fled the United States after the Civil War “enrolled
at Lincoln’s Inn and soon thereafter was admitted to read law.
1867(7th of Shevat, 5627): Eighty-four-year-old
Rebecca Judah, the Newport, RI born daughter of Hillel Judah and the wife of
Isaac B. Seixas passed away today in New York.
1868: The U.S.S. Minnesota, on which Adolph Marix would
serve in 1880, was launched today. The U.S.S. Minnesota,
on which Adolph Marix would serve in 1880, was temporarily taken out of service
today.
1872: Birthdate of Horki native Israel Joseph Zevin who
gained fame as “a humorist and pioneer of the Yiddish press in America” using
the pseudonym “Tashrak.”
http://www.yivoarchives.org/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=33811
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/tashrak
1873: It was reported today that the London Jewish
Chronicle has published a story about the murder of a Russian Jewish
family. Two laborers ordered brandy from
Jewish innkeeper and then refused to pay for their drinks. They became abusive
and eventually were forced to leave the tavern. Later that night, he innkeeper,
his wife, his children and his brother were awakened by cries of “fire.” When
they ran outside, they were attacked by a mob of eight people including the two
laborers. The mob ransacked the inn, set
fire to the building and then threw the Jews in. They all burned to death except for a
12-year-old boy who escaped into the woods.
1873: It was reported today that President Grant has
instructed all United States ministers to inform the governments to which they
are accredited that the U.S. has taken a “deep interest” in the Jews of Romania
and would expect these governments to do what they can to intervene on behalf
of this persecuted minority. Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, the American-Jew who
is the U.S. Consul at Bucharest expressed his pleasure with the American
government’s intervention. [This would be another example of the bogus charge
that President Grant was an anti-Semite.]
1874: In Russia, today enactment of a lawing governing
“universal military service” in which “no special regulations concerning the
Jews are mentioned” which would lead to further modifications aimed
specifically at the drafting of Jews and the subsequent service in the Czar’s
army.
1876(16th of Tevet, 5636): Ḥayyim Löb ben Hirsch
Katzenellenbogen who followed in his father’s footsteps as the head of the
rabbinical school in Vilna which closed in 1873 leaving him destitute passed
away today.
1876: In Poland, Sarah and “Srul Itzhak Gallante gav birth
to Abraham Naphtali Gallant, the husband of Etta Gallant with whom he had four
children and who “was ordained by R.
Johnah Zlotnick of Plock, Poland before
coming to the United States where he served as President of the Board of Rabbis
in the Bronx and was “active in Agudath Haraonim.
1877: Rustic Wedding Symphony, Op. 26 (Ländliche Hochzeit)
a symphony in E flat major by Karl Goldmark was performed for the first time in
the United States “at a New York Philharmonic Society concert.”
1877: It was reported today that Lord Beaconsfield who
celebrated his 71st birthday on December 27 “is now utterly
enfeebled and exhausted and reduced to a condition of intellectual
decrepitude by the strains of office.”
1878: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Newark, NJ,
held its first meeting this afternoon.
The 172 members elected the following officers: President – Frank Marx;
Vice President – Leopold Harzfeld; Recording Secretary – Oscar Wiener;
Financial Secretary – Edward Hirschler; Treasurer – Joseph Goetz. The members voted to raise $2,000 by issuing
400 shares of stock at $5 a share.
1878: It was reported today that David Rosenberg of
Columbus, Ohio whom it is assumed is a Jew “has issued a call for a national
convention of all Israelites who are now willing to accept Jesus Christ as the
promised Messiah of the world.” The Jews promptly repudiated the man and his
scheme.
1878: It was
reported today that The Jewish Messenger sees the “present tendency to break
down the barriers of synagognism” and replace it with a “brotherhood of
synagogues” as one of the most promising features of the Jewish-American
landscape.
1879: In Amsterdam, Isaac Jacob Gans, the Dutch born son of
Jacob and Rebecca Mozes Gans, and his wife Vogeltje Dooseman gave birth to
Jacob Gans
1879: In Kiev, Herman Panken and Feiga Berman Panken, gave
birth to Jacob Panken who after moving to New York in 1890 eventually became an
organizer of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, a member of the
Socialist Party and a municipal judge.
1879: It was reported today that Thomas D. Conygham, the
forger who swindled the people of Wilkes-Barre, PA out of $250,000 before
fleeing the country was in turn the victim of a swindle perpetrated by Lazarus,
a Sephardic Jew who conned him out of $70,000 in Haiti.
1882: The second of two articles by Joseph Jacobs which
provided “an account of the persecution of the Jews in Russia” appeared in The Times of London.
1882: In Paris, Adolphe and Noémie Bloch gave birth to
Darius Paul Bloch dit Dassault.
1882: The Young
Men’s Hebrew Association, whose members included Israel Cohen, Jacob Rosenthal,
Moses Scheinfeldt and Mark Wolf was founded today in Boston, MA.
1882: The Louisville
Courier published an account of the final disposition “of the Confederate
bullion” in which Captain M.H. Clark that “before reaching Washington,
Georgia,” he “was halted by Major Raphael J. Moses,” the member of an old
Southern Jewish family to whom he turned over all of the wagons filled with
silver bullion as order by President Davis so that it might be used “to feed
the paroled soldiers” to keep them from stripping the area of supplies.”
1883: De Witt J. (David) Seligman and Addie Seligman gave
birth to Alma Seligman who became Alma Hochstadter when she married Walter
Hoschstadter.
1884: The Hebrew Technical Institute elected the following
as its first slate of officers: President- James Hoffman; Vice President – Leo
Schlesinger; Treasurer – David L. Einhorn; Secretary – M.A. Kursheedt.
1885: In Philadelphia, PA, Moses and Carrie (Kaufman) Stern
gave birth to University of Pennsylvania and Columbia educated author Arthur K.
Stern, the husband of Henrietta Berkowitz and the President of the Jewish
Chautauqua Society from 1920 to 1925.
1886: In a small
village near Minsk, Brokhe Tsharni (née Hurwitz) and Zev Volf, “a fervent
Lubavitcher” gave birth to Baruch Charney Vladeck who gained famed as Baruch
Nachman Charney, an American Jewish Labor Leader and manager of the Jewish
Daily Forward
https://www.jta.org/1936/01/14/archive/b-c-vladeck-honored-on-fiftieth-birthday
1887: In the Ukraine, Charles Polteil Abuza and Jennie Lenz
Abuza gave birth to Sofya “Sonya” Kalish, who gained fame as multi-talented
Sophie Tucker, “the last of the Red Hot Mommas.”
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/tucker-sophie
1887: In what is now part of Romania,Grand Rabbi Chananyah
Yom Tov Lipa Teitelbaum and his second wife, Chana Ashkenazi gave birth to Joel
Teitelbaum “the founder and first Grande Rebbe of the Satmar dynasty” who saved
himself during the Holocaust and found a haven in the United States where he
adopted anti-Semitism as part of his sects beliefs.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rabbi-joel-teitelbaum
1890: It was reported today that the Hebrew Technical
Institute is currently 120 pupils who are supported by the efforts of 557
patrons and members.
1890: It was reported today that Harmony Club, a Jewish
social club, suffered 3,000 in damages as a result of the cyclone that recently
struck St. Louis, MO.
1891(4th of Shevat, 5651): Ninety-year-old Anton Ree the
son of a Jewish banker who served as director at the Jewish Free School who was
elected to the Hamburg Constituent Assembly where he worked as an advocate for
Jewish Emancipation passed away today.
1891: A ship carrying five hundred Jewish men, women and
children who were all from Russia, arrived at Dover, UK
1891: It was reported today that the Hebrew Benevolent
Society and the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children were among the charities named
to receive bequests in the will of the late Emma Abbot Wetherwall who was not
Jewish.
1891: “Objects To Working Saturday” described the
objections that Judge Joseph E. Newberger, an Orthodox Jew has raised to
hearing matters on Saturday morning. While at least one of his colleagues has
agreed to cover for him, Chief Justice Ehrlich responded by saying that
Newberger should have considered this before running for election.”
1892: Second day of a three-day celebration marking opening
of the Jewish Maternity Association's
Facility in Philadelphia, PA
1892: Charles Spurgeon, a leading British Baptist minister
was quoted today as expressing his displeasure with the Russian treatment of
her Jewish citizens. “If I had all the
health and strength that could fall to the lot of man, I should be quite unable
to express my feelings on reading of Russia’ intolerance of the Jews…The Czar
is greatly injuring his own country by driving out God’s ancient people. No country can trample upon Israel with
impunity…
1892: It was reported today that the annual expenses for
the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for the fiscal year ending October 1,
1891 were in excess of $92,000,000. The
expenditures included part of the payment for the society’s new building.
1892: In London, Esther Goddard and Morris Solomon Corre
gave birth to Henry Morris Corre.
