This Day ... In Jewish History

OCTOBER 8

314: In his quest to consolidate his power, Constantine I, the man who will become the first Christian Roman Emperor defeats his rival Licinius at the Battle of Cibalae. Constantine will officially transform the Roman Empire into an anti-Semitic entity.

1075: Dmitar Zvonimir is crowned King of Croatia. At this point Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion of Croatia. But the King did have Jewish subjects. Some of them might have been able to trace their ancestry to the 3^rdcentury when Jews first arrived in the Balkan principality. Others may have part of the legendary Khazars who lived in the region in the 10^th century.

1408: The city of Jassy (Hungarian) or Yas (Yiddish) is mentioned in business correspondence between Prince Alexander the Good (Alexandru cel Bun) and merchants from Lviv then a part of Poland. The Romanian city of Yas would become a center of Jewish settlement as well as the site of the largest massacre of Jews in Romania in World War II.

1573: In what would prove to a turning point in the Eighty Years War, the Dutch score their fist victory when the Spanish siege of the Dutch city of Alkmaar comes to an end. The war would last until 1648. When it was over, the independence of the Netherlands would be a reality. The Dutch Republic would provide a haven for European Jews, especially those fleeing Spain and its inquisition.

1576: The Sultan ordered 1,000 wealthy Jews to move from Safed to Cyprus. The Jews would be requested to take with them their possessions and riches. The firman ordering the moved utilized wording which warned the Turks that they would be severely punished if they accepted bribes from the Jews to have their names removed from the list. A year later another 500 Jewish families would be forced to move from Safed to Cyprus. Population movements like this were not unusual in the Ottoman Empire. It was the Sultan’s way of encouraging economic development throughout the empire.

1600: San Marino, a small patch of land on the Italian peninsula that “claims to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitutional republic in the world” adopted a written constitution. According to surviving documents, Jews have lived there since 14^th century and Jews were living there when the constitution was adopted since “measures and resolutions regarding the Jews and their trades were repeatedly passed by the government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

1713: Birthdate of Yechezkel ben Yehuda Landau who would gain fame as an expert on Halachah, Jewish ritual law

1780(9^thof Tishrei, 5541): A week after Major John Andre is hung as a spy marking the end to Benedict Arnold’s treason, an event that unfairly implicated his Jewish aide-de-camp, Colonel Franks, Jews heard Kol Nidre.

1781: Birthdate of Abraham David, the brother of Jonas Daniel Meijer, the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands.

1784(23^rdof Tishrei, 5545): Simchat Torah

1791(10th of Tishrei, 5552): For the first time in history, Jews in France observe Yom Kippur as equal citizens having been “emancipated” on September 28 of this year.

1799(9^thof Tishrei, 5560): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre is chanted for the last time in the 18^th century.

1805(15^thof Tishrei, 5566): Sukkoth

1810(10^thof Tishrei, 5571): Yom Kippur

1821: In Rawicz, Germany, Jewish cloth merchant Heimann Strassman and Judith Guhrauer gave birth to Dr. Wolfgang Strassman

1835(15^thof Tishrei, 5596): As Mexican forces move to put down the rebellion in Texas, Jews celebrate Sukkoth

1837(9^thof Tishrei, 5598): For the first time during the Presidency of Martin Van Buren, Kol Nidre is chanted.

1838: In Great Britain, Frederick Goldsmid and his wife Caroline Samuel gave birth to Sir Julian Goldsmid.

1841(23^rdof Tishrei, 5602): Simchat Torah

1845: The Sephardic Synagogue of Kingston, Jamaica celebrated taking possession of a new Sefer Torah." The service was conducted by the Isaac Lopes, who served as rabbi for the congregation.

1848: On the day after Yom Kippur Joseph Wile, Samuel Marks, Joseph Katz, Gabriel Wile, Meyer Rothschild, Henry Levi, Jacob Altman, Joseph Altman, A. Adler, Elias Wolff, Abram Weinberg, and Jacob Gans met in Rochester, NY and formed Congregation Berith Kodesh.

1851: “Europe” published today told the story of a Jewish con artist working in the British Isles. “An old Jew” had advertised in an English country town,” that among other wondrous things he would get into a quart bottle. At the appointed time his room was filled with eager spectators. He came on the stage, and after a deal of preparation, did nothing he had promised. ‘A swindle! A swindle !’ cried one of the cheated company, who had paid his shilling to the door-keeper” who by then had disappeared. “Amid the noise, the Jew came forward, and with imperturbable gravity said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen; it is a svindle and vat then?’”

1857: In the Recorders Office, Nathan Levins testifies against Israel Steinhardt in a case brought by Levins claiming that Steinhard robbed him of 940 pounds in English Sterling notes. Steinhard then has a chance to rebut Levins’ claims. The story is a tale that takes the court across Europe and involves a variety of convoluted transactions. The story is even harder to understand because neither party speaks English nor testimony has to be translated. Apparently the 20 Jews attending the hearing were not affected by the language barrier since, like the plaintiff and defendant they came from Germany or Hungary. The case was continued until tomorrow.

1862(14^thof Tishrei, 5623): Erev Sukkoth

1862: During the Civil War, in Kentucky, Union forces defeat the Confederates at the Battle of Perryville which means the family of future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis who supported Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy will continue to live under the Stars and Stripes.

1862: "Brooklyn Backs the President" published today described the support being given Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The speech by James S. Wadsworth demonstrates how deeply the story of the Exodus from Egypt inspired the Abolitionist Movement showing once again the important role that Jewish ideals and idioms have played in man’s march towards freedom. General Wadsworth told the crowd that “In ancient times, when the Hebrews, escaping out of the house of bondage, stood upon the shores of the Red Sea, with the hosts of Pharaoh hovering on their rear, conservatism shrunk back and feared to wet its sandals in the angry waves. But the Book of Books tells us that the Lord said unto Moses, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward!" They obeyed, and Pharaoh and his his hosts sank like lead in the waters. The age of miracles is past. In our country, vox populi, vox Dei. Our great cause confronts a sea of difficulties, before which timid souls stand appalled. But, the Proclamation reveals to us the land of promise, the Canaan beyond the floods. Let the people, the vox Dei, say unto the President, ‘Abraham, speak unto the armies of the Union that they go forward!’”

1865(18^thof Tishrei, 5626): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth

1856(18^thof Tishrei, 5626): Fifty-three year old Moravian born violinist and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst passed away in Nice.

1867(9^thof Tishrei, 5628): Erev Yom Kippur

1869: President Franklin Pierce passed away. Pierce was one of those forgettable mediocrities who served in the White House in the decade before the Civil War. His record of dealing with Jews is limited and mixed. Franklin Pierce 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. Washington Hebrew Congregation is one of the oldest and largest Reform Congregations in the Washington Metropolitan Area. But two years before, in November of 1855, Pierce signed a treaty with Switzerland that had been ratified by the Senate. The treaty allowed the Swiss government to discriminated again American citizens who were Jews so that the treatment of American Jews would be consistent with the treatment of Swiss Jews by their government.

1871(23^rdof Tishrei, 5632): Simchat Torah

1871: The Great Chicago Fire made its impact felt in the area settled by Jews of German origins. It was referred to by some as The Golden Ghetto. This was in contrast to the area where eastern European and Russian Jews settled which was known as just The Ghetto. This area suffered a fair amount of damage in the less famous Fire of 1874.

1873: It was reported today that the Jews of Cleveland, Ohio have raised $800 which they have sent to Shreveport , LA and Memphis, TN to help those suffering from the current Yellow Fever Epidemic.

1877: It was reported today that Dr. De Sola Mendez is scheduled to give a lecture on “Young America” at an upcoming meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1881(15^thof Tishrei, 5642): Sukkoth

1882: It was reported today that sometime in the first two weeks of November, Edward Harrigan’s new play, “Mordecai Lyons” will premiere at the Theatre Comique. The play tells the story of a Jewish father who forces her to marry a man not of her choosing. The play is “both humorous and dramatic” and portrays a father who loves a daughter who has been touched by misfortune.

1882: “Romance of the Jews” published today provides a detailed review of The Jews of Barnow, a collection of stories by Karl Emil Franzos.

1882: “Songs of a Semite” published today provides a detailed review of Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems by Emma Lazarus.

1883: Birthdate of Nobel Prize winner, Otto Heinrich Warburg, the son of Emil Warburg who was related to the famous family of the Jewish financier. However, Warburg’s father had converted to Christianity as a result of an undisclosed family dispute.

1886: It was reported today that Kaiser Wilhelm has sent the Sultan of Morocco a gift – 12 volumes of the Talmud in Hebrew. (I have no idea why the German Emperor would send the Muslim monarch such a gift.)

1886(9th of Tishrei, 5647): Erev Yom Kippur

1886: “Yom Kippur” published today opens with the following “From sunset this evening until tomorrow at sunset there will be observed by some seven or eight million Israelites scatter all over the globe the…solemn festival of Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement.” In describing the history and customs of the day, J.S. Moore contends that “there is no other religion…that has a similar festival. The great object is…that one a year one day out of the 365 shall be set apart for no other purposed than to commune with God, confess the errors of life and perchance resolve to amend them.”

1886: “Veteran Rosenberg’s Death” published today described the life and death of Joseph Rosenberg, the 102 year old Jewish citizen of New Orleans who was buried yesterday. A native of Baden, Germany, he served with Napoleon’s French Army when he captured Moscow. He came to the Crescent City in 1852 where he raised a family that included 3 daughters.

1886: “A Suicide in the Tombs” published today described how Solomon Goldberg, a Polish Jew, being held in the jail was able to hide a knife from authorities which he then used to kill himself.

1886: It was reported today that Emperor of Germany has sent the Sultan of Morocco 12 volumes of the Talmud, in Hebrew, as a gift. (I cannot find a reason for this)

1886: Theatre receipts were considerably less tonight than normal because the Jewish patrons were observing “the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur.”

1887: In New York City Josephine Morgenthau and Henry Morgenthau, Sr. gave birth to Alma Morgenthau.

1888: “Eating The Old Mare” published today described a dinner hosted by Dr. Rush S. Huidekeper, Chief of the Veterinary School of the University of Pennsylvania during which he told his guests that “the only beef that is properly inspected is that eaten by the” Jews, “which is killed according to their rules.”

1889: Members of Ahavath Chesed met tonight “and voted to all they could” to help raise money for the establishment of a “Jewish Cooper Union.” At the same meeting, “a delegation from the Young Men Hebrew’s Association” pledged their support for this endeavor.

1890: “An Impossible Shekel” published today described the discovery of coin which the owner claims to be a shekel from the time of Simon the Macabee which is impossible because it has markings including a Star of Bethlehem, that were never used on the genuine coins which made of silver and copper while this one is make of gold, bronze and platinum.

1891: “A dispatch from the St. Petersburg to the New York Daily News says that the United States Immigration Commissioners who have been visiting Russia” were impressed the conditions of suffering under which the Jews of Russia were living.

1891(6^th of Tishrei, 5652): Seventy-two year old Dr. Jacob Eduard Polak “the pioneer of modern medicine in Iran” who served as personal physician to the Shah passed away today.

http://www.ams.ac.ir/AIM/0582/0020.pdf

1892: A fire that started in the rooms of Moritz Feinman, spread to the rest of the tenement at 100 Suffolk Street which drove the nearly 100 residents all of whom were Jewish out into the street.

1892: In New York, Jewish Americans begin the observance of Columbus Day which marks the 400^th anniversary of the discovery of the New World..

1892: At Park East Synagogue Rabbi Bernard Drachman delivered a sermon entitled “Israel’s Debt of Gratitude to Columbus and America.

1893: In the elections for the Reichstag, “the Anti-Semites” are running against the Conservatives and National Liberals in seven districts of which they “may capture four.”

1893: Birthdate of Ada Fishman who made aliyah in 1912, played an active role in the development of pre-State Palestine and as Ada Maimon was a member of the first Knesset.

1894: “The east side Hebrew Anarchists have completed preparations to burlesque the fast of Yom Kippur” which begins tomorrow evening, with an evening that will include dancing, singing and a speech by anarchist Emma Goldman at the Clarendon Hall.

1895: German born American-Jewish inventor/businessman, Emil Berliner founded the Berliner Gramophone Company which was to produce “flat gramophone records” or what would be called phonograph records. He designed the disc model which replaced Edison’s cylinders.

1895: Birthdate of future Laborite MP and death penalty foe, Sydney Silverman.

1895: The Executive Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis is scheduled to meet this morning in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1896: In Oregon, Joseph Simon was elected to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Jew to represent the Beaver State in the Upper Chamber of Congress.

1896: It is reported today that the Sultan is demanding a payment of $220,000 from the Grand Rabbi following rioting in Hasskeuy.

1897: “Care of Russian Jews” published today includes a denial by prominent Jewish leaders including Oscar S. Strauss and Jacob Schiff that “the Baroness de Hirsch has given directions” to end the financing of schemes to send Russian Jews to Argentina and “has ordered that the balance of the funds…be devoted to the establishment of technical and industrial schools in Russia.”

1898(22^ndof Tishrei, 5669): Shemini Atzeret

1898: In response to the announcement by Ismail Bey, the Civil Governor of Crete that Turkish troops are being withdrawn from the island as demanded by Great Britain, Russia, France and Italy, Jews, Christians and Moslems are crowding aboard steamers leaving Crete.

1898: “Gladstone” published today provided a review of The Story of Gladstone’s Life by Justin McCarthy includes chapters on “the long with duel with Disraeli in the House of Common” and his “advocacy of the admissions of Jews to Parliament.”

1900(15^thof Tishrei, 5661): Sukkoth

1900: Birthdate of Serge Ivan Chermayeff, “a Russian born, British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects.”

1900:Herzl met with the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister, Ernest von Koerber.

1904: Edmonton, Alberta was incorporated as a city today. Jews had been living there for more than a decade. The first Jews, Abraham and Rebecca Cristall - came to what was then an unincorporated community in 1893. George and Rose Cristall were the first Jews born in the town. By the time of incorporation there were 17 Jews living in what would become Alberta’s capital city.

1904: Prince Albert, Saskatchewan was incorporated as a city. By this time two colonies had been established by Baron Hirsch’s Jewish Colonization Society – the second of which was called Hirsch, Saskatchewan founded in 1892. Among the Jews who had come to Saskatchewan and left before the incorporation of Prince Albert were Ekiel and Mindel Bronfman of Seagram’s Whiskey fame. Two years after the incorporation, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania would establish The Edinbridge Hebrew Colony, another of the settlements created by the Jewish Colonization Society

1905:Founding of the Society for domestic art and industry in Palestine.

1908: Mr. and Mr. William E. Dodd gave birth to Martha Dodd. Martha accompanied her father to his posting as FDR’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany. A romantic figure, she finally became aware of the danger presented by the Nazi regime

1909(23^rdof Tishrei, 5670): Simchat Torah

1912(27th of Tishrei, 5673): Dr. Morris Loeb, Professor of Chemistry and Columbia, who was a noted scientist and philanthropist, passed away today. He is survived by his widow, Mrs. Eda K. Loeb.

1917(22^nd of Tishrei, 5678): Shemini Atzeret

1918: During World War I, in France, on the Western Front U.S. Army Corporal charged an enemy bunker that was inflicting severe causalities and using hand-grenades neutralized the enemy position allowing the unit to continue his advance. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his action.

1924(10^th of Tishrei, 5685): Yom Kippur

1926: The New York Times reported that Jews in Palestine have called upon the British government not to let Arabs be the ones to repair Rachel’s Tomb.

1927:With Jewish editor Herman Bermstein acting as interpreterMordachai Golinkin, conductor of the Palestine Opera and former director of the Petrograd Opera, told reporters at the Ansonia Hotel how he, his wife, Lea, lyric soprano, and G. Giorini, dramatic tenor, had been detained on Ellis Island for three days. Golinkin had nothing but praise for the way in which he was treated during the internment and expressed a desire to return to the Island to give a concert. Golinkin is in this country to raise $200,000 to build an opera house in Palestine. Nathan Struas and Herman Bernstein “were greatly impressed by the artistic merits” of Golinikin’s productions in Israel which have included performances of Fause and Aida in Hebrew.

1927(12^thof Tishrei, 5688): Judith Solis-Cohen passed away.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/solis-cohen-judith

1928: Joseph Szigeti, the Jewish Hungarian violinist, gives the first performance of Alfredo Casella's Violin Concerto.

1928(24th of Tishrei, 5689): Silent screen comedian Larry Semon reportedly passed away. Semon directed, wrote and starred in the silent screen version the Wizard of Oz. There are those who contend that this is not the date of Semon’s death. According to them, Semon was in financial trouble and he faked his death to get away from his creditors. However, they have not been able to come up with alternative date for his death.

1928: Hungarian born Joseph Szigeti performed in the début of Alfredo Casella's Violin Concerto. Szigeti is one more in a long line of Jewish virtuoso violinists.

1928: Several people were injured today and three were arrested in “a clash between Hebraist and partisans of the Yiddish language” at Tel Aviv. “The occasion for the clash was a celebration by the Poale Zion Club commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Czernowitz Conference, where Yiddish was proclaimed as ‘a national language’ of the Jewish people.” G’dud Magginei Ha’saf-fah “a youth organization ‘for the protection of the Hebrew language’ was responsible for the attack. Among the injured was M. Wescher, a Poale Zion leader and member of the Tel Aviv Municipal Council.

1930: In Pittsfield, MA, Harry and Ruth Klein Kaufman gave birth to Donald Kaufman, the Vice President of KB Toys who was responsible for creating “one of the largest and most valuable collections of antique toy cars and trucks in the world.”

1931:Berlin Alexanderplatz: die Geschichte Franz Biberkopfs(Berlin Alexanderplatz: the story of Franz Biberkopfs) with a script co-authored by Bruno Alfred Döblin premiered today.

1931: The Habima Theater opened in Tel Aviv. Founded by Nahum Zemach in 1917 in Moscow, Habima (Hebrew word meaning “the stage”) was one of the first Hebrew language theatre groups. The group left the Soviet Union in 1926 and went on tour before finally settling in Tel Aviv. Habima was designated as the national theatre in 1958.

1931(27th of Tishrei, 5692):General Sir John Monash, who was the highest ranking Jewish officer to serve in the Australian Army during the World War I and who served with distinction at Gallipoli and on the Western Front passed away.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F60B10FE3F54157A93CAA9178BD95F458385F9

1932: In Brooklyn, electrical engineer Irwin Appel and the former Lillian Sender gave birth to Kenneth Ira Appel, a “mathematician who harnessed computer” (As reported by Dennis Overbye)

1935(22^ndof Tishrei, 5697): Shemini Atzeret

1936: Birthdate of Rona Barrett. Born Rona Burstein, she gained fame as a Hollywood gossip columnist.

1937:The Palestine Post reported that the Franco-Luxembourg-German borders were closed to Jews. All trains arriving at the border were searched and Jews were turned back. Jews seeking to return to Germany were also turned back. In Germany Jews were called to police stations and asked point-blank when they were going to emigrate, or they would face serious consequences.

1938: The Slovak Peoples' Party establishes Hlinkova Garda (Hlinka Guard), an anti-Semitic militia that will collaborate with the Germans.

1938:Jewish composer David Rose marries Martha Raye

1939: Birthdate of Harvey Pekar, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, whose autobiographical comic book “American Splendor” would “a cult following for its unvarnished stories of a depressed, aggrieved Everyman negotiating daily life in Cleveland” and would become “ the basis for a critically acclaimed 2003 film.”

1939: The Nazis ordered to the establishment of a Ghetto in Piotrkow, Poland. This was the first of a series of ghettos and camps planned by Heydrich.

1939: The Nazis orchestrated a pogrom against the Jews of Lodz.

1939: Hitler declared that Będzin would be among the Polish territories annexed by Germany which marked the start of the resettlement of 30,000 Jews from other communities in the Polish city.

1939: Germany annexed Western Poland marking the next level of the downward spiral that would come to be known as the Final Solution.

1939: At the annual conference of the Order of the Sons Of Zion a resolution was adopting terming Hitler’s reported plan to establish a Jewish State in Polish territory “a hypocritical scheme fraught with the gravest of dangers to European Jewry.”

1939: Pastor John Hayes Holmes of the Community Church delivered a sermon giving reasons for the United States to remain neutral based in part on the unworthiness of the government of Poland “a place where Jews were a little more miserable than in Germany.”

1940: Dr. Louis L. Mann, the rabbi of Temple Sinai, is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Henry Horner, the Governor of Illinois. Follow the funeral, the Governor will be interred at Mount Mayriv Cemetery in a grave next to his mother.

1941(17th of Tishrei, 5702: Third Day of Sukkoth

1941(17th of Tishrei, 5702: The Vitebsk (Belorussia) Ghetto is liquidated; more than 16,000 Jews are killed.

1942: The USS Drum, the ship on which Maruice Rindskopf spent all of World War II, contacted a convoy of four freighters, and defying the air cover guarding the ships, sank one of the cargo ships before bombs forced her deep.

1943(9th of Tishrei, 5704):Erev Yom Kippur

1943(9th of Tishrei, 5704):: Three thousand Italian prisoners of war are murdered by the SS and Ukrainian guards at La Risiera di San Sabba, Italy, south of Trieste. Of 1,920 Jews in Trieste, 620 are murdered by the SS.

1943(9th of Tishrei, 5704): On the eve of the Jewish Day of Atonement, several thousand ill or weak Jewish men are gassed at Auschwitz.

1943: Birthdate of R.L. Stine. Born Robert Lewis Stine, the author is known for his science fiction works.

1944(21st of Tishrei, 5705): Hoshana Rabbah

1945(1st of Cheshvan, 5706): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1945(1st of Cheshvan, 5706): Austrian born author, Felix Salten passed away. Born Siegmund Salzmann, Salten is best known as the creator of Bambi. Salten fled the Nazis and spent the last years of his life in Switzerland.

1945: As part of the protest against British treatment of the Jews in Palestine and those trying to reach Palestine Rabbis throughout Palestine are scheduled to add Psalm XX which beings “Let the King hear us when we call” to the daily prayer service.

1945: As part of the protest against British policy in Palestine, 50,000 Jews attended a rally in Tel Aviv and tens of thousands more attended a rally at Edison Hall in Jerusalem where they demanded an end to the White Paper.

1945: In an attempt to spare European Jewish refugees another winter in displaced person camps, Zionist leaders spent two and half hours with the new Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, discussing ways to improve British-Jewish relations” in Palestine.

1945: In a sign of Jewish frustration with the continued British enforcement of the White Paper, the Stern Gang reportedly resorted to a new wave of violence tonight with attacks that resulted in the death of two British soldiers and the wounding of scores of others.

1948: In Egypt, “the issuance of export and import licenses to Jewish merchants was forbidden,.”

1948: A group of settlers from Hungary founded Kibbutz Ga’aton in the hill country east of Nahariya. According to some it is named for the Ga’aton River which flows nearby. According to others, it is named for a town thought to have existed in the area before the Babylonian exile. Regardless, the kibbutz fell under immediate attack from Arabs shooting from the surrounding hills.

1951: “The third government of Israel was formed by David Ben-Gurion

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that Dov Shilansky, Gavriel Lichtman, a taxi driver, and Ya'acov Lotan, a regular contributor to the Herut newspaper, were remanded by police in connection with the attempt to sabotage the Israel-German reparations agreement by bombing one of the Foreign Ministry buildings in Jerusalem's Hakirya.

1959: LA Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox, 4 games to 2 in the 56th World Series. The Dodgers team featured two Jewish players who were brothers – the pitcher Larry Sherry and the catcher Norm Sherry. Larry Sherry was a rookie who appeared as a relief pitcher in all four of the Dodgers’ victories.

1962(10^thof Tishrei, 5723): Yom Kippur

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, two Israeli attempts to reach the east bank of the Suez were beaten back by Egyptian soldiers equipped with Soviet supplied anti-tank weapons. IDF forces facing Syria were more successful. Although outnumbered, the IDF forces halted the advance of the Syrians into Israel and by the end of the day have driven them back to the 1967 Armistice Lines and beyond.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, Gabi Amir's armored brigade attacks Egyptian occupied positions on the Israeli side of the Suez Canal, in hope of driving them away. The attack fails, and over 150 Israeli tanks are destroyed.

1973: Buoyed by initial Egyptian and Syrian military success, numerous Moslem and Arab states offered aid and support to the aggressors. The Algerians sent squadrons of planes. The King of Morocco called on soldiers in his army to volunteer to fight with the Egyptians. Idi Amin ordered all Ugandan officers in Egypt to join in the fight. And the Prime Minister of Bangladesh sent telegrams stating the his 75 million countrymen supported the Egyptians and the Syrians “in your just cause”

1973: Israelis were alarmed by news from the front, which was fragmentary and not good. Their fears were heightened when a civil defense spokesperson urged Israelis who did not have a shelter to start digging one and that those who had small shelter should enlarge them. The only good news was Australian volunteers were arriving to perform the work of civilians who had been mobilized and that American Jews had already raised $100 million for the Israeli war effort.

1973: After touring both battle fronts, Maj. Gen. Haim Bar-Lev and Minister Yigal Allon reported to Prime Minister Meir this evening that the Israeli forces' situation is beginning to improve, while the enemy forces are beginning to suffer serious damage."What they achieved today as compared to yesterday is enormous," Allon said. "The front was breached yesterday. If the Syrians had been more daring, they'd have made significant gains."Bar-Lev explained the Egyptian and Syrian successes as being partly due to technological superiority. "Both have the new Soviet tank plus infrared," he said. "They have an advantage there. On the first night we were surprised; we only knew they had it in theory ... Today we know about it and take it into account."

1973: The 17^th Battalion of the Golani Brigade moved up the slopes of Mt. Hermon in the opening round of the Second Battle of Mount Hermon.

1973:Tonight, the Israeli missile boats repeated their success of last night off the Egyptian coast, with three Egyptian missile boats sunk and no Israeli vessel hit. For the remainder of the war, neither the Syrian nor Egyptian fleets would venture out again, enabling more than 100 freighters carrying vital supplies to safely reach Israel, which was in the throes of a brutal, two-front ground war.

1973: Kobi Hayun, Micahel Dvir, Shabtai Ben-Shua, Yoram Peled and Boaz Lerner all made it safely back to Israeli lines when their F-4E Phantom Jets were shot down Syrian SAM’s or Egyptian Anti- Aircraft fire.

1973: Yoram Shachar was taken prisoner after his F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by a Syrian Surface to Air Missile.

1973: As the Vale of Tears Battle entered its third day the outmanned and outgunned 7^th Brigade fought off attacks by the 7^th Infantry Division, the 3^rd Armored Division and the Assad Republican Guards which by the end of the day left the Israelis with at least fifty dead, untold more wounded and less than 45 working tanks but the IDF continued to blunt the Syrian advance.

1976: Paramount releases “Marathon Man,” the movie version of the book by William Goldman starring Dustin Hoffman.

1977: White supremacist Joseph P. Franklin shot and killed three people outside of a suburban St. Louis synagogue including Gerald Gordon.

1981(10th of Tishrei, 5742): Yom Kippur

1981(10th of Tishrei, 5742): Heinz Kohut an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the modern practice of analytic and dynamic treatment approaches passed away.

1985: The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrendered after the ship arrived in Port Said, Egypt. Before surrendering, the hijackers threw Leon Klinghoffer, a wheel-chair bound passenger, over the side of the boat.

1985(23^rdof Tishrei, 5746): Simchat Torah

1986: The Providence Journal "Navy Rabbi To Join Iceland Team: Russian immigrant's grandson picked to lead staff services,” a story about the role of Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, the U.S. Navy Chaplain sent to Iceland to lead services during the meetings laying the groundwork for the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit.

1987(15^thof Tishrei, 5748): Sukkoth

1990: Israeli police kill 17 Palestinian rioters. The riots occurred at the Temple Mount and were part of the orchestrated violence against Israelis now known as the First Intifada. For those of you who like symmetry or have a sense of irony, the Second version of this organized terror would begin in the same place at the same time of the year when Arafat rejected Barak’s peace offer.

1992: Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of Germany, passed away. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize had opposed the Nazis when he was a youth living in Germany. In 1970, Brandt made a highly emotional visit to Warsaw where he fell to his knees in front of the Memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This silent act of contrition spoke volumes to the world about the new Germany and the willingness take responsibility for its past. In writing about the trip Brandt said, “An unusual burden accompanied me on my way to Warsaw. Nowhere else had a people suffered as in Poland. The machine-like annihilation of Polish Jewry represented a heightening of bloodthirstiness that no one had held possible. On my way to Warsaw [I carried with me] the memory of the fight to the death of the Warsaw ghetto.^” As moving as these words were then, they are even more so now as another generation of leaders has risen filled with inclination to minimize their personal pasts and the Jewish element that made the Holocaust unique.

1997(7th of Tishrei, 5758): American architect Bertrand Goldberg best known for the Marina City complex in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest residential concrete buildings in the world at the time of completion passed away.

2000(9^thof Tishrei, 5671): Erev Yom Kippur

2000:The Sunday New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaism including Quarrel & Quandry: Essays by Cynthia Ozick,Einstein In Love: A Scientific Romance by Dennis Overbye, Dream Catcher: A Memoir by Margaret A. Salinger and The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman

2000: In an article entitled “Flash Point: Temple Mount is Holy Ground; Muslims Must Recognize Shrine’s Importance to Judaism” Aron U Raskas of the Baltimore Sunwrote “Ten days ago, former defense minister had the good fortune to be able to do that which Jews dispersed for centuries in the diaspora could only hope, dream and pray for: On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - the liturgy of which is replete with recollections of [Abraham]'s selfless act on the Temple Mount and with prayers for a restoration of the divine presence to this site - Sharon dared to peacefully tread upon this hallowed Jewish ground. The second lesson is that, even after seven years of delusional thinking by Pollyannaish Israelis, the Palestinian people and their leaders are completely unwilling to recognize the Jewish legacy of the Temple Mount, the historic connection of Jews to that place and their inalienable right to worship on that holy ground.”

2001: Forbes published an article entitled “Riklis Driving” that described how Meshulam Riklis drained assets from Dylex Limited, one of Canada’s largest retailers and funneled them into other companies he controlled.

2004: Haaretz reported that at least thirty-five people were killed and over 100 injured in three separate attacks on holiday resorts in the Sinai Desert that were packed with Israelis celebrating the holiday of Sukkoth. Among the hotels attacked on Thursday was the Taba Hilton. According to reports that appeared in the October 8th edition of the paper, Israeli officials believe the blast at Taba was caused by an explosive laden truck. There were reports of two more explosions at other locations within two hours of the Taba attack. Late reports in the Jerusalem Post raised the toll to 37 dead and 150 wounded. A terror group that nobody had heard of up until now claimed credit for the attack. It said the attacks were in response to the killings of Palestinians and Iraqis. If these attacks are the work of terrorists, it would be consistent with a pattern of attacking on Jewish holidays going back to the original outbreaks of the latest wave of Arab terror that began on Rosh Hashanah.

2004: Fiamma Nirenstein was an official speaker at the Boston Conference of on 'Anti-Semitism, the Press and Europe'.

2004(23rd of Tishrei, 5765): Simchat Torah

2005(5th of Tishrei, 5766): Shabbat Shauvah is observed by Jews all over the world.

2005: Award winning singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist Leonard Cohen sued Kelley Lynch, alleging that she had misappropriated over US $5 million from Cohen's retirement fund leaving only $150,000.”

2005: Hundreds of Jews lit candles and prayed near the Babi Yar ravine, where the Nazis killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews during World War II, as Jewish leaders expressed concern over recent anti-Semitic acts in the former Soviet republic.

2005: Jonathan Mandell of Chicago took a photograph of a Hebrew inscription in the Cathedral of Monreal which is a testimony to the 1400 years of Jewish settlements in Sicily.

http://dieli.net/SicilyPage/JewishSicily/JewishTraces.html#inscription

2005: Thanks to Katrina, Rita, OPEC, et al, Americans are confronted with paying record high prices of gasoline and natural gas. Now, American Jews face an additional financial threat. According to The Jerusalem Post, people will be paying record high prices for their lulavs this year. Following Egyptian moves to limit the export of Lulavs, one Israeli importer has “cornered the market” by surreptitiously importing 250,000 Lulavs. Because of his almost complete control of the limited supply, Avi Belali is charging wholesalers five dollars for an item that usually costs one dollar. Retailers claim they will have to charge as much as twenty dollars to break even and that does not include the cost of the Etrog. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the lulav industry is “a pretty shady business” where various tricks are tried each year by dealers looking for a way to make a fast buck. Some Israeli Rabbis are so concerned about profiteering that they have issued a special Halachahic dispensation allowing for the use of branches from the more numerous canary dates may be used for Lulavs. Apparently, the sages don’t just know about the Law of Moses, they also know about the law of supply and demand.

2006: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Primo Levi’s Auschwitz ReportandDaniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and an essay written by Elie Wiesel under the title “Why Memory?”

2006: The Sunday New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaism including The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coupsby Ron Rosenbaum and Five Germanys I Have Known by Fritz Stern.

2006: The Israeli Interior Ministry ruled that Valery Dubinin, who had made Aliyah from the Ukraine seven and half years ago, is not a Jew. This case is newsworthy because the Interior Ministry was overruling the Petah Tikva Rabbinical Court which had provided documents attesting to his Jewishness.

2006(16th of Tishrei, 5767): Second Day Sukkoth; since the first of Sukkoth fell on Shabbat this is the first time, blessings are recited over the Lulav and Etrog.

2007:Shelley Cohn, the former Executive Director of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, is the recipient of the Actor Equity Association's 2007 Arizona Theatre Service Award. The award was presented to Ms. Cohn at the Union's membership meeting at the Phoenix Theatre

2007: Time Magazinefeatures an article about Jerry Seinfeld entitled “Jerry Seinfeld Goes Back to Work” and reviews of The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam and Exit Ghosts by Phillip Roth.

2008(9th of Tishrei, 5769: Erev Yom Kippur

2008:A riot in Acre shattered the Yom Kippur calm on Wednesday night as hundreds of the city's Arab residents vandalized Jewish-owned property.

2009: In New Haven, Yale University presents a double-header with an address byTzipi Livni, former Foreign Minister, Member of Knesset and head of the Kadima party, will speak as a Chubb Fellow and a talk by Brandon Friedman, Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, entitled "Iran: Ideology and Foreign Policy"

2009: In New Britain, CT,Ethan Bronner, the New York Times' Israel Bureau Chief delivers a talk entitled "Israel & Palestine: What Happens in 2009?" at Central Connecticut State University, during which he examines what has happened, and what to expect.

2009:As tensions flare once again over a Jerusalem holy site claimed by Israel and Palestinians as their own, one of the most influential leaders of Israel's religious community told the president today that Jews should not make pilgrimages to the Temple Mount so as not to evoke global outrage. "According to halacha (Jewish religious law), it is forbidden to ascend to Temple Mount," Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv is quoted by Israel Radio as telling President Shimon Peres.

2009:Romania unveiled a monument in memory of 300,000 Jews and Gypsies killed during the Holocaust in the country, which at times in the past had denied that the extermination even occurred.

2010:The 92Y Resource Center for Jewish Diversity and the Ethiopian Jewish community in New York are scheduled to co-host a a festive and authentic Ethiopian Shabbat dinner.

2010: The Telegraph (UK) reported that Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge University has condemned the appointment of historian and presenter Simon Schama as the Coalition Government's new history tsar. She described the announcement as an example of Michael Gove, the education secretary, "playing to the populist gallery". She described Schama as “a celebrity.” She did not mention the fact that he was Jewish.

2011(10^th of Tishrei, 5772): Yom Kippur

2011(10^th of Tishrei): In a tribute to diversity and inclusion, congregants at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids will be able to attend either a Reform or Traditional Yom Kippur Service. The Traditional Service is rooted in Beth Jacob - a synagogue founded 105 years ago. Temple Judah is preparing to celebrate its 90^th anniversary. When one considers the fate of Jewry in many of America’s small cities and towns, this is quite an accomplishment.

2011:Hours after far-right-wing graffiti was reported to police in Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a synagogue in the area today.

2012(22^nd of Tishrei, 5753): Shemini Atzeret

2012(22^nd of Tishrei, 5763): One hundred year old Eda Mirsky Mann, the mother of Erica Jong passed away today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/erica-jongs-mother-eda-mirsky-mann-dead-at-100/

2012: In the United States, observance of Columbus Day which means, for once, the Jewish and Gentile worlds will be celebrating holidays on the same day, even though they are of a completely different nature.

2012: The Alexandria Kletztet is scheduled to play at the Simchat Torah service for Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, VA.

2012:Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired more than 30 rockets and mortars — with some Israeli media outlets reporting over 50 rockets — into southern Israel early this morning, causing damage to a residential building

2013: The Charles E. Smith Life Communities which seeks “to fulfill Jewish values by providing a continuum of quality services for elders and their families” is scheduled to sponsor “An Evening with Tony Kornheiser” at Woodmont Country Club.

2013: The Consulate General of Israel in New York co-hosts this evening’s scheduled screening of “Blues by the beach.”

2013: A staged reading of the new play “Stealing Home: The Mystery of Moe Berg” is scheduled to be performed today by member of the Actors Studio in New York.

2013: In Washington, DC, Mark Cohen, author of Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allen Sherman is scheduled to speak at The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival

2013: Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “announced the full list of nations that had submitted a movie for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film including “Yuval Adler’s “Bethlehem,” which explores a difficult relationship between a Shin Bet agent and a Palestinian teenager and “Transit,” a Philippine film about foreign workers in Israel. (As reported by Debra Kamin)

2013: Eighty-year old Holocaust survivor François Englert, a Sackler Professor by Special Appointment in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University won the 2013 Nobel Prize.

2014(14^thof Tishrei, 5775): Erev Sukkoth

2014: The Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut is scheduled to sponsor a noontime “Yiddish Tish”.

2014: Friends and family celebrate the birthday of author Noam Friedlander the daughter of Evelyn Friedlander and Rabbi Albert Friedlander

2014:SukkahPDX, an annual juried outdoor design competition held in Portland, OR, at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in partnership with Mittleman Jewish Community Center is scheduled to begin today.

OCTOBER 9

768: Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks. Charlemagne treated to his Jewish subjects well, even if it meant parting from the doctrine of the Church. For example, he extended the rights previously granted to the Jews of Narbonne by his father. Jews “mingled freely at the Frankish court in defiance of canon law…Disputes between Jews were resolved in Jewish courts.” The increased protection and freedom offered to the Jews by Charlemagne resulted in increased commercial and financial activity, especially trade with the Islamic world.

1184: Judah ben Elijah Hadassi a Karaite Jewish scholar who lived in Constantinople began working on Eshkol ha-Kofter, “a treatise on the Ten Commandments.”

1217: During the 5^th Crusade, a force led by King Andrew II of Hungary landed on Cyprus “from where they sailed to Acre and joined John of Brienne, ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem” and others who were preparing to fight the Ayyubids of Syria.

1238: In Spain, King James I of Aragon founded the Kingdom of Valencia. In 1263, James I presided over the disputation between Nachmanides and a convert to Christianity named Paul Christian.

1264: The army of King Alfonso the Wise of Castile conquered the Spanish city of Jerez that had been held by the Moors since 711. The Jewish community of Jerez, complete with a separate Juderia or Jewish quarter had existed since the time of the Moors. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the city had two synagogues with Don Yucaff and his son Don Todros each living in one of the “houses of the rabbis” Among those Jews to whom the king gave houses and/or lands were “Don Yehuda Mosca who made translations from Arabic into Spanish for the king; the "almoxarife" Don Mayr, or rather Mür de Malhea, and his son Çag (Isaac); Çimha (Simḥah) Xtaruçi, whose father lost his life and the whole of his large fortune during the rebellion of the city; Don Vellocid (Vellecid), "ballestero del rey a caballo"; Solomon Ballestero; and Axucuri Ballestero—the last three being in the king's army.” [Editors Note – As can be seen from this entry, the image of the Spanish Jews flourishing under the Moors and suffering under the Christians is not an accurate one.]

1334: Casmir the Great (Poland) renewed the Charter of Boleslav, granting Jews the freedom of residence in all areas of the kingdom. This document was instrumental in encouraging Jews to begin to flee Germany and move east. King Kazimierz showed how favorably disposed towards Jews he was when he confirmed the privileges granted to Jewish Poles in 1264 by Boleslaus V. Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. He invited Jews who were being persecuted elsewhere to settle in Poland, protecting them as 'people of the king'

1526: Today, the Queen regent Maria, the widow of Louis II, continued her anti-Jewish policies first displayed when by expelling the Jews of Sopron by allowing the city of Pressburg, to expel its Jewish citizens.

1547: Christening of the Don Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. According to some sources, Cervantes mother, Lenor de Cortinas was a descendant of Conversos, Jews who chose Christianity over death or despoliation of their wealth.

1580: Immanuel Tremellius, the Italian Jewish convert to Catholicism who then became a Protestant and was the Regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge before becoming the Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg passed away today.

1635: Colonial American Separatist Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for preaching that civil government had no right to interfere in religious affairs. (Williams was seeking to establish freedom of worship through the separation of church and state.) Rhode Island would provide the model for the rest of the United States on this issue. In addition to which, William's policy would Rhode Island an attractive place for Jews to settle during the colonial and Revolutionary War periods.

1666(10th of Tishrei, 5427): Yom Kippur

1666(10th of Tishrei, 5427): In Hamburg, Germany, blessings were offered in honor of Sabbatia Zvi during Yom Kippur. The Hamburg community was unaware of the fact the self-proclaimed Messiah had converted to Islam in September of 1666.

1701: The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. In 1805, Moses Simons became the first Jew to attend Yale. Seventeen years later, Judah P. Benjamin attended Yale Law School, making him the school’s second Jewish student. Benjamin left without graduating. According to recent records 1,200 of Yale’s 5,300 undergraduate students are Jewish while 200 of the 1,200 graduate students are Jewish. The school offers 45 Jewish courses and a minor in Jewish studies but no major. This is a vast improvement over the situation for Jews at Yale as late as the 1960’s when administrators, faculty and alumnae sought to limit Jewish enrollment at the Ivy League school through quotas and other forms of social pressure. You have to wonder if these people knew that Elihu Yale’s Jewish mistress, after whom the school was named, had born him a son. Would the Yalies have accepted Yale’s son?

1771: Count Jan Klemens Branicki, the Polish nobleman who proclaimed the Jews of Bialystok to be subject to bylaw and other local laws on an equal footing with the other townsmen, passed away

1775(15^thof Tishrei, 5536): Sukkoth

1780(10th of Tishrei, 5541): Yom Kippur

1784: Benjamin Nones, a native of Bordeaux, France who served with distinction during the American Revolution became a naturalized citizen of the United States today.

1789: Birthdate of Meno Burg, “the first and for a long time the only Jew serving as a Prussian staff officer.”

1794(15^thof Tishrei, 5555): Sukkoth

1797(19th of Tishrei, 5558): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

1797(19th of Tishrei, 5558): The Vilna Gaon passed away. There is no way that we can do justice to this Giant of Judaism. We urge you all to consult the numerous books, websites and other sources that can give you some sense of the importance of this sage who was such an expert in matters of Torah, Talmud and Halachah that even the descendants of those to whom he stood in opposition recognize his merit.

1798: In Bamberg, the chief rabbi and his wife gave birth to German jurist Karl Feust.

1799(10^thof Tishrei, 5560): Final Yom Kippur of the 18^th century

1803(23^rdof Tishrei, 5564): Simchat Torah

1809: Birthdate of Adolphe Franck the French philosopher whose work on the Kabbalah was popular with the public and was President of the Société des Etudes Juives

1813(15^thof Tishrei, 5574): Sukkoth

1817: Johanna Benzinger and Secekel Loeb Wormser, “the Wonder Rabbi of Michel City” gave birth to Jaidel Wormser

1832(15^thof Tishrei, 5593): Sukkoth

1833: In Laupheim, Jewish merchant Viktor Steiner and his Sophie gave birth to German banker and industrialist Kilian von Steiner.

1837(10^thof Tishrei, 5598): As the economic crisis known as the Panic of 1837 grips the United States Jews observe Yom Kippur.

1840: Birthdate of British painter Simeon Solomon. [There is no way to do justice to this complex man’s life and work in this small space. Among other sites, look at http://simeonsolomon.com/default.aspx

1843(15^thof Tishrei, 5604): Sukkoth

1845: The Sephardic Synagogue of Kingston, Jamaica celebrated taking possession of a new Sefer Torah." The service was conducted by the Isaac Lopes, who served as the congregation’s rabbi.

1846: In New York City linguist and orientalist Elias Markens and his wife gave birth to author Isaac Markens.

1848: In Lübeck, laws were adopted that “abolished all the disabilities” of the Jews thus making them true citizens of the city

1856: “A God-Send For The Express” published today reported that “the German organ of the Buchanneers in Philadelphia accuses Fremont of being a Hebrew by birth and having been educated in the Mosaic faith besides being born in Alsace. As the Express must by this time be tired of calling Col Freemont a Jesuit, it will be delighted of an opportunity to accuse him of being a descendant of Abraham.” Fremont is John C. Fremont, a native of Virginia, an Episcopalian, military hero and explorer known as the Great Pathfinder. He was also the Republican Party’s first Presidential nominee.

1857: In New York, the Recorder heard a second day of testimony in the case where Nathan Levin, a recently arrived Jewish immigrant from Hungary, had accused Israel Steinhardt, a fellow Hungarian co-religionist of stealing 940 pounds in Bank of England notes. A witness named Francois Guilland testified that he and Steinhardt had sailed on the same ship in September and that he had seen Steinhardt holding several of the bank notes that Levins claim Steinhardt had stolen from him just two days ago in New York. Two other witnesses testified that Levins had not the bank notes in his possession when they met with him just before the theft. It would appear Levins’ accusation that his fellow Jew had violated the 7th commandment was false and that Levins was attempting a swindle. The Recorder is holding the case over until tomorrow at which time a decision will be made as to which Jew is trying to cheat which Jew.

1858: An article entitled "Chronology of Comets" published today reported that "Josephus the historian includes the appearance of a comet among the miracles which announced the destruction of Jerusalem and the ruin of its temple." In 1208, "the Jews of the West" thought that a very bright comet that appeared for two weeks foretold the coming of the coming of the Messiah.

1859: In Mulhouse, Alsace, Raphael and Jeannette Dreyfus (née Libmann) gave birth to the ninth child, Alfred who would enter history as Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer at the center of scandal that rocked France for a decade and helped to produce the modern Zionist movement.

1860: Birthdate of Count Walter Puckler-Muskau, the anti-Semitic agitator known as "Dreschgraf" (the thrashing count) for the calls for violent attack against the Jews that fill his speeches.

1862(15^thof Tishrei, 5623): Sukkoth

1862: During the American Civil War, as the Jews on both sides observed Sukkoth, JEB Stuart’s Confederate Cavalry humiliated Union General George McClellan by riding around the Army of the Potomac completely unscathed.

1864(9^thof Tishrei, 5625): Yom Kippur

1864: As Sherman’s victorious Union Army completed the occupation of Atlanta during the Civil War, one wonders if the Jewish soldiers serving under him joined the Jews of Atlanta in observing Yom Kippur.

1866: The Law Reports column published today described in detail the breach of contract case brought by a young Jewess named Nanna Solomon against Jewish tailor named Bernard Brown. According to the evidence presented, there was no dispute over the fact that the two were engaged to married and that there had been ample public ceremonies to celebrate the event. There is no dispute that the marriage did not take place. Miss Solomon claimed that the Brown did not marry here because of interference from her mother. Brown implied that Miss Solomon had been seeing other men and was not the stellar character she had presented herself to be. In the end, the jury found for the plaintiff but awarded her only five hundred dollars in damages when she had sought $10,000.

1867(10th of Tishrei, 5628): Yom Kippur

1867(10th of Tishrei, 5628): Abraham Mapu “one of the first, and finest, of the novelists to write in Hebrew” passed away. “Heavily influenced by a wide range of sources--the Bible, the Romantic Novelists, and renewed pride in ancient Jewish history--his works recall the finest works of writers such as Flaubert and other great romantic novelists. His first novel, Ahavat Ziyyon (The Love of Zion), published in 1853, won immediate acclaim. Its sixteen editions attest to its continued popularity. (As reported by Toby Press)

1873: Birthdate of violinist Carl Flesch whose pupils included Jewish violinists Szymon Goldberg, Ivry Gitlis, Ida Haendel, Yfrah Neaman, Eric Rosenblith, Max Rostal, Henryk Szeryng, Henri Temianka and Roman Totenberg

1875(10^thof Tishrei, 5636): Yom Kippur which the secular price described as “a solemn fast universally observed among the orthodox Jews by abstaining from food or drink of any nature whatever for twenty-four hours and spending the entire day in continuous attendance at their places of worship.”

1876(21^stof Tishrei, 5637): Hoshana Rabah

1867: Fanny Janauscheck the Austrian actress who would perform in “Zillah, The Hebrew Mother” made her American stage debut at the Academy of Music in New York.

1876: The New York Times featured a review of “Daniel Deronda” by George Elliot. George Elliot was the penname of Mary Anne Evans. This was her last novel and it featured a sympathetic portrayal of Jewish characters and was sympathetic to the concepts of Zionism.

1877: Charles Stein, who is described the most dangerous confidence man of our times, was arrested in St. Louis, MO. [It can’t always be about Nobel Prize Winners]

1878(12^thof Tishrei, 5639): Seventy-eight year old Abraham Oppenheim who had begun his career as a partner in the banking house of his father Salomon Oppenheim passed away.

1879(22^ndof Tishrei, 5640): Shemini Atzeret

1880(4^thof Cheshvan, 5641): Sixty-four year old Joseph Mayer Montefiore, a nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore who was a member of the Board of Deputies and a director of the Alliance Insurance Company and the National Provincial Bank of Ireland, passed away today.

1880: “Persecution of the Jews of Morocco” published today relies on information that originally appeared in the Petit Marseillais and the Pall Mall Gazette, to describe the brutal murder of a Jew named Bendahan's by the Moslem governor of Estifa. Bendahan’s crime was that he had taken a Moslem women into his home during the recent famine and provided her with food and shelter. When the governor heard of this he summoned the Jew and him beaten to death. Apparently, any relationship between a Moslem and a Jew was unacceptable even if was only intended to save a life.

1881: Birthdate of Victor Klemperer, a businessman, journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specializing in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life, successively, in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and in the German Democratic Republic were published in 1995. He passed away in 1960.

1881: It was reported that the Minister of Justice in Hungary has introduced a bill in the lower house of the Diet that would legalize marriages between Jews and Christians.

1881: It was reported today that the Russian government “intends to all Jews to acquire land in places where there is no fear of collision between them” and the non-Jewish locals.

1881: “The Wandering Jew in Hull, 1769” recounts the history of this anti-Semitic tale which reinforced the view of the Jew as an evil villain who has walked the earth since the days of the Crucifixion

1881: “Old York,” published today provides a brief history of this ancient English castle and city, including the time when it was “the scene of a gruesome tragedy” when a group of “landless knights” and “broken men” penned up the Jews in the castle with the intent to “plunder” and “murder them.” However, most of the Jews, their intended victims, “with desperate courage, forestalled them by burning their property and killing their families and themselves.

1882: It was reported today that G.P. Putnam’s Sons will be publishing Fundamental Questions Relating to the Hebrew Scriptures, a liberal view of the subject by Edson L. Clarke.

1886(10^thof Tishrei, 5647): Yom Kippur

1886: In “Yom Kippur” published today J.S. Moore, a non-Jew, provides a complete description of the observance of the holiday including the observations that “no other religion…has a similar festival” “ and that “ it may be safely predicted that nations, empires and peoples may and will pass and be only remembered in history while the ‘Yom Kippur’ will retain its hold upon a race which has already during the vicissitudes of thousands of years withstood annihilation and bids fair to hold fast to its religion as long as this globe is populated.”

1886: The Uptown Gossip column published today attributed the low attendance rate at theatres in New York yesterday to the fact that the Jews were observing the “fast of Yom Kippur.” “Jewish people are the most liberal patrons of the theaters, and any fast day which they observe makes a very marked difference in the receipts of theatre’s treasury.”

1886: “Big Hebrew Fair” published today described efforts to host a fundraiser this December that provides funds for the establishment of a “Jewish Cooper Institute.” The project has the support of the city’s temples and synagogues as well as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1887: “Levitcal Names” published today contends that there is strong evidence of an Egyptian connection between the Levites – the leading tribe of the Exodus – and those who enslaved them. The names of Moses, Miriam and Pinhcas, Aaron’s grandson, have an Egyptian etymology . The mother of Pinchas was the daughter of Putiel, a name with an Egyptian rather than Hebrew etymology. Finally, Aaron’s ability to address Pharaoh would indicate a knowledge of the Egyptian language that would be more consistent with an educated Egyptian than a wandering Semitic nomad.

1887(21^stof Tishrei, 5648): Sukkoth Chol HaMoed

1887(21^stof Tishrei, 5648): Sixty-two year old Czech born American musician and impresario Maurice Strakosch, whose autobiography Souvenirs of an Impresariowas published in 1886 passed away today in Paris.

1888: As the London police investigated the murder of Catharine Eddowes, The Evening News reported that Jacob Levy, the son of butcher from Aldgate, was “obstinate” when questioned, refusing “to give the slightest information “ leaving “one to inter that he knows something but…is afraid to be called” during the inquest.

1889(14^thof Tishrei, 5650): Erev Sukkoth

1889(14^thof Tishrei, 5650): Sir Benjamin Samuel Phillips, the son of Samuel Phillips, a London tailor, who founded the publishing house of Fauudel, Phillips & Sons, was a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community and the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, passed away today.

1890: In Germany, Das Volk accuses the committee “engaged in gathering the municipal addresses” which are to be presented to Count Von Moltke on his 90^thanniversary as being made up of “Jews….seeking pecuniary benefit from their connection with the movement to honor the Count.”

1891: “A Fire on Fifth Avenue” published today described the fire that swept through the New York home of August Belmont.

1892: In the wake of a decision by the Reform movement that circumcision is no longer a necessary part of the conversion process, a “conclave of rabbis” is scheduled to begin meeting today in New York.

1892: “Phases of City Life” published today described eastside Jews as being “as careful with their money as any people in the world” who will “part with the dollars freely under two conditions –sickness or death in the family” as can be seen by the round the clock medical care being provided for a child who was scaled two weeks ago which has required all of the to “work harder than ever to get the money for it all.”

1892: Construction began on a building that would be called the Frances Jacobs Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Frances Jacobs, known as Colorado's "Mother of Charity," devoted her life to community service. She is the only woman included among the sixteen Colorado pioneers depicted through stained glass portraits in the state's Capital Rotunda. Born in Kentucky and raised in Cincinnati, Jacobs moved with her husband to Colorado in 1863; they settled in Denver in 1870. Jacobs quickly became involved in Denver's Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Jewish issues were especially important to Jacobs. Soon after moving to Colorado with her husband in 1874, she became president of the Hebrew Benevolent Ladies Society (today known as Jewish Family Service of Colorado). By 1872, she was president of the Hebrew Ladies' Benevolent Society and in 1874 helped found the nonsectarian Denver Ladies' Relief Society. She pushed for the creation of Denver's first kindergarten and helped organize Denver's Charity Organization Society, a forerunner to the United Way, in 1877. Jacobs also pushed the Denver Jewish community to attend to the care of the many Jewish tuberculosis sufferers who came to Denver. At that time, the only known treatment for tuberculosis was clean air and sunshine; since Denver had both of these resources in abundance; it became a popular destination for infected immigrants from the industrial Northeast. When these immigrants arrived in Denver, they found no facilities available to treat or even shelter them, and the community ignored their plight. Jacobs did her best to help those who were ill on an individual basis, but worked to convince the Jewish community to help, leading to the construction of the hospital, whose motto became "None may enter who can pay, and none can pay who enter". Jacobs died, at the age of 49, weeks after the hospital's cornerstone had been laid. The hospital's trustees voted to name the hospital after her. Today the institution is known as the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and is the only medical and research center in the United States devoted entirely to respiratory, allergic, and immune system diseases. Jacobs died, at the age of 49, weeks after the hospital's cornerstone had been laid. The hospital's trustees voted to name the hospital after her. Today the institution is known as the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and is the only medical and research center in the United States devoted entirely to respiratory, allergic, and immune system diseases.

1892: The 15 Jewish families living in the tenement at 100 Suffolk lost personal property in yesterday’s fire that was valued today at approximately $2,000.

1893: It was reported today that villages on the German borders with Austria and Russia are crowded with Jewish “families who have been expelled from Russia and are eager to come to United States but are so destitute that they “prostrate themselves before travelers and beg for bread or money.”

1894: It was reported today that Mrs. Elke Rubenstein the widow of convicted murderer Pesach Rubenstein has been ordered to leave the country because she might become a public charge and without having been able to claim the $1,000 which her husband when police arrested him for the murder of Sara Alexander.

1894: It was reported today that Brooklyn resident Nathan Bernstein must have died a happy man since he lived to see his son John married by a rabbi to Miss Ida Korne.

1894(9^thof Tishrei, 5655): Erev Yom Kippur

1894(9^thof Tishrei, 5655): Sixty year old Wolf Cohn “dropped dead while attending services at Adelphi Hall on 52^nd Street and 7^th Avenue.

1894: John Most is scheduled to play the lead in “Die Weber” which is part of the anti-Yom Kippur revelry planned for tonight by the Hebrew Anarchists at the Clarendon Hall.

1894: Voter registration is set to begin in New York City which will be a problem because the sites owned by the Jews will have to close well before the official 9 pm closing time due to the Jewish Holiday.

1894: “Anti-Semitic Groups Combine” published today described the formation of the German Social Reform Party which was created by the delegates to a conference led by Jew baiters at Eisenach Germany

1895: Abraham Stern, a wealthy real estate lawyer, filed a the will of his late aunt, Mrs. Babet Karl, for probate today and discounted reports that there was another will which had been prepared under the influence of Rabbi Aaron Wise and son Otto who is an attorney.

1895: Tonight Tammany Hall nominated Joseph E Newburger, a graduate of Columbia Law School, a Judge on the City Court, a director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the President of Rodolph Sholom to run for a position on the Court of General Sessions in New York.

1897(13^thof Tishrei, 5658): On Shabbat, in Newark, NJ, 45 year old Simon Davis “one of the best known” Jews in the city who has been a partner for the last twenty years in a catering service with his brother, passed away today.

1898(23rd of Tishrei, 5659):Simchat Torah

1898: Herzl has another audience with Grossherzog Friedrich of Baden. On the same day Herzl is received by Foreign Minister Bernhard von Bülow and Reich’s Chancellor Hohenlohe.

1898: “Sixty or seventy of the most prominent lawyers” in Chicago attended a banquet at the Union League Club in honor of the 70^th birthday of Julius Rosenthal who began his career in 1854 as clerk at the banking of house of R.K. Swift before passing the bar.

1901(26^thof Tishrei, 5662): Seventy-year old Sigmund von Henle who represented the city of Munich in the Bavarian Diet from 1873 to 1881 and who served on the board of trustees “of several Jewish societies” passed away today.

1911: Birthdate of Joe Rosenthal. In 1945, at the age of 33, Rosenthal snapped the most famous of all World War II photos – The Raising of the American Flag on Iwo Jima.

1911: Birthdate of Jacob L. Trobe, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, who as a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was among the first relief workers to enter the concentration camps.

1914: It was reported today that at Columbia University, John Dyneley Prince will teach several foreign language courses including one in Hebrew.

1917(23^rdof Tishrei, 5678); Simchat Torah

1917(23^rdof Tishrei, 5678); After enduring three days of torture at the hands of the Ottoman authorities Sarah Aaronsohn committed suicide rather than betray her comrades. Aaronsohn was a member of Nili, a Jewish spy ring working for the British in Palestine. Aaronsohn had been born in Palestine in 1890 and was motivated to work for the British when she the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. She was buried in the cemetery in Zichron Yaakov. There are those who make an annual pilgrimage to her grave on the anniversary of her death so the memory of this brave young Jewess will always be part of the heritage of the Jewish people.

1919(15^thof Tishrei, 5680): Sukkoth

1919: The Cincinnati Reds defeat the Chicago White in the World Series that would become known as the Black Sox Scandal. According to many “experts” Arnold Rothstein, a Jewish born gambler of unsavory reputation, supplied the money to bribe selected members of the White Sox. Abe Attell, a former boxer known as “The Little Hebrew,” was Rothstein’s bagman. According to information left on this blog “Attell was Jewish, but he grew up in an Irish neighborhood. Because of that, he often found himself involved in fights, and according to him, he would get involved in as many as 10 bouts each day as a kid. Attell's father abandoned his family when Attell was 13, and Attell had to sell newspapers to support his family. He used to sell them on the streets and corners, and while selling newspapers, he got a chance to witness the fight between Solly Smith and George Dixon for the world's Featherweight championship. With that, Attell and two of his brothers were convinced that maybe they had a future in boxing.”

1922: In Brownsville immigrant tailor Harry Finkel and his Mary gave birth to Philip “Fyvush” Finkel the veteran of the Yiddish Theatre, Finkel won an emmy for his role as a lawyer in the television hit “Picket Fences.”

1922: Elinor Fatman Morgenthau and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who would serve as FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury gave birth of Dr. Joan E. Morgenthau, the wife of Fred Hirschhorn, Jr.

1923: Birthdate of Israeli, poet, novelist, journalist and filmmaker, Haim Gouri. A sabra. Gouri worked with Jewish refugees in Hungary after WW II and fought with the Palmach in the Negev during the War for Independence before pursuing his literary career. He has won the Bialik, Israel and Uri Zvi Grinberg awards.

1925(21^stof Tishrei, 5686): Hoshana Rabah

1926: Max Derfiner, a pioneer silk manufacturer who arrived in New York from Tel Aviv last week continued to tout the possibilities for developing the silk industry in Palestine. Derfiner who already expressed his belief that in ten years Tel Aviv can become a “second Lyon” said today that one of his keys to success was his ability “to concentrate in one plant all the processes of silk manufacturing…which in France, Switzerland or America would be performed in separate establishments.” Derfiner also said that the Zionists had “developed the ‘Made in Palestine’ label into a commercial asset...” In Jewish homes through the world the name Palestine had a business value as well as a sentimental appeal.

1929: “June Moon,” a play co-authored by George S. Kaufman premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre.

1930: As Dr. Drummond Shiels, British Under-Secretary for Dominions, left his hotel today an angry crowd shouted “Away with Parliament which does do justice to Jews,” “Shame to the British Government” and “Remember Hebron, Safed and Motza,” a reference to the 1929 sites of bloody Arab attacks on defenseless Jews. The crowd sang Hatikvah as Shiels sped away under the protection of the local police. “The demonstration was caused by a report from London that Shiels had promised an Arab delegation that a Parliament for Palestine” would be established. Creation of such an institution was part of a plan to circumvent the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine and guarantee that Jews would always be a minority in Eretz Israel.

1930: An article entitled “Sir John Monash” published one day after his death stated that “It is not an exaggeration to say that Sir John Monash…was one of the ablest soldiers that the British colonies sent to the World War.” Monash was known for his ability to train troops as could be seen from his work with the Third Australian Division. A brave soldier, he was an able tactician and strategist who played a key role in the great assault that broke the Hindenburg Line which forced the Germans to sue for peace. It was said of him “that he would command a division better than a brigade and corps better than a division.” [Nowhere in the article that traced Monash rise to prominence was it mentioned that he was Jewish.]

1933: Birthdate of Martin Gottfried “a drama critic and the author of several biographies of entertainers and playwrights as well as two influential studies of the Broadway musical.” (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)

1935: U.S. premiere of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by Max Reinhardt at the Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre in New York City.

1936(23^rdof Tishrei, 5697): Simchat Torah

1939: In London, Bill Sedley and his wife gave birth to British jurist Sir Stephen Sedley.

1939: Himmler declared that 550,000 Jews living in Polish provinces should be relocated

1940: Adina Gerstel and Rabbi Louis Wefel were married today. Werfel would gain fame for his role as a chaplain during WW II who was known as the flying Rabbi. Unfortunately, his would be cut short when he died when his aircraft crashed in 1943 while he was bring the joy of Chanukah to U.S. troops fighting in North Africa.

1940: In Great Britain, the Committee of Privileges reported that the detention of the anti-Semitic MP Archibald Maule Ramsay under Regulation 18B that applies to people “suspected of disloyalty” “was not a breach of privilgege.” He would be released in 1944 and would return to the House of the House of Commons where he introduced a resolution calling for the banishment of the Jews as had been done by King Edward I.

1941: The Nazis murdered 3,726 Jews including 717 children in the Poligon barracks near Swieciany, Lithuania.

1941: A recruiting rally was held in Tel Aviv as part of a campaign to get another 5,000 Jews from Palestine to enlist in the British Army. Currently there are approximately 10,000 Jews from Palestine serving in the British Army and RAF throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The leading Jewish institutions sponsoring the campaign have adopted the slogan “Jews are fighting with the Allies for victory.”

1941: Parades of Jewish veterans of World War I were greeted by cheering throngs in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The parades were the climax of week’s long effort to recruit more Jewish recruits for the British military. Jewish leaders encouraged every man who can be spared to “enroll under the Union Jack” to “help in the fight against Adolf Hitler.”

1941: Hans Frank told the ministers of the General Government in Cracow; "As far as Jews are concerned . . . I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with one way or another."

1941: The Nazi-allied government led by Marshal Ion Antonescu began deporting Jews to camps located in Transnistria, an occupied area in the former Soviet Union.

1941: Two months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt approved what became known as the Manhattan Project, America’s unprecedented effort to build an atomic bomb. The number of Jews involved in this decision including Einstein is surpassed only by the number of Jewish scientist involved in the effort.

1942: Eighty one year old Jesse Houghton Metcalf, the former Republican Senator from Rhode Island passed away. In 1933, Metcalf was one of the Senators who spoke out against the German treatment of the Jews. While addressing the chamber declared, “We as a notion can only declare the existence of racial or religious prejudice to be untenable as a national ideal.

1942: Anne Frank, who was hiding with her family in an Amsterdam warehouse, wrote in her diary: “The British radio speaks of their (the Jews) being gassed.”

1942: In Brussels, Belgium, five of six leading members of the Belgian Jewish community are released from incarceration following the intervention of Cardinal Joseph-Ernst van Roey and Belgium's Queen Elizabeth.

1942: The USS Drum, the submarine on which Maurice Rindskopf served throughout WW II survived a heavy depth charge attack from the vessels escorting the cargo ships she had sunk the day before.

1942: Thousands of Jews from Miedzyrzec, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.

1943(10th of Tishrei, 5704): Yom Kippur

1943(10th of Tishrei, 5704): On Yom Kippur, over 1,000 men and women at Birkenau, deemed too sick to work, were gassed to death. At Plaszow, 50 Jews were murdered. Ironically, 600 Jews were permitted to pray in Sobibor

1943(10th of Tishrei, 5704): Hundreds of Jews were deported from Trieste and shipped to Auschwitz.

1943(10th of Tishrei, 5704): In Anconcia, a Catholic priest, Don Bernadino, warned the local Rabbi, Elio Toaff, of the impending deportation of the Jewish population. The Jews went into hiding, most of them being sheltered by Christian families. Only ten Jews would be caught and deported and one of them survived the war.

1943: A unnamed Jewish pilot went to Yom Kippur Services in the Grande Synagogue in Tunis “and spent almost the entire day in prayer and please for life and safety and happiness.” (As reported by Rabbi Louis Werfel, the chaplain known as “The Flying Rabbi”)

1944(22^ndof Tishrei, 5705): Shemini Atzeret

1944: At Birkenau, 650 boys involved with the Birkenau revolt were locked in the barracks together. Most of them would be tortured and then killed on October 20.

1944: Mordechai Adler (who became Mordechai Eldar) “celebrated his 15^thbirthday at Auschwitz-Birkenau and cheated death today. Having been “selected” at Auschwitz and having already stripped naked, for some unknown reason German officers had Eldar and 49 others step outside, put on shoes and uniforms, and sent them to work in Canada, the facility where the Germans had prisoners sort and store all the possessions of those who arrived at the Death Camp.

1944: The SS arrests three Jewish women at the Auschwitz munitions factory for complicity in the smuggling of explosives used in the uprising of October 6-7

1945: Tonight, "security at the Atlit Detention Center near Haifa - a camp for 'illegal' Jewish immigrants in Mandatory Palestine - was breached; 200 detainees mainly Holocaust survivors and recent arrivals from Europe, were released in a daring operation launched by the Palmach."

1945: After his trial in Paris, Pierre Laval, head of the Vichy Government is executed by firing squad. General Petain was the titular head of the Vichy Government. Laval really ran the show. Vichy was the name of the French collaborationist government that worked with the Nazis during World War II. Vichy’s supporters included France’s own, home-grown anti-Semites. The Vichy government was so eager to ingratiate itself with the New German Order, that it was rounding up Jews and turning them over to the Nazis before the Nazis asked them to do so.

1945: Loy Henderson, the head of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs at the United States State Department who was an Arabist opposed to the creation of Jewish state in Palestine sent Secretary of State James Byrnes “a memo regarding what he called ‘urgent problems relating to the Palestine.’”

1946: An announcement was made today that “Israel Aron Friedman, a member of the board of directors of General Mercantile Corporation of Palestine, Ltd., has arrived in New York from Tel Aviv. “The corporation is concerned with the procurement of raw materials and machinery for the basic Jewish industries of Palestine.”

1946: Birthdate of Gustin L. Reichbach, the Columbia University protest leader who went on to a career in the law and as a distinguished jurist. (As reported by Jim Dwyer)

1947: “The Jewish Agency…called upon…Jewish veterans of the North African and Italian campaigns” now living in Palestine “to form the nucleus of a Jewish army that would be ready for a ‘life or death showdown’ with Arab forces. Mrs. Gold Meyerson, head of the Agency’s political department told veterans assembled at Tel Aviv that salvation for Palestine Jews rested not at Lake Success but ‘right here. If the Arab leaders have their way, we must either give up the link between the Jews and Palestine or die in a last-ditch struggle…We are not looking for trouble, but we are ready for it.’”

1947: President Truman learned that the Arab League Executive had requested its member nations to dispatch troops to the Palestine border as part of a plan to invade the Mandate Territory. Truman responded by instructing Secretary of State Marshall to support the planned partition of Palestine.

1948: During the War for Independence, Egypt launched a major attack in the Negev. This
attack constitutes a major violation of the UN brokered truce. This Egyptian offensive along with other violations will lead to a major Israeli military effort later in the month of October.

1951(9^thof Tishrei, 5712) Erev Yom Kippur

1951: Birthdate of actor Robert Wuhl who played the title role in the HBO hit “Arli$$.”

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that since 1948, Youth Aliyah had absorbed more than 5,000 young people from Morocco. Their parents were given a choice of three types of educational institutions: Orthodox, traditional (keeping of Sabbath, festivals and Kashrut), and non-religious.

1955(23 of Tishrei, 5716): Simchat Torah

1956: Arab terrorists cross the border, murdering two Israeli workers at Even Yehuda and cutting off the victims’ ears.

1958:HMS Springer an S class submarine of the Royal Navy was sold to the Israeli navy today and renamed the Tanin

1958: Pope Pius XII passed away 19 years after being elevated to the Papacy. The Pope’s role in the Holocaust has been too well documented to need to be covered here.

1963: Birthdate of journalist Daniel Pearl who was brutally murdered by Moslem terrorists on February 21, 2002.

1967(5th of Tishrei, 5728): French author Andre Maurois, born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog, passed away at the age of 82.

1971: “The Incomparable Max” a play co-authored by Jerome Lawrnece based on a short story by Max Beerbohm had its first “preview” performance today.

1972: Birthdate of Etan Kalil Patz

http://www.biography.com/people/etan-patz-20851519

1973: On the third day of the Yom Kippur war a pessimistic Moshe Dayan addresses a group of journalist leading them to believe that Israeli forces are in such precarious shape that they will have to surrender most of the Sinai to the advancing Egyptians and make a stand in the eastern edge of the peninsula. Prime Minister Golda Meir is so alarmed by Dayan’s emotional about-face that she refuses to let him address the nation on television in the evening. Israeli news broadcasts reported for the first time that the Egyptian attack had driven Israeli forces from the east bank of the Suez Canal. While Syrian artillery was able to shell villages in the Jezreel Valley, Israeli planes had attacked installations in around Damascus. Inadvertently, one of the attacks had hit the Soviet Cultural Center in the Syrian capital. In a television later in the evening an Israeli general pointed out that the Soviets had been arms into the Arab states for the past six years creating a military imbalance of striking proportion. He also said that Israeli forces would not cease operation action until the Arab states learned that they could not violate a truce with impunity without paying a high price.

1973: During a meeting of the war cabinet, Defense Minister Dayan voiced confidence in the Israeli forces' ability to overcome Syria and asked permission to bomb targets in Damascus. "There's an order: No retreat on the Golan," he said. "Fighting to the death and not moving ... What I'm suggesting and asking for approval of [is] bombings inside the city." Prime Minister Meir asked whether he meant within the city itself, and Dayan confirmed this. He said the IDF can't muster a column to march on Damascus even as a decoy, but bombing in and around the city could "break the Syrians" - though he conceded, "You can't say the population wouldn't be hurt."Why would it necessarily break them?" Meir asked. "Would a bombing here break us?” General Elazar replied: "A heavy bombing here, on Reading and Ramat Aviv, would seriously disrupt things."

1973: Aharon Sagi, Harel Gilutz and Yosef Ye'ari made it back safely to Israeli lines after their F-4E Phantom Jets were shot down.

1973: Lt. Col. Yossi Ben Hanan who had cut short his honeymoon in Nepal at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War “took command of a scratch force of Israeli tanks that had been put together by Shmuel Askarov, one of the survivors of the decimated 188th Armored Brigade. Leading his command in a desperate battle against overwhelming numbers of Syrian T-62s, Ben Hanan restored the tactical situation but at the cost of most of his command and his own Centurion tank. Blown out of the turret when his tank was hit by a Sagger anti-tank missile, Ben Hanan lay wounded on the battlefield until he was rescued from behind enemy lines by Yonatan Netanyahu, a legendary member of the IDF's elite Sayeret Matkal.” A Sabra, born in 1945, Hanan was a second generation military leader. He father, Michael Ben Hanan had been a Haganah commander in Jerusalem.

1973: As of today those parts of the Golan that were the responsibility of the Golani Brigade were back under Israeli control, and the Syrians had been pushed back over the Purple Line. The Purple Line was the name given to the cease fire line drawn between Israel and Syria after the 1967 war.

1973: “Against orders, reserve Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon launches a counterattack against Egyptian forces in the canal area. Sharon’s actions lead to moves for his dismissal.”(As reported by JTA)

1973: U.S. Jewish leader Max Fisher urges President Richard Nixon in a meeting at the White House to “please send the Israelis what they need.” That night, Nixon tells Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that “all your aircraft and tank losses will be replaced.” (As reported by JTA)

1973: Lt. Colonel Avigdor Kahalani was awarded the Medal Valor for his leadership and valor shown starting today during the Yom Kippur War when “he commanded a hastily assembled group of tanks and crews from different armor units” that “repelled a vastly superior Syrian force which had overrun the Israeli positions in the first days of the war.” The scene of the fighting was so “littered with hundreds of burned tanks that it was renamed “Emek Ha-Bacha” (the Valley of Tears)

1973: Birthdate of Erin Daniels. Born Erin Cohen the Vassar College grad is known for her career as a television actress.

1974: Oskar Schindler, the Schindler in “Schindler’s List” passed away.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005787

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/schindler.html

1980(20th of Tishrei, 5741): A bomb planted in a motorcycle saddlebag outside the Copernic Street synagogue in a wealthy eastern Paris neighborhood exploded on a Friday night, killing three Frenchmen and Aliza Shagrir, 42, and wounding 22 others. Shagrir, an Israeli cinematographer, was walking past the synagogue with her 15-year-old son, Haggai, who would eventual go to work at the Foreign Ministry. Aliza Shagrir was the wife of Micha Shagrir a well-known television, film and documentary producer who lives in Jerusalem and who established the Aliza Shagrir Fund prize for outstanding documentaries in her name. Eventually, Hassan Diab a Lebanese native living in Canada would be charged with crime.

1981: Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas T. Johnson ruled in favor of Mel Mermelstein, finding that he had provided sufficient evidence to prove his claim that Jews were gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Court issued a judgment requiring the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) to pay Mermelstein $50,000, plus $40,000 for personal suffering, and to write a public apology to Mermelstein.

1986: Senator Claiborne Pell (D- R.I.) enters into the Congressional Record an article, "Navy Rabbi To Join Iceland Team: Russian immigrant's grandson picked to lead staff services," published in the Providence Journal that described the role played in by Rabbi Arnold Resnick, a U.S. Navy Chaplain in leading Yom Kippur services in Greenland during the planning meetings for the latest Soviet-American summit

1985: A day after having murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a wheel-chair bound Jewish American passenger and then throwing his body overboard, the Arab/Moslem terrorists who had high jacked the Achille Lauro negotiated with authorities as the ship steamed towards Port Said

1987: Claire Boothe Luce passed away. Most people remember her as the wife of Henry Luce, the man who created the Time-Life publishing empire. Others remember her as a Republican Party political figure and ambassador. But Mrs. Luce considered herself first and foremost a playwright, a role that brought her great success before World War II. In 1939, she wrote Margin for Error, a comedy about a policeman assigned to protect the German consul in New York. The Consul is a Nazi. The police officer is an American Jew. The play was considered the first successful anti-Nazi play to reach Broadway.

1988: Active polio viruses have been discovered in sewage and a water purification plant in four more Israeli cities, bringing the total number of infected areas to nine, Israel Radio said today.

1989: Penthouse Magazine'sHebrew edition hits the newsstands

1990: Saddam Hussein threatens to hit Israel with a new missile.

1993(24^thof Tishrei, 5754): On Shabbat, “Dror Forer and Aran Bachar were murdered by terrorists in Wadi Kelt in the Judean Desert. The Popular Front and the Islamic Jihad 'Al-Aqsa Squads' each publicly claimed responsibility.”

1994(4th of Cheshvan): Holocaust survivor, successful businessman and founder of the NYC Marathon, Fred Lebow, passed away.( As reported by Michael Janofsky)

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/10/obituaries/fred-lebow-is-dead-at-62-founded-new-york-marathon.html

1994: Corey Pavin won the Tokai Classic. The golf tournament was Japanese; the golfer was Jewish.

1995(15^thof Tishrei, 5756): Sukkoth

2000(10^thof Tishrei, 5761): Yom Kippur observed for the first time in the 21st century.

2003: The Israeli Gesher Theater starts its tour of Moscow. The Moscow critics have already called the tour the biggest event of the theater season. The Gesher Theater was founded in 1990 in Tel Aviv by Russian immigrants

2004: The first National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust was held in Romania. October 9 was chosen as a date for this event because it marks the beginning of Romanian deportations of Jews to Transnistria, in 1942.

2004: Final performance of the London production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeny Todd.”

2004(24th of Tishrei, 5765): On Shabbat Jews begin the cycle of Torah readings with Bereshit.

2004(24th of Tishrei, 5765: Philosopher Jacques Derrida passes away at the age of 74

2005: The Romanian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, participated in the laying of a wreath at the Holocaust Memorial in Iasi and the inauguration of The Centre for Hebrew Studies. During the inaugural National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust, the National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania was also opened.

2005: The Histadrut labor federation renews the strike against the Religious Councils. Funerals will be performed only at night and there will be no registration of marriages or Kashrut supervision in restaurants, hotels and catering halls.

2005: Despite threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists, Israelis work to develop a fruitful society and create an air of normalcy. For example, Haaretz reported that Israel’s 2 – 1 victory over Faroe Islands in a World Cup soccer qualifier in the Ramat Gan stadium means Israel still has a chance of qualifying for the World Cup in Germany 2006.

2005: Bishop Von Galen, the German bishop known as the "Lion of Muenster" for his courageous anti-Nazi sermons during World War II took a step on the road to sainthood when he was beatified in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Nazis deported 37 priests to concentration camps 10 of whom perished in von Galen's place as punishment for the homilies, according to a brief biography by Reinhard Lettmann. However von Galen was not arrested. The Nazis were worried that if von Galen were arrested and killed, Muenster's residents would be angered and "written off as lost during the duration of the war," Lettmann wrote. Von Galen helped a Protestant pastor to hide a Jewish boy in an institute belonging to the bishop's office and took responsibility for the youth, who after the war was reunited with his mother, according to testimony carried by Vatican Radio.

2005(6th of Tishrei, 5766): Comedian Louis Nye passed away. (As reported by James Barron)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/arts/television/11nye.html?_r=0

2005: The New York Timesreviewed The Pagoda in the Garden: a Novel in Three Parts by Wendy Lesser.

2005: The Times of Londonreviewed We Are at War: The Remarkable Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times by Simon Garfield

2006: A ceremony took place for setting the keystone of the National Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest. The ceremony was attended by the President, Foreign Minister Affairs Minister and Culture Minister, as well as representatives of the Romanian and international Jewish community. A commemoration march also took place through Bucharest in order to remember the Roma victims of the Holocaust and to demand greater recognition by the government of Roma Holocaust victims.

2006: Haaretz reported that Holocaust survivor groups here have joined the recommendation of the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, to award the Nobel Peace Prize to 96-year-old Irena Sandler who was a member of the Polish underground group Zegota that was dedicated to saving Jews

2007: A special preview screening of The Counterfeiters takes place as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival. “The Counterfeiters is based on the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936.”

2008(10th of Tishrei, 5769): Yom Kippur

2008: At Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. during a late afternoon break between Musaf and Mincha, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher and Emily Yoffe of Slate lead a learning session that opens with the study of a classic text on the use of speech in public followed by a discussion of the ethical dilemmas of reporting and the spiritual importance of truth-telling.

2008: In Acre, both Jews and Arabs clashed with police in various parts of the ethnically divided city, leading to 10 arrests.

2009: Michael Chabon, author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boysand the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,discusses his first book of nonfiction, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, at Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

2009: Scott Turow, the bestselling author of the legal thrillers Presumed Innocentand The Burden of Proof, presents a lecture, "Confessions of a Death Penalty Agnostic," drawn from his book "Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty," at the Fairfax County Government in Fairfax, Va..

2009: Kol Shira will be performing at Java House in downtown Iowa City. Kol Shira is an all women sextet known for its eclectic fusion performances of International Jewish music, including songs from Russia, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Iraq, Yemen, France, Spain, Middle East, Italy, Romania, Algeria and more. The group features vocals, flute, guitar, piano, bass, cello and hand-held percussion. Jim Musser, music reviewer for the Iowa City Press Citizen, described Kol Shira as “remarkable” and “exquisite.” At the end of 2004, Musser ranked their CD as one of the top six independent releases from the Eastern Iowa area.

2009 (21 Tishrei, 5770): Hoshanah Rabbah

2009: While Friday prayers ended without incident at the al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, Palestinian rioters clashed with police in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Issawiya, Ras el-Amud and Sur Baher this afternoon.

2009(21^stof Tishrei, 5770): “Stuart M. Kaminsky, a film scholar-turned-detective novelist who was widely known for his prodigious output, complex characters, and rich evocations of time and place, including Hollywood in its Golden Age, died today at the age of 75.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/arts/14kaminsky.html

2009 (21^st Tishrei, 5770): Richard W. Sonnenfeldt, who fled Nazi Germany as a teenager, became the chief interpreter for American prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and interrogated some of the most notorious Nazi leaders of World War II, died today at his home in Port Washington, N.Y. at the age of 86.(As reported by A.G. Sulzberger)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/nyregion/13sonnenfeldt.html

2009: Even on Hoshanah Rabah there is no rest from reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose (Los Angeles Times) and Michael Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics by Joyce Purnick (NY Times)

2010: A special Ethiopian Shabbat luncheon is scheduled to take place at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan.

2010(1 Cheshvan, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2010: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told Arab leaders he may seek U.S. recognition for a Palestinian state, which would include all of the West Bank, should peace talks with Israel break down, an aide said today.

2010: In a case of Jew versus Jew, Andy Samberg played the part of Mark Zuckerberg in Saturday Night Live’s lampoon of Facebook and its creator.

2011: StrorahSteps is scheduled to present Norah’s Rainbow at the 14^th Street Y in Manhattan.

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Lucky Bruce:A Literary Memoir” by Bruce Jay Friedman.

2011: A top Israeli security official is visiting Cairo, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reported today, amid recent tensions between Israel and Egypt over security arrangements in the Sinai.

2011:The Yom Kippur War ceremony in Tel Aviv was almost canceled today after not a single government minister attended, causing uproar among the bereaved families. The ceremony, held annually at the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery which is the resting place of 780 soldiers who were killed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, was supposed to begin at 4 pm but was delayed after government representatives failed to arrive.

2012: A screening of Amos Gati’s “Field Diary” is scheduled to take place at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.

2012: “Fill the Voice,” “the first film about haredi life directed by an insider for a secular audience” is scheduled to have US premiere at the New York Film Festival

2012(23 of Tishrei, 5773): Simchat Torah for Orthodox and Conservative Jews.

2012: The funeral for Dr. Joan Morgenthau Hirschhorn is scheduled to take place Temple Emanu-El in New York City followed by a private burial.

2012: Two Kassam rockets fired by terrorists from the Gaza Strip tonight landed near the southern Israeli town of Sderot, while three Grad rockets fell outside the nearby town of Netivot.

2012: Serge Haroche, a French-Jewish physicist, has won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with David Wineland from the United States. (As reported by JTA)

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/10/09/3108811/french-jew-american-researcher-share-nobel-prize-in-physics

http://www.timesofisrael.com/french-jew-is-co-recipient-of-2012-nobel-prize-in-physics/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=5656b1a69c-2012_10_09&utm_medium=email

2013: Jerry Dauber, author of The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye is scheduled to deliver The Bernard Wexler Lecture on Jewish History in Washington, DC

2013: “Meditations on Equilibrium: Works in Glass and Paper” by Alex Hirsch is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum

2013: “Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age” is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum.

2013, Janet Yellen was officially nominated to replace Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve.

2013: Prof. Arieh Warshel, who was born in Israel and now lives in California, and Prof. Michael Levitt, a South African native who made aliya and now splits his time between the US and Israel, Prof. Martin Karplus, an Austrian native who fled to the US before the Holocaust won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today. Warshel and Levitt are Israel’s 11th and 12th Nobel Prize laureates. (As reported by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich)

2013: Pope Francis told Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) he would visit Israel, but did not specify a date.

2013: Michael Applebaum, the first Jewish Mayor of Montreal, is scheduled to make his first court appearance after having been “arrested and indicted on 14 charges including fraud, conspiracy, breach of trust, and corruption in municipal affairs.”

2013: Two IDF soldiers were hurt today after two mortar shells fired from Syrian territory landed near their position in the Golan Heights

2013(5^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Sixty-nine year old Roger Richman, the son of a rabbi who became a major “talent agent” passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/business/roger-richman-agent-who-fought-for-rights-of-stars-heirs-dies-at-69.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1412727054-kCJDxcJyRhmTUCKZv91s8g

2013(5^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety-seven year old movie critic Stanley Kaufman passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/business/roger-richman-agent-who-fought-for-rights-of-stars-heirs-dies-at-69.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1412727054-kCJDxcJyRhmTUCKZv91s8g

2014(15^thof Tishrei, 5775): Sukkoth

2014: In Romania observance of “National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust.”

2014: “Gett,”“a stark divorce drama from brother-and-sister duo Ronit and Shlomi Alkabetz” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival which opens today.

OCTOBER 10

680: At the Battle of Karbala, Shia Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as Aashurah. This is part of the split between the Shiites and the Sunnis that has led to so much violence and had an impact on the terrorist war against Israel and other nations of the world.

732: At the Battle of Tours which was fought near Poitiers, France, the leader of the Franks (modern day French) Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. This meant that the territory south of the Pyrenees – Spain – would remain in Islamic hands for the better part of the next seven centuries while the rest of Europe would remain in Christian hands for the time being. This demarcation would lead to the development of different variants of Judaism depending up whether the Jews lived in Moslem and Christian dominated parts of Europe.

1384: A judicial inquiry was held in a castle at Châtel, by order of Prince Amadeus, Count of Savoy with purpose of confirming the charges by his Christian subjects that the Jews were guilty of poisoning the wells, springs “and other things which the Christians use.” Numerous Jews of both sexes have been imprisoned based on these charges. The case rested, in part, on the admission of Jew named Agimet from Geneva, who confessed after having been subject to only “a little” torture that he had engaged in such practices.

1619(2nd Cheshvan, 5380): Rabbi Joseph Pardo passed away today in Amsterdam.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0015_0_15416.html

1674(10^thof Tishrei, 5435): David Cohen de Lara, the “Haham, lexicographer and writer on ethics” passed away today in Hamburg.

1723: The party responsible for slandering a group of Jews was put to death in an auto-de-fe at Lisbon. The person had alleged groups of men were assembling to practice Jewish customs. The men were later arrested and jailed where many of them had died.

1755: In a 4 month period ending today, eight Jewish merchants were listed in the Custom House records of New York.

1777(9^thof Tishrei, 5538): Erev Yom Kippur -- Kol Nidre is chanted for the third time during the American Revlution.

1792(24^thof Tishrei, 5553): Seventy-nine year old Dutch born businessman, Talmudist and Hebrew language poet passed away after spending the last six months of his life as honorary secretary of the Spanish-Portuguese community at Amsterdam.

1802: In Philadelphia, a group of German Jews formed a society that they called the “Hebrew German Society Rodef Shalom” which was one of the earliest German Jewish congregations in America. “The society was reorganized and chartered in 1812. Among the earliest rabbis were Wolf Benjamin, Jacob Lipman, Bernhard Illowy, Henry Vidaver, Moses Sulzbacher, and Moses Rau.”

1818(10^thof Tishrei, 5579): Yom Kippur

1823: Birthdate of Russian scholar and philanthropist Joshua ben Aaron Zeitlin.

1830(23^rdof Tishrei, 5591): Simchat Torah

1845: Founding of the U.S. Naval Academy. Today there are approximately 140 Jewish Midshipman at the Naval Academy. The dedication of the multi-million dollar Uriah P. Levy Jewish Center and Chapel in 2005 marked a major milestone in the development of Jewish life at the Annapolis institution. For more about the history of the Jews at the U.S. Naval Academy see “The Judaic Experience at the U.S. Naval Academy” by Joel Ira Holwitt

1847: In Hamburg, Germany, Julie and Samuel Lewishon gave birth to Leonard Lewisohn who gained fame and fortune in the United States as a businessman and philanthropist.

1847: A constitution was adopted forming 'The Ladies Sewing Association, of the Congregation Shearith Israel, of New York.' The society consisted of an initial fifty members who would make garments for the needy.

1851: Communications pioneer Paul Julius Reuter “established a telegraph office at the I Royal Exchange Buildings, near the London stock exchange. From this location he transmitted stock market quotations between London and Paris, using the new Calais-Dover telegraph cable under the English Channel. Recognizing the need for a news service, Reuter would the next seven years working hard to build the agency and promote his services to newspapers.”

1853: An article entitled “Jewish Educational Institute” published today described the cornerstone laying ceremony for a Jewish Educational Institute to be built in New York next to B’nai Jeshraun Synagogue on Greene Street. Rabbi Morris Raphall’s address to the attendees included the statement that he was as proud of the establishment of this academy for Jewish study as he was of the role he had played in establishing a similar such institution in Birmingham, England. He stressed the importance of Jews receiving both a secular and religious education. He spoke of the unique benefits Jews enjoyed in the United States. And he predicted that a day would come when the United States would surpass the United Kingdom and when the Jews of the United States would have to assume a leadership role for Jews throughout the world.

1854: The Jewish Theological Seminary, “the first rabbinical seminary in Central Europe, opened today in Breslau.

1862: Zillah and Samuel Henry Beddington gavie birth to Ada Beddington who married Ernest Leverson and as Ada Leverson became a noted British author and friend to the famous.

1864(10th of Tishrei, 5625): Yom Kippur

1864: Jews gathered at the home of a merchant in Salt Lake City to observe Yom Kippur. This was probably the first communal Jewish activity to take place in this Mormon dominated regioned.

1864: The New York Timesreported that “To-day will be generally observed by our Jewish fellow-citizens as a rigid fast-day and period of strict religions observance. It is known as Your Kippur Day of Atonement. Every Israelite in every part of the world, who believes in the Law of Moses and the doctrine of a future world, keeps the day as a strict fast-day. From sunset yesterday till sunset to-day no food or drink is indulged in. Every Jew and Jewess, and children above thirteen, must observe the fast. According to Jewish tradition, on the first day of the New Year, the Israelites are summoned in judgment before their Creator, but sentence upon their misdeeds is reserved till the tenth day Your Kippur. If, during the ten intermediate days, called the Arsareth Yermi Tersluaro, ten day of repentence, penitence is made, and the "sinner turneth from the evil of his ways," the anger of the Lord is assuaged, and on the day of atonement forgiveness is accorded. When the Isralites worshipped in the Temple at Jerusalem, the service of this day was equally solemn and splendid. It was the only day throughout the year on which even the Cohen Hagodol (High priest,) presumed to enter the most holy sanctuary of the temple, or to pronounce the renevated and deladed name of the Deity which at any other time it was unlawful even for him to utter. The glories of this day are commemorated in the musaf or midday service of the synagogue. According to Jewish tradition, also the Your Kippur even before the giving of the law was a day of atonement and pardon. Adam did penance and was pardoned on this day. Abraham entered the covenant of the circumcision on this day. Moses, after he had broken the first tables, ascended the Mount again on the first day of Elul, so that the second forty days expired with the Your Kippur. The eve is allotted to solemn feasting, and at sunset the twenty-four hours fast and continued prayers commence. It is also customary in the evening for parents to bestow a solemn benediction on their children. Whosoever meet on that day, be they previously acquainted or complete strangers, salute each other with brotherly love and sincerity. If any dispute exists between the Jews, it is obligatory on them to become reconciled before either of them presumes to appear in the presence of his God. The law which ordains the observance of the day likewise commands the Jew "to afflict his soul." The affliction of the soul by means of the body, according to Jewish custom, consists in abstaining from five indulgences -- eating and drinking, bathing, perfuming, wearing shoes and sexual enjoyment. The observance of the festival is most strict by every one who claims the name of Jew, and even those who make light of other observances throughout the year, pay due regard to this day. The exercises in the synagogue are of a striking and impressive character, the edifice is thronged with worshippers, the ministers and officials are draped in white shrouds while prayers of lamentation and penitence are heard on all sides. The services are divided into five parts the kol nidri, or eve service for last night; the sharcheris, or morning service; the musaf, or midday service! the mincha, or afternoon service; the nela, or conclusion. The synagogues open to-day at 6 A.M., and remain open till sunset.

1864(10th of Tishrei, 5625): Jews of Tunis and Tripoli were massacred.

1865: Joseph M. Montefiore, the President of the Board of Deputies and his wife gave birth to Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore who served as the High Sheriff of the counties of Kent and Sussex and as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the English Zionist Federation.

1871(25th of Tishrei, 5632): Sixty-seven year old Joseph Zedner passed away. Born in Germany, he served as librairian of the Hebrew Department of the British Museum from 1845 until 1869 when he resigned and returned to Germany due to his failing health.

1869(5^thof Cheshvan, 5630): Eighty-five year old Rabbi Abraham Sutro who was an ardent advocate for Jewish emancipation in Prussia passed away today.

1871: Birthdate of “German rabbi and folklorist” Max Grunwald.

1871(25^thof Tishrei, 5632): Sixty-seven year old Joseph Zender the German born librarian of the Hebrew department of the British Museum in London passed away today.

1871: On the last day of the Great Chicago Fire it was noted that a void now existed in the city. The Hebrew Relief Association’s Hospital had been destroyed during the catastrophic conflagration.

1874: Ceremonies were held this evening in New York City marking the formal opening of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Lewis May, the president of the organization opened the event with a brief address followed by Dr. Mark Blumenthal’s speech would provided a brief history of YMHA. Judge Philip J. Joachimsen and Rabbi Isaacs of the 19th Street Synagogue were among the dignitaries who attended the event.

1875: According to reports published today that while the Moslems have political control of Jerusalem, the Jews, who number 8,000 souls and even more during festivals, make up a majority of the city’s population.

1876(22nd of Tishrei, 5637): Shemini Atzeret

1879(23rd of Tishrei, 5640): Simchat Torah

1879: Daniel Edward Bandmann played Shylock in tonight’s opening performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Standard Theatre in New York City. His portrayal of Shakespeare’s Jew differs from that of Edwin Booth who creates an “over-tragic and impassioned” figure.

1879: Birthdate of Eugen Täubler who wrote his dissertation on Josephus and lectured at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin.

1883(9^thof Tishrei, 5644): Erev Yom Kippur

1883: Three hundred boys attended Kol Nidre services at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum that were led by Dr. Herman Baar, the Superintendent.

1884(21st of Tishrei, 5645): Hoshanah Rabbah

1884(21^stof Tishrei, 5645): Seventy six year old Johanna Goldschmidt the wife of Moritz David Goldschmidt who was a philanthropist, author and an advocate for the right’s of women passed away today in Hamburg.

1884(21st of Tishrei, 5645): Dr. Adolph Huebsch, “one of the most popular and influential…rabbis” in New York “died suddenly from heart disease from heart disease” from “heart disease” at 4:30 this morning. Born in Hungary in 1830, earned a doctorate at the University of Prague after which he took a pulpit in that Czech city. In 1886, he came to the United States where began serving as rabbi at Ahaveth Chesed. In addition to leading his congregation through a period of growth that included the building of a new sanctuary, he was a noted scholar.

1885: George S. Stinson, a special agent of the Internal Revenue Department discovered today that “crooked whiskey was being manufactured by four Hebrews at Bruynswick, NY.

1886(11th of Tishrei, 5647): David Levy Yulee, the first Jewish United States Senator passed away. David Yulee (also spelled Yule) was known simply as David Levy for the first three and half decades of his life. He had been born on the West Indian island of St. Thomas and brought to Florida by his father Moses Levy. The younger Levy turned Yulee was a successful planter and lawyer, a perfect background for a further career in politics. When Florida became a state in 1845, Yulee was chosen to serve as one of her senators. Yulee was not active in Jewish communal life and married a non-Jew. However, his political opponents did not ignore this fact. When the Civil War broke out, Yulee joined the other Jewish senator, Judah P. Benjamin in secession. During the war he served in the Confederate Congress. After the war, he served a year in prison on for reasons not recorded. He had been arrested while on his way to Washington, D.C. in an effort to gain Florida’s re-entry into the Union. It is ironic that the only claim to fame of a Jew who sought to assimilate is tied to that very Jewishness.

1886(11th of Tishrei, 5647): In St. Louis, Frank Sandmeyer, a Jew who was employed as a waiter at Esher’s Variety Theatre took his own life after killing his wife.

1886: It was reported that an actor named “Curtis” will be appearing at the 14^thStreet Theatre in New York. His forte is his comic portrayal or “caricature” of “the superficial traits of the modern German” Jew.

1889(15^thof Tishrei, 5650): Sukkoth

1890: The Vossiesche Zeitung declared that the charges published in the Das Volkattacking the committee honoring Count von Moltke as being Jews seeking to make money from the event are “a calumny.”

1890: The anti-Semitic May Laws were modified to allow Jews to rent, but not buy, lands within certain city limits that will be used for grazing purposes only.

1890: “Plans were filed with the Building Bureau…for the erection of a five-story orphan asylum for the Hebrew Shelter and Guardian Society” in New York City.

1891(8^thof Tishrei, 5652): Shabbat Shuva

1891: In Paris, author and humorist Tristan Bernard and his wife gave birth to director and screenwriter Raymond Bernard.

1891(8^thof Tishrei, 5652): Thirty-five year old Anna Hilkofsky who suffered from epilepsy died this evening when she died in a fire that started while she was cooking and fell into the stove.

1891:”Alleged Great Expectations” published today described the action being taken by 23 year old Charles Horowitz, a Jewish peddler who came to the United States from Russia two years ago to obtain his share of his late uncle’s estate who reportedly died in San Francisco leaving his heirs $30,000,000.

1893(30th of Tishrei, 5654): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1893(30th of Tishrei, 5654): Lipman Emanuel "Lip" Pike, the first professional Jewish baseball player passed away.

1893: In Jersey City, NJ, the Moral Reform Society, an organization composed of representatives from various Protestant Churches met for the first time and decided to include Jews and Catholics in its membership.

1894(10^thof Tishrei, 5655): Yom Kippur

1894: “Died at the Services” published today described the death of sixty year old Wolf Cohn who passed away during Kol Nidre services.

1894: Due to the observance of the Day Atonement, the 1,000 Jewish registrars who would have served both the Republicans and Tammany Hall will not be able to serve.

1894: “Business on the Stock Exchange…was restricted owing to the absence of many operators who were away observing the Hebrew fast of the Atonmenet.”

1894: In New York, Temple Beth-El will use “the new order of services for Yom Kippur adopted at the Central Conference of American Rabbis at the meeting in Atlantic City. In a more shocking move, German will no longer be used and all prayers will be in English or Hebrew.

1895: “Two Wills In A Week” published today described a dispute over the estate of Mrs. Babet Karl involving Rabbi Aaron Wise of Congregation Rodoph Sholom and his son Otto Irving Wise on one side family members including her nephew Abraham Stern on the other side.

1896: It was reported today that a rare copy of William Blake’s “Jerusalem” had been sold at action by Bangs & Co for $14.50.

1897(14^thof Tishrei, 5658): Erev Sukkoth

1897: At Temple Israel on 125^th Street and 5^th Avenue Rabbi Maurice Harris officiated at services which included an address by Daniel P. Hays, President of the congregation.

1897: Samuel D. Levy presided over the 18^th annual meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society

1898(24^thof Tishrei, 5659): Author and numismatist David Henriques de Castro passed away in Amsterdam the city where he was born in 1832.

1899: The New York Timesbegins publishing a supplemental section devoted to reviewing books. The New York Times Book Sectionhas provided numerous reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers for over a century. It has been an invaluable resource for this blog.

1900: During the “Konitz Affair,” an episode of Jewish blood libel, “Jacob Jacoby of Tuchel, was sentenced to confinement for one year in the penitentiary for perjury.”

1900: In Detroit, Congregation Beth El made the decision to build a new Temple which will be located at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Eliot Street.

1902 (9^th of Tishrei, 5663): Erev Yom Kippur

1906(21st of Tishrei, 5667): Hoshanah Rabah

1907: Ernesto Nathan, a Jew, was elected Mayor of Rome.

1908(15^thof Tishrei, 5669): Sukkoth

1910: Birthdate of Photographer Julius Shulman. Born in Brooklyn, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, his family moved to a farm in Connecticut, where Shulman first developed a love of nature that, he said, awakened him to light and shadow and influenced his life's course. When Julius was 10, his father moved the family to the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, which at that time was predominantly Jewish, and opened the New York Dry Goods Store. His father died of tuberculosis in 1923, leaving Julius' mother to run the business and raise five children.

1910: Ten Jewish men founded Tau Episolon Phi (TEP) fraternity at Columbia University.

1912: Today, Dr. Joseph Silverman officiated at the funeral of Professor Morris Loeb. The funeral which was attended by more than 500 people representing most of the Jewish charitable and religious organizations of New York and many of its educational institutions was held at Temple Emanu-El Cemetery, Salem Fields, Cypress Hills. Dr. Samuel Schulmann of Temple Beth-El gave the closing prayer.

1913(9^thof Tishrei, 5674): Erev Yom Kippur – Kol Nidre is heard for the last time before the start of World War I when, as the British Foreign Minister said, the lights went out all over the world and we do not know if we shall ever see them turned again.”

1915: In the Ukraine, Elie Gottmann and Sonia-Fanny Ettinger gave birth to their only child French geographer Jean Gottman.

1917: In Brownsville, Pincus Schacter, “a seventh generation shochet” and his wife “the former Miriam Schimmelman” gave birth to Herschel Schacter the first US Army Chaplain to enter and participate in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp and the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

1923: Birthdate of major league pitcher, Saul Rogovin.

1925(22nd of Tishrei, 5686): Shemini Atzeret

1926: The weeklong campaign of the Jewish Welfare Board to raise $150,000 is scheduled to come to an end today.

1929: Die gelbe Jacke (The Yellow Jacket) an operetta with a libretto co-authored by Fritz Lohner-Beda was performed, at the Metropol Theatre, Berlin for the first time today.

1930: Birthdate of English playwright and Nobel Prize Winner, Harold Pinter.

1933(20th of Tishrei, 5694): Sixth day of Sukkoth

1933(20th of Tishrei, 5694): The Nazis killed Dr Theo Katz at Dachau. According to Martin Gilbert, Katz had worked in the camp hospital before his murder.

1935: George Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" opened on Broadway. The Jewish music master used his talents to bring the life of African-Americans to mainstream entertainment.

1937: The Palestine Postreported that the Mandatory Administration assured the British government that no question of security would interfere with the plans to send a new commission to Palestine. This new commission will be well protected and will be well able to consider how to implement the country's partition, as requested by the Mandatory Commission of the League of Nations at their General Assembly meetings in Geneva.

1937: The Postreported that a tax collector's van was robbed by armed Arabs on the Nablus-Jenin road.

1938: Sh'chita (Jewish ritual slaughter) is banned in Italy.

1938: In accord with the terms of the Munich Agreement signed in September, German troops took control of the Sudetenland and gained de facto control over the rest of Czechoslovakia. The agreement gave the Nazis direct control over another portion of Europe’s Jewish population. More importantly, it was one more bloodless victory for Hitler. It helped drive the Soviets to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany which led to the invasion of Poland which led to…well you know the rest.

1938: In statement issued today, U.S. Representative Emanujel Celler of New York urged President Roosevelt “to remind Prime Minister Neville Chamerlain of Great Britain’s solemn pledge in the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine and to declare that the United States ‘views with great conern and alarm a departure by Great Britain from its obligations under that pact.’” Celler went on to express concern that the promise of the Balfour Declaration was about to be “scrapped.”

1939: “A memorial to Felix Warburg will be started today when foundations are laid for seventy farms at Kfar Felix Warburg in southern Palestine.

1939: The period of forced labor for Jewish men in Slovakia is scheduled to come to an end today.

1939: The Germans create a Generalgouvernement in Poland. It is an administrative area not incorporated into Greater Germany. The Germans will locate their death camps in the Generalgouvernement.

1941(19th of Tishrei, 5702): Fifth Day of Sukkoth

1941: Marshal Walther von Reichenau instructed his troops that, "The soldier must fully understand the need for severe but just atonement of the Jewish sub-humans." Contrary to one of the myths surrounding the Holocaust, the German army was a willing accomplice in the slaughter of the Jews. The use of gas vans by the roaming Eisengruppen would not put an end to the involvement of German soldiers in the destruction of European Jewry.

1941(19th of Tishrei, 5702): Eliaho Hayeem Victor Cohen, a Lieutenant with the 9th Jat Regiment of the British Indian Army was killed in an accident today during World War II. Although he is buried in the Penang Jewish Cemetery which is believed to be the oldest Jewish cemetery in Malaysia, his grave is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

1941: Thousands of Slovak Jews are sent to labor camps at Sered, Vyhne, and Nováky.

1941: Slovak, Bohemian, and Moravian Jews are forced from their homes and into ghettos.

1942: The SS issued a decree to “cleanse all concentration camps of Jews.”
http://www.natzweiler-struthof.com/OrianenbergOctober101942.htm

1943(11^thof Tishrei, 5704): Twenty-six year old German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon died today at Auschwitz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Salomon#mediaviewer/File:Charlotte_Salomon_-_JHM_4762_-Kristallnacht.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Salomon#mediaviewer/File:Charlotte_Salomon_painting_in_the_garden_about_1939.jpg

1943: A non-Jewish Latvian named Yanis Lipke rescues three Jews in Riga by offering ghetto guards two packs of cigarettes for "some Yids to work in my kitchen garden"

1943: At the Sobibór death camp, a revolt is planned by Jewish laborers and Jewish Red Army POWs.

1943(11^thof Tishrei,5704): On the day after Yom Kippur, a pilot who had spent -the Day of Atonement praying at the Grande Synagogue in Tunis “flew on a mission and never returned.” (As reported by Louis Werfel, “the flying chaplain”)

1944(23rd of Tishrei, 5705): Simchat Torah

1944: Fourteen men from the Sonderkommando who escaped during the revolt of October 7 are found. They are tortured along with many other picked up during the prior two days. But none gave away the locations of the hiding survivors. None of the men would survive the interrogation.

1944: Four additional women involved in smuggling explosives used in the October 6-7 uprising at Auschwitz are arrested, including an inmate named Roza Robota. Fourteen men from the camp's Sonderkommando unit also are arrested. The sole surviving conspirator, a Greek Jew named Isaac Venezia, will later die of starvation after Auschwitz inmates are evacuated by their captors to Ebensee, Austria.

1945: According to reports from Jerusalem, Dr. Chaim Weizmann will resign as President of the World Zionist Organization if the British government reaches decisions that are “unfavorable to the Jewish cause in Palestine.” David Ben Gurion, who is expected to return from London next week, is mentioned as his most likely successor.

1945: The Palmach freed two hundred “illegal” Jewish immigrants who had been rounded up by British troops and were being held at a detention facility near Haifa.

1945: Joseph Darnard who had served under Pierre Laval as the commander of the Vichy militia was executed by a firing squad today.

1946: Birthdate of Arnold E. Resnicoff the Washington D.C. native who became a Conservative Rabbi and served as a chaplain in the U.S. Navy for a quarter of a century.

1947: “Deputy Mayor John H. Bennett spoke at the presentation of a piece of fire apparatus to the volunteer fire brigade of Tel Aviv” which a gift from the New York City Fire Department.

1948: “The intensity of the Egyptian shelling on the southern suburbs (of Jerusalem) was such that the United Nations observers believed that a full-scale Egyptian assault on the city was imminent.

1949: U.S. premiere of “Thieves’ Highway” directed by Jules Dassin, co-starring Lee J. Cobb (Leo Jacob) as “Mike Figlia” with music by Alfred Newman.

1951(10^thof Tishrei, 5712): Yom Kippur

1951: Twentieth Century Fox released “Love Next,” an American comedy-drama directed by Joseph Newman and written by I.A.L. Diamond

1951: Mrs. Alfred F. Hess read a statement at today's meeting of the Board of Trustees of Barnard College expressing their sorrow at the recent death of Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer, one of the founders of and original trustees of Barnard.

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Palestine Conciliation Commission had announced that Israel agreed to release one million in sterling. These funds belonged to Palestinian Arabs who had fled Israel during the fighting when the Arabs tried to destroy the state of Israel at the moment of its birth. The commission commented that the Israeli move was "an important step towards the settlement of the differences existing between Israel and her neighbors." The Israelis hoped that this act of good will would help lead to a peace agreement and that the Arab states would now give the Jews who had fled such places as Iraq would now have access to the funds they had been forced to leave behind. As has happened so many times, the hope proved illusory.

1956: At the urging of Moshe Dayan, the cabinet agreed to an attack aimed at destroying the Kalkilya police fort in response to murders at Even Yehuda. The attack would be led by Mordechai Gur who would later be IDF Chief of Staff. The attack was costly in terms of Israeli casualties and brought an end to the period of night-time tit-for-tat reprisal raids.

1961: U.S. premiere of “Splendor in the Grass,” with music by David Amram and filmed by Boris Kaufman.

1961: Milk and Honey opened on Broadway in the Martin Beck Theatre and ran for 543 performances. “Milk and Honey is a musical…music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The story centers on a busload of lonely American widows hoping to catch husbands while touring Israel and is set against the background of the country's fight for recognition as an independent nation.”

1963: In Princeton, NJ, Ruth and Judea Pearl gave birth to journalist Daniel Pearl whowas kidnapped by Pakistani terrorists and later murdered by Al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan.

1964(4th of Cheshvan, 5725): Eddie Cantor passed away. The comedian with the “banjo eyes” enjoyed a career that ran from vaudeville to the crazy days of live television variety shows. One of Cantor’s famous running gags centered around the fact that he had five children – all girls. He passed away at the age of 72.
http://www.eddiecantor.com/bio.html

1966: The Jewish musical duo, Simon and Garfunkel, released the album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.”

1970(10th of Tishrei, 5731): Yom Kippur

1972: Jews in Moscow held a press conference expressing their support of the Senator Henry Jackson’s legislation granting trade benefits to the East Bloc nations in turn for liberalization of their immigration policies (which would make it possible for Jews to leave the Soviet Union and go to Israel)

1973: 14th of Tishrei, 5734): Economist Ludwig von Mises passes away at the age of 92.

1973: 14th of Tishrei, 5734): Erev Sukkoth; as Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Sukkoth, all thoughts are turned to Israel’s fight for survival that had begun on Yom Kippur.

1973: Fighting continued during the Yom Kippur War. A morning counter-attack launched against the Syrians drove their tanks back to line from which they had launched their sneak attack four days ago. General Elazar wanted to push on, but Defense Minister Dayan wanted to stop lest penetration towards Damascus upset the Soviets. Golda Meir sided with Elazar who made plans to attack across the old cease fire line. In the evening, Mrs. Meir addressed the nation describing Israel’s perilous position. The Soviets had armed the Arabs with all matter of modern weaponry and were re-supplying them even as Mrs. Meir spoke. She urged King Hussein not to repeat his mistake of 1967 when he joined the Egyptians and the Syrians. She said that Jews could not allow themselves “the luxury of despair.” She had but one prayer in her heart, “that this will be the last war.

1973: In an effort to relieve Israeli pressure on the Syrian front, where the IDF has gained back the southern Golan, Egyptian forces move further into the Sinai, beyond the range of their SAM umbrella which creates an opportunity for the IAF to go on the offensive.

1973(14th of Tishrei, 5734): Israeli political leader and former MK Ada Maimon passed away at the age of 80 today.

1974(24^thof Tishrei, 5735): Just two months shy of his 64^th birthday, historian and Holocaust survivor Joseph Wulf passed away.
http://stevenlehrer.com/joseph_wulf.htm

1974: Birthdate of Asi Cohen, the native of Ashdod who gained fame as a comedian and actor.

1980: Private Benjamin, a film produced by and starring, Goldie Hawn was released in theaters across the United States.

1982: The New York Timesbook section included a review An Orphan in History: Retrieving a Jewish Legacy by Paul Cowan describing the “beautiful and moving account of his search for his religious and cultural roots.”

1983: Ruby Myers, who was the Indian actress known as Sulochana passed away today.
http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2011/09/actress-sulochana-real-name-ruby-myers.html

1983: Israel's Knesset voted 60-53 to endorse Yitzhak Shamir as Prime Minister. Shamir was part of the Right Wing Likud and a successor to Menachem Begin.

1983: Mordechai Tzipori completed his service as Deputy Minister of Defense.

1983: Haim Meir Drukman “broke away from the NRP and attempted to form a Knesset faction by the name of Zionist Religious Camp, but was refused permission to do so by the House Committee.”

1983: As Israel changed governments, David Levy retained his position as Deputy Prime Minister.

1984: In the U.K. premiere of “1984” Michael Radford’s cinematic treatment of George Orwell’s novel by the same name.

1985: U.S. fighter jets forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into custody. This was part of a farce that resulted in the hijackers getting off without punishment for their murderous act of piracy.

1986: Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres resigned. Peres was and is a leader of what was the original Labor Zionist movement that dominated the governments of Israel for the first two decades of its existence.

1987: Birthdate of Danny Rosenbaum who played for Xavier University and was drafted by the Washington Nationals.

1994(5th of Cheshvan, 5755): Tzvi Gal-chen, the father of author Rivka Galchen, and a scientist known for his work on wind and thermodynamic variables passed away today.

1995: As part of Israel’s agreement with the PLO, two members of the PLO’s former Jerusalem Committee crossed into Israel from Jordan as a prelude to becoming Governors of Ramallah and Nablus. Twenty years earlier these same to men had masterminded the bombing in Zion Square which killed fourteen civilians, including three Arabs.

1995: As Israel turned over control of 460 West Bank villages to the Palestinian Authority, a banner flew over the village of Salfit declaring “Today Salfit, tomorrow Jerusalem.”

1996: Yad Vashem decided to recognize Baron Friedrich von Oppenheim as Righteous Among the Nations
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/oppenheim.asp

1997(9^thof Tishrei, 5758): Erev Yom Kippur

1999: Bruce Fleischer won The Transamerica golf tournament.

1999: The Sunday New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaism including We Can Report Them by Michael Brodsky, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss and The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict Into Cooperation by Daniel Yankelovich.

2001(23^rdof Tishrei, 5762): Simchat Torah

2001: “A Man of Good Fortune” published today tells the story of the Moussaieff family.
http://www.haaretz.com/a-man-of-good-fortune-1.71559

2002: Richard Blumenthal was awarded the Raymond E. Baldwin Award for Public Service by the Quinnipiac University School of Law.

2002: Representative Shelley Berkley of Nevada was among the 81 House Democrats who voted in favor of authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

2003(14^thof Tishrei, 5764): Erev Sukkoth

2003(14^thof Tishrei, 5764): Sixty-year old Atara Chana Beile Marmor the daughter of David Feuerwerker and Taube Rachel Feuerwerker passed away today.

2003(14^thof Tishrei 5764): Eighty-five year old Max Rayne the British businessman and philanthropist who was knighted and later made a life peer so that he was known as Baron Rayne passed away.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/oct/14/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

2004: The Sunday New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaism including Harold Blum’s Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

2004: In an article designed to encourage gardeners to follow proper transplanting procedures, the Times of London writes approvingly of the practices of “the great rhododendron enthusiast Lionel de Rothschild who used to move fully mature rhododendrons around his garden at his estate.”

2005: Sociology professor Majd el-Haj was named Haifa University's next dean of research, making him the first Arab faculty member to serve at the vice presidential level of an Israeli university.

2005: With a sigh of great relief the feared Lulav Shortage has been avoided. Thanks to aggressive action by the Ministry of Agriculture, the sound of shaking frond will be heard at Sukkah time after all.

2006: H.B.O presents the premiere of "The Journalist and the Jihadi: the Murder of Daniel Pearl."

2007: In Australia, Richard Pratt was formally accused of price fixing in what would be that nation’s largest case of its kind.

2007: The third and final performance of “Idan Raichel Songs for Peace: The Acoustic Series” takes place at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City.

2007: Johtje Vos, a modest Dutch woman who saved three dozen Jews during World War II passed away in Saugerties, NY at the age of 97.

2007: Nearly 200 Israeli sailors who served in the British Royal Navy during World War II gathered at the home of the British ambassador to Israel who, together with Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, awarded them the Veterans Badge to commemorate the victory over the Nazis. The ceremony was held at the Ramat Gan home of Ambassador Tom Phillips.

2007: Attendees at a conference in Jerusalem, "Sephardic Jews and Ladino," hope to revive what some refer to as the Spanish Jews answer to Yiddish.

2007 The New York Times reported that the Israelis had shared the dossier showing proof of their strike on the Syrian nuclear reactor in the Deir –ez Zor region with Turkey.

2008: While in Paris for the, inaugural meeting of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation - a forum established by European Jewish Congress head Moshe Kantor and former politicians from 10 European countries whose stated goal is to further initiatives that promote dialogue and coexistence Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former president of Poland sat down with The Jerusalem Post to talk about his own vision of tolerance and the special connection Poland has with the Jewish people.

2009 (22 Tishrei, 5770): Shemini Atzertz

2009: Drew University hosts lunch and discussion with graphic artist and author David Stromberg who is also the book review editor for Zeek.

2010: As part of Sigid, the Ethiopian Jewish Festival and Dance Performance is scheduled to take place at the 92nd Street Y.

2010: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Nemesis by Phillip Roth, Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case by Walter Schneir and The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb by Allen M. Hornblum

2010: The Los Angeles Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Great House by Nicole Krauss

2010: Earth: A Visitors Guide to the Human Race by Jon Stewart, the fake newsman who was the subject of an anti-Semitic diatribe earlier in the week tops the October 10 LA Times Best Seller List.

2010: Cabinet ministers today approved by a majority vote a controversial amendment which would require every non-Jew wishing to become a citizen of Israel to pledge loyalty to "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

2010: Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals held a demonstration today against the cabinet's approval of a controversial amendment to the citizenship bill, requiring non-Jews seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

2010: During today’s radio show, Glen “Beck described how George Soros, who was born in Hungary to Orthodox Jewish parents, ‘used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening. Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps.’” [This statement would draw a response from ADL national director Abe Foxman who released a statement slamming the Fox News commentator's criticism of Soros.]

2011: Aluf Ram Rothberg assumed command of the Israeli Navy.

2011: The Lo Tishkach Foundation is scheduled to sponsor memorial services in the Ukrainian town of Tarascha in honor of the Jews who were slaughtered there in 1941 during World War II.

2011: Center for Jewish History and Center for Traditional Music and Dance are scheduled to present The Hidden Musical Treasures of Romania –A Fulbright Scholar’s Quest a program that explores “the deep roots that connect Romanian music and klezmer music.”

2012: A reception sponsored by the Hebrew Union is scheduled for tonight to mark the opening of “The Sexuality Spectrum,” “a groundbreaking exploration of sexual orientation through the creativity of over fifty international contemporary artists.”

2012:The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and The Israel Project is scheduled to present “A Presidential Candidate Surrogate Debate featuring Congressman Robert Wexler, representing the Democrats and Under Secretary Dov Zakheim representing the Republicans.

2012:Robert Lefkowitz, a Jewish physician and biochemist, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Brian Kobilka, a Stanford University researcher.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/10/10/3108891/new-york-born-jewish-doctor-co-recipient-of-nobel-prize-in-chemistry

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/science/2-american-scientists-win-nobel-prize-in-chemistry.html?hp

2012: "French police found an explosives lab that they say was used by a "jihadist cell" in the bombing of a kosher store near Paris. Francois Molins of the Paris prosecutor’s office said at a news conference today that the firearms and “all the elements necessary to produce explosive devices” were discovered the previous day at a parking lot in the eastern Paris suburb of Torcy."

2012:The exhibition, “Zionism 2000 Collection, 1920-1960,” which has been on displayed at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: The National Book Award finalists announced today included Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europeby Anne Applebaum and The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnsonby Joseph Caro

2013: In the best sense of Tikun Olam, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host “Interfaith Gathering for Prayer and Sharing co-sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Johnson County and the Consultation of Religious Communities of Johnson County.

2013: Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids is scheduled to host the first in a series of lectures “Engaging Israel, Foundations for a New Relationships”

2013: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to sponsor the Middle East Forum on “Iran – The Nuclear Threat and Implications for the Greater Middle East.”

2013: Arkadi Zaides, an independent choreographer born in the Soviet Union in 1979, who immigrated to Israel in 1990, is scheduled to perform his interpretation of “Dig Deep” in New York City.

2013: “In a display of muscle-flexing to Tehran ahead of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, Israel made a rare announcement today that its air force had conducted a series of drills in which fighter aircraft practiced midair refueling and a simulated strike on a distant target.” (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)

2013(6^th of Cheshvan, 5774): Colonel (Res.) Seraiah Ofer was killed in an attack outside his home in the Jordan Valley settlement of Brosh Habika at 10 P.M. tonight and his wife Monique was moderately wounded, but managed to escape and contact police. (As reported by Chaim Levinson, Gili Cohen and Eli Ashkenazi)

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.551845

2013:The clandestine World War II work of champion cyclist Gino Bartali was recognized today when a ceremony was held in Jerusalem to mark his help in rescuing Jews in his native Italy. (As reported by Andrew Dampf)

2014(16^thof Tishrei, 5775): Second day of Sukkoth

2014: Moishe House, OJMCHE and MJCC are scheduled to bring you a party under the sukkah canopies in NW Portland, with live music, beer and great vegetarian food as part of Shabbat in the Sukkah.

2014: Professor Robert Cargill is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Book of Ecclesiastes at Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa.

OCTOBER 11

1138: Massive earthquake strikes Aleppo, Syria. According to tradition, the Jewish community traces its origins back to the time of King David. This is based on the description of the conquest of the city by Joab found in the Book of Samuel. The Great Synagogue, the most famous Jewish edifice in the city was originally built in the fifth century of the Common Era. The real importance of the community can be traced to the Aleppo Codex,“the earliest known manuscript containing the entire text of the Bible. Tradition states that Maimonides consulted the Aleppo Codex when he set down the exact rules for writing Torah scrolls.”The Codex was copied by the scribe Shlomo Ben-Buya'a over 1,000 years ago. It was deposited with the Aleppo community at the end of the 14th Century and kept in a small vault in the Cave of Elijah under the Joab Ben Zeruiah Synagogue of Aleppo. The community guarded it for over 600 years." Whatever loss the community suffered during the earthquake, we know it survived and thrived since it was visited by Rabbi Petachya of Regensburg (Germany) starting in 1170 and Benjamin of Tudela in 1173. Benjamin’s visit was part of his “round the world tour” which he described in his literary work entitled the Travels of Benjamin.

1285: Following a false charge that the Jews had purchased a Christian child from an old woman and then killed, a mob in Munich attacked the Jews community. Those who escaped the mob took refuge in the synagogue which the mob then burned killing 180 Jews.

1347: Emperor Louis IV, the German ruler who had given Gottfried von Eppstein permission to settle Jews in Eppstein, Homburg and Steinheim in 1335, passed away.

1394: Ordination of Benedict XIII, one of the Avignon Popes whom the Catholic Church classifies as an Anti-Pope. In an attempt to gain acceptance of his Papacy, Benedict attacked the Jews. Not content to adopt oppressive laws at aimed Children Of Israel, he initiated the Disputation of Tortosa in 1413 one of those one-sided debates that the Church loved. As a result of this one, the works of Maimonides were burned and copies of the Talmud were to be confiscated so that they could be censored.

1727: George II and Caroline of Ansbach are crowned King and Queen of Great Britain. King George II was the monarch who gave “the royal assent” to the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753. Unfortunately, the act was repealed a year later.

1727: “Zadok the Priest,” an anthem composed by George Frederic Handel based on First Kings 1:38-40 which describes the coronation of King Solomon was performed today during the coronation of King George II.

1741: George Fredrick Handel completed the second of “Samson,” his oratorio based on the figure from the Book of Judges.

1777(10^thof Tishrei, 5538): Four days after the Americans completed their game-changing victory at the Battle of Saratoga, Jews observe Yom Kippur

1783(15^thof Tishrei, 5544): Sukkoth

1792(25^thof Tishrei, 5553): Seventy-nine year old Hebrew poet and businessman David Franco Mendes passed away today in his home town of Amsterdam.

1796(9^thof Tishrei, 5557): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre is chanted for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1821(15^thof Tishrei, 5582): Sukkoth observed for the first time during the second term of James Monroe who gained all but one electoral vote when he ran for re-election.

1826(10^thof Tishrei, 5587): Yom Kippur

1845(10^thof Tishrei, 5606): The day after the United States opened the Naval Academy in Annapolis whose most famous Jewish graduated was Admiral Hyman Rickover, Jews observe Yom Kippur

1845(10^thof Tishrei, 5606): A minyan led by Mayer Klein and Philip Newberg held services in Chicago, Ill, marking the first time that his occurred in “The Windy City”

1846: Birthdate of Carlos Enrique José Pellegrini, the Argentine President who was sympathetic to attempts to settle Jewish refugees in his country.

1850: The University of Sydney, Australia’s oldest university, opened its doors. Percy Marks, described as “Jewish Renaissance Man” was one of its earliest and most famous Jewish graduates. The Australian Union of Jewish Students or AUJS is an on campus organization whose aim is to promote Jewish continuity. Today the University has a Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish studies whose website asks and answers the following: “Why enroll in Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney?? * Challenging: Where else would you find such a stimulating fusion of diverse ethnic and religious groups studying together? Learn about religion and politics in an open and fun environment.

* Educational: Further your knowledge and insights into Jewish Studies. Learn about the issues around assimilation and Jewish civilization and master classical or Modern Hebrew or Yiddish.
* Practical: For undergraduate students, taking one of these courses will count towards qualifications in General Studies or part of your Arts, Arts/Law or Education degrees. It will also enable budding teachers to pursue a career in Modern Hebrew, Jewish Studies and Tanach.
* Unique: Delve into Jewish philosophy, history and politics, delivered by expert lecturers in their fields.There is a Jewish club called AUJS (Australian Union of Jewish Students) which has many purposes, one of which is to promote Jewish continuity!

1851(15^th of Tishrei, 5612): Sukkoth

1852: Famed German mathematician Ferdinand Eisenstein passed away at the age of thirty. Eisenstein’s fate was typical of many Germans. His parents were Jewish, but they converted to a Protestant denomination before their son’s birth to gain full entrée into German society.

1853(9^thof Tishrei, 5614): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre is recited for the first time during the Crimean War which had just begun earlier this montn

1855: Johann Ludwig Schneller, a German Lutheran missionary “bought from the people of Lifta, a parcel of land outside LIfta, approximately 3 kilmotres (1.9 miles) northwest of Jaffa Gate.

1863(15^thof Tishrei, 5764): Sukkoth

1863: An article entitled “The House of Rothschild” published today based on information from the London Globe provided a fascinatingly detailed contemporary look at this most prominent of Jewish dynasties.

“A few days ago, our Paris correspondent told us that a congress of the members of the illustrious house of Rothschild has been sitting at Paris. The purport of the meeting was nothing less than to rearrange the dominions of the great banking dynasty. In one word, the great object of the Rothschild congress was to reduce the five branches of the house who now rule Europe to four, and following the example of Garibaldi, to strike another sovereign of Naples from the list of reigning monarchs. Henceforth there are to be but four kings of the house of Rothschild, with secure thrones at London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfort. It is now exactly a hundred years since a poor Jew, called Mayer Anselm, made his appearance at the City of Hanover; barefooted, with a sack, oa his shoulders, and a bundle of rags on his back. Successful in trade, like most of his co-religionists, he returned to Frankfort at the end of a few years, and set up a small shop in the "Jew-lane," over which hung the signboard of a red shield, called in German roth-schild. As a dealer in old and rare coins, he made the acquaintance of the Serene Elector of Hesse Cassel, who, happening to be in want of a confidential agent for various open and secret purposes, appointed the shrewd-looking Mayer Anselm to the post. The Serene Elector being compelled soon after to fly his country. Mayer Anselm took charge of his cash, amounting to several millions of florins. With the instinct of his race, Anselm did not forget to put the money out on good interest, so that, before Napoleon was gone to Elba, and the illustrious Elector had returned to Cassel, the capital had more than doubled. The ruler of Hesse Casse thought it almost a marvel to get his money safely returned from the Jew-lane of Frankfort, and at the Congress of Vienna was never tired of singing the praise of his Hebrew agent to all the Princes of Europe. The dwellers under the sign of the Red Shield laughed in their sleeves; keeping carefully to themselves the great fact that the electoral two million florins had brought them four millions of their own. Never was honesty a better policy. Mayer Anselm died in 1812, without having the supreme satisfaction of hearing his honesty extolled by kings and princes. He left five sons who succeeded him in the banking and money-lending business, and who, conscious of their social value, dropped the name of Anselm, and adopted the higher sounding one of Rothschild, taken, from the sign board over the paternal house. On his deathbed their father had taken a solemn oath from all of them, to hold his four millions well together, and they have faithfully kept the Injunction. But the old City of Frankfort clearly was too; narrow a realm for the fruitful sowing of four millions; and, in consequence, the five were determined after a while to extend their sphere of operations by establishing branch banks at the chief cities of Europe. The eldest son, Anselm, born 1773, remained at Frankfort; the second, Salomon, born in 1774, settled at Vienna; the third, Nathan, born in 1777, went to London; the fourth, Charles, the infant terrible of the family, established himself in the soft climate of Naples, and the fifth and youngest, James, born 1792, took up his residence at Paris. Strictly united, the wealth and power of the five Rothschilds S was vested in the eldest born; nevertheless, the shrewdest of the sons of Mayer Anselm, and the heir of his genius, Nathan, the third son, soon took the reins of government into the own hands. By his faith in Wellington and the flesh and muscle of British soldiers, he neatly doubled the fortune of the family, gaining more than a million sterling by the sole battle of Waterloo, the news of which he carried to England two days earlier than the mail. The weight of the solid millions gradually transferred the ascendancy in the family from Germany to England, making London the metropolis of the reigning dynasty of Rothschild. Like the royal families of Europe, the members of the house of Rothschild only intermarry with each other. James Rothschild married the daughter of his brother Salomon: his son Edmond heir apparent of the French line, was united to his first cousin, the daughter of Lionel, and granddaughter of Nathan Rothschild; and Lionel again-M.P. for London -- gave his hand in 1836 to his first cousin Charlotte the daughter of Charles Rothschild, of Naples. It is unnecessary to say that, though these matrimonial alliances have kept the millions wonderfully together, they have not improved the race of old Mayer Anselm, of the Red Shield. Already signs of physical weakness are becoming visible in the great family. So, at least, hint the French papers in their meager notices about the Rothschild congress at Paris. From all that can be gathered out of a wilderness of canards, thin faces and thick fiction, it appears that the sovereigns of the Stock Exchange met in conference for the double purpose of centralizing their money power and widening their matrimonial realm. In other words, the five reigning kings; descendants, according to the law of primogeniture, of the five sons Mayer Anselm, came to the decision to reduce their number to four by cutting off the Neapolitan branch of Charles Rothschild; while it was likewise decided that permission should be given to the younger members of the family to marry, for the benefit of the race, beyond the range of first cousinship. What has led to the exclusion of the Neapolitan line of Rothschild seems to have been the constant exercise of a highly blameable liberality, unheard of in the annals of the family. Charles, the prodigal son of Mayer Anselm, actually presented, in the year 1846, 10,000 ducats to the orphan asylum of St. Carlo, at Naples, and the son and heir of Charles (Gustavus) has given repeated signs of his inclination to follow in the footsteps of his father. Such conduct, utterly unbecoming of the policy of the house of Rothschild, could not be allowed to pass unnoticed, and, accordingly -- we quote the rumor of Paris journalism -- the decheance of the Neapolitan line has been pronounced. However, Baron Gustavus De Rothschild is not to retire into private life, like famous Charles V., with only a cassock on his shoulders and a prayer-book in his hand, but is allowed to take with him a small fortune of 150,000,000 francs, or about six millions sterling -- a mere crumb from the table of the descendants of poor Mayer Anselm, who wandered shoeless through the electorate of good King George III. It is certain that no romance of Royalty is equal to the romance of the house of Rothschild

1864: Campina Grande was elevated to the status of city in Brazil. Campina Grande is in northeast Brazil. Based on a recent documentary many Catholics in that region follow various Jewish customs without being aware of their origin, In all likelihood, the region was originally settled by Marranos or Conversos. Their descendants continued practicing rituals such as not eating pork, circumcising new born males, reciting special prayers on the first day of the month and a variety of customs relating to dealing with the dead without being aware of their origins.

1864 The General News column today reported that “In consequence of a Jewish feast occurring yesterday, there were fewer buyers at the yards, and the gentiles had the business of buying and selling to themselves, -- this gave less annimation to the sale yards. It is thought that the Jews will bring in some stock to-morrow, and that there will be considerable business transacted.”

1874(30^th of Tishrei, 5635): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1874: During today’s opening session of the Supreme Lodge of the Order of Kesher Shel Barzel, in the Bowery. J.P. Solomon of New York was chosen as Supreme Rosh. Other officers elected were, Deputy Rosh, L.H. Cohen of Ohio and Supreme Sopher, A.T. Jones of Pennsylvania.

1876(23^rd of Tishrei, 5637): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of U.S. Grant

1878(14^th of Tishrei, 5639): Erev of Sukkoth

1878: A fire broke out tonight in New York City “in the temporary building erected in the yard at #67 Hester Street for the celebration of…Sukkoth.” The fire took place during services which created panic among the worshippers all of whom escaped without injury

1878: It was reported today that dispatches sent from Berlin by The Pall Mall Gazette (a British publication) say the European Powers are still refusing to recognize the independence of Romania until the government at Bucharest fulfills its treaty obligations granting full rights to its Jewish citizens. The Romanian government has been using a series of legal gimmicks to avoid granting the Jews the civil rights that had been promised during negotiations in Berlin.

1879: Citizens of Bolivar County, Mississippi, meeting at Bolivar Landing passed a resolution denouncing Edward Storm, the Republican nominee for Supervisor as “a dishonest Jew, the servile tool of the slave owner before the war and convenient and abandoned ally of the corrupt carpet-bagger” since the end of the Civil War. (This maybe a reference to Edward Storm, a native of Berlin, Germany who served in the Confederate Army from 1861 until 1865 and is buried in Greenville, MS

1879: It was reported today that there are between six and seven million Hebrews in the world which is about the same number that were alive in the days of King David. This includes 5 million Jews in Russia, 200,000 in Asia, 80,000 in Africa and a million to a million and a half in America. Russia has the largest European Jewish population followed by Austria. There are only about 500,000 Jews living in Germany 45,000 of whom reside in Berlin. Most of the African Jews live in Algeria and Ethiopia. The 13,500 Jews living in Jerusalem constitute over half of that city’s total population.

1881: In Prague, Adolf Kelsen and Auguste Löwy gave birth to jurist and philosopher and Hans Kelsen.

1883(10^th of Tishrei, 5644): Yom Kippur

1883: Rabbi Kaufman will deliver today’s sermon in German at Temple Beth-El in New York City.

1884(22^nd of Tishrei, 5645): Shemini Atzeret

1884: It was reported today that the funeral of Dr. Adolphus Huebsch, the rabbi who has led Ahavet Chesed since 1866 and passed away suddenly last night will be held on the day after Simchat Torah.

1884: Birthdate of Eleanor Roosevelt. Contrary to what the anti-Semites said, neither FDR nor his wife was Jewish. However, Mrs. Roosevelt certainly had numerous Jewish friends. As a champion of the downtrodden including Jews seeking to escape Hitler’s Europe and those seeking to create a Jewish homeland, she certainly enjoyed a certain kind of celebrity and popularity with Jews living during the middle of the twentieth century.

1884: “Hebrew Charity For Children” published today presented a summary of the annual report of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society. Since its opening in September of 1879, this New York Institution has received applications for admission from more than 600 boys and girls. In addition to maintaining sex segregated facilities for those needing residential assistance, the society provided 7,983 free meals to “poor people and children” not living in one of these facilities. Mrs. P.J. Joachimsen will continue to serve as President for another year.

1884: It was reported today that two Jews named “Ritter and Strochlenski” have been found guilty and sentenced to death in Poland for having “murdered a Christian girl.”

1885: According to reports published today, there are 100,000 people living in Bagdad, 30,000 of whom are Jews struggling “for a bare subsistence.”

1885: It was reported today that officials had destroyed an illegal still near Newburg, NY, that was reputed to be owned by four Jews who escaped apprehension.

1886: In St. Louis, MO, an inquest was scheduled to be held today to determine the facts concerning death of Josie Martel who was supposed to have been killed by her husband Frank Sandmeyer, a Jewish waiter who took his own life after taking hers.

1887(23rd of Tishrei, 5648): Simchat Torah

1888: Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler’s address at tonight’s meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association was followed by musical program that was conducted by Frederick Brandies.

1890: Novostiexpresses the opinion that “the expulsion of the Jews from the districts not specifically assigned to them is one of the main causes of the present critical condition of commerce.”

1890: A list published today of the newly elected officers of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum included: President – Mrs. Phillip J. Joachimsen; Vice President – Mrs. Teller; Treasurer –Mrs. Barnett; Secretary – Mrs. Meyer.

1891: Unless friends or relations claim the body, “the Hebrew Charities Organization” will bury Anna HIlkofsky, the thirty-six year old epileptic who died tragically yesterday in a fire.

1891(9^th of Tishrei, 5652): Erev Yom Kippur.

1891: “The Fast of Yom Kippur Published "today described the differences in observance between the Orthodox and Reformed Jews while acknowledging that the holiday is so “popular” that “temporary places of worship have been established in a number of public halls, particularly on the east side of the city to accommodate those who are not regular members of any congregation.”

1891: “University of Rochester” published today included a summary of a speech delivered by David Jayne Hill the school’s president to the Query Club on “Higher Education” in which he “referred to the achievements of many of the Jews” whom “he said…were among the leaders of advanced thought and in literature, art, music and other departments they had brought honor upon the race. A people without a country, they have made the world their home.”

1892: In New York, today’s Columbus Day Parade included a group of “very little boys from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, some of them scarcely five years old” marking behind “their tiny Drum Major;” a scene that drew “many cheers” from the onlookers.

1892: One of the Columbus Day Parades had a total of 24, 620 participants, 128 of whom were from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1893(1^st of Cheshvan, 5654): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1894: Otto Slimbach, a well-known bully in the eastern district of Brooklyn was mortally stabbed by an unknown assailant this evening after having engaged in drinking at several saloons, beating his mother and going through the “Hebrew quarter” and indulging in Jew-baiting for further amusement.”

1894: An unknown number of striking cloakmakers, many of whom were Jewish, were clubbed tonight in Rutgers Place.

1894: General Mercier, the Secretary of War meets with three leaders including Charles Dupuy, the President of the Cabinet before moving ahead with the arrest of Captain Dreyfus on charges of selling secrets to a foreign power.

1894: “Who The Nominees Are” published today provides biographies of the those nominated by Tammany Democrats including Nathan Strauss who is their candidate for Mayor.

1895: The list of Tammany Judicial candidates published today included Joseph E. Newburger, a graduate of Columbia Law School who is a director of the of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and President of Rodoph Sholom.

1896: In Moscow, Osip and Anna Jakobson gave birth to Roman Jakobson, “the father of modern structural linguistics who elaborated sophisticated theories of language and communication that had profound effects on such disciplines as anthropology, art criticism and brain research…”

1897(15^th of Tishrei, 5658): Sukkoth

1897: “Thirty-four new cases of yellow fever were reported today in New Orleans, four of which were found at the Jewish Home” and they will be treated at Tuoro Infirmary, a non-sectarian medical facility supported by the city’s Jewish population.

1897: “The Feast of Tabernacles” published today provided a description of the celebration of Sukkoth which is immediately followed by the celebration of Simchat Torah, “The Rejoicing of the Law,” “when the last section of the law is read in the temples by what is called ‘The Bridegroom of the Law.’”

1898: Colonel Theodore Roosevelt delivered his first stump speech tonight during which he talked about the Rough Riders where all members were treated on their “merits as a man” whether Protestant, Catholic or Jew.” (Yes the famous regiment had Jewish members and Teddy valued the Jewish vote, most of which went to his Republican Party in those days)

1902(10^th of Tishrei, 5663): Yom Kippur

1906(22^nd of Tishrei, 5667): Shemini Atzeret

1906: Birthdate of Charles Revson, Canadian born founder of Revlon Cosmetics.

1912:Louis D. Brandeis addressed some 200 social workers from the charitable and philanthropic organizations of New York and Brooklyn today at a meeting in the United Charities Building. Mr. Brandeis in his speech told the workers they might expect much help from Gov. Woodrow Wilson if he is elected President.

1912: According to reports published today, a special meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York was held to pass a lengthy a resolution marking the recent death of Professor Morris Loeb

1913(10^th of Tishrei, 5674): Yom Kippur

1913: In Rochester, NY, Rose and Harry Simon gave birth to Hymie Simon, who gained fame as Joe Simon the writer and illustrator who created Captain America. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1914(21^st of Tishrei, 5675): Hoshanah Rabah observed for the first time during World War I.

1918: Birthdate of film director Jerome Robbins. He is best known for directing Leonard Bernstein’s musical version of Romeo and Juliet called “West Side Story.” He died in 198l.

1921(9^thof Tishrei, 5682): Jews hear Kol Nidre for the first time during the Presidency of Warren G. Harding.

1924: Birthdate of Maurice Sanford Fox, “the son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants” who became “an American geneticist and molecular biologist, and professor Emeritus of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

1925(23^rdof Tishrei, 5686): Simchat Torah

1926: Birthdate of major league baseball player Myron Nathan “Joe” Ginsberg.

1927(15^thof Tishrei, 5688): Sukkoth

1929: In Manhattan, Irving Westin and the former Etta Furman gave birth to Alan Furman Westin “a legal scholar who nearly half a century ago defined the modern right to privacy in the incipient computer age” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1931: Formation of the Harzburg Front, a right wing alliance that included the Nazi Party which was formed to undermine the democratically elected government of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning, the person who held that post for the longest period of time during the Weimar Republic.

1933(21^stof Tishrei, 5694): Hoshana Raba observed for the first time during the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1936: In “Life in Tel Aviv, That Sudden Town,” published today Katherine Woods reviews Spring Up, O Well by Ruth Kahn, a book that describes the Jewish “resettlement of Palestine”

1937: Birthdate of actor Ron Leibman. Born in New York City, his portrayal of the union organizer in the film hit Norma Rae won him kudos even if Sally Fields got the Oscar.

1937: The Palestine Post published an extensive report on the deteriorating condition of Jews in Polandand German Upper Silesia. According to Alexander Kahn, the vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, entire Jewish communities in towns and villages were subjected to unspeakable brutalities of local nationalists, anti-Semites and hooligans. There were riots at the Vilna and Lvovuniversities where Jewish students were beaten and, when forced to seat on the left side, preferred to stand instead. The Polish administration welcomed an economic anti-Jewish boycott while trade organizations urged to create "a ghetto" for Jewish tradesmen in the markets. In the village of Mushlatovaa Jewish merchant and his wife were murdered at night, the fifth such crime in that district. Note that these outbreaks took place two years before the Nazis occupied Poland. Anti-Semitism was part of the European cultural landscape. It was this reality that helped to make the Final Solution possible. “They did not hear our cries, not because they were deaf, but because they did not want to hear them.” Anon

1938: In Cairo, at the concluding session of the Moslem Congress, the Proposals Committee presented a resolution making nine demands on the British government including nullification of the Balfour Declaration, cessation of Jewish immigration into Palestine, an end to any plans to partition Palestine and end to the mandate which would mirror the earlier end to the British Mandate in Iraq.

1939: President Franklin Roosevelt received a letter signed by Albert Einstein urging that the United States begin an urgent program to develop what would become the atomic bomb. It was Einstein’s support that garnered Roosevelt’s support for what would be known as the Manhattan Project – America’s program to build the Atomic Bomb. At the time, it was viewed as a race which, if won by the Germans, would have cost the Allies the war.

1940(9^thof Tishrei, 5701): Erev Yom Kippur

1940: As the deportation of the Jews of Cracow continued a group of un-named Jews were captured at prayer by an unknown photographer.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/05.asp

1940(9^thof Tishrei, 5701); Eight-year old Italian Mathematician Vito Volterra passed away in Rome.

http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Volterra.html

1941: Birthdate of Edmond E. Levy the native of Bara who made Aliyah at the age of 10 and rose to become an Israeli judge of the Supreme Court of Israel.

1941: A Jewish ghetto at Chernovtsy, Romania, is established.

1941(20th of Tishrei, 5702: Sixth Day of Sukkoth; Shabbat

1941(20th of Tishrei, 5702: Thousands of Jews are murdered at Edineti, Romania.

1942(30th of Tishrei, 5703):Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1942(30th of Tishrei, 5703):Over the next 48 hours eleven thousand Jews from Ostrowiec-Swietokrzyski, Poland, are killed at the Treblinka death camp

1943: An article in Time magazine entitled “Quality of Mercy” describes the rescue of the Danish Jews and their trip to Sweden. “Across the narrow waters of the Ore Sund word came to Sweden last week that 1,800 Gestapo men sent to Copenhagenspecialty for the job had broken into Jewish homes and synagogues during Rosh Hashanah, arresting most of Denmark’s 10,000 Jews. The reports said the Germans planned to ship their prisoners to the charnel houses of Poland. Next day the Swedish government told the German Government that there was immediate, unconditional sanctuary for all Danish Jews in Sweden. The Germans ignored the offer. At the end of the week, end upwards of 1,000 wretched Jews from Denmark had found their way across the cold Ore Sund to merciful Sweden.

1943: One day after rescuing three Jews from the Riga (Latvia) Ghetto by asking guards for Jews to labor on his property, Yanis Lipke rescues additional Jews using the same ruse.\

1943: Heinrich Himmler appeared on the cover of Time magazine

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601431011,00.html?internalid=AC

1943: The trains kept rolling to Sobibor. According to Alexander Pechersky – on this day “the crematorium burned longer than usual. Helpless and distressed, we looked at the bodies of our brothers and sisters."New arrivals paniced and ran toward barbed wire, only to be machine-gunned by guards.

1944: U.S. premier of “To Have and Have Not” co-starring Laruen Bacall (the cousin of Shimon Peres) in her first major film role.

1945: According to reports published today, “Fritz Wiedemann, former German consul in San Francisco will be a leading Allied witness in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals” who will be tried according to rules established by the International Court of Justice. Wiederman had been the lover of Princess Stephanie who had spied on top Nazis.

1945: Early this morning, a group of armed Jewish attackers overpowered the guards at the British Army camp at Rehovot and stole a quantity of weapons and ammunition which they loaded into stolen trucks that were used to make a clean get—away.

1945: The USS President Warfield was struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register. This was but one of the many steps that would lead this packet steamer to re-emerge as the Exodus in 1947.

1946: Rabbi Phillip Bernstein of Rochester, NY, who serves as an adviser to Generals Joseph T. McNarney and Mark Clark” commanders of the American zones of occupation in Germany and Austria is returning to Germany today after meeting with President Truman at the White House. Truman expressed concern for the plight of the Jews and said he wanted more firsthand information. Bernstein said that the “original concept of resettling 100,000 European Jews is untenable” since the number of Jewish displaced persons is closer to 225,000.

1946: One hundred fifty of the four hundred Jews imprisoned at the Latrun detention camp began partial hunger strike in protest over their lengthy detention without ever having been charged let alone tried with any crime.

1946: An organization called the Arab Higher Fighters executed “two Arab land brokers” accused of having sold land to Jews.

1947: “Twenty British constables armed with Sten guns guarded the American consulate against possible Arab attack today after the United States announced its support of the partition of Palestine…The precautionary measures followed the bombing of the Swedish consulate…by Arabs…which was believed to have been an answer to a speech by the Swedish chairman of the United Nations special committee on Palestine” at the United Nations which is meeting a Lake Success, NY.

1948:At 5 p.m., former Gov. Herbert H. Lehman and Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, speak in a pre-Yom Kippur broadcast of the American Jewish Committee carried by WCBS and the Columbia Broadcasting System.

1951: In Paris, Ruth Ambrunn and Alter Mojze Goldman gave birth to Jean-Jacques Goldman a Grammy Awards-winning French singer-songwriter, who is hugely popular in the French-speaking world and since 2003, was the second-highest-grossing French living pop singer, after Johnny Hallyday.

1952:Howie Greenfield knocked on Neil Sedaka’s door and asked him if “he wanted to write songs” with him. Sedaka “didn’t know how to write songs and didn’t have any inclination” to learn how to. Greenfield would convince him to change his mind and Sedaka later said it was a good thing “because we ended up writing over 300 songs together over the next 20 years.”

1953: NBC broadcast Paddy Chayefsky’s teleplay “The Bachelor Party” on the Philco Television Playhouse.

1953: General Mordechai Makleff, the 3^rd Chief of Staff of the IDF, and at 32 the youngest to hold the position, announced his intention to resign after repeated disputes with government leaders.

1955: In Los Angeles, premiere of “Oklahoma,” the cinematic version of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical directed by Fred Zinnemann.

1959(9^thof Tishrei, 5720): Erev Yom Kippur

1959(9^thof Tishrei, 5720): Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rov passed away. A native of Belarus, he escaped the Holocaust and settled in Jerusalem. A leader of the Haredi community, he advocated completed withdrawal from involvement with the state of Israel. Unlike others, this meant he opposed accepting any financial aid from the state.

1961(1st of Cheshvan, 5722): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1961(1st of Cheshvan, 5722):Leonard "Chico" Marx passed away at the age of 74.

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/chico.htm

1961: U.S. Premiere of “King of Kings,” the biblical blockbuster produced by Samuel Bronston

1961: U.S. Premier of the 3^rd version of “Back Street” based on a novel by Fannie Hurst

1962: Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II. The Council marked a turning point in improving relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish People.

1963: Popular French singer Edith Piaf passed away. Piaf was accused by some of collaborating with the Nazis while they occupied Parisduring the war. In her defense, Piaf’s supporters pointed that she helped the Jewish composer Michael Emer escape from occupied France. More to the point during the war she carried on an affair with the Jewish pianist Norbert Glanzberg, Okay, so it’s not Schindler’s List or Raoul Wallenberg; but saving Jews is saving Jews.

1965(15^thof Tishrei, 5726): Sukkoth

1973(15^thof Tishrei, 5734): Sukkoth

[Editor’s note – the next three entries are incomplete. They are not a catalogue of failure, but a record of very brave men, fighting against great odds, not unlike those members of the RAF who fought so courageously during the Battle of Britain – never have so have so many owed so much to so few)

1973: An F-4E Phantom carrying Kobi Hayun and Uri Arad was shot down by an Egyptian MiG-21

1973: An F-4E Phantom carrying Yonatan Ofir and Eran was shot down by an Egyptian MIG-21

1973: An F-4E Phantom carrying Asher Snir was shot down by a SAM or anti-aircraft batteries.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, after pushing Syrian troops from the Golan Heights, Israeli troops under General Raful Eitan counterattacked into Syrian territory. During the battle for the Golan, the Syrian army lost approximately 1,100 tanks. Some 3,500 Syrians were been killed, and 370 prisoners taken. At the end of the battle “a special paratroop unit led by a young officer called Yoni, made its way through Syrian-occupied territory, and in a dramatic rescue operation,” evacuated Lieutenant-Colonel Naty Yossi, who had led a gallant tank attack. The Yoni mentioned here is none other than Yoni Netenyahu, the man who will lose his life three years later on the rescue mission at Entebbe. His second in command described the scene, “Yoni attacking, shooting and his leading his men into battle, leading them, not giving orders from behind.” By nightfall, the Israelis were ten kilometers inside Syria and literally on the road to Damascus. Despite this moment of victory, the fate of the Jewish state still hung in the balance and the situation was quite precarious to say the least.