1893: Birthdate of Chaim Sutin, the native of Belarus who
gained fame as French painter Cahim Soutine. He owed part of his success to the
support of Paul Guilluam, the French art dealer who championed the works of
another Jewish artist, Amedeo Modigliani.
1893(25th of Tevet, 5653): Russian biographer
Israel Tobiah Eisenstadt a descendant of Tobiah Bacharach and Israel ben
Shalom, who were executed in 1659 on charges of “ritual murder” passed away
today in St. Petersburg.
1893(25th of Tevet, 5653): Eighty-eight-year-old
Alice Aarons, the daughter of Aron Aarons who died at the age of 78 in 1849,
passed away today in the United Kingdom.
1894: Sixty-two-year-old Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of
Karl von Meck, who joined with Dubrovnik native Samuel Polyakov, the Jew known
as “the railroad king” to create Russia’s modern railway system, passed away
today.
1894: Sixty-seven-year-old William Waddington who as French
Foreign minister in 1879 supported Laurence Oliphant’s plan for “large scale
Jewish settlement in Palestine” passed away today.
1894: Adolph L. Sanger lost in his bid to be elected
President of the Board of Education in New York City.
1895: English author and historian Sir John Robert Seely,
author of Ecce Homo and Natural Religion passed away. He believed that
“the Hebrew Scriptures express in poetic for…the spirit of modern science.”
1896: It was reported that a course in Hebrew will be
offered by New York University as one of its summer school offerings starting
this July.
1896(27th of Tevet, 5656): Sixty-seven-year-old
businessman, philanthropist and “patron of the arts” Seilg Meier Goldschmidt
passed away today in Frankfurt, Germany.
*When his children urged Selig Goldschmidt to retire from business, he
replied "This is impossible for me.
There may well be enough to live on, both for you and myself, but I must
certainly continue to work for my poor people, because for them I need a great
deal of Maaser."
1896: “Dr. Cohen On ‘Judaism A Force’” published today
includes Dr. Cohen’s message that “the wealthy Jewish merchants of
Philadelphia…built large temples, patronized the arts and sciences and were
charitable…but was there one among them who paid his employees liberally? In Philadelphia, as in other cities he knew
of clothing fortunes that had been built from the blood of the poor Russian
Jews…”
1897(10th of Shevat, 5657): Forty-six-year-old
Croatian-Hungarian timber merchant who was a pioneer in the creation of the
kind of airship that came to be known as a Zeppelin passed away today.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080120001853/http://amerisrael.com:80/article_david_schwartz_2.html
1898: Emile Zola published "J'Accuse." This
famous letter appeared in Clemenceau's paper L'Aurore. Zola was a
supporter of Alfred Dreyfus, and the letter condemned the French establishment
for wrongly convicting Dreyfus. (The
Clemenceau mentioned above is the same Clemenceau who led France to victory in
World War I.)
1898: Seventy-eight-year-old Benjamin Victor Abraham the
son of Victor Abraham and Rebecca Levy was buried today at the “Le Repentir
Cemetery in Georgetown, British Guyana.”
1898: Auguste Scheurer-Kestner failed to convince his
colleagues in the Senate to join with him in the battle for rehabilitation of
Captain Dreyfus
1898(19th of Tevet, 5658): Eighty-one-year-old Talmudist
and Biblical commentator Yehoshua Yehudah Leib Diskin also known as the Maharil
Diskin, who established the Diskin Orphanage in Jerusalem and the Ohel Moshe
(Tent of Moses) Yeishiva passed away today.
1899: Magistrate Sims is scheduled to hear a case in which
Mrs. Esther Wallenstein, President of the Hebrew Infant Asylum, has brought
charges of trespass against the builders working on the asylum’s building. She is represented by Maurice Untermyer.
1899: In Illinois, “German-Jewish immigrants Bettie and Max
Mendheim gave birth New York Public Library branch librarian “who went
undercover in the 1930s to spy on the Nazis.”
https://www.lbi.org/events/florence-mendheim/
1899: It was reported today that Liebler & Company are
committed to producing a dramatization of Israel Zangwill’s Children of the
Ghetto which will be produced at the Herald Square Theatre starting in
October. The theatrical company has
accepted the scenario he presented and the Jewish author is now working on a
multi-act treatment.
1900(13th of Shevat, 5660) Parashat Beshalach
1900: It was reported today that “during his recent lecture
tour here, Mr. Zangwill told the following story of himself: ‘He was walking
along the beach one day, when he decided to rest on a bench beside a wall. On the other side of the wall were two ladies
talking. He listened because ‘he
couldn’t help it’ and because they were talking about him. One said it wonderful how Mr. Zangwill could
write as well as he did about the Ghetto.
The other replied, ‘Oh not at all! Whey shouldn’t he write well about the
Jews? He is one and has lived among them
all his life, and ought to know them.
Look at Walter Besant: he is more wonderful to my mind. He doesn’t know anything at all of them and
yet he writes about them.”
1901: As today, six people are dead and three more are
missing as result as a panic caused at the West Twelfth Street Turner Hall in
Chicago where 800 people who were waiting to see a performance of the Yiddish
play “The Greenhorn” were panicked when a man cried out “fire” causing the
mostly Jewish crowd to rush out of the building
1902: In Chicago, “wealthy shoe manufacturer Emmanual
Rosenbaum” and his wife gave birth to bronze medal winning shot putter Maud
Rosenbaum who married Baron Giacomo Giorgio Levi in 1927 and after getting a
divorce married H. Walter Blumenthal in 1935 which led to her gaining further
fame under the name Maud Blumenthal, the champion tennis player.
1903: Herzl begins the preparations for the meetings with
the Foreign Ministry and with Lord Rothschild.
1904: In Baltimore, MD, “Jacob L. Zetzer and Fannie B.
Zetzer gave birth to Rose Sylvan Zeter, the University of Maryland trained
attorney and reformer who was the first woman to be admitted to the Maryland
State Bar Association and the founder of “the first all-female law firm” in the
state of Maryland.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-09-1998099166-story.html
1904(25th of Tevet, 5664): Leo Napoleon Levi, a lawyer and
one of the first Jews from Texas to gain national recognition, died of a heart
attack. He was born in 1856 in Victoria, TX.
“At age sixteen he enrolled at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville, where he received the medal for being the best university
debater and at age twenty received his law degree. He married Ray Bachrach, and
they had six children. He settled in Galveston and became associated with the
law firm Flournoy and Scott in 1876; later he became a partner in Scott, Levi,
and Smith. Levi was a well-known orator, and officials at the University of
Texas invited him to give the commencement address in June 1899. The
Independent Order of B'nai B'rith published this speech and others by Levi in a
book in 1905. In 1887 Levi was elected president of Temple B'nai Israel, and
the next year he brought Rabbi Henry Cohen to Texas. Levi retained the
presidency for twelve years. In Galveston he joined the Independent Order of
B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal organization, and was elected president of
District Seven, which comprised seven Southern states. In 1900 Levi was elected
national president of the IOBB. That same year he moved to New York City to
pursue his work with B'nai B'rith. As president of B'nai B'rith, Levi he sent a
petition to Czar Nicholas II, after the massacre at Kishinev, that demanded
Russians stop abusing Jews. Secretary of State John Hay signed the Kishinev
petition, and President Theodore Roosevelt endorsed it.
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fle75
1904(N.S): Birthdate of Nathan Mironovich Milstein) a
Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.
1904: In New York City, Augusta and Barnett Goodman gave
birth to architect Percival Goodman the Columbia University Professor who
“designed over 50 synagogues and religious buildings including the stone-clad
Fifth Avenue Synagogue at 5 East 62d Street in Manhattan; Congregation Adath
Israel in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, a strongly sculptural mass of
concrete and red brick, and Shaarey Zedek in Detroit, a building with a stark
prowlike concrete roof cutting into the sky.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/12/obituaries/percival-goodman-85-synagogue-designer-dies.html
1905: In Grand Rapids, MI, Norman and Iva (Bates) Taylor
gave birth to Ruth Alice Taylor the wife of General Paul Zuckerman and the
other of Henry Zukerman who gained famed award winning actor, producer,
director and very funny guy Buck Henry
1906(16th of Tevet, 5666): Parashat Vayehci
1906: Birthdate of Moselle, France native Leon Israel, the
Faculty of Medicine in Strasbourg trained physician who was assassinated in
1944 for his role as a member of the French Resistance.
1906: “The Russian Revolution” published today includes a
review of The Truth About the Tsar by Carol Joubert, the author of Russia as It
Really Is which included a large amount of information relating “to the
persecution of the Jews.
1907: A new building, which
resulted from the remodeling of two townhouses opened today for the use of
Congregation Orach Chaim.
1907: Fifty-five-year-old Joseph Simmons, the
husband of Annie Simmons, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery” in
London.