1975: Debut of Saturday Night Live, produced by Lorne Michaels, or, as he was known when growing up in Canada, Lorne Michael Lipowitz

1977(29^th of Tishrei, 5738): Five days before his 67^th birthday Sir Misha Black founder of the Artists’ International Association and winner of the Minerva Medal, the Chartered Society of Designers highest award.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan told the UN General Assembly that for the past 10 years, 1967-1977, Israel was committed, but to no avail, to territorial concessions on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip in return for a genuine peace. There was no sign that Arabs were ready for a settlement. And the same can still be said today.

1978(10^thof Tishrei, 5739): Yom Kippur

1981: “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin opens on CBS for its seventh season.

1981: U.S. premiere of “My Dinner with Andre” produced by George W. George the son of cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

1984(15^thof Tishrei, 5745): Sukkoth

1985: Birthdate of actress Michelle Trachtenberg.

1993: A month after the signing of the Declaration of Principles had taken place in Washington, D.C.between Israeland the PLO, the Israeli Foreign Minister “sent a letter to the Norwegian Foreign Minister in which he confirmed that ‘the Palestinian institutions of East Jerusalem and well-being of the Palestinians of East Jerusalem are great importance and will be preserved.’”

1997(10^thof Tishrei, 5758): Yom Kippur

1998: The New York Times book section featured a review of Phillip Roth’s novel, I Married A Communist.

2000: Avraham Shochat began serving as Minister of Energy and Water Resources (AKA – Ministry of National Infrastructure)

2000: In addition to his other duties, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer began serving as Minister of House and Construction

2000: Portions of the INS Dakar, the Israeli submarine that sank in 1968, were raised from the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. (They were later placed at the memorial to the sub and its crew located at the National Military and Police Cemetery on Mt. Herzl.)

2001: The Polaroid Corporation filed for bankruptcy marking the end of a company founded on the dream and the genius of Edwin Land and his instant photography.

2003(15^thof Tishrei, 5764): Sukkoth

2004: At the start of the Knesset winter session, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “outlined his plant to start legislation for the disengagement” from Gaza “beginning in November.”

2005: Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for their work in game theory, which explains the choices that competitors make in situations that require strategic thinking.

2005: The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage opened in suburban Cleveland. It is named for Milton Maltz and his wife, Tamar. The museum describes the heritage of the Jewish community through sound, visuals and interactive displays. The museum shares a campus with The Temple-Tifereth Israel. Founded in 1850, it's one of the oldest reform congregations in the United States.

2006(14th of Tishrei, 5767): A double barreled celebration as Sukkoth and Shabbat both begin on Friday night.

2006: FrontPageMagazine.com reported that Randy Weinstein is regretfully resigning the from Student Government Association (SGA) at Georgia Tech when that organization decided to provide funding for the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) so that it could put on a program that provided “a one-sided attack on Israeli anti-terrorism policy.”

2006: As of today, General Universal Stores (GUS) which had been under the control of Leonard Wolfson since 1970, was listed as two separate entities – Home Retail Group and Experian - on the London Stock Exchange.

2007: In Washington, D.C. the DCJCC as part of the Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a noontime discussion of Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community, a fascinating and authoritative chronicle of the history and heritage of Washington's vibrant Jewish community.

2007: The Oxford Union debating society raised ire among student groups and activists on Thursday after its president announced that he had invited Holocaust denier David Irving to come speak at the university.

2008: At the Jerusalem Cinematheque, a screening of the short film “So We Said Goodbye” ( “נפרדנו כך”) in which “65-year-old Yaakov is saying goodbye to his sons and grandchildren, who are leaving Israel and recalls the moment when as a child he bid farewell to his family in 1937 Poland.

2009 (23 Tishrei, 5770): Simchat Torah

2009:Israeli poet Efrat Mishor reads at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, IA.

2009:American fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will have the opportunity this fall to watch their team in action at Madison Square Garden, tonight when the Israeli team takes to the court against the New York Knick in a rematch of the teams' meeting in 2007.

2009: The Sunday edition of the Washington Postincluded reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Why the Dreyfus Affair Really Matters by Louis Begley

2009: The Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Timesincluded reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

2009: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Anne Frank: The book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose and Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics by Joyce Purnick.

2010: Israeli author Joshua Sobol is scheduled to take part in a reading at McNally Jackson bookstore in New York City.

2010: The Knesset is scheduled to convene for its Winter Session.

2010: Steve Linde reported today that “Irene Rosenfeld, an American Jewish businesswoman who is chief executive of Kraft Foods, came in second place on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most powerful women published this month. The list, which is headed by first lady Michelle Obama, features several other prominent Jewish women:

• Mary Schapiro, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (17th),

• Elana Kagan, the new Supreme Court justice (25th), • Sarah Jessica Parker, the attractive actress in Sex in The City (45th),

• Suze Orman, a personal finance expert, author and TV host (61st),

• Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer (66th), and

• Donna Karan, the famous fashion designer (96th).

2010:The 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded to three recipients today including Peter A. Diamond, a professor of MIT.

2010(3^rd of Cheshvan, 5771): Seventy four year old Carla Cohen who Politics and Prose was a bookstore was more a cultural landmark than a commercial venture, passed away today. (As reported by Ashley Parker)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/books/12cohen.html

2010(3^rd of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety four year old real estate developer Robert V. Tishman, whose work included the World Trade Center, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/13tishman.html

2011: Ethan Halpren is schuedled to host an Israeli Dance Workshop and Marathon at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia featuring internationally recognized choreographer and instructor Ira Weisburd.

2011: Israeli pianist Ran Dank is scheduled to perform the works of Chopin and Beethoven at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.

2011: Under the agreement, announced today, Israel is to free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for its soldier, Gilad Shalit, held captive in Gaza for the past five years.

2011:Unknown vandals scrawled "Death to the Jews" on four synagogues and a vehicle in the northern city of Safed on tonight.

2012: “The Gatekeepers,” a film created by Israeli director Dror Moreh is scheduled to be shown at the New York Film Festival

2012: In Washington, DC, Robin Jacobson, the Librarian at Adas Israel is scheduled to lead a discussion about Comedy in a Minor Key which “tells the story of a Dutch couple who harbor a Jew during the Holocaust and the consequences of their relationship.”

2012:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today that the elections for the 19th Knesset will be held on Tuesday, January 22, 2013.

2012: Barbra Streisand performed before the sold out crowd at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn tonight.

2012:The leader of Hezbollah claimed responsibility today for launching an Iranian-made drone aircraft into Israeli airspace earlier this week, adding more tension to an already explosive Mideast atmosphere.

2012:Over seven years after he vanished without a trace, a Daliat al-Carmel resident discovered the remains of missing Druse soldier Majdi Halabi two weeks ago in a forest near Usfiya, the IDF confirmed today. Halabi went missing in May 2005.

2012: “Fill the Void,” “the award-winning movie debut from Israel’s Rama Burshtein” is scheduled to have its Israeli premier. (As reported by JTA and Times of Israel)

2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “Mozart’s Women – Cose fan tutte”

2013: Shrek is scheduled to open at the Lawrence Family JCC in San Diego, CA

2013: The Ninth Grade is scheduled to lead Shabbat Eve services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA.

2013: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present “The Great Children’s Read: Bringing Books to Life” featuring Pamela Mayer, author of Don’t Sneeze at the Wedding.

2013:Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) today called on Israel to halt direct talks with the Palestinians following the fatal attack of an Israeli man overnight in a settlement in the northern Jordan Valley, Army Radio reported. (As reported by JP Staff)

2014(17^thof Tishrei, 5775): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2014: In Washington, Adas Israel is scheduled to hold Shabbat services for the first time since Gil Steinhauf, the congregation’s senior rabbi informed the community that he and his wife are divorcing while declaring “I have come to understand that I am gay.”

http://forward.com/articles/207077/how-gil-steinlauf-chose-personal-torah-over-one-tr/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202014-10-09&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform this evening at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, WI.

OCTOBER 12

539 BCE: The Persian armies of Cyrus the Great captured Babylon. Within the year, Cyrus would make it possible for the Jews to return to their homeland.

1129: The tombstone of Elijah ben Simon dated October 12, 1129 is among the oldest evidence of the Jewish settlement in Nuremberg goes back to the 12^th century.

1285: The Jews of Munich (Germany) were caught in a claim of blood libel which resulted in the death of most the Jewish community. When 180 Jewish survivors refused baptism, they were burned alive in their synagogue.

1366: In Sicily, Jews were forbidden to decorate the outside of their houses of worship.

1491: During the Blood Libel tied to the Holy Child of La Guardia, inquisitors arranged for a meeting between Yucef Franco and Benitor Garcia, the two Jews accused in this event.

1492: After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition, including Hebrew speaker Luis de Torres (the translator) went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and Spice Islands of Asia. Louis de Torres, a Marrano, was the first member of Columbus’ expedition to set foot in the Western Hemisphere. He discovered and introduced tobacco into Europe. He saw a bird he thought to be a peacock and called it a "tuki" (Hebrew for peacock - I Kings X22). Today that bird is known as a turkey. (There are those who say that the story of the Turkey is pure fiction. All that I can say is “Of this I do not know.”)

1576: Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor passed away. Maximilian reversed the decree that had banished the Jews from Prague. Furthermore, he allowed them to return to other towns in Bohemia and to settle in Austria. The life of the Jews in these domains was far from tranquil thanks to pressure from the Catholic Church. But under Maximilian II it was better than it had been under his predecessor Ferdinand.

1589(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5350): Rabbi Samuel ben Moses Medina (RaShDaM) passed away in Salonica. Born in 1505, his disciples included Abraham de Boton and Joseph ibn Ezra and his grandson was Samuel Hayyun, author of “Bene Shemuel “

1711: Charles VI who sought to limit the number of Jews living in Austria and Hungary began his reign as Holy Roman Emperor. Among his subjects was Ḥayyim Judah Löb Ettinger, the Austian Rabbi who was the son of Eliezer ha-Levi Lichtenstein Ettinger and the brother-in-law of Chaim Cohen Rapport, who served as a rabbi in Lemberg.

1772(15^thof Tishrei, 5533): Six month old David Riccardo "celebrates" Sukkoth for the first time.

1775: The Continental Congress creates the United States Navy. Some of the famous Jews to serve in the U.S. Navy include: Commodore Uriah P. Levy who played a key role in ending flogging as a punishment for seamen; Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the Nuclear Navy; Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations.

1778: In Denmark, Philip Hartvig Rée and Hanna Hartvig von Essen gave birth to Hartvig Philip Ree.

1789(22^ndof Tishrei, 5550): Shemini Atzeret is observed for the first time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1793: The cornerstone of Old East the oldest state university building in the United States is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is an important date in Jewish history because my sister, Judy Sharon (Levin) Rosenstein, of blessed memory was a Tar Heel Grad. She met her husband, Larry Rosenstein of blessed memory, at Chapel Hill. All three of their sons are also Carolina grads. Of such moments are real Jewish history made.

1796(10^thof Tishrei, 5557): Yom Kippur is observed for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1796: Israel Baer Kursheedt observed Yom Kippur as the only Jew aboard an American sloop sailing to the United States from Hamburg.

1797(22^ndof Tishrei, 5558): Shemini Atzeret is observed for the first time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1800(23^rdof Tishrei, 5561): Jews celebrate Simchat Torah for the first time in the 19^thcentury and for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.

1819(23^rdof Tishrei, 5580): Simchat Torah

1822: Birthdate of Seligman Solomon, the German born American businessman and philanthropist best known for his support of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City

1830: Birthdate of Antony Mayer de Worms, a London born descendant of Amschel Moses Rothschild and Schoenche Lechnich

1837(13^thof Tishrei, 5598): Seventy-five year old Talmudist, interpreter of Halacha and moel Rabbi Akiva Eger passed away today in Poznan

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112047/jewish/Rabbi-Akiba-Eger.htm

1838(23^rdof Tishrei, 5599): Simchat Torah

1848(15^thof Tishrei, 5609): Sukkoth

1853(10th of Tishrei, 5614): Yom Kippur

1853: Rabbi Raphall led services today at the Greene Street Synagogue in New York.

1854: Birthdate of Ida Kuhn, the daughter of Clara Regina Kuhn who became Ida Cohen after marrying Eduard Cohen

1864:The General News column reported today, Wednesday, that Monday’s livestock market was fairly active despite “the absence of the Hebrews, who” were “observing the Day of the Atonement, one of their principal fasts.” Tuesday’s market was more active than usual, in part, because “on account of the numbers of Jews present.”

1865: In a column styled “Our London Correspondence,” The New York Times reported that, “If you want a present proof that Mammon rules here, take the fact that yesterday Mr. Phillips, a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion, was elected Lord Mayor of London. Not that a Jew has not teeth, hands, organs, dimensions, and all that, as well as any other man; but, in the face of English prejudice, money and money alone could make a man who is a Jew by birth and religion, member of Parliament or Lord Mayor.” “Mr. Phillips” referred to Benjamin Samuel Phillips, a prominent British citizen and leader of the Agnlo-Jewish community who had been elected Lord Mayor in September of 1865. He served with such distinction that Queen Victoria knighted him for his service. Phillips was the second the Jew to hold the post; the first being David Salomons. His son, Sir George, would also served as Lord Mayor. The level of anti-Semitism displayed in this items stands in stark contrast with the detailed and sympathetic description of Jewish holidays that this paper was publishing in the 19^th century.

1865(22nd of Tishrei, 5626): Shmini Atzeret

1872(10^thof Tishrei, 5633): Yom Kippur

1873(21^stof Tishrei, 5634): Hoshanah Rabah

1873: “Curiosities of Superstition” published today traces the history of “host desecration” including a description of the 38 Jews who were burned to death in 1510 “because they had tortured the consecrated host until bled.”

1875: Birthdate of Yaakov Ben Zion Morein who gained famed as Rabbi Yaakov Ben Zion HaCohen Mendelsohn who served a congregation in Glasgow, Scotland before settling in the United States where he founded “his own shul, Congregation Beis Hamedrash Hagadol.”

1877: An application was made to Judge Barrett on behalf of the two children of the late Abraham Weisberg to order the Public Administrator to turn the two hundred dollars that constituted his estates to Rabbi Ash of the Ludlow-Street Synagogue so that he could send the money to the children living in Poland. Weisberg was a Jewish peddler who had been murdered two years ago in New York’s Westchester Country. The judge denied the application saying a guardian for the minor children would have to be appointed before going forward with the dispersal of funds.

1878(15^thof Tishrei, 5639): Sukkoth

1878: The strict anti-Socialist legislation passed today outlawed, for all practical purposes, the German Socialist Democratic Party whose leaders included Eduard Bernstein

1879: An article published today devoted to describing the rich variety of shell-fish used by cooks in Morocco pointed out that these are “utterly tabooed” when it comes to the local Jewish population.

1882: It was reported today that the Prime Minister told members of the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies, that the recent anti-Jewish riots in Pressburg “might …degenerate into” an event “of a socialistic character.” He declared that would he would not tolerate “such excesses.”

1884(23^rdof Tishrei, 5645): Simchat Torah

1884: As the effects of the sever economic recession, which has necessitated the closing of many major employers, including the Falls Cotton Mills, grip New England, it is reported that the Polish Jews living in Baltic, a city 8 miles north of Norwich, Conn, are reduced to begging from door to door.

1884: Roderick Waters, who is Christian and Michael Hauman, who is Jewish nearly came to blows today as they vied for the affections of a Jewish widow in St. Mark’s Place.

1884: “News of the World” published today described the change in fortunes for Mahmoud Pasha, aka Jacob Freund The Sultan has brought him back from the Island of Rhodes where he had been living in exile since 1876 and restored him to his former position of prominence. Mahmoud Pasha was a Polish born Jew named Jacob Freund who had fled Hungary after the revolution there failed and, after converting, became “the ablest of Turkish Generals.

1885: David J. Seligman and Adelaide (Addie) Seligman gave birth to Gladys Seligman who, after she married Henri Wertheim became Gladys Wertheim.

1885: “The Only One In America” published today described the opening of the first and only “Hebrew-Christian Church” in the United States. Located in New York, it is the only congregation that has been established by Jewish converts to Christianity. (Editor’s note – Jews for Jesus type movements are obviously note a creation of the late 20^thcentury.)

1886: “The Anchroia’s Long Trip” described the perilous ocean crossing of a steamer that that had its propeller shaft brake causing havoc among the crew and passengers. Fortunately, only two passengers died in the chaos, one of whom was an unnamed Polish Jew who was buried at sea.

1888(7^thof Cheshvan, 5649): Just two months before his 76^th birthday, Joseph Moses Levy, the English newspaper editor and publisher whose properties included The Daily Telegraph passed away.

1888: “The Fifteenth Season” published today described the first event of 1888-1889 season sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Among those who addressed those attending the gala at Chickering Hall was Chauncey M. Depew. (Depew was not Jewish. He was an attorney who became President of the New York Central Railroad and U.S. Senator from New York. His willingness to speak at the YMHA gathering gives an indication of the importance of the organization.) The speeches were followed by an evening of choral music with violin accompaniment.

1889: Max Maretzek, the Moravian born American opera conductor and composer, celebrated his Golden Jubilee

1890: “Russia’s Milling Industry” published today attributed the decline in the country’s grain milling industry and the decline in the price of corn to “the persecution of the Jews.”

1891(10th of Tishrei, 5652): Yom Kippur

1891: Several “temporary places of worships have been established” in New York city “public halls” to accommodate the large number of people attending services, especially on the Lower East Side.

1891: In Columbus, GA, more than fifty Jewish owned stores closed because of the Day of Atonement.

1891: In Brooklyn, Sophie and Pincus Weinberg gave birth to Sidney James Weinberg

1891: An Indictment of Russia” published today described the view of the Jews that Nicholas I who reigned from 1825 to 1855 was “a Second Haman” whose 30 year reign “was filled with special hardship for” them. Much to their surprise, the reign of Alexander III has proved to be even worse.

1891: Birthdate of Edith Stein who later converted to Catholicism. When she became a nun she took the name "Teresia Benedicta ac Cruce." Sister Teresia left Germanyfor Hollandafter the Nazis came to power. In 1942, the Nazis ordered the arrest of Catholics of Jewish origin living in Holland. This included clergy like Sister Teresia. Sister Teresia was once again Edith Stein. She died in Auschwitzin August of 1942. If people who converted to Catholicism are really Catholics it is hard to understand how the Pope gave up these members of his flock. Eventually, Edith Stein would be made Saint. Cynics would say that in one respect the Church has remained consistent. It loves Jews, as long as they are dead.

1891: Today, Jews in Missouri are upset by the recent attack John T. Blake the manager for William Warner, the Republican candidate for governor has made on Mr. Isaac Isaacs, Secretary of the Republican clubs that included a “roast of the Jews.”

1892(21^stof Tishrei, 5653): Hoshana Rabah

1892: In New York, a conference of Orthodox rabbis which has dealt with changes espoused by the Reform including doing away requiring circumcision as part of the conversion ceremony, is scheduled to come to an end

1892: Carlos Pellegrini, who has a German-Jewish brother-in-law, completed his term of office as President of Argentina during which he expressed his support for Baron Hirsch’s plan to settle a half a million Russian Jews in the Argentine Republic.

1893: Julius Bien, the President of B’Nai B’rith is scheduled to address the opening session of a three day affair marking the Golden Anniversary of the Jewish fraternal organization.

1894: Alfred Gobert, “the handwriting expert from the Bank of France,” was summoned to the rue Saint-Dominique where he spent the day examining the treasonous documents supposedly written by Captain Dreyfus.(For more see The Dreyfus Affair by Piers Paul Read)

1894: This evening, General de Boisdeffre told Commandant du Paty de Calm that “he had been chosen to arrest Dreyfus.” Du Paty tried to avoid the task but the general insisted.

1897: In Kansas City, clothing store owner Jacob Epstein and his wife gave birth to Jane Epstein, the future wife Goodman Ace who became half of the comedy team known as “Easy Aces.”

1897: Expenses estimates submitted at today’s meeting of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment included: Aguilar Free Library $41, 500; Maimonides Free Library $5,000; Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum $324,992; Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society $89,000; Sanitarium for Hebrew Children $5,500; Mt. Sinai Hospital $26,000

1903(21^stof Tishrei, 5664): Hoshana Rabah

1906(23^rdof Tishrei, 5667): Simchat Torah

1906: In Australia, Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs began serving as Puisne Justice of the High Court of Australia.

1910(9^thof Tishrei, 5671): Erev Yom Kippur

1910: Birthdate of Canadian screenwriter Ben Barzman who fell afoul of HUAC and ended up on one of its infamous blacklists.

1911: Multiple telegrams were received in Londonfrom Malta, Gabes and Djerba, appealing for help for the many thousands of Jewish refugees who had come from Tripoli.

1912: Birthdate of Elizabeth H. Friedman, the wife of Sylvan N. Friedman, the Jewish political leader who served in both houses of the Louisiana state legislature.

1914(22^ndof Tishrei, 5675): Shemini Atzeret

1914: Birthdate of Mauricio Leib Lasansky, “an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism…” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1916(15^thof Tishrei, 5677): Sukkoth

1918: Dr. Madisen Clinton Peters, the former pastor of the Bloomingdale Church and author whose works included Justice to the Jew, The Jews as Patriot, The Wit Wisdom of the Talmud, The Jews in America and the Jews Who Stood by Washington, passed away after losing his week-long fight with Spanish Influenza.

1918:Upon hearing that the German government had accepted President Wilson’s condition for negotiation, “the German born Zionist Arthur Ruppin noted in his diary how he ‘went for a long walk and continuously repeated to myself the one word: Peace! How much it means.’” Ruppin’s joy was premature and it would be another month before Peace would become a reality.

1919: The New York Times includes a review of Past and Present: A Collection of Essays by Dr. Israel Friedlander, a noted member of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary and an author of several volumes on Jewish history.

1921(10^thof Tishrei, 5682): Yom Kippur

1921: According to New York City political leaders yesterday's drop in voter registration, as compared with both the first day's registration and that of last year was mainly due to the fact that the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur began yesterday evening. “In many instances Jewish registration inspectors left their booths at sundown” which delayed registration for those waiting in line. “The Jewish holiday kept the registration down on the East side of Harlem” and other East side locations because Jews did not come out to register on the eve of Yom Kippur. The importance of observing Yom Kippur was a universal factor among Jews regardless of affiliation as can be sen by the fact that Jacob Schiff, who was serving as Chairman of one of the registration boards and a co-religionist serving on the board “quit work at sunset.” When Schiff was challenged by waiting voters he replied, “We are sorry, but you observe your holidays and we must observe ours.” The Board of Elections admitted that it had not even considered the disruption that would take place when voter registration coincided with the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar.

1923: Birthdate of Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight Watchers. “The story of the establishment of Weight Watchers International begins with the personal story of a New York housewife who wanted to succeed at losing weight. In 1963, Mrs. Jean Nidetch , a Jewish woman in her forties, who had experienced many failed attempts at losing weight and gaining weight, decided to lose weight forever.” So begins the saga as described by the Weight Watchers Program. There are those who say the program is very Jewish. Like Moses, Ms. Nidetch started with a list of foods you could not eat and book.

1924: Birthdate of Erich Gruenberg, the Austrian born violinist who studied at the Jerusalem Conservatory and “led the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra from 1938 to 1945.

1925: Birthdate of Julius Bronstein, a 34 for year veteran of the Chicago Police Department

1925: Birthdate of Alan Howard Abelson, the New York native who became an editor of Barron’s magazine where he wrote “a pugnacious, sagacious stock market column that denounced Wall Street hucksterism and routinely rocked share prices (As reported by Douglas Martin

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/business/media/alan-abelson-barrons-columnist-and-editor-dies-at-87.html?hpw&_r=0

1925(24^thof Tishrei, 5685): Thirty-two year old Polish born circus performer known as the “Strongest Man in the World” passed away today in Berlin after having injured himself during a performance.

1926: Birthdate of Dr. Ruth L. Kirschstein, a National Institutes of Health pathologist who helped develop and refine tests to ensure the safety of vaccines for polio and measles, organized the NIH response to the AIDS epidemic, and became the first woman appointed director of an NIH institute.”

1927: Anna Boudin, Mrs. Jacob Panken and Florence Dolowitz organized the first meeting of the Women's American ORT (WAO). (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1929: The British High Commissioner sends a telegram to the government in London warning that the Arabs of Palestine had recently obtained a considerable number of arms from Transjordanand the Hedjaz which they intended to use in attacks on the Jewish population.

1930: Birthdate of New Rochelle native Jack Gottlieb, a noted composer who “served as President of the ASJM for a number of years.”

http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=3548

1933(23rd of Tishrei, 5694): Simchat Torah

1933: William E. Dodd, FDR’s newly appointed Ambassador to Germany, defied the conventional wisdom and gave a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in which he was highly critical of the Nazi regime. Among the high-ranking Nazis in attendance were Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg.

1934: Birthdate of architect, Richard Meier.

1934: U.S. premiere of “The Bay Divorcee,” a musical directed by Mark Sandrich with a score by Max Steiner.

1935(15^thof Tishrei, 5695): Sukkoth

1939: The first Jewish deportees left Viennaand Bohemia.

1939: Hans Frank is appointed governor-general of Occupied Poland.

1940(10th of Tishrei, 5701): Yom Kippur; it is also Shabbat.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/05.asp

1940:For the first time in 940 years, non-Christian religious services were held in Iceland. Approximately twenty five Jewish soldiers from England, Scotland and Canada gathered with eight Jewish refugees and Hendrik Ottósson, who had married a Jewish woman to observe Yom Kippur. Ottósson, served as their Shammash. The Icelandic authorities offered a chapel in Reykjavík's old cemetery. Ottósson found the suggestion insulting and rented a hall of the Good Templars' Lodge. They borrowed the only Torah scroll available in town.

1940: On this Jewish Day of Atonement, German loudspeakers in Warsaw, Poland, announce that all Jews in the city must move to the Jewish ghetto by the end of the month.

1940(10th of Tishrei, 5701): The Nazis executed 3,400 Jews in Galicia.

1941(21^st of Tishrei, 5702): Hoshanah Rabah

1941: InStanislawow, Eastern Galicia, all of the Jews living in the district, were driven out of their homes into the center of the town where massive graves had been dug. SS troops and Ukrainian militia commence machine gunning of the gathered populace. Estimates of the number of Jews murdered range from a low of 6,000 to a high of 12,000. For the Jews, it was Hoshanah Rabbah, (the Great Prayer day.) The Ukrainian and German killers throw a "Bloody Sunday" victory celebration.

1941: At Sabac, Yugoslavia, hundreds of Gypsies are murdered. Jews were the primary victims of genocide, but not the only victims.

1941: The head of the University ofLouisville expresses his gratitude for a bequest by the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandies to the school’s Law Library. About two decades ago, Justice. Brandies selected the LawSchool of the University of Louisville as beneficiary of specific current gifts from him because, in his judgment, this university is much less liable to political influence than institutions under complete public control.

1944: Gerda Baier was deported to Auschwitz where she was subsequently murdered.

1944(25^thof Tishrei, 5705): The wife and young daughter of chess champion Salo Landau were gassed today at Auschwitz.

1945: Forty women rescued from Nazi concentration camps were the first to be sheltered in the new sixty-bed wing opened” today “at the Women’s League for Palestine home at Haifa. In New York, “Mrs. David L. Isaacs, who head the Palestine committee of the league” described “the welcome given the group rescued from Bergen-Belsen, Buchwald and Auschwitz.”

1945: British authorities continued their search of a secret radio that was “attempting to rally Jewish resistance forces.” Shortly before a secret radio station “that was attempting to rally Jewish resistance forces…broadcast the announcement ‘Listen to the voice of Israel! This is not a terrorist station. This is the station of Hebrew resistance. Never again will Jews be deported from their homeland. Our patience is over. No power in the world shall break our determination.”

1946: U.S. premiere of “Nobody Lives Forever” starring John Garfield (Jacob Julius Garfinkle)

1948(9^thof Tishrei, 5709): Erev Yom Kippur; in the evening Kol Nidre is chanted for the first time in almost two thousand years in an independent Jewish state.

1948(9^thof Tishrei, 5709): Eighty year old Alfred Kerr passed away today.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11056.html

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006082

1948: Egypt, Syria and Lebanonrecognize the All Palestine Government. Jordan’s King Abdullah had already refused to grant this entity any power in territory seized by his Arab Legion. In other words, there was to be no Palestinian control over what is now called the West Bank and the OldCitysection of Jerusalem.

1952(23^rdof Tishrei, 5713): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Harry S. Truman, “the godfather of Israeli independence”

1953: The “Caine Mutiny Court Martial” opened at the Plymouth Theatre in New York. This Broadway dramatic hit was based on the novel The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Wouk has had a successful writing career dealing with both non-Jewish and Jewish themes. More to the point, he has been successful without compromising his very strong belief in traditional Judaism and the state of Israel.

1954(15^thof Tishrei, 5715): Sukkoth

1954: In Philadelphia, PA, Congressman Joshua Eilberg and his wife Gladys gave birth to Amy Eilberg, the first female rabbi ordained by the Conservative movement.

1955(26th of Tishrei, 5716):Arthur Hammerstein passed away. Born in 1872, this son of Oscar Hammerstein I and uncle of Oscar Hammerstein II, “was an opera producer and one of the writers of the song "Because of You," a major hit (#1 for 10 weeks) for Tony Bennett in 1951. Hammerstein wrote the song in 1940. It was used in the film I Was an American Spy (1951). He was the producer of the musical comedies The Firefly (1912), and Rose Marie (1924), which he did along with his nephew. He also was the producer of the film The Lottery Bride (1930), and made an appearance as himself in an episode of the film series Popular Science in 1949. Arthur Hammerstein was born and educated in New York City. Arthur's daughter, Elaine Hammerstein was a well-known stage and film actress.”

1956: In response to a request from a very worried Jordanian King, the British government informed Israel that, in accordance with the treaties with Jordan and Iraq, Britain would go to the aid of both these countries if they were attacked by Israel. The irony was that Israel was negotiating with France and Britain over plans to attack Egyptand seize the Suez Canal.

1957: Publication of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged which, in 2007, will be described as one of the most influential business books ever written.

1958: Fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in the entryway of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Society -- the oldest and largest Reform congregation, commonly known as the Temple.Five men, all associated with white separatist groups like the National States' Rights Party, were tried and acquitted. No one was ever convicted for the crime. The bombing came as Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was becoming increasingly active in the Civil Rights movement.

1959(10^thof Tishrei, 5720): Yom Kippur

1959: The Play of the Week broadcast David Susskind’s production of Media as its first broadcast.

1960(21^stof Tishrei, 5721): Hoshanah Rabah

1960; U.S. premiere of “Inherit the Wind,” the cinematic adaptation of the play co-authored by Jerome Lawrence, directed and produced by Stanley Kramer.

1963: Archaeological digs began at Masada, Israel. Masada was the site of the famous “last stand” during the “War Against Rome” that ended with the destruction of the SecondTemple. The archaeological dig was important because it gave credence to Jewish history. Of course the debate continues to this day as to who was right – the Jews of Masada or the Jews of Yavnah.

1963: “A virulent anti-Semitic book, Judaism Without Embellishment, by Trofim Kichko was published in the USSR today.”

1967: In discussing his latest archeological finds, Dr. Yigael Yadin, Israel's leading archeologist contends that King Solomon may have indulged a passion for building during his long reign from 960 to 922 B.C., but he did not build the stables at Megiddo

1969(30^thof Tishrei, 5730): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1969(30^thof Tishrei 5730): Seventy-two year old Dr. Max Schur, the friend and confidant of Sigmund Freud passed away

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3969756-freud

1971(23^rdof Tishrei, 5732): Simchat Torah

1973: Moshe Koren safely ejected from his F-4E Phantom Jet after it fell victim to Lebanese anti-aircraft fire and was recovered by IDF forces.

1973: Ran Goren and Micha Oren were safely recovered by IDF forces after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by an Egyptian MiG-21.

1973: A week after the Yom Kippur War began; Avraham Lanir scored his third and last aerial kill, downing a Syrian MiG-17 in the vicinity of Kuneitra while flying Mirage 5

1973: As many as 15,000 Iraqi troops had reached the Syrian front and were prepared to attack Israeli forces. The Israelis lucked out and spotted a lead contingent of fifty Iraqi tanks. When the Iraqis reached to within three yards of the outnumbered Israelis, the IDF tanks opened fire destroying 17 tanks and halting the assault The Soviets completed a twenty-four hour air lift during which eighty large Soviet transport planes landed in Syria filled with a wide variety of arms that more than compensated for the Syrian losses during the first week of fighting. On the southern front, Egyptian tanks and troops continued to pour across the Suez Canal posing a new threat to the Israelis.

1973: In the midst of the perilous first week of the Yom Kippur War a dispute broke out between the Sephardic Chief Rabbi and his Ashkenazi counterpart. October 12, 1973was a Friday. As the sun was setting the Sephardic Rabbi announced that it was a sin to bake bread on Shabbat, even in war time. The Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Goren, the man who had been chief rabbi of the IDF in the 1967 war said that it was perfectly permissible to break the rules of Shabbat and bake bread during war time. Doesn’t this remind you of Jerusalemduring the Roman Siege?

1975: Birthdate of Aharon Mordechai Rokeach the only child and heir of the current Rebbe of Belz, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, he was named after his father's uncle, Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, the fourth Belzer Rebbe, and his father's father, Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgorai.

1978: Representatives of Israel and Egypt opened peace talks in Washington, D.C.

1984: It was reported today that memoirs of Jaroslav Seifert, the newly named Nobel Prize winner in Literature, contain a “selection, titled 'Russian Bliny,' is about Roman Jakobson, a Russian born Jewish scholar who emigrated to Czechoslovakia after World War I and came to the United States during World War II.”

1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748): Sixth Day of Sukkoth

1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748):Oliver Louis Zangwill an influential British neuropsychologist passed away today. Born in 1913, he was Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 1952-81, then Professor Emeritus. He was the son of Israel Zangwill and the grandson of William Edward Ayrton. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1977

1988:

Israel

and China signed a trade agreement and made plans for establishing diplomatic relations.

1989:A Syrian Air Force major flying a Soviet-made fighter-bomber landed in Israel today, stunning Israeli officials who said the pilot had asked for political asylum. Syria asserted that the MIG-23 plane had suffered mechanical problems and made an emergency landing, though the Syrian statement did not explain why the pilot had flown more than 50 miles into Israel. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin hastily left a Cabinet meeting as soon as he heard of the defection at about noontoday. Joined by several other military officials, he rushed to the site of the landing, a small crop-duster air strip outside Megiddo in the central Galilee, and personally questioned the pilot. Syria is this nation's most bitter enemy and has been at a state of war with Israel since the nation was founded in 1948. Its political leaders oppose any form of accommodation with Israel. No Syrian pilot has ever defected to Israel before now. The last defection of an Arab pilot to Israelwas in August 1966, when an Iraqi air force captain flew his MIG-21 to Israel. Israeli officials reported that a second MIG-23 from the same unit landed in Alexandria, Egypt, today. But the Egyptian Government denied that, and there has been no independent confirmation. Without making any mention of the report of a plane landing in Egypt, the Syrian Government said it planned to ask the International Committee of the Red Cross for help in winning the return of the plane and the pilot that landed in Israel. ''Fire and smoke were reported coming out of the plane's engine before its pilot was forced to bring it down in Israel,'' a Syrian Defense Ministry statement said. Syria intends ''to work for repatriating the pilot,'' it added. Israeli officials scoffed at the idea that either the plane or its pilot would be returned. They said the major was already cooperating with Israeli officials, who began interrogating him almost immediately. Being Held at Air Base He was identified as Maj. Adel Bassem, 34 years old. Israeli officials have not said so far whether he has explained the reason for his defection. He is being held at an air base in the northern Galilee. Military officials said that the plane was one of several on maneuver near the Golan Heights and that it and the others were being tracked by radar even before it veered west, crossing into Jordanian and then Israeli airspace and flying west on its own. A MIG-23 is capable of flying at Mach-2, twice the speed of sound, and officials said the plane probably was airborne over Israel for only three or four minutes. Once it landed, Israel Radio reported, workers at the small airstrip said the Syrian major climbed down, spread his arms and in Arabic said, ''I have no hostile intentions.'' The workers offered the pilot water, which he accepted and then told them he wanted to request political asylum. No military or security officials arrived at the airfield for more than 20 minutes, said the workers on the scene, who were quoted by the Israeli radio. The Soviet Union has supplied the MIG-23, a single-seat, swing-wing fighter known as the ''flogger'' in NATO parlance, to several Arab nations, and it remains the principal plane of the Syrian and Iraqi air forces.

1990(23^rdof Tishrei, 5751): Simchat Torah

1992(15^thof Tishrei, 5753): Sukkoth is observed for the last time during the Presidency of George Bush.

1997: In “Neighborhood Report: Corona –New Worshipers Are Bane, Not Balm, for Old Synagogue,” Charlie Leduff describes the challenges faced at Tifereth Israel as an influx of Bukharan Jews face the aging members of the nine decades old synagogue.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/12/nyregion/neighborhood-report-corona-new-worshipers-are-bane-not-balm-for-old-synagogue.html

1997:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazisy by William D. Rubinstein, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jewsby Eva Hoffman and God & The American Writer by AlfredKazin.

2000: Ben Weider received the French Legion of Honor. A successful body builder and businessman, Weider was a student of history who worked to prove that Napoleon had been poisoned.

2000(13^thof Tishrei, 5761): Vadim Nurhitz and Yossi Avrahami, two Israeli reservists who entered Ramallah by mistake were arrested by the PA. While in the custody of the PA, a mob savagely murdered them and then mutilated their bodies.

http://www.think-israel.org/freerepublic.octoberramallahlynch.html

2000: During the Infitada, “vandals…desecrated the building” housing the mosaic that had been part of the Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue, Jewish house of worship that dates back “to the late 6^th or early 7^th century and was discovered in 1936 “by Dr. Baramki of the Antiquities Authority under the British Mandate.”

2002: In Massachusetts, Boston College, a Catholic institution of higher learning, installed “a copy of the Torah in the worship center, where it is expected to be used” for future Friday and Saturday services.

2003:The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including Madam Secretaryby Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward and Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11by Gerald Posner.

2005(9th of Tishrei, 5766): Erev Yom Kippur

2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified one last time before the federal grand jury before being “relieved of contempt charges” in matters related to the Scooter Libby leak case.

2006(20th of Tishrei, 5767): Sixth Day of Sukkoth

2006(20^thof Tishrei, 5767): Sixty-one year old Don Novick, loving husband of Denise Novick and father of Rochelle and Cassie Novick passed away. The son of Russian immigrant Jews, he was raised as an Orthodox Jew in Cheynne, Wyoming. A member of Temple Judah, he was a pillar of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Jewish community who gave freely of his time and cuillanary skills to so many worthwhile events. Among his many virtues, was the ability to cook anything you wanted to perfection, including the best falafel west of Tel Aviv. A quite man, he touched many lives and will never be forgotten.

2006: In New York, the Albany County District Attorney acknowledged that he was investigating the hiring of a chauffeur by the Comptroller of New York, Alan Hevesi.

2007(30th of Tishrei, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2007: The film “Jewish Life in Cracow”is screened at the GuggenheimMuseum in New York City

2007: Yaakov Katz the military correspondent and defense analyst for The Jerusalem Post, the Middle East's leading English daily speaks at the Hillel House at the University of Iowa

2007:Some of the world's best klezmer musicians gathered in a New York neighborhood that was once home to poor immigrant Jews for a 10-day festival of the music rooted in their Eastern European cultures.

2008: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar and The Partnership:The Making of Goldman Sachsby Charles D. Ellis.

2008: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including Hitler’s Empire:How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower and two paperback offering: A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich; Translated from the German by Caroline Mustill and Just Say Nu Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do)by Michael Wex.

2008: In Atlanta, members of The Temple gathered to observe the 50^th anniversary of the blast that shook the congregation, recalling , recalling its terrifying aftermath and the way it changed their congregation's mission to promote racial equality. The bombing of a prominent Atlantasynagogue in 1958 claimed no lives, but the community outrage that it prompted helped galvanize the city's nervous Jewish community to embrace the civil rights movement."What could have been a terribly tragic event had the effect of making the congregation more confident, and more willing to get involved in controversial events," said Ellen Rafshoon, who curated an exhibit on the bombing at Emory University's rare manuscripts library. The Reform congregation, housed in a handsome cluster of buildings on one of Atlanta's busiest streets, had for years discouraged conflicts with Atlanta's dominant Christian community. But the synagogue's message changed when it hired Rabbi Jacob Rothschild to lead the congregation in 1946. Sermons encouraging racial equality soon became an annual tradition on Jewish holidays, and the rabbi slowly pushed his congregants to work for integration. "He suspected all along that he was endangering the congregation and his family," said Rothschild's widow, Janice Rothschild Blumberg, who remarried after the rabbi's death in 1973. "But he felt he had to do it, that this was his duty — as a rabbi and a human being." On the early morning of Oct. 12, 1958, some 50 sticks of dynamite exploded in the synagogue's entryway, destroying a part of the building. At least six other synagogues around the nation had been targeted by bombs in the previous year. But it was a particular shock for congregants who believed Atlanta— whose leaders fostered a reputation as a bustling, progressive city — was immune from the hate crimes spreading across other parts of the South. "We were so naive at the time," said Jill Shapiro Thornton, a Templemember and a ninth-grade student at the time of the bombing. The city's Jewish community worried the bombing would be met with a halfhearted response, as had happened in the aftermath of the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Temple member who was killed by a white mob. Instead, the Templewas flooded with letters and donations, messages of support from Girl Scout troops, concerned clergy — even a white citizens council in Alabama. Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield visited the Templeand quickly went on television to condemn the bombers and the politicians who he said should share the blame. "Whether they like it or not, every political rabble-rouser is the godfather of these cross burners and dynamiters who sneak about in the dark and give a bad name to the South," he said. "It is high time the decent people of the South rise and take charge." Dozens of city, state and federal investigators fanned out across the area, arresting five suspects with ties to anti-Semitic groups. One suspect, George Bright, was acquitted in a high-profile trial, and charges against the other four co-defendants were dropped. Rothschild, meanwhile, continued to urge his flock to embrace racial equality. Among his proudest accomplishments was co-hosting an integrated dinner after Martin Luther King Jr. had won the Nobel Prize in 1964. Some 20 percent of the event's donors were Jewish, Rafshoon said. "Jews had become complacent and afraid, reluctant to stick their necks out," said Rafshoon. "The rabbi had pushed the congregation to take a stand, to support the civil rights movement. After the bombing, the big hug that came their way made Jews in Atlanta feel they could have the confidence to move forward on this controversial issue." Congregants on Sunday mingled with residents who came to pay respects in a new building near the site of the explosion. Some recalled it as a terrifying introduction to racism. Some said it cemented the Jewish community's role in Atlanta. To Blumberg, it was an act of violence that ultimately proved to be positive. "I felt it was like lancing a boil, like a surgeon opening a wound that didn't heal right," she said. That helps explain the surprising name she coined for the blast that shook Atlanta: "The bomb that healed."

2008:A critically acclaimed fully staged off-Broadway production of Joseph Stein’s “Enter Laughing: The Musical” came to a close at The York Theatre. “It was nominated for a 2009 Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding revival.”

2009: Time magazine published an article entitled “How Moses Shaped America” by Bruce Feiler.

http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1927303,00.html

2009:Israel and the U.S. are scheduled to begin their biggest joint air-defense exercise today. Code named "Juniper Cobra," the maneuvers will be overseen by Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, chief of the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet and are designed to test the missile interceptors that would serve as a strategic bulwark in any future showdown with Iran.

2009: As part of The New School's "Jewish Text" seminar series David Stromberg will be reading from and discussing his newest book, Baddies.

2009(24th of Tishrei, 5770): Ninety-six year old Mildred Cohn who overcame gender and religious discrimination to make major advances in biochemistry and who received the nation's most prestigious award in science passed away today. (As reported by Matt Schudel)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102204570.html

2010:Joshua Sobol is scheduled talk about his novel Cut Throat Dog at program sponsored byWesleyan University Jewish and Israel Studies program in Middleton.

2010:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “Protocols of Justice: Inside the Rabbinical Court of Metz, France (1771-1789).”

2010:After six years of construction, the American Consulate in Jerusalem is scheduled to open its new facility for consular services on Rehov David Flusser in the southern Arnona neighborhood today.

2010:British Jewish author Howard Jacobson was the surprise winner of the Man Booker Prize today for The Finkler Question, the first comedy to scoop one of the English-speaking world's most coveted literary awards.

2010(4^thof Cheshvan, 5771):Ninety-five year old best-selling author Belva Plain passed away today (As reported Elsa Dixler)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/books/18plain.html

2010: The Guardian published Shabtai Rosenne: Eminent International lawyer, teacher and Israeli diplomat” by Malcom Shaw.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/12/shabtai-rosenne-obituary/print

2011(14^thof Tishrei, 5772): Erev Sukkoth

2011: Israeli cellist Inbal Segev is scheduled to perform at the Bulgarian Concert Evening in Carnegie Hall.

2011:Galid Shalit's parents, Noam and Aviva, arrived this evening in their home in Mitzpe Hila in northern Israel, after leaving the protest site they had been encamped at in Jerusalem.

2012: NFTY/HUC/AJA Teen Study Weekend is scheduled to begin in Cincinnati, Ohio.

2012:The US State Department confirmed today that it had attempted to renew peace talks between Jerusalem and Damascus in 2010, before the outbreak of violence in Syria. The information partially confirmed an article in today’s Yedioth Ahronoth that stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed in principle to withdraw from the Golan Heights during indirect talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2010.(As reported by Yoel Goldman and Ron Friedman)

2012:Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip fired a Grad rocket towards Netivot today, causing one civilian to suffer shock symptoms, according to the Negev Police.

2013: In Jerusalem, the Ensemble Millennium is scheduled to perform “Night Music,” a concert that will include works by Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg.

2013: The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present “American Savage: Insights, Slights and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love and Politics” featuring Dan Savage.

2013: Iran said it arrested three Israelis suspected of spying and attempting to recruit Iranian citizens to gather intelligence for Israel, Iranian news agency Mehr reported today.

2013:"The State should act forcefully to send a message to these people," said Monique Ofer, wife of retired IDF Colonel Seraya Ofer, 61, who was murdered in a terror attack outside his home in the northern Jordan Valley early yesterday. "He was an amazing man, and two bastards took his life," she said. (As reported by Ahiya Raved)

2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig

2014: “Race: Are We So Different?” is scheduled to open at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

2014: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a new walking tour “Downtown Synagogues and D.C.’s Urban Evolution.”

2014: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host “Zangwill’s Ghetto: An East End Story” which is a walking tour of the author’s childhood neighborhood held to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of Zangwill’s birth.

2014: In honor of Sukkoth, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Pita in the Hut.”

OCTOBER 13

54: Roman Emperor Claudius passed away. For Jews, Claudius has to rate as one of the best of the Roman rulers. Among other things, he took the side of the Jews when they were attacked in Alexandria; he maintained a genuine friendship with Agrippa and allowed the Jews to elect their own high Priest while refraining from tampering with the Temple treasury.

54: Nero ascends to the Roman throne. Nero would appoint four increasingly incompetent and venal governors whose misrule would play a key role in the outbreak of the Great Revolt. When the Jews did rebel, Nero appointed Vespasian to put down the revolt.

1307: In France, Phillip IV ordered the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar on charges of heresy. What Phillip was really after was control of the wealth of the Templars. A year earlier, he had expelled the Jews from France after stripping them of their wealth. Philip’s behavior is just one more example of greed hiding behind a façade of religious belief.

1398:Richard Whittington was elected Lord Mayor of London. Whittington was one of those who defied the ban on Jews living in England when it suited his purposes. He brought a physician named Samson de Mirabeau into the realm for care for his wife in 1409. Whittington was in good company when it came to ignoring the ban since King Henry IV brought Elias Ben Sabbetai from Bologna to serve as his physician in 1410.

1483: Isaac Ben Judah Abravanel (also spelled Abarbanel) started his exegesis on the Bible. Born in Portugal 1437, Abravanel was one of the most colorful and interesting characters of the final decades of during which Jews lived in Spain and Portugal. He was part of a distinguished family and he was well educated in Jewish and secular studies. Abravanel was a financier, tax collector and advisor to the King Alfonso of Portugal. When Alfonso died, Abravanel had falling out with his successor. It was at this time that Abravanel decided to give up his political duties and devote himself to writing commentaries. For reasons that are too complex for this brief entry, Abravanel was forced to flee to Spain where he returned to his tax collecting duties. He left Spain in 1492 and ended up in Naples where he ended up as financier and tax collector again. He passed away in 1503 leaving behind a body of commentaries on the Torah and the Prophets. According to some authorities, his work is solid, but not original. He is, however seen as being the last in a long line of Jewish commentators and philosophers who were part of the Sephardic culture that flourished from the 8^th to the 15^thcenturies.

1534: Papacy of Paul III began. In response to the threat of the Protestant Reformation, Paul “established a system of tribunals, administered by the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition’, and staffed by cardinals and other Church officials. This system would later become known as the Roman Inquisition.” Unfortunately for the Jews, this iteration of the Inquisition also dealt with the “crimes” relating to Judaism including the attempts by Jews who had been forced to convert to return to the faith of their ancestors.

1654: (2nd of Heshvan 5415): On this date Isaac Rodriguez Cunha, a citizen of Curacao, writes a letter which is addressed “to the illustrious Gentlemen, the Mahamad of the Holy Congregation Mikvah Israel, Curacao.” This is one of the first written pieces of evidence used in fixing the dates for the founding of the Jewish community and the synagogue in Curacao. Mahamad is a term used for the “board of directors of a Spanish-Portuguese Congregation

1759(22^ndof Tishrei, 5520): Shemini Atzeret

1773: It was reported today that “a gentleman” who has “returned from the interior parts of North America, beyond the Ohio,” claims to have discovered “a nation of Jews” living among the Indians, “who call themselves Naphthali.” (Naphtali was the second son born to Jacob the concubine Bilhah)

1788: In Kremenetz, Judah Levin, a grandson of Jekuthiel Solomon and his wife gave birth to Isaac Baer Levinsohn a leader of the Haskalah movement

1789(23^rdof Tishrei, 5550): Simchat Torah

1791 :( 15th of Tishrei, 5552): Sukkoth

1797(23^rdof Tishrei, 5558): Simchat Torah

1796: Censorship of Jewish books in Russia became official policy.

1891: Birthdate of Emil Roediger the German orientalist and Hebrew linguist who edited books on Hebrew grammar.

1816: In New York, Michael and Elizabeth Daly gave birth to Judge Charles Patrick Daly author of The Settlement of the Jews in North America.

1820: Birthdate of Sir John William Dawson the Canadian geologist who “traveled extensively in Egypt and Syria” and whose works included “Archaia” Studies on the Cosmogony and Natural History of the Hebrew Scriptures.

1821: Birthdate of Rudolf Virchow, the German biologist and anthropologist whose family may have at one time been Jewish and who studied the biological characteristics of thousands of Jewish schoolchildren as part of his attempt to “provide a rational for the sense of Jewish acculturation” even though “he still assumed that Jews were a separate and distinct racial category.”

1823: Francis Ephriam Cohen who would change his name to Francis Palgrave married Elizabeth Turner following his conversion to Anglican Christianity, a move that no doubt advanced his career as an historian and archivist.

1843: B'nai Brithwas founded under the leadership of Henry Jones at Sinsheimer's cafe on Essex Street in New York. Its original mission was the maintenance of orphanages and homes for the elderly and widows. It extended its work to many spheres of American Jewish life, including combating anti-Semitism. (A.D.L.) and working with students on campus (Hillel).

1844: An election was scheduled to be held today to choose the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. The election was won by Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler who held the position from 1845 until his death in 1890.

1846(23^rdof Tishrei, 5607): Simchat Torah

1846: Birthdate of Hebrew poet and Yiddish author Isaac Rabinowitz the native of Kovno many of whose works can be found in Zemirot Yisrael and who passed away in the New York City where he went to join his children.

1847(3^rdof Cheshvan, 5608):Rabbi Jizchok Arye, (Isaac Loew Matthes Wormser) also called the Wonder Rabbi Michel city and Baal Shem of Michel City passed away today.

1853: “Hebrew Ceremonial” published today reported that the Jews were absent from their businesses on New York City’s Chatham Street yesterday because they were observing the “Day of Atonement, which the Hebrew still duly celebrates though three thousand years have elapsed Moses delivered his Levitical command” concerning this Fast Day. It is the “same statute” the Jews have observed “by the rivers of Poland, in the streets of York, in the valleys of the Aragon” or now “by the banks of the Hudson” river.

1862: In Manchester, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and his wife gave birth Birthdate of RabbiRichard James Horatio Gottheil

1865(23rd of Tishrei, 5626): Simchat Torah celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Andrew Johnson.

1871(28th of Tishrei, 5632): Fifty-eight year old Moses Millaud, French banker, businessman and founder of Le Petit Journal passed away today. He was a supporter of Louis Napoleon (Emperor Napoleon) and was involved in some of the more infamous financial scandals of his time.

1873(22^ndof Tishrei, 5634): Shemini Atzeret

1873: Today, the Hebrew Society of St. Joseph, MO, sent five hundred dollars to aid people in Memphis, TN caught in the grips of a Yellow Fever Epidemic.

1875(14^thof Tishrei, 5636): Erev Sukkoth

1875(14^thof Tishrei, 5636): Sixty-four year old Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw, the Hungarian Rabbi who incorporated elements of modernity in his Orthodox world passed away Szeged where he had been leading the community since 1850 despite many offers to lead large communities including Bucharest.

1875: It was reported today that a survey expedition composed of English officers and soldiers was attacked by marauders at their camp at Ain el Beida in Palestine. The group was conducting a triangulation exercise in western Palestine, specifically the Galilee and most important of all Safed “one of the ‘Holy Cities’ of the Jews’…” According to the report, Lieutenant Kitchener was of the English officers who was involved in this minor skirmish. [History would come to know him as Lord Kitchener, who was involved in all of those 19th British Imperial Campaigns from Egypt, to Sudan, to Khartoum to South Africa. He played a critical role in Britain’s early war effort in WWI before being drowned while on his way to Russia. But all of that began here, in Palestine, when a 24 year old lieutenant faced an armed enemy for the first time.]

1876: In New York, Clara Koffman and Joseph B. Bloomingdale gave birth to Rosalie Stanton Bloomingdale.

1877: It was reported today that New York State Supreme Court Judge Barrett has turned down the application of Rabbi Ash of the Ludlow Street Synagogue to be given the $200 that had belonged to the late Abraham Weisberg so that he could send it to a rabbi the Polish village where the descendant’s children live. Under the law, Barrett said that a guardian for the minor children would have to appointed before he could take action. (This is an example of the myriad conflicts that arose from the fact that fathers and husbands came to the U.S. ahead of their families with the intent to bring them to America once they had earned enough to pay for passage.)

1878(16^thof Tishrei, 5639): Second Day of Sukkot

1878(16^thof Tishrei, 5639): Twenty three days before his 71^st birthday Seligman Baer Bamberger who was serving as the rabbi of Wurzburg passed away today.

1878: “Lord Beaconsfield’s Policy” published today, claimed that Great Britain has shifted her foreign policy for the first time in over 135 years to one of annexation and aggressive imperialism. This change is the result of Beaconsfield’s ability to dissemble and confuse the English people which is due, in part, to the fact that he is a Jew.

1880: Birthdate of Sasha Cherny, the pen name of Russian poet and satirist Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg

1881: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and friends decided to speak Hebrew exclusively, marking the beginning of the revival of the language in modern times. Born Eliezer Perlman in Lithuania, Ben- Yehuda is proof that one person can make a difference. As a youngster, a rabbi gave Ben-Yeuda a Hebrew translation of Robinson Crusoe. That experience convinced him that Hebrew should be a modern, spoken language as well as a language of prayer. He devoted the rest of his life to the idea of living in the land of Israel where Hebrew would be the spoken language. He arrived in Jaffa with his bride In 1881 and he became associate editor of a Hebrew Language journal. His task of creating a modern Hebrew language was not an easy one. He was attacked both in print and physically by those who thought he was desecrating the holy tongue. At the same time, he had to keep inventing words since much had happened since Hebrew was last a an active language. Life was a real challenge for his children. It was difficult for them to have playmates since they were the only people who spoke Hebrew. Ben-Yehuda did not give up his dream. He lived to see Hebrew become one of the three official languages of Palestine under the Mandate after World War I. Such was his success that by the time he died in 1922, a majority of the Jews in Palestine listed Hebrew as their native tongue on the census forms.

1884: “Two Love-Sick Ducks” published today described an altercation between a Jew and a Gentile who were competing for the affections of Jewish widow living in St. Mark’s Place. The two became so violent that they ended up in front of a Judge who agreed to release them “with the hope that Providence will improve the quality of your brains.

1884: Funeral services were held today for Rabbi Adoph Huebsch at Ahavath Chesed in New York City. The overflow crowd included numerous Jewish leaders from across the United States the most prominent of whom was Rabbi Wise of Cincinnati, the leader of the Reform Movement in the United States. Rabbi Theodore Guenzberg, Huebsch’s assistant, led the worship service. Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbi Gottehiel delivered a sermon in German. Rabbi Jacob delivered the English language sermon. Following the funeral services the rabbi was interred in Linden Hill Cemetery on Long Island.

1885: Harry Hershfield who has been described as “the Jewish Will Rogers” was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

1885: The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), home of the Yellow Jackets, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, Tech’s undergraduate and graduate population of 19,000 includes approximately 600 Jewish students. There are several Jewish organizations on campus including AEPi Fraternity, Hillel and Jackets for Israel which co-sponsors the annual Israel-fest.

1888: At the insistence of his future wife, Otto Pierre Siegelstein married Mary Bubis at City Hall; a fact that he would later contest in his attempt to have the marriage annulled.

1891: As the famine in Russia worsens, it was reported that “the destitute Jews who have expelled from Kiev, Moscow and Odessa are swelling the ranks of the famished” populated primarily by Christian peasants.

1891: Birthdate of Jennie Loitman Barron, judge, lawyer, and suffragist. Born in Boston's West End, Barron attended Boston University where she earned her BA, LL.B, and LL.M. degrees and was active in Boston University's League for Equal Suffrage. Barron started her own law firm after graduation and created a new firm with her husband Samuel Barron, Jr. when they married four years later.Barron was elected president of the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers and campaigned for uniform marriage and divorce laws, as well as for women's right to serve on juries. She also worked to mobilize women to exercise their newly established right to vote. Barron began her thirty-five year career as a judge in 1934 when she was appointed by the governor as a special justice of the Western Norfolk District Court. In 1937, she was named to be an associate of the Boston Municipal Court. She left this position when she became an associate of the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1957 -- the first woman to hold this position. Throughout her career, Barron remained active in the Jewish community serving as the first president of the Women's Auxiliary of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, on the first board of Brandeis University National Women's Committee, and as the first president of the New England Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress. Barron died in March 1969, one year after her husband's death. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archive)

1892(22^ndof Tishrei, 5653): Shemini Atzeret

1892: “A Republican Insult To Jews” published today described the problems facing William Warner, the Republican candidate for Governor of Missouri, following the denouement of Isaac Isaacs, the Secretary of the League of Republican Clubs and the “roasting” of the Jews by his personal manager John T. Blake.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40D15F6395C17738DDDAA0994D8415B8285F0D3

1892: Isaac Issacs, the deposed Secretary of the League of Republicans who is Jewish said that the Jews would not accept an apology from Mr. Blake, the campaign manager for Major Warner, the Republican candidate for governor of Missouri. “The only thing that will conciliate the Jewish vote will be the removal of Mr. Blake.

1893: Edward Everett Hale delivered an address at the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indians in which “he spoke of the great success of Massachusetts in assimilating the Hebrew immigrants by breaking up their clannishness and scattering them among the American populations and asked why the same principle should not apply to the Indian.”

1893: The Hebrew Journal express praise for the opposition of the New York Times to an upcoming prize fight between and American and an English man which is supported by powerful interest in New York and Brooklyn.

1893: Congressman Rayner of Maryland gave a speech in the House of Representatives expressing his views on the Geary Chinese Registration and Exclusion Act which “closed with a fervid appeal…to not commit a great national crime, as gross and wicked as the treatment accorded by Russia to the unfortunate Jews in her dominion and against which our own Government had protested.”

1893: “Curious Coincidences” published today described recently discovered connections between Columbus and the Jewish people including evidence that “Hebrews were among the sailors that composed crews of the three vessels,” the role of Luis de Toress and the evidence produced by Dr. Moses of Kayserling of Budapest that Columbus set sail on the 9^th day of Av and made landfall in the New World on the “Seventh Day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacle, the da of the great Hosanas.”

1893: Because it is erev Shabbat, there will be a pause in the festivities marking the Golden Anniversary of the B’Nai B’rith.

1893(3^rdof Cheshvan, 5654): Eighty-one year old the Confederate officer who “pioneered the commercial growing of peaches in “the Peachtree State” passed away today in Belgium.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/raphael-moses-1812-1893

1894: “A Bully’s Career Ends in Death” published today described the demise of Otto Slimbach a Brooklyn bully who on the night he was mortally stabbed by an unknown party had beaten his mother and gone through the Jewish neighborhood indulging “in Jew-baiting for his further amusement.”

1894: In New York, Police Inspector Williams began an investigation into charges that the police had beaten the striking cloakmakers many of whom were Jewish including Israel Groman.

1894: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested by Commandant du Paty de Clam, an assistant to the Army Chief of Staff and charged with treason. Dreyfus was left alone with a pistol, having been encouraged to do “the honorable thing.” When Dreyfus refused he was marched off to prison where he would be kept in solitary confinement for the next five days.

1898:The Zionist Delegation including Joseph Seidener, Moses T. Schnirer, Theodor Herzl, David Wolffsohn and Max Bodenheimer takes the Orient Express to Constantinople as they pursue Herzl’s dream of top-down Zionism.

1903(22nd of Tishrei, 5664): Shemini Atzeret

1903(22nd of Tishrei, 5664): Dr. Marcus M. Jastrow a noted Hebrew scholar and educator who was rabbi emeritus of Rodef Shalom, a synagogue in Philadelphia, PA, passed away today at his home in Germantown, PA. Born in Pozen in 1829 he graduated from the University of Berlin. He came to the United States in 1866 and became the Rabbi at Rodef Shalom, a position he held until his retirement in 1892. His major literary work was “A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature.”

1905: Sixty-seven year old Sir Henry Irving the British actor manager whose first great career success came with his portrayal of Mathias in “The Bells” (an adaptation of “Le Juif Polonais” and whose portrayal of Shylock provided him with a dignity not usually seen in other actors, passed away today.

1909: Birthdate of Herbert Lawrence Block, the Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist who gained fame as Herblock and set the standard by which all practice this genre are evaluated.

http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/herblock/

1910(10^th of Tishrei, 5671): Yom Kippur

1911: Multiple telegrams were received in London from Malta, Gabes and Djerba, appealing for help for the many thousands of Jewish refugees from Tripoli.

1912: Birthdate of Hugo David Weisgall, the Moravian born American composer and conductor “who served as aid-de-camp to General Patton” during WW II.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/12/arts/hugo-weisgall-opera-composer-dies-at-84.html?scp=1&sq=%22The+Stronger%22+%22Hugo+Weisgall%22&st=nyt

1912: Israel Abrahams, a Reader in Rabbinics at the University of Cambridge and a leader of the UK’s liberal Jewish movement addressed a meeting held in his honor at New York’s Astor Hotel. Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, President of Judeans, presided over the meeting and introduced Mr. Abrahams. Among the other speakers were Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue. Oscar S. Straus, Progressive Party candidate for Governor of New York, who was to have delivered an address, sent a message expressing his regrets at having been unavoidably detained. Abrahams spoke about a favorite topic of the time “The Jewish Problem.” In a unique twist, Abrahams defined it as “The eternal question of living two lives harmoniously.”

1913: According to legend, German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzwieg attended Yom Kippur services for what he thought would be his last visit to a Jewish house of worship before converting to Christianity. “But that prayer service moved him so profoundly that he gave up the idea of converting and became a committed Jewish philosopher, who saw his religion as preferable to Christianity.

1914(23^rd of Tishrei, 5676): Simchat Torah

1914(23^rd of Tishrei 5676): 50 year old Mrs. Rose Baruch Streng, the wife of Bernard Streng, a native of Landau, Germany passed away at her home on West 143^rd Street in New York.

1914: “Russian Treaty Approved” published today the decision of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to approve a peace treaty with Russia which might be a prelude to the signing of new treaty of commerce “to take the place of the treaty of 1832 abrogated by the United States because of Russia’s treatment of American Jews.”

1914: “Foreign Legion Of Jews published today provides Israel Zangwill’s view that Jews support the Allies over the cause of the Kaiser as can be seen by the number of Jews who have tried to enlist in the Jewish Territorial Organization which is a Zionist organization under the misconception that it is part of the British Army – proof that “it would be easy to form a foreign legion of Jews grateful for Britain’s sympathy” as can already be seen by the thousands of Jews already serving in the military.

1914: “15 Poisoned at Feast” published today described the unfortunate events at the Sukkoth Meal eaten by the large family of Samuel Horowitz where several of the attendees came down with ptomaine poisoning after having some tainted fish.

1914: Judge Leon Sanders, the President of the Hebrew Shelter and Immigrant Aid Society, has organized “a special Relief Committee for the Jewish suffers in all of the nations at war, following an appeal sent to the Austro-Hungarian Legation in New York by Jews in Austria.

1920: In Berlin chess champion Mimi (née Heller) and psychiatrist Harry Marcuse gave birth to Albert Marcuse who was raised as a Lutheran because “his family considered their Jewish heritage a liability” and who gained fame as American composer and actor Albert Hague.

1924(15^th of Tishrei, 5685): Sukkoth

1925: Birthdate of Lenny Bruce. Born Leonard Alfred Schneider he was a controversial comedian and satirist. He passed away in 1966

1928(29^thof Tishrei, 5689): Seventy year old German Jewish otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess passed away today

http://www.freudfile.org/fliess.html

1929(9^thof Tishrei, 5690): Erev Yom Kippur

1929: In Manhattan, Joseph and Sylvia Slifka gave birth to twins – Barabara and Alan Bruce Slifka, “a New York investment manager who used his fortune to promote harmony among Israeli Arabs and Jews and to give the Big Apple Circus its start.” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

1937:The Palestine Post reported that a slight earth tremor was felt in Jerusalem. It lasted about a second, and caused in some cases a definite sway of upper stories of buildings. There were sporadic Arab attacks, accompanied by heavy firing, at Hadera, Safed and on Kibbutz Gordonia. A curfew was imposed on Safed. Robbers operated in the no-man's-land between the Palestinian and Lebanese French border posts at Nakura. The attackers were protected by other well-armed men in surrounding area.

1939: Chaim Kaplan, the director of a Hebrew School in Warsaw, described the Jewish reactions to the Soviet occupation of Poland with the following diary entry: “The Jews there looked upon the Bolsheviks as redeeming messiahs. Even the wealthy, who would become poor under Bolshevism, preferred the Russians to the Germans. There is plunder on the one hand and plunder on the other, but the Russians plunder one as a citizen and a man, while the Nazis plunder one as a Jew. The former Polish government never spoiled us, but at the same time never overtly singled us out for torture. The Nazi is a sadist, however. His hatred of the Jews is psychosis. He flogs and derives pleasure from it. The torment of the victim is a balm to his soul, especially if the victim is a Jew.

1939: New York premiere of “Babes In Arms,” a musical produced by Arthur Freed with songs by Richard Rogers, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

1940: Jews from Warsaw's suburbs were ordered into the Warsaw Ghetto.

1941(22^ndof Tishrei, 5702): Shemini Atzeret

1942: Birthdate of singer and composer Paul Simon.

1943: One hundredth anniversary of the founding of B’nai B’rith

1943: A revolt took place in Camp Number I at Sobibor. Alexander Pechersky distributed knives and hatchets to other prisoners. Nine SS and two Ukrainians were killed in the fighting. Three hundred of the prisoners from Camp Number I' escaped. The other 300 would be killed. However, as a result of this revolt, Sobibor ended its operation.

1944: The Soviet Troops entered Riga. Only a handful of Jews had survived in city where there were 30,000 Jews just ten years earlier.

1945 (6th of Cheshvan, 5706): On Shabbat, Leon Recanati, Sephardic leader of Palestine and formerly of Salonika passed away. Recanati was a "happy admixture of a learned Jew with his Biblical wisdom on the one hand and a man of affairs with a sense of reality on the other."

1946: “Three masked gunmen” believed to members of the Irgun “escaped with $12,000 after a daring daylight robbery in down town Tel Aviv.

1946: Members of Hashomir Hatzair (Young Guard), a left-wing Zionist organization, “distributed pamphlets in Tel Aviv calling on the Jewish community in Palestine to take ‘active measures’ against Jewish terrorist organizations.”

1948(10th of Tishrei, 5709) Yom Kippur

1948: An Israeli army unit held Yom Kippur services on Mt. Zion, right outside the [then] sealed Zion's Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. There they blew the Shofar, the closest place to the Western Wall they could get.

1948: U.N. “observers reported that the Arabs had fired with automatic weapons ‘for several hours, from an area under UN supervision, and with any provocation by Jewish Forces.’”

1950: U.S. premiere of “All About Eve,” a drama written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with music by Alfred Newman.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet had appointed a seven-member Board of Directors of the German Reparations Purchasing Company. The board was responsible, through Foreign Minister Levi Eshkol, to a five-man ministerial committee which was aided by a 13-member Planning Committee and an Advisory Council of 25 members. You might recognize the name of Levi Eshkol. He would be Prime Minister in June of 1967 when Israel defended itself against its Arab neighbors and reunited the city of Jerusalem

1953(4th of Cheshvan, 5714): “Arab terrorists called Fedayeen, infiltrate into the Israeli village of Yahud and kill Suzanne Kinyas and two of her children (the youngest of which was only 18 months old) in their sleep bringing the toll of Israeli civilian victims to 124.

1955: Premiere of “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” written by George Axelrod, whose father was Jewish.

1955: “The Pajama Game,” the Richard Adler and Jerry Ross musical opened in London, UK today for the first of 588 performances.

1957(18^thof Tishrei, 5718): Sukkoth IV

1957(18^thof Tishrei, 5718): Sixty-four year old literary critic and philologist Erich Auberbach passed away today.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1768517?uid=3739640&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102762773353

1960(22^ndof Tishrei, 5721): Shemini Atzeret

1960: Birthdate of Ari Fleischer, former Press Secretary for President Bush

1962(15^thof Tishrei, 5723): Sukkoth

1960: In the seventh game of the World Series, as future hall of famer Bill Mazeroski rounded first base after having hit the series winning home run, he runs past first base coach, Lenny Levy, the Pittsburgh native who spent most of his life serving in some capacity with the Pirates organization.

1967(9^th of Tishrei, 5728): Erev Yom Kippur

1968: B’nai B’rith celebrates its 125^th anniversary

1968: “A Birthday Today For B’nai B’rith” published today traces the history and contributions of the Jewish fraternal organization from its inception during the Presidency of John Tyler to the middle of the twentieth century.

1971(24^th of Tishrei, 5732): Fifty-seven Phoebe Ephron, part of a noted artistic family passed away today in New York City.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/06/28/nora-ephron%E2%80%99s-potato-chip-legacy/

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ephron-phoebe

1971: Birthdate Sacha Baron Cohen, the British born comedian who first gained fame portraying his highly successful comedy character Ali G.

1973: Jordan entered the Yom Kippur War. Thinking that initial Arab victories would spell the demise of Israel, King Hussein thought he would get back the West Bank and east Jerusalem. In the end he lost again and ended up having to surrender his claims to these lands to the PLO.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian reinforcements continued to cross the Suez Canal and began attacking Israeli forces.

1973: Israeli forces confronted large numbers of Iraqi tanks both on the road to Damascus and on the Golan Heights. In both battles, Israeli forces destroyed considerable number of the Iraqi tanks while sustaining minimal losses. Israeli aircraft refrained from shooting down the Soviet transports that were landing at Damascus. However, Israeli forces did destroy at least two Soviet craft once they had landed sparking threats from Moscow.

1973: After much hesitation and despite opposition from America’s Western Allies, President Nixon ordered a massive airlift of supplies for the IDF. The material helped offset the tons of modern weaponry being shipped into the region by the Russians. Many Jews shifted their allegiance to Nixon and the Republicans based on the airlift. However, they seemed to have forgotten that if the Nixon administration had not kept the Israelis from conducting a pre-emptive strike against the Egyptians before they crossed the Canal, none of this would have been necessary in the first place.

1973: Avraham Lanir was scrambled for a reconnaissance mission deep in Syrian territory. During his return to Israel, Lanir was caught in a missile ambush and his Mirage was hit in the rear, forcing him to eject. The wind carried the parachuting pilot back over the border into Syrian territory and he landed in the area of Mazra'at Beit Jinn. Israeli Armor Corps soldiers witnessed him land and attempted to rescue him, but he was captured by a Syrian jeep patrol that reached him first. Lt. Col. Lanir was tortured to death by his Syrian captors. His body was finally returned by the Syrians in 1974. “Former Israel Air Force Commander Mordechai Hod noted that Lanir had information that would have placed the existence of Israel at risk had he revealed it to the Syrians.”

1973:Ady Bnaya and David Ya'ir made it back safely to Israeli lines after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire.

1973: Iftach Zemer and Itzhak Amitai returned safely to Israeli lines when they were forced to eject from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it suffered a technical malfunction.

1973: After his Phantom F-4E Jet fell victim to “friendly fire,” Uri Bakal safely ejected and made it back to Israeli lines.

1974: Seventy-two year old Austrian conductor Josef Krips, whose father was Jewish which meant he had to leave his native land to pursue his career while the Nazis were in power, passed away today.

1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that US President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Israeli cabinet's approval of a "working paper" on procedures for reconvening of the Geneva Middle East peace conference. "I am pleased with that," he said. His officials explained that what the US had in mind was the creation of some sort of a Palestinian "borough" on the West Bank and in Gaza which would be linked with Jordan. Asked directly whether he advocated an "entity," Carter simply replied, "I have never advocated an independent Palestinian state." These negotiations of 25 years ago provide a tragic-comical backdrop to the so-called peace negotiations that have been taking place since the Camp David Meetings hosted by President Clinton.

1977: Four Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction. Yes, twenty-five years ago, terrorists were interconnected, often sharing resources, training facilities and killing assignments.

1986:Rita Levi-Montalcini’s pioneering work on nerve growth earned her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)

1989: Israeli soldiers killed an 18-year-old Palestinian in a West Bank village, Qalqilya, after they were attacked by masked youths.

1990: Syria invaded Lebanon killing over 500. There was no noticeable protest from Arab states or the U.N.

1993: 150^thanniversary of the founding of B’nai B’rith.

1993: U.S. Premiere of the Notre Dame football film “Rudy” co-starring Jon Favreau with music by Jerry Goldsmith

1994: Fifty thousand Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall to pray for the life of Nachshon Wachsman, a nineteen year old Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas.

1995(19th of Tishrei, 5756): Fifth Day of Sukkoth

1995(19th of Tishrei, 5756): Eighty-nine year old Henry Roth, author of Call It Sleeppassed away. Born in 1906, Roth was ignored for most of his career and was reduced to holding a variety of jobs since he could not support himself as a writer. Later in life, he enjoyed a re-birth of interest which continued for at least a decade after his death. (As reported by Richard Nicholls)

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/obituaries/henry-roth-89-who-wrote-of-an-immigrant-child-s-life-in-call-it-sleep-is-dead.html

1997: Syria Invaded Lebanon again. Actually, Syrian troops had occupied parts of Lebanon since 1977. Lebanon is more like a satellite of Syria, than a truly independent nation. The late President Assad had a vision of ruling Greater Syria – nation that would include Syria, parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.

2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews includingThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball by Scott Simon and Rereading Sex: Battle Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century American by Helen Lefkowitz

2004(28th of Tishrei, 5765): In London, Bernice Rubens passed away at the age of 76. The prolific British novelist drew on her Jewish upbringing to tell stories of vice and grimness with warmth and humor. “She won Britain’s’ prestigious Booker Prize for fiction in 1970 for The Elected Member, the story of a Jewish family whose secrets drive one son insane.”