1908: In Manhattan, paleontologist Simon
Flexner, the Kentucky born son of European-Jewish immigrants and Helen Thomas
gave birth to award winning historian James Thomas Flexner. (As reported by
Douglas Martin)
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/nyregion/james-thomas-flexner-washington-biographer-95-dies.html
1908: The Times of London published the
obituary for Major General Sir Frederic John Goldsmid who passed away yesterday
without mentioning the fact that his family was Jewish.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Times/1908/Obituary/Major-General_Sir_Frederic_John_Goldsmid
1909: “Rights For Jews In Finland” published
today reported that a committee of the
Senate is considering two laws to improve the conditions of the Jews of
Finland but that a allowing for “full
equality for Hebrews is not contemplated.”
1910: Birthdate of Fay Gulack “a judge at the
World Gymnastics Championships at Moscow in 1958, a manager of the 1964 Women’s
Olympic Gymnastics Team and the wife of George Gulak who won a Gold Medal at
the 1932 Olympics.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/palmbeachpost/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=1548483
1911: The first issue of the Yiddishe Baker, a Yiddish weekly
appeared in New York City today.
1912: “The Psalms and Their Applications to
Life” a tableau presented “arranged and directed by Mrs. Amie Stern” was the
highlight of “the fourth regular meeting of the Chicago Association of Jewish
Women held” today “at Sinai Temple” in Chicago under the leadership of its
President, Mrs. Israel Cowen.
1912: Eduard Bernstein, a leading German social
democrat whose “Jewish parents, who were active in the Reform Temple on the
Johannistrasse where services were performed on Sunday” began serving as a
“Member of the Imperial Reichstag from Silesia.”
1912: Centenary celebration of the birth of Dr. Liebman Adler who
began his career in Germany as a public-school teacher and cantor at a local
synagogue before moving to Detroit, Michigan in 1854 where he served as rabbi
and cantor at Congregation Bethel. Adler was the father of famed architect
Dankmar Adler. The younger Adler’s
mother died in childbirth, so the father named him “Dank” (thanks), Mar
(bitter). Liebman Adler moved to Chicago
in 1861 when he was named rabbi of Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue. Dankmar would build a new synagogue before
his father passed away in 1891.
1913: It was reported today that Professor
Felix Weil of the City College was chose as the representative of the Alliance
Israelite Universellte to the Jews of Many Lands Exposition being held in
Cincinnati next week” and which “will include” a variety of artifacts
“depicting the lives of Jews in different countries.”
1914: “The Great Powers Courting Rumania”
published reported that Henry Green is planning on postponing the international
conference “on the Jewish Question” due to the unsettled situation in Europe; a
decision which he reached in part on “the advice of eminent European Jews such
as Dr. Max Nordeau.”
1915: Winston Churchill
presented plans for an assault on the Dardanelles. This plan would come to be known as the
ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign. If the
campaign had succeeded, Turkey would have been knocked out World War I. Russia would have been re-supplied meaning no
Russian Revolution. The stalemate on the
Western Front would have ended and World War I would have ended without the
United States joining the fray. But the
campaign failed which ironically had a positive effect on one small aspect of Jewish
history. Gallipoli consumed a great deal
of Allied manpower. In desperation, the
British were even willing to use an-all Jewish unit called the “Zion Mule
Corps.” The corps acquitted itself with
valor and honor, making it possible for the British to create an all-Jewish
combat unit that saw service under Allenby in the fight against the Turks in
Palestine.
1915: The London Chronicle “editorially” suggested today
“that America may eventually be called upon to exercise a sort of suzerainty
over Palestine.”
1915: Hyman G. Enelow, Louis Marshall, the Chairman of the
American Jewish Relief Committee and Meyer London, “the only Socialist elected
to Congress last November” are scheduled to address a mass meeting this evening
a Temple Emanu-El where “they will tell the consequences of the war upon
7,000,000 Jews of Europe and Palestine.
1915: Louis Marshall, the Chairman of the American Jewish
Relief Committee today “deplored what he termed the failure of the Jews of
America, particularly in New York, t realize the terrible calamity that has
overtaken the millions of Jews whose home are in the eastern theatre of the
European war.”
1916: Birthdate of Bella
Lewitzky, founder of the internationally acclaimed Bella Lewitzky Dance
Company. When she appeared before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, Lewitzky declined to testify saying, “I
am a dancer, not a singer.”
1916: The note that accompanied violinist Mischa Elman’s
check in the amount of $5,869.94 for the Jews of Europe which was published
today read “Inclosed please find check for the receipts from the benefit
concert which I had the pleasure of giving for the Jewish war sufferers. I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me
to able to donate this amount to this cause.”
1916: It was reported today that President Wilson’s
proclamation concerning a day set aside for raising funds for the Jews of
Europe included the announcement that “Contributions” for that purpose “may be
addressed to the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. which will take care of
their proper distribution.”
1917: Birthdate of New York native Morris R. “Moe” Becker
the All-American Duquesne University basketball star who played college ball
from 1939 through 1941 before turning with pro staring with the Philadelphia
Sphas and finishing with NBA teams including the Boston Celtics.
1917: An early step towards the founding of UFA, the German
film production company whose original owners included Hermann Frenkel, was
taken today with the creation of the Bild- und Filmamt (Bufa) by Germany's
Supreme Army Command.
1917: The Directors of the Montefiore Home gave a private
dinner this evening at Sherry’s in honor of banker Jacob H. Schiff who had just
turned seventy during which Samuel Sachs presented the guest of honor “with a
three-quarter length oil painting of himself” which “will hang in his home
until his death, after which it wll be hung in the Montefiore Home of which he
is the President.”
1917: “The midwinter dance of the junior workers of the New
York Guild for the Jewish Blind” is scheduled to “be held at the Plaza Hotel”
this evening.
1917: In Manhattan, The First Hungarian Congregation
Ohab`Zedak offered a special thanksgiving prayer composed by Rabbis Bernhard
Drachman and Philip Klein for the life and works of Jacob Schiff who had just
turned seventy at a service “conducted by Cantor Joseph Rosenblatt and the full
choir.”
1917: During services at Temple Israel in Harlem, Rabbi
M.H. Harris “paid tribute to” Jacob Schiff.
1917: Leonard Keysor who had been promoted to the rank of
Sergeant in the 42nd Battalion of the 1st Australian
Brigade while fighting in France in December was commissioned a 2nd
Lieutenant today which would lead to his promotion to 1st Lieutenant
in July of 1917.
1918: Final preparations were made by those participating
in the campaign of the Jewish Philanthropic Societies to raise four million
dollars or more for the year’s maintenance of Jewish welfare, relief and
sociologic activities” which is scheduled to start tomorrow under the
leadership of Felix M. Warburg.
1918(29th of Tevet, 5678): Forty-nine-year-old
Albert Aschaffenburg, “a prominent New Orleans Capitalist and Real Estate
Developer who had planned to build the Pontchartrain Hotel next door to the
Orpheum Theater, who was the husband of Elivine Schaefer Aschaffenburg and the
father of Eugene Albert Aschaffenburg passed away today, before he could begin
the construction project which was “resurrected by his son.
1918: “Three large halls were required” tonight “to hold
the outpouring of Jewish men and women who met to lay the foundation for the
Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies which enter upon
its campaign for 50,000 members.”
1919: Rebecca Henriques, the daughter of Sigismund Stiebel
and Eliza Jacob Mocatta and the wife of Frederick Henriques was buried today at
the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1920: Polish Russian Jews are fleeing at the approach of
Bolshevist bands of plunderers between Kiev and Woloczys according to adviced
received today by the State from Warsaw” which has led to 15,000 Jewish
refugees gathering “at Amerinka” living in “deplorable conditions.
1920: The ZOA announced today “that London and Copenhagen
had been selected as centers through which the mass migration of Jews to
Palestine will be directed.”
1921: The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee did not agree
with “an informal statement of policy of the United States toward Russia set
for forth in a letter read this afternoon at a meeting of the National Civic
Federation” saying that was possible to extend relief in Soviet Russia on the
conditions drawn up by the Soviet Authorities.”
1922: Today, Nahum Sokolow, President of the Executive
Committee of the World Zionist organization, who is visiting the United States
as the head of a European delegation of Zionist leaders, met with U.S.
President Warren G. Harding.
1923(25th of Tevet, 5683): Parashat Shemot
1923: As of today, there are reportedly 83, 794 Jews living
in Palestine.
1924: In Philadelphia, Sol and Rae Breslow gave birth to
Lillian Breslow who gained fame as Lillian B. Rubin, a sociologist and
psychotherapist who wrote a series of popular books about the crippling effects
of gender and class norms on human potential.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)
1924: Today, “The Domaine du Mont d'Arbois was established
as a private chalet for family and friends by Noémie de Rothschild, the wife of
Maurice de Rothschild…”
1925: Today, Ha’Koach, the Vienesse Jewish football
(soccer) team defeated a team of English players in Jerusalem by a score of 4
to 2.
1925(17th of Tevet, 5685): Russian born Benjamin
Lazarus, the husband of Sarah Kail Lazarus whom he married in 1875 and the
father of Isaac, Mac and Joseph Lazarus passed away today in Syracuse after
which he was buried at the Britton Road Cemetery in Greece, NY.
1926: Birthdate of
author and feminist Carolyn Gold Heilbrun.
1926: “Arthur M. Lamport was officially installed as
Chairman of the West Side for the United Palestine Appeal” today based “based
on the recommendation of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise who is leading the drive to
raise five million dollars “for the restoration of Palestine.”
1927: “In Germiston, a small town near Johannesburg,”
Morris Brenner, a cobbler from Lithuania and Leach (Blecher) Breener gave birth
biologist Sydney Brenner who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston. (As reported by Nicholas
Wade)
1928: “Sapiro Reviews Ford Suit” published described an
address given by attorney Aaron Sapiro entitled “Our Day In Court” during which
he reviewed the suit brought against Henry Ford and his Dearborn Independent
1929: Birthdate of Cleveland native Morris “Moe” Savransky
the southpaw who pitched for the Cincinnati Reds in 1954.
1929(2nd of Shevat, 5689): Sixty-two-year-old
medalist, painter and sculptor Emil Fuchs the Vienna born son of Leopold and
Josephine Fuchs who painted portraits of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII and
who settled permanently in the United States in 1915 after which he wrote his
biography With Pencil, Brush and Chisel: The Life of an Artist, passed
away today after having been diagnosed with cancer in 1928.
http://thomascool.eu/Painting/TC1851-EmilFuchs.html
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/emil-fuchs-1130
1929: Wyatt Earp, the Western legend, passed away. Earp was
not Jewish. But his wife was and she
conspired to have him buried in a Jewish cemetery. This gave rise to erroneous rumor that Earp
had converted before his death.
1930: Birthdate of Sidney Cole the jockey killed in 1961 “after being thrown from the saddle of a 2-year-old filly
and into a guard rail at Aqueduct.”
1931: It was
reported today that “the Jewish papers of Germany and the adjoining countries
have proclaimed tomorrow” to be “a Jewish festival” in honor of Felix M.
Warburg’s sixtieth birthday.
1931: “Allie Schukman scored eight points” and Max Posnack
scored another seven “as St. John’s beat L.I.U. for the fourth year in a row.”
(As reported by Wechsler)
1933: It was reported today that The Federation for the
Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies has closed its annual drive l with
the announcement by Paul Felix Warburg and Ira M. Younker, campaign
co-chairmen, that the budget of $3,923,000 appropriated for the maintenance of
ninety-one affiliated institutions, had been raised.
1934(26th of Tevet, 5695): Parashat Vaera
1934: The late Rabbi Martin A. Meyer of Temple Emanu-El,
whose fifty-fifth birthday would have occurred this month, is scheduled to be
honored from the pulpit of every congregation in Northern California this morning
1935: Germany regained control of a valuable resource as
the Saar rejoins the Reich following a plebiscite conducted by the League of
Nations which is a big win for the Nazis.
1935: “The eighty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the
late Jacob H. Schiff, banker and philanthropist, and the tenth anniversary of
the dedication of the Jacob H. Schiff Center is scheduled to be observed with
special services at the center” in the Bronx, this morning which will include
“introductory remarks by Rabbi Alexander Basel” followed by “an address by Dr.
Israel Goldstein, the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun.”
1936(18th of Tevet, 5696): Seventy-nine old
educator Sir Meyer Spielman, the son of Adam Spielmann and the brother of
Isador and Aarib Spielmann, the
president of the Keren Hayesod Committee and author of “The Romance of Child”
who was knighted in 1928 passed away today.
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw52577/Sir-Meyer-Adam-Spielman
1936: During today’s celebration of the first anniversary
of the Saar Plebiscite that led to Nazi Germany taking control of this valuable
territory, District Leader Joseph Buerckel responded to questions by foreign
correspondents by insisting “that all Jews in the Saar still enjoyed double
protection under the Rome agreement – namely a Jews and as status quo voters”
but also announced that this protection would end on March 1 when the Jews
would come under the Nuremberg laws…”
1936(18th of Tevet, 5696): Samuel Lionel "Roxy"
Rothafel passed away. Born in 1882 at Stillwater, Minnesota “was a showman of
the 1920s silent film era and the impresario for many of the great New York
movie palaces that he managed such as the Strand, Rialto, Rivoli, Capitol, and
his eponymous Roxy Theatre in New York City He also opened Radio City Music
Hall in 1932, which featured the precision dance troupe, the
"Roxyettes", later renamed the Rockettes.” Roxy also made a name for
himself on radio, where he began broadcasting in mid-November 1922, and
throughout the 1920s, his live broadcasts from the Capitol Theatre became
increasingly popular. One estimate from 1924 placed his typical radio audience
at about five million listeners, and he was said to receive thousands of pieces
of fan mail weekly. (His weekly variety show, "Roxy and His Gang,"
was later heard on the NBC Blue network, by that time broadcasting from the
Roxy Theatre. Rothafel has been credited with many movie presentation innovations,
including synchronizing orchestral music to movies (in the silent film era) and
having multiple projectors to effect seamless reel changes. The book The Best
Remaining Seats by Ben Hall (1961), gives a good overview of the movie palaces
of the 1920s and, specifically, of Roxy himself. Rothafel is buried in Linden
Hill Jewish Cemetery in Queens, New York.”
1936: It was announced today that the annual donor luncheon
of the Women’s League will be held at the Waldorf Astoria on January 15,
1936. Proceeds from the event will be
used to pay for the completion of a facility being built in Tel Aviv for female
refugees fleeing Hitler’s Germany.
1936: The Ministry of Public Instruction announced the
closing of the University of Vilna for the rest of the school term because of
“continued anti-Semitic demonstrations by Polish Nationalist students” who
began to riot after their demands that they be separated from the Jewish
students were not met.
1937: Speaking on behalf of the Arab High Committee,
Jerusalem lawyer Auni Bey Abdulhadi told the Peel Commission that “the Arabs
will not compromise” and “they will negotiate only with the British government,
not the Jews and they will never agree to cantonization.” (Editor’s Note –
Cantonization was the pre-war term for Partition, which is the key to the “two
state solution”.)
1937: Brooklyn Republican Assemblyman introduced “a bill to
shift the date of the primary election this year from September 14, which “is
the eve of the Jewish Day of Atonement” to September 16.
1937: “Joseph C. Hyman, executive director of the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee announced” today “that late in 1936” the
committee made “a $1,000 contribution for school and cultural work among the
Falasha Jews of Ethiopia” which “has been acknowledge by Professor Taamarat
Emanuel, the director of the Jewish School in Addis Ababa.
1937: “Crooked Cross” Sally Carson’s play about “a Bavarian
girl’s love for a Jewish doctor in the early days of the Nazi revolution”
opened tonight at the Westminster Theatre in London.
1938: The Palestine
Post reported on the opening of the Rockefeller archeological museum in
Jerusalem, founded by John Rockefeller and named in his honor. The museum's
permanent exhibition revealed the history of mankind as recorded in local
archeological finds. No festive opening ceremony took place, due to the tragic
murder of archeologist John Starkey.
1938: The Palestine
Post reported that Jewish buses were shot at in Haifa and there were
various shooting incidents in Jerusalem.
1938: “The fifth anniversary of Hitler’s ascension to power
in Germany was made the occasion of anti-Nazi meeting” tonight “in the
Manhattan Opera House” which was sponsored by the Joint Boycott Council of the
American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee and where “the
principal speaker, William E. Dodd, the former United States Ambassador to
Germany said the situation for the Jews in Germany was worse than at any time
in the last hundred years.”
1938: An article in The
Palestine Post quoted extensively from the London's Financial Times, which reviewed the hopeless position of
over five million Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, denied the means of
existence or possible emigration. The report concluded that "it seemed too
much to hope in the present state of the world that a political and economic
effort will be made to stop this tragedy."
1938(11th of Shevat, 5698): Albert Ottinger, the former New
York State Attorney General who was the Republican candidate for governor
defeated by FDR in 1928 passed away today at the age of 59. He used his
governmental positions to fight corruption and prosecuted those responsible for
perpetrating frauds in the financial services industry. He was responsible for
the introduction of voting machines.
Ottinger was also active in Jewish communal affairs. [Many younger readers
may be surprised to find out that the Republican Party in New York had a
history of using government to protect the citizens from abuses by rapacious
and/or crooked “capitalists.]
1939: “Negotiations regarding the evacuation of Jews from
Germany were resumed today when Geroge Rublee, chairman of the
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees and his aides conferred for one hour
with Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank” in Berlin. (Editor’s note - this has to qualify as one
of the most farcical meeting in an era marked by meetings that were pure
farce.)