2005(10th of Tishrei, 5766): Yom Kippur is observed by Jews all over the world.

2006(21st of Tishrei, 5767): Hoshana Rabah

2006: “Stage Killing: Solving an Attempted Murder” published today provides Faith Jones account of the love triangle surrounding David Levinson, Morris Finkel and Yiddish theatre star Emma Thomashefsky Finkel.

http://forward.com/articles/4898/stage-killing/

2006: The End, Lemony Snicket’s final novel is scheduled to come out today.

2007: Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, 5768(Second Day) – First of Cheshvan

2007: Yaakov Katz the military correspondent and defense analyst for The Jerusalem Post, the Middle East's leading English daily speaks at Agudas Achim in Iowa City, IA.

2007:Haaretz reported that in Lakewood, New Jersey, a man wielding an aluminum baseball bat attacked an Orthodox Jewish rabbi walking to synagogue critically injuring the 53-year-old man and threatening to strain the already tense ethnic relations in a New Jersey city, officials and residents said. The beating of Mordechai Moskowitz, reportedly at the hands of am African-American man, has put residents on edge in Lakewood, a diverse city of 70,000 near the Jersey Shore that is home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, as well as black and Hispanic communities.

2008(14th of Tishrei, 5769): Erev Sukkoth

2008: Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity

2009: Chronic City, a novel by Jonathan Lethem, was published today.

2009: Assaf Ramon, the son of Colonel Ilan Ramon who died on the Columbia in 2003, was commemorated today during a military rememberance ceremony marking the 30-day anniversary of his death.

2009: Former Agriproccessor executive Shlomo Rubashkin is scheduled to go on trial in St. Louis, MO.

2009: Channel Two reported that Dalia Itzik spent NIS 75,000 of taxpayers' money on an unnecessary hotel upgrade during a 2006 4-night trip to Paris, France.

2009: The Library of Congress opens a new exhibition "Herblock!," highlighting the life and works of the great political cartoonist.

2009:A Massachusetts judge has denied a motion by Brandeis University to dismiss a lawsuit brought by three overseers of the school’s Rose Art Museum who are seeking to stop the university from closing the museum and selling its works.

2009(25^thof Tishrei, 5770):Seventy-seven year old movie producer and studio executive Daniel Melnick passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/movies/17melnick.html

2010(5^thof Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty year old lexicographer, author and tenured member of Olbom (On Language’s Board of Octogenarian Mentors) Sol Steinmetz passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/books/25steinmetz.html

2010:David Grossman and Nicole Krauss are scheduled to talk about their new novels, To the End of the Land and Great House at the New York Public Library.

2010:Among the 20 finalists for the National Book Awards that were announced today was Nicole Krauss for her third novel, Great House, a sprawling story of memory and loss

2010: Ron Charles reviewed The Finkler Question the Howard Jacobson comic novel about anti-Semitism which just won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in London.

2011(15^thof Tishrei, 5772): Sukkoth

2011(15^thof Tishrei, 5722): Yahrzeit of William Schueller, husband of Eleanor Schueller and father of Deb Levin

2011:Milan's La Scala opera house said today that Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim would serve as its new music director for the next five years.

2011:IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz met with Noam and Aviv Schalit this evening, confirming that their son Gilad Schalit would be returning to Israel on October 18, Channel 2 reported.

2011: Hamas-affiliated media outlets began today publishing names of imprisoned terrorists who will reportedly be set free by Israel in exchange for captive soldier Gilad Schalit.

2012: Six13 “a six-man vocal band that brings an unprecedented style of Jewish music to the stage” is scheduled to appear in the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia Performing Art Series.

2012: Israeli films “Chasing A Star” and “One Day After Peace” are scheduled to be shown at the Syracuse Film Festival in Syracuse, NY.

2012: Tosha Skolnik, an 8^th grader at Alice Deal, is scheduled to be called to the Torah as Bar Mitzvah at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.

2012: Seventy year old Barbra Streisand is scheduled to “return to her roots” with a concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY.

2012(27^thof Tishrei, 5773): The cycle begins again as Jews all over the world read Bereshit.

2012: One man was reportedly killed and two others were injured tonight in an IAF attack in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. The strike targeted Islamic Jihad members who had reportedly planned to carry out an attack against Israelis during the Sukkot holiday. They were said to belong to the Mujahideen Shura Council, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda.

2012: Iran hinted today that it was responsible for a drone that flew deep into Israel on October 6, before being shot down by the Israeli Air Force.

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Anti-Semitism by Daniel Johnah Goldhagen and the Kraus Project: The Essays of Karl Kraus translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen as well as an interview with Scott Turrow whose latest work is Identical.

2013:“Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War” is scheduled to open today at the Maryland Museum of Jewish History

2013: “Her” starring Puerto Rican born Jewish actor Joaquin Phoenix is scheduled to debut at the New York Film Festival.

2013: The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to host a Local Author Fair featuring Melissa Ford, author of Measure of Loveand David Bruce Smith, author of American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States

2013: After almost a year, “It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond comes to an end at the Yeshiva University Museum

2013:“Skokie: Invaded, But Not Conquered” is scheduled to shown this afternoon at the Illinois Museum and Education Center.

2013: Led by Amy Barnum, Hadassah is scheduled to hold its annual dinner at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

2014: In Scarsdale, NY, thhe funeral for Edward M. Davidowitz, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York is scheduled to be held Westchester Reform Temple

2014: As part of its series on the Jewish Experience in the Trenches and at the Homefront” during WW I, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to show La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion), a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir

2014: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a presentation by Bill Schneider entitled 2014 Election – Viewpoint from the Nation’s Electionmeister.”

2014: Members of the House of Commons are scheduled to vote on a motion “that is being put forward by Labor MP Grahame Morris” calling for recognizing “the Palestinian state.” (As reported by Times of Israel)

OCTOBER 14

680:Wamba, the Visigoth King of Hispania, abdicated. During his reign, he issued an order expelling the Jews from Spain. This was part of an on-going policy of abuse, mistreatment and humiliation the Jews suffered under the Catholic Visigoth monarchs.

996: Beginning of the reign of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim who ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks

1066: William and his Norman army were victorious at the Battle of Hastings. The Jewish community in England dates from the Norman conquest of the British Isles. William brought a group of Jews from Rouen, part of his holdings in Normandy. That decision probably did not sit well with the Pope. William probably wanted the Jews to settle in England because of their commercial skills. The Jews were limited in their activities. For example, William conformed to the Pope’s decree that Jews were not allowed to keep Christian bondsman or to use Christians as nurses.

1165 (4^th Marcheshvan): Maimonides and his family arrive in Jerusalem. When the Almohades, a group of Muslim fundamentalists, conquered Cordoba and threatened the Jewish community, Maimonides’ father decided it was time to leave Spain. The family settled for a while in Fez, Morocco where the Rambam wrote his commentary on the Mishnah and then moved on to Eretz Israel where they lived for a short period before finally settling in Egypt.

1270 (4 Cheshvan 5031): Moses Ben Nachman - known as Nachmanides or as the Ramban, passed away. Born in 1194, Gerona, Spain, Nachmanides was trained as a doctor and served King James of Aragon as court physician. At the same time the Jews of Spain viewed him as their spiritual leader due to his prowess as a Talmudic scholar and sage The turning point came in his life came when he was forced by the King to defend Judaism in a debate with Pablo Christiani, a heretic Jew, in Aragon 1263. Nachmanides was so successful that the debate was called off after four days without the usual claim of Christian victory. Nachmanides was so bold that at one point, in discussing the concept of Jesus as the “peace of prince” that he declared, “from the time of Jesus until the present the world has been filled with violence and injustice and the Christians have shed more blood than all other peoples.: To make a long story short, the Dominicans forced Nachmanides to flee. He moved to Eretz Israel where he first settled in Jerusalem in 1267. After working to refurbish the community there, he moved to Acre where he worked on his extensive Torah commentaries until his death in 1270. Nachmanides was one in long series of great Sephardic teachers, many of whom combined a secular career as physician with the role as scholars and sages. Some people confuse the Ramban (Nachmanides) with the Rambam (Maimonides).

1494: Based on an edict issued by Grand Duke Alexander Jagellon, “it appears that the customs duties of Brest and its districts were farmed by Jews of Brest and Lutzk.”

1633: Birthdate of King James II of England and VII of Scotland. James reigned during a period when the Jews were trying to gain re-admittance to England, a cause to which he showed some partiality. He ordered his Attorney General not to take any action against the Jews and see to it that they be allowed to practice their religion freely as long as they obeyed the laws of the realm.

1644: Birthdate of William Penn founder of Pennsylvania. The Quaker leader founded a colony that adopted the Great Law, a humanitarian code which became the fundamental basis of Pennsylvania law and which guaranteed liberty of conscience. This liberal fundamental law made Pennsylvania an early home to many non-conformists including Jewish settlers.

1663: An entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys describes his visit to a synagogue on Simchat Torah.“…after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson's conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that everyone desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.” (Editor’s note: I have not been able to find any explanation for the visit.)

1759(23^rd of Tishrei, 5520): Simchat Torah

1778(23^rd of Tishrei, 5539): Simchat Torah

1780(15^th of Tishrei, 5541): Sukkoth

!792: Birthdate of August Lewald, the Konigsberg native who in 1835 founded the periodical Europa which published the first novel written by his cousin Fanny Lewald.

1799(15^th of Tishrei, 5560): Sukkoth

1808(23^rd of Tishrei, 5569): Simchat Torah

1808: The Republic of Ragusa including its major city of Dubrovnik, is annexed by France. “The Old Synagogue in Dubrovnik, is the oldest Sephardic synagogue still in use today in the world and the second oldest synagogue in Europe. It is said to have been established in 1352, but gained legal status in the city in 1408.” Jewish merchants living in Ragusa must have been successful since Christian merchants moved to have them expelled during the 16^th century. There are records of Jewish merchants and physicians living in Ragusa as far back as the 16^th century. The annexation by the French marked the first time that the Jews of the region enjoyed the rights of full citizenship. The victory was short lived since when the French were defeated the Austrians took back what the French had given.

1829: Birthdate of Eduard Lasker, the German Jewish political leader who supported the unification that led to the creation of the modern German state.

1837(15^th of Tishrei, 5598): Sukkoth

1843: The Synagogue of Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasidim (Congregation of Blessing, Peace and Loving Deeds) in St. Thomas holds the first confirmation ceremony for Jewish youth ever in the Western Hemisphere. The St. Thomas synagogue has held a weekly service since it first opened its doors in 1833; reportedly, it's the oldest synagogue in continuous use under the American flag and the second oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Acclaimed Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro was a member.

1835(21st of Tishrei, 5596): Hoshanah Rabah

1853: During their Friday meeting, the Assistant Board of Alderman voted to accept an invitation from the Directors of the Jews Hospital to attend the cornerstone laying ceremony scheduled to take place on Thanksgiving Day.

1867(15^th of Tishrei, 5628): Sukkoth

1882: Birthdate of Eamon De Valera, Irish prime minister and president. As Prime Minister during the 1930’s De Valera modified the Irish Constitution so that it gave recognition to many non-Catholic religious groups including the Jewish community. “The behavior of de Valera's government towards Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust is also controversial. Ireland's Justice Minister Michael McDowell later described the Irish government's treatment of Jewish refugees as ‘antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling’. Dr Mervyn O'Driscoll of University College Cork reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland: ‘Although overt anti-Semitism was untypical, the Irish were indifferent to the Nazi persecution of the Jews and those fleeing the third Reich’.However, this attitude towards Jewish refugees differed little from other Western Governments - as exemplified by the abject failure of the Evian Conference-who were unwilling to admit Jews fleeing Nazism.”

1886(15^thof Tishrei, 5647): Sukkoth

1866: A column styled “Law Reports: Business in the Surrogates Courts" published today reported that will of the late Solomon D. Moses is among those that have been admitted for probate during this past week. Under the terms of Mr. Solomon's will payments of two hundred dollars are to be made to the Jews Hospital of New York and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum

1869: Birthdate of Sir Joseph Duveen, the London native who became one of the most influential art dealers of his time.

1871: During his sermon today, Rabbi J.J. Lyons called upon the members of the West 19^th Street Portuguese Synagogue to contribute to aid the people of Chicago who are suffering from the effect of a great fire that consumed much of the city. Since money cannot be handled on Shabbat, a special meeting will be held tomorrow to deal with this.

1871: In Trieste, Italy Michele Levi and Emma Perguia gave birth to Professor Giusepp Levi “a pioneer of in vitro studies of cultured cells.”

1873(23^rd of Tishrei, 5634): Simchat Torah

1875(15^th of Tishrei, 5636): Sukkoth

1879: In the on-going battle to have the Romanian government honor its promise to grant full rights to the Jews, it was reported today that 58 deputies in Bucharest are opposed to the government’s bill granting emancipation to the Jews. This has increased fears that the bill will not get the two-thirds majority required for passage.

1881: John W. Carroll, the actor whose fame rested in part for his portray of Fagin, the Jew in ‘Oliver Twist,’” passed away today in New York City at the age of 44.

1881:”Russian Hebrew Exiles” published today described the activities of the committee formed in New York designed to help the newly arrived Jewish immigrants from the Czar’s anti-Semitic empire. The most recent group of arrivals number 120 and plans have already been to send 70 of them to “various sections of the country” since there is no way to find all of them employment in New York. Committees have been formed in Houston, New Orleans, Louisville, St. Louis and Wilmington, NC to help with the re-settlement plans. (This marked the first year of what prove to be a tidal wave of immigration that would last until World War I. These well-intentioned plans would soon be overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of immigrants)

1881: “An assignment for the benefit of creditors by Hirsch Levy to Isidore Hirsch with $600 preferences was filed in the County Clerk’s office” today.

1882: It was reported today that “Mordecai Lyons,” a new play by Edward Harrigan that features an array of Jewish characters is scheduled to open at the Theatre Comique next week.

1882: It was reported today “there is a singular set of lunatics in England who are devoting all their energies to the rather hopeless taks of proving that the so-called Anglo-Saxon race is not Anglo-Saxon but Jewish. They believe that all Englishman belong to the tribe of Manasseh annall Americans to the tribe of Ephriam and that the Irish belong to the rest of the long-lost ten tribes.”

1882: There was a “serious disturbance” among the Russian Jewish immigrants on Ward’s Island, the New York entry point for those arriving from Europe.

1884: “Funeral of Rabbi Huebsch” published today described the procession for Rabbi Huebsch which began at his home on Lexington Avenue, then moved to Ahavath Chesed, before finishing on Long Island where he was interred at Linden Hill Cemetery.

1888: “Some Glances Backward” published today provided a retrospective on the fight in California to halt Chinese immigration and to ban them from living here including a speecby A.A. Haight the Democratic Governor of California in which he said that the “same argument” made “today in this country against the Chinese were used two centuries ago against the industrious Jews of Europe…. But it did not take” these bigots “a hundred years before they found out their mistake because the Jews too industry along with them and enriched the new countries in which they settled. It will work with the same with the Chinese..if our laws permit us to drive them from the State.”

1888: “Old World News by Cable” published today described events surrounding the recent death of J.M. Levy whom many mistakenly thought was the founder of the Daily Telegraph. Actually Joseph Moses Levy bought it from the founder in 1855 three months after its opening for $4,000. “He and his son” then “made it one of the half dozen great newspaper properties of the world. “A very good man, charitable, just and simple manners and tastes, as was the last professing Jew of his fmily, all of whom now bear the name Lawson.”

1888: “Jews Leaving Russia” published today relied on dispatches from the London Daily News to describe the exodus of nearly 2,500 Jews from Odessa (Russia) during the law three months. The Jews are leaving because of the Expulsion Law enacted last Spring. The number of Jews leaving is being swollen by those who are taking advantage of the recent relaxation in the conscription laws which were designed to have just that effect. Most of them are going to America or England but lack the capital to open business on their own.

1890: Birthdate of General of the Army and U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower. In a recently published history about three World War II generals entitled 15 Stars, Stanley Weintraub described a hither-to little known story about Ike and the Jewish people. While serving in the Philippines in 1938 as a Lt. Colonel, “Eisenhower got to know some of the 1,200 emigres who had fled Hitler who could find no sanctuaries in the uncaring West, including his own country.” At this time “he was made a surprising and hugely remunerative offer. Almost certainly it came from Alex Frieder, one of three brothers from Cincinnati who had opened a cigar factory in Manila, and who played bridge and poker with…Ike. ‘I was asked to take a job seeking in China, Southeast Asia…and every country where they might be acceptable, a haven for Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The proposed pay would be $60,000 a year with expenses…Te offer was, of course, appealing for several reasons. But…I had become so committed to my profession that I declined.’” Given other facts of Ike’s life during this period and the revulsion he demonstrated when Allied troops liberated the Concentration Camps, no one should think Ike’s decision was tainted by antipathy toward Jews and that it was made for the reasons he stated. Given the political environment of the 1950’s as a Republican President, Ike was only going to have a limited amount of popularity among Jewish voters. To his credit, he became the first President to participate in national television show sponsored by a Jewish organization. In this case it was a program celebrating the 300^th anniversary of the American Jewish Community. For many Jews living during the 1950’s Ike was the American President who sided with the Arabs against Israel. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Eisenhower administration threatened Israel with economic ruin if it did not withdraw from the Sinai. This policy had four effects. It left Gaza as a place from which terrorist could attack Israel. It gave Nasser a new lease on life thus setting the stage for another decade of un-rest in the Middle East that reached its next crescendo in the Six Day War. During the crisis, the Americans actually sided with the Soviets who threatened the French and the British with nuclear attack if they did not remove their forces from Suez. From the French point of view, the Americans had shown that the nuclear umbrella did not protect France when she did not agree with the United States, so the French started to build their own independent nuclear force. This is one of those times where Jewish history is world history and world history is Jewish history. As is so often the question, where does one begin and the other end?

1890: Chaie X. Hishovitz signed a release in the presence of Mortiz Tolk that stated in consideration of a payment of $8.00 she release Kopel Harris from their marriage, promises not to bring any further legal action against and gives him permission to marry any other person he may so desire.

1891: “The Indictment of Russia” published today speaks approvingly of Harold Fredric’s use of “cold, rigid, facts to present the date relating to the” harsh treatment of the Jews in Russia which some have “transformed into an indictment against the victims” to justify the acts of the Czar’s government.

1891: “The Local Tickets” published today analyzed the Republican and Tammany Candidates in the upcoming New York City elections including Ferdinand Levy one of the Tammany candidates for Coroner and Meyer S. Isaacs

1892(23^rdof Tishrei, 5653): Simchat Torah

1893: Because it is Shabbat, there will be a pause during the day in the festivities marking the Golden Anniversary of the B’Nai B’rith.

1893: This evening in New York five hundred people are scheduled to attend a banquet celebrating the Golden Anniversary of B’Nai B’rith where the guests of honor will include President Cleveland, Governor Flower and Mayor Gilroy.

1894(14^th of Tishrei, 5655): Erev Sukkoth

1894: Officer Grier of the Macdougal Street Station arrested 15 year old John Shevlin after he saw him and a group of boys “chasing two old Hebrew men” whose beards they pulled and then kicked after throwing them to the ground.

1894: Marquis du Paty de Clam, a French General Staff officer is designated as Officer of Judiciary Police a position from which he masterminds enquiry against Dreyfus and invents the scenario of his hostile interrogation and handwriting test. His son will be appointedhead of Jewish Bureau under Vichy government.

1903(23^rdof Tishrei, 5664): Simchat Torah

1903: “Dr. Marcus Jastrow” published today reported that among the survivors of the recently deceased rabbi were his two sons, “Morris Jastrow, the widely-known philologist and Joseph Jastrow, the well-known psychologist.”

1906: Birthdate of author and commentator Hannah Arendt. Many know her for her writings about the Nazis and the originator of the term “the banality of evil.”Living amidst the political turmoil of Europe greatly shaped Arendt's studies and interests. Initially a philosophy and theology student, Arendt shifted her focus to the rising anti-Semitism permeating the German polity in the 1930s. In addition to her writing, Arendt became involved in the German Zionist Organization in 1933 and worked to bring Nazi atrocities to global attention. Arendt was arrested for investigating anti-Semitic propaganda, but befriended a Berlin jailer who enabled her escape. Fleeing to Paris, Arendt worked with Youth Aliyah to help rescue Jewish children from the Third Reich by bringing them to Palestine. While in Paris, Arendt met her second husband and both were sent to internment camps in southern France. In 1941, both were able to reach America and reunite with Arendt's mother. In America, Arendt published numerous articles in Jewish studies journals, and was in charge of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, a program created by historian Salo W. Baron to recover and restore lost and damaged Jewish archives and cultural markers. The publication of her book The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, made Arendt an intellectual celebrity as America, searching for answers to the horrors of World War II, careened into the Cold War. The Origins of Totalitarianism sought to explain the rise and appeal of both Hitler and Stalin. Arendt went on to publish several other books including her most controversial work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evilin 1963.Arendt taught at the University of Chicago and Wesleyan and was the first female full professor at Princeton. She continued to lecture and teach until her death in 1975.

1910: A Jew, David Effendi Molcho, the First Interpreter of Imperial Divan of the Ottoman Empire is appointed member of the Senate. On this same day, Samuel Effendi of Salonica is appointed Chief of Police for the coast districts of Constantinople.

1912: It was reported that a veritable “who’s who” of American Jewry including Judge Julian W. Mack, Justice Samuel Greenbaum, Henry Morgenthau, Cyrus Sulzberger, Louis Marshal and Professor Solomon Schechter, attended the lecture at the Astor Hotel delivered by Israel Abrahams. The British academic is a firm believer in the need to maintain a strong Jewish identity as the Chosen People develop national identities in the various home-countries.

1914: Sir Alfred Knox, the British military attaché described the condition of the Jews on the Eastern front when he wrote today, “It is said that a Hew was caught carrying a German officer in a sack across the bridge at Ivangorod. Both were hung. (Jewish misery would only increase as can be seen by the 20 Jews who were killed by Coassacks at pogrom in Lemberg during November or the 64 Jews in Warsaw were arrested and detained as alleged members of a conspiracy to raise prices through speculation. As was all too common their property was confiscated by the authorities) p 393 Max Hastings.

1914: “To Aid Jewish Sufferers” published today described the work of Leon Sanders, the President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society to form a special committee that will provide assistance to the Jews trapped on the battlefields of eastern Europe whose members include Jacob H. Schiff, Chairman; Louis Marshal, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Dr. J. L. Magnus, Samuel Dorp, Dr. Cyrus Adler of Philadelphia and Judge J.W. Mack of Chicago.

1915: According to the Maccabean, “a large number of Jewish privates as well as officers have been killed and wounded… at the Battle of Loos” – a three week long British offensive that failed to dislodge the Germans -- which ended today

1917 (28th of Tishrei, 5678): Over 250 people, including students, faculty and alumni attended exercises marking the formal opening of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Dr. Cyrus Adler, acting President of the Seminary gave the keynote address in which he urged everyone “to get behind the Government in the successful prosecution of the war.” Additional addresses were given by two of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community - Louis Marshall, Chairman of the Board and Professor Louis Ginzberg.

1917: U.S. premiere of “Cleopatra” starring Theda Bara (Theodosia Burr Goodman) in the title role.

1918: “An ‘inter-communal’ Jewish congress was organized in Vienna.” As World War I was coming to an end, it became apparent that the Austro-Hungarian or Habsburg Empire would dissolve into a group of small nations based around national constituencies. “Arriving from the principal Habsburg cities, the delegates elected a Jewish National Council and issued a policy statement that was intended as a message to the Allied Powers. Whatever the empire’s fate, they declared, the Jews expected to be awarded the identical civil and collective recognition, and the identical protection, extended to any other nationality.

1918: Accompanied by another officer, Major Julius O. Adler was supervising the work of clearing the enemy from St. Juvin where they suddenly came upon a party of the enemy numbering 150. Firing on the enemy with his pistol, Major Adler ran toward the party, calling on them to surrender. His bravery and good marksmanship resulted in the capture of 50 Germans, and the remainder fled (For this he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross)

1923: The American Jewish Congress will meet today in New York. The congress was originally to meet in Boston. The meeting was moved to accommodate the schedule of Israel Zangwill whose schedule only had an opening for him to meet in New York.

1923:Tonight, at Carnegie Hall Israel Zangwill, Jewish scholar, author and publicist, in an address which he referred to earlier in the day as "the greatest labor of my life" declared that the Jews must forego their political hopes in Palestine "rather than kindle a conflagration which may ravage the whole world."

1929(10th of Tishrei, 5690): Jews observe the first Yom Kippur of what would become the Great Depression

1929: “Louis Fleisher, Harry Fleisher, and Henry Shorr, three members of the Purple Gang attended services at Orthodox Congregation B’nai David in Northwest Detroit.” (As reported by Robert Rockaway)

1933: Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. This was the first of Hitler’s moves to overturn the Treaty of Versailles, which was in turn part of his plan to create his Jew free Third Reich.

1937:The Palestine Postreported from Warsaw that a new Polish Labor Party resolved to oppose totalitarianism, but to stimulate Jewish emigration.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that court proceedings were taken in Romania against Jews guilty of having Jewish National Fund blue boxes in their houses. Yes, the little blue box that we use to this day was part of a criminal activity in Romania. Anti-Jewish measures like this provide further proof that the Holocaust was possible, in part, because of pre-existing conditions throughout Europe.

1938: The Jewish-Americans living in Palestine of which there are eight to nine thousand made “plans today for a conference” for all of their number who have made investments in Eretz Israel to let the British and American governments know about their opposition to any move to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Jewish-Americans intend to use the conference as a way to remind the British that their investments had been predicated on the pledges made in the Balfour Declaration which were incorporated in the League of Nations Mandate that provides the basis for British rule over Palestine. These investments have totaled more than forty million dollars.

1938: Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, announced plans for ghettoizing Jews in all big cities.

1939: Birthdate of Ralph Lauren. Born Ralph Lifschitz in the Bronx, the famous fashion designer began by working with Brooks Brothers before striking out on his and riding his “polo pony” to fame and fortune.

1939: Dr. Ludwig Halberstädter of Tel Aviv, a Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem left the United States today aboard the American export liner Excalibur after having attended the International Cancer Congress at Atlantic City, New Jersey.Ludwig Halberstädter obtained his doctorate in 1901 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). From 1901 to 1907 he worked at the surgical clinic in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) under Carl Garré (1857-1928) and then dermatology with Albert Neisser (1855-1916) in Breslau. He was habilitated for dermatology and radiation therapy in Berlin in 1922 and in 1926 became "nicht beamtlicher ausserordentlicher Professor". His interest in irradiation resulted in studies on its effects on lower forms of life and on tissues and cells. He became director of the Radiation Department at the Institute for Cancer Research, Berlin-Dahlem and used thorium in an effort to treat cancer. Halberstädter demonstrated sensitivity of the ovary to irradiation in 1904. In 1907 he was a member of the research expedition on syphilis which went to Java under Albert Neisser’s direction. After 1933 he was one of 276 Jewish dermatologists who were able to leave Nazi Germany. He settled in Palestine that year and became director of radiation therapy at the Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. He brought with him a tiny amount of radium and opened the first radium and X-ray institute in the Middle East. Working together with cytologist Dr. Leonid Doljansky, he was able to provide the first treatment for cancer in the country.

1940: "Four months after they had bicycled out of Paris" Margret and Hans Rey arrived in New York, their new home and the new home for Curious George.

1940: The Nazis move non-Jews out of a designated section of Warsaw, Poland, and import Jews to replace them.

1941(23^rdof Tishrei, 5702): Simchat Torah

1941: At the intervention of the Union of Jewish Communities in Romania, an order was given today to stop the deportations of Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Dorohoi district

1942: One thousand Jews living inPiotrkow, Poland are dragged from their homes in the middle of the night. Those too ill or old to move were shot on the spot. This was first of eight straight days of terror resulting in the deportation of 20,000 Jews. All of them were sent to Treblinka to be killed. The Shtetel of Piotrkow had had a Jewish population since at least the start of the fifteenth century. At the start of World War II, the Jews made up a third of the town’s population. After the Holocaust there were so few Jews left that they were less than one percent of the population.

1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Sukkoth I

1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Led by Alexander Pecherski and a few other Jewish members of the Red Army, a revolt broke out in the Sobibordeath camp when a number of SS guards were killed. Prevented from fleeing through the gates, 130 Jews died trying to escape through the mine fields. Thirty found their way to freedom. The remaining 140 were captured and shot. The camp itself was closed immediately. Yes, you did read a description of the same event on October 13. Apparently different sources disagree on the date of this heroic act. If there can be such a lack of agreement on the date of so recent an event, we should not be surprised when we have difficulty providing exact dates for ancient events.

Or, a different version

1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Leon Feldhendler and Jewish Soviet officer Aleksandr Pechersky, interned at the Sobibór death camp since September, instigate an inmate revolt and escape, during which 11 German SS guards and two or three Ukrainian SS guards are killed. Two hundred of 600 Jews in the camp are killed by gunfire and exploding mines; among them is 33-year-old Dutch painter Max Van Dam. Of the 300 who escape, only 100 are recaptured; many of the remaining 200 escapees join Soviet partisan forces. Of these, only 50 to 70, including Pechersky, will survive the war.

1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Dr. Saul Tchernichovsky, the physician-poet who translated Macbeth and The Odyssey into Hebrew died today the age of 68 after settling in Eretz Israel ten years ago after fleeing from Nazi Germany. According to the New York Times, he was born in the Ukraine, practiced medicine in St. Petersburg and Berlin. “In My Dream,” his first Hebrew poem was published in the United States in a magazine called Hagispah (Summit). “His original verse and translations made him a leading figure in the world of modern Hebrew literature. The government of Finland decorated him for translating the Finnish national epic, “Kalevala: and during his later years he won the Bialik Prize for his poetry.” He also served as one of the governors of Hebrew University. During the First World War, he “served as a Russian Army doctor on the Eastern Front. He practiced medicine for a year in Palestine during the middle 1920’s before settling in Berlin where he was a successful physician until the Nazis came to power.

1944: Soviet Troops entered Riga. Only a handful of Jews survived where there were 30,000 just ten years earlier.

1944: In Hungary, the Horthy government promises to release imprisoned Jewish-Palestinian paratroopers.

1944: As he attempts to negotiate for the safety of Hungarian Jews, Dr. Rudolf Kastner “travelled for the second time to St Margathen.”

1945: Birthdate of Alan Blinder a Professor of Economics at Princeton who served as Vice Chairperon of the Federal Reserve System during the Clinton Administration.

1947: The Palestine Supreme Court ruled that “the government must give Gershon Friedmann of Tel Aviv and his wife Erna, legal status because years ago two certificates had been deducted for them from the official immigration court.” The decision is “a test case that may provide legal status for more than 2000 Jews who migrated to Palestine without proper certificates.”

1948:Brandeis University opened its doors to its first undergraduate class of 120 first-years.

1948: During the War for Independence major fighting between Egypt and Israel resumed. The Egyptians found out that the Israelis would not be any easier to defeat in “round two” of the fighting.

1949: In the U.K. premiere of “Give Us This Day” with a score by Benjamin Frankel.

1952: Birthdate of Steve Rothman, who was first elected to Congress from the 9^thDistrict of New Jersey in 1997.

1953: Unit 101, together with a unit of regular paratroopers, all under the command of Ariel Sharon carried out a reprisal raid on the Arab village of Kibya on the night after an Israeli woman and her two infant children were murdered by Arab terrorists from Jordan.

1958: Foundation stone of the Knesset laid in Jerusalem. The Knesset is the Israeli parliament. Knesset is a Hebrew word that means “meeting.”

1959: Alexander "Alex" Bittelman’s planned memoir was condemned by Gus Hall and other leaders of the Communist Party in the United States. This was part of Bittleman’s shift in views in the wake of the exposure of Stalin’s crimes and the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

1960(23^rdof Tishrei, 5721): Simchat Torah

1961: Birthdate of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi

http://www.isaacmizrahiny.com/

1962: NBC broadcast the first show of the final season "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" starring Dinah Shore.

1965: Sandy Koufax hurled his 2nd shutout of the World Series beating Twins 2-0. Koufax is still regarded as the greatest southpaw and the leading Jewish athlete of his time.

1964: The Episcopal Church cleared Jews of the charge of killing Jesus. The Roman Catholic Church reached a similar conclusion during this period. While this action was a cause for optimism about the future of relations between Christians and Jews, recent comments and actions by the Episcopal Church concerning the state of Israel have clouded some of this optimism.

1967(10^thof Tirshrei, 5728): Yom Kippur is observed in a united Jerusalem.

1971(25^thof Tishrei, 5732): Seventy-two year old Samuel Spewack, the husband and writing partner of Bella Spewack passed away today.

1973:David Zeit and Eli Tovel ejected from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it was shot down by either a MiG or a SAM. Both were recovered by Israeli forces.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian tanks mount a major attack against Israeli forces. Their goal is to seize the Mitla and Gidi Passes in the Central Sinai which will then open the road to eastern Sinai Peninsula and the Negev. Two thousand tanks were involved in the battle. This is more tanks than were used in any single battle of World War II except for the great battle of Kursk. In other words, this was one heck of big fight over a very limited front. At the end of the day, the Israelis held the line. That evening, despite the opposition of Moshe Dayan, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army ordered Israeli forces to prepare to cross the canal on the following night and begin a major assault on the Egyptian bridgeheads. He correctly believed that the heavy Egyptian losses had weakened the Arab army. He also had already been convinced that the only way to end the war was to cut the supply line to the Egyptian forces attacking east of the Suez Canal. Despite the battlefield successes of the last forty-eight hours, moral on the homefront was low as the Israeli casualty lists lengthened and the war moved into its second full week. To make matters even worse, The Soviets continued to rush tons of supplies by sea and air to both Cairo and Damascus.

1973: In one of the largest tank-to-tank battles ever fought, Israel is estimated to have lost 10 tanks, the Egyptians anywhere from 250 to 300. Iraq and Jordan send troops to the Golan, in response to appeals for assistance from Syria. (As reported by JTA)

1980: In something that is unique to Israeli government, MK Yitzhak Yitzhaky left Likud and formed “a one man party called One Israel.”

1982: In Manhattan, Mary Amanda Dargan and Steven Joel Zietlen, founder of City Lore gave birth to Benjamin Harold "Benh" Zeitlin “the 2012 recipient of Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Visual Arts category.”

1986: VHS release of “The Cage” which was supposed to have been the first pilot episode of Star Trek, featuring Leonard Nimoy as “Mr. Spock” and Malachi Thorne as “The Keeper.”

1986: Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/

1989: Sixty-three year old German historian and war crimes expert Martin Broszat passed away. (As reported by Eric Pace)

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/02/obituaries/martin-broszat-german-historian-and-war-crimes-expert-63-dies.html

1989:The Syrian fighter pilot who defected to Israel in a Soviet jet fighter on Wednesday said today that his flight was ''a very difficult mission'' since he flew at about 800 miles an hour and was only about 100 to 150 feet off the ground. In a meeting with journalists, the pilot, Maj. Mohammed Bassem Adel, said that the monitors on his Soviet-made MIG-23 showed that Israeli air-defense radar tracked him all along the way, and that he was worried because he knew that ''the section I was crossing is spread all over with missiles.'' But the major said he believed that he was not shot down before he landed because ''a country that has confidence in itself cannot be afraid of one single plane and would take the time to evaluate what was going on before taking action.'' Major Adel, whom the Israelis had initially identified as Maj. Adel Bassem, is balding and has a mustache, and he looks far older than his 34 years. The Israeli military allowed journalists to interview him this afternoon at a military base just north of Tel Aviv. He still wore his deep green Syrian flight jumpsuit. Two dozen Israeli military officers sat in the room as he talked. He said he fled Syria, leaving a family and fiancee behind, because ''I wanted to change my life - I wanted to live in a democratic country where people are free to express their views.'' He would not elaborate. He decided to leave three months ago but did not make his ''operational plans'' until Wednesday morning, he said. He was influenced by what he read of Israel and saw on television. ''I was not in contact with anyone here before I came; no one was expecting me,'' he added. ''I've no connection whatsoever with anyone in Israel before now.'' Before leaving, Major Adel said, he told no one what he intended to do. Once he lifted off from his base in Syria, he said he was in the air 20 minutes, and over Israeli airspace only between three and four minutes, before he landed near the town of Megiddo. On Thursday the military opened an investigation to determine how Major Adel flew into Israel in a potentially hostile fighter plan without interference. He appeared to give much of the explanation today. He said all his active electronic systems were off. Without any of his target radars armed - conditions easily monitored from the ground - air defense officers could probably see he had no immediate hostile intent. He said he did not know where he would land. ''I didn't know if there would be a facility I could land at and thought I might have to land on a highway,'' he said. ''I thought I might be intercepted by Israeli planes. But I kept flying, looking for a place to land.'' After he landed, he waited 20 minutes for security officials to arrive, and in that time he told a ground technician at the airfield that police in Syria had beaten him up after he had asked for better housing several months ago. Today, he declined to discuss his life in Syria. He said his treatment here so far has been ''gentle.'' West Bank and Gaza Killings

1990(25th of Tishrei, 5751): Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein passed away. During his 72 years, Bernstein drew on a variety of themes from traditional Judaism to Shakespeare and racial conflicts that divided the teenage gangs of New York. There is no way that this blog can do justice to this musical genius and social icon. The man who gave the world West Side Story was an ardent supporter in its darkest days. He came to Israel during the War for Independence to perform and his concert on Mt. Scopus after the June War is a treasure in more than one way.http://www.leonardbernstein.com/

1993: The Wldodawa Museum which erected the first monument to Sobibór victims in 1965 “established a separate Sobibór branch today.

1994 (9th of Cheshvan, 5755): Nachsho Wachsman, a nineteen year old Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas, was killed when Israeli forces attempted to rescue him. “His father Yehuda was an advocated of improved Jewish-Arab relations, and a supporter of the peace process.’”

1994: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

1997(13th of Tishrei, 5758): American novelist Harold Robbins passed away.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-harold-robbins-1236165.html

1997: First broadcast of “The Dream Team” a British television series with scripts by Noam Friedlander.

2000(15^thof Tishrei, 5761): As Israelis cope with the violence of yet another round of Arab terrorism, the first day of Sukkoth is observed.

2001:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author or of special interest to Jewish readers including Will the Circle Be Unbroken?:Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith by Studs Terkel.

2001: Delta Flight 458 from Atlanta, Georgia to Newark, New Jersey, is diverted to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, and passengers are taken off the flight while officials investigate a report of two "Middle Eastern men" making threats in a foreign tongue -- two Orthodox Jews peacefully praying.

2003: Following today’s celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the revolt at Sobibór “the grounds of the former death camp received a grant largely funded by the Dutch government to improve the exhibits.”

2004: "FDR's Auschwitz Secret," by Michael Beschloss appears in Newsweek Magazine. The article is an excerpt from Beschloss’ latest book and makes the claim that it was FDR himself who made the decision not to bomb the Nazi death camp.

2005: As part of an interview with the Israeli Interior Minister, the Jerusalem Post reported that Jewish extremists were continuing with plots against the life of Prime Minister Sharon. While the capabilities of the Israeli security forces had improved since the murder of Prime Minister Rabin ten years ago, the Jews who are willing to murder other Jews still posed a major threat. The Interior Minister called for the same kind of Administrative Detention be used in dealing with Jews plotting to kill government officials or blow up the Temple Mount as was used against Arab terrorists.

2006: International Haifa Film Festival comes to a close.

2006: A show featuring the works of Lazar (El) Markovich Lissitzky opens at the Phillips Collection in Washington. According to an article in the Forwards, the “prints in the Phillips show are from his “Victory Over the Sun” drawings for an opera set.” Lissitzky was a contemporary of Chagall with whom he was often confused. The paintings from this period represent Lissitzky’s attempt to break from “Chagall Shadow.”

2006(22nd of Tishrei, 5767): Shemini Atzeret, 5767.

2007:“The New York Times cited U.S. and Israeli military intelligence sources saying that the target of the attack in Syria had been a nuclear reactor under construction by North Korean technicians, with a number of the technicians having been killed in the strike.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/washington/14weapons.html?hp

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of An Extraordinary Musical Prodigy by Kevin Bazzan which is a biography of pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi -- pronounced, "air-veen nyeer-edge-hah-zee"– “who was born in Budapest of Jewish ancestry.”

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a slew of reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan, The Bulldozer and The Big Tent by Jewish author Todd Gitlin,The Year of Living Biblicallyby A.J. Jacobs, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories,1967-2007 by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar; translated by Vivian Eden and The Castle on Hester Streetby Linda Heller, a book for children that is a zestful tale of Russian-Jewish immigration at the turn of the last century.

2007: As a sign of the vitality and growth of the Jewish Community, The Washington Post reported that Charles County, Maryland, is getting its first synagogue. Congregation Sha'are Shalom, which has been holding services for the last sixteen years at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Waldorf, has located an acceptable site after a five year search. Speaking about the benefits of building a permanent home, congregation treasurer Lee Weinberger said, “With the construction of the synagogue, we will be able to expand our educational and social activities and be able to offer all our activities and services at one location."

2007: The New York Times Magazine featured an article entitled “The SY Empire” describing the growth of the Syrian Jewish Community.

2007:Rabbi Shais Taub of the Chabad Lubavitch of Wisconsin led a group of 10 Orthodox Jewish football fans on a pilgrimage from Milwaukee deep into Green Bay Packerland. They tailgated across the street from Lambeau Field, in a grass-covered parking lot, next door to Kroll's West, where butter burgers - definitely not kosher - are a specialty.

2007: Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. Changed its name to to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.

2008(15th of Tishrei, 5769): First Day Sukkoth

2008: In Canada today, a “Battle of the Booths”; Canada’s Conservative Party chooses to hold elections on the first Day of Sukkoth giving Jews the choice between the voting booths or the Festivals of Booths. Jews can vote ahead of time, but many Jewish leaders object because holding the election on a Jewish holiday limits Jewish participation in the electoral process. Others express no objection.

2008:Canter's Deli, a famous Jewish style delicatessen in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, California, near the border of West Hollywood, celebrated its 60th anniversary today. To mark the occasion, the deli reduced the price of their "famous" corned beef sandwich to its 1948 price of 60 cents, limited to one per customer, for a period of 12 hours.

2008(15^th of Tishrei, 5769): Seventy-six year old Irish author and feminist June Levine author of Sisters passed away today.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/my-extraordinary-contradictory-beautiful-friend-june-levine-26485638.html
http://www.irishwriters-online.com/levine-june/

2009: The Jewish Agency is scheduled to hold citizenship ceremonies for new immigrants on the roof of a Yeshiva overlooking the Western Wall. Up until today the ceremonies had been held at the Western Wall plaza. The agency changed the location for the ceremony because the rabbi responsible for the site “had demanded gender separation at the ceremonies.”

2009: The UN Security Council is expected to meet today instead of October 20 and is expected to discuss the Goldstone Report which reported on Israeli actions during the anti-terrorist incursion into Gaza known as Cast Lead.

2009(26^th of Tishrei, 5770): Sixty one year old investment banker Bruce Wasserstein passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/business/15wasserstein.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?a=jkpcEphcbfa&title=Lazard_CEO_Bruce_Wasserstein_dies_at_61

2009:The Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute present: Music in the Age of the Wittgensteins, Part 1. The Wittgenstein Century began in the early 19th century and ended after WWI. During this period the dynasty rose from humble origins to become the wealthiest family in Austria-Hungary and produced one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

2010:“Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco” an exhibition sponsored by American Sephardi Federation that tells the story of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world is scheduled to open in New York.

2010:“Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2010,” a one-woman exhibit, opens at the AC Galleries, in New York.

2010: Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, was presented with CCJU's prestigious Nostra Aetate Award for "his outstanding contributions to a world at peace."

2010:In an article entitledVague, Opaque and Ambiguous: Israel’s Hush-Hush Nuclear Policy, Ethan Bronner reviewed The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bomb by Avner Cohen

2010:According to reports published today,”The world's youngest billionaire, Dustin Moskovitz, is 26, born just eight days after his former Harvard roommate and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg is no longer the youngest member of the Forbes 400, he is this year's biggest percentage gainer: His net worth has jumped to $6.9 billion from $2 billion. The third Facebook billionaire, 28-year-old Eduardo Saverin, left the company in a legal dispute, settled with Saverin reportedly getting a 5% stake in the company.” All three are Jewish.

2010: The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the city’s second Holocaust museum was dedicated today at Pan Pacific Park in the city’s heavily newish Beverly-Fairfax neighborhood.

2010(6^th of Cheshvan, 5771):Eighty-five year old “maverick mathematician” Benoît B. Mandelbrot passed away today. (As reported by Jascha Hoffman) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html

2010(6^th of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-two year old legal scholar Louis Henkin passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17henkin.html

2011(16^th of Tishrei, 5772): Second Day of Sukkoth

2011(16^th of Tishrei, 5772): Eighty-seven year old Morris Chaftez, the first director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/morris-chafetz-87-dies-altered-view-of-alcoholism.html

2011: Following Friday night services at Auguda Achim in Iowa City, IA, congregants are scheduled to view “Ushpezin,” a comedy in which an impoverished Jerusalem couple is visited by a pair of escaped convicts “become their guests (ushpezin) in the Sukkah”

2011:The disagreements and tensions within Hamas over the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap are reportedly pitting group detainees against each other in Israel's prisons. A website affiliated with Fatah reported today that great tensions emerged between Hamas prisoners from the West Bank and their counterparts from the Gaza Strip as result of the swap's characteristics.

2011:Bereaved families filed a petition with the High Court of Justice today, the first against the Gilad Shalit deal which will see 1,027 Palestinian prisoners being released in exchange for the Hamas-held soldier. They are claiming the deal is a "wholesale release of murderers" and have asked that the implementation of the exchange be delayed.

2012: The Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to sponsor a walking tour of Downtown Jewish Washington that will include a look at “the historic 7^th Street, NW neighborhood from 1850 to 1950.”

2012: “Outsiders in Israel” and “Who Shot My Father” are scheduled to shown at the Syracuse (NY) Film Festival.

2012: History of Jewish Giving: Jews and Charity, a “symposium organized by Debra Kaplan, Yeshiva University and Judah Galinsky, Bar-Ilan University” is scheduled to take place in New York City.

2012: Today,the cabinet approved a resolution calling for new elections to be held in 101 days, on January 22, 2013.

2012:The Hezbollah drone that infiltrated the Negev last week beamed back live images of secret Israeli military bases, the Sunday Times reported today.

2012(28^th of Tishrei, 5773): Eighty-two year old Arlen Spector, long-term senator from Pennsylvania passed away today

http://www.timesofisrael.com/former-pennsylvania-senator-arlen-specter-dies-at-82/

2012(28^th of Tishrei, 5773): Eighty-seven year old broadcast magnate and philanthropist Joseph Rosenmiller passed away today. (As reported by Leslie Kaufman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/us/joseph-rosenmiller-nontraditional-philanthropist-dies-at-87.html?_r=1&hpw

2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons, The Machine That Kills Secrets:How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information by Andy Greenberg and the recently released paperback edition of The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World by Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin.

2013: In Manhattan, the Israel Real Estate Exhibition is scheduled to come to a close.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Creating Identity: Yiddish across a Spectrum of Jewish Communities Today” featuring Isabelle Barrière and Sarah Benor

2013: Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eli Marom, who served as the commander of the Israeli Navy during Operation Cast Lead and during the raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara vessel, was held for questioning at around noon today at London's Heathrow Airport upon his arrival in Britain (As reported by YNet)

2013: Ten Jewish men were detained by police after they were accused of praying and bowing inside the Temple Mount enclosure on Monday morning (As reported by Stuart Winer)

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center of Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Ray of Hope Concert” with Alika Hope and Ray Morant.

2014: Tziporela, the award winning Israeli theatre is scheduled to perform its latest production, “Odd Birdz.”

2014: The Wiener Library is scheduled to host Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler and the First World War during which author Thomas Weber will present a picture of the German dictator’s military service which is at odds with the myth he created.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “The Haunted Sukkah.”

2014: “From Moses to Moses,” a three week course taught be Dr. Maurice Mirahi is scheduled to begin tonight at the JCC of Northern Virginia.

2014: Tel Aviv Noir, an anthology of Gadi Taub’s short stories published by Akashic Books is scheduled to go on sale today.

OCTOBER 15

586 BCE (Cheshvan, 3338): King Zedekiah was blinded and taken into captivity. He was the last king of Judea. Zedekiah’s ("Tzidkiyahu") original name was Matanya. He was torn between the two great powers of Egypt and Babylon. Unfortunately, Egypt under Hopra was no match for Nebuchadnezzar who pushed out the Egyptians and laid siege to Jerusalem. Zedekiah tried to flee from Jerusalem but was captured along with his sons in Jericho. He ended his life in a Babylonian prison.

412: Theophilius passed away clearing the way for Cyril an anti-Semite who had incited a Greek mob to kill Jew to become Patriarch of Alexandria.

912: Abdullah ibn Muhammad, Emir of Córdoba passed away. Abdullah passed away just when Cordoba was on the brink of becoming a major center of Jewish culture and learning. Menahem ben Sharuk, the great grammarian was two years old when the Emir passed away and Hasdai Ibn Shaprut would not be born until three years after his birth. The rise of Cordoba as a Jewish center coincided with its reemergence as a power on the Iberian Peninsula.

1218: Birthdate of Hulagu Khan, the Mongol rule who conquered Palestine in 1260 who showed toleration to all three major religions – Jews, Christians and Moslems.

1485: At Soncino, Italy, Joshua Solomon Soncino printed “The Former Prophets” with a commentary by Kimhi. [Kimihi probably refers to David Kimihi, the 13th century rabbi known as RaDak. But it cannot be said with certitude that it does not refer to his father Rabbi Joserph Kimhi and his brother Rabbi Moses Kimhi.] The Soncinos were a family of Sephardic Jews who had begun operating printing presses in the town of Soncino, Italy in 1483. Yes the town was the inspiration for the last name.

1582: Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15. The change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar helps to explain the challenge in matching dates on the Hebrew calendar with the dates on the civil calendar.

1585: Birthdate of Louis Cappel, the French Huguenot Scholar “accepted the chair of Hebrew at Samur” at the age of 28 who “made a special study of the history of the Hebrew text, which led him to the conclusion that the vowel points and accents are not an original part of the Hebrew language, but had been inserted by the Massorete Jews of Tiberias, no earlier than the 5th century.”

1739(13th of Tishrei, 5500): António José da Silva “was garroted and burnt at a Lisbon auto-da-fe.” Born in 1705, he “was a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu)”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/da_Silva.html

1655(Tishrei, 5416): The Jews of Lublin, Poland were massacred.

1733: Birthdate of Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal the native of Hebron who is reported to have been the first rabbi to visit the colonies that would become the United States of America.

1737: After a slave denounced them to the Holy Office, Portuguese dramatist António José da Silva and his wife “were both imprisoned on the charge of ‘judaizing’”

1764: Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his classic history of the Roman Empire, Gibbon had the following to say about the Jewish people. (Editor’s Note: This long entry has been included to help decided if Gibbon was an anti-Semite in the sense that we understand that term. Also, by reading Gibbon you will may gain a greater understanding of the variety of views held by English men women when it comes to the Jewish people. After all, this is designed as a learning experience, not just a collection of dates.

In Chapter XVI, Gibbon wrote:

“Rebellious Spirit of the Jews: Without repeating what has been already mentioned of the reverence of the Roman princes and governors for the temple of Jerusalem, we shall only observe that the destruction of the temple and city was accompanied and followed by every circumstance that could exasperate the minds of the conquerors, and authorize religious persecutions by the most specious arguments of political justice and the public safety. From the reign of Nero to that of Antonius Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives;(1) and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race of fanatics whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but of human kind. The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported by the opinion that it was unlawful for them to pay taxes to an idolatrous master, and by the flattering promise which they derived from their ancient oracles, that a conquering Messiah would soon arise, destined to break their fetters, and to invest the favorites of heaven with the empire of the earth. It was by announcing himself as their long-expected deliverer, and by calling on all the descendants of Abraham to assert the hope of Israel, that the famous Barchochebas collected a formidable army, with which he resisted during two years the power of the emperor Hadrian

Toleration of the Jewish Religion: Notwithstanding these repeated provocations, the resentment of the Roman princes expired after the victory, nor were their apprehensions continued beyond the period of war and danger. By the general indulgence of Polytheism, and by the mild temper of Antonius Pius, the Jews were restored to their ancient privileges, and once more obtained the permission of circumcising their children, with the easy restraint that they should never confer on any foreign proselyte that distinguishing mark of the Hebrew race.(4) The numerous remains of that people, though they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honors, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from the burdensome and expensive offices of society. The moderation or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical policy which was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the Sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded by the Mosaic law or enjoined by the traditions of the Rabbis, were celebrated in the most solemn and public manner. Such gentle treatment insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behavior of peaceable and industrious subjects. Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of over-reaching the idolaters in trade, and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom.

The Jews Were A People Which Followed The Christians, a Sect Which Deserted the Religion of Their Fathers: Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed, however, the free exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them is simple and obvious, but, according to the sentiments of antiquity, it was of the highest importance. The Jews were a nation, the Christians were a sect: and if it was natural for every community to respect the sacred institutions of their neighbors, it was incumbent on them to persevere in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the precepts of philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously enforced this national obligation. By their lofty claim of superior sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations they might deserve their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind, and it was universally acknowledged that they had a right to practice what it would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favor or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of the Pagan world. To their apprehensions it was no less a matter of surprise that any individuals should entertain scruples against complying with the established mode of worship than if they had conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language of their native country.

1780: Birthdate of Eva Meijer, the sister of Abraham David Meijer and Jonas Daniel Meijer, the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands and a leader in the fight to gain full rights for all Dutch Jews.

1786(23^rd of Tishrei, 5547): Simchat Torah

1787: In the Netherlands, the Jews of Amersfort including Benjamin Cohen celebrated today as a holiday because the Orange forces liberated the town.

1794(21st of Tishrei, 5555):Hoshanah Rabah

1809: In Mecklenburg, Jacob H. Marcus and his wife Judy Levi gave birth German lawyer and political leader Lewis Jacob Marcus.

1809: Birthdate of Friedrich A. Philippi, the son of a wealth Jewish banker who converted to Christianity following a pattern similar to that of the Mendelssohn family with which he was friends.

1818(15^th of Tishrei, 5579): Sukkoth

1821: Birthdate of German poet Moritz Hartmann. Hartmann was as well known for his political activities as for his poetry. He was a liberal and took part in the revolutions that rocked Europe in the 1840’s. “Hartmann's poems are often lacking in genuine poetical feeling, but the love of liberty which inspired them, and the fervor, ease and clearness of their style compensated for these shortcomings and gained for him a wide circle of admirers.”

1829(18^th of Tishrei, 5590): Chol HaMoed Sukkoth

1829(18^th of Tishrei, 5590): Twenty year old Hindel Henriette Warburg passed away today.

1835(22nd of Tishrei, 5596): Shemini Atzeret

1843(21st of Tishrei, 5604): Hoshana Raba

1844: Birthdate of Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher. According to some Nietzsche was an anti-Semite. In reality, his big complaint against Judaism was that it gave rise to Christianity. Nietzsche’s sister and brother-in-law were anti-Semites. Nietzsche did not approve of them or their politics. However, the Nazis misrepresented his beliefs. After Nietzsche’s death, his sister became the keeper of his literary estate and she was only too glad to bend it to fit Hitler’s will.

1854(23^rd of Tishrei, 5615): Simchat Torah

1855: The New York Times reported that Mlle. Rachel has returned from performing in Boston and is scheduled at the Academy of Music on nights when the opera is not being performed. Mademoiselle Rachel is Elizabeth-Rachel Félix, the daughter of Alsatian Jews who was prominent actress as well as the mistress to prominent Europeans including at least one member of Napoleon I’s family.

1859: Birthdate of “Austrian physician, medical author and dramatist” Alois Pick.

1861: At their regular meeting which was held today, the Board of Councilmen (of New York City) examined a report from the Board Alderman that favored donating thirty thousand dollars to the Hebrew Benevolent Association “, for the erection of a building for the poor and orphans of that persuasion.” It was opposed by Mr. Lent who contended that the city had already done its share by donating the land on which the building was to be erected. The donation was supported by Mr. Barney, who proposed that the money should be paid in installments based on the progress of construction without more than 25 per cent to be paid at any one time. Following further discussion, the whole subject was referred to the Finance Committee.

1862(21st of Tishrei, 5623): Hoshana Rabah

1863: The Board of Alderman met today and adopted the Report of Committee on Donations and Charities that appropriate steps be taken to ensure that a lot adjacent to the Orphan Asylum of the Hebrew Benevolent Society would become the property of the Hebrew Benevolent Society.

1864(15th of Tishrei, 5625): Sukkoth

1866: In Merkine (Meretz), Hinde Bernstein and Isaac Margolis gave birth to Max Leopold Margolis the Lithuanian-born American philologist whose accomplishments included serving as “editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Bible into English, the finished product being published in 1917.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13280.html

1869: Birthdate of American painter Ernest Peixotto. The son of Raphael Peixotto, “he studied at the Académie Julien in Paris for five years under Benjamin Constant and Jules Lefèbvre. His work has been exhibited in the Paris Salon. He exhibited also at the Columbian Exposition held in 1893.

1871(30th of Tishrei, 5632) Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1871: An article published today entitled “English Jews” reported that the Jews of the United Kingdom are “divided into two sects- orthodox and reformers.” The Orthodox are led by Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom who delivered a sermon declaring “that the oral law and written law are equally Divine. The Reform or Liberal Jews are led by Professor David Woolf Marx. A smaller group, they use a synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square. Their numbers are described as “very small” and “the services lifeless.” According to four speeches given by Professor Marx, the Reform believe in the “sufficiency of the law of Moses as the guide of Israel.” The article goes on to describe, in some detail, the Jewish dietary laws and Sabbath, which it finds a joyful in event. In the end, among English Jews, their ritual is “little better than an empty shell.” For example Jews pray for next year in Jerusalem but would not move if given a chance to down and Jews pray for blessings on the Royal Family while ignoring the Parliament yet most Jews are Liberals.

1871: Following yesterday’s Shabbat sermon in which Rabbi J.J. Lyons made an appeal for financial aid for those who have suffered during the Great Chicago Fire, a committee is scheduled to meet today at the West Nineteenth Street Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue to discuss how to disperse the expected large number of contributions.

1873: At today’s meeting of the Free Religious Association, Jewish author and editor Moritz Ellinger said that it was “eminently proper that the Jewish religion” should be a part of the association since “it was found upon reason, had not priests, but only teachers. It had no creed, but simply belief in a creator, and did not point men to a future rewsard, but to a reward on earth. He argued…that the Jewish religion was not based on miracles.” Finally like other members of the association, “Jews did not look toward the past for their Savior, but kept their face toward the future.” [The Free Religious Association was formed two years after the Civil War. Its leaders sought to “emancipate religion from dogmatic traditions” and supernaturalism. Non-Orthodox Jews were drawn to the organization which included Quakers, Unitarians agnostics and theists.]

1875(16th of Tishrei, 5636): Second Day of Sukkoth

1875: School Board member Fritz A. Meyer introduced a resolution at tonight’s meeting of the Board of Education in Union Hill, NJ, to abolish the mandatory reading of the Bible at the start of each school day. Besides raising constitutional issues, the resolution points out the fact that the Bible being used is not the text of the Catholics or the Jews and this makes the activity a matter of sectarian religious practice.

1877: “Fine Arts In America,” an article published today comments on the works of several 19th century artists including Washington Allston’s “Jeremiah” which is owned by Yale University. The work has many fine points, but the artist has failed “to express the exaltation of an inspired prophet.” You may judge for yourself at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeremiah_Dictating_His_Prophecy_by_Washington_Allston_1820.jpeg

1878: In New York City, Sarah Weiler or Wheeler, the widow of a rabbi, was tried on charges that she had abducted a 16 year old girl named Mary O’Connor for immoral purposes and had compelled her “to commit an act of self-abasement.” She was sentenced to two years in the state prison after having been found guilty of one of the two counts of the indictment.

1880: “Whipped With Cat-O’-Nine-Tails” published today described the decision rendered by Justice Kilbreth in the case of Mrs. Lizzie Wenke who was accused of horse-whipping Isaac Stern a fellow Jew living in the tenement at 192 Broome Street.

1881: The London Telegraph reported that the Turkish governor of Jerusalem has received orders from the Sultan to resume work on the restoration of the Temple of Solomon which had stopped five years ago after having been begun by Sultan Abdul Aziz.

1881: “Work of the Young Hebrews” published today provided a summary the annual report issued by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. The Association has about a thousand members, sponsored 8 lectures and has accumulated a library of 2,016 volumes. The executive committee called for a fair to raise funds for a new building and “grand Chanukah ball” to be held at the Academy of Music.

1881: It was reported today that in New York, “an assignment for the benefit of creditors, by Hirsch Levy to Isidore Hirsch, with $600 preferences” has been filed in the County Clerk’s office.

1882: “Plays and Actors” published today included a dispute over the portrayal of the Jewish characters in Edward Harrigan’s new play, “Mordecai Lyons.” A Jewish correspondent disparaged it as “another Jew play” which is coarse at best while others contend that “the Jewish part of this drama” is thought to be “serious and valuable.”

1882: “Varied Old World Topics” published today described conditions in Germany. Surprise was expressed that the “anti-Semitic agitation is gaining ground.” Some of the support may be coming indirectly from Chancellor Bismarck would be using to it intimidate the Jews “who have been opposing his program on financial matters.”

1882: “Religious Ideas” published today described the anomaly that “Christianity was founded by Jews, preached by Jews and died for by Jews, yet Jews are the only people living directly and always within its influence upon whom, in 1,800 years, that creed has made no impression at all.”

1882: “A Riot Among the Russian Jews” describe events surrounding an outbreak of violence among the 400 Jewish immigrants temporarily housed on Ward’s Island. The violence broke out during mealtime when Jacob Rabota, a native of Warsaw protested the way they were being fled. The attack was in reaction to ill-will between the Jews and the staff brought on by mistreatment sanction by the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent. Rebbec Bochtel told those investigating the matter “a pitiful story of maltreatment” that “was corroborated by other women.”

1882:”Suit About A Play” published today described litigation surrounding “Siberia,” a drama about “the persecution of the Jews of Russia” written by Barley Campbell. Plaintiffs Imrl and Bolossi Kiralfy claim they provide Campbell with the idea for the play and he agreed to write it so that they could perform it.

1884: It was reported today that Smyrna, which is second only to Constantinople “as an eastern centre of commerce” has population of 250,000, 30,000 of whom are Jews.

1887: It was reported today that another 100 Jewish families have been expelled from Kiev.

1888: Democrat Martin Foran’s victory in the election for the 21st Congressional District from Ohio was reportedly due in part to his Republican opponent having lost the support of Jewish voters in the district.

1889: In Great Britain the press has reported that Baron Hirsch is negotiating with Lord Cholmondeley for the purchase of Houghton Hall estate. The purchase will probably cost the Baron 300,000 English pounds. Baron Hirsch's desire to purchase the estate in England may have been stimulated by "the snub he recently received from the French Jockey Club."

1890: Ferdinand Forzinetti was named commandant of military prisons in Paris, a position he held when Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned. Later Dreyfus would credit him as one of the people who dissuaded him from taking his own life and "who knew how to combine the strict duty of a soldier with the highest feelings of humanity."

1890: Birthdate of Leib Kvitko, the Ukrainian born Yiddish poet. He was a member of the Jewish Ant-Fascist Committee, an organization Stalin supported as a vehicle to gain foreign support for the Soviets during WW II. Stalin repaid him for his efforts by making him one of the victims of the “Night of the Murdered Poets.”

1892: Kinloch Cooke is named editor of the Pall Mall Gazette following its purchase by the Lowenfield syndicate, which according to unsubstantiated rumors is backed by Baron Hirsch. Furthermore, other rumors include reports of a desire of members of the Jewish community to gain control of this or some other major English publication.

1893: The Jubilee Celebration of B’nai B’rith is scheduled to end this evening with services at Temple Beth-El followed by a business meeting.

1893: Colonel J.E. Bloom, the manager of the Baron de Hirsch Trade School defended his decision to “turn out” five students from their boarding house without warning because they had refused to follow the school’s rules and the school felt no obligation to support young men undermining the school.

1893: A review of “The Woollen Stocking published today described the addition of a “the Jewish politician who ‘pulls together’ with the Irish” as the newest character added to this comedy.

1894(15th of Tishrei, 5655): Sukkoth

1894: “Literary Notes” published today described the publication by A.C. Armstrong & Son of The Historical Geography of the Holy Land by George Adams which provides an outline of Palestine that includes six maps prepared by John George Bartholomew.

1894: Birthdate of Moshe Sharett, second Prime Minister of Israel. Born Moshe Shertok in the Ukraine, Moshe Sharett emigrated to Palestine in 1908 where his family was one of the founders of Tel Aviv Sharett was the first Foreign Minister of Israel. He was a key figure in establishing the Armistice Agreements that ended with a Jewish victory in the War for Independence. When Ben Gurion resigned as Israel’s fist Prime Minister in 1953, Sharett was the logical choice to succeed him. He was ousted by Ben Gurion in 1956 and he returned to the Foreign Ministry. He passed away in 1965.

1894: Justice McMahon dismissed that assault case brought by Nathan Hirsch in Yorkville.

1894: John Shevlin who had been arrested by Officer Grier after he saw him lead a crowd chasing and beating two old Jews was released from custody when the victims could not be found to appear at the Jefferson Market Police Court.

1894: Louis Rothschild was elected treasurer of the newly formed Cloak and Suit Manufacturers Association whose 85 members met tonight and voted not to “entertain any communications from any of the trade unions.”

1895: At a meeting held at Tammany Hall this afternoon, it was agreed that Jacob A. Cantor would be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the Twentieth Senate District. Before entering politics, Cantor, the son of two Jews from London, was a newspaper man and lawyer. He would go on to a successful political career that would include serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.

1897: Herzl publishes his article "Mauschel" in Die Welt. Die Welt was the name of a weekly publication founded in 1897 by Theodor Herzl in Vienna as organ of the Zionist movement. In the article entitled “Mauschel” Herzl did not deny that the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jew had a basis in reality. Rather he identified the stereotype with the Jewish opponents of Zionism and used it against them.

1898: Theodor Herzl was invited to a private audience with Kaiser Wilhelm today when the Kaiser stopped in Constantinople for a State visit. The Kaiser asked Herzl what he wished him to ask of the Sultan:’ “A Chartered Company – under German protection,” was Herzl’s request.

1898: “The new home of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of the city of New York” is scheduled to “be fully furnished and ready for occupancy” today.

1906; Major Alfred Dreyfus took command of the artillery unit at St. Denis, a northern suburb of Paris.

1906: The Anglican Bishop of Shangai, a convert from Judaism named Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky passed away today.

1906: Bruno Alfred Döblin, a German-Jewish author and doctor best for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz took up a position at the Berlin psychiatric clinic in Buch where he worked as an assistant doctor for nearly two years.

1907: Birthdate of Varian Fry, known as the American Schindler for his gallant rescue of those fleeing Hitler and the Nazis. . Some of those he saved were Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt and Alma Mahler. In 1995 Varian Fry became the first United States citizen to be listed in the Righteous Among the Nations at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem (in 2006, fellow Americans Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp were added to the list). He was awarded the additional honor of "Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel" on 1 January 1998. The film Varian’s War provides a cinematic treatment of Fry’s wartime activities

1907(7^th of Cheshvan, 5668): Seventy-four year old award winning French astronomer Maurice (Mortiz) Loewy passed away today.

1909: Birthdate of American astronomer Jesse Leonard Greenstein.

1911(23rd of Tishrei, 5672): Simchat Torah

1911: At the request of David Levontin, Director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, Jews assemble to pray for the welfare of the Sultan and for victory of the Turkish Army.

1915: Birthdate of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir.

1915: In Portsmouth, VA, Reb Yisroel Gifter and his wife gave birth to Mordechai Gifter, the future rosh yeshiva of the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio.

1915: Louis D. Brandies of Boston is identified as the attorney leading the opposition to the increase in freight rate charges that the railroads are presenting to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

1922(23rd of Tishrei, 5683): Simchat Torah

1923: Birthdate of Walter Zacharius, the Brooklyn native, “who rode the passion-swollen wave of romance fiction in the early 1980s to build the Kensington Publishing Corporation into a leading purveyor of bodice-rippers and other romance genres…” (As reported by William Grimes)

1927: Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen was mortally wounded while standing on a street corner during a turf war with Jacob Shapiro and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.

1930(23rd of Tishrei, 5691): Simchat Torah

1930: Dr. Drummond Shiels, Under-Secretary for the Colonies left Palestine today with “a long memorial” from the Society of Young Christians “in which they protested against Moslem demands for the abolition of the British mandate in Palestine.

1930: Birthdate of Heiko Augstinus Oberman author of Luther: Man Between God and the Devil who noted that Rabbi Josel of Rosheim’s attempt to get relief from John Frederick’s anti-Jewish decree “as being significant in Luther's attitude toward the Jews: "Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther's career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews;"yet, Oberman contends that Luther would have denied any such "turning point." Rather he felt that Jews were to be treated in a "friendly way" in order to avoid placing unnecessary obstacles in their path to Christian conversion, a genuine concern of Luther.”

1930: The High Commissioner put an end to the proceedings against six Jews who had been arrested at Tel Aviv for protesting against Dr. Drummond Shiels when he arrived in Palestine last week. The prisoners were released to a joyful crowd who had been angered by reports that Shiels supported creation of Parliament in Palestine that would guarantee Moslem rule and put an end to the creation of a Jewish homeland as promised by the Balfour Declaration.

1931:In the Bronx, NY, Alfred Epstein, a pharmacist from Poland and Eva Epstein, a former modern dancer from Russia, gave birth to Edmund Lloyd Epstein, “a literary scholar who, as a book editor in the late 1950s, was so taken by a well-reviewed but not especially popular first novel by a largely unknown British writer that he decided to reprint it in paperback, thus enabling the extravagant American success of “Lord of the Flies” and its author, the future Nobel Prize winner William Golding…” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1935: Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior called for codifying laws that would impose legal restrictions on Jews taking part in trade and industry. The Nazi rise to power and the early days of the final solution were all couched in terms of the German legal code. The Nazis hid their evil behind a façade of laws.

1937: Birthdate of comedic actress Linda Lavin who played the wisecracking waitress on the television hit “Alice.”

1937: David Feuerwerker, French born rabbi and resistance leader began his service in the French Army which would earn him the Croix de Guerre with a bronze star.

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the end of the temporary cease-fire, and an intense revival of the Arab anti-Jewish and anti-British terror activities throughout the country. Bullets and bombs hit Jewish transport, buses in particular. The Iraqi Petroleum Company pipeline was damaged and the oil flowing from Iraq set on fire near Beit She’an. A passenger train from Haifa and a goods train were derailed. The settlements of Ginegar, Afula, Rosh Pina, and Migdal Tzedek were exposed to persistent firing and 12 Jews were injured. Telephone lines were cut. The authorities closed the Syrian border and imposed a curfew in Jerusalem.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jewish students in Warsaw went on strike to protest against the introduction of the so-called "ghetto benches" on the left side of the lecture halls at Polish universities.

1940: "The Great Dictator," a satiric social commentary film by and starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. The film was a satiric attack on Hitler, Mussolini and fascism. Chaplin felt so strongly about the need to expose the threat posed by the Nazis and their allies, that he was willing to break his film silence. The Great Dictator was his first “talkie.”

1941: The Nazis began the first mass deportation of German Jews to Eastern European ghettos.

1941: As of today, “the Nazis had murdered up to 30,000 of the approximately 60,000 Jews that had not been able to flee Latvia before the German occupation.”

1941: According to a proclamation, Jews caught outside the Polish Ghetto walls could be put to death. I am not sure what this entry really means considering the plight of the Jews of Poland at this time.

1942: An SS Aktion is undertaken against Jews of Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland that would last until October 21. During this time untold numbers of Jews are shot in their homes and 22,000 are deported to the Treblinka death camp.

1942: The Nazis murdered 2,000 Jews living in the second ghetto at Bar in the Ukraine.

1942: The Nazis murder 25,000 Jews from Brest-Litovsk, Belorussia. Jewish resistance, led by Hana Ginsberg, attempts to fight back.

1943: Birthdate of Stanley “Stan” Fischer, the native of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia who became a leading economist and vice chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.

1944: Joseph Bau, who had been at Gross Rossen, was sent to Brunnitz where he went to work in the Schindler factory which made him one of those on “Schindler’s List.”

1944: Truce talks between the Hungarians and the Allies collapsed. The Arrow Cross, a Hungarian fascist organization regained power through a coup. A Hungarian Nazi, Ferenc Szálasi, is installed as regent. There are 170,000 Jews still alive in Hungary out of a half million that had been alive at the beginning of the year. After a three month period without deportations to the death camps, this remnant was once again vulnerable as potential fodder for the Nazi killing machine.

1944: The Germans emptied Plaszow Camp at Cracow. Included in the evacuation were 700 of the Jews protected by Oscar Schindler. They were sent to the concentration camp at Gross Rosen. Schindler managed to retrieve these Jews, claiming the essential nature of their contribution to his factory and the war effort. Schindler also fought for release of 300 other of "his" Jews who were sent to Auschwitz.

1945: Execution of Pierre Laval former premier of Vichy France. Laval was one of history’s more vile characters. At the same time, he was the fall guy for Vichy. Marshall Petain, the famous French Marshall who was the head of the Nazi puppet state was spared. The French could not bring themselves to punish the hero from World War I.

1945: The Alsos Mission, part of the Manhattan Project, of which Samuel Goudsmit served as the scientific leader came to an end today.

1945: In a press conference at Tel Aviv, David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared that “Judah will arise anew as an independent state and the Jews will return freely to their own land.” In a statement that was construed to mean that the Yishuv was developing a shadow government that would assume official authority when the British left Palestine, Ben-Gurion said “Palestine’s Jews will have ‘to constitute a kind of state before the final and orderly state machinery comes into being.’”

1945: As part of the movement to bring Jewish refugees to Palestine, despite the British blockade, two ships capable of carrying more than 13,000, were in the Black Sea preparing to load Jews from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

1946: Hermann Goering Nazi Reich marshal who had been found guilty at Nuremberg beat his scheduled date with the hangman. He poisoned himself.

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Eighty year old Abram I Elkus, a distinguished New York attorney and former ambassador to Turkey passed away tonight.

1948: Following numerous violations of the UN Truce by Egypt. The Israel Army and Air force took the offensive and launched Operation 'Yoav. Since the UN would not act the Israelis felt compelled. In addition to the immediate tactical considerations, the strategic goal of Operation 'Yoav' was to open a corridor to the Negev, cut the Egyptian lines of communications along the coast and on the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road, isolate and defeat the Egyptian forces, and ultimately to drive them out of the country. On the eve of 15 October, Gaza, Majdal and Beith Hanun were bombed, and part of the Air Force at El-Arish was put out of action. This action kept most of the Egyptian frontline fighters out of the skies and gave the IDF air superiority for the first time.

1949(22nd of Tishrei, 5710): Shemini Atzeret

1950: David Ben Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel forcing the formation of a new government.

1951(15th of Tishrei, 5712): Sukkoth

1951: During the 1951 general election, Herbert Samuel became the first British politician to deliver a party political broadcast on television when he appeared before the cameras today.

1954: “Sabrina” a chic comedy produced, directed and co-authored by Ernest Lehman Billy Wilder was released for general showing to theatres across the country.

1956: On the day in which Iraqi troops entered Jordan in what Israel saw as a menacing move, Ben Gurion ordered a partial mobilization of Israeli forces and told the Knesset that “Israel reserves to herself freedom of action.

1962: Louis Katz, who would be known as “Mr. Katz” went to work for the Forward

1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Fifth day of Sukkoth

1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Sixty-four year old Israeli mathematician Abraham Frankel, the first Dean of Mathematics at Hebrew University passed away today.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Fraenkel.html

1965: The Dodgers and Sandy Koufax won the 7th game of the World Series.

1966: Broadway composer Moose Charlap and singer Sandy Stewart gave birth to jazz pianist William Morrison Charlap.

1968(23rd of Tishrei, 5729): Simchat Torah

1969: Birthdate of game show host Paige Davis.

1970(15th of Tishrei, 5731): Sukkoth

1970: Final day of publication for The American Examiner which traces its origins back to the American Hebrew, which first appeared in 1879.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, start of the Battle of the Chinese Farm.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, General Arik Sharon led an attack on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. Joined by Generals Adan and Magen, within a week the IDF cut off the main road from Cairo to Suez and surrounded Egypt’s 3rd Army. The hold on the West Bank greatly improved Israel's negotiating position with the Egyptians and the morale of the country. Regardless of how one may feel about Sharon’s politics, he was a bold general. His successful cross canal attack completely changed the military equation of the Suez War.