1939(22nd of Tevet, 5699): Seventy-four-year-old
Rabbi Isaac Alpert, the father of Sarah Alpert and father-in-law of Nathan
Kolko passed away today in Rochester, NY.
1940(3rd of Shevat, 5700): Parashat Bo
1940: In his sermon today at the Spanish and Portuguese
Synagogue Rabbi David de Sola Pool said, “However much of evil and disaster the
passing generation has bequeathed to the world, religion has an unshakable
faith in the power of youthful idealism to refashion human society for the
better. “
1940: In his sermon today at the Mount Nebo Congregation,
Rabbi Samuel Segal “declared that to go forward is not a command for an attack
on life but rather an order for the civilization to advance.”
1941: James Joyce passed away. His most famous novel, Ulysses,
featured a Jewish protagonist, Leopold Bloom.
1941: Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed Philip M.
Kleinfeld to the New York Supreme Court.
1942: The deportation of 10,000
Jews from Lodz began at the rate of 700 a day. They are all sent to Chelmno to
be gassed. Nine transports of about 90 people each were buried in Chelmno. Five
of the nine men unloading the corpses were shot when the day was done.
1943: The German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop,
warned Italians that they would permit Jews to live in areas under German rule
until March 31. After that time, "the Government won't be able to make any
exceptions." In other words,
Italian Jews would now become candidates for the Final Solution.
1943: Following Hitler’s reversal
of the verdict of her first trial, Mildred
Fish-Harnack, the Milwaukee born daughter of William Cooke Fish and the wife
“German Rockefeller scholar Arid Harnack” who were part of the “Red Orchestra”
went on trial today for a second time after having been arrested by the
Gestapo.
1943: Fifteen hundred Jews are
deported from Radom, Poland, to Treblinka.
1943: Birthdate of Brooklyn
native and Brandeis alum Eli Jay Segal the businessman and political activist
who worked in campaigns from McGovern to Clinton and who married his
“college-sweetheart” Phyllis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/us/eli-j-segal-63-clinton-aide-who-led-major-initiatives-dies.html
1944: Two United States
Treasury Department officials--Josiah DuBois and Randolph Paul--threaten to
resign and make public the report on their investigation into the State
Department's scandalous activities in regard to the Jews. The report is originally
entitled "Report to the Secretary [of the Treasury] on the Acquiescence of
This Government in the Murder of the Jews." The report indicts officials
of the State Department for their "willful attempts to prevent action from
being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler." "They have not only failed
to use the governmental machinery at their disposal to rescue Jews from Hitler
but have even gone so far as to use this governmental machinery to prevent
rescue of the Jews.
1944: “The Sosnowiec labor camp, which had been established
on the site of the Srodula ghetto was liquidated today and its prisoners sent
to Auschwitz.”
1945(28th of Tevet, 5705): Parashat Vaera
1945: Today “The State Prosecutor demanded today that the
Egyptian military court hand down the death penalty for the two young
Palestinian Jews being tried for the political assassination of Lord Moyne,
British Resident Minister in the Middle East.”
1946: Two days after he had passed away funeral services
are scheduled to be held today for songwriter and published Harry Von Tilzer
http://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/harry-von-tilzer
1947: Tonight, economist Robert R. Nathan “told a
conference of the United Palestine Appeal” that “the best solution of to the
Palestine problem is a joint Anglo-American trusteeship” which if properly
administered “could permit the absorption of 600,000 to 1,000,000 Jewish
immigrants in the next ten years.”
1948 (2nd of Shevat, 5708): Solomon Mikhoels was killed by
the secret police under Stalin's orders, as part of a campaign to eradicate
Jewish intellectualism and culture. Born
in 1890, Mikhoels was a leading Russian and Yiddish actor famed for his roles
as Tevye and King Lear. During the war he had tried to win support for the
Russian war effort by touring England and the United States.
1948: In attempt to secure the road to Mt. Scopus, site of
Hadassah Hospital, the Haganah launched an attack on Sheikh Jarrah. Having dislodged the Arab gunmen from the
area, the Jews were forced to hand it over to the British who promised not to
permit armed Arabs into the area. Within
forty eight hours, the British gave it back to the Arabs.
1948: Twenty-four hours after several members of the “Pan
York” escaped from their British captivity on Cyprus arrived aboard a fishing
boat at Caesarea.
1949: Birthdate of television executive, Brandon
Tartikoff.
http://www.biography.com/people/brandon-tartikoff-9542058
1949: Following the War for Independence, several of the
former members of the human blockade runner “Pan York” including Avi Livney
settled at Sasa, a village “situated at a strategic crossroad between the
Western and Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border.”
1949: Boris Abramovich Shimelivoich the Russian poet and
revolutionary who was part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was arrested
during one of Stalin’s purges which would lead to his execution in 1952.
1950(25th of Tevet, 5710): Parashat Shemot
1950(25th of Tevet, 5710): Seventy-one-year-old
Rabbi David Alexander, the graduate of the University of Cincinnati and HUC and
the husband of the former Irene Schwab with whom he raised two children – Ruth
and James – passed away today in Akron Ohio.
1950: Los Angeles premiere of “Samson and Deliah” with a
script co-authored by Jesse Lasky, Jr. based on a work by Vladimir Jabotinsky
starring Hedy Lamar as the Biblical temptress.
1950: “Whirlpool” the film version of Guy Endore’s Methinks
the Lady, directed and produced by Otto Preminger, with music by David
Raskin and with a screenplay co-written by Ben Hecht whose name was removed
from the version shown in Great Britain due to his militant Zionism, was
released today in the United States.
1951: Birthdate of Jerusalem native Avishai Dekel, a
professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, holding the
Andre Aisenstadt Chair of Theoretical Physics” whose primary research interests
are in astrophysics and cosmology.
1953: An article published today in Pravda touched off a wave of virulent anti-Semitism throughout
Russia.
1953: As the “Doctors Plot” campaign which accused Jewish
medical professionals of planning to kill Stalin and other officials, as well
as being “agents” of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an
international social welfare agency” began Pravda published “Dastardly Spies
and Assassins in the Guise of Professors and Doctors.”
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the
losses due to drought in the Negev topped $3 million. The heavy rain came too
late, and not a drop fell in the Migdal-Ashkelon-Safieh region, where the loss
was over IL 10m.
1954: In Johannesburg,
Joy and Godfrey Rabinowitz gave birth to Trevor Rabinowitz, the South African
native best known as a writer and guitarist for the band “Yes” who changed his
name from Rabinowitz to Rabin and was raised in a Reform household. He grew up
observing Shabbat and singing in his synagogue choir, and despite the name
change, he has never really left Judaism. In 2004, he told the San Diego Jewish
journal that it helps to be a Jew in the world of rock and roll, because so
many other musicians are also
1955: “Rambam Year,”
“which marks the 750th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Moshe Ben
Maimon, the medieval Jewish philosopher and scientist also known as Maimonides
will be opened” today in Jerusalem at the Rabbi Kook Institute. (JTA)
1956:
Eighty-four-year-old “caricaturist, comic strip artists” and “expressionist
painter” Lyonel Charles Feininger who left Germany after the Nazis came to
power because his work was declared “degenerate” and because his wife was
Jewish under their racial laws passed away today.
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1958(21st of Tevet,
5718): Seventy-seven-year-old motion picture pioneer Jesse L. Laskey, the
co-founder of Paramount Pictures, the father of three children including
screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky Jr. and the brother-in-law of fellow movie mogul
Samuel Goldwyn, passed away today.
http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Kr-Lo/Lasky-Jesse-L.html
1958: Shlomo-Yisrael
Ben-Meir began serving Deputy Minister of Welfare.
1960: “The Story on
Page One,” written and directed by Clifford Odets with music by Elmer Bernstein
and featuring Sanford Meisner as “Phil Stanley,” was released in New York City
today.
1961: William
Louis-Dreyfus and Julia Bowles gave birth to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the actress
who played Elaine on the television hit “Seinfeld.”
1961(25th of
Tevet, 5721): Sixty-two-year-old “foreign securities broker” Carl Marks “the
founder of Carl Marks & Co and husband of Edith Marks with whom he had two
children and generous donor to several charities including the Federation of
Jewish Philanthropies passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/01/14/97649655.pdf
1962: After 400
performances, the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of Jule
Styne’s musical “Do Re Mi” starring Phil Silvers and featuring Al Lewis.
1965(10th of
Shevat, 5725): Arthur “Art” Gottlieb the Rutgers University quarterback who
threw the touchdown pass in a game against in-state rival Princeton which gave
the Scarlet Knights their first victory over the Tigers since they had met for
the first time in 1869 in what was the first “modern” intercollegiate football
game.
1965: In Philadelphia,
PA, “small businessman” Robert Rosenstein and his wife Gerri who worked as “a
bookkeeper and school board gave birth to Rod Jay Rosenstein, the Harvard Law
School graduate who in April of 2017 “was the nation’s longest-serving U.S.
Attorney” at which time he became the 37th United States Deputy
Attorney General serving under Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President
Donald Trump.
1966: In Tel Aviv,
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and his wife gave birth to Rabbi David Baruch Lau.
1966: Abba Eban became
the third Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel.
1967: In Moscow,
Alexander and Yelena Gessen gave birth Maria Alexandrovna Gessen who gained
fame as award winning journalist and LGBT activist Masha Gessen,
1968: At the Martin
Beck Theatre after 293 performances and 22 previews the curtain came down on
the original Broadway production of “Hallelujah, Baby!, a musical with music by
Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and a book by Arthur Laurents
1969: Samuel H.
Shapiro, who was the second Jewish governor of the State of Illinois completed
his term of office today, having gained the job when his predecessor resigned
to take a federal judgeship and he moved up from being Lt. Gov.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-03-17-8701210345-story.html
1971: “Lupo.!”, a
comedy with a script by Ken Globus and Menahem Golan who also served as
director and co-producer was released today in Israel.
1972(26th of
Tevet, 5732): Seventy-four-year-old Chicago native and University of Chicago
trained attorney Edwin Louis Weisl, a company commander United States Navy,
World War I and husband of “the former Alice Todriff” who “was one President
Johnson’s closest friends and a Democratic National committeeman” from
California passed away today.
https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/14/archives/edwin-l-weisl-sr-key-democrat-dies.html
1972: After having
premiered in New York City in December of 1971, Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork
Orange” was released today in the United Kingdom.
1972: “The Cowboys”
directed and produced by Mark Rydell with a screenplay co-authored by Irving
Ravetch was released today in the United States by Warner Bros. (Editor’s
Note: Based on decades of experience, in
my humble opinion, this is one of the best western movies ever made – a must
see film.)
1974(19th of Tevet,
5734): Sholom Secunda passed away. Born in 1894 at Oleksandriia, he “was a
Jewish composer, born in Ukraine and educated in the United States. He wrote
the melody for the popular song "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1932.
Together with Aaron Zeitlin he wrote the famous Yiddish song "Dos kelbl
(The Calf)" (also known as "Donna Donna") which was covered by
many musicians, including Donovan and Joan Baez. Along with Abraham Ellstein,
Joseph Rumshinsky, and Alexander Olshanetsky, he was one of the "big
four" composers of his era in New York City's Second Avenue Yiddish
theatre scene.
1974: A Gallup poll on religious worship showed that fewer
Protestants and Roman Catholics were attending weekly services than ten years
earlier, but that attendance at Jewish worship services had increased over the
same period.
1975(1st of
Shevat, 5735): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1975(1st of
Shevat, 5735): Seventy-four-year-old Alexander Falk, “a former State Senator
and president of the State Civil Service Commission” passed away today.
1978: The Jerusalem Post published an
exclusive interview with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who agreed that Israel
needed security, but could not keep Arab land. Sadat proposed mutual security
measures for the West Bank and Sinai. He promised to build a "triple
shrine" a mosque, a synagogue and a church at the top of Jebel Musa,
Mount Sinai, where according to tradition Moses received the Ten Commandments.
1978: Former Vice
President Hubert H. Humphrey passed away in Waverly, Minnesota, at age 66. As mayor of Minneapolis and Senator from
Minnesota was champion of the underdog and fighter for civil rights. These policies made him popular with Jewish
voters. During the 1950’s visitors to
Humphrey’s office in the Senate Office Building were greeted by the sight of a
prominently displayed JNF Tree Certificate.
1979(14th of
Tevet, 5739): Parashat Vayechi
1974(14th of
Tevet, 5739): One person died and five more were injured when Palestinian
terrorists tried and failed to seize a hotel in Maalot.
1980: "King of Schnorrers" closes at
the Playhouse Theater in New York City after 63 performances. “King of Schnorrers” was a musical based on
work of the same name by Israel Zangwill.
1981: In response to
Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir’s request the Knesset voted to remove the
“parliamentary immunity” of Aharon Abuhatzira “so that he could be charged with
bribery.”
1981: Yigal Hurvitz,
who had been serving as the Minister of Finance, left the cabinet.
1982(18th of Tevet,
5742): Sixty-seven L.I.U basketball great Jules “Julie” Bender passed away
today in Boca Raton, FL
http://seymourbrody.com/generals/gen-adm70.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/15/obituaries/julie-bender-is-dead-basketball-star-in-30-s.html
1982(18th of
Tevet, 5742): Just weeks before his 60th birthday, Harold William
Chase, the Worcester born son of Louis Chase and Bessie Lubin and husband of
Bernice Chase with whom he had two son -- Bryce and Eric – who was the
Princeton trained political science and decorated Marine Corps veteran who rose
to the rank of Major General passed away today.
1984(9th of Shevat,
5744): Seventy-five-year-old Alfred Gilman, “founding chairman of the
department of pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of
Yeshiva University, in the Bronx” passed away today.
1989: “Gleaming the
Cube” a murder mystery written by Michael Tolkin was released today in the
United States.
1989: “Unsettled Land”
an Israeli drama directed by Uri Barbash was released in the United States
today.
1993(20th of
Tevet, 5753): Seventy-three University of Chicago trained archeologist and art
historian Helene J. Kantor, the daughter of Dr. Jacob Robert Kantor, who worked
at Choga Mish with Israeli archaeologist Pierre Pinchas Deloguaz passed away
today.
1994(1st of
Shevat, 5754): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1994(1st of
Shevat, 5764: Eighty-year-old “art collector, dealer and philanthropist” “the
widow of Lester Avnet, founder of Avnet, Inc., a major distributor of
electronic components” who along with her husband assembled a collection of
over 900 works,” 180 of which they donated to MOMA passed away today.
1994: Edward P.
Djerejian, a Clinton appointee, presented his credentials as U.S. Ambassador to
Israel.
1995(12th of
Shevat, 5755): Sixty-five-year-old Edith Silverblatt Mendelsohn, the daughter
of Manchester England born merchant Jacob Silverblatt and the wife of Morris
Aaron Mendelsohn who she married in 1950 passed away today after which she was
buried in the Beth Shalom Cemetery in Shaler Township, PA.
1998: Daniel Charles
Kurtzer presented his credentials as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. (Yes an American
Jew represented the United States in Cairo.
Jewish diplomats representing the United States in Moslem countries is
nothing new. It dates back to the days of the Ottoman Empire.]
1999(25th of Tevet,
5759): Terrorists killed an Israeli soldier near Hebrwon
2000: Steve Balmer “was
officially named CEO of Microsoft” today.
2001(18th of
Tevet, 5761): Parashat Vayechi
2001: “Early this
morning, the Palestinian official, Yasir Abed Rabbo, took back his call for Mr.
Barak's indictment after the Israelis promised that they did not have an
assassination hit list of 500 Palestinians.”
2002(29th of Tevet,
5762): Canadian born comedian Frank
Shuster, who gained fame as part of the comedy duo of Wayne and Shuster passed
away.
2002: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish author and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Public
Intellectuals: A Study of Decline by Richard A. Posner, Henry Ford
and the Jews: The Mass Production of
Hate by Neil Baldwin, two books of Al Hirschfield’s drawings - Hirschfeld's New
York and 'Hirschfeld's Hollywood and Be My Knife by
David Grossman “an Israeli, widely known not just for his four previous novels
but for two seminal books about the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian
territories and for his -- as the Israelis say -- dovish'' articles and
editorials in major newspapers around the world. With the exception of his
first novel, however, the horrific political life of Israel -- the real world
of intifada and reprisal -- plays virtually no role in the universe of
Grossman's fiction.”
2003(10th of
Shevat, 5763): Fifty-eight-year-old Rabbi Steven Dworken, executive vice
president of the Rabbinical Council of America, a professional body serving
over 1,100 Orthodox rabbis, died suddenly at his home in Teaneck, N.J., of a
heart attack
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/19157/orthodox-rabbinical-leader-steven-dworken-dies-at-58/
2004: “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon raised the
possibility today that the Israeli military could one day withdraw from the
Gaza Strip…’
2005: “At least three Palestinians detonated a truck bomb and
then attacked Israelis late tonight at a busy crossing point in the Gaza Strip,
in an attack coordinated with other militants who fired mortars and automatic
weapons at Israeli soldiers,
2006: Jeffrey Pollack
was appointed Commissioner of the World Series of Poker.
2006: After
premiering at Los Angeles in 2005, “Hoodwinked” a computer animated comedy film
produced by Maurice Kanbar was released in the United States today.
2006: An exhibit of works by
ceramicist Daisy Brand sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for
Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Northern Clay Center opened today.
https://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/13/2006/daisy-brand
2007: Mathew Freud, the
great-grandson of Sigmund Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch gave birth to their
second child Samson Murdoch Freud.