1973: Binyamin Livne and Rahamim Sofer were taken prisoner after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by either a MiG or Egyptian anti-aircraft fire. Tragically, Sofer would die while being held prisoner.

1989: In Justice v Justice, Bernard Schwartz reviewed The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Civil Liberties in Modern America.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/15/books/justice-vs-justice.html

1992: Title to Temple Israel in Leadville, CO passed from the William H. Copper Family Trust

1995(21st of Tishrei, 5756): Hoshana Rabah

1999: Marquette University Law School Dean Howard Eisenberg delivers a speech entitled “What's a Nice Jewish Boy Like Me Doing in a Place Like This? Some Thoughts on Spirituality, the Legal Profession and Religious Diversity” at a Law School retreat.

2000(16th of Tishrei); Second Day of Sukkoth; first day for blessing the Lulav & Etrog

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas, Off Camera Private Thoughts Made Public by Ted Koppel and Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach by Martha C. Nussbaum

2000(16th of Tishrei, 5761): Second Day of Sukkoth

2000(16th of Tishrei, 5761): Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Konrad Emil Bloch passed away. Born in Germany in 1912, Bloch fled Nazi Germany in 1934. He arrived in where he furthered his education while serving on the faculties of Yale Medical School, Columbia, the University of Chicago and Harvard. He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1964 with Feodor Lynen for their discoveries related to the regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.

2003: Golda's Balcony, starring Tovah Feldshuh, opened at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre In this one-woman show, Feldshuh plays the role of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Golda's Balcony is set during 1973's Yom Kippur War. It splits between those events and reflections upon Meir's life, from her childhood in Milwaukee to her role in founding the Jewish state. Golda Meir is certainly not the only dramatic Jewish woman that Feldshuh has played during her illustrious Broadway career. Feldshuh has earned three Tony nominations for best actress, including the title role in Yentl (1975). She has also won four Drama Desk Awards, including one for Golda's Balcony. Her roles on television have included a Czech freedom fighter in Holocaust (1978), a role for which Feldshuh was nominated for an Emmy. She has appeared in a number of movies, including Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and A Walk on the Moon (1999). Feldshuh is also a supporter of Seeds of Peace, a non-profit organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict. She is a recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitas Award, the Israel Peace Medal, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's Jewish Image Award.

2003: Three Americans were killed and one wounded at the Beit Hanoun junction in the Gaza Strip when a massive bomb demolished an armor-plated jeep in a convoy carrying U.S. diplomats and CIA personnel. Both the militant Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements denied responsibility for the attack.

2005: Haaretz reported that dozens of Jewish worshippers attacked the head of the Israel Defense Forces Manpower Branch Major General Elazar Stern at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem. Stern was in civilian dress when he came to pray at the Western Wall, accompanied by his family. Worshippers surrounded him, yelling insults, and attempted to prevent him from reaching the wall. Though police officers immediately surrounded him, the worshippers began throwing stones and other objects in his direction. Stern was not hurt, and a police officer lightly wounded in the head did not require medical treatment. The attackers were apparently motivated by Stern's role in Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, completed last month.

2006: Police said that complaints that five women had filed against Moshe Katsav “would not be pursued because the statute of limitations had run out.

2006: The Los Angeles Times book section features a review of The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews by David Mamet.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Through The Children’s Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

2006: “Pelech,” a unique progressive Torah/Talmud based educational opportunity for women in Israel, marks its 40th anniversary.

2006: Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann, the Israeli-American scholar who won the Nobel Prize for economics last year, said this week that Israel may not be capable of continuing to exist in the long-term. "Too many Jews don't understand why they are here," said Aumann, who moved from the United States to Israel in the 1950s and helped found the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an interdisciplinary research body that focuses on game theory. "If we don't understand why we are here, and that we are not America or just a place in which to live, we will not survive," he said in a speech at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel. "The desire to live like all the nations will sustain us maybe another 50 years, if we are still here."

2007: In Washington D.C., Nextbook Presents: Shalom Auslander, Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir, as part of the Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2007: The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to three Americans Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and Roger B. Myerson, a professor at the University of Chicago.

2007: Time magazine reviewed Foreskin’s Lament by Sahlom Auslander. “Behind the worst title of the year lurks one its best memoirs.…”

2008(16th of Tishrei, 5769): Second Day Sukkoth

2009(27th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-nine year old toy collector Donald Kaufman passed away. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/nyregion/18kaufman.html

2009: The Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the National Security council issued a new, more sever warning today against traveling in India. The warning comes a month before the anniversary of the November, 2008 Mumbai attacks which an attack on the Chabad House.

2009: The Library of Congress hosts a discussion of the illustrated volume "Herblock: The Life and Works of the Great Political Cartoonist," published to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of syndicated cartoonist Herbert Block, with its editors Haynes Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and Harry Katz, curator of the Herb Block Foundation Collection and the editor of "Cartoon America: Comic Art at the Library of Congress. The retrospective, published in cooperation with the Library of Congress, coincides with the library's new exhibition, "Herblock!,"

2009: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” is performed at Kimmel Theatre on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon Iowa. The production is based on Wendy Kesselman’s acclaimed new adaptation of the play that makes thoughtful use of recently recovered segments of Anne’s diary to deepen our understanding both of the cultural context of the events and to present a much more complex (and less sentimental) Anne.

2009: Israeli poet Efrat Mishor reads at The Mill in Iowa City, IA.

2010: Holocaust historian leads a noon time discussion at the University of Iowa Hillel in Iowa City.

2010: Mort Fertell is scheduled to speak at the Friday night dinner following the MesorahDC traditional Shabbat service at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2010: Hitler and the Germans — Nation and Crime," which opens today at the German Historical Museum, juxtaposes the Nazis' propaganda images and artifacts such as 1930s Hitler busts with footage and documentation on the regime's brutality and Germans' involvement in it.

2010: Tomer Chelouche reviewed The Arab Jew From Algeria by Joanna Paraszczuk

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Batsheva Esther Kanievsky, the wife of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, oldest daughter of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and granddaughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, passed away today.

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Seventy-nine year old super-agent Sue Mengers passed away today (As reported by Michael Cieply)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/movies/sue-mengers-hollywood-agent-dies-at-79.html

2011: The Season’s Opening Concert, featuring the “Four Seasons” is scheduled to take place at the Eden Tamir Music Center. What better way to celebrate the joys of Sukkoth than to listen to Vivaldi in Jerusalem!?

2011: Israeli gymnast Alexander Shatilov won a bronze medal at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Tokyo this morning, securing a place at the London Olympics in 2012.

2011: Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Kiryat Shmona today, in solidarity with economic demonstrations being held around the world.

2012: The ARZA Board and Leadership Council Annual Meeting is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: As Hadassah members gather to celebrate its 100th anniversary the Keepers of the Gate Reception is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem

2012: The YIVO institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a lecture by Victoria Sake Woeste entitled ” Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech.”

2012: Alvin E. Roth was awakened at the three o’clock this morning by a phone call that told him he was a co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/business/economy/alvin-roth-and-lloyd-shapley-win-nobel-in-economic-science.html?hp

http://www.timesofisrael.cmaom/two-americans-win-noble-prize-for-economics/

2012: Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today that he is currently refraining from drafting into the IDF yeshiva students, who have until now been receiving military service deferrals, until after elections, despite the current lack of any legal framework for them to avoid national service following the expiration of the Tal Law in August.

2013: As part of the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, Judy Blume is scheduled to participate in a discussion of Tiger Eyes, the first of her books to be turned into a movie.

2013: A dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp and piano which is part of the Israeli Chamber Project is scheduled to perform at the Merkin Concert Hall

2013: Glenn Greenwald announced and The Guardian confirmed that he was leaving to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”

2013: Members of the Netzah Yehuda, (Nahal Hareidi) Brigade captured Arab terrorists who had infiltrated the community of Eina. Troops have been extra vigiliant since the shooting of 9 year old Noam Glick and and the murder of retired IDF Colonel Seraya Opher – events that have taken place within the last ten days.

2013: Bob Filner, the former Mayor of San Diego who was forced to resign because of his outrageous sexual antics pleaded guilty today “to a felony and two misdemeanors for unwanted physical contact with three women at public events.”

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/10/15/us/ap-us-ex-mayor-charged.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381855827-MW8vLeyJZi3lIyKeAb68Ug&

2014(21^st of Tishrei, 5775): Hoshana Rabbah

2014: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to present a lecture by Yvette Walczak, “a Polish child survivor who will speak about her experiences growing up in Poland, the Soviet invasion and later her escape with reference to her autobiography ‘Let Her Go!’,

2014: “The Kehilla Residential Programme will hold its fourth annual “Sukkahville” international design competition at Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto today to draw attention to the issue of affordable housing in the Toronto area.”

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Eighty year old Abram I Elkus, a distinguished New York attorney and former ambassador to Turkey passed away tonight.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F30E13F9395E17738DDDAF0994D8415B8788F1D3

1949(22nd of Tishrei, 5710): Shemini Atzeret

1950: David Ben Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel forcing the formation of a new government.

1951(15th of Tishrei, 5712): Sukkoth

1951: During the 1951 general election, Herbert Samuel became the first British politician to deliver a party political broadcast on television when he appeared before the cameras today.

1954: “Sabrina” a chic comedy produced, directed and co-authored by Ernest Lehman Billy Wilder was released for general showing to theatres across the country.

1962: Louis Katz, who would be known as “Mr. Katz” went to work for the Forward

1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Fifth day of Sukkoth

1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Sixty-four year old Israeli mathematician Abraham Frankel, the first Dean of Mathematics at Hebrew University passed away today.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Fraenkel.html

1965: The Dodgers and Sandy Koufax won the 7th game of the World Series.

1966: Broadway composer Moose Charlap and singer Sandy Stewart gave birth to jazz pianist William Morrison Charlap.

1968(23rd of Tishrei, 5729): Simchat Torah

1969: Birthdate of game show host Paige Davis.

1970(15th of Tishrei, 5731): Sukkoth

1970: Final day of publication for The American Examiner which traces its origins back to the American Hebrew, which first appeared in 1879.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, start of the Battle of the Chinese Farm.

1989: In Justice v Justice, Bernard Schwartz reviewed The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Civil Liberties in Modern America.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/15/books/justice-vs-justice.html

1992: Title to Temple Israel in Leadville, CO passed from the William H. Copper Family Trust

1995(21st of Tishrei, 5756): Hoshana Rabah

2000(16th of Tishrei); Second Day of Sukkoth; first day for blessing the Lulav & Etrog

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas, Off Camera Private Thoughts Made Public by Ted Koppel and Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach by Martha C. Nussbaum

2000(16th of Tishrei, 5761): Second Day of Sukkoth

2005: Haaretz reported that dozens of Jewish worshippers attacked the head of the Israel Defense Forces Manpower Branch Major General Elazar Stern at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem on Friday night. Stern was in civilian dress when he came to pray at the Western Wall, accompanied by his family. Worshippers surrounded him, yelling insults, and attempted to prevent him from reaching the wall. Though police officers immediately surrounded him, the worshippers began throwing stones and other objects in his direction. Stern was not hurt, and a police officer lightly wounded in the head did not require medical treatment The attackers were apparently motivated by Stern's role in Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, completed last month.

2006: Police said that complaints that five women had filed against Moshe Katsav “would not be pursued because the statute of limitations had run out.

2006: The Los Angeles Times book section features a review of The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews by David Mamet.

2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Through The Children’s Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

2006: “Pelech,” a unique progressive Torah/Talmud based educational opportunity for women in Israel, marks its 40th anniversary.

2006: Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann, the Israeli-American scholar who won the Nobel Prize for economics last year, said this week that Israel may not be capable of continuing to exist in the long-term. "Too many Jews don't understand why they are here," said Aumann, who moved from the United States to Israel in the 1950s and helped found the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an interdisciplinary research body that focuses on game theory. "If we don't understand why we are here, and that we are not America or just a place in which to live, we will not survive," he said in a speech at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel on Sunday. "The desire to live like all the nations will sustain us maybe another 50 years, if we are still here."

Aumann said one of the primary reasons for the recent war in Lebanon was national fatigue and quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as having said that Israel is tired of wars and sacrifices. "Fatigue, in the State of Israel's situation, will lead to death, as occurs with mountain climbing," said Aumann. "If a mountain climber is caught on the side of a mountain and it starts to snow, if he falls asleep, he will die. He must remain alert." Aumann, who lost his son Shlomo in the first Lebanon war, accused Israelis of being overly sensitive to casualties of war. "We are too sensitive to our losses, and also to the losses of the other side," he said. "In the Yom Kippur War, 3,000 soldiers were killed. It sounds terrible, but that's small change." In addition, said Aumann, last summer's disengagement from the Gaza Strip was a "tactical and ethical mistake" that gave the Palestinians the wrong message and was another factor leading to this summer's Lebanon war. "Looking at the other side is an important element of game theory," he said. "The Arabs' understanding in the wake of the expulsion was that they had succeeded, and that they have to continue on the same path. The expulsion, therefore, brought about the launching of Qassams on Israel and the abduction of the soldiers. The expulsion transmitted the message that we can be moved even from Tel Aviv, and not just from Gush Katif.""Last summer we set back peace and understanding with our neighbors by at least 10 years," said Aumann. "After the expulsion, no words will convince them that we intend to stay here forever."

2007: In Washington D.C., Nextbook Presents: Shalom Auslander, Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir, as part of the Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2007: Time magazine reviewed Foreskin’s Lament by Sahlom Auslander. “Behind the worst title of the year lurks one its best memoirs.…”

2008(16th of Tishrei, 5769): Second Day Sukkoth

2009(27th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-nine year old toy collector Donald Kaufman passed away.

(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/nyregion/18kaufman.html

2009: Israeli poet Efrat Mishor reads at The Mill in Iowa City, IA.

2010: Holocaust historian leads a noon time discussion at the University of Iowa Hillel in Iowa City.

2010: Mort Fertell is scheduled to speak at the Friday night dinner following the MesorahDC traditional Shabbat service at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.

2010: A major Berlin museum is launching an exhibition that seeks to explore how Adolf Hitler won and held mass support among Germans for his destructive regime."Hitler and the Germans — Nation and Crime," which opens today at the German Historical Museum, juxtaposes the Nazis' propaganda images and artifacts such as 1930s Hitler busts with footage and documentation on the regime's brutality and Germans' involvement in it.

2010: It took seven years to write and just a few days to sew together, but today the first Torah scroll written entirely by a group of women was attached to its wooden poles and declared complete.The ceremony was held at Seattle’s Kadima Reconstructionist Community, which sponsored the project.“We had the idea 10 years ago, but when we looked around for women scribes, we realized there weren’t any,” said Kadima member Wendy Graff, one of the volunteers who shepherded the project from its inception. To remedy the dilemma, Kadima supported two women as they trained to be scribes. Four others trained on their own. Ultimately the six female scribes, or sofrot, worked on the scroll in four countries: two in Israel, two in the United States, and one each in Brazil and Canada. The panels were checked by experts in Jerusalem and New York, who made the minor tikkunim, or corrections, permitted by Jewish law. Major errors require a complete redo of the page. Last week the panels were flown to Seattle, where another group of women sewed them together. The Torah mantle, including wooden poles, or atzei chayim, and other traditional accoutrements were created by seven local artists. The scribes were paid, but the others who worked on the project donated their time. According to Orthodox tradition, women are not permitted to be Torah scribes. Over the last decade, however, a handful of women have trained as scribes. It’s an exacting process. Torahs must be written by hand on parchment made from the skins of kosher animals, and scribes must state their intentions out loud each time they prepare to write God’s name. In September 2007, Jen Taylor Friedman of New York completed the first Torah scroll known to have been written by a woman, for the United Hebrew Congregation of St. Louis, Mo. Friedman advised the Women’s Torah Project and was one of the experts who checked for small errors. She is among a number of women at work on other Torah scrolls, including Julie Seltzer of San Francisco, one of the six scribes on the Seattle project. Seltzer wrote four of the Seattle Torah’s 62 panels in the summer of 2009, when she was living in New York. Since October 2009, she has been writing a Torah scroll at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco as part of the yearlong exhibition, “As it is Written: Project 304,805.” Seltzer began the year doing all her writing in public at the museum, so visitors could watch and ask questions. She soon realized, however, that she would never complete the scroll by her December 2010 deadline, so Seltzer writes mainly at home now and spends several days a week at the museum talking to the public. “Jewish learning and text was my entryway to Jewish practice and spirituality, and continues to be one of the primary ways I connect,” Seltzer told JTA, saying she feels honored to be able to write a Torah scroll. “To be this close to the text, on the elemental level of the letters, is extraordinary.” Seltzer says she doesn’t feel that her experience writing a Torah is any different from a male scribe. But the fact that her Torah, and the one completed by the Women’s Torah Project, were written by women means they will not be accepted for use in Orthodox congregations. On her website, Hasoferet.com, Friedman tells female scribes they need to be upfront about that when they are commissioned to work on a Torah. “Why is a soferet like a swordfish?” she writes. Swordfish, she says, is not considered kosher by most Orthodox Jews, although Conservative Jews will eat it. “If I repair a Torah and then let Orthodox congregations use it,” she wrote, it’s “an appalling desecration of trust. If we want respect, as Jews or as human beings, we have to give respect, and part of that is accepting that other Jews' rule systems are valid despite being different from ours.”

2010: Tomer Chelouche reviewed The Arab Jew From Algeria by Joanna Paraszczuk

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Batsheva Esther Kanievsky, the wife of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, oldest daughter of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and granddaughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, passed away today.

2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Seventy-nine year old super-agent Sue Mengers passed away today (As reported by Michael Cieply)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/movies/sue-mengers-hollywood-agent-dies-at-79.html

2011: The Season’s Opening Concert, featuring the “Four Seasons” 1s scheduled to take place at the Eden Tamir Music Center. What better way to celebrate the joys of Sukkoth than to listen to Vivaldi in Jerusalem!?

2011: Israeli gymnast Alexander Shatilov won a bronze medal at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Tokyo this morning, securing a place at the London Olympics in 2012. Shatilov, Israel's leading male gymnast, tied third in floor exercise to Diego Hypolito of Brazil, with a score of 15.466. Japan's Kohei Uchimura, who on Friday night became the first man in history to win three all-around titles, took the floor exercises title with 15.633 points. This was his second gold medal in about 18 hours. Zou Kai, the Beijing Olympic and 2009 world floor champion, won the silver medal with 15.500 points. Shatilov, who won Israel's first-ever World Championship medal in 2009, will be Israel's great Olympic hope, when he sets out for London in 2012.

2011: Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Kiryat Shmona today, in solidarity with economic demonstrations being held around the world. The events in Israel included discussion circles and activities for children. "We saw what is going on around the world, we saw the October 15th events, and we decided to initiate local events to connect Israel with the world," said Dor Nahman, the spokesman for October 15th events in Israel. Demonstrators rallied on Saturday across the world to accuse bankers and politicians of wrecking economies, but only in Rome did the global "day of rage" erupt into violence. Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protests began in New Zealand, rippled east to Europe and were expected to return to their starting point in New York. Demonstrations touched most European capitals and other cities.

2011: The Justice Ministry this evening gave President Shimon Peres' office the list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be pardoned and released as part of the Gilad Shalit exchange deal, with the recommendation of Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman. The legal department at the presidential residence will gather the materials for the pardon documents that will be submitted to Peres for his signature. The names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released as part of the Shalit swap deal will be published on the website of the Israel Prison Service tomorrow to allow for opponents of the deal to present petitions to Israel's High Court against the deal's implementation. Under an agreement reached between Israel and Hamas that was announced last Tuesday, Israel is to free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit. Gilad Shalit been held incommunicado in the Gaza Strip since being captured by Palestinian militants during a cross-border raid on June 25, 2006.

2012: The ARZA Board and Leadership Council Annual Meeting is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: As Hadassah members gather to celebrate its 100th anniversary the Keepers of the Gate Reception is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem

2012: The YIVO institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a lecture by Victoria Sake Woeste entitled ” Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech.”

2012: Alvin E. Roth was awakened at the three o’clock this morning by a phone call that told him he was a co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/business/economy/alvin-roth-and-lloyd-shapley-win-nobel-in-economic-science.html?hp

http://www.timesofisrael.cmaom/two-americans-win-noble-prize-for-economics/

2012(29^th of Tishrei, 5773): Ninety-three year old Sarah “Reva” Golad, the mother of Helen Slvay passed away today in Arizona.

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=287899

2013: As part of the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, Judy Blume is scheduled to participate in a discussion of Tiger Eyes, the first of her books to be turned into a movie.

2013: A dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp and piano which is part of the Israeli Chamber Project is scheduled to perform at the Merkin Concert Hall

2013: GlennGreenwald announced and The Guardian confirmed that he was leaving to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/10/15/us/ap-us-ex-mayor-charged.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381855827-MW8vLeyJZi3lIyKeAb68Ug&

2014(21^st of Tishrei, 5775): Hoshana Rabbah

OCTOBER 16

521 BCE (10^th of Tishrei): Darius, the Persian monarch under whose rule the Second Temple was completed, and six companions killed another claimant to throne and cemented his position as ruling monarch.

912: Abd-ar-Rahman III began his reign as Emir of Cordoba. The Emir appointed Hasdai ibn Shaprut to serve as his physician. Their relationship developed to the extent that the Jewish physician became the confidant and advisor to the Muslim ruler.

976: Sixty-one year old Al-Hakam II the second Caliph of Córdoba, whose subjects included Enoch Ben Moses, who followed his father as Rabbi of Cordoba and whose students included Samuel ha-Nagid.

1384: Jadwiga, the youngest daughter of Louis I of Hungary is crowned King of Poland. In 1385, she married Wladislaus II which meant that Lithuania was united with the kingdom of Poland. Now the rights enjoyed by Polish Jews would be extended to Lithuanian Jews.

1529:Suleiman the Magnificent gives up on the siege of Vienna which means that a large section of central Europe and all of Western Europe will remain under Christian domination as opposed to becoming part of Muslim Empire.

1649: The American colony of Maine passed legislation granting religious freedom to all its citizens, on condition that those of contrary religious persuasions behave acceptably. This early evidence of religious tolerance demonstrates why Jews would flourish in the land that would become the United States.

1655(Tishrei, 5416): Joseph Solomon Delmedigo a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist passed away. Born in Candia, Crete in 1591 he moved to Padua, Italy, throughout most Europe and north Africa, and finally died in Prague. Yet in his lifetime wherever he sojourned he earned his living as a physician and or teacher. His only known works are Elim (Palms), dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays. He followed the lectures by Galileo Galilei, during the academic year 1609-1610. Elim (1629, published by Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam) is written in Hebrew, in response to 12 general and 70 specific religious and scientific questions sent to Delmedigo by a Karaite Jew, Zerach ben Natan from Troki (Lithuania). The format of the book is taken from the number of fountains and palm trees at Elim in the Sinai Peninsula, as given in Numbers, xxxiii, 9: since there are 12 fountains and 70 palm trees at Elim, Delmedigo divided his book into twelve major problems and seventy minor problems. The subjects discussed include astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, and music theory. In the area of music, Delmedigo discusses the physics of music including string resonance, intervals and their proportions, consonance and dissonance.

1655(15^thof Tishrei, 5416): Sukkoth

1655(15^thof Tishrei, 5416): Sixty-four year old Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, passed away. A native of Crete, he was known for his work as a philosopher, mathematician, physician and the author of Elim (Palms) a wide ranging tome on numerous scientific subjects.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_05064.html

1656: Thomas Burton, who recorded Oliver Cromwell’s assurance to Antonio Fernandez Carvajal that Jews could return to England in his famous diary appeared before parliament where he successfully defended himself against “a charge of disaffection towards the existing government.

1773: In Braunschweig, Rabbi Meyer Hall and his wife Hale gave birth to their third son Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg the directo of the Jewish Samson School in Wolfenbuttel.

1753: Birthdate of Johann G. Eichhorn, the German Old Testament scholar who was a pioneer in "higher criticism," which evaluated Scripture through literary analysis and historical evidence, rather than by the unquestioned authority of systematized religious tradition as can be seen in his seminal work Introduction to the Old Testament.

1777(15^thof Tishrei, 5538): Sukkoth

1783: Birthdate of Jeanette Wohl, the native of Frankurt am Main who “was a longtime friend and correspondent of Ludwig Börne.”

1794(22^ndof Tishrei, 5555): Shemini Atzeret

1805(23^rdof Tishrei, 5566): Simchat Torah

1810(18th of Tishrei, 5571): Fourth Day of Sukkoth

1810: (18^th Tishrei), 5571 Nachman of Breslov also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Nachman from Uman, or simply as Rebbe Nachman (in local Yiddish reb Nokhmen Broslever) passed away. “Born in 1772, he was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic dynasty.Born at a time when the influence of his great-grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov, was waning, Rebbe Nachman breathed new life into the Chasidic movement by combining the esoteric secrets of Judaism (the Kabbalah) with in-depth Torah scholarship. He attracted thousands of followers during his lifetime, and after his death, his followers continued to regard him as their Rebbe and did not appoint any successor. Rebbe Nachman's teachings continue to attract and inspire Jews the world over.” Some of his most famous quotes are:

· "It is a great mitzvah to be happy always."

· "If you believe that it is possible to break, believe it is also possible to fix."

· "And know that a person needs to traverse a very, very narrow bridge, but the fundamental and most important principle is to have no hesitation or fear at all…" (This saying has been set to music in Hebrew as the song Kol Ha-Olam Kulo

For more information about Rebbe Nachman see the attached or go to http://www.breslov.org/

1812: Birthdate of Lazarus W. Powell, the Kentucky Senator who sought to have Congress condemn General Grant for issuing General Order No.11. Powell was animated more by his anti-war views than he was by affection for the Jews.

1826(15^thof Tishrei, 5587): Sukkoth

1835(23^rdof Tishrei, 5596): Four-month old Ada Isaacs Menken, celebrated her first Simchat Torah

1841: Founding of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Today Queen’s University offers“Jewish Studies courses that may be taken as electives by any student, or as part of a Minor in Jewish Studies. The Minor can be the main focus of a three-year BA or a secondary focus in a 4-year Honours BA.” The University is also home to Queen's University Hillel, the Jewish Student Union.

1841(1st of Cheshvan, 5602): Rosh Chodesh

1841: In Germany, on a Shabbat that was also Rosh Chodesh Chesvan, Issac Bernays, the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg condemned the newly issued Prayerbook for the Israelites and the rabbis who had authored it. This was part of dispute that had been taking place at The Hamburg Temple among the orthodox members and the reformers who were led by Gabriel Riessler. It was part of larger dispute that was rocking German Jewry as it dealt with issues of Reform, Orthodoxy, and coping with modernity. (If this sounds familiar, it is since we continue to deal with these issues in the 21st century. Considering the rancor and ill will that was created, some would say that the German experience in the 19th century is primer for how not to deal with these issues.)

1843(22^nd of Tishrei, 5604): Jews observe Shemini Atzeret on the same day that Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard was published.

1845(15^th of Tishrei, 5606): Jews in Texas observe Sukkoth for the first time as citizens of the United States since the citizens of what had been the Lone Star Republic approved the new constitution and the statute of annexation three days before. Today, Houston, Dallas and Austin are home to three of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the United States.

1847:District Rabbi Jonas Wiesner and Estra (Therese) Wiesner Schur gave birth to their daughter Fanny Abeles Wiesner.

1851: “The News by the Mails” column published today reported that “The New York correspondent of The Republic replies to the animadversions of certain parties here, in relation to his former statement that there were no Jews on Wall Street. The letter-writer substantiates his assertion by citing names, etc; and states that the fact was mentioned in order to prove that the Jewish people have no natural aptitude for the brokerage business, and are only driven into the money-dealing business by the disabilitities which shut them out of other honorable employment.

1854: Birthdate of Oscar Wilde, the Anglo-Irish author who is remembered as much for his sexual orientation as for his literary works. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde presents us with a Jewish theatre manager named Isaacs. The depiction of the character can only be described as anti-Semitic. One critic attributes Wilde’s creation of the character to a dispute he was having with the author George Eliot. Since Eliot had created a sympathetic Jewish figure in one of her works, Wilde felt compelled to do just the opposite.

1855(4^th of Cheshvan, 5616): Seventy-seven year old Jeremiah Heinemann, the son of Rabbi Joachim Heinemann and the brother of Moses Heinemann who had published a translation of “Kohelet” passed away today.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0008_0_08690.html

1859: Abolitionist John Brown, whose followers included August Bondi, Jacob Benjamin and Theodore Weiner, leads the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

1861:A. Eger, the Secretary of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco wrote to I.J. Benjamin that the congregation has “set aside the sum of $250 in order to assist you in your…journey to the Orient. (“I. J. Benjamin was a nineteenth-century Moldavian Jewish world traveler. His primary goal, his mission, was to be a "living link" between all the Jews in the world, "a maggid [traveling preacher] on a world wide circuit." He wrote Three Years in America, in German, for readers in Europe, most of whom had never been to the New World and would be very curious about it. He wrote it largely to raise money to fund his travels. As reported by Gabriel Steinfeld)

1860:“Rarely has the ‘opening lecture of the season’ been attended by so large and fashionable an audience as that which assembled at Clinton Hall this evening to greet R.J. De Cordova the popular humorist, and to listen to his new poem entitled a ‘Photograph of Broadway.’ The poem was one of Mr. De Cordova’s best efforts, and can hardly fail of having what the theatrical men term a successful run. All the salient points of the great New-York thoroughfare, -- its crowd of vehicles, and pedestrians, its churches, its theatres, its hotels, its mock-auction shops, its marble stores, its policemen, its dandies, its gamblers and its beggars, -- were hit off in a style at once humorous and sarcastic, that kept the audience in a constant roar of laughter.” Mr. De Cordova was a well-known Sephardic humorist, speaker and sometime investor who was quite popular with New York audiences – Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

1862(22^nd of Tishrei, 5623): Shmini Atzeret

1862(22nd of Tishrei, 5623): As Jews observe Shemini Atzeret, Major General Ulysses S. Grant is given command of the Department of Tennessee

1862(22^nd of Tishrei, 5623): Seventy-eight year old Alexander Gove Village a physician who championed Jewish emancipation and co-founded the Westphalian Art Association in 1831 passed away today.

1867(17th of Tishrei, 5628): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed

1867(17th of Tishrei, 5628): Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport passed away. Born in 1790, at Lemberg, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria, “he was a Galician rabbi and Jewish scholar.” “After various experiences in business, Rapoport became successively rabbi of Tarnopol (1837) and of Prague (1840). He was one of the founders of the new Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. His chief work was the first part of an (unfinished) encyclopaedia (Ereklz Millin, 1852). Equally notable were his biographies of Saadia Gaon, Nathan (author of the Arukh), Hai Gaon, Eleazar Kalir and others.Thrown upon his own resources about 1817, Rapoport became cashier of the meat-tax farmers. He had already given evidence of marked critical ability, though his writings previously published were of a light character—poems and translations. His critical talent, however, soon revealed itself. In 1824 he wrote an article for Bikkure ha-'Ittim on the independent Jewish tribes of Arabia and Abyssinia. Though this article gained him some recognition, a more permanent impression was made by his work on Saadia Gaon and his times (published in the same journal in 1829), the first of a series of biographical works on the medieval Jewish sages. Because of this work he received recognition in the scholarly world and gained many enthusiastic friends, especially S. D. Luzzatto. After the fashion in rabbinic circles, Rapoport was known by an acronym "Shir", formed by the initial letters of his Hebrew name Shelomo Yehuda Rapoport. Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport notes that according to the Masoretes there are ten vowel sounds. He suggests that the passage in the Sefer Yetzirah, which discusses the manipulation of letters in the creation of the world, can be better understood if the Sefirot refer to vowel sounds. He posits that the word sefirah in this case is related to the Hebrew word sippur ("to retell"). His position is based on his belief that most Kabbalistic works written after Sefer Yetzirah (including the Zohar) are forgeries.”

1869: Solomon Bibo arrived in New York from his native Prussia. This was the first leg of a journey that would take him to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he would join his brothers Nathan and Simon. Yes, Jews played an active role in life of what we now call “the Old West.”

1869: Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.Gertrude Himmelfarb, the wife of Irving Kristol and mother of Bill Kristol, may have been one of the most famous Jews to have studied Girton College which she attended on a fellowship after World War II. Today, Griton is home to one of the UK’s Judaica collections and its Theology and Religious Studies program includes course work on the Old Testament; World Religions including a separate paper on Judaism (separate papers on Indian religions, Islam and Judaism) and Jewish and Christian Responses to the Holocaust.

1869: The President of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, CA, sent a letter to Israel J. Benjamin, also known as “Benjamin the Traveler" who was spending time in the city that informing him that the congregation had voted to give him $250 to help defray the costs of his travels.

1870:”The New Jewish Ritual” published today described the changes being instituted by Raphael Lewin, the rabbi at Temple Israel in Brooklyn.

1871(1^st of Cheshvan, 5632): Six days after the Great Chicago Fire came to an end Jews in the Windy City observed Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1872(15th of Tishrei, 5633): Sukkoth

1872: “Succoth- The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles” published today reported that “last evening witnessed the commencement of the Jewish feast of Succoth, or Tabernacles, which continues for eight days.” The article goes on to report that the first two and last two days are full holidays while the intermediate days are called Chol Hamoed and “are of no special import. The article continues with a description of the Thanksgiving aspect of the festival as well as the “extemporized booth” in which “the pious Israelite, surrounded by his family, takes his meals” in this “season of joy and thankfulness…”

1874: It was reported from Vienna today that the Italian Consul at Bucharest has refused to open negotiations for commercial treaty between Italy and Romania as long as the Jews of that country are not fully emancipated.

1874(5th of Cheshvan, 5635): Seventy-nine year old German rabbi and early supporter of Zionism Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, passed away.
http://zionism-israel.com/bio/kalischer_biography.htm

1874: It was reported today that Mr. Peixotto, the American Consul at Bucharest has refused to enter into negotiations with the government of Romania as long as the Jews of that country are denied their civil rights.

1874 (5th of Cheshvan, 5605): Rabbi Zevi Hersh Kalisher passed away. Born in 1795 in the Polish town of Lissa that had just become part of Germany, Kalisher was unique because he was an Orthodox Rabbi who believed that Jews develop a practical program for returning to Eretz Israel instead of just waiting for the coming of the Messiah. In 1860, he published Derishat Tziyyon , his blueprint for the return to the Holy Land. Almost forty years before the advent of Herzl and Zionism he called for a systematic purchase of land, the development of agriculture, the development of a self-defense force and the need to develop viable businesses to replace the charitable institutions that traditionally supported the Jews in Palestine. The Reform opposed Kalisher because of the nationalist content of the proposal. The Orthodox saw it as a form of blasphemy. One of the practical results of his work was the establishment of Mikveh Israel, a school located near Jaffa, designed to teach the new generation of pioneers the scientific agricultural skills that would enable them to reclaim the land.

1881(23^rd of Tishrei, 5642): Three days after Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had what is believed to be the first modern conversation in Hebrew, Jews observed Simchat Torah\
1
883(15^th of Tishrei, 5644): Four month old Franz Kafka joined the rest of Jewry in observing Sukkoth

1886(17^thof Tishrei, 5647): Shabbat Cho HaMoed Sukkoth

1886(17^thof Tishrei, 5647): Sixty-year old German banker Mayer Carl von Rothschild, the nephew Amschel Mayer Rothschild passed away today

1886: Birthdate of David Ben-Gurion. To describe him as one of the earliest Zionist leaders, founding father of Israel, and its first Prime Minister would not even begin to do justice to this gigantic figure. Ben-Gurion was no saint and it is easy to criticize him. But he was a committed socialist. He truly believed in the brotherhood of man. At the same time, he was committed to the Zionist movement and worked to create a “new” Jew in a Jewish homeland. Ben-Gurion was a realist and a gambler. Despite a great deal of criticism, he was willing to accept the 1947 Partition Plan even though it an Jewish state without Jerusalem. At the same time, he was bold enough to declare the independence of the Jewish state in May of 1948 when most of the “smart” leaders of the world told him to wait. The modern state of Israel might have come into existence without Ben-Gurion, but it is hard to imagine how it would have happened. I urge you to read more about the truly remarkable, complex leader. He passed away on December 1, 1973.

1887: “Where Has The American Merchant Gone” published today bemoans the passing of the country’s mercantile activities into the hands of recent immigrants including Jews who usually “own the largest and best stocked store in town.” “The American importer of dry goods” have been replaced by “firms composed of well dressed and highly intelligent Jews,” Germans or even Scandinavians. Americans shrug their shoulders, say “it could not be helped “and then curse the foreigners as they drink a cocktail to their speedy downfall.”

1887: It was reported today that the property belonging to the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York City is valued at $75,000 for tax purposes. But the building is tax exempt because it owned by a non-profit religious organization.

1888: The decision was made tonight “to depose” Professor Horowitz as manager of the fund raising theatrical productions being sponsored by the Jewish Order of the Harp of David appearing at Poole’s Theatre because “he has been running things in a high-handed manner.”

1888: Sixty-year old Horatio Gates Spafford, one of the founders of the “American Colony,” whose members “engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives” lost his battle with malaria and passed away today following which he was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery.

1890: Joseph Jacobs, a Jewish glazier who was attacked by a gang in Jersey City is lying unconscious in City Hospital after having had his skull fractured by a paving stone.

1890: “City and Suburban News” published today described the upcoming social events which will be sponsored the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1892: “A Jewish Historical Society” published today described the organization of the American Jewish Historical Society under the presidency of Oscar S. Straus which has already gained the interest of European historians who are sending materials about “the Jews who first crossed the Atlantic with Columbus

1892: Saul Solomon passed away in Cape Town. A native of St. Helena, he settled in South Africa where he became a leader of the Liberal Party. He was known as the “Cape Disraeli” because, like his English predecessor, he converted but retained a public affection for his former co-religionists.

1892: Missouri Republican Party leader Isaac Isaacs said that unless Major Warner, the party’s nominee for governor fired his campaigner manager after he made anti-Semitic remarks, he would not even get 8 of the 1,200 Jewish votes in Kansas City and would lose most, if not all, of the 25,000 Jewish voters in the state.

1892(25^thof Tishrei, 5653): Seventy-four year old Saul Isaac Kaempf a native of Posen and a disciple of Akiba Eger who became an assistant professor of Oriental languages at the University of Prague passed away today.

1892: “Did Harris Get Files from the Hallman” published today described the escape of Henry Harris from the Hudson County, NJ, Jail despite the fact the a Jewish prisoner, Benjamin Greyer, had warned authorities that prisoner Paul Zimmerman who was serving as a “hallman” had supplied Harris with two files for sawing through the bars.

1894: “They Will Not Deal With Strikers” published today described the organization of the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers’ Association whose officers included Frank and Louis Rothschild and which is the manufacturer’s to the strike of cloakmakers. (Editor’s Note: There are Jews on both sides of this fight)

1894: “Business Men and Tammany” published today provides a cross section of responses to the nomination of Nathan Strauss for Mayor. Most of its was negative as the respondents were “reformers” supporting William L. Strong and would have opposed any Tammany candidate. (None of the responses made any references to Strauss’ ethnicity)

1895: The will of Babet Karl which was prepared by her nephew Abraham Stern, “a wealthy real estate lawyer” “is on the Surrogate’s calendar for probate today even though a second will which was written after this name Rabbi Wise and his son as primary beneficiary has just been found.

1898: Birthdate of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who in 1949 “revealed that he was ‘converted to Zionism’ by the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis” and pledged to continue his sympathies for Israel and to do whatever” he could do “for its welfare.” (As reported by JTA)

1899: Israel Zangwill's play "Children of the Ghetto," premiers at the Herald Square Theatre in New York. The play was based on a novel of the same name published in 1892 that describes the life of a Jewish family living in London in the last decade of the 19^th century.

1900(23^rdof Tishrei, 5661): Simchat Torah celebrated for the first time in the 20^thcentury.

1902(15^thof Tishrei, 5663): On the same day that the first “Youthful Offenders Institution” opened in Borstal, Kent, UK, Jews observed Sukkoth

1906: Birthdate of León Klimovsky the Argentine dentist who gained fame as a film director.

1910: Birthdate of Sir MIsha Black, Russian-born British architect and designer.

1913(15^thof Tishrei, 5674): Sukkoth

1913: In New York, Governor William Sulzer, who had been defended by William Marshall, was convicted on three articles of impeachment. Sulzer was replaced by his Lieutenant Governor, Martin Glynn, the author of the 1919 article “The Crucifixion of the Jews Must Stop!”

1917: President Woodrow Wilson sends word to Lloyd George that he approves of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration.

1918: Birthdate of Abraham Nemeth, who developed the Nemeth Code, a form of Braille that greatly improved the ability of visually impaired people to study complex mathematics (As reported by William Yardley)

1923: Birthdate of “Walter Zacharius, who rode the passion-swollen wave of romance fiction in the early 1980s to build the Kensington Publishing Corporation into a leading purveyor of bodice-rippers and other romance genres.” (As reported by William Grimes)

1923: Tonight at the Hotel Commodore the American Jewish Congress adopted a resolution prepared by the Committee On Palestine, assisted by Israel Zangwill, carrying out Mr. Zangwill's suggestion for a resolution insisting that the British Government fulfill its mandate under the League of Nations for the “upbuilding “of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

1924: In New York City Jennie (née Friedman) and Jacob J. Scherick gave birth to Edgar J. Scherick the ABC television producer who helped create “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

1927(20^thof Tishrei, 5688): Sukkoth Chol HaMoed

1927(20^thof Tishrei, 5688): Thirty-four year old bootlegger and labor racketeer Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen died after having been shot by rivals while walking on the Lower East Side.

1930: Birthdate of Dan Pagis, Holocaust survivor and poet whose most famous work may be:

written in pencil in the sealed railway car

Here in this carload
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
if you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of man
tell him that I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Belzec_oboz_zaglady_pomnik_ewa_abel.JPG

1933: The Associated Press reported that the German citizen who had assaulted a New Yorker named Dr. Daniel Mulvhill “because he had failed to ‘salute a Nazi detachment’” was being held at an unnamed concentration camp. (This seemingly harsh punishment may have been an attempt to ingratiate the new Nazi regime with the West while it went about its various nefarious activities including re-armament in violation of the Versailles Treaty)

1935: When the Belgian steamship Leopold II was unloading 97 tons of cement at Jaffa, “a tin case of cartridges concealed in a barrel” was discovered. According to “unconfirmed reports from Arab sources…800 rifles and 400,000 cartridges” were also found among the 537 barrels of cement. Officials have not been able to determine who was supposed to be getting the weaponry.

1937:Hans Achim Litten, a lawyer whose father had converted to Christianity before and who represented several of the opponents of the Nazis in court, arrived at Dachau where he was placed in the same barracks as the Jewish prisoners.

1939: Kraków, one of the most important Jewish communities since the 1300s, is designated the capital of the Generalgouvernement.

1939: “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” a three act comedy created by those Jewish stalwarts of the Broadway Theatre , George S. Kaufman, premiered at the Music Box in New York

1940: Warsaw Ghetto established. (In note of historic irony, six years later to the day, those convicted at the first Nuremberg Trial were hung)

1941: The Germans murdered 4,500 Jews outside of Lubny, Urkaine (USSR). Unknown Nazi photographers left a photo of a mother and her children just before the atrocity and a photo of a group of Jews awaiting their fate.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/06.asp

1941: In response to Hitler's plea that all Jews must leave Germany, the first of twenty trains left Germany for the East. Jews from Luxemburg and Vienna were part of the deportation. Within the next month 19,827 Jews from the Reich would be sent to Lodz.

1941: The German Army advanced to within 60 miles (96 K) of Moscow. One not need romanticize life in Stalin’s Russia to recognize the courage of the Soviet Army. Stalin decided to remain in Moscow and take personal command of the battle. As bad as the Holocaust was, it would have been even worse if the Soviets had not held on. At the same time many revered the Soviet Army because it liberated so many of the camps as it later moved west towards Berlin.

1941(25th of Tishrei, 5702): Three days after the German murder of 15,000 Jewish residents of Dnepropetrtovsk, Ukraine, an additional 5000 Jews are executed in the town.

1941: The first SS deportation train of Western Jews travels to ghettos at Lódz, Lublin, and Warsaw, Poland.

1941(25th of Tishrei, 5702): Twenty trains carrying nearly 20,000 Jews travel from Germany, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, and Austria to the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto. The shipments will come to an end in the first week of November.

1942: Final liquidation of the Ghetto at Zamosc, Poland
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/08.asp

1942: The Nazis arrest more than 1000 Jews in Rome and deport them to Auschwitz.

1943: German Ambassador to the Vatican Ernst von Weizsäcker compliments the Holy See for its "perfect even-handedness" in treating Germany and the Allies. When Weizsäcker asks what Pope Pius XII will do if the German government persists in its present Jewish policy in Italy, Vatican Secretary of State Maglione replies that "the Holy See would not want to be put in the position of having to utter a word of disapproval." The Pope is being "cautious so as not to give the German people the impression that [he] has done or has wished to do even the smallest thing against Germany during this terrible time.”

1943: Germans looking for Jews in Rome conduct house-to-house searches. About 1000 Jews are briefly held at Rome's Collegio Militare and then deported to Auschwitz. 477 Jews are sheltered in the Vatican, and another 4238 find sanctuary in convents and monasteries throughout Rome. Nevertheless, by this date more than 8300 Italian Jews have been deported to Auschwitz.

1943: In Rome, Germans searched through streets and homes for Jews. Of the 1,015 Jews taken on that morning only 16 would survive the war. Within two months, another 7,345 Jews would be found and deported from Northern Italy

1943: Two days after a violent Jewish revolt at the Sobibór death camp, SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the camp destroyed.

1944: Birthdate of Joseph Sitruk the native of Tunisia who as Joseph Haim Sitruk served as Chief Rabbi of France from June, 1987 to June, 2008.

1944: Following the coup led by the Arrow Cross, the Germans and their Hungarian allies resume resumed their attacks on the Jews of Budapest. Jews were again dragged from their homes and into the streets. Then for the next 10 days, all Jews are forbidden to leave their homes.

1944: Germans and members of the Fascist Nyilas group prohibit Jews in Budapest, Hungary, from leaving their homes. Many Jewish slave laborers are killed by Nyilas members on a bridge linking Buda with Pest.

1944: In Rome, the roundup of the Jewish population began. “SS troops surrounded the Lungotevere, the former ghetto area, where some 4,000 of the city’s 12,000 Jews still lived.” The SS selected 1,000 men, women and children for immediate shipment to Auschwitz. This was only the beginning of a march to the Death Camps that took place in the city of the Pope.

1944:Composer, conductor, pianist and music critic Viktor Ullmann was sent to Auschwitz today.

1945: David Lubin’s dream for the creation of an “international organization for food and agriculture” came to fruition today with the founding of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

1945: During the presentation of the Army-Navy “E” Award (a commendation for outstanding production during WW II) at Los Alamos, NM, Robert Oppenheimer delivered his “farewell speech” as director of the project that led to the development of the Atomic Bomb.

1945(9^th of Cheshvan, 5706): Eighty-year old Berta Zuckerland, the daughter of Mortiz Szeps and the wife of Dr. Emil Zuckerkandl who was famous for her Salon in Vienna passed away today in Paris after having spent much of the war in Algeria.

1946: Ten Nazi leaders were hanged as war criminals after the Nuremberg trials. This chart shows the fate of those tried at Nuremberg.

Name	--Count--				Sentence	Notes
	1	2	3	4
Martin Bormann	I	º	G	G	Death	In absentia
Karl Dönitz	I	G	G	º	10 years	Initiator of the U-boat campaign and Hitler's designated successor
Hans Frank	I	º	G	G	Death	Expressed repentance
Wilhelm Frick	I	G	G	G	Death
Hans Fritzsche	I	I	I	º	Acquitted	Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels
Walter Funk	I	G	G	G	Life Imprisonment	Released due to ill health on May 16, 1957
Hermann Göring	G	G	G	G	Death	Commander of Luftwaffe. Committed suicide the night before his execution.
Rudolf Hess	G	G	I	I	Life Imprisonment	Hitler's deputy, flew to England in 1941
Alfred Jodl	G	G	G	G	Death	Posthumously acquitted of all charges in 1953
Ernst Kaltenbrunner	I	º	G	G	Death	Highest surviving SS-leader
Wilhelm Keitel	G	G	G	G	Death
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach	I	I	I	I	----	Medically unfit for trial
Robert Ley	I	I	I	I	----	Suicide on October 25, 1945, before verdict
Konstantin von Neurath	G	G	G	G	15 years	Released (ill health) November 6, 1954
Franz von Papen	I	I	º	º	Acquitted
Erich Raeder	I	G	I	º	Life Imprisonment	Released (ill health) September 26, 1955
Joachim von Ribbentrop	G	G	G	G	Death	Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs
Alfred Rosenberg	G	G	G	G	Death	Racial theory ideologist
Fritz Sauckel	I	I	G	G	Death
Hjalmar Schacht	I	I	º	º	Acquitted
Baldur von Schirach	G	º	º	G	20 years	Head of the Hitlerjugend, expressed repentance
Arthur Seyss-Inquart	I	G	G	G	Death
Albert Speer	º	º	G	G	20 Years	Responsible for several aspects of industry and a central figure in leadership, expressed repentance.
Julius Streicher	I	º	º	G	Death

"I"indicted "G" indicted and found guilty

1948: During Operation Yoav, Israeli forces were repulsed after heavy fighting as they tried to open the road to Jewish settlements in the Negev and Beersheba.

1948: “Arab Legion forces at the Arab-held Zion Gate attacked the Jewish positions on Mount Zion, but were driven off after fierce fighting.”

1948(13^th of Tishrei, 5709): Twenty-seven year old Mordechai “Modi” Alon died today when his plane crashed after returning from an attack on Egyptian forces. A native of Safed, Alon trained with the RAF during World War II and flew in the first combat mission undertaken by the Israeli Air Force in May of 1948. He scored infant air forces’ first kills when he shoot down to Royal Egyptian Air Force C-47’s over Tel Aviv. These air victories were more than just numbers. They gave heart to the beleaguered Yishuv who had had no protection from the air forces of their Arab attackers.

1948: Leonard Bernstein, who had come to Israel specifically to do this, conducted a concert of the newly created Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Jerusalem’s Edison Theatre. “He did so amid the persistent background noise of rifle and machine-gun fire from the direction of the Old City. The climax of the evening was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.” According to eye witness Tom Tugend, “’Towards the end of the first movement machine-gun fire burst out in the Old City, held by Jordanian forces. The gunfire continued unabated throughout the performance. Lenny and the orchestra never missed a beat.’”

1948: Birthdate of Bruce Fleisher, the Union City, TN native who became a successful professional golfer.

1949(23^rd of Tishrei, 5710): On the same day that the Greek Civil War came to an end marking a victory for the West in what was called the “Cold War,” Jews observed Simchat Torah

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from New York that hundreds of Jewish congregations throughout the US joined in a unique nationwide effort on behalf of the Israel Independence Bonds sales drive, to mark the recent holiday period. Tens of thousands of bonds were sold in scores of cities in which leading American personalities visited synagogues to present the facts about the importance of such action. In New York the actor Edward G. Robinson canceled his important personal plans to substitute for his colleague, Eddie Cantor, who became ill, and to participate in a series of special, festive Bond dinners.

1955: Esther Lederer, writing as Ann Landers, had her first advice column published in the Chicago Sun Times. By the end of Lederer's life, Ann Landers had become the world's most widely syndicated column, published in more than 1,200 publications and with more than 90 million readers around the world.When Esther Lederer and her husband moved to Chicago in the 1950s, she contacted a family friend at the Chicago Sun Times to see whether the columnist Ann Landers needed any help in writing her column. The Sun Times was in the process of finding a replacement writer for the column, and Lederer took over as the new Landers, a name that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Because Lederer had been involved in politics and had volunteered extensively, she was very well connected, and her column reflected these connections. Lederer was able to solicit advice from experts in many different fields. From her column, Landers openly opposed racism and anti-Semitism, and devoted much space to fighting injustice. Lederer continued to write as Ann Landers for 46 years, until her death in 2002.

1957: The German Pharmacological Society is scheduled to present a medal at 4 o’clock this afternoon to Dr. Otto Lowei, Research Professor of Pharmacology at the College of Medicine of NYU and the winner of the 1936 Noble Prize in Medicine.

1960: “Israel Gives Aid to New Nations,” an article published today described the visit to the United States of Dr. Benjamin Mazar, the noted archaeologist and President of Hebrew University. During his visit, Dr. Mazar described the aid that Israel is providing to the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia including the enrollment of 100 students from nations in these two continents in courses at Hebrew University and the sponsorship by the government of Ethiopia of several medical students at the university’s medical school. The university has also sent teams to various developing countries to aid in the development of educational and health programs.

1961: Birthdate of French-Jewish novelist Marc Levy.

1966:”Eh?” by Henry Livings, which premiered at the Circle in the Square Downtown, featuring Dustin Hoffman in “his first critical success.”

1969: A revival of “3 Men on a Horse” co-starring Jack Gilford and Hal Linden opened at the Lyceum Theatre.

1970: Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat was responsible for the Yom Kippur War. But his claim to fame was the courage to risk all with his famous trip to Jerusalem and the peace treaty with Israel. His motives are of less importance than the deeds he performed.

1970: Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison, was designated as a National Historic Site. Among those who were imprisoned in the camp was George Geiger who would go on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

1973: Just after mid-night, a small force of Israeli tanks crossed to the western bank of the Suez Canal. This daring success was a closely held secret. The first task of this force was to find and destroy the SAM-6 Missiles that were negating Israel’s air superiority. The Israelis were dismayed to find that the French were supplying weapons to the Arabs. Israeli pilots shot down a French Mirage that belonged to the Libyans. On the diplomatic front, President Sadat asked Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin who was in Cairo to get the UN to call for an immediate cease fire. The Israeli Foreign Ministry exploded with indignation when Kosygin complied. The Israelis recounted the massive buildup of Soviet military equipment that had been sent to the Arabs. The war could not have started it the Russians had not provided the weapons. To the Israelis, it was lie the man who supplied an arsonist with gasoline calling on the fire department to protect the arsonist.

1973: Events on the northern front dispelled any doubt as to how broad support was in the Arab world for this war aimed at destroying Israel. Israeli forces were forced to fight two major tank battles on the Syrian front and neither of them was with the Syrians. In the first battle a Jordanian brigade including twenty-eight tanks was beaten back. In the second fight, the Israelis faced a larger number of Iraqi tanks. Exactly how many Iraqi tanks were involved is unknown; all the Israelis know is that the Iraqis left the hulks of sixty tanks behind when they retreated.

1973: Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho jointlywere awarded Nobel peace prize. Kissinger is Jewish. Le Duc Tho is not Jewish. Kissinger was a refugee from Nazi Germany. In the 1950”s when others in academia were converting to advance their careers, Kissinger did not choose to follow that path.

1973: American Sephardi Federation and the Sephardic community at large collected $4,000,000 for Israel by week two of the Yom Kippur war.

1977: Birthdate of John Meyers, creator of Blues for Peace which was set up in Israel to honor the roots of blues music and promote peace and the understanding that ALLpeoples have had their share of the blues. Blues for Peace is dedicated to the unsung heroes, local blues musicians that love the blues and pass it on to the next generation

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that three people were slightly injured, two of them tourists, by two bombs thrown at them by Arab terrorists in the Old City of Jerusalem. There was no security barrier, no trip to the Temple Mount by Sharon, etc. In other words, each of these current excuses for terror are just that excuses for continuing behavior of longstanding.

1978(15^th of Tishrei, 5739): Sukkoth

1981 (8th of Tishrei, 5742): Moshe Dayan passed away. The much acclaimed Israeli general with the eye-patch was born in 1915. He was one of the first children born at Deganya Alef, “the mother of all kibbutzim.” Dayan joined the Haganah at the age of 14, learning military tactics from the fabled British Captain, Orde Wingate. He lost his left eye fighting the Vichy French in Lebanon during World War II. Dayan held a variety of important positions during Israel’s fight for independence. During the 1950’s he helped mold the IDF and led it to a lightening victory over Egypt in 1956. Dayan left the Army to purse a role in politics, but returned to serve as Minister for Defense during both the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars. In a an unexpected switch, Dayan joined the right wing government Begin government and served as the Foreign Minister who negotiated the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Dayan died at the age of 66, a victim of colon cancer.

1981(8^thof Tishrei, 5742): Sixty five year old Haim Landau who made Aliyah in 1935, joined both Betar and Irgun before serving as an MK and government minister passed away today.

1981:”Writer of Central Europe Wins Nobel Prize” published today provides John Vincour’s description of the triumph scored by Sephardic Jew Elias Canetti.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/16/books/81nobel-cane.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D

1982: GeorgeShultz warns that the United States will withdraw from the UN if they vote to exclude Israel.

1983 (9th of Cheshvan, 5744): Dr. Leonardo De Benedetti, friend and companion of Primo Levi, passed away at the age of 85 in the Jewish Rest Home where he had lived for years.

1986: Ron Arad, Israeli Weapons System Officer, is captured by Lebanese Shi'ite militia Amal.

1986:Armand Hammer returns to the United States with Jewish refusenik David Goldfarb.

1986: The Jonathan Netanyahu Memorial by Buky Schwartz, was dedicated outside the entrance to the National Museum of American Jewish History, along the walkway between 4th and 5th Streets north of Market Street today.The sculpture, donated by Muriel and Philip Berman, consists of four white marble monolithic vertical blocks, roughly 7' high by 2' deep and wide, standing in a square formation. The four blocks originated from one block of stone.Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu or Jonathan Netanyahu was a member of the Israel Defense Forces elite Sayeret Matkal unit. Yoni was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service for his conduct in the Yom Kippur War. He was killed in action during Operation Entebbe at Entebbe airport in 1976, by Ugandan soldiers, when the Israeli military rescued hostages after an aircraft hijacking. He was the leader of the assault, and the only Israeli military casualty of the raid. His younger brother Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel from 1996-1999. The National Museum of American Jewish History, founded in 1976, contains a large collection on the role and the everyday life of Jews in America. In 2010 the museum will open the doors to a new state-of-art facility

1993: Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.

1995(22^ndof Tishrei, 5756): Shemini Atzeret

1997(15^thof Tishrei, 5758): Sukkoth

1997: Prolific American Author James Michener passed away at the age of 90 in Austin, Texas. . A non-Jew, Michener’s specialty was historic fiction in the tradition of the grand saga. One of Michener’s most famous books was The Source. In it he traced the history of the Jews from earliest times to modern days using the artifacts discovered at an fictional archeological dig as the literary springboard. It is one of the easiest ways to enter into the world of Jewish history.

1997: Sir Isaiah Berlin, who had been gravely ill since late July, made what turned out to be a final statement on the subject of the Israeli–Palestinian situation. "Since both sides begin with a claim of total possession of Palestine as their historical right; and since neither claim can be accepted within the realms of realism or without grave injustice: it is plain that compromise, i.e. partition, is the only correct solution, along Oslo lines – for supporting which Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish bigot. Ideally, what we are calling for is a relationship of good neighbors, but given the number of bigoted, terrorist chauvinists on both sides, this is impracticable. The solution must lie somewhat along the lines of reluctant toleration, for fear of far worse – i.e. a savage war which could inflict irreparable damage on both sides. As for Jerusalem, it must remain the capital of Israel, with the Muslim holy places being extra-territorial to a Muslim authority, and an Arab quarter, with a guarantee from the United Nations of preserving that position, by force if necessary." To make a statement of this kind was unusual for him, since he rarely if ever made public statements on political topics, though, in the case of Israel, he was ready to be known as a supporter of Peace Now. On this occasion, however, he decided to take what might be his last opportunity to set out his strongly held views, which he sent in the form of a brief statement (dictated to his secretary) entitled ‘Israel and the Palestinians’ to his close friend Professor Avishai Margalit in Jerusalem.

2002: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance posthumously awarded the Museum’s Medal of Resistance to Heshek Bauminger and Aharon Liebeskind, founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO) in the Cracow Ghetto. Hela Schupper-Raufaizen, who fought with the JFO in Cracow, accepted the medal during the summer on their behalf.

2005:The New York Times book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt, In Case We’re Separated: Connected Storiesby Alice Mattison, The Other Shulman by Alan Zweibel and The Tiger In the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up Englishby Edith Milton

2005(24th of Tishrei, 5767): Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded as least 5 others in two separate drive-by shootings in the West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for both attacks.

2005: Even in disaster, hope can be found. In a move that would have been unthinkable only months ago, Pakistan has expressed a willingness to accept aide from Israel as the Moslem nation deals with the aftermath of a major earthquake.

2005: “My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Jury Room,” published today provided Judith Miller’s account of her time spent before the federal grand jury.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html?pagewanted=all&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D

2007: At the Jewish Museum of Florida an exhibition styled “Zap Pow Bam - Super Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics” opens. “Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane! It’s Zap Pow Bam, a colorful dynamic exhibit that immerses visitors in an interactive world of Super Heroes, highlighting the Jewish creators of comic books from 1938 – 1950. These are America’s timeless icons like Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman – including the phone booth where Superman changed his clothes and a Batmobile. Zap Pow Bam features 1940s serials, video interviews, a drawing studio and costumes. The exhibit offers a unique perspective on the way pop culture portrays issues and how identity and culture can shape popular opinion.”

2008: Proposed date on which Italy’s Holocaust Museum will open in Rome on the 65^thanniversary of the German capture of more than 1,000 Jews from Rome’s ghetto, a major Holocaust episode in Italy.

2008: At SUNY New Paltz as part of the Israel @ 60 celebration the Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish Life hosts a lecture by Dr. Len Lyons, author and member of the Ethiopian Jewry Committee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, entitled"The Ethiopian Jews of Israel."

2008: One thousand Jews traveled in and out of Nablus on buses from midnight to 5 a.m. in a brief pilgrimage to the burned-out shell of the building that covers Joseph's Tomb.

2009: Scottish actress Ronni Ancona appeared for the second time this year on “The One Show.”

2009: The joint Israeli-US Navy military exercise code named “Juniper Cobra” comes to an end.

2009: Acclaimed Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter makes his West Coast debut at UCLA Live with his UK-based company performing “Uprising,” inspired by the Paris protests of 2006 and “In Your Rooms,” which traces Shechter’s traumatic time in the Israeli military. The 33-year-old is one of Britain’s most sought-after choreographers.

2009: In an article entitled “Book on March Rich Detials His Iran Oil Deals,” Jad Mouawad examines the life this rogue businessman who profited from the oil industry while working with a host of governmental agencies including the U.S. State Department and Mossad as he reviews The King of Oil by Daniel Ammann.

2009: The Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, a fixture at Yankee Stadium for years with his stirring rendition of “God Bless America,” was scheduled to belt out the song again during Game 1 of the American League Championship Series today. Instead, he was disinvited by the Yankees after he admitted making an anti-Semitic remark at his Manhattan apartment building a day earlier. Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Yankees, said the team took action as soon as Tynan acknowledged making the comment. “He acknowledged that he used the slur and the Yankees stepped right in,” Rubenstein said tonight. The Yankees indicated today that Tynan would not be invited to sing at Yankee Stadium for the rest of the 2009 postseason but might be invited back in the future. Rubenstein said the Yankees were notified about 5 p.m. Thursday by a New York University physician, Gabrielle Gold-Von Simson, who was present when Tynan made the remark. Rubenstein said the incident occurred when a real estate agent was showing an apartment in Tynan’s building to Gold-Von Simson and jokingly said to Tynan, “Don’t worry, they’re not Red Sox fans.” Tynan reportedly replied, “I don’t care about that, as long as they are not Jewish.” Rubenstein said that after admitting his remarks to the Yankees, Tynan, 49, called Ms. Gold-Von Simson to apologize. “She said that if he gave a sincere apology she would forgive him,” Rubenstein said. “He did that to her satisfaction. He was very apologetic.” Tynan has been singing “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium for years. A former member of the Irish Tenors, he did not embark on his music career until he was 33 and had already earned a medical degree. Tynan had both legs amputated below the knees after a car accident at age 20. But within a year he had entered the Paralympics, and in the 1984 and 1988 games won gold medals in the discus, the shot put and the long jump. Ronan sang at the Sept. 28, 2001, memorial for victims of Sept. 11. He first sang at the old Yankee Stadium in the 2000 season. When he will sing again at the new one is now unclear.

2010: Avishai Cohen, singing in in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Ladino, is scheduled to perform at the Winter Garden in New York City.

2010: The new Natalie G. Heineman Smart Love Preschool was dedicated to the memory of her life and her love and understanding of children.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is among the partners supporting Ford’s Theatre scheduled matinee and evening productions of “Parade,” a Tony-award winning musical drama about the story of Leo Frank, who was lynched by a Georgia mob after having been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a Christian girl working in his factory.

2011: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout” by Jill Abramson and “Until The Dawn’s Light” by Aharon Appelfeld; translated by Jeffery Green.

2011: The Los Angeles Times features a review of “MetaMaus” by Art Spiegelman which is “a lavish deconstruction of his magnum opus” known to one and all as “Maus.”

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-art-spiegelman-20111016,0,7783952.story

2011:The Shalit family requested today to be present at a High Court of Justice hearing, scheduled to discuss petitions issued geared at thwarting a prisoner exchange deal that would secure the release of their son, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, warning that any delay in the agreement's execution could lead to its failure.

2011:Palestinian terrorists due to be deported overseas as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal will no doubt find their way back to Palestinian land, a top Hamas official said in an interview today

2011: Two Palestinians who participated in the 2000 lynching of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Ramallah will be released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal, an official prisoners list indicated today. Israeli reservist Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were killed in October 2000, at the start of the intifada, after they mistakenly drove their car into the West Bank city. Both reservists were arrested and then beaten to death by Palestinians who stormed the police station where they were being held.

2012: The Raw Men Empire, “an Israeli indie folk band” formed in 2009, is scheduled to perform at CMJ Music Marathon in New York.

2012: In Herndon, VA, Congregation Beth Emeth’s Hazak Chapter is scheduled to present a lecture by Dr. Mark Lowenthal, President and CEO of the Intelligence & Security Academy.

2012: Delegates to the Hadassah Convention are scheduled to “march, sing, dance and cheer” their way “through the streets in downtown Jerusalem” as they mark the opening of their convention.

2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Consulate General of Lithuania in NY are scheduled to present “Reclaiming the Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today,” a lecture by Markas Zingeris, Lithuanian Jewish author and Director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

2012:Israel will weigh military action if it suspects Syria’s chemical weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said today.

2012: Vandals desecrated the grave of former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan tonight (As reported by Ben Hartman)

2012: A rocket fired from Gaza hit close to a house in the Hof Ashkelon area tonight

2012:The Contemporary Jewish Museum's “California Dreaming: Jewish life in the Bay Area from the Gold Rush to Present” is scheduled to come to an end. (For more about American Jewry in the American West see Harriet Rochlin Western Jewish History
http://www.rochlin-roots-west.com/ )

2012(30^thof Tishrei, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2013:The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present an evening with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz author of For the Next Generation: A Wake-Up Call to Solving Our Nation's Problems

2013: In New York, The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture”

2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to present “Middle East Updated” with Professor Sandy Lakoff

2013: The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis next week.

2013: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will be able to reopen following the vote by Congress to approve legislation that will federal agencies to resume operation and raise the debt limit.

2014(22^ndof Tishrei, 5775): Shemini Atsert

2014: At noon today, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a Festive Concert featuring the Philomusica Piano Quartet.

2014: In the evening, Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa led by Rabbi Jeff Portman is scheduled to host a Simchat Torah celebration complete with “pizza and treats.”

2014: In the UK, The Oxford University Jewish Society chaplains are scheduled to host a Simchat Torah dinner this evening.

2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at the Palace Theatre in Albany, NY

OCTOBER 17

832 BCE(7 Cheshvan 2928): This is considered the traditional date of the inauguration of the first Temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon. As far as many Jews are concerned, the dedication is tied to the holiday of Sukkoth and dating schemes such as these are of minimal value. In one of those oddities of the calendar, in 2005, Sukkoth began on the evening of October 17.

539 BCE: King Cyrus, The Great, of Persia marches into the city of Babylon. This will lead to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem after 70 years of exile.

415: Emperors Honorius and Thedosius II issued an edict deposing Rabin Gamliel IV as the Nasi “because he had disregarded an earlier decree by Honorius, which had curtailed his privileges and the ban on the building of new synagogues and had adjudicated disputes between Jews and Christians.”

1448: Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II. Murad is remembered favorably by the Jews since he allowed German Jews who were fleeing persecution and death to settle in Salonica. He also employed Jews as his court physicians. On the other hand, John Hunyadi enjoyed the support of the Italian Monk Jean de Capistrano who had previously convinced King Ludwig of Bavaria to expel his Jewish subjects. These two leaders would meet again a decade later during the siege of Belgrade with a different outcome. [Editor’s note – As you can see, conflicts between Moslems and Christians is not an invention of the 21^st century]

1469: Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. Their marriage led to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain. This rapacious duo would expel the Jews in 1492. While cloaking themselves in the Cross, they filled their pockets with stolen Jewish wealth.

1483: Pope Sixtus IV launched the Spanish Inquisition, placing it under joint direction of the Church and state. Despite his previous protest, Pope Sixtus IIIgave into Ferdinand's pressure and extended the authority of the Inquisition to Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. This consolidated the Inquisition under one central body under Torquemada. Tomas de Torquemada, 63, was the Grand Inquisitor in charge of removing Jews and Muslims from Spain. For those who are studying history in Cedar Rapids you will find out that one of the oddities of all this is that all of the major players – Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada – descended from Conversos which means that those who led the Spanish Inquisition had Jewish ancestors.

1532: Pope Clement VII issued an apostolical brief halting the Portuguese Inquisition “until further notice.

1756: Birthdate of Isaac Abraham Euchel, the native of Copenhagen and nephew of Rabbi Masos Rintel who was one of the founders of the Haskalah movement.

1762(30th of Tishrei, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1762(30th of Tishrei, 5523): Sixty-three year old Samson Gideon, "one of the outstanding members of the London Jewish Community" and "a leader in the Parliamentary struggle to pass the Jews' Naturalization Act of 1753" passed away today after having contracted dropsy leaving £1000 of his £350,000 fortune to the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London on condition he was buried with honor as a married man in their cemetery in Mile End.

1768: Birthdate of Israel Jacobson, the native of Halberstadt Germany who was a sccessful businessman, philanthropist and one of the founders of the Reform Movement

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_09920.html

1775(23^rd of Tishrei, 5536): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since the Americans rebelled against the British.

1781: The Americans, with a lot of help from the French, defeated Cornwallis at Yorktown. This victory ensured the creation of the United States. For the most part, the small Jewish population supported the patriot cause. Of course the victory meant that the “last best hope of man” would become a haven for the Jews of Europe.

1793: Birthdate of Isaac Noah Mannheimer, the Copenhagen Talmudist and Rabbi who held a variety of posts in Denmark, Germany and Austria. A leader in the Reform Movement, he served as a representative in the Austrian Reichstag.

1794(23^rd of Tishrei, 5555): Simchat Torah

1796(15^th of Tishrei, 5557): Sukkoth celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1808: With Napoleon's arrival at the Duchy of Warsaw, the new State parliament called for equal rights. Unfortunately this did not include the Jews whose rights “would be postponed for 10 years in the hope of eradicating all their distinctions which set them apart."

1812: In the Netherlands, Branca and Hirschel Eliazer Kann gave birth to Jacob Kahn

1813(12rid of Tishrei, 5574): As the war between Great Britain and the United States drags into its second year, Jews on both side of the Atlantic celebrate Simchat Torah.

1830: Birthdate of Mortiz Ellinger, who emigrated to the United States from Bavaria in 1854 where he held several city government jobs while being active in the B’Nai B’rith and editing The Menorahand The Jewish Times.

1831: Birthdate of Bernhardine Wetzlar.

1832(23^rdof Tishrei, 5593): Simchat Torah

1832(23^rdof Tishrei, 5593): Forty-six year old Moses Lemans, the Dutch born Jewish educator and author whose works including The Spirit of the Talmudic Lordand a biography of Maimonides, passed away today.

1835: Birthdate of Abraham Harkavy (Avraham Eliyahu ben Yaakov Harkavy), the Russian born Jewish historian and author. As an author, he was one of the first to write in Hebrew in modern times.

1843(23^rdof Tishrei, 5604): Simchat Torah

1846:On Sabbath Bereshit a Beth-din was established, composed of the following gentlemen: Chief Rabbi Lilienthal, Moreno [Isaac M.] Wise, Rabbi of Albany and Syracuse; Moreno Doctor Felsenheldt, and Moreno Doctor Kohlmayer. Dr. Lilienthal, elected Rosh Beth Din, presented the Dayanim to his congregations, and in a sermon, delivered on that occasion, declared, on behalf of the Beth-din, that their services were ready to be given to every Jewish congregation in America, without claiming any clerical rights or dues.

1850: Anti-Christian rioters pillage Christian neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria. Several Christians die during the riot. This serves as a reminder that sectarian violence in the Middle East was a fact of life before the birth of the Zionist movement and that this long-standing pattern of violence had nothing to do with the Jews.

1851(21st of Tishrei, 5612): Hoshanah Rabah

1851: A letter was sent to Samuel J. Rubinstein thanking him for his two years of “excellent service” as the treasurer of the synagogue in Dublin, Ireland.

1853(15^thof Tishrei, 5614): Sukkoth

1854:Ernestine Rose, a leading early American advocate for women's rights, presided over the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphiawhich opened on this date. At the Philadelphiameeting, Rose declared, "[I]s woman not included in that phrase, 'all men are created … equal'? ... Tell us, ye men of the nation … whether woman is not included in that great Declaration of Independence?"

1858: Birthdate of David Samuel Margoliouth, The son of Ezekiel Margoliouth and the nephew Moses Margoliouth, both of whom were Anglican converts, he was a noted Orientalist and Oxford Don. Among other accomplishments, “He identified a business letter written in the Judeo-Persian language, found in Danfan Uiliq, northwest China, in 1901, as dating from 718 C.E. (the earliest evidence showing the presence of Jews in China).” He passed away in 1940.

1862(23rd of Tishrei, 5623): Simchat Torah

1862: As the Jewish “holiday season” comes to an end with the celebration of Simchat Torah, General U.S. Grant returns to active field service as he takes command of the Department of Tennessee. In that capacity he will issue the infamous General Order Number Eleven that expelled Jews, “as a class” from the district under his command. This regrettable episode would be used by some to unfairly brand Grant as an anti-Semite.

1863(21st of Tishrei, 5764): Hoshana Rabah

1864(17th of Tishrei, 5625): As the Jewish soldiers serving with the Army of Northern Virginia observe Sukkoth Chol Hamoed, General James “Pete” Longstreet, Lee’s good right arm resumes command of troops after having been seriously wounded during the Battle of Wilderness.

1872(15th of Tishrei, 5633): Sukkoth

1875: It was reported today The Hebrew Charity Fair is to take placed in December at New York’s 22^nd Regiment Armory. All proceeds from the event will go to support Mount Sinai Hospital. Women from all of the city’s synagogues are actively working to prepare for the event.

1875: According to an article entitled “The Wandering Jew” published today, the first document mentioning this mythic figure are about 650 years old, dating back to the reign of Henry III. The next references to him do not appear until the 16^thcentury when he supposedly revealed himself to a weaver in Bohemia. Contrary to the name, the Wandering Jew has nothing to do with Judaism. Rather he is a Christological Character tied to one of the stories relating to the Crucifixion

1875: “The Bible in the Public Schools” published today described the conflict going on at the Board of Education of Union Hill, NJ concerning mandatory Bible readings at the start of each school day.

1877: Herman C. Bush wrote a letter from Cincinnati today addressed to his friend Christopher J. Bush of New York confessing that he had stolen seven piece of cassimere from his employer in New York City. He claimed that he had sold five of the pieces to a Jew on the corner of Baxter and Leonard Streets. Further investigation would establish that this was the address of a second-hand clothing store owned by Louis Lazarus, who had been arrested previously on charges of receiving stolen goods. Lazarus claimed the items in question had been bought by his son who had no idea that they were stolen. Lazarus would later be arrested. There is no word as to the fate or religion of either of the men named Bush.

1877: Dr. F. De Sola Mendez is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York City, starting at 8 p.m.

1879: Birthdate of German historian Eugen Täubler who worked as a lecturer at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies) in Berlin from 1910 to 1914 and again from 1933 to 1941 after which he and his fled Nazi Germany for the United States where he became a professor at HUC in Cincinnati.

1881: “Minor Affairs Abroad” published today provides a statistical snapshot of births in Russia including the fact that Jews accounted for 3 percent of the 8,119 out-of-wedlock births

1881: One hundred thirty two more Jewish immigrants from Russia are expected to arrive in New York City today.