2007: Senior
archaeologists have come out in harsh criticism against the Israel Antiquities
Authority (IAA) for authorizing plans for a bridge to connect the Dung Gate in
Jerusalem's Old City to the Mugrabi Gate, located next to the Western Wall and
leading to the Temple Mount.
2008: The Sunday New York Times book section
featured a review of Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky who grew up in a
small eastern Kansas town, where she and her brothers were the only Jewish kids
in school and is best known as the creator of the fictional female detective V.
I. Warshawski, Vienna Blood by Dr. Frank Tallis in which the author
returns to his previous literary landscape - fin de siècle Vienna complete with Sigmund Freud and
Austrian anti- Semitism and Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons by
Jacob Heilbrunn. As can be seen from one typical review, the book emphasizes
the Jewish nature of the Neo-Con movement. “The story of the neocons is a saga
of immigrant assimilation, whose seeds lie in the Jewish intellectual circles
of the 1930s, when communists loyal to Stalin clashed with Trotskyites over
communist theory and its applications in the real world. In tracing the
evolution of neo-conservatism (including a look at the influence of the
mysterious Leo Strauss), Heilbrunn shows how generations of Jews moved from the
margins of political and intellectual life to replace the old WASP elite and
now play a central role in determining U.S. policy in the Middle East.”
2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky and a biography about Mstislav Rostropovich the
renowned Baku born Jewish musician entitled Rostropovich: The Musical
Life of the Great Cellist, Teacher, and Legend by Elizabeth
Wilson
2008: An exhibition at
the Corcoran Gallery of Art, "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life,
1990-2005 " comes to a close
in Washington, D.C.
2008: The UK's Mail on Sunday issued a free
2008:”New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch De Spinoza at Talmud
Torah Congregation: Amsterdam
2008: Leonard Cohen announced today that he would make his first
concert tour in 15 years starting in May of 2008 at New Brunswick.
2008: “They Called Me Mayer July”, the first
major exhibition of Mayer Kirshenblatt’s work in the United States has its
final showing at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkley, California.
2009: The 92nd St Y presents an
evening with newly minted Nobel Laureate, economist and New York Times columnist
Paul Krugman.
2009: The Governor of
New York nominated Jonathan Lippman to serve as the Chief Judge of the New York
Court of Appeals.
2009: U.S. Senator Bill
Nelson revealed during Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing that he believes
Robert Levinson is being held in a secret prison in Iran. "The door has
been closed at every turn", Nelson said during Clinton's confirmation
hearing. "We think he is being held by the government of Iran in a secret
prison. (Levinson is the only Jew in this item)
2009: Hadassah began
instituting a massive reduction in force today when it laid off 80 employees
across the country, roughly a quarter of its national staff. The cuts are
coming at all levels of the organization. Hadassah recently announced that it
had in total $40 million invested in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scam, as well as
another $50 million the organization thought it had made in the scam. It was a
significant hit to its endowment, which now stands at $412 million.
2010: Miriam Levinson, an expert on Jewish
Cuban History is scheduled to present a lecture entitled “The Jews of Cuba: The
Road to Paradise and the Land We Called Home” at the JCC of Northern Virginia.
2010: The 19th annual New York
Jewish Film Festival opens with a showing of “Saviors in the Night.”
2010: In “For Some, ‘Kosher; Equals Pure,” published
today Kim Severson reported that “this year, for the first time, glatt kosher
food will be sold at the Super Bowl.” She then explained why “kosher” has
become so popular among the food-eating public...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/dining/13kosh.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2010: The 10th annual Atlanta
Jewish Film Festival opens with a showing of “Berlin ’36.” “
2010: Israel’s deputy foreign minister issued
a formal apology to the Turkish ambassador today after ostentatiously
humiliating him earlier in the week and aggravating strains in a complex and
increasingly troubled relationship between Israel and Turkey, its closest
Muslim ally.
2010: According to a report
made public today, the past three years have seen a huge jump in the number and
variety of courses about Israel taught in America's top universities.
2010: According to a
report entitled "Searching for the Study of Israel" that was released
today, "the past three years have seen a huge jump in the number and
variety of courses about Israel taught in America's top universities."
2011: “Sholem Aleichem:
Laughing in the Darkness” is scheduled to have its world premiere at the New
York Jewish Film Festival.
2011: “Other Desert
Cities” by Jon Robin Baitx “opened off-Broadway at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
Theatre with a cast that included Linda Lavin
2011: “The Klezmatics:
On Holy Ground” is scheduled to have its New York premier at the New York
Jewish Film Festival.
2011: Andrea Meislin
Gallery is scheduled to host a reception in honor Naomi Leshem to mark the
opening of Between Zones, an exhibition of the work of this acclaimed Israeli
photographer.
2011: A group of
national religious youth, known as “Ra'ananim” [waking up], plans to launch a
campaign today against buying fruits, especially figs, from Turkey for the
upcoming Tu B'Shvat holiday\
2011: In an
unprecedented step, some twenty senior Israeli ambassadors sent a letter to
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, asking him to intervene in the Foreign
Ministry workers' strike "in order to save Israel's foreign service."
2012: “The Klezmatics:
On Holy Ground” – a documentary about one of the premier klezmer music groups –
is scheduled to be shown at The Boston Jewish Film Festival.
2012: Avram Grant was named the new manager of
Partizan Belgrade
2012: “The Last Jews of
Libya” is scheduled to be shown at Temple Sinai in Springfield, MA
2012: Israel's
Counter-Terrorism Bureau warned Israeli citizens today to stay away from
Thailand's capital, following the arrest of a Hezbollah militant suspected of
planning a terrorist attack in the city.
2013: Gary Gilson is
scheduled to perform “You Don’t Have To Be Jewish…But It Couldn’t Hurt” at the
Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival
2013: Jonathan-Simon
Sellem gave a speech at the National Convention of the CRIF on “from
anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism.
2013: “Israel’s
Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar has announced that Prof. Chava Turniansky from
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will receive the 2013 Israel Prize. Prof.
Turniansky, the Spitz Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies (Yiddish) in the
university’s Department of Yiddish, will receive the award for her work on the
Jewish language and literature.”
2013: The New York
Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “An Evening with the Safdie
Brothers” featuring an in-person appearance by directors Josh and Benny Safdei.
2013: The New York Times featured reviews of
books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Zoo
Time by Howard Jacobson, The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
and She Matters: A Life in Friendships by Susanna Sonnenberg.
2013: The Jewish
Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to co-sponsor the
presentation of “Life in Stills” and “Hava Nagila” as part of the Washington
Film Festival
2013: Israeli forces
evacuated a Palestinian outpost built on a controversial strip of land in the
West Bank early this morning, less than a day after the High Court stayed the
demolition of the small tent village.
2013: Cabinet ministers
voted in favor of approving an upgrade in status for the Jerusalem-based Shalem
Center, making it a recognized institute of higher education, and allowing it
to open a program that has been widely touted as Israel’s “first liberal arts
college.”
2014: Following “a
formal mourning ceremony” which is scheduled to be held at the Knesset and
attended by national leaders, Ariel Sharon is scheduled to be laid to rest at
Shikmim Farm in the Negev next to his second wife Lily. (As reported by Times
of Israel)
2014: “The Man with the
Golden Arm” and “Bethlehem” are scheduled to be shown at the New York Jewish
Film Festival
2014: Professor Joel
Dimsdale is scheduled to deliver a lecture “Anatomy of Malice: Rorschach
Records of the Nuremberg War Criminals” at the Lawrence Family JCC.
2014: Just after the
funeral services for Ariel Sharon were completed Palestinians fired rockets
from Gaza into the area near Sycamore Ranch where the service had taken place.
A third rocket blew up on its launcher. (As reported by Yaakov Lappin)
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/two-mortars-hit-during-sharons-funeral/2014/01/13/
2014: Top Israeli
tennis player Dudi Sela was eliminated from the Australian Open by Finland’s
Jarkko Nieminen today.
2014: The Cedar Rapids
Gazette “Homer” feature highlighting things that have gone right in the last
week includes WE’RE WITH YOU: University of Iowa President Sally Mason is among
academic leaders who oppose the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, of
which the American Studies Association is part. Cheers to Mason. This is a
misguided initiative that suppresses academic freedom and the exchange of
information and ideas. - See more at: http://thegazette.com/2014/01/13/homers-whats-going-right-215/#sthash.nEmiRreq.dpuf
2015: Per the request of their families, “the victims of
the terrorist attack at the Kosher supermarket in Paris -- Yoav Hattab, 22;
Yohan Cohen, 22; Philippe Braham, 45; and François-Michel Saada, 55 --- were
buried in Israel today.
2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust
Education is scheduled to host a lunch to mark the upcoming opening of the
exhibition “Anne Frank: A History for Today.”