1882: Leo Pinkser published his famous pamphlet"Autoemancipation; A Warning of a Russian Jew to his Brethren."He published it as a result of the Russian pogroms of the previous year. Pinsker advocated establishing a homeland as a cure for anti-Semitism. He thought that a Jewish congress should decide if that homeland should be in Eretz-Israel, the United States or some third choice. Only later did he join with the “Lovers of Zion Movement” and acknowledge that Eretz-Israel was the only place for a Jewish homeland. Pinkser died in 1891, six years before the First Zionist Congress. His writings and efforts laid the groundwork for Herzl and others. In 1934, his remains were re-interred on Mt.Scopus.

1882: Mr. and Mrs. Julius W. Kaskel buried their three week old son Asher in the Hebrew Cemetery in Leadville, CO.

1882: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be sponsoring a concert at Chckering Hall later this week.

1882: It was reported today that Israel Ettler has been arraigned in the Harlem Police Court for his alleged role in the recent riot at Ward’s Island.

1884: It was reported today that Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be hosting a celebration marking the 100^th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore tomorrow night. (The overwhelming number of centennial celebrations marking the birth of Montefiore attests to his importance to Jews throughout the world and the affection in which he was held. But how many people know who is today/)

1885: The first American Rabbinical Conference was held in Cleveland, Ohio

1885: “Statistics of the Jews” published today used figures provided by The Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Marseilles to present a demographic picture of world Jewry. There are 6,377,601 Jews in the world, 5,407, 602 of whom live in Europe, 245,000 in Asia, 413,000 in Africa, 300,000 in American and 12,000 in Oceania. Of the European countries, Russia has the largest population at over 2,000,000 followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire with 1,600,000. With a combined Jewish population of 3,000 Norway and Sweden have the fewest.

1885: A law enacted on this date madereligious instruction for Jewish children living in Lübeck who were attending public schools compulsory. The city paid an annual subsidy to the synagogue in Lubeck for providing this instruction

1886: “Moses and Henry George” published today provided George’s praise for the system “Moses tried to found in which there was an absence of poverty and the idea of the brotherhood of man was paramount. To that end, “Moses proved not only for a fair division of the land among the people but for a redistribution every 50 years making monopoly impossible.”

1888: “A Jewish Wedding” published today described the wedding ceremony that joined New Yorker Louis H. Rascover to Miss Carrie Thalheimer in Reading, PA which was one of the social highlights of the year. The ceremony was followed by a reception attended by five hundred people from New York and most of the major cities in eastern Pennsylvania. Before her marriage, Miss Thalheimrt “was the acknowledged belle in Hebrew society circles in Reading.”

1888: The leaders of the Jewish Order of the Harp of David who were sponsoring a series of “grand operas, tragedies and high comedies at Poole’s Theatre for the benefit of its charitable and mutual benefit funds” clashed with Professor Horowitz, the man it had retained to manage the events during which the latter ceased the proceeds from the ticket offices and only agreed to pay the actors after they threatened not to perform this evening.

1890: A citizen’s committee met with Mayor Grant today and urged him to appoint Coroner Ferdinand Levy to serve as a Police Justice.

1891(15^thof Tishrei, 5652): Sukkoth

1891: Birthdate of Henry Torres, the attorney who defended Samuel Schwartbard, the Jewish poet and anarchist who was accused of assassinating Simon Petlioura for his role in the Ukrainian Pogroms in which thousands of Jews including his parents were murdered.

1893: In response to an allegation published in The Evening Post that Otto Irving Wise is a “hack politician” one of his friends said today “that Mr. Wise had been connected with Tammany Hall for short time only and then resigned and affiliated himself with the Republicans.”

1894: As reported today, the average age of the 163 people living at the Aged and Infirm Hebrews is seventy-two.

1894: The Lexow Committee (named for its chairman Clarence Lexow), the New York State Senate Committee investigating charges of corruption in the New York City Police Department heard more testimony including charges of police intimidation and payoffs in the operation of soda water stands on the Lower East Side by Samuel Ebert, Wolf Lipman, Samuel Cohen and Amelia Levine.

1898: A.C. Wheeler writes a letter to the New York Times in which he takes issue with the surprise expressed by the paper’s London correspondent at the positive and warm reception received by Israel Zangwill during his highly successful lecture tour.

1900: Birthdate of molecular biologist Alfred Ezra Mirsky, the husband of children’s author Reba Paeff and the father of Reba Goodman and Jonathan Mirsky.

1900: Herzl meets with the Ernest von Koerber, Austrian Prime Minister.

1903(26^thof Tishrei, 5664): Lewis Abraham Tallerman, the brother of Australian merchant Daniel Tallerman passed away today.

1903: Birthdate of author Nathanael West best known for Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locusts.

1905: Birthdate of Lev Nussimbaum, the native of Kiev “who wrote under the pen names Essad Bey and Kurban Said.

1911: In New York Dr. Morris Loeb said today that it was his understanding that his brother, James Loeb, the retired banker, was going to underwrite the expense of translating 200 hundred volumes of the classics into English. The volumes in question were originally written in Latin and Greek.

1914: Birthdate of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman.

1915: Birthdate of Arthur Miller. Two of this American playwright’s noted works were “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible.” His other claim to fame was his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe conversion to Judaism was tied to her relationship with Miller.

1916: Eighteen year old Mischa Levitz, famed Russian born concert pianist made his American debut in New York, at Aeolian Hall

1916: Cartoonist Rube Goldberg married Irma Seeman after which they set up housekeep at 98 Central Park West in New York City where they gave birth to two sons, Thomas and George.

1917: Birthdate of Herschel Schater, the Brownsville native who was youngest son of a 7^th generation shochet and a real estate manager and as chaplain serving with the Third Army was the first rabbi “to enter and participate in the liberation of Buchenwald.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1917: Birthdate of Alfred Edward “Fred” Kahn “a leading regulatory scholar who wielded his influence in both government and academia, helped spur a broad movement beginning in the mid-1970s toward freer markets in rail and automotive transportation, telecommunications, utilities and the securities markets.”

1919(23^rd of Tishrei, 5680): Simchat Torah is observed for the first time after the end of World War I.

1919: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) created. RCA and NBC were inextricably linked with David Sarnoff.

1919: Birthdate of Russian physicist Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov

1920: Today South Jersey's first Conservative congregation was officially "organized" and elected Morris Handle as Beth El's first President.

1920: In Brussels, Sadi Kirschen and his wife gave birth to Claude-Anne Kirschen who gained fame as Claude-Anne Lopez one of the most, if not the most formidable, expert on Benjamin Franklin. “Her father was a defense lawyer for Edith Cavell, the British nurse who was executed by the Germans after she helped scores of Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Belgium during World War I.” (As reported by William Yardley)

1920: Birthdate of Betty Sarah Wouk, of blessed memory. Born Betty Brown in Grangeville, Idaho, this graduate of USC married Herman Wouk, the great American-Jewish novelist, in 1945. Wouk’s service on the USS Zane gave him two great gifts, Mrs. Wouk and the material for the “.Caine Mutiny.”

1921(15^th of Tishrei, 5682): Sukkoth

1923: Birthdate of Isaac Saba Raffoul, “a Mexican businessman.”

1924: The Ku Klux Klan staged its second march in less than six months in Las Vagas, Nevada but found little support for its message of hating Catholics and Jews.

1925: Birthdate of Irwin Silber, “a founder and the longtime editor of the folk-music magazine Sing Out!, who was one of the prime movers behind the folk-music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.” (As reported by William Grimes)

1927(21^st of Tishrei, 5688): Hoshanah Rabah

1927: Birthdate of guitarist Barney Kessel.

1930:In Biddeford, ME, Samuel and Leah Osher gave birth to Marion Osher, the future wife of Hebert Sandler her partner in creating Golden West Financial.

1933:Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Strangely enough, the New York Times story referred to him as a German scientist. I guess the guys at the Times had not figured out that for all of his greatness, he was just another Jew fleeing Hitler’s Germany. When is a Jew in Germany a German and not a Jew? When he wins the Nobel Prize.

1935: When the Belgian steamship Leopold II was unloading 97 tons of cement at Jaffa, “a tin case of cartridges concealed in a barrel” was discovered. According to “unconfirmed reports…from Arab sources…800 rifles and 400,000 cartridges” were also found among the 537 barrels of cement.

1935: “The party of Haj Amin el Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem asserted” today that the arms discovered yesterday when the SS Leopold II was being unloaded in Jaffa yesterday, “were part of a Jewish plot” and gave rise to the threat of a general Arab work stoppage.

1937: As the Arab Reign of Terror designed to drive the Jews from Eretz Israelcontinued, The Palestine Post reported that the Mandatory Administration at last admitted that the renewed Arab terror and sabotage causes extensive damage. One of the main buildings at LyddaAirport was destroyed by arson and the authorities decided that severe measures would be taken against the town. British women and children living in Hebron were evacuated to Jerusalem and were accommodated at the YMCA. A Cook's cruise was temporarily suspended and tourist agents reported cancellations. Railway service suffered from frequent interruptions. Jewish buses were shot at and a number of passengers were wounded. One Arab attacker was killed. The Mandatory Government decided to exert a stricter control over the activities of the Wakf (Moslem religious endowment fund).

1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): A band of Arab terrorists shot and killed a ten-year old Jewish boy from Yemeni at Tirath Shalom which is located near Ness Zionah in southern Palestine.

1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): In the wake of renewed Arab terrorism, “Samuel Gutman, a young Jewish theological student studying his Talmud lesson in the shade of a tree in the Schneller quarter of Jerusalem was attacked by an Arab, who stabbed him six times.”

1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): In the wake of renewed Arab terrorism, two buses filled with Jewish workers returning to Jerusalem from the quarry near Motzah were fired on by Arabs. The gunmen escaped having failed to wound or kill any of their targets.

1937: A movement “led by Max Seligman” a lawyer from Cardiff, Wales, now living in Tel Aviv, that is seeking to convert Palestine into a British Crown Colony as a way of ending the fighting between Arabs and Jews files an application with the Palestine Attorney General’s office in attempt o register an organization called “The Palestine Crown Colony Association.”

1937: Late tonight Arab terrorists attempted to blow up a ridge on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. The bridge was partially damaged but the road remained opened to traffic.

1939: The Nazis deported over one thousand Jews from Moravska Ostrava, of the former Czechoslovakia, and sent them to Lublin region of Poland. There, they were forced to build themselves a labor camp. Adolph Eichmann, now in charge of “Jewish resettlement", greeted the train

1939: With the cessation of hostilities the Nazis finally fixed the Polish-German frontier. At a meeting, Hitler made clear that the policy would be to cleanse Poland's towns of Jews, Poles and intelligentsia from all lands falling within the Gerneralgouvernement.Implementation was put in the hands of Henreich Himmler and his SS.

1939: Hitler lectures General Wilhelm Keitel and other top Wehrmacht generals on the need for "Jews, Poles, and similar trash" to be cleared from old and new territories of the Reich.

1940(15^th of Tishrei, 5701): Sukkoth

1941: U.S. premiere of “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” co-starring Simone Simon with music by Bernhard Herrmann who won an Oscar for his work on this picture.

1942: According to reports published in the New York Times, Palestine is filling a dual role in the British war effort. It is home to a key military headquarters called the “Palestine Base and Lines of Communications Headquarters.” It has also become an industrial center that fills many needs of the British military in the Middle East including the manufacture of mines and hand grenades and the repair of British and American tanks and other military vehicles damaged during combat action. Many of the workers are refugees from central and eastern Europe which has given them the capability of producing goods that used to be supplied by “Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany and other industrialized European nations.”

1942: Austrian librettist, lyricist and writer Fritz Löhner-Beda was deported to the Monowitz concentration camp near Auschwitz.

1942: Over 10,000 Jews were transferred from Buchenwald Concentration camp to Auschwitz.

1942: The Nazis murdered 1600 Jews from Buczacz, Ukraineat the Belzec death camp.

1942: Four hundred and five Jews held in the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, Germany, concentration camps are deported to Auschwitz. Austrian-Jewish opera librettist Fritz Beda is among those deported from Buchenwald.

1943: A Jewish partisan unit commanded by Abba Kovner destroys two rail engines and two bridges near Vilna, Lithuania.

1943: German Ambassador to the Vatican Ernst von Weizsäcker writes to the German Foreign Ministry that the College of Cardinals has been "particularly dismayed" since the roundup of Jews in Rome is occurring "below the very windows of the Pope." He notes that the Pope continues to do everything he can "not to burden relations with the German government and German agencies in Rome."

1944: Adolf Eichmann returned to Budapest. He demanded that 50,000 Jews be assembled to be used as forced laborers in Germany. He further ordered that they should march there on foot.

1944: At Birkenau, Dr. Mengele began another selection of children to be sent to the gas chambers. Only his small selected group of about 200 twins were continued to be spared his wretched wrath.

1946: King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia sent a letter to President Truman charging that the American leader’s “call for opening the gates of Palestine to more Jews was in ‘complete contradiction’” to what the King said were “presidential assurances to the Arabs.” The King described the Jews as “aggressors from the start” when it came to matters regarding Palestine.

1947: Following a six day trial, Yossef Vavriel and Abraham Katalan, two members of the Irgun, “were convicted of carrying arms in a room of the house at Kiryat Sahul where two British policemen” who had been kidnapped from a swimming pool in June were being held prisoner. The two British policemen had not been harmed by their captors.

1947: David Ben-Gurion called on members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to disband their organizations and join the Haganah as the Jewish community moved to protect itself from attacks from the Arabs. Ben-Gurion denied that negotiations were being held with the leaders of these organizations since his goal is to have only one military force that will answer to the civilian leaders of the Yishuv.

1947: Mr. Moshe Shertok the head of Political Department of the Jewish Agency, addressed the United Nations, making the case for the creation of a Jewish state as part of the Two State Solution. Moshe Shertok would become Moshe Sharett after the creation of the state of Israel, serving as it first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister.

1947: U.S premiere of “The Exile” directed by Max Ophüls,

1948(14th of Tishrei, 5709): Erev Sukkoth;

1948: Israeli naval vessels shelled Majdal which had been occupied by invading Egyptian troops.

1948(14th of Tishrei) Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, also known as the Maharitz, passed away. Born in 1865 he moved to Jerusalem in 1930. He was the first Rebbe of Dushinsky and Chief Rabbi (Govad) of the Edah HaChareidis of Jerusalem.

1948: The 52^nd and 54^thBattalions of the Givati Brigade began a three day action aimed at taking control of “the internal Negev road from Julis to Bror Hayial through Kawkaba and Huleiqat.”

1948: During Operation Yoav, Egyptian forces begin withdrawing from the Negev after suffering heavy attacks by the Israelis. The Egyptians were retreating from land to which they had no legal or moral claim. Operation Yoav was conducted during the Israeli War for Independence. It took place following numerous violations of the UN brokered cease fire about which the international organization did nothing.

1950: David Ben-Gurion made an attempt to form a minority government consisting of Mapai and Sephardim and Oriental Communities today, but it was not approved by the Knesset.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Joint Distribution Committee agreed to defray half the cost of the upkeep and medical treatment of the North African immigration. The forced migration of Jews living in Moslem lands to Israelis one of the untold "refugee" stories. Following the creation of the state of Israel Jews from such places as Moroccocame to Israel, in part, because the local Arab population had turned against. This happened despite the fact that Jews had lived there for centuries. It is interesting to compare the efforts of the Israelis to integrate immigrants into their society as opposed to the Arab treatment of their Moslem brethren who had left what would become the state of Israelfor whatever reasons.

1956: U.S. premiere of “What Happened to Julie on Her Honeymoon?” produced by Martin Melcher.

1958: NBC broadcast “An Evening with Fred Astaire,” the Emmy winning special directed and co-produced by Bud Yorkin (Alan David Yorkin)

1959(15^th of Tishrei, 5720): Sukkoth

1959: In the UK, Julie Brett and Eric Selig Phllip Cowell, Sr. who is Jewish gave birth to television personality Simon Cowell.

1963(29th of Tishrei, 5724): Mathematician Jacques-Salomon Hadamard passed away at the age of 98. Although Hadamard claimed to be an atheist when it came to religion he became an active in support of Jewish causes following the Dreyfus Affair. Part of this may have stemmed from the fact that his wife was related to the wrongly accused French Colonel.

1967: Barbra Streisand starred in "Belle of
14th Street
" a special on CBS television.

1967: Memorial service for Brian Epstein was held at New London Synagogue – The Jewish Connection to the lads from Liverpool.

1973: The “Battle of the Chinese Farms” comes to an end when an Egyptian counter-attack fails to dislodge Israeli troops leaving the bridgehead across the Suez Canal intact. The battle, which began on October 15^th was one of the bloodiest and costliest of the war.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, the Soviets were landing 70 planes per day crammed with modern supplies at Egyptian and Syrian airports. Egyptian forces failed in their attempts to dislodge Israeli forces from their new positions on the west bank of the Suez Canal. At the same time, the Egyptians were not making any progress with the attacks on Israeli positions east of the Canal. As the fortunes of war began to turn against the attacking Arab Armies, the Soviets increased the pressure for a cease fire. The Israelis were unwilling to consider any action that would reward Arab Aggression.

1973: OPEC started an oil embargo against a number of western countries. Supposedly OPEC was using the Oil Weapon to reverse the Arab defeat during the Yom Kippur War. In point of fact, OPEC succeeded in raising the price of petroleum which enriched OPEC, shifted the economic balance and along the way impoverished millions of people living in Third World Nations – untold numbers of Arabs and other followers of Islam living in non-OPEC nations.

1975: The United Nations declared that “Zionism is racism.” This came in the same period when the U.N. General greeted the pistol packing Yasser Arafat with a standing ovation. Arafat was still in the full flush of his victory; having been responsible for the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics and the slaughter of the Israeli athletes.

1975: U.S. premiere of “Rooster Cogburn” produced by Hal Wallis.

1976(23^rd of Tishrei, 5737): Simchat Torah

1977(5^th of Cheshvan, 5738): Eighty-one year old English film producer Sir Michael Elias Balcon, the grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis and Tasmin Day-Lewish passed away today.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a prominent, unnamed, West Bank figure, whom the local Arab politicians expected to become a central member of any Palestinian delegation at the renewed Geneva Peace Conference, was seeking an urgent meeting with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, to check whether Israel would be prepared to negotiate an eventual self-determination for the Palestine Arabs at the conference table.

1979(26th of Tishrei, 5740): Sidney Joseph Perelman passed away. Known as S.J. Perelman, he was born in Brooklyn in 1904, raised in Providence, where he graduated from BrownUniversity. For almost forty years, Perelman was a true man of letters gaining fame as a cartoonist, author, screenwriter, and satirist. A city boy by birth, Perelman chose to live in rural BucksCounty for forty years. During that time he wrote, “A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.”

1983(9^th of Cheshvan, 5744): Seventy-eight year old Raymond Aron passed away. Born in Paris, the famed author and social commentator, served in the French Air Force and then fought with the Free French during WW II. While his name may not be a household word, he was a life-long friend and worthy intellectual opponent of Jean-Paul Sartre.

http://www.egs.edu/library/raymond-aron/biography/

1984(21st of Tishrei, 5745): Hoshanah Rabah

1984(21^st of Tishrei, 5745): Rabbi Levi Arthur Olan passed away. Born in 1903 at Cherkasy, Ukraine, he was Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1929 to 1948. From 1949 to 1970 he was Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas.

1985(2^nd of Cheshvan, 5746): Ninety-year old conductor and opera manager Joseph Rosenstock passed away today. (As reported by Dena Kleiman)

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/18/arts/joseph-rosenstock-90-conductor-of-operas.html

1988:Today’s announcement that chemist Gertrude Elion had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine represented the culmination of an unlikely career. The young Elion had known what she wanted to do—but nobody seemed ready to let her do it. New York’s HunterCollegeprovided her with a free education during the Depression, but when she graduated at age 19, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, not one graduate school would provide her with needed financial aid. Unable to find a laboratory job, she started secretarial school. Supporting herself as a doctor’s receptionist and a substitute high school science teacher, Elion earned a master’s degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 (she was the only woman in her classes). With more lab opportunities open to women during World War II, Elion found a job at Burroughs Welcome, a pharmaceutical company, in 1944.Elion’s research with her mentor and partner George Hitchings led to the first effective treatment for childhood leukemia and to immunosuppressants that made organ transplants possible. Her anti-viral research led to treatments for many ailments including AIDS. Elion, whose doctorates were all honorary, received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Hitchings and British scientist James Black. Elion thus joined an impressive list of American Jewish female Nobel Prize winners in science that also includes American-born Rosalyn Yalow (1977), and Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori (1947) and Rita Levi-Montalcii (1986) who were born and educated abroad. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive.

1989: An army inquiry completed today found that a Syrian MIG-23 fighter-bomber was able to penetrate Israeli airspace unchallenged last week because of an error by the air defense officer on duty at the time.

1990: Publication of William Steig’s Shrek! a picture book for children about a young ogre whose name is derived from the Yiddish work for “fear” or “fright.”

1994: The draft of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was finalized. This would prove to be one of the tangible positive by-products of the Oslo Peace Process.

1995(23^rd of Tishrei, 5756): Simchat Torah

1997(16^th of Tishrei, 5758): Second day of Sukkoth

1997(16^th of Tishrei, 5758): Ninety-six year old character actor Ben Welden passed away today.

1998: A Palestinian conducted a grenade assault on the Beershebabus terminal, wounding 67 Israelis, including 24 soldiers.

1999: The New York Times book section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jews including Bad Jews And Other Stories by Gerald Shapiro and Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel.

2000: At the Library of Congress opening of an exhibition entitledHerblock’s History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium that presents works by cartoonist Herb Block, who chronicled the nation’s political history and caricatured twelve American presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton.

2001 (30th of Tishrei, 5762):Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi was shot to death in the first assassination of a serving Cabinet minister by Palestinians. Born in Jerusalemin 1926, Zeevi served in the Palmach. He enjoyed a very successful thirty year career in the IDF. After retiring with the rank of Major General, he pursued a career in politics. A general in the Israel Army, Zeevi had a distinguished military career before pursuing a political career.

2003(21st of Tishrei, 5764): Hoshana Rabah

2003: U.S. premiere of “Runaway Jury,” co-starring Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz

2004: The body of Sam Kellerman was found in a Hollywood (CA) apartment. Sam Kellerman was the broth of Max Kellerman an American boxing commentator and sports talk radio host based in Los Angeles. “As a result of the ensuing investigation, former boxer James Butler was arrested and charged with Sam's murder. He later confessed to the murder and was given a 29 year sentence.”

2004(2nd of Cheshvan, 5765): Uzi Hitman “an Israeli singer, songwriter, composer and television personality” passed away. His career began in 1976 and he became a popular Israeli artist during the 1980s and 1990s. He has famously composed a popular melody for Adon Olam in 1976. His most famous songs include Noladati Lashalom (I Was Born for Peace), Ratziti Sheteda (I Wanted You to Know), Todah (Thank you) and Kan (Here), which reached 3rd place during the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Hitman also appeared on the 1980s children's programmes Parpar Nehmad and Hopa Hei. He died after a heart attack at the age of 52. He was buried at the Yarkon Cemetery near Tel Aviv. The City of Ramat Gan renamed Kikar Hashoshanim (Roses Square) in his neighborhood of residence to Kikar Hitman (Hitman Square).

2005: Haaretz reported that Kinneret Mendel and Matat Rosenfeld-Adler, 21-year-old cousins from the settlement of Carmel, and Oz Ben Meir, 15, from the settlement of Ma'on were murdered by terrorist on Sunday and buried today.

2005(14th of Tishrei, 5766): Erev Sukkoth

2006: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called on President Moshe Katsav to resign in response to the police's recommendation to indict him on a number of charges including rape.

2007:Virtuoso Pianist Vladimir Feltsman plays “Music from Poland and Russia” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

2007: As an example of the secular power 21^stcentury Jews have attained, a photo is taken at 10:13 a.m. of Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general chatting with Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman prior to the start of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The two Orthodox Jews were classmates at YaleLawSchool.

2007: The New York Times features a review of Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do) by Michael Wex.

2007:A London-based Jewish radio station, Shalom FM, founded by Mike Menoza as a way of providing, "some balanced reporting about the community and Israel" ceased broadcasting at midnight.

2008: In a reversal of cultural roles. The Jerusalem Cinematheque features an American film about an Israeli. The film is “You Don’t Mess with Zohan” an American made film about an Israeli. “

2008: Jerusalem mayoral candidate Nir Barkat toured Jewish and state owned lands in an area between the French Hill and the Arab neighborhood of Anata, promising that “In Anata, a new Jewish neighborhood will be established and this will provide a solution to the housing needs of students and the city’s younger generation.

2008 (18th of Tishrei, 5769): Eighty five year old Montreal native Ben Weider who was a founder and longtime president of the International Federation of Body Builders” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/othersports/21weider.html?_r=0

2009:Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” is performed at Kimmel Theatre on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon Iowa.

2009: At Agudas Achim in Iowa City, Sam Stalkfleet is called to the Torah as a the Bar Mitzvah

2009: At the 14^th St Y in Manhattan opening of the LABALMA Exhibition followed by the Y Dance party.

2009(29th of Tishrei, 5770):Sheldon Jerome Segal “an American embryologist and biochemist who spent his entire career working on contraception and made major innovations in the field of long-lasting alternatives, including in the creation of Norplant, the first major development advance in birth control since the birth control pill” passed away.

2009(29th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-eight year old novelist Norma Fox Mazer, passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/arts/25mazer.html

2009: “A Believer in Heroism, to Jews’ Lasting Gratitude” published today told the tale of Dr. Tina Strobos and her who hid more than 100 Jews from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/nyregion/17metjournal.html?pagewanted=print

2010: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival opened in Washington, DC.

2010: Dr. Stephen Whitfield, Professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, author of In Search of American Jewish Culture and one of Tulane University’s most distinguished graduates is scheduled to speak at the Guardain-Benefactor Luncheon sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Great House by Nicole Krauss and David Susskind: A Televised Life by Stephen Battaglio.

2010:The IDF Israel Defense Forces attacked a terrorist cell planning to launch Qassam rockets or mortar bombs at Israel from Gaza.

2011: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to open his residence to the public today from from 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon. It is the continuation of a long-held tradition for the presidents of Israel to open the residence to the wider public during one of the intermediate days of the Succoth.

2011:Philip Levine, the newly named Poet Laureate is scheduled to open the annual literary season of the Library of Congress with a reading of his work at the Coolidge Auditorium.

2011:Ron Skolnik, Executive Director of Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) is scheduled to speak on "Rent, Cottage Cheese and Peace: What's making Israel tick these days?" at Kol Ami, the Northern Virginia Reconstructionist Community

2011: Dr. Michael Berenbaum is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Three German Jews Rediscover Their Judaism” during which he will examine the lives of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Gershom Scholem.

2011: A genuine simchah as the family and friends of Laurie Silber celebrate the birthday of this remarkable ayshish chayal: loving wife, devoted daughter, doting mother and grandmother, sweet singer of Psalms who brightens the Musical Shabbat and energetic community leader who taught in our Sunday School for many years and who brings new energy to Temple Judah in each of her terms as co-President. For those lucky enough to know her she is a “chever” – a friend for all seasons.

2011:The Israel Law Center (Shurat Hadin) is set to launch a hotline today, to help Jewish college students who are victims of anti-Semitism on their campuses.

2011:The State responded to petitions lodged against the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit at the High Court of Justice today, saying the swap was strictly a political matter to be carried out by the government.

2011:The High Court of Justice rejected numerous petitions against the execution of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal today, effectively removing the last legal obstacle en route to the release of the abducted Israel Defense Forces solder.

2011(19^thof Tishrei, 5772): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2011: Following a speech by David Einhorn today at the Value Investing Congress in which he “publicly announced his short position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, its share price fell by 10 per cent.

2011(19^thof Tishrei, 5772): Ninety-four year old audio innovator Edgar M. Villchur passed away (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/business/edgar-m-villchur-hi-fi-innovator-dies-at-94.html

2012(1^stof Cheshvan, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2012(1^stof Cheshvan, 5773): Eighty-nine year old “Stanford R. Ovshinsky, an iconoclastic, largely self-taught and commercially successful scientist who invented the nickel-metal hydride battery and contributed to the development of a host of devices, including solar energy panels, flat-panel displays and rewritable compact discs,” passed away today. (As reported by Barnaby J. Feder)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/technology/stanford-ovshinsky-an-inventor-compared-to-edison-dies-at-89.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381883239-jgHWRRYDyOwHzSlRY5PFow&pagewanted=print

2012: University of Liverpool Professor Eve Rosenhaft is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Black People under Nazi Rule: Perspectives on the ‘Racial State’” at the Wiener Library in London.

2012: The Washington Jewish Film Festival and the Hebrew Language are among the sponsors of the scheduled screening of “Four Pairs of Shoes” at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

2012: Israeli singer-song writer Onili (Nili Ohayon) is scheduled to perform at Littlefiled in Brooklyn.

2012: Israel has not done enough to carry out the directive issued by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to increase the country's aerial firefighting capabilities, in spite of the growing threat of wildfires posed by rockets and missiles pointed at the Israeli home-front both from the north and south, the state comptroller's report stated today.

2012:"Incoming Egyptian ambassador to Israel Atef Salem presented President Shimon Peres with his official credentials at the President's Residence in Jerusalem today. Salem, the first ambassador sent by new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, said at the ceremony that Cairo is committed to all agreements with Israel, including the peace agreement."

2012: Friends and family look forward to celebrating the birthday of Laurie Silber a pillar of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jewish community whose efforts has included multiple tours as President of Temple Judah, enthusiastic singing member of Shir Yehuda, long-time Sunday School teacher as well as a loving wife, devoted mother and “grand” grandmother An Ashish Chayil in the truest sense of the term.

2013(13^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Eighty-four year old Emmy award winning producer Lou Scheimer passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/business/media/lou-scheimer-tv-cartoon-producer-dies-at-84.html?hpw&_r=1&

2013: At the Library of Congress, the Czech film series that features movies with Jewish themes is scheduled to show “Four Pairs of Shoes.”

http://www.mutualinspirations.org/archive/2012/events/docs-in-salute2/

2013: The Center For Jewish History is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem” featuring Jeremy Dauber author of The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to present “Behind the Scenes of Elegy” in which Ron Hirsen discusses his play that “reveals the family dynamic between Holocaust survivors and the next generation.”

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the National Archives are scheduled to present “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage”

2013: Middle Eastern vocalist and composer Galeet Dardashti is scheduled to demonstrate the melismatic vocal ornaments present in Mizrachi Jewish music and Persian classical music to students at Tulane University

2013: US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism following an IDF guided tour of a recently unearthed tunnel running beneath the border with the Gaza Strip today. (As reported Naama Barak)

2013: While Israel issued no official response to a Washington Post report today that claimed Turkey had deliberately exposed a network of up to 10 Iranians working for the Mossad, a former Israeli spy chief fumed that, if accurate, the incident constituted a grave betrayal by Turkey of years of unwritten understandings between the two intelligence communities.

2014: SukkahPDX 2014 , Juried Outdoor Design Exhibit sponsored by the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to come to an end.

2014(23^rdof Tishrei, 5775): Simchat Torah

2014: In the UK, the Oxford University Jewish Society chaplains are scheduled to host a festive lunch at their home.

2014: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Ritual Committee hosts a Pizza dinner prior to the Consecration Ceremony honoring the newest youngster in the Religious School.

OCTOBER 18

67 CE: Roman soldiers captured Gamla, a fortress in Israel's Golan region, and killed all its inhabitants. The ancient historian Josephus Flavius, a leader of the Jewish revolt against Rome, fortified Gamla as a main stronghold in 66 CE. The Romans attempted to take the city by means of a siege ramp, but were turned back by the defenders; only on the second attempt did they succeed in penetrating the fortifications and conquering the city. Thousands of inhabitants were slaughtered, while others chose to jump to their deaths from the top of the cliff. The location of ancient Gamla was discovered in archeological excavations during the 1970s; the remains have been preserved as a national park (As reported by Aish)

323: Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine's sole control over the Roman Empire. Constantine is perhaps best known for being the first Roman Emperor to endorse Christianity. To put it mildly, Constantine tipped the scales in favor of Christianity and helped begin a downward spiral for European Jewry for an extended period of time. This is an example of the fact that Christianity owes its dominant position to the power of the state. As one author has pointed out in a recent bestseller, the Sword of Constantine was the vehicle for empowering the Cross of the Church.

412:Cyril was made Pope or Patriarch of Alexandria. Two years later, he “incited the Greeks to kill or expel the Jews. He forced his way into the synagogue at the head of a mob, expelled the Jews and gave their property to the crowd. The Prefect Orestes, who refused to condone this behavior, was set upon and almost stoned to death. Only one Jew, Adamanlius, agreed to be baptized. Within a few years Jews were allowed to return, but a majority of them returned only after the Mohammedans conquered Egypt.”

1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock. His treatment of a Christian shrine provides an insight as to how Islam treated the holy sites of other religions. In other words, Islam’s current claims to the Temple Mount are consistent with a pattern of usurpation and destruction.

1035: Sancho III, King of Navarre, called by some, the Great, was assassinated during a revolt. Four officials and sixty Jews were put to death during that revolt, because the locals considered Jews to be "property" of the crown.

1210: Pope Innocent III excommunicates German leader Otto IV. This was part of Innocent’s drive to become the dominant power in Europe. Jews will recognize him as the true father of the Inquisition and the driving force behind the Fourth Lateran Council that served to demean the Jewish people and force them to live a life isolated from their Christian neighbors which would ensure their impoverishment.

1270: The Last Crusade ended. The Crusades began in 1095 with the People’s Crusade. These first Crusaders moved through Central Europe like a giant wave attacking the local Jewish communities as they moved toward the Holy Land. There were eight crusades, the last two led by the French King, Louis IX known as St. Louis. St. Louis actually died of the plague in 1270 in Tunis thus failing to reach the Holy Land. Many historians see the Crusades as a negative in Jewish History. The slaughter of the Jews in Europe by the Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land and the slaughter of the Jews of Jerusalem by the Crusaders once they got there are two examples for this view. The fact that the Crusaders lost out boded well for the Jews since Islamic dominated societies at this time provided better treatment for the Jewish citizens.

1356: Basel, Switzerland was destroyed by an earthquake which was the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps. In all likelihood, no Jews died in the earthquake since the Jewish community in Basel had been dissolved in 1349 when 600 adults were burned to death and the children were forcibly baptized in response to claims that the Jews were well-poisoners who were responsible for the Black Death.

1503: Pope Pius III passed away. The Papacy of Pius III was one of the shortest in history since it had begun on September 22, 0f 1503. He was a compromise Pope who was preceded by Alexander VI and followed by Julius II, two the Medici popes who showed some sympathy for the Jews and otherwise left them alone while they pursued other, more worldly interests. There are those who think that Pius may have died as the victim of sort of Medici induced plot.

1571: In Mexico, an inquisition was set up that remained in force until the end of the eighteenth century.

1635: Urban VIII issued “Cum sicut acceptimus” a papal bull dealing with the requirement to feed poor Jews imprisoned for failure to pay their debts.

1739(16^th of Tishrei, 5500):António José da Silva, a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu) fell victim to the Inquisition suffering death in an auto-da-fé.

1747: In London, establishment of the Sephardi Jews’ Hospital (Beth Holim).

1747: Three Jewish doctors, Jacob de Castro Sarmento, Dr. Phillip de la Cour and Dr. Joseph Vaz de Silva offered their services to the newly opened Beth Holim - The Sephardi Jewish Hospital.

1748: Signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession. The Jews of Silesia would now live under Prussian rule instead of Austrian governance. Silesia would eventually become part of Poland. This is an excellent example of how the Jews never moved; the nations of Europe kept redrawing their boundaries so that a Jew, depending upon the time period could be an Austrian, a German or a Pole. Breslau, which at one time was home to a significant Jewish community, is located in Silesia.

1762: Birthdate of Lazarus Bendavid, the native of Berlin who became a leading mathematician and philosopher.

1763: Uriah and Eva Hendricks gave birth to Richa Hendricks who would marry Abraham Gomez

1764: Uriah and Eva Hendricks gave birth to Rebecca Eve Hendricks who married Solomon Levy

1844: “Under the editorship of Joseph Mitchell,” The Jewish Chronicle “to the title of The Jewish Chronicle and Working Man’s Friend.”

1851(22nd of Tishrei, 5612): Shemini Atzeret

1851: The New York Times began publishing. Contrary to popular misconception the paper was not founded by Jews. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady" or The Times, the newspaper was founded as The New-York Daily Times by Henry J. Raymond and George Jones as a sober alternative to the more partisan newspapers that dominated the New York journalism of the time. In 1896, the times was purchased by Adolph Simon Ochs, an American Jewish reporter of Bavarian background who rescued it from near oblivion, increasing its readership from 9,000 at the time of his purchase to 780,000 by the 1920s. His daughter, Iphigene Bertha Ochs, married Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who became publisher of the Times after his father-in-law. Her son Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger also became publisher of the Times. The Times may be owned by Jews but it sure is not a Jewish newspaper.

1859: In Paris, pianist Michal Bergson and Katherin Levison, the daughter of an English doctor gave birth to French philosopher, author and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature Henri Bergson.

1863(22nd of Tishrei, 5764): Shemini Atzertz

1867: Birthdate of Adolf Büchler “a Hungarian-Austrian rabbi, historian and theologian. In 1887 he began his theological studies at the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, and at the same time studied in the department of philosophy of the university under Ignác Goldziher and Moritz Kármán. Büchler continued his studies at the Breslau Seminary, and in 1890 graduated as PhD at Leipzig University, his dissertation being Zur Entstehung der Hebräischen Accente, which was afterward published in the Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften of 1891. Büchler returned to Budapest to finish his theological studies, and was graduated as rabbi in 1892. He then went to Oxford for 1 year, where he worked under the direction of his uncle, Adolf Neubauer, and published an essay, "The Reading of the Law and Prophets in a Triennial Cycle". The same year he accepted a call as instructor at the Vienna Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching Jewish history, Bible, and Talmud. He became Principal of Jews' College in London, in 1906. He passed away in 1939.

1869: In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Temple Emanu-El was formed under the leadership of David Adler and Herny Friend.

1871: It was reported today that 800 buildings have been burned by arsonists in Boguslav who are described as “fanatical oppressors of the Jews.” [Boguslav is a city in the Kiev district of the Ukraine which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. The Ukraine was the scene of periodic spasm of anti-Semitism from the 17^th century through the 20^th century.]

1873: “Explorations in the East” published today examines recent archaeological discoveries including the Stone of Moab which was uncovered five years ago. Questions still remain about its authenticity. There is a thriving traffic in fake ancient antiques some of which are attributed to Professor Shapira a noted Orientalist living in Jerusalem. [Moses Shapira would be involved in several cases where he was accused of forging or creating relics. These charges would contribute to his death in 1884. Shapira was born a Jew but became an Anglican while living in Palestine.]

1873: Based on information that first appeared in Germany’s Cologne Gazette, it was reported today that the Kingdom of Poland has a total population of six million people, over 800,000 of whom are Jews meaning that they make up about 13 per cent of the total. Since 1816, the Jewish population has quadrupled. The eastern districts of the kingdom have the largest proportions of Jewish citizens while the western districts have a larger proportion of Germans in their population.

1878(21st of Tishrei, 5639): Hoshana Raba

1878: A meeting of property owners was held tonight at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at #110 West 42^nd Street to protest the construction of a horse-railroad at this location. The protesting property owners include Jews and non-Jews who are united in a desire to protect their aggregate investment of $1,730,000

1878: It was reported today that Italy, France and the United Kingdom have informed the government at Belgrade that they will not recognize Serbian independence until the civil and political of its Jewish citizens are guaranteed.

1879: At tonight’s meeting of St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City, the report of the house physician stated that in the past fiscal year, the hospital treated 1,216 patients two of whom were Jews.

1880: Birthdate of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky. There is no way that this blog can do justice to the life of this complicated person who played such an active role in the activities that led to the creation of the state of Israel. His untimely death in 1940 prevented him from seeing the horrors of the Holocaust and the final fruits of his labors. Regardless of your view of his Revisionist wing of the Zionist movement all would do well to learn more about him.

1880: As of today, in the past six months the Jews of Newcastle-upon-Tyne have purchased beef from 15 different shipments from the United States. This is an indication that American meat is gaining in acceptability among the British since the “the Jews are the most particular race of people upon the face of the earch grading the wholesome state of their butcher’s meat.”

1881: It was reported today that 131 Russian Jewish immigrants were on board the SS Italy when it docked at Castle Garden.

1881: It was reported at tonight’s annual meeting of the Society of St. Luke’s Hospital that the Episcopal institution had treated 1,665 patients in the past year, seven of whom were Jewish.

1881: “Mr. Jacobsohn’s Grievance” published today described the suit that Adolph Jacobsohn has brought against Moses Keniger. The Plaintiff claims that the Respondent has defamed him by claiming that he “failed to fast and pray on Yom Kippur” and that, instead, he had gone to Connecticut “to purchase goods.” Jacobsohn is seeking two thousand dollars in damages because he claims that his fellow Orthodox Jews have refused to do business with him.

1882: In New York City, a concert sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be held in Chickering Hall this evening.

1883: There were several families of Russian Jewish immigrants aboard the SS Canada when it arrived in New York today.

1883: Henry J. Greenberg, a thirty year old Jewish peddler from Huntingdon County, PA, registered at Hartman’s Hotel in the Bowery.

1884:Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at New York’s Temple Beth-El will deliver the address at the centenary birthday celebration being sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association tonight.

1884: An “informal celebration” marking the 100^th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore was held “in the last chapel of the Five Points House of Industry. N.W. Platzek, President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association provided the opening remarks to the standing room only crowd during which he praised Montefiore and introduced the evening’s main speaker, Dr. Kohler, Rabbi of Temple Bethel. Kohler, who began his speech in English, but switched to German so that all assembled could understand spoke glowing of Montefiore’s efforts including those alleviate the suffering of the Jews of Russia.

1884: Birthdate of Emmanuel “Manny” Shinwell, the British trade unionist who would become a member of Clement Attlee’s government – the first Labour government in British history.

1885: “A Magazine Library” published today provides a look at various traditions and tales based on folklore including The Merchant of Venice which Shakespeare seemed to have completely twisted from its Italian origins. “According to an authority from 131 years, in the time of Pope Sixtus, Paul Sedchi insured his ships with Samson Ceneda, a Jewish underwriter…” It was the gentile Secchi who bet the pound of flesh meaning that when his ships were lost he was the one who “insisted on taking his pound” from Ceneda, the Jew. In response to all of these the Pope said: “Go ahead Secchi carve your meat rare; but we wold advise you to careful it you cut a scruple more or less than is due you shall certainly be hanged.” (Editor’s Note: The Pope would be “Sixtus” not Sextus. In terms of the reference to Shakespeare it might be a reference to Sixtus V, one of the Popes issued a bull against the Blood Libel since the only other Sixtus it could be was Sixtus IV who instituted the Inquisition)

1886: A bail of $300 was set yesterday in the Essex Market Police Court for Wolf Bloom a 26 year old Russian Jew who is charged with violating the Sunday “closing laws.”

1886: Henry L. Sayles is scheduled to on trial in the Court of General Sessions for his role of alleged financial improprieties surrounding the Broadway Surface Railroad in New York.

1888: Attendance at Poole Theatre fell off markedly tonight following the withdrawal of support of the production by the Jewish Order of the Harp of David,

1889(23^rdof Tishrei, 5650): Simchat Torah

1889: In Hamilton, Ohio, Rose and Samuel Hurst gave birth to Fannie Hurst, the St. Louis educated novelist who wrote Imitation Of Life

1890: Mayor Grant responded to a request by a committee led by Samuel Roeder for the appointment of Coroner Ferdinand Levy to one of the vacant Police Justiceships by expressing doubt that such a vacancy existed but adding that even if one did he would not fill it until after the elections had been held.

1891: It was reported today that “Count Koffsky, the Cossack Chief of Police whose brutalities in evicting the poor Jews of Moscow last March shocked the whole world has been” accused of being part of a forgery ring involving 200,000 rubles.

1893: “Otto Irving Wise’s Candidacy” published today provided background information on the Republican nominee for the Assemblyman in the 21^st District including the fact that he is the son of Dr. Aaron Wise, the rabbi at Rodolph Shalom, the brother of Stephen S. Wise, the rabbi at Madison Avenue Synagogue and the editor of The Hebrew World

1894: The Jockey Club purchased Baron Hirsch's three year old English horse Matchbox for 18,000 English pounds

1894: The Lexow Committee which had already heard testimony from Senator Cantor and from Jewish soda water peddlers on the Lower East Side continued its hearings into charges of corruption in the New York City Police Department.

1894: A circular printed in Hebrew advertising a meeting of Republicans in New Haven to be held tonight when translated revealed “a bitter attack on the Irish and requesting the Russians to turn out to the mass meeting and denounce the Irish.” (The Republicans canceled the meeting for fear of trouble.)

1896: German Lutheran missionary Johann Ludwig Schneller, the founder of Jerusalem’s Schneller Orphanage passed away

1896: In London, operetta composer Victor Hallaender and his wife gave birth to German film composer Friedrich Hallaender.

1898(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5659): David Levi, who fought in the Italian wars of independence and whose literary efforts included “Il Profeta,” a five act drama set in the final days of the First Temple, passed away today.

1898(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5659): Eighty-nine year old Ralph Disraeli, the son Isaac D’Israeli passed away today in Yorkshire.

1898: Herzl has an audience with Wilhelm II in Constantinople.

1898: Louis Selig, Director of the Hebrew Charities in Detroit is scheduled to be one of the speakers at the Civic-Philanthropic Conference that opens today in Battle Creek, Michigan.

1898: United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.

1902:Herzl begins his trip to London in search of support for the Jewish homeland.

1902: Inaugural service of the Jewish Religious Union which led to the formation of the Liberal Jewish Movement.

1902(17^thof Tishrei, 5663): Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkoth

1902(17^thof Tishrei, 5663):Reuben Asher Braudes, the Wilna born Hebrew author whose novels included The Repentant, Religion and Life and The Morning Light and editor of the Yiddish weekly Yedhudit passed away today in Vienna.

1903:Hedwig Bergman, the daughter of Rabbi Adolf Rosenzweig and Rabbi Juda Bergman gave birth to physicist Ernst David Bergman, “the father of the Israeli nuclear program.”

1903: Birthdate of Zygmund William Birnbaum a native of Lwów, Austria-Hungary who gain fame as Bill Birnbaum, Professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

1904: Birthdate of Chaim Shirman an Israeli scholar of medieval Spanish Jewish poetry who passed away in 1981.

1905: This marked the first day of what was the blackest week in Russian Jewish history until the Holocaust. The Black Hundreds and other bands of reactionary, anti-Semites were formed during and after the Russian Revolution of 1905. They alleged that the Jews were responsible for Russia’s many military, economic and political ills. These government sanctioned militias killed hundreds of Jews and injured thousands more. Over forty thousand homes and shops were destroyed in one week of rioting.

1905: Start of a Pogrom in Rostov.

1908(23^rdof Tishrei, 5669): Simchat Torah

1910(15^thof Tishrei, 5671): Sukkoth

1910: Birthdate of Morris Kertzer, the Canadian born rabbi who earned a bronze start for bravery during the Battle of Anzio and who became an active leader in the move to improve relations between Christians and Jews after the war.

http://americanjewisharchives.org/collections/ms0709/

1911: It was reported today that“James Loeb, the banker, who retired from the firm of Kuhn, Loeb Co, a few years ago, has made arrangements for the translation into English and publication at his own expense of the classical authors of all periods.” The volumes in question were originally written in Latin or Greek. Professor Salomon Reinach, the French archaeologist and intellectual (who happens to be Jewish) brought the need for this project to Mr. Loeb’s attention. Details are not available at this time because Mr. Loeb is traveling.

1912: The First Balkan War begins. When the war ended Salonica, with its large Jewish population that numbered approximately 60,000 souls would be detached from the Ottoman Empire and became part of Greece. There was concern among the Jewish population about how they would be affected by the change. The new Greek government moved to gain support among the Jews and was one of the first supporters of the Balfour Declaration when it was issued in 1917.

1914: During World War I, The Yorkshire Herald, an English newspaper, reported on the Czar’s awarding the Cross of St. George to a Jewish soldier named Leo Osnas by that his display of bravery “has won freedom for the Jews in Russia; he has gained for his race the right to become officers in the Russian army and navy, hitherto denied them, and he has so delighted the Russian government that it has since proclaimed that henceforth Jews in the Empire shall enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Surely no man’s winning the Victoria Cross ever resulted in such magnificent results for a subject people as this.” As Martin Gilbert points, the Herald went a bit too far in its praise since under the Czars the Jews never attained full citizenship nor did the persecution ever stop.

1919: A pogrom began at Ivankiv, a town the Ukrainian district of Kiev. This was part of a series of pogroms that racked the Ukraine during 1919 during the Civil War that found the Whites, the Cossacks and the Reds battling for control of what had been the Russian Empire.

1920: Birthdate of actress and political activist Melina Mercouri, the wife of Jewish movie director Jules Dassin who was a victim of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist.

1926: U.S. premiere of “The Eagle of the Sea,” a silent film produced by B.P. Schulberg and co-starring Florence Vidor, the future wife of Jascha Heifitz.

1927(22nd of Tishrei, 5688): Shemini Atzertz

1927:In Paris, Sholom Schwartzbard goes on trial for allegedly having assassinated Symon Petliura the Ukrainian leader who played a leading role in the pogroms during which Schwartzbard’s family was wiped out. Despite the fact that Schwartzbard had in fact shot him, a jury would acquit him after an eight day trial

1927: Columbia Broadcasting System went on the air. This radio network lost money in its first year, and two years later it was purchased by William S. Paley, the son of Jewish cigar manufacturer from Philadelphia.

1927: Birthdate of Marvin Joseph Rotblatt, a left-handed relief pitcher who toiled for the Chicago White Sox for “three seasons in the late 1940s and early 1950’s” (As reported by Richard Goldstein

1929: Birthdate of New Jersey state Democratic political leader Byron Baer. He passed away in June, 2007. “In 2005, shortly before he retired from the Senate, the New Jersey Association of Jewish Federations presented Baer with the Shem Tov and Distinguished Service awards. Jeffrey Maas, then executive director of the association, said Baer was responsible for making sure Jewish community centers, nursing homes, and social service agencies received extensive state funding.”

1933: The Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation was officially dedicated today. “The Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation, located in central New Jersey, was a major Boy Scout training facility for almost 50 years. It was named after Mortimer L. Schiff, the father of John M. Schiff; both of whom were World Scout Committee members and notable early Boy Scouts of America (BSA) leaders.The land was purchased for the BSA by Mrs. Jacob Schiff in memory of her son, Mortimer, who died while President of the BSA in 1931…When the Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation was closed, Nassau County Council's Camp Wauwepex in Wading River, New York was renamed as the John M. Schiff Scout Reservation, in honor of Moritmer's son, John.”

1933: Birthdate of Irwin Mark Jacobs the Cornell University electrical engineer who co-founded Qualcomm.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/qualcomm-founder-a-fan-long-before-start-up-nation/

1934: U.S. premiere of “Man of Aran,” a “British fictional documentary” produced by Michael Balcon.

1934: “An exchange agreement to facilitate the importation of Palestinian oranges into Germany has been devised by the Anglo-Palestine Bank of London and Tel Aviv and the banking firm of M.M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg.” The agreement will “enable Germany to buy about three million dollars worth of Jaffa oranges during the coming year…”

1935(21st of Tishrei, 5696): Hoshana Raba

1935: The German government introduces the anti-Semitic Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People.

1936: “A Detroit all star soccer team…held the Maccabees of Tel Aviv…to a 2 to 2 tie before 10,000 spectators at the University of Detroit stadium.”

1936: The SS Excalibur of the American Exports line unloaded it cargo at Tel Aviv, making it he first American ship to use the newly built port facilities at the first “all Jewish metropolis”

1937, The Palestine Post reported that renewed Arab terror claimed three more Jewish victims, while violence continued throughout the country. One Arab assailant was killed in the Old City of Jerusalem. In Ness Ziona an 11-year-old Yemenite boy, Eliahu Sherabi, was fatally shot in the head while sleeping in his house. Jewish buses were shot at and armed Arabs attacked workers of the Palestine Quarries near Motza. Arabs had also attacked Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, where the children's house became their main target. In Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jew, Shmuel Guttman, was stabbed five times in the Mea She' street, near the Sheller compound, by an Arab who escaped. The town was under night curfew for more than a week.

1937: Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on “Problems of Youth” at a luncheon at the Hotel Astor. The luncheon is the opening event of a campaign by the Women’s League for Palestine to raise $100,000 to build “a home for immigrant girls in Jerusalem.” Mayor La Guardia will also address the gathering while Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Rabbia Israel H. Leinthal will open the dirve.

1937: As Arab violence continued to grow, a gang of terroirsts attacked the Jewish settlement at Artuf in southern Palestine and a band of twenty armed Arabs “attacked the Baharieh police post between Hebron and Beersheba” and made off with weapons belonging to the British police.

1938(23^rd of Tishrei, 5699): Simchat Torah

1938: During his third visit to Germany, Charles Lindbergh attends a dinner at the U.S. embassy in Berlin during which Hermann Göring presents him with the Service Cross of the German Eagle with Star, also known as the Order of the German Eagle (Verdienstorden vom Deutschen Adler).Personally created by Adolf Hitler, this is the highest honor which the Nazi government can give to a foreigner and was last presented to Henry Ford two months earlier.

1938: With Jerusalem under a virtual state of siege because of the worst outbreak of Arab violence since 1929, the British declared a state of virtual martial law and sent troops into the Old City aimed at driving out the “rebel bands.” “The Mufti of Jerusalem, leader of the rebellious Moslems, declared from exile in Syria, that the Arab peace terms included an independent Ara state and an end to Jewish immigration into Palestine.

1939: In Poland, Arthur Weissmann, the brother of Holocaust survivor and author Gerda Weissmann complied with the German summons to register for military service and was never seen again.

1941: When it appeared that the Germans might defeat the Red Army outside Moscow, Chaim Kaplan the director of Hebrew school in Warsaw wrote in his diary, “a Nazi victory means complete annihilation, morally and materially, for all the Jews of Europe.”

1941: Mass executions of Soviet Jews in Borisov, Byelorussia, 50 miles east of Minsk, Byelorussia, are carried out by an Einsatzkommando (special killing squads)following a night of celebration by German troops.

1942: The Nazis gassed 1,594 deportees from Holland at Auschwitz.

1943: Pope Pius explained his failure to speak out against the Nazi deportation of the Jews of Rome. He told Harold Tittman, the United Statesrepresentative to the Vaticanthat a “demonstrative censure” might provoke a class with the SS “that could benefit only the Communists.”

1944(1st of Cheshvan, 5705): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1944: Seven hundred Plaszów, Poland, camp deportees are sent from the Gross-Rosen, Germany, camp to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. Oskar Schindler, owner of a newly opened munitions factory in Brünnlitz, persuades the SS to give him all 700 Jews for use as workers. Schindler also makes arrangements to have 300 Jewish women transferred from Auschwitz to his factory.

1944: As the Red Army drives toward Berlin, the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia. This would help to lead to Soviet control of Czechoslovakia after the war; a fact that proved oddly beneficial to Israel when it was fighting for its independence. The Israelis had no aircraft. There was a store of surplus ME-109’s in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets gave the Czechs permission to sell the planes to the Jews which meant that the first fighter craft flown by the Israelis in May of 1948 were planes left over from the Luftwaffe.

1944(1st of Cheshvan, 5705): Eva Heyman and Gisi Fleischmann, head of the women's Zionist movement in pre-war Slovakia were murdered at Birkenau.

1944(1^st of Cheshvan, 5705): Forty-six year old composer, conductor and pianist Viktor Ullman was gassed today at Auschwitz-Birkenau

http://www.viktorullmannfoundation.org.uk/

http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/

1945: Nazi war crimes trials opened in Nuremberg, Germany. This week marked the appearance of The Nuremberg Interviews edited by Robert Gellately. The book is a collection of the interviews conducted by a Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist. He was assigned by the Army to interview the defendants and the witnesses at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. His detailed notes which have been annotated and edited by Professor Gellately provide a chilling window into the minds of those who made the Holocaust.

1946: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his wife gave birth to Rabbi and MK Ya’akov Yosef.

1947: In three separate incidents seen as part of the work of Jewish fighters seeking to end British rule in Palestine, a British army truck “was blown up by a mine just west of Petah Tikva injuring two soldiers, “another army truck hit two mines near Benyaminia” without any casualties and an RAF jeep “ran over a mine on the road near Hadera wrecking the Jeep” without any casualties.

1947: Birthdate of songwriter Laura Nyro. She passed away in 1997.

1947: “Several …banners with legends such as ‘Don’t dissect our counrty’ and ‘Remember the Warsaw ghetto’ went up on the wire in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this afternoon.”

1948(15^thof Tishrei, 5709): For the first time in almost 2,000 years Jews celebrate Sukkoth in their own country.

1948:Gertrude Berg made her television debut as Bronx housewife Molly Goldberg on NBC's Chevrolet on Broadway in 1948. The Goldbergs began running as a comedy series on NBC radio in 1929 and became one of television's earliest and most popular situation comedies beginning in 1949. Berg produced and scripted the shows and portrayed Molly Goldberg, the family matriarch. Each show offered audiences a pleasant, often comical portrayal of the life of a second-generation Jewish American family. Assimilation into American culture was a prominent theme throughout the series with the last season incorporating the family's move from their Bronx apartment to a fictitious suburb. After the series' cancellation in 1955, Berg went on to win a Tony Award in 1959 for her work in the Broadway comedy A Majority of One by Leonard Spigelgass (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1950: In Brooklyn Lola (née Liska) Schleifer and textile manufacturer Morris Wasserstein gave birth to Tony Award winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, the author of “The Heidi Chronicles.”

1954: Texas Instruments introduces the first transistor radio. “The transistor was invented and patented in the 1920s by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. Its re-invention some twenty years later earned Bell Telephone Laboratories the Nobel Prize, but Bell Labs was forced to abandon all patent claims to the field-effect transistor (which completely dominates modern electronics) because of Lilienfeld's prior work.”

1954: "The Week in Religion" aired for the last time over Dumonttelevision. First broadcast in March 1952, this ecumenical Sunday evening panel show divided the hour into 20-minute segments each for Protestant, Catholic and Jewish news.

1967: MGM released “Far from the Madding Crowd” directed by John Schlesinger with a script by Frederic Raphael.

1973 (22nd of Tishrei, 5734): Shemini Atzeres

1973 (22nd of Tishrei, 5734): German-born American philosopher, Leo Strauss, passed away.

1973: During the Yom Kippur War, the Israelis were able to finally put a pre-fabricated bridge across the Suez Canal. Moving the bridge into position and actually using it to span the Canal was a costly operation. One hundred IDF soldiers died in the attempt with forty-one dying in a single night. The bridge made it easier to move tanks across the Canal but there was no lightening quick strike as had been seen in 1956 and 1967. In fact, if the Egyptians had pressed home their advantage while the bridge was being put in place, the whole plan would have ended in failure. This is another example of how much the Yom Kippur War was “a near run thing.”

1973: Guri Palter and Itzhak Bar’am were taken prisoner after ejecting from their F-4E Phantom Jet that had fallen victim to an Egyptian SAM.

1973: Doron Shalev and Yosef Lev-Ari were taken prisoner after ejecting from their F-4E Phantom Jet that had fallen victim to an Egyptian SAM.

1973:The half-track in which Eliezer Kalina was riding was hit by Syrian gunfire killing the two other occupants and leaving Kalina so gravely wounded that his leg had to be amputated. He overcame adversity to form a volleyball team which he led to three gold medals and one silver medal at the Paralympic Games.

1973: During the Yom Kippur war, Colonel Giora "Hawkeye" Epstein went on a two day spree in which he downed 17 enemy aircraft.

1974: After two years of negotiations over the proposed Jackson-Vanick Amendment, Secretary Henry Kissinger and Senator Henry Jackson exchanged a series of letters that would pave the way for Jews to leave the Soviet Union in large numbers with relatively little impediment.

1981: Publication of “How Clifford Odets Spent His last Desperate Days” by Margaret Brenman-Gibson

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/18/theater/how-clifford-odets-spent-his-last-desperate-days-sing.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A17%22%2C%221%22%3A%22RI%3A8%22%7D&pagewanted=print

1982(1st of Cheshvan, 5743): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1982(1st of Cheshvan, 5743): French political leader and former Premier, Pierre Mendès France passed away. Political accomplishments aside, Mendes France may be best remembered for his choice of beverages. Convinced that the French drank too much wine, Mendes France made a point of drinking milk in public. When he first appeared on the American news program Meet the Press, a class of milk was prominently placed next to the French leader much to the delight of the interviewers.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/19/obituaries/mendes-france-who-lead-france-out-of-indochina-is-dead-at-75.html

1984(22nd of Tishrei, 5745): Shemini Atzeret

1986(15^th of Tishrei): Sukkoth

1987(25th of Tishrei, 5748): Eighty-seven year old Philip Levine, the renowned pathologist who is the namesake of the “Philip Levine Award” passed away today.(As reported by Peter Flint)

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/20/obituaries/dr-philip-levine-87-is-dead-discovered-blood-s-rh-factor.html

1987: “In Jerusalem of the 1800’s” published today, Nitza Rosovsky, curator of the exhibits at the Harvard Semitic Museum and author of Jerusalem Walks provides a virtual walking of Jerusalem highlighting the history of the city by referencing various architectural gems

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/18/travel/in-jerusalem-of-the-1800-s.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

1988: Israel's supreme court upheld the ban on Meir Kahane`s Kach Party as racist.

1988 ((7th of Cheshvan 5749): Bar Mitzvah ofAharon Mordechai Rokeach the only child and heir of the current Rebbe of Belz, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, he was named after his father's uncle, Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, the fourth Belzer Rebbe, and his father's father, Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgorai.

1988: In Waterford, CT, premiere of “Italian American Reconciliation” co-starring Helen Hanft.

1988: ABC broadcast the first episode of “Roseanne,” starring Roseanne Barr.

1990: "O you beloved Spain, ‘mother’ we call you, and throughout our lives we will not forget your sweet language. Even though you have expelled us as a stepmother from your womb, we have not stopped loving you as our holy ground, where our ancestors are buried and where the ashes of thousands of tormented and burned still lie..." Haham Solomon Gaon quoted at the ceremony of the Prince of Asturias Concord Award, Oviedo, Spain.

1992(21s of Tishrei, 5753): Hoshana Raba

1992(21s of Tishrei, 5753):Yoram Ben-Porath, the president of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leading Israeli economist, died today in an automobile accident. He was 55 years old. Also killed in the accident near the town of Eilat were his wife, Yael Cohen Ben-Porath, 42, a lecturer in the university's philosophy department, and their 5-year-old son, Yahali. Mr. Ben-Porath was named president of Hebrew University, Israel's largest and oldest, in 1990. He had previously served as its rector. He received his doctorate from Harvard and was known for his research on surveys and random sampling. During the 1980's he was active in the Israeli political movement Peace Now, which favors conciliation with the Arabs.

1998:The New York Times book section included a review of The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gatesby Jewish author Wendy Goldman Rohm.

2001: U.S. premiere of “The Grey Zone,” a film based on Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account written by Dr. Miklós Nyiszli co-starring Harvey Keitel and produced by Avi Lerner.

2002: Congregation Har Sinai, a congregation that traces its origins to pre-Civil War Baltimore began the dedication of its new facility in Owings Mills, MD

2003(22^ndof Tishrei, 5764): Shemini Atzeret

2004: The New York Times book section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jews including Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh and The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary by Robert Alter

2004: The Jewish Women's Archive joined with National Women's Philanthropy of the United Jewish Communities for an historic celebration of 350 years of American Jewish community. The evening showcased Jewish women, of the past and the present, whose boldness, vision, and hard work have shaped the American and the American Jewish life. Part of the International Lion of Judah conference in Washington, D.C., the event was attended by more than 1,200 women from across the United States. An extraordinary group of contemporary women of achievement were brought together for this evening to reflect upon their own work and careers within the historical context of 350 years of Jewish women creating community in North America. Honorees included Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Representative Shelley Berkley; communal leaders Shoshana Cardin, Amy Friedkin, Carole Solomon, and Linda Rae Sher; artist Judy Chicago; actress Tovah Feldshuh; composers Debbie Friedman and Elizabeth Swados; cookbook author Joan Nathan; authors and activists Blu Greenberg, Ruth Gruber, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; Rabbi Sally J. Priesand; and Barnard College President Judith Shapiro.

2005:Matt Bloom unsuccessfully challenged Satoshi Kojima for the AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship.

2005: The Icon Festival, a celebration of science fiction and the imagination which is held yearly during the Hol Hamoed period of Sukkoth, begins at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.

2006:The exhibition "Israel - Art and Life 1906-2006," curated by Amnon Barzel, opens at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.

2006: French Jewish director’s O Jerusalem a film version of the history written thirty years ago by Collins and Lapierre premiered in Paris, France.

2006: The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz was not released to the public today as previously announced.

2007:The Center for Jewish History presents a screening of the documentary On My Way to Fathers Land a 1995 Hebrew Language film with English subtitles directed by Aner Premingerof Anthropology at the University of Illinois leads a discussion about the movie.

2007: Limmud FSU, the largest Jewish studies and cultural event ever to take place in Russia opened in Moscow.

2008: On the fifth day of the 24^th Haifa International Film festival, screenings of a variety of films including “A Jumpin Night in the Garden of Eden,” a 1980’s film that was the first cinematic effort to document the American Kletzmer revival.

2009 (30 Tishrei, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan I

2009:This afternoon the Open Door Reading Series at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD presents a reading by Gail Collins from "Words that Burn Within Me: Faith, Values, Survival," a book of poetry and prose by the late Hilda Stern Cohen.

2009: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem and an hitherto unpublished short story by Kurt Vonnegut appearing in his latest work "Look at the Birdie"

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity” by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and “Manhood For Amateurs” by Michael Chabon and the recently released paperback edition of “Writing In The Dark” a collection essays by David Grossman, the Israeli novelist and peace advocate who defends the necessity of literature in a violent world.

2009: The Washington Post features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Enemies of the People:My Family's Journey to America” by Kati Marton

2009: In Washington D.C., opening night of Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival

2009:In an opinion piece published today in The Times and Democrat newspaper, Bamberg County, GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County Chairman James Ulmer defended the fiscal policies of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, by saying he was "like Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves."

2010:Michal Govrin, author of Hold on to the Sun is scheduled to appear at the Library of Congress as part of the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.

2010: “Confessions of An Agent” published today in Sports Illustrated, Josh Luchs “a dyslexic Jewish kid” tells how he used $2,500 of his bar mitzvah money to pay a college player in violation of NCAA rules in hopes that he would become a client of Luchs. In the article Luchs gives detailed accounts of the various players he would illegally pay during his twenty year career.

2010:General Staff Forum members gathered this morning at the Rabin Center to mark 15 years since the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

2010: The New York Times featured a review of Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in His Laboratory by Patrick Wilcken

2010: A memorial service honoring the late William Coblentz one San Francisco’s most ardent champions of major civic projects and one of its most influential attorneys is scheduled to be held at the Herbst Theatre.

2010: A website providing information on over 20,000 works of art stolen by the Nazis from their Jewish owners during the 1930s and 1940s was launched today.

2011(20^thof Tishrei, 5772): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2011(20^thof Tishrei, 5772): Eight-nine year old Ruby Cohn, the academic who was the leading authority on Samuel Beckett, passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/arts/ruby-cohn-theater-scholar-and-beckett-authority-dies-at-89.html

2011(20^thof Tishrei, 5772): Norman Corwin, a producer and dramatist from the golden age of radio passed away today at the age of 101. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/arts/norman-corwin-pioneer-of-radio-dies-at-101.html?pagewanted=all

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to co-sponsor a screening of “The People v Leo Rank.”

2011: Rabbi Ita Paskind, the Assistant Rabbi of Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, Virginia, is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of lectures on “Aggadah's Influence in Development of Law in the Torah.”

2011:Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit today a strategic turning point in Hamas’s struggle against Israel.

2012: The 96^th Hadassah Convention is scheduled to come to an end in Jerusalem.

2012: Hayehudim, considered one of the most successful Rock bands in Israel, is scheduled to perform at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill

2012: Pianist Jeanne Golan is scheduled to perform the piano sonatas of Viktor Ullman under the sponsorship of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

2012:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a screening of “Everything is illuminated.”

2012: President Shimon Peres said today that the people of Iran should be encouraged to overthrow their government.

2012: A new centrist “super party,” bringing together former prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Kadima chair Tzipi Livni and popular political newcomer Yair Lapid, “is not going to happen,” Lapid said today.

2013: A screening of “Ghosts of the Third Reich” which “documents the stories of the descendants of the Nazis who confront their family’s past and communicate their most profound feelings of guilt by inheritance” is scheduled to take place today at the Library of Congress.

2013: In the UK, The Wiener Library is scheduled to present “Hitler’s Helpers: The Female Administrators of the Holocaust”

2013: Folk/Reggae/songwriting Rabbi Jack Gabriel is scheduled to lead a special Kabbalat Shabbat service at Kol Ami in Arlington, VA.

2013: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to slow down settlement construction today. (As reported by JP staff)

2013: Scattered showers fell in northern Israel this morning, eventually making their way to Tel Aviv in the early afternoon.

2013(14^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety-one year old airline victims advocate Hans Ephraimson-Abt passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/us/hans-ephraimson-abt-air-crash-victims-crusader-dies-at-91.html

2013(14^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Seventy-year old Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Manchester and husband of Jerusalem born children’s author Adèle Geras passed away today.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/20/norman-geras

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/10495887/Norman-Geras-obituary.html

2014(24^thof Tishrei, 5775): On Shabbat the cycle is scheduled to begin again with “Bereshit.”

http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2014: Four-time Tony nominee Tovah Feldshuh is scheduled to recreate her award-winning performance as Golda Meir in “Golda’s Balcony” at the Victoria Theatre.

2014: Louis Black is scheduled to appear the Seneca Allegany Casino in Salamanca, NY.

OCTOBER 19

1187: Pope Urban III passed away. Urban was a supporter of the Crusades, the cause of so much Jewish misery. A large part of his papacy was spent in struggle with Frederick I, the Emperor who issued “The Confirmation of Rights of the Jews of Regensburg” that stated, “We must make provision for them tom maintain their customs and secure peace for their persons and property.”

1216: King John of England died at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.Richard's brother John's lack of judgment and popularity meant that he was always short of money and support. While his barons might grumble at John's incompetence and resist his ever-increasing demands for money, the Jews had no such leverage. When the Baron’s forced him to sign the Magna Carta they included a clause that restricted claims of Jews against debtors who died owing them money. John pressed his Jews to provide a royal dowry for his daughter, Joan, followed too quickly by the massive so-called Bristol Tallage, which depleted the wealthiest Jews upon which it largely fell. Henry was only a nine year old child. As Henry III will also clash with the Barons and will look to the Jews as a source of revenue to prop up his throne.

1298: Two hundred Jews were massacred in Germany. This was part of a period half century of violence aimed against the Jews of Germany. Much of the popular sentiment was aroused by claims that Jews were using Christian blood to make matzoth. The clerics were working to enforce laws against any kind of intercourse between Christians and Jews. And the royalty was trying to figure out ways to strip the Jews of their wealth. It was this kind of violence that would cause Asher ben Yechiel (see above) to flee Germany in 1303.

1329 (9 Cheshvan 5090):Asher ben Yechiel passed away. Born in 1250 this great Talmudic commentator was known as Rabbenu Asher or the "Rosh". He fought against the over-philosophizing of his day. Asher was a unique case. He was Ashkenazi and had begun his work among the Jews of France of Germany. When his life was threatened in Germany he fled to Spain where he became rabbi of the Sephardic Jews of Toledo. His rabbinical academy attracted students from Europe and Russia. His works included "Diskei Rosh", discussions, over 1000 Responsa, a commentary of the MishnayotZerayimand Teharot, and notes on some Talmudic Tractates. He encouraged his pupil, Isaac ben Yoseph, to write Yesod Olam "Foundation of the World," a scientific work on astronomy and the calendar. At the time of his death he was preparing a codification of commentaries that for the first time included the views of the German and Spanish rabbinical authorities. His son, Jacob ben Asher, would finish his father’s task by writing a code called Turim.

1466: In Poland, the Thirteen Years War comes to an end with Polish forces victorious over the Teutonic Knights. This victory came during that period of time when Poland was on its way to becoming home to the largest Jewish population in Europe.

1469: Ferdinand II of Aragon wedded Isabella of Castile, a marriage that paved the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain. The marriage also paved the way to Spanish Inquisition, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. In other words, these two Hispanic lovebirds closed out the what had been one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in history and opened the door to what would become the most vibrant Jewish community in the history of the Diaspora.

1518: “Shealtiel a Sephardic Jew who had served as Kahya for twenty years was ousted from office by the community leaders, after many complaints of bribery and arbitrary taxes were lodged against him by Jews. The community banned him and his sons from holding the position of kahya or performing any other function involving contact with the Ottoman authorities.” (As described by the Jewish Virtual Library)

1735(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5496): Moses Kalman, grandfather of A.M. Rothschild passed away.

1739: In Portugal, Antonio Jose da Silva, who was a Converso born in Brazil to Converso parents was found guilty of heresy. He was a well-known dramatist and his works were popularly referred to as those of “The Jew.” Da Silva whose parents had also been persecuted by the inquisition was arrested numerous times and tortured. Although the King himself was inclined toward leniency, he was burned. At the same time, one of his plays was playing in a popular theater in Lisbon. Despite the King’s inclination towards leniency Da Silva was garroted and burnt at a Lisbon auto-da-fe. His wife, who witnessed his death, did not long survive him. At the time of his death, one of da Silva’s plays was being performed in a popular Lisbon theatre. Da Silva's tragic story has inspired several modern writers, including the Portuguese Camilo Castelo Branco (author of the novel O Judeu), who was himself of Converso origin.

1767: Birthdate of Salomon Heine, the Hamburg born banker who was the father of Amalie Friedlander and the uncle of Heinrich Heine.

1781: Emperor Joseph II issues the Toleration Decree in which the Jews of Austria were accorded civil and political equality.

1781: The articles of capitulation were signed today marking the end of the siege of Yorktown and for all intents and purposes the end of the American Revolution.

1783(23^rd of Tishrei, 5544): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since the signing of the Treaty of Paris marking the end of the American Revolution.

1803: In Great Britain, an official fast for success in the war against France begins.

1810: The Grand Duke of Frankfurt, a French official, resisted granting full equality to the Jews. A.M. Rothschild was sure that the Grand Duke was just holding out for a larger bribe.

1812:Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow. This marks the beginning of the end for the emancipation of the Jews of Europe that had followed in the wake of France’s military victories. The defeat at Moscow would hasten the return of the reactionaries. Figuratively, if not literally, ghetto doors that had been thrown open would be closed again.

1821(23^rd of Tishrei, 5582): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since Mexico and the nations of Central America threw off the yoke of Spanish rule.

1826: Birthdate German Jewish philosopher Manuel Joel who followed Abraham Geiger as the rabbi in Breslau.

1842: Birthdate of Adolph Meyer, the native of Natchez, Mississippi, who served represented Louisiana’s First Congressional District for 18 years.

1851(23^rd of Tishrei, 5612): As the turmoil that would lead to the coup that would end the Second Republic gripped France, Jews observed Simchat Torah

1854:Ernestine Rose, a leading early American advocate for women's rights, presided over the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphia which ended today. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)

1859: Birthdate of Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer whose trumped up treason trial would split French society and become a prime catalyst for the creation of the Zionist movement under Herzl. He died in 1935.

1863(23rd of Tishrei, 5764): Simchat Torah

1863: During the American Civil War, on the same day marking the end of the Jewish “holiday season” General U.S. Grant replaces William Rosecrans as Commander of the Army of the with General George Thomas. Thomas will appoint Major Alfred Mordecai Junior, Senior and Supervising Ordinance Officer of the Army of the Cumberland. Young Mordecai was a West Point Graduate and the son of one of the Army’s highest ranking Jewish officers in the pre-Civil War U.S. Army.

1864(19th of Tishrei, 5625): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

1864: During the American Civil War, under the command General Sheridan decisively and dramatically defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Cedar Creek. This victory marked the end of the Valley Campaigns of 1864. From this time on no Confederate Army could threaten Washington with invasion through the Shenandoah Valley and the rich valley farms would no longer be a source of supply for the armies of Robert E. Lee. The defeated Confederate was commanded by a general with a name straight out of Bereshit – Jubal Early. Major Lyon Levy Emanuel, a member of a prominent Jewish family from Philadelphia was among those fighting with Union in the Shenandoah Valley

1864: "Our Paris Correspondence" published today reported that "Baron Erlanger and his fair bride, Miss Slidell, were the prime pets of the brilliant feudal throng, and the joy at Baden-Baden knew no bounds…nothing remains of all the Summer's gay humbug but Erlanger’s courtship with Miss Slidell. The Erlangers are German Jews, originally from Marburg, a University town in the Electorate of Hessen, but the academical glories of that town made but little intellectual impression upon the Erlanger stock, who took themselves to Frankfort, where they attained to wealth by stock-jobbing, and to a baronetcy by the grace of the King of Portugal, to the great distress of Rothschild-- he being no longer the only Jew Baron…” Erlanger was a member of family of German-Jewish bankers who was head of the leading banking house in France. Miss Slidell was the daughter of John Slidell of Louisiana, a Confederate diplomat living in France who tried unsuccessfully to get the French to recognize the South’s independence during the Civil War. Erlanger was not the first Jew to marry into Slidell’s family. August Belmont was his brother-in-law. The Rothschild’s claim to the title Baron stemmed from the Austrian house of the famous banking family.

1876: Argentina completed legal reforms that would permit the establishment and consolidation of Jewish agricultural settlements.

1877: The report of a correspondent who is traveling with the Russian Army during the Czar’s war with the Ottoman Empire reported that there are more Jews at the Bulgarian town of Sistova now than on his last visit. He described the Jews as “more bestial than before.” Once he had reached the Czar’s headquarter encampment, the correspondent found himself eating food provided by “a firm of enterprising Israelites” that charges “Fifth Avenue Hotel prices.”

1878(22nd of Tishrei, 5639): Shemini Atzeret

1878: Birthdate of Jacob Sonderling, the German born American rabbi who helped to found the Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles, CA.

1879: In Bucharest, the Chamber of Deputies is scheduled to vote on a measure designed to resolve the issue of Jewish emancipation. Under the proposal, the Jews will have to apply individually for naturalization except for those who have served in the army. Jewish veterans will be granted full citizenship en bloc.

1880: It was reported today that in the past year St. Luke’s Hospital treated 1,114 patients in the last year, four of whom were Jewish.

1880: An article published today described the bustling commercial activity in Smyrna, a Turkish city where trade “is chiefly in the hands of the Greeks and the Jews.” Smyrna, according to the article, was the scene of “one of the most striking episodes in the history” of the Jews – the rise to prominence of Shabbetai Zvi.

1881: Birthdate of Harold Hirsch the University of Georgia football player who studied law at Columbia and went to serve as the General Counsel for The Coca-Cola Company. According to some, Hirsch played a role in designing Coke’s uniquely shaped bottle.

1882: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association is sponsoring tonight’s concert at Chickering Hall in New York.

1882: Israel Ettler, is scheduled to return to court today where he will face charges involving his role in the recent “riot” among the immigrants on Ward’s Island.

1882: Seventy-four year old Celia Marks, the daughter of Moshe and Hannah Wolfe and the wife of David Woolf Marks passed away today

1883: It was reported today that Mrs. Martin Scherbner has filed for a divorce in New Jersey Chancery Court because her husband deceived her before they were married. Before their wedding he assured his Catholic bride that he was not Jewish, but Catholic like her. After the wedding, he confessed that he was Jewish.

1883:Sir Moses Montefiore has given a gift of 99 English pounds to the London Sheriffs' charitable fund. That sum represented 1 pound for each year of the giver's age. Nearly 50 years ago the aging philanthropist had held the office of Sheriff for London and Middlesex.

1884: It was reported today that 40 year old Benjamin Levy “is lying at his home…dangerously near death.” According to Levy and those who witnessed the event, Levy was beaten by a policeman in plain clothes. The officer claimed he had been provoked by Levy and his companions “who were full of liquor” The officer’s claim is questionable since the beating took place on Yom Kippur.

1884: “Statistic of the Deaf and Dumb” published today reported that “in Berlin the greater proportion of deaf-mutes is found the Israelites where consanguineous marriages are frequent and the smaller number among the Catholics to whom such marriages are forbidden.” In evaluating these statistics it should be noted that the same article said that the causes of “deaf-mutism” are “damp atmosphere, uncleanliness, bad air in dwellings and” parents who are laundresses, excavators, miners and weavers.

1885(10th of Cheshvan, 5646): A mounted officer serving with the New York Park Police found the dead body of a man identified as 29 year old Albert Unger propped against a tree just south of Camp Grant.

1886: Birthdate of Reb Velvel (Yitzchok Zev) Soloveitchik, the native of Belarus and son Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk

1886:”A Thrifty Prince” published today erroneously reported that the Princess of Battenburg, the wife of Prince Alexander of Hesse “was the daughter of a German Jew” named Haucke. (Actually her father was a German professional soldier).

1886: “Violated the Sunday Law” published today described the plight of Wolf Bloom, a 26 year old Jewish immigrant from Russia who had been arrested on charges brought Cornelious Leary for having violated the Sunday Law (aka Blue Laws) by having the employees of his cloak factory work on Sunday. In his defense Bloom said that as a Jew he observed Saturday as “his holy day” which is why he worked on Sunday. (In a world where everything seems to be open 7/24/36, it is hard to remember that Sunday closing laws were the norm in many parts of the U.S. well into the second half of the 20^th century)

1886: In New York City Angeline Seligman married Albert H. Gross

1887: Joseph Krauskopf began serving as the rabbi for Keneseth Israel, a Reform congregation in Philadelphia, PA.

1888: Moshav Gederah was attacked by Arabs. Gederah was one of the first agricultural settlements developed by Jewish pioneers. It was established by a Russian-born Jew named Yehiel Michael Pines in 1884. Money for purchasing the land came from the Moses Montifore Testimonial Fund. Grapes and grain were the principal products of the moshav.

1888: As charges of financial mismanagement swirl around the theatrical productions that the Jewish Order of the Harp of David have been sponsoring at Poole’s Theatre in New York, a threatened injunction brought by one group of claimants might cancel tonight’s performance of “King Solomon.”

1888: It was reported today that Mrs. John Jacob Astor has made a bequest of $25,000 to St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.

1888: It was reported today that of the 1,793 patients treated at St. Luke’s, an Episcopal Hospital in New York, 19 of them were Jewish

1889: It was reported today that property valued at $27,500 owned by the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and property valued at $4,000 owned by the Talmud Torah on East Broadway, were among those charitable and educational institutions granted an exemption from paying property taxes.

1890: It was reported today that during 1889, St. Luke’s Hospital a New York facility supported by Episcopalians that is non-denominational when it comes to offering services, served 1,997 patients of whom 38 were Jewish.

1890: The managers of the Society of St. Luke’s hospital reported that of 1,384 patients treated this year four of them were Jewish.

1890: The Jews of Alpena, Michigan met today and adopted the articles of incorporation and by-laws creating Temple Beth El for which they agreed to purchase a building on White Street to use as a sanctuary.

1890: “A Big Hotel Planned Where Jews Will Be Welcomed” published today described the purchase of 10,000 acres owned by the Mutual Life Insurance Company in the Adirondacks around Lake Saranac Nathan Strauss on which he along with Isidor Straus, Max Nathan and Mayor Hugh J. Grant will spend one million dollars to develop with cottages and a luxury hotel that will be open to all who wish stay which would set it apart from many of the hostelries in the areas which do not accept Jewish guests.

1891: “An Indictment of Russia “ published today described the “golden age of the Jews in Russia” which “lasted from 1857 to 1877” was followed by a “return to oppression” in which “nobody in Russia has dreamed of paying a debt owed to a Jewish trader or artisan” in the past twelve months.

1892: In Lancashire, Thomas and Annie Mackereth give birth to Sir Gilbert Mackereth who in 1937 while served as the British council “advised an increase in border patrol around Palestine due to the high numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazism in Hitler's Germany” At the same he “observed that the Arab nationalists had hired known criminals in Syria who crossed the frontier to join bandit groups in Palestine where they blew up passenger trains, menaced and murdered both soldiers and civilians alike, and indiscriminately robbed Arabs, Christians and Jews.” (As reported by Leslie Stein)

1894(19^th of Tishrei, 5655): Fifth day of Sukkoth

1894(19^th of Tishrei, 5655): Forty-five year old James Darmesteter who “published a thesis on the mythology of the Avesta, in which he advocated that the Persan religion of zoroastrianism had been influenced by Judaism (and not backwards as many scholars say) passed away today

1894: After visiting his son Lester, Abraham Keyser, a retired grocer left to go home and was never seen alive again.

1894(19^th of Tishrei, 5655): Forty-five year old James Darmesteter author of Les Prophetes D’Israel (The Prophets of Israel) passed away today.

1894: In New York, morning newspapers described the decision of the Trustees of the Hebrew Institute to not to let the Women’s Municipal League use its building for a meeting even though only one of the five, Nathan Straus had opposed the request.

1894: The two children of Mrs. Urchittel, who had been sent to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, were returned to her at meeting of the Lexow Committee which is investigating corruption in the New York City Police Department. The children had been taken from her based on the testimony of two men from the 12^th Precinct who claimed she ran “a disorderly house” when in fact her only crime was her refusal to pay them blackmail. State Senator Cantor had previously testified before the committee on her behalf.

1896: The Vitascope Theatre opened in Buffalo, New York. It was one of the first buildings built deliberately for the showing of motion pictures. The theatre was owned by Mitchell Mark. In 1906 this Jewish entrepreneur teamed with his brother Moe, Adloph Zucker and Marcus Lowe to for the Automatic Vaudeville Company.

1896:Gaston Michel Calmann-Lévy and Hélène Koenigswarter gave birth to Nicole Germaine Oulman

1896: Colonel J.E. Bloom, Chairman of the Wage Earners Patrotic League presided over a mass meeting at Cooper Union where delivered an address opposing William Jennings Bryan and his Free Silver Platform.

1897(23^rd of Tishrei, 5658): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley.

1898:The Zionist Delegation aboard the "Emperor Nicolai II" is on its way to Palestine.

1898: Forty-two year old Harold Frederic the journalist who visited Russia in 1891 to investigate the conditions of the Jews and who wrote The New Exodus: A Study of Israel In Russia in 1892 passed away today.

1904: Birthdate of Hayyim Schirmann, the Russian born Jewish scholars who specialized in Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages. Schirmann, worked in Berlin until the rise of the Nazis when moved to Palestine and began teaching at Hebrew University. He passed away in 1981.

1905: A two day Pogrom began at Kishinev. This was the second Pogrom at Kishinev in two years. The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 is the more famous (or infamous) of the two.

1907: Birthdate of Roger Wolfe Kahn, jazz bandleader and composer.

1908: “Irving Lehman” published today described the qualifications, career and family history of 33 year old Irving Lehman “who was nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court by the Tammany County Convention” and who will be the youngest person to serve on the bench if elected which seems to be highly likely.

1912: Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya from the Ottoman Empire. “According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Jews were first settled in Cyrene and other parts of present-day eastern Libya by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Lagos (323-282 B.C.E.) With their numbers likely bolstered by Berbers who had converted to Judaism, later supplemented by Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, and, from the seventeenth century, by Jews from Leghorn and other Italian cities, Jews lived continuously in Libya for well over two millennia, predating the Muslim conquest in 642 C.E. by centuries. In 1911, 350 years of Ottoman rule ended and the Italian colonial period began. At the time, Libya’s Jewish population numbered 20,000. The next quarter century was to prove a golden age for Libya’s Jews. By 1931, nearly 25,000 Jews lived in Libya.” For more about the Jews of Libya see

1915: Birthdate of major league pitcher Samuel Ralph "Subway Sam" Nahem

1916: Birthdate of pianist Emil Gilels. Born in Odessa, Gilels is variously described as a Ukrainian, and a great artist who made his career in the Soviet Union until his death in 1985. But his name appears on the list of Jewish Pianist. This litany of origins points once again to the difficulty of answering the question, “Who is A Jew?”

1918: In Lockhart, Texas, Edith Violet (née Schwarz) and Charles H. Strauss gave birth to Robert Straus the Democratic political leader whose career including serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union under Republican President George H.W. Bush.

1918: In the Bronx, Samuel and Molly Eisen gave birth to their only child, Max who was one of the nation’s leading press agents and who “from 1954 to 1997… was the press agent for more than 60 Broadway shows and dozens of Off Broadway productions.”

1919:The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago White Sox, 5 games to 3 in the16th World Series. This series is known as the Black Sox Scandal since 7 White Sox players threw the series. Supposedly the Series was fixed by Arnold Rothstein. Although raised as an observant Jew, Rothstein turned his back on his Jewish upbringing after his Bar Mitzvah. A son of wealthy middle class parents, Rothstein hung out with “Irish gangsters” and married out of the faith. Did Rothstein fix the series? Or was this part of a pattern of blaming Jewish and other foreign influences for corrupting a pristine America. This was a common theme among Natavists during the 1920’s.

1922: Birthdate of author and historian Ruth Gay, a writer known for her nonfiction books documenting Jewish life in the Old World. Ms. Gay's books include Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War IIwhich dealt with a little-studied subject - the more than 250,000 Jews who returned to Allied-occupied Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. She also wrote The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait which chronicled Jewish life in Germany from the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the rise of Hitler in 1933. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Peter Filkins called it "moving and lively.""What emerges is the portrait of a culture very much alive and aware of its own rich heritage," he wrote. In 1997, Ms. Gay received the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction for Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America. In that book, she examined the immigrant experience through the lens of her own girlhood in the Bronx. Ms. Gay has also coauthored a book with her daughter, Sophie, entitled Ms. Gay's book The Jewish King Lear Comes to America. She passed away in 2008.

1923: Hadoar, a Hebrew Language weekly published in the United States temporarily suspends publication

1923:Czernowitz born authorRosalie Beatrice Scherzer married Ignaz Ausländer. Her increasingly famous works were published under her married name, Rose Ausländer even though her marriage proved to be short-lived.

1923: Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett completed his service as Minister of Health in the government led by David Lloyd George.

1924(21st of Tishrei, 5685): Hoshana Rabah

1926: Birthdate of American moral philosopher Joel Feinberg.

1927(23^rd of Tishrei, 5688): Simchat Torah

1927: Pan American World Airways, one of the corporate clients of press-agent Benjamin Sonnenberg, began operations today.

1928: Birthdate of “animator and voice actor” Louis Sheimer, the Pittsburgh, PA who helped to found Filmation.

1928(5th of Cheshvan, 5689): Sixty-seven year old Chess Champion Berthold Lasker passed away. Chess must have been in his genes since he was the brother of Emanuel Lasker.

1929(15^th of Tishrei, 5690): Sukkoth is observed for the first time since the Stock Market Crash that triggered The Great Depression.

1937: Haj Amin el Huseini, the Mufit of Jerusalem, leader of the latest wave of Arab violence who is currently in Syria, is trying to get permission to take refuge in Italy, where Mussolini’s fascist government has expressed support for the Arabs.

1937: Arab violence continues as bombs were thrown in the Shimon Hazadik quarter of Jerusalem, in Safed at group of reserve Jewish policeman and in the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area.

1937: Birthdate of Peter Max. The American Pop Artists was born in Berlin, and raised in Shanghai, China and in Israel before his family settled in the United States in 1953. Max's art work was influential and much imitated in advertising design in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His artwork may be viewed at numerous websites.

1938: In Great Neck, NY, Jeanette and Bernard Workman gave birth to Peter Israel Workman the founder of Workman Publishing.

1938: The National Council of Catholic Men sent a letter to President Roosevelt today asking him “to exercise his influence to avert the closing of the doors of Palestine to Jewish refugees and the abandonment of the Jewish national home policy Great Britain.”

1939: At the World’s Fair in New York, members of the New York Council Pioneer Women’s Organization meet this morning for a ceremony at the Palestine Pavilion followed by a luncheon at the Café Tel Aviv.

1939: A Jewish ghetto at Lublin, Poland, is established.

1939: The American film classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” co-starring Claude Raines, who played the evil Senator who had sold out to the special interests. Like so many of the roles played by Raines, there was nothing Jewish about the character. The real Jewish connection comes from Columbia Studios the production company that made the movie. Harry Cohn owned and ran the studios. He was one of a group of Jewish movie moguls who helped to create the middle brow American culture and the myths that were a part of it.

1939: Otto Blumenthal and his wife moved from Utrecht to Delft because they had been able to find a flat in that Dutch city. Blumenthal could only find one student to tutor which left them so impoverished that they had to live on charity. After the Nazi invasion, the Blumenthals would be forced to left Delft because of ethnic cleansings. The tragic life of the mathematician would end at Theresienstadt in 1944 where he had gone voluntarily to care for his sister.

1940: Air raid sirens sounded tonight in Jerusalem as Axis planes were spotted approaching the coast of Palestine. No bombs fell on the City of David.

1941: During the Battle of Moscow, Stalin institutes martial law, ordering the NKVD to shoot looters and anybody else who looked suspicious. Yes, this was more of Stalin the brutal. But it replaced Stalin, the confused, the supreme leader of the Soviets who had so supremely bungled everything in the fight against Hitler. Although the Battle for Moscow would rage into the spring of 1942, these aggressive tactics provided the impetus for the defense that brought the seemingly invincible Nazi military machine to a grinding halt. From a Jewish perspective (and from the point of view of the western democracies as well) whatever was good for the Russians was good for the Jews and the West in the fight against fascism in general and the Holocaust in particular.

1943: In Trieste, the Nazis conduct a round up Jewish citizens.

1943: Streptomycin the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was first isolated by researchers at Rutgers University by a Jewish research student from Connecticut named Albert Schat. However, according to academic tradition, Schatz's supervisor, Professor Selman Abraham Waksman, took credit for his student's discovery and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1952. Schatz was belatedly awarded the Rutgers medal in 1994, at the age of 74.

1944(2nd of Cheshvan, 5705): Sixty-seven year old screen writer Isadore Bernstein, passed away today.

1948: In some of the fiercest fighting of the War of Independence Israeli forces are victorious at Huleikat after fighting both Egyptian and Saudi army units. This victory opened the road to rest of the Negev.

1948: A naval battle took place between three Israeli warships near Majdal, and an Egyptian corvette with air support. An Israeli sailor was killed and four wounded, and two of the ships were damaged. One Egyptian plane was shot down, but the corvette escaped. This naval clash was part of the Israeli attempt to thwart the Egyptian drive up the coast through Gaza with the aim of taking Tel Aviv. [While people have heard of the Israeli Air Force and the accomplishments of the IDF’s armored and infantry units, they are unaware of the fact that Heil HaYam HaYisrael (the Israeli Navy) has played an active role in the defense of Jewish people going back to the days of the British Mandate.

1948: In Iraq, “the discharge of all Jewish officials and workers from all governmental departments was ordered.’

1948: Tonight, the 51^st Battalion of the Givati Brigade launched an unsuccessful attack from the south on the Egyptian held police fort of Iraq Suwaydan

1948: Founding of Tzova, a kibbutz in the Judean hills outside of Jerusalem.

1951: During the Korean War, near Kumson, when his platoon came under enemy attack Sgt. JackWeinstein volunteered to stay and provide cover while his men withdrew. Weinstein killed six enemy combatants and, after running out of ammunition, used enemy grenades around him to keep the enemy forces back. Weinstein held his position until friendly forces moved back in and pushed the enemy back. (He received the Medal Honor for this action)

1953: In a radio broadcast to the nation Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion blatantly “says that no IDF unit had left its base on the night of the attack on Qibya and that it seems as though it was done by a group of local Israeli villagers.”

1953(10^th of Cheshvan, 5714): Forty-six year old attorney Felix Solomon Cohen who received the Department of Interior’s Distinguished Service award for his handbook on federal Indian law passed away today.

1965(23^rd of Tishrei, 5726): Simchat Torah

1966: United Artists released “The Fortune Cookie,” a comedy directed and produced by Bill Wilder, with a screenplay written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamon and starring Walter Matthau.

1966: In Queens, Madeleine and Charles gave birth to actor Jon Favreau whose followed the faith of his mother and “attended Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah.”

1967(15^th of Tishrei, 5728): Sukkoth

1967: Polish born Canadian physician and Holocaust survivor Henry Morgentaler “presented a brief on behalf of the Humanist Association of Canada before a House of Commons Health and Welfare Committee that was investigating the issue of illegal abortion.”

1970: Birthdate of SNL cast member Chris Kattan the son of an Iraqi born Jew

1970: After thirteen previews, the Broadway production “The Rothschilds” produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd, opened today at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where it ran for 505 performances. Hal Linden, who happened to be Jewish, played Mayer Rothschild. “The Rothschilds” is a musical that tells the story of the rise of the famous Jewish banking family

1971: Broadway permiere of “The Incomparable Max,” with a script co-authored by Jerome Lawrence based on a collection of short stories by Max Beerbohm.

1973 (23rd of Tishrei, 5734): Simchat Torah

1973: The Yom Kippur War continued to exact its toll. By nightfall, the Syrian counterattack on the Golan Heights had been repelled with losses that included thirty Jordanian and Iraqi attacks. Israel may have been alone, but the Syrians certainly were not. On the Suez front seventy Egyptian tanks were knocked out and fourteen of Sadat’s aircraft had been shot down. With the war entering the end of its second week, the Arabs were looking to the Soviets to bring about a face-saving cessation of hostilities. Secretary of State Kissinger, who had arrived in Moscow, joined the Soviets in issuing a call for the end of hostilities.

1977: U.S. premiere of “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” the film version of the novel by Judith Rossner directed by Richard Brooks.

1982: Yitshak Moda’I began serving as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

1984(23rd of Tishrei, 5745): Simchat Torah

1986(16^th of Tishrei, 5747): Second Day of Sukkoth

1986(16^th of Tishrei, 5747):Eighty-one year old Moses Asch, the driving force behind Folkways Records passed away today.. (As reported by Jon Pareles) Eighty-one year old

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/21/obituaries/moses-asch-who-founded-folkways-records-dies-at-81.html

1987(26^th of Tishrei, 5748): Forty two year old Jacqueline du Pre the brilliant Anglo-Jewish cellist who had been stricken by multiple sclerosis passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/20/obituaries/jacqueline-du-pre-noted-cellist-is-dead-at-42.html

1988: Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger win the Nobel Prize for Physics.

1992(22nd of Tishrei, 5753): Shemini Atzeret

1994(14^th of Cheshvan, 5755): Twenty-one Israelis and one Dutch national were murdered and another fifty were injured by a Hamas terrorist who set off a bomb as bus was approaching Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.

1994: Sivan Horesh survives the No. 5 bus bombing on Dizengoff Street in central Tel Aviv.

1995: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre

1996: “The Fortune Cookie,” a comedy directed, produced and written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L.Diamond and co-starring Walter Matthau was released to theatres today.

1996: The talents of cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Jules Feiffer were on display as he spoke to a gathering at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The lecture was sponsored by the Center for the Book and coincided with the exhibition of Mr. Feiffer's gift to the Library, a major portion of his works, including manuscripts, typescripts and a large selection of original cartoon drawings. ." Mr. Feiffer opened his lecture with a showing of his animated film "Munro," about a 4-year-old boy who finds himself drafted into the Army, which refuses to discharge him. During the lecture, Feiffer reported that "My mother, Rhoda Davis Feiffer, saved all of my drawings and every scrap of paper. She was the only Jewish mother that thought that being a cartoonist was an honorable profession.” From the time he was a child, Mr. Feiffer aspired to be a cartoonist. "I was a boy cartoonist living in the Bronx during the Depression with friends living in the other boroughs of New York," he said. Mr. Feiffer used to sell his comics on street corners, competing with the boys who were selling real comic books. In the 1930s many Jews began producing comics as a way of assimilating into American society. According to Mr. Feiffer, two Jewish men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, created "Superman" as a way of opposing anti- Semitism in America and abroad. "Every boy wants to be invincible, to fight, kill and maim … and Superman does those things, except he is heroic," said Mr. Feiffer. Superman was a metaphor for fighting evil, such as the Nazis. "Superman really came not from Krypton, but from the planet Poland," he said.

1997: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Jewish history or culture including Perfidiaby Judith Rossner,Miriam’s Kitchen A Memoir by Elizabeth Ehrlich and The World Is The Home Of Love and Death by Harold Brodkey.

2001:In “Her Name Still Rings A Bell” published today described the “life of Mercedes Jellinek, daughter of a wealthy Austrian businessman with a passion for the newly invented motorcars at the turn of the 20th century.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/19/automobiles/her-name-still-rings-a-bell.html

2003(23rd of Tishrei, 5764): Simchat Torah

2003: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Jewish history or culture including Blacklist by Sara Paretsky, Arthur Miller: His Life and Work by Martin Gottfried and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon R. Kass.

2004: Archivists in the Dutch City of Tilburg announced the discovery of the diary of a Holocaust victim that has an eerie similarity to that of Anne Frank. The Holocaust era diary and love letters written by Helga Deen, a Jewish woman, for her Dutch boyfriend while she imprisoned in a Dutch internment camp were donated by the family of the now deceased Dutch man. Deen died at Sobibior.

2005: Second Day Sukkoth 5766.

2006: The Times of Londonreported on the premier of the documentary “Spell Your Name” by the Ukrainian director Sergei Bukovsky. The 90 minute film records testimonies of Jews who survived the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. The highlight of the event was the appearance of Steven Spielberg whose grandparents came from the Ukraine.

2007: In the UK and US, premier of “Things We Lost In The Fire” directed by Susanne Bier with a script by Allan Loeb.

2007: Rex Ditto, one of the men convicted of murdering Allen Shalleck who co-authored parts of the Curious George series with Margaret Rey in the 1970’s was sentenced to life in prison today.

2007: The Washington Postfeatured a review of Jezebel: The Untold story of the Bible’s Harlot Queenby Leslie Hazelton.

2007: The New York Timesfeatured a review of Young Stalin by Jewish historian Simon Sebag Montifore. This book could be viewed as a prequel to Mr. Montifore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

2007: “The Last Jews of Libya” opens at São Paulo International Film Festival in São Paulo, Brazil..”

2008: The New York Times includes reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein and Explainers a new anthology “which gathers all of Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice strips from 1956 to 1966.

2008:A former Israeli soldier, Marti Mintz, who was trained in a counter-terror unit of the IDF and is married to an Australian risked his own life today to save five people during during a fire that had broken out in supermarket in Perth, Australia.

2009(1st of Cheshvan, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2009(1st of Cheshvan, 5770):Joseph Wiseman a Canadian actor, best known for starring as the titular antagonist of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, passed away
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0936476/

2009: At Olam Tikvahthe new sisterhood Co-President Rachel Rothberg, leads a discussion of the well-reviewed book Sarah by Marek Halter.

2009:In Chevy Chase, MD, Richard Breitman, a professor of history at American University, discusses and signs Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945. McDonald was the first U.S. ambassador to Israel.

2009: In an article entitled “A Believer in Heroism, to Jews’ Lasting Gratitude,” Joseph Berger describes the exploits of Dr. Tina Strobos who is scheduled to be honored today by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, based in Westchester.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/nyregion/17metjournal.html

2009: CBS is scheduled to hold a memorial service today at the Time Warner Center in New York for Don Hewitt the creator and longtime executive producer of ''60 Minutes.'' Hewitt died of cancer in August at age 86. In addition to his work at ''60 Minutes,'' Hewitt also produced the first televised presidential debate in 1960.

2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, a screening of “Adam Resurrected” based on novel of the same name in which “a former circus clown who was spared the gas chamber so that he might entertain thousands of Jews as they marched to their deaths, Adam Stein is now the ringleader at an asylum in the Negev desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors.”

2009:“Jewish Transit Berlin: From Hell to Hope,” the 52-minute documentary, which premiered today at the Berlin Jewish Museum, relates the unusual and brief history of the Displaced Persons camps set up in postwar Berlin.

2009:“Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags,” a documentary about the rise and decline of New York’s garment district — and the efforts to preserve what remains of a sector that played a vital role in the American Jewish experience during the past century — premieres tonight on HBO. (As reported by the Forwards)

2010: Scribner published a collection of short stories, Palo Alto, by JamesFranco

2010:Israeli author David Grossman who was named the winner of the Germany's book publishers' association’s 2010 Peace Prize in honor of his support for reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians is scheduled to be awarded the $30,200 prize today during the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. In his epic novel To the End of the Land, Grossman tells the story of a woman's journey through Israel. It was written after Grossman's son was killed by a Hezbollah missile in 2006.

2010: Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor at The New Republic is scheduled to introduce “Ruth Franklin, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction” at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.

2010:Labor Party lawmakers lambasted their fellow MK, Einat Wilf today for proposing to cancel the annual memorial rally for assassination prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

2010:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that his cabinet needed more time to decide when and how to dismantle certain illegal West Bank outposts, due to the "political implications" involved.

2010(11^thof Cheshvan, 5771): Tom Bosley, best known for his role as Richie’s father on the t.v. sitcom “Happy Days” passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/television/20bosley.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2011(21^st of Tishrei, 5772): Hoshanah Rabbah

2011: This afternoon Israel Defense Forces soldiers thwarted a stabbing attack at the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank, Channel 10 reported.

2011:A day after returning to his home in Mitzpe Hila after five years in Hamas captivity, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit marked the Simchat Torah holiday at home with his family tonight.

2012: At the Wiener Library in London, Dr. Ruth Levitt is scheduled deliver a lecture on “Jews in the Netherlands,” a country where “some 75 percent” of the Jews “were deplored and killed in the Holocaust

2012: Director Arnon Goldfingers award winning film, “The Flat,” is scheduled to open at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

2012:Four masked individuals infiltrated the IDF's Naftali camp near the Golani junction in the North early this morning and stole four weapons. The infiltrators tied up the soldier on guard duty, stealing his and three other weapons before escaping

2012:"The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) announced today that the long-time director of its Jerusalem office, Wendy Singer, will be leaving her position early next year. Singer will be replaced by Leslie Levy Mirchin, who is currently the lobbying group’s local director of policy and research."

2013: As part of the Performing Arts Series, the Jewish Community Center is scheduled to present “The Marcy and Zina Show” featuring Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich.

2013: In California, the Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present Khaossia, performing EOSLove Across Time, Space, and Sound, a concert based on a love story from Puglia, after the Shoah.

2013: Gaza-based Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called today for Palestinians to wage a “popular uprising” in the West Bank.

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest including Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich and The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21^st Centuryby Steven Pinker.

2014: In Washington, DC, the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to begin today.

2014: “Hitler’s Hidden Drug Habit” is scheduled to be shown on British Channel 4.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/hitler-was-meth-addict-records-claim/

2014: The Center For Jewish History is scheduled to show “Jacques Faitlovitch and the Lost Tribes,” a film that explores the ‘extraordinary odyssey’of Jacques Faïtlovitch, a Polish Jew who “discovered” Ethiopian Jewry, in 1904, and thereafter set about reestablishing a connection between their community and the rest of the Jewish world.”

2014: Louis-Fest!, a celebration of the life of local realtor, bicycle enthusiast and musician Louis Lederman of blessed memory will be held today at The Willow (formerly Jimmy’s Music Club following the Saints vs. Detroit Lions game. (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News)

2014: “Dancing in Jaffa” is scheduled to be shown at The Twin City Jewish Film Festival

OCTOBER 20

1409 BCE (10 Cheshvan 2351): This is the traditional date of the death of Gad, son of Jacob, one of the Twelve Tribes (born 2196).

460: Aeilia Eudocia, the Byzantine Empress who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 438, passed away today.

1650: Coronation of Queen Christina of Sweden, who became a Catholic, moved to Rome in December 1655 and made Clement X prohibit the custom of chasing Jews through the streets during the carnival.

1722: Wolf Popper “a Primator of the Jews of Bohemia” and his wife gave birth to banker Joachim Edler von Popper, “commonly known as ‘Court Jew’ to the Habsburgs.”

1740: Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refuse to honor the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession begins. At the end of the war, unfortunately for the Jewish people, she would still be on the throne. She attempted to expel all of the Jews from Bohemia. She imposed a myriad of restrictions on the Jews living in her realm but was not averse to gouging them for as much money as she could. Like her Russian counterpart, she sought to limit the number of Jews living in her empire. And then, with the partition of Poland the number of her Jewish subjects soared when she acquired Galicia. The famous Jewish historian Simon Dubnow said that this Empress caused the Jews more trouble than all of the Emperors who had come before her.

1772(23^rd of Tishrei, 5533): As relations between Britain and her American colonies begin to deteriorate to a level that will eventually lead to revolution, Jews on both sides of the Atlantic observe Simchat Torah

1779: During the American Revolution, the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania passed a series of resolution related to Solomon Bush who had been wounded and taken prisoner by the British before being paroled so he could recuperate at the home of his father, Matthias Bush.

1781: The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria issued the Patent of Toleration which was an edict extending to religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians living in the Habsburg Empire. The Jews would have to wait another year. In 1782 Joseph II issued the Patent of Toleration for the Jews of Lower Austria, thereby establishing the civic equality of his Jewish subjects.

1803: The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase. The tiny Jewish population of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou country were now “American Jews.” The first Jews probably came to the Louisiana coast at the start of the 18th century when they brought trade goods from the Caribbean. Ironically, Judo Turo, the famous merchant and philanthropist who would contribute to the development of Jewish communal institutions arrived the same year that the Louisiana Purchase was ratified. St. Louis, the other “city” the United States acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase would not see its first Jewish settler until 1807.

1820: Birthdate of Whilhelm Wolfensohn the Odessa born author and playwright.

1827: During the Greek Liberation War, an allied fleet made up of British, French and Russian ships defeated a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino. The battle effectively marked the end of the war and paved the way for the creation of the independent nation of Greece which had been part of the Ottoman Empire. According to Nikos Stavrolakis one of the founders and director of the Jewish Museum in Greece from 1977 until 1993, “The Greek War of Independence brought disaster to the Jewish communities in the Peloponnesos the place where the revolution erupted in 1821. The Jews, because of their close association with the Ottoman administration, were massacred along with the Turks. The Jewish communities of Mistras, Tripolis, and Kalamata were decimated; the few survivors moved north to settle in Chalkis and Volos, still under Ottoman rule. Patras lost its ancient Jewish community, which was re-established only in 1905.”

1828: Birthdate of Horatio Gates Spafford , the New York born lawyer who was one of the founders of the “American Colony,” whose members “engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives”

1829(23^rd of Tishrei, 5590): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson.

1840:Solomon Benedict de Worms, Hereditary Baron of the Austrian Empire, and Henrietta Samuelde Worms gave birth to their third son, Henry de Worms, a leading member of the Conservative Party in the UK.

1848(23rd of Tishrei, 5609): As Europe is racked by Revolutions and thousands head for California in search of the newly found gold, Jews observe Simchat Torah

1850: Birthdate of Adolf Rosenzweig, the Hungarian born Biblical and Talmudic scholar.

1852: It was reported today that “An insane Jew died at the House of Industry in Boston, last week, at the age of 30 years. This is the 1st Jew that ever became a public charge in the City of Boston within the memory of one of its oldest city officials.”

1855: Reverend Findlay is scheduled to deliver a sermon tomorrow evening at the Presbyterian Church in the Williamsburg section of NYC entitled "The Restoration of the Jews."

1859: Birthdate of John Dewey, the American educational philosopher who met Anzia Yezierska in 1917 while she was auditing one of his seminars at Columbia. Despite the differences in their ages, they became romantically involved which led to his writing her poems and she describing their relationship in a novel, All I Could Never Be.

1862: Birthdate of Maud Nathan an American social worker, labor activist and suffragist for women's right to vote who came from a prominent Sephardic family that included her cousins Emma Lazarus and Benjamin Cardozo.

1865: Sir Saul Samuel began his second term as Treasurer of New South Wales.

1874: Adolf Aharon Rosenzweig “entered the rabbinate of Pasewalk in Pomerania.

1876: Samuel A. Lewis, who is a candidate for Alderman at Large in New York City, was described as a native New Yorker and a Hebrew who “occupies a god social position.” He has served as a School Commissioner, and has twice been elected Alderman at Large. Currently he is President of the Board of Alderman and editor of the Hebrew Leader. He had unsuccessfully sought the nomination to serve as Mayor of New York.

1878(23^rd of Tishrei, 5639): Simchat Torah

1878: According to a report published today on conditions in the French colony on the island of Cyprus the native (non-European) “community consists of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Of these a European merchant can always believe the first upon his simple word, the two latter he can rarely credit on oath, and the harder they swear the more certain one may be that they are stating what is not the case.” [The report is unusual for two reason – first it lumps Jews and Christians together and second it speaks highly of the trustworthiness of a local Muslim population, two things that western writers rarely, if ever, did.

1879: According to a letter published today reported that Joseph Barclay, the recently consecrated Bishop of Jerusalem, “showed an extraordinary interest in the conversion of the Jews” even when he was a “mere child.” Before being appointed Bishop, Barclay served as the Superintendent of the Church of England’s Missions to the Jews of the Continent and served in Jerusalem for ten years where he became a noted Orientalist. [Barclay was one of a large cast on English characters who showed an unusual interest in Palestine and the Jewish people.]

1880: In Jackson, CA, Dora Steckler gave birth to her third child who was born two months after the death of his Charles Steckler, a local merchant who is buried in Givoth Olam Cemetery.

1882(7^th of Cheshvan, 5643): Eighty-one year old Solomon Benedict de Worms thhe grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild who was successful British stockbroker and plantation owner in Ceylon before being named as a Baron by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, passed away today.

1883: It was reported today that the families that recently arrived from Odessa aboard the SS Canada will be sent back to Europe because they are destitute.

1883: It was reported that Henry J. Greenberg a Jewish peddler from Pennsylvania, whose body was found in a hotel in the Bowery probably committed suicide. Before coming to New York, he had visited his brother Marcus in Boston.

1883: This morning, Isaac Cohen, President of Ansche Chesed on Hester Street, visited the Tenth Precinct and requested that a police officer be sent to the synagogue that evening because he feared that there might be an “uprising” during the scheduled business meeting.

1883: Violence broke out during the business meeting of Ansche Chesed B’nai Kovanah that was held tonight at the Hester Street Synagogue.

1884: It was reported today that in the past year St. Luke’s Hospital in New York treated 1.497 patients, 18 of whom were Jewish.

1884: Professor Felix Adler was among the members of the Tenement House Commission that met this afternoon in New York.

1884: Isaac Hamburger, Grand Master of The Grand Lodge of the United states of the Independent Order of Free sons of Israel and H.I. Goldsmith, the organization’s Grand Secretary sign an address on behalf of its 12,000 members living throughout the United States, that is being sent to Sir Moses Montefiore on “the one hundredth anniversary” of his birth “recognizing his unique greatness to which no one nation can lay claim.”

1885: “A Suicide At Riverside” published today describes events surrounding the death of Albert Unger whose body was found by a police officer after he heard two gunshots. Unger, who belong to several Jewish organizations, had recently been discharged by Steinhardt Brothers where he had worked for 12 years, but Abraham Steinhardt refused to discuss the matter.

1887(2^nd of Cheshvan, 5648): Baron Hermann de Stern passed away in London. Born at Frankfort in 1815 he and his brother moved to London in 1844 where they became respected members of the financial community through their company, Stern Brothers

1889: “Russian Converts” published today described the pressure brought to bear on Jews to convert to the Orthodox Church. As a result, “young men” who were “once honest Jews” are now “spurious Christians.”

1892: Eduard Schnitzer passed away. He was born in 1840 to assimilated German Jewish parents. His parents had him baptized at the age of two because they thought it would advance his career. Schnitzer later converted to Islam and took the Turkish name of Emin Pasha. As, Emin Pasha, he traveled throughout the world as an explorer, adventurer and doctor, spending much of his time in Khartoum in the Sudan. He was a tireless fighter against the slave trade which was still rampant. He returned to Central Africa on a semi-political voyage for Germany and was killed there by slave traders.

1890: Sixty-nine year old Sir Richard Francis Burton a British orientalist and explored who antagonized the Jewish population of Damascus while serving there as consul in 1869, passed away. Burton’s The Jew, the Gipsy and el Islam which was published 8 years after his death was critical the Jews and “asserted the existence of Jewish human sacrifices.

1893: “George Samuel’s Big Estate” published today described the disposition of his estate which was valued at $2,365,000 most of which went to his nephew Baron Henry de Worms who represents a Liverpool borough in the House of Commons.

1893: In Germany, the annual report of the Social Democrats published today complained that when the right wing Anti-Semites boycott Jews firms nothing is done but when the Social Democrats do the same they are prosecuted with the full “rigors of the law.”

1894: Seventy-six year old James Anthony Froude who in 1869 “was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews, defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a majority of fourteen” and who wrote Lord Beaconsfield, a biography of Benjamin Disraeli published in 1890, passed away today.

1894: When Alexander III died in Crimea today, “according to Simon Dubnow: ‘as the body of the deceased was carried by railway to St. Petersburg, the same rails were carrying the Jewish exiles from Yalta to the Pale. The reign of Alexander III ended symbolically. It began with pogroms and concluded with expulsions.’"

1894(20^th of Tishrei, 5655): Shabbat Sukkoth Chol Hamoed

1894(20^th of Tishrei, 5565): Fifty-four year old Austrian neuroanatomist and ophthalmologist Ludwig Mauthner who discovered “Mauthner Cells” passed away today.

1894: Dr. Charles Henry Parkhurst, the leader of the “municipal purity movement” in New York told a reporter today of the broad support he has found among women in New York including “Mrs. Frederick Nathan, who belongs to an old and highly distinguished Hebrew family of great wealth and social position.”

1894: French police officer and handwriting expert Alphonse “Bertillon's provisional report, submitted today inferred ‘without any reservation whatever’ that Dreyfus was guilty.”

1894: Samuel Greenbaum, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Educational Alliance took issue with the a request by the Women’s Municipal League for the use of the Hebrew Institute Building which is controlled by the Alliance was handled; especially the influence the of Nathan Straus who is neither an officer or a director of the Alliance.

1899: In ParisGaston Michel Calmann-Lévy and Hélène Koenigswarter gave birth to

Robert Paul Michel Calmann-Levy

1904(11^th of Cheshvan, 5665): Sixty-one year old Joseph Bernhardt Bloomingdale the husband of Clara Koffman and the father of Rosalie Stanton Bloomingdale passed away today in New York City.

1905: A two day pogrom at Kishinev came to an end. According to some reports only 19 Jews were killed and 56 were injured. This was the second pogrom that had taken place at Kishinev in the first decade of the twentieth century. The first pogrom in 1903 was the more infamous and deadly of the two. Jewish self-defense leagues formed in 1903 helped to hold down the casualties in the second pogrom.

1905: A two day pogrom at Rostov came to an end leaving more than 150 Jews murdered, 500 more wounded and great damage done to the “Jewish shops, stores, warehouses and mills” despite the efforts of “a small self-defense detachment organized by the Po’

1909: Birthdate of silent screen actress Rebekah Isabelle "Carla" Laemmle, “the niece of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/movies/carla-laemmle-actress-with-silent-screen-debut-dies-at-104.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

1916(23^rd of Tishrei, 5677): Simchat Torah

1916: Producer Joseph M. Schenck who was Jewish married actress Norma Talmadge following which the couple formed the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation.

1917: In Berlin, Helen and Franz Hessel gave birth to Stéphane Frédéric Hessel, the naturalized French citizen who “was a diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, French Resistance member and BCRA agent.”

1917: During WW I, a German submarine commanded by Martin Niemoller sank a British steamer. This is the same Martin Niemoller who as Pastor Niemoller became an anti-Nazi who went to the camps in 1937 where he remained until the end of WW II.

1918: The New York Branch of the Jewish Welfare Board has transformed the dormitories of the Jewish Theological Seminary into a canteen for soldiers. Among other things, the canteen will provide meals for the troops and their visiting family members. The effort is being led by Mrs. Solomon Schechter whose son, a graduate of Columbia, is serving with the Army in France.

1918: The founding conference of Yevsektsiya took place today. Yevsektsiya was the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party and was established to popularize Marxism and encourage loyalty to the Soviet regime among Russian Jews. “For most of its existence, the Yevsektsya was headed by Semyon Dimanstein. Yevsektsiya was entirely subordinate to leadership of the Soviet Communist party. Yevsektsiya members were people of Jewish origin, but they were hostile to traditional Jewish culture and instead sought to assimilate Jews into the new Soviet society, often by repressive measures. In line with official Soviet doctrine, Yevsektsiya was deeply opposed to Bundism and Zionism, labeling them forms of "bourgeois nationalism”. The Yevsektsia was disbanded in 1929. Many leading members perished in the Great Purge. Dimanstein was arrested and received death sentence in 1938 and was executed. He was rehabilitated posthumously in 1955, 2 years after the death of Joseph Stalin.”

1920: Max Bruch passed away. The German composer and conductor was a Protestant. However, he wrote a piece for cello and orchestra which remains quite popular, Kol Nidrei based on Hebrew melodies, most notably the melody of the Kol Nidre, which gives the piece its name.

1920: Birthdate of Janet Rosenberg, the Chicago native who married Cheddi Jagan and as Janet Jagan played a key role in the political life of Guyana including serving as its sixth President.

1923: Birthdate of actor Herschel Bernardi who is best remembered as Lt. Jacobi on the television hit, “Peter Gunn,” the voice of Charlie the Tuna and the second person to play Tevye in the Broadway hit, “Fiddler on the Roof.”

1924(22^nd of Tishrei, 5685): Shemini Atzeret

1925: Birthdate of columnist Art Buchwald. The cigar-chomping humorist first gained popular acclaim for his daily column written from Paris. His annual Thanksgiving column where he would explain the holiday to the French was a classic.

1927: In Brooklyn, Estelle (née Rapaport) and Morris K. Bauer, attorneys who shared a law practice gave birth to Joyce Diane Bauer who gained famed as psychologist, quiz show contestant and columnist Dr. Joyce Brothers.

1930: Lord Passfield issued his "White Paper" banning further land acquisition by Jews and slowing Jewish immigration. Chaim Weizmann who had always toed a pro-British line resigned in protest.

1928: “In the presence of 400 Jewish leaders representing twenty-five States and Canada, Mr. Louis Marshall opened the Non-Zionist Conference at the Hotel Biltmore” this evening. (As reported by JTA)

1934: Birthdate of Martin Landau. The actor gained early fame on the television hit “Mission Impossible.”

1935: Birthdate of Jerry Orbach. The actor has played everything from the father in the film “Dirty Dancing” to Detective Lenny Briscoe in “Law & Order.”

1935(23^rd of Tishrei, 5696): Simchat Torah

1936(4th of Cheshvan, 5697): Mrs. Sarah Sandler, mother of New York Attorney Bernard Sandler, passed away in Tel Aviv today at the age of 85. Mrs. Sandler had lived in Palestine for the last 18 years. She was active in numerous charitable activities and refused her son’s request that she return to New York after the most recent outbreak of Arab violence.

1937(15th of Cheshvan, 5698): Felix M. Warburg, a member of the Jewish family known for its financial acumen and philanthropies passed away today at the age of 66.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F30C15FC3959177A93C3AB178BD95F438385F9

1937: In response to discrimination policies, Jews of Poland, assorted liberals and students went on strike. Within a few weeks the government succeeded in putting down the strike and enforcing its decrees. The environment of anti-Semitism obviously existed before the Nazis arrived and made their work much easier.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a loud explosion which shook the American Colony was found to be due to a bomb thrown at a Jewish shop at the Simon the Just Quarter, just off the Nablus Road in Jerusalem. Shots were also fired at Jewish buses and an Armenian photographer was hit. A £2,000 fine was imposed on the Adh Dahariya village for raiding a police post. An immediate fine collection began in kind, livestock, wheat and other movables.

1940: More than 7000 Jews from the Saar region of Germany are interned at the camp at Gurs, France.

1942(9th of Cheshvan, 5703): Twelve thousand Jews are murdered at Bar in the Transnistria region of the Ukraine.

1942(9^th of Cheshvan, 5703): Seventy-four year old classical scholar Friedrich Münzer who had been officially classified as Jewish in 1935 by the Nazis died today at Theresienstadt concentration camp.

1942: The deportations of Jews from Slovakia were halted today after a group of Jewish citizens, led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, built a coalition of concerned officials from the Vatican and the government, and, through a mix of bribery and negotiation, was able to stop the process. By then, however, some 58,000 Jews had already been deported, mostly to Auschwitz. The deportations would be resumed in 1944.

1943: Mrs. Moses Schorr, her daughter Felicia and the grandchildren of Moses Schorr arrived in the French town of Vittel where they were supposed to be exchanged for German POW’s.

1943: Irene Sendler was arrested in a Gestapo night raid on her apartment and taken to Pawiak prison where she was tortured. Sendler held out and did not betray any of confederates with whom she worked to smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.

1944: Nazis put 25,000 Hungarian Jewish men and 10,000 Jewish women to work digging anti-tank trenches in the path of the advancing Red Army.

1944: Men of the Polish Home Army attack Jewish houses in the freshly liberated village of Ejszyszki. The village's Jews subsequently retaliate against the Poles.

1944: 22,000 Budapest Jews are entrained for deportation to Auschwitz.

1944: Nazi administrators at Auschwitz burn documents related to prisoners and their fates.

1944: Nazis initiate death-march deportations of Jews from Budapest, Hungary, to Germany.

1944(21st of Tishrei, 5769): At Birkenau, 600 of 650 boys between the ages of 14 and 16 who had been locked in barracks since the Revolt at Birkenau on October 7, would be gassed. Most of them were Hungarians. Many race about the camp, naked and panicked, before being clubbed by the SS guards who pursue them. The 50 survivors are put to work unloading potatoes from railcars.

1944: On this day the deportations from Hungary begin again. Despite the uprisings, more Jews from Theresienstadt were selected for death. Another 1,416 would be gassed.

1946: Birthdate of Austrian Novelist Elfriede Jelink, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature. “Elfriede Jelinek was born in the village of Mürzzuschlag in Styria, Austria. Although Jelinek’s father was classified a Mischling (a person of “mixed races”) under National Socialism, he and his wife escaped the most extreme excesses of anti-Semitic persecution due to his work as a chemist in war research. Jelinek is not considered a Jewish writer per se, but the author herself positions her writings within the Jewish tradition and history. Critics, too, prompted by the scathing irony underlying her texts, traces a continuity between the Austrian Jewish satirical tradition - represented in the writings of Karl Kraus or Elias Canetti - and Jelinek, while recognizing the latter’s radicalization of that tradition.”

1947: The leaders of the Jewish refugees living in DP camps under British control sent a telegram that “makes clear the wishes and determination of the refugees to find a home in Palestine.’Nothing will deter us from Palestine. Which jail we go to is up to you (the British). We did not ask you to reduce our rations; we did not ask you to put us in Poppendorf and Am Stau.’" [Poppendorf and Am Stau were in Germany.]

1947: HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) opened hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. While engaging in its highly publicized search for alleged Communists, HUAC certainly had a tendency to stir up a lot of collateral anti-Semitic dust. Ironically, many of the cooperative witnesses who were the first to take the stand were Jewish including Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer (ex-chairman of the Republican Party's California State Committee) and Ayn Rand. Warner told HUAC: "Ideological termites have burrowed into many American industries, organizations and societies. Wherever they may be, I say let us dig them out and get rid of them. My brothers and I will be happy to subscribe generously to a pest-removal fund. We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don't like our American system of government and prefer the Communistic system to ours." Ayn Rand who was identitified as a “Russian émigré” attacked "Song of Russia," complaining that the Soviet peasants smiled too much. Red-baiter Adolphe Menjou testified on Oct. 21 that he believed the Communist Party should be "outlawed." HUAC and its right-wing supporters were quick to tie Jews to Communists, making the two seem to be one in the same. However, they never identified the friendly witnesses as Jews. This would have interfered with the Right Wing prejudice and conspiracy theoris.

1948: After five days of fighting along the Jerusalem Corridor, there is no major change in territorial holdings.

1948:The internal Negev road from Julis to Bror Hayil through Kawkaba and Huleiqat was taken today by Givati's 52nd and 54th battalions. Upon taking Huleiqat, the Israelis discovered a mass grave where the Egyptians buried Israeli casualties of the failed July Negev Brigade attack.

1950: The SS Benjamin Peixotto, a decommissioned Liberty ship was refloated in a harbor in Hong Kong after having been damaged by a typhoon. The ship was named after the 19^th century American-Jewish leader who had served as U.S. Consul to Bucharest.

1952: Birthdate of Dalia Itzik, the native of Jerusalem born to a family of Iraqi Jews who was the first female Speaker of the Knesset.

1953: CBS broadcast an episode of “See It Now” entitled "The Case of Milo Radulovich" co-produced by Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Wershba which was a landmark in exposing the Red Scare led by Joe McCarthy and other reactionaries. (Wershba was Jewish; Murrow wasn’t)

1953: General Kenneth Nichols retired from the Army which enabled to became a senior management at the AEC which would enable him to lead the fight to take away the security clearance for J. Robert Oppenheimer.

1954(23^rd of Tishrei, 5715): Simchat Torah

1954: The 1954 musical version of “Peter Pan” directed by Jerome Robbin with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.

1963: In Moscow, Rudolf Naumovich Solovyov, and Inna Solomonovna Shapiro gave birth to Russian electronic journalist Vladimir Rudol'fovich Solovyov who “was awarded the TEFI Russian television prize as the best interviewer.”

1964: Herbert Hoover 31st President of the United States passed away. Hoover named Benjamin Cardozo as Associate Justice to the Supreme Court in 1932. How a Hawkeye Quaker came to name a liberal Sephardic New York Jew to the High Court without incurring a burst of anti-Semitic diatribes is one of the under-told stories of the 20th century

1964:Henry David Leonard George Walston, the son of Florence and Sir Charles Waldestein began serving as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a position he would hold until the “beginning of 1967.

1967: Seven men were convicted in Meridian, Miss., of violating the civil rights of three murdered civil rights workers. Two of the three victims were Jewish youngsters who had come South during the summer of 1964 to work on a voter registration project. Their deaths helped bring about the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

1972: In Ann Arbor, Michigan, cardiologist Irwin Schatz and his wife gave birth to Brian Emanuel Schatz, the future Senator from Hawaii.

1973: When their F-4E Phantom Jet was hit by an Egyptian SAM, Aharon Sagi and Moshe Barton were recovered by the IDF after safely ejecting from their aircraft.

1973: David Zeit and Yoram Rubenstein were taken prisoner after their F-4E Phantom Jet was hit by an Egyptian SAM. The Israeli Air force faced a Soviet designed air defense network that was more sophisticated than anything any air force had had to cope with in modern warfare. The willingness of these flyers to take to the skies is a tribute to their individual courage and those who were shot down were no less heroes than those who made it safely back to base.

1973: William Shatner married Marcy Laffert. Yes, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were both played by Jewish actors.

1973: The Israelis shot down Syrian aircraft on its way to bomb the oil refineries at Haifa. The IDF force on the west bank of the Suez Canal continued to widen its area of activity. The Israelis were actually taking control of some of the roads between Cairo and the Canal – between the Egyptian capital and the attacking Egyptian armies. While the Israelis understand what is happening, the Egyptian high command either is not aware of what is going or is hiding the truth from its battlefield commanders.

1982: Revival performance of Abraham Goldfaden’s “Shulamith” presented by Ben Bonus, Lively and Yiddish Productions, in association with the Yiddish Musical Theater of Israel, producer, Dr. Rabbi Israel Walin at the Norman Thomas Theater in New York City.

1985: In a review entitled “A Place Like No Other,” Michael Grant, the author of The Jews in the Roman Empire and A History of Ancient Israel examines Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets From the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times by F. E. Peters.

1986: Shimon Peres completes his second term in office as Prime Minister of Israel.

1986: Yitzhak Shamir began his second office term as Israel's prime minister

1989(21^st of Tishrei, 5750): Hoshana Rabah

1989(21^st of Tishrei, 5750): Sixty-five year old “Israeli radio broadcaster, journalist, playwright, and author” Dahn Ben-Amotz who made Aliyah in 1938 and whose parents died in the Holocaust lost his battle with liver cancer and passed away today.

1990: Among those celebrating today’s Cincinnati’s four game sweep that made them World Champions is Larry Rothschild the former pitcher now serving as a coach for the Reds.

1992(23^rd of Tishrei, 5753): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Bush.

1994(15th of Cheshvan, 5755): Shlomo Calbach passed away. Words cannot describe what he has done. Everybody has their favorite Carlbach tunes or songs. Here are two sites where you can sample some of his work by BenZion Solomon. I do not get any royalties. I just happen to like them. http://www.israel-music.com/ben_zion_solomon_sons/nishmas_kol_chai/

http://www.israel-music.com/ben_zion_solomon_sons/lchu_nrannoh/

1998: “After eighteen years of using the Sabin vaccine, the federal government recommended that children use the Salk vaccine exclusively” today

2000(21^st of Tishrei, 5761): Hoshana Rabah is observed for the first time in the 21st century.

2002: In an article entitled “Funny, You Don't Look Jewish,” Judith Shulevitz reviews Hillel Halkin's Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel“Across the Sabbath River relates an improbable story: a people on a remote border of India, Tibet and Burma want to migrate to modern Israel because they believe themselves to be descended from one of the 10 tribes exiled from ancient Israel 2,700 years ago, and close analysis of their folklore hints that they may be right.”

2002: Ceremonies marking the dedication of Har Sinai’s new facility in Owings Mill, a reform congregation with roots in pre-Civil War Baltimore came to an end.

2004:The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on a speech given by Schindler's List survivor Rena Finder. Now 75 and living in Massachusetts, Finder told of what it was like to be a ten year old in Krakow, Poland in 1939 when the Nazis arrived. "Nobody saw us, nobody helped us, nobody cared." In speaking about Schindler she said, "What Oskar Schindler did for us and for the world, nobody, nobody had achieved."

2004: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that "a Holocaust-era diary and love letters written by a Jewish woman for her Dutch boyfriend in an internment camp in 1943 have been donated to a Dutch archives." The woman who was named Helga Deen died at Sobibor.

2005: Mikhail Khodorkovsky was delivered to the labor camp YaG-14/10.”The labor camp is attached to a uranium mining and processing plant and during Soviet times had a reputation as a place from which nobody returned alive.”

2006: “The Great Conjurer,” a new play about Franz Kafka, premiers at the Kirk Theatre in New York City.

2007: As part of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Concert the Alei Gefen Chorus performs "A Ceremony of Songs" at Kol Haneshama Synagogue, to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan.

2007: In a story with dateline of Fayetteville, Arkansas, The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “a Jewish synagogue is rising in the hills of Arkansas, in large part because of the generosity of the project contractor: a Muslim immigrant from the West Bank. Fadil Bayyari, a Springdale, Ark., general contractor, agreed to waive his regular fee for Temple Shalom, saving the Reform congregation at least $250,000. Bayyari, who built the mosque in Fayetteville, cited both religions’ ties to Abraham and said the fact that his faith community, too, lacked its own building until the mosque was completed.”

2008(21st of Tishrei, 5769): Hoshana Rabbah

2008: “The re-trial of Phil Spector for murder in the second degree in the death of Lana Clarkson began today.

2008: Haaretz reports that “the Foreign Ministry is examining an initiative aimed at reaching a long-term non-belligerence pact with Lebanon to prevent renewed fighting along the northern border.”

2008: The Menier Chocolate Factory production of Jerry Herman’s “La Cage aux Folles” transferred to the West End at the Playhouse Theatre co-produced with Sonia Friedman Productions, Robert G. Bartner, David Ian Productions, The Ambassador Theatre Group, Matthew Mitchell and Jamie Hendry Productions

2009: The first group of Kaifeng Jews arrived in Israel, in an aliyah operation coordinated by Shavei Israel.

2009: Opening session of the National Jewish Democratic Conference Washington Conference.

2009: Opening session of the Presidents’ Conference in Jerusalem.

2009: At the Hyman S. Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Zoë Heller discusses The Believers in a conversation with Ron Charles, Senior Editor of The Washington Post Book World

2009: International Harp Contest in Tel Aviv-Jaffa comes to an end.

2010: A program entitled “Miryam Kabakov, ed., Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires” is scheduled to be presented at The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, D.C.

2010: The American Jewish Historical Society and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to present :Revisiting the American Soviet Jewry Movement: A Panel Discussion Honoring the Publication of Gal Beckerman's book When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry

2010(12^th of Cheshvan, 5771):Ninety-five year old Coleman Jacoby, “a comedy writer during the golden age of television who, with his partner Arnie Rosen, created some of Jackie Gleason’s most memorable characters and engineered one of the great match-ups in television history, Gleason and Art Carney,” passed away today (As reported by William Grimes.’)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/arts/television/13jacoby.html

2010(12^th of Cheshvan, 5771):Seventy-seven year old Robert Katz, an author and screenwriter who incurred the wrath of the Vatican by accusing Pope Pius XII of failing to act to stave off a Nazi massacre of Italians in 1944, passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/arts/22katz.html?_r=0

2011(22^nd of Tishrei, 5772): Shemini Atzeret

2011:Today, two Israeli soldiers were struck by a Palestinian vehicle at a checkpoint near Beit Ur al-Fauqa south of Ramallah in the West Bank. The soldiers were lightly injured and evacuated to a hospital in Jerusalem after a Palestinian driver reportedly sped past other cars waiting in line at the checkpoint, ramming the soldiers, and then speeding away.

2011: Noam Shalit, father of recently released Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, said on today that claims his son was not tortured during his time in Hamas captivity should be taken "with a grain of salt."

2011: Ninety-year old Jerzy Bielecki, a World War II resistance fighter, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/world/europe/jerzy-bielecki-dies-at-90-fell-in-love-in-a-nazi-camp.html

2012(4^th of Cheshvan, 5773): Eighty-five year old science writer and Timemagazine editor Leon Jaroff passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/business/media/leon-jaroff-editor-at-time-and-discover-magazines-dies-at-85.html?hpw

2012: Temple Beth-El in Bloomfield, Michigan, is scheduled to host a special ceremony blessing pets belonging to members of the congregation.

2012: The Israeli band, Flora, is scheduled to perform at Muchmore’s in Brooklyn, NY

2012: Shalom Bard is scheduled to make his debut as RBC resident conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra today “at a special concert featuring violinist and conductor Maxim Vengerov.”

2012:Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid called to "finally get rid of the Palestinians" by giving them their own state at a cultural event in Kiryat Motzkin today.

2012: The Israeli Navy today surrounded a ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists intent on breaching Gaza’s blockade as it approached the coastal strip.

2013:In Baltimore,Barry Steelman is scheduled to present “Standing by Their Flags,” exploring the Jewish military experience on both sides of the Civil War at the Jewish Museum of Maryland

2013:Folk/Reggae/songwriting Rabbi Jack Gabriel, a leader in the Jewish Renewal Movement is scheduled to perform in Alexandria, VA.

2013(16^thof Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety-year old Sid Yudain, the founder of “Roll Call” passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/us/politics/sid-yudain-who-created-roll-call-dies-at-90.html?ref=obituaries

2013: In Australia, “The Songs They Sang,” a musical narrative of the Vilna Ghetto during World War II is scheduled to be performed at the South Melbourne Town Hall

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a walking tour that will showcase Jewish life in the historic Seventh Street, NW Community from 1850 to 1950

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host as special of book launch of Out Chaos:Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust edited by Elaine Saphier Cox

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto”

2013:The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats is scheduled to close today.

http://www.nmajh.org/SpecialExhibitions/

2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont, Norman Mailer: A Double Life by J. Michael Lennon, Identical by Scott Turow and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi

2013: In Milwaukee, WI, Meaghan Meredith Reider, daughter of Sue and Dr. Ron Reider, pillar’s of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Jewish community married Mikhail Iosifovich Guterman son of Dina Gezhes and Iosif Guterman.

2013: 2013: In Milwaukee, WI, Meaghan Meredith Reider, daughter of Sue and Dr. Ron Reider, pillars of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Jewish community married Mikhail Iosifovich Guterman son of Dina Gezhes and Iosif Guterman.

2013: While no injuries or significant damages afflicted surrounding areas, a string of minor earthquakes have rattled Israel’s North over the past few days – including two today alone.

2013: News of Karnit Flug's appointment as the head of the Bank of Israel has been well received, with opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich of Labor even hailing the appointment as "enlightened." Her appointment along with that of Janet Yellin as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board means that Jewish women occupy the two highest financial positions in their respective country’s for the first time in history

2014: John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer” which is consistently accused of being anti-Semitic because of its sympathetic and factually inaccurate portrayal of the terrorists who hijacked the “Achille Lauro” and murdered wheelchair-bound Jewish-American Leon Klinghoffer” is scheduled to have its debut at the Met in New York today.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/met-to-present-klinghoffer-opera-undeterred-by-charge-it-glorifies-terrorism/

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ny-klinghoffer-teach-in-warns-of-slippery-anti-semitic-slope/

2014: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to host “Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks for a multi-media concert based on the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah and featuring Bosnian-born composer and accordionist Merima Kljuco.”

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present an evening of film and discussion with historian Linda J. Borish, examining “Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympics.”

2014: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its inaugural Sisterhood Lunch Out for 5775.

OCTOBER 21

1553 BCE(11 Cheshvan 2207): On the civil calendar, this date marked the death of Rachel, the matriarch and wife of Jacob, at the age of 36. She died during the childbirth of Benjamin, near Efrat, and is buried in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem).

336 BCE (24^th of Tishrei, 3425): According to the Book of Nechemia, Ezra and Nechemia convened the Jewish community in Jerusalem. (As reported by Aish)

681: The revised laws adopted by the Twelfth Council of Toledo including 28 anti-Jewish measures among which was forbidding converts to Christianity from returning to Judaism went into effect today.

1096: During the First Crusade, the Turks destroyed the portion of the Crusader army led by Peter the Hermit. Peter escaped and joined the main crusader army. The main body took Jerusalem from the Moslems in 1099. The Crusaders slaughtered the Jews of Europe as they made their way to the Holy Land. When they got to Jerusalem, the continued their bloody behavior as they slaughtered the Jews living in David’s City.

1422: King Charles VI, the monarch who banished the Jews from France in 1394, passed away.

1486: The body of one of the sons of Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, (Jerome of the Holy Faith) who had been arrested with other Marranos who had taken part in the rebellion against Pedro Arbucs was publicly burned today after he had killed himself in order to escape the disgrace of being publicly burned alive. Other members of the Santa Fe family were burned as marranos in 1497 and 1499. Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, Jerome of the Holy Faith was born Ibn Vives Lorki (Al-Lorqui, Joshua ben Joseph). A Jewish Christian convert, he was a Spanish physician and writer who wrote as Gerónimo de Santa Fe (Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, Jerome of the Holy Faith). His Jewish name came from the name of his birthplace, Lorca, near Murcia.

1512: In what may have been one of the most far-reaching decisions in the history of academia, Martin Luther joined the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. It would be almost five years to the day (October 31, 1517) from his appointment, that Luther would post his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle. (This gives a whole new meaning to the term “publish or perish”). Seven years after his appointment (1519) “Luther denounced the doctrines” regarding the treatment of the Jews. His final view of the Jews would be codified in the 1544 pamphlet “Concerning The Jews and Their Lies” that included a call for burning synagogues and destroying the homes of Jews.

1553: Volumes of the Talmud were burned in Venice

1780(22^ndof Tishrei, 5541): Shemini Atzeret

1781: In Austria, Joseph II rescinded the law forcing Jews to war a distinctive badge. The regulation had been in effect since 1267, more than 600 years.

1791(23^rdof Tishrei, 5552): Simchat Torah

1804: Birthdate of French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey who created one of the earliest surviving pictorial record of Palestine.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4486020,00.html

1805: Under the command of Lord Nelson the British win the decisive Battle of Trafalgar
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-old-salts-of-jewish-sort.html

1809: In Glasgow, Elizabeth Currie and William Stenhouse gave birth to noted Chemist John Stenhouse whose assistant included Raphael Meldola, the descendant of Sephardic Jews who had been in England since the 18^th century.

1810(23^rdof Tishrei, 5571): Simchat Torah

1817(11^thof Cheshvan, 5578): Meyer Abrahamson, the native of Hamburg who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor who served as “the physician to the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg” and who also pursued a literary career passed away today.

1833: Birthdate of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, creator of dynamite and the Nobel Prizes “Since 1901, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 802 individuals.” While Jews account for only 0.2% of the world’s population, 180 or 22% of the recipients are classified as Jewish or of Jewish ancestry. This anomaly has fascinated writers and researches for decades, but so far has not been satisfactorily explained. [Editors note – Claims that Jews are somehow smarter are just as specious as are claims that they are all crooks because of the disproportionate number of Jews involved in recent financial scandals. For more details on Jewish winners, see www.jinfo.organ very informative site that seems to be everybody’s primary source when it comes to these matters.]

1835: In Charleston, SC, Mr. Alexander Solomons officiated at the weeding of Nathan Emanuel of Georgetown, SC and Henrietta Eugenia, the “third daughter of the late Michael Simpson.”

1837(22^nd of Tishrei, 5598): Shmini Atzeret

1837(22^nd of Tishrei, 5598):Thirty-one year old Michael Joseph Gusikow, a multi-talented musician who played the flute and an early form of the Xylophone passed away at Aix la Chapelle.

1847: Birthdate of Danish political leader and author Edvard Brandes.

1853(19^th of Tishrei, 5614): Sukkoth Chol HaMoed

1853(19^th of Tishrei, 5614): Eighty-year old Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg, the Director of Wolfenbüttel Samson School, passed away today.

1861: Temple Emanuel of Davenport, Iowa was formed today as B’Nai Israel Congregation

1864(21^st of Tishrei, 5625): Hoshanah Rabah

1864: “Jewish Festivals” published today reported that “The last of the series of Autumnal Jewish festivals will commence this evening. It is a part of the festival of Succoth tabernacles, previously described in the Times. It is called Shemini Artzareth, and the institution will be found in Numbers xxix, 35. Part of the liturgy of the day is a prayer for rain and a propitious season. To-morrow evening commences the festival of Simchas Torah, rejoicing of the law. According to the regular service of the synagogue each Sabbath a sedrah or "section" of the law of Torah or Pentateuch is read, so that the whole five books of Moses are read each year, and with the new year the first book of Bereshit or Genesis is commenced while the reading of the last section of Deuteronomy is reserved for this festival. It is customary on the eye of this festival to take out all the "rolls or the law" deposited in the Ark, and to carry them in procession round the synagogue, which is brilliantly lit up. In order to pay due honor to the law, both at the termination of its reading and at the commencement, two persons are appointed in each synagogue to fill the offices of Bridegroom of the Law and Bridegroom of the Beginning. The liturgy of the day celebrates the excellence of the law and the mission of Moses, and its festival is greeted with joyous demonstrations. With this festival the Autumnal festivals of the Hebrews are brought to a close. According to the teachings of the Jewish sages, the festival teaches this lesson: Rosh Hashanah (New Year) calls the Israelite to examine his past conduct, the Arsareth Yermi Tershura, ten days of repentance, tell him to repent and amend his conduct, the Your Kippur (Day of Atonement) directs him to make his peace with God and his fellow-men, and when his mind is thus properly prepared, (Succoth,) or Tabernacles teaches him to rejoice in the belief of the Divine bounty, and Simchas Torah seals his attachment and adherence to the law. [Editor’s Note-This article shows an amazing comprehension of Jewish holidays, especially when you consider that it was published in an American newspaper at a time when the Jewish population was comparatively small.]

1865(1st of Cheshvan, 5626): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1867(22^nd of Tishrei, 5628): Shemini Atzeret

1867: Zigmund Schlesinger, frontiersman and Indian fighter gave up life in the Wild West and moved to New York today where he pursued a more civilized life of commerce and business. The following monograph entitled “Zigmund Schlesinger: A Defender of the West” by Seymour"Sy" Brody provides a glimpse of less than typical life for an American Jew.

“General George Forsyth was delegated by General Philip Sheridan to hire 50 first class frontiersmen to fight the attacking Indians. One of the first to apply was a young Hungarian-Jew, Zigmund Schlesinger, who had immigrated to America in 1864. Schlesinger came to New York Cityand worked at many jobs. He heard about the opportunities that existed in the West and left New Yorkto go to Kansas. In Kansas, he tried his hand at business by baking bread and cake and selling the foods under a canvas tent. The bakery failed as did some other business ventures. When Schlesinger applied for the frontiersman with Forsyth, they were not anxious to have him. He was small with a high-pitched voice and had very little experience or knowledge of firearms and horsemanship. He was told if they couldn't get 50 men, he would be hired. Schlesinger was lucky. He was hired since a 50th man was not found. In his diary, Schlesinger wrote of his first day as a member of the scouts in August 1868. After riding all day, Schlesinger recalled how stiff and tired he was when it was over. His riding abilities bore the brunt of ridicule from others. He was also reminded that he was a Jew. Schlesinger had been involved in many minor encounters with the Indians. The encounter that earned him the respect of the others took place at the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River in 1868. His scouting expedition was set upon by Chief Roman Nose with his band of Cheyenneand Sioux Indians. The scouts were pinned down for 9 days. Their horses had been killed and they suffered 19 casualties. Schlesinger had been wounded in both legs and the head. Yet, he managed to shoot down any Indian who exposed himself. They held off the Indians until a U.S. Army relief column came to their rescue. Forsyth wrote a letter to Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas, lauding the heroism of Schlesinger: "...He was the equal in manly courage, steady and persistent devotion to duty, and unswerving and tenacious pluck of any man in my command." Schlesinger left the company and returned to New York. Eventually, he settled in Cleveland, where he established a successful cigar store business. Active in Jewish organizations, Schlesinger was one of the organizers of the Hebrew Free Loan Association, vice-president of his temple, and president of the Hebrew Relief Association. He died in 1928, leaving behind a legacy as a Jewish Indian fighter and as a philanthropist.”

1869: Birthdate of William Edward Dodd, the first American Ambassador to Germany appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. Dodd became an early foe of the Nazis and tried to warn Americans of the evil that Hitler represented. For more about Dodd see “In the Garden of the Beasts.”

1873: “Season of Wonders” published today described many of the unusual apparitions that can be seen at this time of the year including “the erudite Hen that lays eggs inscribed with Hebrew characters.” The article does not say if the Hebrew is script or block printing.

1874: Birthdate of Albert Abram Aftalion, a native of the Ottoman Empire who taught economics at the University of Paris for 14 years before WW II.

1875(22^nd of Tishrei, 5636): Shemini Atzeret

1878: “A committee was empowered to rent the mansion on the southeast corner of Stuyvesant Avenue and McDonough Street for a term of five years at annual rent” to be used for the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1879: Pauline Markham (the future wife of Wyatt Earp) arrived in Yuma, AZ with a theatrical troupe headed for Tucson.

1879: According to a report published today based on a dispatch from Bucharest, the measure adopted by the by the Romanian government concerning the emancipation of the Jews does not contain all that they, the Jews want. But under its terms they are better off than they were before. If they accept the compromise, “there is no reason why they Jews…should not have a peaceful and prosperous political future before them.” Support for Romania by the Great Powers depended, in part, on granting the Jews full rights as citizens. The Romanians did not wish to do this and they kept looking for ways to grant the Jews as little as possible while hoping that the Powers would be satisfied with a minimalist approach.

1880: In today’s review of the recently published A History of Our Own Times: From the Accession of Queen Victoria to the Berlin Congress by Justin McCarty includes a chapter styled “On the True Faith of a Christian” describes the fight to remove the “disabilities of Jews in England, who for so many years were prevented from occupying the seats in Parliament to which they had been elected by” the words in the oath.

1882: “To Make Farmers of Hebrews” published today described the creation of the Maccabees, an organization formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, “to encourage and aid in the promotion of agriculture among” the Jewish people in the United States. Moses Krohn, Henry Stix, Joseph Abraham, Joseph Trounsine, Alexander Straus, Max Isaacs and Henry Lowenstein are the among those who will serve on the new organizations Executive Council.

1883: At the Essex Market Police Court Judge Gardner heard the facts surrounding the row that had taken place last night at Ansche Chesed, a synagogue located on Hester Street. After hearing the witnesses and the police officers, Gardner told Mr. Korn, one of the congregants, that “he ought to be ashamed of himself for fighting in a sacred place” and fined him $5 for his role in the matter.

1883: “The Jews of Wazan” published today reported that there are 10,000 people living in this Moroccan city, 600 of whom are Jews. Unlike in other cities like the melha, or Jewish quarter, is not “dirtier than any other part of town” and “the well-to-do appearance of the grownups…and pretty laughing faces of the children, show that in Wazan…the ancient race is not subject to persecution.”

1883: “Cremated After Burial” published today described the hassle that had taken place to ensure that the remains of the late Marcus Kronberg were cremated as he had requested; a request that his widow had at first tried to avoid by having him embaled and prepared for a traditional burial. (The embalming was necessitated by the fact that he had died of typhoid in Chicago but the cemetery was in Washington, PA)

1884: Sara Rock, “a well-formed” 18 year old Polish Jewess sued Kever Leiman for $40, the value of the engagement gifts she said he had given her and that were then taken away by his father.

1884: Henry Lehr went on trial today for the murder of John Wilson in Passaic County, New Jersey. The Jews of Patterson, NJ, have provided financial support for their co-religionist who claims the shooting was an accident.