2015: In an example of “picture is worth a thousand words”
“Newspaper in Israel Scrubs Women From a Photo of Paris Unity Rally” published
today graphically illustrated how “the ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspaper
HaMevaser removed the images of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other
female leaders” who were part of the march against terrorism in the French
capital.
2015: “Senators Dean Heller (R-NV) and Ted Cruz (R-TX)
ushered in the new Congressional session by proposing legislation today to
force the Obama administration to change longstanding US policy and move the US
embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”
2015: Stephanie Pollack was appointed Secretary of
Transportation for the State of Massachusetts today.
2016: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to
present a preview matinee of “The Merchant of Venice.”
2016(3rd of Shevat, 5776): Ninety-year-old 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” passed away today.
2016: The New York Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to
begin today.
2017(15th of Tevet, 5777): Just a week after his
92nd birthday veteran journalist and Jerusalem Post editor Ari Rath
passed away today
http://www.timesofisrael.com/former-jerusalem-post-editor-ari-rath-dies-at-92/
2017: Should Jews take notice of the fact that today is
Friday the 13th or should they ignore it because it is Friday, the
15th of Tevet?
http://joshuahammerman.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-friday-13th-is-lucky-day-for-jews.html
http://www.jewishtreats.org/2009/03/unlucky-13.html
http://blog.eteacherhebrew.com/jewish-religion/significance-of-13-in-judaism/
2017: An episode of “The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” entitled
“Will Scarsdale Like Josh’s Shayna Punim?” in which “Rebecca Bunch (show
creator and star Rachel Bloom) has to go to Westchester for a family Bar
Mitzvah” which also includes the reappearance of Tovah Feldshuh as “Rebecca’s
mother” is scheduled to be broadcast tonight.
2017(15th of
Tevet, 5777): Today,105-year-old Hilde Metzger Prins, the daughter of Louis and
Clara Metger who moved to Palestine in 1933 to escape the Nazis at the same
time she sought refuge in Amsterdam after which she moved to New York and
married Benajamin Prins in 1940 with whom she moved to Washington 1948 where
she raised their daughter Judith, the wife of Larry Lorber passed away
2017: In the United
Kingdom, the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Friday
Night Dinner featuring “Joanne’s chicken soup.”
2017: “The Anti-Defamation League called on the Huffington
Post’s Arabic-language edition to remove a blog post claiming a Jewish woman
poisoned the Prophet Muhammad with arsenic.”
2018(26th of Tevet, 5778): Parashat Va-ayrah;
2018: The Preservation Virginia and Roanoke Valley
Preservation Foundation is scheduled to host a free screening of “Rosenwald.”
2018: In Tinton Falls, NJ, the Monmouth Reform Temple is
scheduled to host two screenings of “Rosenwald.
2019: Seventy-nine year old Yom Kippur War veteran Motti
Ashkenazi, “ whose 1973 post-war public campaign is thought to have been
instrumental in bring down the government at that time” announced today that he
was going to be one of the leaders of the Social Justice party which will be
taking part in the upcoming election campaign.
2019: “Israel’s Air Force attacked an Iranian arms
warehouse at Syria’s international airport in Damascus over the weekend,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed” today at the start of the
weekly cabinet meeting.
2019: The New York
Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special
interest to Jewish readers including Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic
Adaptation adapted by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, A
Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by
Elizabeth Wein and the recently released paperback edition of King Zeno
by Nathaniel Rich.
2019: As part of the “Bearing Witness” series Bebe Forehand
who “like Anne Frank was hidden away from the Nazis in an attic” is scheduled
to speak at the Breman Museum in Atlanta.
2019: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present
a concert featuring the “Flute Musice of New York Jewish Composers” introduced
by Professor Tina Frühauf
2019: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “The
Interpreter” that tells the tale of “80-year-old Ali, a Slovakian-Jewish
interpreter, who arrives in Vienna with the intention of tracking down – and
killing – the SS officer who shot his parents.”
2019: The exhibition “Stories of Survival” “that showcases
more than 60 never-before-seen personal items brought to America by Survivors
of the Holocaust and genocide” is scheduled to come to a close today at the
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
2020: San Francisco based Jewish LearningWorks is scheduled
to host ““Elevate: Inspiring New Paths In Jewish Education” a “summit devoted
to elevating Jewish education, with leaders and innovators from across the
country.”
2020: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to host
the 1st Sephardi Voice Town Hall where attendees will have a chance
to “share their ideas and show their solidarity for an inclusive, united Jewish
future.”
2021: In Columbus, OH, Tifireth Israel is scheduled to host
The Rabbi’s Study Circle which will include examining “essays on the weekly
parasha” as well as a lunch and learn on “Holy Hypocrisy: The case for
Religious Inconsistency with Rabbi Rami Schwartzer.”
2021: As part of its “New Works Wednesdays” program which
is an exploration of new works of fiction the American Sephardi Federation is
scheduled to present Edith Scott Saavedra as she discusses her new work, The
Lamps of Albarracin.
2021: “The Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center are
scheduled to present the 2021 New York Jewish Film Festival virtually starting
today.
2021: In Palm Beach Gardens, FL, Temple Judea is scheduled
host via Zoom “a Noon Lunch & Learn with Rabbi Yaron Kapitulnik: who will
present “The best of the Apocrypha – A glimpse into the books that did not make
the Bible’s final cut.”
2021: The Illinois Holocaust Museum is scheduled to host
“Second Generation Speaker Helen Hoffenberg as she “describe how her parents
were reunited after being sent to different camps.”
2021: “Israel's world-leading COVID-19 inoculation drive will expand to include
citizens aged 50 and over starting today after a large shipment of Pfizer's
coronavirus vaccine arrived in the country, the Health Ministry announced
yesterday.” (As reported by Adir Yanko and Sivan Hillaie)
2022: The Lappin Foundation is
scheduled to present online “The Holocaust: A Maritime History” during which
Gregg Philipson will examine the people, organizations, ships and events that
shaped the Holocaust from a maritime perspective.
2022: The New York Jewish Film
Festival is scheduled to host screenings o “The Lost Film of Nuremberg” and
“Kaddish.”
2022: The Illinois Holocaust
Museum is scheduled to host a screening of ” Passage to Sweden, a documentary produced and directed by Suzannah
Warlick, that tells a compelling story about European Jews who escaped to
freedom and safety in Sweden and events that occurred in Scandinavia and
Budapest during World War II.”
2022: Based on previously
published reports, as of today “nearly a quarter of a million Israelis have
been infected with COVID since the start of January, 2022. (As reported by
Yaron Druckman and Adir Yanko)
2022: The Miami Jewish Film
Festival is scheduled to open today.
2022: The East Bay Jewish film
festival scheduled to a screening of “The Invisibles” along with a talk by
historian Rosenbaum who looks at the Jews of Berlin before WWII and today and
puts into context a 2017 German war drama about four young Jewish Berliners who
try to remain “invisible” during the war.
2023: Temple Emanu-El of
Haverhill is scheduled to hold its annual Shabbat service honoring the late
Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. in person and online.
2023: In San Francisco,
Congregation Emanu-El and Third Baptist Church are scheduled to present the 36th
annual “ MLK Pulpit Exchange Shabbat Service.
2023: “Chess Story,” a film
adapted from Stefan Zweig’s bestseller that tells the story of a lawyer
imprisoned by the that Nazis who finds refuge in the world of chess to
withstand the Gestapo’s psychological torture is scheduled to open theatrically
at NYC’s Quad Cinema.
2023: Temple of Israel is
scheduled to host onsite and online Shabbat Tzedek, a Sabbath of Justice, open
to people of all faiths to celebrate the values of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. with honored guest Tanisha M. Sullivan, President of the Boston branch of
the NAACP.
2023: Temple Emanu-El is
scheduled to welcome the Reverend Gary V. Simpson and the congregation of The
Concord Baptist Church of Christ to join our annual Shabbat service
commemorating the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2024: Lockdown University is scheduled to
host a lecture by David Peimer on “Chaplin, Part 1: Global Icon, Comic Genius
Outsider.”
2024 (3rd of Shevat, 5784): Parashat
Va-ayrah
For more see https://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/
2024: The Miami Jewish Film Festival is
scheduled to host screenings of “Where Is Anne Frank” and “Young Frankenstein.”
2024: The Breman is scheduled to host a
performance by “The Afro-Semitic Experience, a band that offers a powerful and
poetic musical experience that celebrates diversity, promotes social justice,
and inspires hope and joy.”
2024: As January 13th begins in Israel, the
terror and anti-Semitism are increasing based on yesterday’ reports of the
foiling by Danish authorities of plot by Hamas connected terrorists, the attacks
on the Houthis made in response to their attempts to shut off shipping in the
Read Sea and the suit by Harvard students accusing the university of allowing
the campus to become “a bastion of rampant anti-Semitism while the Hamas held
hostages begin day 99 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.)