1884: “Life in Tenement Houses” published today included a report by “Dr. Simeon New Leo, Chief Sanitary Inspector for the United Hebrew Charities” said that after inspecting numerous downtown tenement houses the “great and crying evil was” the lack “of a proper water supply and bathing facility.” He also said that the law requiring each tenement dweller “to have 600 cubic feet of air space” need to be enforced and that those buildings that could not comply should be torn down. (Dr. Leo was active in many Jewish organizations including the Young Men’s Hebrew Association whose first meeting was held in his home.)

1885:John Edward Moss, President of Shaar Hashomayim laid the cornerstone for a new synagogue on McGill College Avenue. The building was consecrated in 1886. It had cost $40,000 to build.

1886: In Cleveland, Ohio, Anshe Chesed, laid the cornerstone for its new temple today.

1886: In Cleveland, Ohio, a grand ball took place this evening that was attended by city’s “Hebrew elite.”

1887: Birthdate of Isa Kremer, who may have been the first woman to bring Yiddish songs to the concert stage in Russia.

1887: “Claimed By Two Mothers” published today described the custody battle between the Lees, an African-American family and Brodsky, a family of immigrant Jews from Poland over child known as either Nellie Lee or Yetta Brodsky.

1887: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the Rabbi at Temple Beth-El met with a reported from the New York Times so that he could explain the growing popularity of the Reform movement.

1888: Actor’s from Poole’s and the Oriental Theatre met at 56 Orchard Street today where they formed the Hebrew Actor’s Union.

1891: Dr. Walter Kempster, one of the U.S. Government Commissioners who sets sail today for the United Sates today having completed his investigation of Russian treatment of the Jewish population “has the highest opinion of the Jewish population…and is boiling over with indignation and horror at the inhuman treatment they are receiving from the Russians.”

1891: Baron and Baroness von Suttner and Professor Nothnagel were among those who founded a society for combatting anti-Semitism today

1892: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band marched in today’s Columbus Day Parade in Harlem.

1892: German histologist and medical author Gustav Jacob Born and Bertha Epstein born gave birth to their son Wolfgang. Wolfgang was the half-brother of Max Born, the physicists who played a critical role in the development of quantum mechanics. Gretchen Kauffmann, the mother of Max, was Gustav’s first wife. She passed away after having given birth to Max and his younger sister Käthe. Gustav Born was born in 1862 at Posen. By the time he passed away in 1900 he had made several contributions in the fields of microscopy and embryology.

1893: “The Week at the Theatres” published today described the upcoming revival of “The Merchant of Venice” in which famed Shakespearian actor Richard Mansfield will play Shylock with a portrayal “that will surely be original” but “also true to Shakespeare” and Beatrice Cameron will play the Jew’s daughter, Portia.

1894: Jacob Siegel and a family of Polish Jews – Hyman, Rosie, Becky and Henry Rubin – were among those injured when a stove exploded causing a fire at the tenement at 60 Orchard Street

1896:Herzl is elected honorary member of "Kadimah."

1899: “San Toy,” or “The Emperor's Own,” a musical comedy with songs by Paul Alfred Rubens premiered at Daly’s Theatre in London

1910: The Minister of the Interior takes prompt steps to suppress anti-Semitic manifestations at Kirk-Klisse, near Adrianople (Edirne, Turkey).

1912: Birthdate of composer George Solti.

1918: In Brooklyn, Bertha (née Lerner) and Max Himmelfarb gave birth to Milton Himmelfarb an American scholar and brother of Gertrude Mimmelfarm who is famous for his comment on Jewish voting patterns. "Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans."

1920: Birthdate of Louis Herman “Red” Koltz the native Philadelphian who played college basketball for Villanova before turning pro where he spent most of his career playing for teams that were the foil of the Harlem Globetrotters, including the Washington Generals.

1924(23^rdof Tishrei, 5685): Simchat Torah

1925: Birthdate of Wolf Stefan Priwin, the native of Berlin and brother of Andre Previn who gained fame as American director and television producer Stephen “Steve” Wolf Previn.

1925: Preferred Pictures, a movie production company formed by B.P. Schulberg in 1919 filed for bankruptcy. This cleared the way for him to join Paramount Pictures and its founder, Adolph Zukor.

1926: Birthdate of Mel Simon the Brooklyn native “who helped shape suburbia developing shopping malls” and who was the co-owner of the N.B.A. Indiana Pacers. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

1927 Birthdate of Howard Zieff, the commercial director and ad photographer who stuffed an actor with spicy meatballs in a memorable Alka-Seltzer spot and used an American Indian in print ads to convince people “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye,” and then went on to direct movie comedies

1928: Alfred Hugenberg, the German businessman and political leader served in Hitler’s first cabinet was appointed chairman of the conservative German National People’s Party of DNVP.

1930:The Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development or Hope Simpson Report of October 1930 was released today. The report followed the Arab Riots of 1929. Prepared by Sir John Hope Simpson, it recommended limited Jewish immigration due to the lack of agricultural land to support it. The report said nothing about limiting Arab immigration into Palestine. The Arab population had been growing since WW I thanks in no small measure to the economic improvements brought about by the Jewish population.

1931: After having agreed to work to overthrow the Weimar Republic, conservative political leader Alfred Hugenberg and Adolph Hitler joined together to create a short-lived united front. Like so many other Hugenberg thought he could control Hitler and instead just ended up being used by him.

1931(10^thof Cheshvan, 5692): Sixty-nine year old Austrian playwright and author Arthur Schnitzler, the son of Dr. Johann Schnitzler passed away today. Born in Vienna in 1862, Schnitzer trained to be a physician. However, he decided to follow his passion and become a playwright and author. One of his more memorable lines was “If a person knew at twenty how fortunate he is to be twenty, he would get a stroke because of sheer bliss.”
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/schnitz.htm

1932: In Baltimore, MD, “a five-story art deco style expansion to the downtown store, described as "Greater Hutzlers", opened” today. “Hutzler's, or Hutzler Brothers Company, was a department store founded in Baltimore by Abram G. Hutzler in 1858. From its beginning as a small dry goods store at the corner of Howard and Clay Streets in Downtown Baltimore, Hutzler's eventually grew into a chain of 10 department stores, all of which were located in Maryland.”

1933: German withdrew as a member of the League of Nations. This move was in keeping with Hitler’s contempt for the Versailles Treaty of which the League was a creation.

1935: Hank Greenberg was named the American League Most Valuable Player in a unanimous vote by sportswriters.

1937(16th of Cheshvan, 5698):American rabbi Henry (Haim) Pereira Mendes passed away. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, this son of Abraham Pereira Mendes was born in Birmingham, England,.. He was educated at Northwick College (rabbinics), at University College (London), and at the University of the City of New York, taking the degree of M.D. He became minister of the Manchester (England) Sephardic congregation in 1874, and in 1877 was called to the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York, of which he is still (1904) the minister. In 1881 he was one of the founders of the New York Board of Ministers, and acted as its secretary from its foundation up to 1901, when he became president. He joined Dr. Morais in helping to establish the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886, of which he became secretary of the advisory board and professor of history. On the death of Dr. Morais he became acting president of the faculty until the appointment of Dr. S. Schechter. In 1884, the centennial of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore, he moved his congregation to convene the leading Jews of New York to mark the event by some practical work: the outcome was the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, established in the same year. He was made vice-president of the Gild for Crippled Children in 1896, and in 1901 established the Jewish branch of that gild. He promoted the formation of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of the United States and Canada (1897) and was subsequently elected its president. Mendes was one of the founders of the Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York (1902), of whose advisory board he is chairman. In Zionism, Mendes stands specially for its spiritual aspect; he served as vice-president of the American Federation of Zionists and was a member of the Actions Committee of Vienna (1898-99). The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1904. In conjunction with his brother Frederick de Sola Mendes, and others, he was one of the founders of "The American Hebrew” in1879, to whose columns, as to those of the general press, he is a frequent contributor. He is the author of Union Primer and Reading Book (1882); Jewish History Ethically Presented (1895); Looking Ahead, a plea for justice to the Jew (1900); The Jewish Religion Ethically Presented(1904). Among his other writings are: In Old Egypt, stories about, but not from, the Bible;Esther; Judas Maccabæus; and many essays in periodical publications.

1937: The Palestine Post reported the death at 66 in New York of Felix Warburg, the banker and a great philanthropist, the leader of the non-Zionist group of the Jewish Agency. Born in Germany in 1871, Warburg eventually became a senior partner in the firm of Kuhn, Loeber and Co where he played an active role in the financial aspects of the industrial development of the United States. Warburg engaged a wide variety of philanthropic activities. “Although not a political Zionist, Warburg was involved in a variety of projects designed to develop Eretz Israel. He was a co-founder of the Jewish Agency and founder of HebrewUniversity. He actively protested British attempts to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. His former home on

Fifth Avenue

is now the Jewish Museum.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish constable, Eliahu Shitreet, was seriously wounded by an Arab terrorist in Haifa.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that the new Mandatory Ordinance introduced a more limited definition of a family and "dependants," further limiting the number of Jews eligible to immigrate under this category.

1937: Attendees at a dinner hosted by the New York-Brooklyn Federal of Jewish Charities paid tribute to the memory of the late Felix Warburg. Ironically, the dinner had originally been planned as tribute to Warburg’s son, Paul Felix Warburg, “head of the business men’s council of the federation.”

1937: In Jerusalem, Avinoan Yellin, inspector of the Jewish Schools in the Government Department of Education was shot by an Arab gunman who ambushed him as walked towards his offices. Yellin, the son of Hebrew University Professor David Yellin, was taken to Hadassah Hospital where his condition was described as “grave” following surgery.

1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Residents of the Jewish community at Koidanov, Belorussia, are murdered.

1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Thousands of Jews are murdered at Kraljevo, Yugoslavia.

1941: The first transport of Jews left Cologne, Germany for the Lodz Ghetto.

1942: In Brooklyn, Dr. Murray Blum and Ethel Silverman gave birth to Judith Susan Blum who as Judith Sheindlin gained fame as “Judge Judy”
http://www.judgejudy.com/

1942(10th of Cheshvan, 5703): At Szczebrzeszyn, the final Jews remaining were rounded up in a night of fierce and deadly slaughter. Those who were not shot were taken to Belzec. In Zwierzyniec, more Jews were rounded up. The guards all carried walking sticks that they would use to pull out Jews who lagged behind as they were marched to the town square. Those pulled out where shot on the spot.

1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): Shmini Atzeret

1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): The last surviving 2,000 residents of the Minsk ghetto were rounded up and killed in pits outside the city.

1943: Lucie Auerbach, who was six month pregnant, led an ambush in which five German guards and truck drivers were killed while members of the French resistance rescued 13 of their comrades including her husband Raymond had been held by the Gestapo at Montluc.

1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): During the final Aktion in Minsk, Belorussia, about 2000 Jews are murdered at Maly Trostinets.

1944: The retreating Nazis burned trunk loads of files, documents and papers concerning the Jews of Birkenau. The Germans were busy destroying the evidence of their evil. At the same time thousands of Jews would be sent away from Birkenau. The human evidence was being moved as well. Tens of thousands would die from hunger, cruelty and the raw elements as they marched from the concentration camp towards central Germany. Some would eventually find their way to Dachauand Stutthof.

1944 (4th of Cheshvan, 5705): Frances Y. Slanger, R.N. died in Elsenborn, Belgium, a victim of a German artillery attack. She was the first American nurse to die in Europe after the June 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy. She was 31 years old. On the night before she died, Slanger had written a letter to the Stars and Stripes military newspaper, on behalf of military nurses, praising American G.I.'s and thanking the wounded for the privilege of easing their pain and sharing some of their hardships. Featured on the newspaper's editorial page by editors who did not know of her death, Slanger's letter evoked a deep response. When the news of her death was published, Stars and Stripesreceived an unparalleled outpouring of letters from its moved readership. Charles Sawyer, the U.S.ambassador to Belgiumspeaking of Slanger, said "if there is in heaven and in our hearts a special shrine for those who have given the most and the best, it is held sacred for the American nurse." Born in Poland, Slanger came to Boston, Massachusettswhen she was seven years old with her family. She helped her father, a fruit peddler, while she attended high school. She graduated from the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing in 1937 and entered hospital work. In 1943, she enlisted in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and attended the first nursing basic training program at FortDevens. In Europe, she worked as part of a surgical team on the front lines.In June 1945, a cruise ship, refurbished as a hospital ship to return wounded American soldiers from Europe, was commissioned as the Frances Y. Slanger. In November 1947, her body was returned to Bostonfor reburial. More than a thousand people, including the mayor of Boston, paid their respects.(As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)

1946: The HMS Moon, a British minesweeper captured the SS Alma off the coast of Lebanon and towed her to Haifa. The vessel contained 800 Jewish refugees trying to enter Palestine despite the White Paper and the British Blockade. According to reports by the British, the Jews “took strong but unsuccessful action” in an attempting to prevent British sailors from boarding the Alma and tying tow ropes to the vessel. The British claim that no Jews were injured or killed. The Stern Gang used rumors about harm that had come to the refugees to issue a shoot to kill order aimed at British soldiers and sailors.

1947: “In the little town of Raanan on the coastal plain between Tel Aviv and Nathanya a new children’s village and farm school was dedicated today by the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America.” Initially the facility will be home to 170 holocaust survivors ranging in age between 5 and 17 years of age who have been living in displaced persons camps in Cyprus or at the Athlitit detention center. The village will eventually be able to house anywhere from 300 to 500 children.

1947: The UNSCOP majority report with its recommendation of partition was sent to the UN General Assembly with the approval of both the United States and the Soviet Union.

1948: Israeli naval vessels supported by planes from the Israeli Air Force shelled Egyptian positions in Gaza.

1948: At four in the morning, Israeli troops attack the fortified positions of the Egyptians outside of Beersheba. The Egyptians are taken by surprise since they did not know that the Israelis had opened the road to the Negev two days earlier. The Egyptians surrendered and the ancient place to which Abraham returned after “the binding of Isaac” was in Jewish hands.

1949: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

1952: In Beverly Hills, CA, Phoebe and Henry Ephron gave birth to Amy Ephron the multi-dimensional authorwhose work includes A Cup of Tea and One Sunday Morning.

1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion met "Hazon Ish," the supreme authority on interpretation of the Jewish law for extreme Orthodox Jewry. After an hour of animated discussion the area of disagreement between the two leaders remained fundamentally as wide as ever, but they came closer on the need for the mutual understanding. “Hazon Ish” was the appellation applied to the famed Talmud scholar Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz. Born in Poland in 1878, he moved to Eretz Israelin 1933. He settled in B’nai B’rak (yes the same place mentioned in the Haggadah) where he severed as communal leader while writing forty books on a variety of religious topics. Although principally an academic scholar, he applied himself to practical problems such as the use of milking machines on Shabbat and the cultivation of hydroponics during the sabbatical year, when it is forbidden to cultivate land in Eretz Yisrael. He was even once consulted by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion on the question of drafting young women to the Israel Defense Forces. He passed away in 1953.

1956: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe appeared as contestants on the panel quiz show “What’s My Line?”

1959: In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This is yet another example of Jewish philanthropy for the civil society.

1959: U.S. premiere of “A Bucket of Blood” a satire with music by composer and cellist Fred Katz.

1961: Author James Michener purchases a painting by Morris Louis, the great Jewish Washington abstractionist whom kingmaker-critics would anoint as the greatest painter since Jackson Pollock.

1962(23 of Tishrei, 5723): Simcaht Torah

1965: Helen Schucman commits the first lines of A Course in Miracles to paper. Dr. Helen Schucman was a Jewish research psychologist who was a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University

196717th of Tishrei, 5728): Third Day of Sukkot

196717th of Tishrei, 5728): An Egyptian missile attack sank the Eilat an Israeli ship 13 miles away from Port Said which meant the attack that cost the lives of 48 Israelis, took place in international waters. Israeli artillery opened up all along the Suez Canal setting the refineries at Suez City on firing thus forcing the evacuation of thousands of Egyptians

1967: First broadcast of “Twice a Fortnight” co-starring Abba Eban’s nephew Jonathan Lynn.

1967: “Jerusalem of Gold, Israel Festival Song, Strikes Gold” published today descried how “a song originally commissioned by the May of Jerusalem for the 1967 Israel Song Festival in May has become, since the Six Day War, one of the biggest hits ever.”

1973: Yitamar Barne’a and Gil Haran ejected from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it fell victim to a Syrian MIG-21, the most advanced Soviet aircraft of that period. Barne’a was taken prisoner. It is unclear as to whether Haran was captured or killed.

1973: Israeli forces sustained serious casualties as they fought to re-capture Mount Hermon from the Syrians. The Israelis referred to the 8,200 high mountain as “the eyes of the State of Israel.” Henry Kissinger flew from Moscow to Tel Aviv where he pressured the Israelis into accepting a cease fire. Kissinger and the Israelis knew that the Egyptian Third Army which was on the east bank of the Suez Canal was on the verge of annihilation. Kissinger claimed that such a crushing defeat would weaken Sadat and keep him from making any kind of political settlement in the future. There are those who contend that Sadat was able to sign a peace treaty with Israel because he felt that Arab honor had been redeemed in 1973. Others contend that Sadat also made peace because in 1973, the Egyptians with every possible military advantage still could not defeat Israel and that there was no point in continuing the endless hostilities.

1976: Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature

1979: Birthdate of Israeli jazz guitarist and composer Assaf Kehati.

1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff arrived in Lebanon to lead a memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert, an American Jewish Marine killed by Arab sniper fire

1983: U.S. premiere of “The Dead Zone” an horror film directed by David Cronenberg.

1986: During “Operation Wrath of God” Munzer Abu Ghazala, a senior PLO official and member of the Palestinian National Council, was killed by a bomb as he drove through a suburb of Athens

1987: Former Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.

1988: Today Israeli Army officials reported that the Palestinian arrested in the grenade assault on Monday that wounded 67 Israelis, including 24 soldiers, confessed to several recent terrorist incidents. The suspect, Salem Rajab al-Sarsour, 29, an Islamic militant, admitted the assault on the Beershebabus terminal, a similar grenade attack late last month on an army post in Hebron, and the fatal stabbing of an elderly rabbi, also in Hebron, in late August, the Israeli officials said.

1995(27^th of Tishrei, 5756): Eighty-three year old Jack Rose, the Russian immigrant who began as a gag writer for Milton Berle and Bob Hope before pursuing a career as a screenwriter.

2000(22^nd of Tishrei, 5761): Shemini Atzere

2001: The Sunday New York Times features reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including A History of Britain Volume II: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 by Simon Schama, Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden by Diane Ackerman and Too Close To Call: TheThirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election by Jeffrey Toobin.

2002(15th of Cheshvan, 5763): A car packed with explosives pulled up to a bus in northern Israel during rush hour, igniting a massive fireball that killed 14 people along with two suicide attackers.

2003: Exactly one year after a suicide bomber killed 14 Israeli bus riders, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Israel tear down a barrier being built as an anti-terrorist measure. The U.N. objects to what critics claim is the “jutting the fence into the West Bank.”

2004: An Israeli air strike in GazaCity killed Adnan al-Ghoul,a leading Hamas weapons maker who was responsible for some of the group's most powerful bombs and its homemade rockets, Israel's military said.

2005: The Icon Festival comes to an end at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. The Icon Festival, a celebration of science fiction and the imagination is held yearly during the Chol Hamoed period of Sukkoth.

2005: As a testimony to the vibrancy and creativity of Israeli society, Haaretz reported that “Lumenis, the developer, manufacturer and seller of laser and light-based devices for medical, aesthetic, ophthalmic, dental and veterinary applications, has announced the launch of a series of new products over the past two weeks.

2005(18^thof Tishrei, 5766): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth

2005(18^thof Tishrei,5767): Rabbi Hermann Naftali Neuberger, the President of Ner Israel and the man who helped to save 60,000 Persian Jews. His legacy includes three sons who became prominent rabbis in their own right and two other sons who became prominent members of the legal profession.

http://www.forward.com/articles/2224/

2006:Palestinian terrorists fired four Kassam rockets at the western Negev, a day after several other rockets hit Israel. All of them landed in open areas, causing no injuries or damage.

2007(9^thof Cheshvan, 5768):Seventy year old “R. B. Kitaj, an American artist who became influential in Britain with figurative and Pop Art paintings that ran against the grain of 1960s and ’70s abstraction” passed away today. (As reported by Martha Schwendener)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/arts/24kitaj.html?_r=0

2007: A 10-day klezmer festivalfeaturing over 100 klezmer musicians comes to an end in New York.

2007: In “A Counter History” published today, Alex Witchel traces the history of the New York deli and the role of Abe Lebewohl, who started the 2^ndAvenue Deli in 1954. (Editor’s note – the 2^nd Avenue Deli makes the best tongue on pumpernickel sandwich in the world and their meat knishes are beyond compare.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21deli-t.html?pagewanted=all

2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section features Marvin Kalb’s review of Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War by Howard Kurtz and The Siege of Mecca: The forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov.

2007: The Sunday New York Times book section features reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sexby Andrew Wilson, The Conscience of Liberal by Paul Krugman, Supercapitalismby Robert Reich, Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir by Shalom Auslander, Weimar Germany: :Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz, The Last Chicken In America, Ellen Litman’s elegantly constructed web of stories about Russian-Jewish immigrants living in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, The Sabotage Café by Joshua Furst fiction editor of Zeek and Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith.

2007: The Chicago Tribune carried a front page story entitled “How Holocaust heroine rescued 2,500 children” that told the story of how four Kansas high school students “discovered” and publicized the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker an unsung Polish heroine of the Holocaust

2007: the State Senate voted to oppose the Elliot Spitzer plan to issue special driver’s licenses to immigrant workers without requiring proof of legal immigration status by a 39–19 vote

2007: The latest adaptation of I.L. Peretz’s “A Night in the Old Marketplace” has its last performance at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, PA. The musical is the creation of composer Frank London.

2007: Archeologists overseeing contested Islamic infrastructure work on Jerusalem's Temple Mount have stumbled upon a sealed archeological level dating back to the FirstTemple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced today. The find marks the first time that archeological remains dating back to the FirstTempleperiod have been found on the contested holy site, the state-run archeological body said.

2008(22nd of Tishrei, 5769): Shemini Atzeret,

2008:Inside the grand Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in this bustling seaside city, five mostly elderly women and a middle-aged man from the Jewish community here gathered this evening to commemorate the holiday of new beginnings: Simhat Torah.

2008:The Israeli feature film Seven Minutes in Heaven, directed by newcomer Omri Givon, took the top award in its hotly contested category at the 24th Haifa International Film Festival, which ended tonight.

2008: Ruth Gruber, Journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian and U.S. government official “was honored for her work defending free expression by the National Coalition Against Censorship.

2009: Closing session of the National Jewish Democratic Conference Washington Conference.

2009:Freelance writer David Sax discusses his new book, Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.

2009:The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival feature programs centered around Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression and Shana Liebman’s Sex, Drugs and Gefilte Fish: The Heeb Storytelling Collection

2009:The IDF and the US military are scheduled to begin a major joint air defense exercise today, highlighting military ties between the two allies at a time of heightened tensions over Iran's nuclear program.

2009:The Anti-Defamation League said today that despite the apology of two South Carolina Republican Party chairmen for characterizing Jews as penny-pinchers, "they need to do more to publicly disavow their words and to understand why their remarks were so insensitive."

2009: The Senate plenum and executive council of Tel Aviv University approved the appointment of Professor Joseph Klafter as the school's 8th president.

2009(3rd of Cheshvan, 5770: English mystery writer Lionel Davidson passed away. In 1966, he won his second Gold Dagger for A Long Way to Shiloh which was published in the United States as The Menorah Men, a story that revolves around the search for a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. The story draws from the Copper Scroll found at Qumran in 1952, which lists buried treasure.

2010: Samuel Heilman is scheduled to deliver The Bernard Wexler Lecture on Jewish Historybased on The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneersonat The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.

2010: Artist Noam Braslavsky unveiled a life-sized sculpture of Sharon in a hospital bed with an IV drip at the Kishon Gallery in Tel Aviv.

2010:The Chief Rabbinical Council today formed a committee to examine the conversion processes not only in the IDF but also in the State Conversion Authority.

2011(23^rd of Tishrei, 5772): Simchat Torah

2011:A brushfire broke out between Kibbutz Yasur and Moshav Ahihud in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel today. 24

2011:The Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court agreed to a police request today to extend the remand of 14 people arrested during a rally outside the Sharon prison last night.

2011:Theo Epstein officially resigned as general manager of the Red Sox to accept the position of Cubs president of baseball operations.

2012: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket (who is really David Handler, the son of Lou Handler a Jewish accountant)

2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore.

2012: Carl Bernstein is scheduled to address a luncheon sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington

2012: Jeanne Golan is scheduled to perform the second and final, in a series of recitals featuring the complete piano sonatas of Viktor Ullman at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

2012: The Wiener Library, “the world’s oldest Holocaust memorial institution,” is scheduled to host an Open Day as part of the Bloomsbury Festival, which will give a wider audience a chance to view the new temporary exhibition, ‘Rescues of the Holocaust: Remembering Raoul Wallenberg and Lives Saved’.

2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah is scheduled to sponsor “Yiddish Café & Cabaret” featuring Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel (Temple Judah Confirmation class of 1973), “the Java Jews” (Des Moines gift to klezmer) and Dr. Bill Carson, director of bands at Coe College.

2012:Former Mossad chief and Yesh Sikuy director Meir Dagan is facing the threat of assassination by an Iranian hit squad as he recovers from a liver transplant in Belarus, The Sunday Times reported.

2012: Israel’s security forces are being tested rigorously in the upcoming days as they take part in two major drills aimed to test their ability to face both natural disasters and war. The largest-ever joint Israeli and American military drill began today at the same time that the country’s emergency services were participating in their first earthquake preparedness drill.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Sex, Yiddish and the Law: Jewish Life in Metz in the 18th Century”

2013:The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS), is scheduled to host a seminar, Introduction to Holocaust Studies through the International Tracing Service (ITS) Collection at the Wiener Library, designed for advanced undergraduate, master’s-level and first-year PhD students.

2013(17^thof Cheshvan, 5773): Seventy-two year old New York City “budget maven” Paul Dickstein passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/nyregion/paul-dickstein-kochs-budget-chief-in-new-york-city-dies-at-70.html?hpw&_r=0

2013: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was announced today as the winner of the first Genesis Prize, a $1 million award dubbed “the Jewish Nobel Prize.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2013: Two mortar shells fired from Syria, likely spillover from the bloody civil war in the country, landed on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights today near Tel Fares. (As reported by Lazar Berman)

2013:An Opera Fights Hungary’s Rising Anti-Semitism published today described how Ivan Fischer’s “The Red Heifer” is being used to combat rising anti-Jewish sentiment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/arts/music/in-hungary-a-new-opera-joins-the-chorus-against-anti-semitism.html?pagewanted=print

2014: In Glencoe, Illinois, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a screening of the documentary “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus.”

2014: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present Zachary Lazar, author of I Pity the Poor Immigrant and “Art Spiegelman's WORDLESS! with music by Phillip Johnston.

OCTOBER 22

362: A mysterious fire destroys the temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch. According to one source,the Christians living in Antioch who were angry with the Emperor Julian for the favor he showed to Jewish and pagan rites, and, outraged by the closing of its great church of Constantine, burned down the temple of Apollo in Daphne. Julian had promised to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, a promise he was unable to keep due to his untimely and mysterious death. Julian was the last non-Christian emperor of Rome. He opposed the special privileges that his predecessors had granted to Christianity because he thought the road to restoring Roman grandeur lay in returning to basic Roman values which were tied to their pagan religion.

741: Charles Martel passed away. Charles Martel or Charles the Hammer is credited with saving Europe from Islam by defeating the Moors at the Battle of Tours. This effectively meant, that Islamic culture would remain south of the Pyrenees in what is modern day Spain. Although fighting would continue between invading Moslem armies and defending Christian armies, most of Europe was destined to be Christian. This division would have profound consequences for the development of Jewish civilizations in various parts of Europe, Africaand Asia. Charles Martel was the grandfather of Charlemagne, the great French leader and effectively the first Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects comparatively well even in the face of pressure from the Catholic Church

1495: Ines Lopez of Ciudad Real, Spain was accused of heresy. In confessing, she wrote to the

Inquisitional Court

stating she was a 'Christian', but admitted wearing clean clothing on Saturday. In the letter she accused her cousin of teaching her to observe Passover, saying it was good "for her soul." Turning in her cousin satisfied the Inquisition, but they could do nothing as she was safe in Constantinople. Soon after this, Lopez was sentenced to life imprisonment, ordered to wear the San Benito and was burned at the stake.

1586: Sixtus V issued Christiana Pietas, a papal bull that ameliorated the restrictions placed on Jews by his papal predecessors. Among other things, the papal bull allowed the reprinting of the Talmud and other Jewish books provided that they had properly been censored before publication. The successor to Sixtus would not only reverse this bull, he would promulgate even more onerous restrictions on the Jewish people.

1597: The Roman Curia ruled that a Jewish child baptized without the permission of his parents, as required by canonical law, must be brought up as a Catholic. The ruling required the removal of the child from hits parents.

1668: The Jews of Barbados were forbidden to engage in foreign or local retail trade. Jews were forbidden from purchasing slaves, and were forced into living in a Jewish Ghetto in Barbados. All the discriminatory laws were removed by 1802, by the colonial government of Barbados. In 1820, the British Parliament also confirmed this repeal of the discrimination laws against the Jews.

1688: Birthdate of Nadir Shah of Persia. A member of the Afsharid dynasty, he was positively disposed towards his subjects. Persecution of the Jews resumed after he was assassinated in 1747

1727: Coronation of George II who was so moved when he saw Charles Macklin’s portrayal of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice (of which a bystander said “This is the Jew/That Shakespeare Drew”” the English king “was so moved he could not sleep”

1746: The College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University, received its charter. Like all elite colleges, Princeton has a checkered past when it comes to Jewish students and faculty. Today the university boasts a Jewish Studies Program and a Hillel Chapter. Albert Einstein is probably the most famous Jew to serve at Princeton.

1780(23^rd of Tishrei, 5541): Simchat Torah

1792: French troops take Frankfurt and the tri-color floats above the arsenal located at the north gate to the ghetto. Oddly enough, the Jews of Frankfurt respond as “Prussian patriots” and cheered when the French were to leave a few weeks later.

1799(23^rd of Tishrei, 5560): Last Simchat Torah of the 18^th century.

1804: Birthdate of Palestinian geographer Joseph Schwarz.

1806: In London,Nathan Mayer Rothschild married Hannah Barnet-Cohen the daughter of Lydia and Levi-Barent Cohen.

1832: In Prussia, Mr. and Mrs. Heinrich Damrosch gave birth to German American musician and conductor Leopold Damrosch “who was baptized a Lutheran when marrying his wife, former opera singer Helene von Heimburg.”

1835: During the Texas War for Independence Albert Moses Levy who had come to Texas as a member of the New Orleans Greys and who had been appointed surgeon in chief of the volunteer army of Texas began his army career which last would less than five months before he transferred to Republic’s fledgling Navy. In 1986, the state of Texas would institute Albert Moses Levy Day to honor Levy and all of his fellow Jews who served during the War for Independence.

1836: Sam Houston is inaugurated first President of the Republic of Texas. Jews played an active role in the settlement of Texas from the earliest days. Samuel Izaacs was reported to be the first Jew to settle in Texas when he arrived in 1821 with the party led by Stephen Austin. Dr. Moses Levy, a native of Richmond, Virginia, was the surgeon-in-chief of the volunteers. Castroville, Texas takes its name from Henri Castro, a French native who provided financial aid for the fledgling republic in return for a large land grant in south Texas between San Antonio and the Rio Grande River.

1837(23^rd of Tishrei, 5598): As Americans deal with the effects of the Panic of 1837, the worst economic crisis to hit the new republic, Jews observe Simchat Torah.

1839: Birthdate of Leon Jacob Wertheim the Amsterdam born banker and author who was a friend of the French poet Lamartine

1843: Birthdate of Moshe Leib Lilienblum

1847(12th of Cheshvan, 5608):Henriette Herz née De Lemos who was “best known for the "salonnieres" or literary salons that she started with a group of emancipated Jews in Prussia” passed away today. “Henriette Herz had grown up in the Berlin of the Jewish emancipation and had shared tutors apparently with the Mendelssohn's daughters. At age fifteen, she married a physician, twenty years her senior. Dr. Markus Herz had studied medicine at the University of Königsberg, one of only three universities that accepted Jews -- but only in its medical faculty. She was said to be an extremely beautiful woman.After a few years the salon split in two, a science-seminar led by her husband and a literary salon by Henriette herself. Most notable men and women in Berlin were said to have attended her salon. Among her friends and acquaintances were Dorothea von Schlegel, Jean Paul Richter, Friedrich Schiller, Mirabeau, Friedrich Rückert, the Danish Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Johannes von Müller, the sculptor Schadow, Salomon Maimon, Friedrich von Gentz, Fanny von Arnstein, Madame de Genlis.Alexander von Humboldt often visited and even received Hebrew lessons from Henriette. The theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was another frequent visitor; a fact which for Jews was her undoing. After the death of her husband she came under the powerful influence of Schleiermacher and converted to Protestantism. Strange that the daughter of a Portuguese Jewish family, a family that clung to its faith despite the blandishments of Catholic Princes and the threat of the Inquisition, would surrender to the blandishments of the pseudo-equality of 19^thcentury Germany.

1844: Birthdate of actress Sarah Bernhardt. Born in Parish, she was the illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard who came from a Dutch Jewish family. Since the youngster’s presence interfered with her mother’s way of life she placed in a convent and baptized, but was always conscious and proud of her Jewish origin.” Ms. Bernhardt was an international star of the legitimate stage and the silent silver screen. She passed away in 1923.

1852: "Austria" published today reported that a fire had broken out in a synagogue in Kolmed, Galicia where approximately a thousand Jews were attending services. The warning cry of "fire" was first heard in the women's balcony. In the ensuing stampede to avoid the flames thirty-six women were crushed to death as they tried to make their way down the narrow stairway. The fire had been set by a gang of thieves who snatched pearls, diamonds and other jewelry from the women during the confusion.

1860: It was reported today that in New York, the Board of Alderman had adopted a report in favor of leasing, at the rate of $1 per year, a plot of ground on the corner of Third-avenue and Seventy-seventh-street, for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the lease to continue so long as it is used for such purposes.

1861: "Affairs in Utah" published today Jews were an important component of this Mormon dominated territory. “A new Governor has been talked of for some time, for this Territory, but I believe no such person has yet appeared in this vicinity. As far as I can see, the reappointment of the late incumbent, Mr. Cumming, would meet the views of Jews and Gentiles here perhaps as completely as could be done by selecting any other name. That burly old gentleman somehow had the knack of getting decently along with both the contending elements of this community, though I believe neither could drive him an inch further than he was inclined to budge.”

1864:22nd of Tishrei, 5625): Shmini Atzeret coincided with Shabbat

1864: During the Civil War. Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr. was named Acting Chief of Ordinance for the Department and Army of Tennessee, one of the largest military units in the Union Army.

1866: “Singular Discover: A Colony of Jews in the Heart of China” published today described the plight of the Jews living in Kaifeng, the capital of Hunan province, which was one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China. According to a stone found on the site of the now destroyed synagogue, the Jews had first arrived during the Hon Dynasty (200 BCE-200 CE), this house of worship had been built in 1163 during the Sung dynasty and rebuilt about 300 years ago during the Ming dynasty. There are between 200 and 400 people who identify themselves as Jews living in the city. The last Rabbi, who apparently was the last person to know Hebrew, passed away about 40 years ago. The Jews still knew the names of their holidays but had no knowledge of how to observe them. The Jewish community has suffered serious economic loss as a result of the many years of violence that have racked the area. The synagogue had fallen into a state of disrepair and ruin. There was no money to rebuild it. According to this account, the Jews actually tore the decaying building down with the hope of selling the scrap for money to help to meet their basic needs. Somehow, one of the main stones from the synagogue ended up as part of the local mosque.

1867(23^rdof Tishrei, 5628) Simchat Torah

1874: In New York City, at the Academy of Music, Bayard Taylor gave a lecture on the topic of “Ancient Egypt.” The well-attended event was sponsored by the Hebrew Young Men’s Association. John R. Brady, a justice of the state Supreme Court introduced the speaker. In his opening remarks, Brady, who was not Jewish, said, “…the purpose of the …Young Men’s Hebrew Association…are first, the establishment of a reading room and library; second, the delivery of lectures on historical , scientific and social topics and on Jewish history and literature, and in the third place, entertainments of a social, artistic, literary and musical nature….This is a program so entirely comprehensive that he who cannot be satisfied with any of the several subjects suggest me be extremely unworthy of the designation of an American citizen. The lecture tonight is given on the invitation of the descendants of a race who were formerly bondsmen on the banks of the Nile, who helped build the pyramids, and hence the propriety of commencing a lecture season with a lecture, the subject of which is identified with that extraordinary performance.”

1875(23^rdof Tishrei, 5636): Simchat Torah

1876: In Baltimore, MD, the new Hebrew Orphan Asylum was dedicated in ceremonies led by Dr, Benjamin Szold. Governor John Carroll and Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe were among the dignitaries in attendance. Szold was the rabbi for Temple Oheb Shalom and the father of Henrietta Szold.

1878: Moritz Ellinger has been chosen to run for the position of Coroner by the opponents of the Tammany political machine.

1883: In Temesvar, Hungary, Dr. Jules Rosenberg, a leading Jewish lawyer, shot and killed Count Etienne de Battyany in duel fought over the affections of Mlle. Hona de Schossberger.

1883: It was reported today that a dispute over the process of selecting officers to lead Ansche Chesed B’nai Kovanah was the cause of the altercation that took place at the synagogue on the Lower East Side after Shabbat had ended last week.

1883: The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York held its grand opening with a performance of Gounod's ''Faust.'' The Met was the product of the Metropolitan Opera Association. Two decades after the opening of the Met, Otto H. Kahn took over as head of the association and chaired it for almost three decades until his death.

1884: “Shot For A Robbing A Melon Patch” published today described events surround the fatal shooting of John Henry Wilson. Wilson was shot while stealing melons from a patch guarded by a 19 year old Henry Lehr.

1884: It was reported today that Justice McCarthy is “reserving his decision” after hearing the evidence in a suit brought by Sara Rook, an 18 year old Jewess from Poland who has been living with her uncle Jacob Leiman, against her cousin Kever Leiman to whom she claims she is engaged and who wrongfully took back gifts he had given as part of the engagement. Kever’s parents testified that the jewelry belonged to his mother who had lent the items to the young lady and that the event which she claims was her engagement party was in fact the engagement party for Kever’s younger brother. (Yes, this Jewish soap opera actually appeared in a major secular newspaper.)

1886(23rd of Tishrei, 5647): Simchat Torah

1886: It was reported today that when a member of the Ohio Grand Lodge of Mason was challenged over his role in laying the cornerstone for Anshe Chesed in Cleveland, he “explained that it is the duty of Masons to lay a cornerstone whenever called upon.”

1886: It was reported today that Mary Suselinski, the young servant girls who had tried to poison the Ginsburg family, told authorities that she was really a Christian and not Jewish. She had only claimed to be Jewish because she thought it would be easier to find work that way.

1887: In “The Growth of Liberalism,” which was published today, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler defended his decision to begin delivering lectures on Sunday at Temple Beth-El that would replace the traditional Saturday services. He began the practice 14 years ago while in Chicago and states that it is quite popular with the Reform leaders in German. He claims that the young men this congregation are highly supportive of the change and the need to attract younger members to Jewish congregations is one of the many reasons for making the shift from Saturday to Sunday. (Those of you who know about the history of the Reform movement will recognize this as a contemporary account of one that movement’s attempt to create a Judaism that conformed to the world around it,)

1887(4th of Cheshvan, 5648) Seventy-one year old historian Simon Hock passed away today.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hock_Simon

1888: It was reported today that the members of the newly formed Hebrew Actors’ Union “are all Socialists and” that they “intend to join the Central Labor Union.”

1888: It was reported today the Centurywill be publishing an article on Assyrian monuments written by Professor Morris Jastrow.

1888: It was reported today that Professor Morris Jastrow “will take charge of the course in Semitic Languages at the University of Pennsylvania while his colleagues are conducting an expedition to Babylonia.

1890(8^thof Cheshvan, 5651): Joseph Rosenthal who has been head of the “dry good firm of J. Rosenthal & Co. for the last forty-five years” and “was a generous contributor to Hebrew charities” passed away today at his home on East 61^st Street in New York.

1891: “Russia and Europe” published today described the problems that the Czar’s government is having dealing with the disastrous famine gripping the country including the persecution and expulsion of the Jews which has deprived the regime “of the those citizens” who are most useful “in times of distress” and has made the possibility of obtaining a loan even more difficult because of the opposition of Jews throughout Europe to such an action.

1892: In Clinton, NY, Hamilton College announced “the prize oration and essay subjects” that included “The Hebrew Prophets as Social and Political Reformers” and “Pathos in the Life and Poetry of Heinrich Heine.”

1892: Edwin Einstein, the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City “made his first formal speech of the campaign at a meeting tonight in the Hebrew Institute Hall at East Broadway and Jefferson Street.

1893: Birthdate of Manfred George Cohn, the German born journalist who gained fame as Manfred George, the refugee from the Nazis who “started work in New York as editor of Aufbau and turned it into an important journalistic voice for the Jewish exile community in the post-World War II era, leading him to be called ‘a central figure in Jewish journalism of the Hitler and post-Hitler period’".

1894: According to reports published today, Jacob A. Cantor has five opponents in his bid to be elected to the House of Representatives from New York’s 15^thCongressional District. Cantor’s is the first name on the ballot which bodes well for his chances of being elected.

1896: “Baroness Hirsch’s Check” published described how the widow of the Baron had sent a check for $1,000 to Temple B’nai Israel in Columbus, GA after she had received a request four months ago from Mrs. Gabriel, the President of the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society who unfortunately passed away on the same day that the check arrived from Paris.

1898: Captain Mathew Nathan, a graduate of the Royal Military Academy and the son of Jonah Nathan was promoted to the rank of major in the engineers

1902:Meeting with Colonial Minister Joseph Chamberlain: Herzl presents the plan for the colonization of Cyprusand the Sinai Peninsula, including El Arish: Jewish settlers under a Jewish administration.

1903: Birthdate of Curly Howard. Born Jerome Lester Horwitz, Howard was one of the Three Stooges, along with his brother Moe Howard and Larry Fine.

1905: Birthdate of Hungarian composer Joseph Kosma.

1913: In Duluth, MN, Isadore and Ann Jaffe gave birth to Edward Jaffe. Isadore Jaffe “was a tailor from Lithuania who borrowed the money for a passage to America from a woman acquaintance who assumed he would then send for her and marry her. When he did not, she came over herself, tracked him down in Duluth and got a rabbi to perform the wedding.” Edward Jaffe moved to New York and “became a press agent legendary for his lost causes, chutzpah and angst, who all but made Broadway his alias and held that the best kind of promotion was self-promotion.” (As reported by Ralph Blumenthal)

1913: In Budapest, Dezső and Júlia Friedmann-Berkovits gave birth to Endre Ernő Friedmann who as Robert Capa became one of the most famous of photographer of his time. He survived the Spanish Civil War and World War II only to die in 1954 while covering the war in Indochina. Capa was in the first wave of troops that hit the beaches at Normandy and his photos are the classic views of the Longest Day.

http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/robert-capa-1913-1954

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Soldier

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353

1914: “Nathan Straus sent a letter to Governor Glynn of New York today praising the work the Governor had accomplished in the way of legislative reform, particularly the new primary law and the Workmen’s Compensation Law.”

1914: “Great Russian Host on Prussian Border” published today described the multi-ethnic force under General Rennenkampff that included Jews from Riga and Libau which was preparing an new attack on Eastern Front.

1914: In describing the fighting on the Eastern Front during World War I,a correspondent for the London Standard reported he shudders “to think of the ravages made by the waves of troops, both German and Russians who passed to and fro over what was once a peaceful, quiet agricultural region inhabited chiefly by Jews.”

1915: Birthdate of Aaron Katz, who would spend fifty years of his life seeking to exonerate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1915: Birthdate of Sydney Simon Shulemson DFC who “was a Canadian fighter pilot, and Canada's highest decorated Jewish soldier, during World War II…After the war, Shulemson located aircraft and recruited pilots for Israel's growing Israeli Air Force.” He passed away at his home in Florida in 2007

1915: In the village of Ruzhany, Perla and Shlomo Jeziernicky gave birth to Icchak Jeziernicky who would gain fame as Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel.

1917: The two hundred aged residents of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in NYC gave $100 to Superintendent Albert Kruger "with instructions of buy a Liberty Bond in the name of the institution. Among the contributors were 109 year old Nissen Rosenstein said to be the oldest man living in NY who gave five dollars and 113 year old Ethel Polansky who contributed one dollar. The residents held a service before making their donations during which they prayed "for the success of the American arms and the coming of an honorable peace.

1919: Birthdate of author and political radical Doris Lessing. Lessing led a colorful life. Born Doris Tayler to English parents living in Persia(now Iran) her father moved the family to what was then the British Colony of Rhodesia. In 1943, after divorcing her second husband she married Gottfried Lessing, a German Jewish Marxist, in order to give him the protection of citizenship. Strange what some people would do save one Jewish life while others turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the screams of tens of thousands.

1921: Birthdate of Alexander Kronrod, Russian mathematician

1926: In a surprise assault, J. Gordon Whitehead repeatedly punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal. The episode contributed to the death of Houdini on Halloween.

1928: “Four hundred Jewish leaders attend the non-Zionist Conference on Palestine.” (As reported by JTA)

1930:Birthdate of Frank Lowy, the European-born Australian-Israeli businessman who is one of the richest people in Australia. He is known for his co-founding and continuing involvement with The Westfield Group, a retail giant that owns dozens of shopping centers in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Great Britain.

1931: A codicil to the well of Dr. Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian physician turned playwright who passed away yesterday, was read tonight. The codicil call for a paupers funeral, forbidding “wreaths, obituary announcements and all accessories to the funeral ritual such as a guard of honor,” Schnitzler wanted the money that would have been used for the funeral to be given to various hospitals. The codicil also forbids eulogies and the wearing of mourning clothes. Finally, he left instructions that a needle be “thrust through his heart to remove any doubt of his death.

1933:Bernard Bergman, the nursing home mogul, received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein today.

1934: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native David Libai, Israeli lawyer and politician

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Avinoam Yellin, the senior inspector of education and a prominent Jewish leader, was shot and seriously injured by an Arab terrorist lying in wait at the entrance to his office.

1937: Funeral services were held today for Felix Warburg at Temple Emanuel on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

1937: Warm tributes were paid to the memory of Felix Warburg tonight at a dinner given by the Joint Distribution Committee of which he was an honorary chairman.

1939(9^th of Chesvan, 5700) Shimon Yehuda Hakohen Shkop passed away. Born in 1860, “he was a rosh yeshiva ("dean") in the Yeshiva Shaar Hatorah and in the Telshe yeshiva and a renowned Talmudic scholar. He was born in Torez in 1860. At the age of twelve he went to study in the Mir yeshiva, and at fifteen he went to Volozhin yeshiva where he studied six years. His teachers were the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, with whom he was very close. Shkop married a niece of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon and in 1885 was appointed to the Telz Yeshiva, where he remained for 18 years until 1903. While there, he developed a system of talmudic study which combined the logical analysis and penetrating insights of Rabbi Chaim Brisker with the simplicity and clarity of Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) and which became known as the "Telz way of learning". In 1903, he was appointed Rabbi of Moltsh, and in 1907 of Bransk. A famous pupil of his in Moltsh was Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna who studied under him for a year in 1906, before leaving to the Slabodka yeshiva when Rabbi Shkop himself left. During World War I, the communal leaders urged him to leave before the Germans arrived, but he refused and stayed with his community.Between 1920 and 1939, at the request of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, he succeeded Rabbi Alter Shmuelevitz as Rosh Yeshiva of the renowned Sha'ar HaTorah in Grodno. He raised the level of the institution and transformed it into one of the finest yeshivos in Poland and beyond. Hundreds of young men flocked there from near and far. For many years, Rabbi Zelik Epstein, who was married to a granddaughter of Rabbi Shkop, has headed a successor in Queens. It is known as an exemplary institution. It was there that he taught Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz, the Suvalker Rav.As a young man of eighteen, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz was invited by Rabbi Shimon to give the third level lecture in the Yeshivah Ketanah in Grodno. At the age of 22, he headed a group of students who transferred from Grodno to Mir. However, his four years in Grodno with Rabbi Shimon had a profound influence on his approach to Talmudic analysis. In 1928 Shkop traveled to the United States in order to raise much needed funds for the Yeshiva. After delivering a lecture at Yeshiva University, he eventually acceded to Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel's invitation to serve as a Rosh Yeshiva of Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan (RIETS) in New York. In his absence from Poland, he was greatly missed by Rabbis Yisrael Meir Kagan and Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, who pleaded with him to return. He also received a scathing letter from Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, the mashgiach of Mir, which, according to an eyewitness, he ignored. For family reasons, Rabbi Shkop chose to return to Europe in the fall of 1929.Shkop had a winning personality. He was an active member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of the Agudas Yisroel. Many of his students attained distinction, among them Rabbis Elchonon Wasserman of Baronovitch, Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman of Ponevezh and Isser Yehuda Unterman, a future Israeli Chief Rabbi. Dayan Michoel Fisher of London was also a pupil of Rabbi Shkop. Shkop formed close bonds with [the younger] Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal, the future Manchester Rosh Yeshiva. He would sometimes come to England to raise funds for his yeshiva, and Rabbi Segal took advantage of these opportunities to serve as his attendant, spending one vacation at Rabbi Shimon's summer resort, studying with him and accompanying him on his walks. He published his classic essay titled Sha'arei Yosher (The Gates of Honesty) in 1925 and Ma'arekhet ha-Kinyanim in 1936. Novellae on the Talmud tractates Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Basra were published posthumously in 1947 with a preface by his son, and on Nedarim, Gittin, and Kiddushin in 1952, and on Yevamos and Ketuvot in 1957. Rabbi Shkop's Talmudic novellae are still studied in yeshivos throughout the world today. Sha'arei Yosher is largely concerned with the intellectual principles by which the law is established, rather than with concrete laws, and is stylistically similar to the Shev Shema'tata of Aryeh Leib HaCohen Heller, on which it was partly based.As the Russian army was about to enter Grodno during World War II, he ordered his students to flee to Vilna and he himself died two days later on the 9th of Cheshvan 5700 (1939) in Grodno. Including his death, the Jewish people lost three Rabbis and Torah giants in 10 months: Harav Shimon Shkop, Harav Boruch Ber Leibowitz of Kamenitz and Harav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Zaniemanski Forshtat section of Grodno.

http://www.aishdas.org/asp/ShaareiYosher.pdf

1939: Birthdate of English professional football player George Cohen who was on the 1966 World Cup Team.

1940: The Nazis deported 6,300 Jews living in Baden, the Saar and the Palatinate. Jews had lived in these communities since the 14^th century.

1940: Jewish business owners in the Netherlandsmust register their businesses with the occupying Nazis.

1941: Birthdate of Max Apple, author of I Love Gootie: My Grandmother’s Storyand The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories

1941: The Rumanian command headquarters for the ODESSA"ACTION" were blown up. Seventeen Rumanians and four Germans were killed. In reprisal for this apparent act of defiance over 5,000 Jews were rounded up in Odessaand shot dead the next day. Considering what the Nazis did to the Jews of the Soviet Union, it is always amazing to read about the excuses that were concocted for various mass murders.

1942: The keel was laid for the HMS Totem which would renamed INS Dakar when the Israelis purchased the submarine from the British in 1965.

1942(11th of Cheshvan, 5703): Icek and Fraidla Dobrzynska, Jewish parents of two children who had been deported from Poland's Lódz Ghetto in September 1942, commit suicide

1942(11th of Cheshvan, 5703): Jacob Joseph, a captain in the United States Marines Corps who was the great-grandson of Rabbi Jacob Joseph and son of New York State Senator Lazarus Joseph was killed today while fighting on Guadalcanal.

1943(23^rdof Tishrei, 5704): Simchat Torah

1943: Birthdate of violinist Paul Zukofsky

1944:The Federation of Jewish Communities officially reestablished its activities today a few days after the liberation of Belgrade, when its surviving chairman, Friedrich Pops, reopened its office. Fifty-six Jewish communities were reconstructed, and the federation, with the aid of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), engaged in a variety of welfare projects, including the reopening of the home for the aged in Zagreb, extending material aid to the needy who began to return to their daily lives, etc. It also reestablished its ties with the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations.

1944: As the Soviets closed in on Budapest, 25,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and forced to dig anti-tank ditches on the Westward roads. Thousands were shot during the marches.

1946: A transport ship is scheduled to leave Haifa today bound for Cyprus loaded with 800 Jews who been taken off the SS Alma when it tried to run the British blockade designed to keep Jews from settling in Eretz Israel.

1947: Canadian Ethel Stark became the first woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall when she raised her baton in front of “the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra, the first Canadian orchestra to play at the legendary venue.” (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)

1947: In describing the tenuous situation in Jerusalem, Zipporah Borowdky, who had just arrived from the United States, wrote her parents that “Jerusalemis thick with barbed wire and barricades…I still haven’t gotten used to the idea of being frisked every time I go into a public building, even the Post Office.

1948: Israeli naval commandos using explosive boats sank the Egyptian flagship Emir Farouk, and damaged an Egyptian minesweeper..

1948: During the War of Independence, the Third Cease Fire went into effect.

1948: Arab Liberation Army did not feel itself bound by the Third Cease Fire. They “continued to harass Israeli forces and settlements in the north. On the same day that the truce came into effect, the Arab Liberation Army violated the truce by attacking Manara, capturing the strongpoint of Sheikh Abed, repulsing counterattacks by local Israeli units, and ambushed Israeli forces attempting to relieve Manara. The IDF's Carmeli Brigade lost 33 dead and 40 wounded.”

1948:The Arab Liberation Army violated the truce by attacking Manara, capturing the strongpoint of Sheikh Abed, repulsing counterattacks by local Israeli units, and ambushed Israeli forces attempting to relieve Manara. The IDF's Carmeli Brigade lost 33 dead and 40 wounded. Manara and Misgav Am were totally cut off, and Israel's protests at the UN failed to change the situation. [Editor’s note – the more things change, the more they stay the same.]

1952: The complete “Jewish Torah” was published in English for the first time. A collection of oral and written commentary (dating 200 BC to AD 500) on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah comprises the basic religious code of Judaism.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from London that Eliahu Elath, accompanied by eight senior members of his staff, presented Queen Elizabeth II with his credentials as the first Israeli ambassador to the Court of St. James.

1952: In West Homestead, PA, Dr. Harold Goldblum and Shirley (née Temeles) Goldblum gave birth to multi-talented actor Jeffrey “Jeff” Lynn Goldlbum who appeared in such films as “The Big Chill” and “The Fly.”

1956: In a second round of meetings, Israelis led by Ben-Gurion meet with the British and French at Sevres, France, to make plans for coordinating a triple military attack on Egypt.

1959: In Newark, NJ, Claire (née Goldfein) and William Robert Shaiman gave birth to award winning composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman.

1961(12^th of Cheshvan, 5722): Eighty-two year old film executive Joseph M. Schenck whose interest in young starlets spanned an era from Norma Talmadge to Marilyn Monroe passed away today

http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/joseph-schenck/

1965: Protestant theologian Paul Tillich passed away.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4466666?uid=3739640&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102792017967

1966(8^th of Chesvan): Eighty-two year old Michael Noyk, the Lithuanian born solicitor and Irish Republic leader passed away today in London. For more see http://books.google.com/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&lpg=PA72&vq=noyk&pg=PA72#v=snippet&q=noyk&f=false

1973: Security Council Resolution 338 establishing a cease fire ending the Yom Kippur War was officially supposed to go into effect at 7 p.m.However, combat did not cease. Syrians continued to bombard Israeli positions. Israeli forces on the west bank ceased a major juncture of highway connecting Suezwith Cairo. In Lebanon, Fatah, the Palestinian terrorist organization announced it would not accept the cease fire and fired rockets into northern Israel. It would be another 48 hours before the facts on the ground would reflect the desires of those on the banks of New York’s East River.

1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff remained in Beirut after yesterday’s memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert instead of flying back to Italy because it was Shabbat

1984: Abd Rabbo murdered Ron Levy and Revital Seri today when he “came upon the two hiking south of Jerusalem, tied them up at gunpoint, placed bags over their heads and shot them dead.” (As reported by Elhanan Miller)

1986: Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian born physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate passed away. He was an anti-fascist who helped his Jewish friends escape from Hungary.

1989(23^rd of Tishrei, 5750): Simchat Torah

1989: The funeral of Israeli journalist Dahn Ben-Amotz was held today.

1992: “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a play by Wendy Wasserstein that focuses on three Jewish-American sisters and their lives “premiered off-Broadway in a Lincoln Center Theater production at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater.”

1993: U.S premiere of “Twenty Bucks” with a script by Leslie and Endre Bohem, co-starring David Schwimmer and photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki.

1999: Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy French government during World War II was jailed for crime against humanity. Papon was a senior police official and instrumental in the deportation and murder of large numbers of French Jews. He covered up his crimes for several decades but eventually he was brought to justice.

1999: U.S. premiere of “One Day in September” an Academy Award winning documentary about the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

2000(23^rd of Tishrei, 5761): Simchat Torah

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of two books by Jewish authors: The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation by Howard Kurtz and Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

2001: Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad “was able to get a loan at relatively high rate from the Bank Leumi” to cover part of the 1.5 million NIS that his father had had to return to donors.

2002: The Anaheim Angels defeated the Giants in the third game of the World Series. Scott Schoeneweis, whose mother was Jewish, pitched the final two innings of a 10-4 Angel victory -- he allowed no runs, struck out two, and gave up only one hit. The Angels went on to win the series in seven games

2002: Domazlice -- An old Jewish cemetery was desecrated in a southwestern Czech town. Five tombstones were toppled at the cemetery in Domazlice, 94 miles southwest of Prague, and five copper lanterns stolen. Copper plaques with Hebrew inscriptions were removed from two tombstones

2002:At least 14 Israelis were killed and more than 45 injured when an explosives-laden sport utility vehicle driven by a Palestinian suicide bomber rammed a bus near Hadera in northern Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

2005: "What do you do with the Etrog after Sukkoth?" was answered today. According to the Jerusalem Post, Uzi Eli the "etrog medicine man" has created a variety of etrog-based juices, tonics, pastes, and creams that are more than just medicine; they are a way of life. There is evidence that in the Middle Ages the etrog, or as it is called in English, citron, was used as a remedy for seasickness, pulmonary troubles, intestinal ailments and other disorders, according to Fruits in Warm Climates by J. Morton. Jews are not the only ones who believe the curative value of the etrog. In India, the peel is eaten to cure dysentery and halitosis, while the distilled juice is given as a sedative. In China, the peel is made into a tonic and used as a stimulant and expectorant. In West Tropical Africa, the etrog is used only as a medicine, most often against rheumatism. In Panama, etrogim are ground up and combined with other ingredients and given as an antidote for poison.

2006: The Chicago Tribune book section featured reviews of two books about I.F. Stone: All Governments: The life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone by Myra MacPherson and The Best of I.F. Stone edited by Karl Weber

2006: University of Chicago Professor, Norman Gelb’s long-discredited theory on the Dead Scrolls has gained new support based on recent archeological digs at Qumran. Rather than being a monastery used by the Essenes, Qumranmay have been a fortress and then a pottery factory. According to Gelb, the caves were a repository of literature brought from Jerusalemat the time of destruction of the SecondTemple, placed in clay containers purchased at the pottery factory and then hidden from the Romans in the local caves. This would mean that the Dead Scrolls are not the unitary work of one sect but a collection of literature from a variety of authors.

2006: The Chicago Tribune reported on Dina Babbit’s attempt to reclaim artwork she had created while an inmate at Auschwitz. As a teenager Babbit’s life was spared because she was able to draw pictures for Dr. Josef Mengele. Babbit has been trying to claim the paintings since 1973 when she first found out that they had survived the war. A museum at Auschwitzhas the paintings and despite repeated requests from a variety of sources claims that the only one who could make a claim for them would be Mengele since the work was done for him. Babbit wants the art works as a way to bring some sort of closure to the evil experience she endured with her mother.

2006: Siraly (Seagull in English) the newest nightspot in Budapestopened its doors on

Kiraly Street

in the heart of what used to the city’s Jewish ghetto.

2006:The New York Times features reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57by Michael Weisskopf and two books by Lemony Snicket, The End: A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the 13^thand The Beatrice Letters. Lemony Snicket is the pen name of author Daniel Handler, Jewish 33-year-old native of San Francisco

2007: At the Englert Theater in Iowa City, IA, Ambassador Samuel Lewis, one of Washington's most experienced and respected Old Middle East Hands facilitates a presentation that is part of "US and the World," the ongoing series, which focuses on US policy in the Middle East, past, present and, so far as possible, future.

2007: Zigota, a tiny fringe studio/movement theater ensemble presents its new show “The Passerby” at the intimate Tmumna Theatre in south Tel Aviv.

2007: The New York Times and the Washington Post each featured a review of Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House by Valerie Plame Wilson. Like Madeline Albright, Plame did not find out that she was “part Jewish” until she reached adulthood. At least one great grandfather was a rabbi. Her husband, Joe Wilson, who was part of the “leak scandal”, has two Jewish children from his first marriage.

2007: The NewRepublicmagazine featured a review of Fateful Choies;Ten Decisions That Changed The World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw. Kershaw views the Holocaust as one of these ten decisions. “Kershaw argues that the Nazi program for the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question,’ adopted in the summer and autumn of 1941, was for Hitler a strategic decision. In his view the war could never be won unless the Jews were destroyed.”

2008: Simchat Torah, 5769 (The Holiday Season ends)

2008:Award-winning Israeli author Etgar Keret reads from his writing as part of the Raymond Carver Reading series at SyracuseUniversity.

2008: The New Republic includes reviews of Indignationby Philip Roth and Khibet Khizeh by S. Yizhar; translated by Nicholas de Lange.

2009(4^thof Cheshvan, 5770):“Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died today at the age of 83”. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/arts/television/23sales.html?_r=0

2009: The annual Presidents’ Conference comes to a close in Jerusalem.

2009: In “Examining a Man Who Was (of Wasn’t?) a Holocaust Hero” Stephen Holden reviewed a documentary about the controversial Hungarian entitled “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/movies/23killing.html?_r=0

2009:Sportswriter and author John Feinstein reads from and discusses Change-up: Mystery at the World Series, his new book for young readers (ages 9-12), at Aladdin's Lamp Children's in Arlington, Va.

2009: At the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a program entitled “Past Imperfect: New Jewish Fiction” provides an opportunity to meet three of the newest authors of Jewish fiction:Binnie Kirshenbaum (The Scenic Route), Jonathon Keats (The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six) and Norah Labiner (German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons).

2010:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a program entitled “Lenin's Jewish Question” in which Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern an Associate Professor of Jewish History at Northwestern University and author of Lenin's Jewish Question is scheduled to discuss his discoveries about Lenin’s maternal Jewish great-grandfather named Moshko Blank.

2010: The Jewish People Policy's annual conference held its closing session in Jerusalem today

2011: Jews begin the cycle again with the reading on Bereshit.

2011:The 21^st Holocaust Remembrance Concert, featuring the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is scheduled to take place in New York City.

2011:Firefighters battled flames at the Gilon junction and the Ahihud Forest this afternoon, after extinguishing two blazes that had broken out earlier that day and one yesterday.

2011: Israel gave Egypt a list of 81 Egyptian prisoners held in Israel to be released in exchange for Ilan Grapel, according to Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabeh, Army Radio reported early this morning.

2012: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present “a play reading” of My Name is Asher Lev.

2012:The American Jewish Historical Society ansdYeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present “Jews as Art Dealers and Collectors,” a panel discussion that will examine Jewish “prominence as collectors and dealers supporting their claim to membership in European high culture and making them the principal targets of Nazi dispossession

2012:More than 2,500 people signed up to participate in a global Shema flash mob as part of a campaign to promote religious pluralism in Israel.

2012: The Israeli air force hit a rocket launching squad in the northern Gaza Strip today, reportedly killing three. The airstrike came in response to rocket fire on southern Israel from Gaza and a mortar attack on an IDF patrol, military sources said.

2013: Mayor Nir Barkat defeated Moshe Lion in today’s mayoral election in Jerusalem.(As reported by Yoel Goldman)

2013: Rihanna is schedule to be giving a public concert in the Tel Avi’s Park Hayarkon as the ballots from the city’s election are being counted (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)

2013: The JCCNV is scheduled to present “My Name Is Asher,” a play reading by Aaron Posner adapted from the novel of that name by Chaim Potok.

2013: The Israel Action Center at the JCRC is scheduled to present “Iran: The Nuclear Threat and Implications for the Greater Middle East.”

2013: The Center for Jewish History” is scheduled to present “The Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia – 1350 to the Present Day.”

2013: “An earthquake measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale took place today in northern Israel, according to the Israel Geophysical Institute. It is the fifth quake in the Galilee in less than a week. The quake was centered at a depth of two kilometers, beneath the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret).” (As reported by Gil Ronen)

2013: Mohamed Aazi, 28, and who helped plan the bus bombing in Tel Aviv last November in which 29 people were injured was killed in a clash this morning with Israeli Special Forces.

2014:The American Sephardi Federation and Congregation Shearith Israel is scheduled to present Mimouna’s Moroccan Jewish Caravan: “Preserving the Past, Connecting in the Present & Building the Future.” http://mimounacaravan.rsvpify.com/

2014:Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man: A Novel, and her daughter Meg, author of the literary sensation The Interestings and the new young adult novel Belzhar are scheduled to discuss their writing and the family influences that have shaped their work at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

OCTOBER 23

521 BCE (17^th of Tishrei):The first Babylonian record of Nebuchadnezzar III the usurper who challenged the rule of Darius, the Persian ruler under whose reign the building of the Second Temple began.

42 BCE: The army of Marcus Junius Brutus was defeated at the Second Battle of Philippi. Brutus committed suicide at the end of the day. Since he was one of those who murdered Julius Caesar, the death of Brutus was probably not mourned by most Jews. Caesar's popularity was such among the Jews of the Roman Empires that when he died, the Roman biographer Suetonius wrote, “Public grief was enhanced by crowds of foreigners, lamenting in their own fashion, especially Jews, who came flocking to the Forum for several nights in succession.” Additionally, the victory paved the way for the eventual rule of Augustus who was a better Emperor than most from the Jewish point of view.

1086: At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI. Yusuf ibn Tashfin was the leader of group of puritanical Muslims known as Berber Almoravids. Many Jewish and Muslims scholars and intellectuals left areas controlled by these Berbers and took refuge in Toledo which had been conquered by the Christians in 1085. Periods of Berber control were not a Golden Age for the Jews of Iberia and thousands of Jews joined the army of Alfonso. Although Alfonso lost the battle, the Berbers were too battered to take advantage of their victory and Yusuf had to return to North Africa marking the end of this phase of the long, drawn-out conflict between Christians and Muslims. During the centuries’ long contest, Jewish loyalties varied depending on the nature of the combatants. All of this would come to an end with the Expulsion of 1492.

1456: Seventy Year old John of Capistrano a Franciscan friar who would be canonized by the Catholic Church but who was also known as the “Scourge of the Jews” for his “fiery sermons” that “persuaded southern German regions to expel their Jewish populations,” passed away today.

1625: “Pope Urban VIII forbids Jews from having gravestones within the city limits of Rome.”

1715: Birthdate of Peter II of Russia. During his reign, Peter modified some of the anti-Jewish rulings of his predecessor, Catherine I. At the request of some of the Cossack leaders, he allowed them to return to the fairs in Little Russia since their presence was essential for the commercial wellbeing of the area.

1726:António José da Silva a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew"“went through the great auto-da-fé held” today “in the presence of King John V and his court, abjured his errors, and was set at liberty.” His mother would not be released until October of 1729.

1776: The brigantine Andrea Doria left the United States headed for the Dutch held island of St. Eustatius with a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The Andrea Doria returned from the island which had a significant Jewish population which was supportive of the Americans with the first of several loads of arms and munitions that were critical to American success.

1818(23^rdof Tishrei, 5579): Simchat torah

1842: Fifty-six year old Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius the German Biblical critic and Hebrew language expert who authored a Hebrew grammar and a commentary on Isaiah passed away today.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar

1853(21^stof Tishrei, 5614): Hoshanah Rabah

1853: “Compulsory Christianity in Italy,” published today summarized the events of the last five years that are known as the Mortara Affair or The Kidnapping of Edgar Mortara which it says is recent stretch of Papal power in Italy ,making a noise in Europe, which will not be hushed up. It also pointed out that the Papacy and this policy are propped up on the bayonets of Napoleon III’s troops and that if these troops were withdrawn the populace would rise up to defend the rights of the Jewish child’s father. “If rascally servants may clandestinely baptize the children of Hebrews, there is no reason why they not extend the same blessing to those of Protestants and if the Church can lawfully found a claim to the possession of their persons and their minds upon such a ceremony in the former case, they may in the latter.”

1854: It was reported today that in the matter of Abraham Oettinger v Uriah P. Levy, the judge decided in favor of the Plantiff and gave a judgement in the amount of $313.69. This was a landlord/tenant dispute over who should pay for plumbing repairs. [Yes, this is the same Uriah P. Levy who was highest ranking Jewish officer in the United States Navy and a member of one New York’s most prominent Sephardic families.

1855: Birthdate of Emily Levy, the Hamburg born linguist and lexicographer.

1859: Birthdate of Simon Marx, the native of Alsace who is better known as Sam Marx, the husband of Minnie Marx and the father of the Groucho Marx and the rest of the Marx brothers.

1860: “The Present Condition of the Jews” published today stated that the second of Mr. De Cordova’s course of lectures, to be delivered this evening at Clinton Hall, is upon this highly interesting topic. To discuss it, it is needless to say, the lecturer lays aside the vein of light humor and pleasantry, which usually characterize his productions, and gives us sober facts and apposite illustrations instead.”

1860: A very large audience listened to Mr. De Cordova’s lecture on ‘the Past and Present condition of the Jews,’ delivered in Clinton Hall this evening. Commencing with the Biblical renown of the Israelites, the lecturer traced the distinction of that nation in the field of letters of arms, of medicine, and, in fact, of all the arts and sciences, demonstrating that they are well worth a place in history. He cited the popular idea of a Jew as that of a man with a very protuberant proboscis, engaged in buying old clothes, renovating them by same mysterious and secret process, and selling them for eight times their value to unsuspecting countrymen. He accounted for the degraded condition of the lower class of Israelites from the fact of the relentless persecutions to which the race has been subjected in Austria, Spain, Germany and other countries, where they have been obliged to withstand the most terrible pains and penalties in their adherence to the religion of their fathers. He read official correspondence from Holland to show the good effect of emancipation the Jewish nation in that country, and from the increasing liberality manifested in all countries -- taking example by America -- he foretold a glorious future for Israel. As to the politics of this country he knew many Jews who would vote for Lincoln… Some who would vote for Douglas….Some who would go for Breckenridge and two or three who were Know-Nothings…In conclusion, Mr. De Cordova paid a glowing tribute of admiration to our free institutions, which alike honor and protect the Jew and the Gentile” [Editor’s Note – De Cordova was a Sephardic Jew who was quite popular as a humorist, author and public speaker.]

1861: Samuel Du Pont the U.S Navy officer in charge of the expedition aimed at taking Port Royal, SC from the Rebels “was furious” when he saw the article published in today’s New York Times providing details of his activities. “Jacob da Silva Solis Cohen, as Sephardic Jew…was an assistant surgeon with Dupont’s expedition to Port Royal” who also served with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron which was a key, if unsung, element in the Union’s victory.

1864 :( 23rd of Tishrei, 5625): Simchat Torah

1864: Major Mordecai was named Chief of Ordinance, Department and Army of the Ohio, which was one of the major military units of the Union forces during the American Civil War. Ordinance dealt with Artillery, the one element of the Northern Army that consistently out-performed its Confederate counterparts.

1866: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassman, a leading German gynecologist who would be forced to flee when the Nazis came to power.

1867: Seventy-two Senators are summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate, the upper house of the Canadian Parliament. Jews played an active role in Canadian politics as can be seen by the fact that Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in 1807 and Henry Nathan was elected as to serve as an MP in the House of Commons in 1874. But a Jew did not serve in the Canadian Senate until 1955 when David Kroll was appointed to serve in the upper chamber.

1868: Birthdate of Sri Alfred Moritz, the younger son of Ludwig Mond, who gained fame as an industrialist, financier, politician and Zionist.

1868: The Jews of Barbados were denied the right to engage in retail trade.

1872(21^stof Tishrei, 5633): Hoshanah Rabah

1872: “Minor Topics” published today described the theory of “J.B. Bartnett, a Hebrew scholar” that “Ireland was…settled” by people “from Judea when the Prophet Jeremiah emigrated” there “with the remnant of the tribe of Judah. According to Bartnett, prophet brought with him the stone known as ‘Jacob’s Stone’ which was kept in the sanctuary of the first temple at Jerusalem” and has become “the Stone of Destiny” that was used to crown Irish kings and was later taken to Westminster Abbey by Edward III who used it for the same purpose.

1874(12th of Cheshvan, 5635):Abraham Geiger a German rabbi and scholar who led the founding of Reform Judaism passed away. (There is no way this brief entry can do him justice. See below for gateway article into his fascinating life.)

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/AbrahamGeiger.html

1877: Louis Lazarus, the Jewish owner of a second-hand clothing store on the corner of Baxter and Leonard in Manhattan, was held at the tombs Police Court on the charge of receiving stolen goods. Bail was set at $1,500.

1878: It was reported today that Moritz Ellinger has been chosen to run for the position of Coroner by the opponents of the Tammany political machine.

1879: It was reported today that Joseph De Longpres, a fourteen year old who had arrived yesterday in New York from New Orleans is missing. He was last seen entering a hack hired by a Jew whom he had met on the boat coming up from New Orleans. The boy, who had money and luggage when he left the ship is described as “timid and effeminate.” There is no other description of the other party except that he was a Jew. How this was deduced is not mentioned.

1879: The Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald reported that a meeting held in Bolivar County adopted resolutions denouncing Edward Storm as “a dishonest Jew, the servile tool of the slave-owner before the war and the convenient and abandoned ally of the carpetbagger.” The citizens of Bolivar County are urged to vote against Storm who has been nominated by the Republicans for the position of County Supervisor.” [A Google Search cannot find any reference to a Jew named Edward Storm. Poor man, he was hit with the big three of the post war South – Republican, Carpetbagger and Jew.]

1879: Simon Curriak, a Jewish tailor working on Division Street in NYC, has come forward to claim his children who being held at Castle Garden. In the meantime, an unidentified Jewish newspaper editor has asked the authorities to hold the children until he can present their case to “the local Jewish societies” who will provide for their needs.

1881: It was reported today that the Jewish synagogues of East Prussia, which total 34, “recently held their first convention.

1881: It was reported today that “the Russian Government proposes to give special privileges to those Jews who will engage in agricultural pursuits.” The Jews will be allowed to purchase land outside of the Pale of Settlement, “but they will be under strict surveillance.”

1881: It was reported today that for Jews, the disappearance of “religious hate” has so completely disappeared” from Serbia that a Jew has been elected to the Serbian Parliament. This stands in stark contrast to “the neighboring kingdom of Romania” where “persecution of Jews still goes on.”

1882: It was reported today that the six largest Jewish congregations in New York are Temple Emanu-El Temple Beth El, Ahavath Chesed, B’nai Yeshurun, Shearay Tefilla and Rodoph Sholom. The membership of these congregations total approximately 1,500.

1883(22^ndof Tishrei, 5622): Shmini Atzeret

1883(22^ndof Tishrei, 5622): Seventy-nine year old German physicist Peter Riess the first Jewish member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences passed away today.

1883: In New York, Christopher Oscanyan, an Armenian-American, delivered a lecture at Steinway Hall entitled “The Women of Turkey and the Jews of the East.”

1884: New York Mayor Franklin Edson and Jesse Seligman were among the dignitaries who attended the dedication of the new building housing the Hebrew Orphan Asylum

1884: It was reported today that in New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on holding “a Montefiore centenary celebration.”

1884: Rabbi Mendes of Shearith Israel wrote to President Chester A. Arthur inviting him to participate in the upcoming events celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore. Arthur’s private secretary replied with a note expressing his high esteem for the great philanthropist and his regrets that he would not be able to attend due to other official demands on his time

1885: “The Mystery At Wilmington” published today described events surrounding the death of lodger at the Clayton House in Wilmington, Delaware. “The man’s features are clear German, and there are evidences that he was of the Hebrew faith.” (The latter statement may have been a polite reference to the decedent having been circumcised.)

1886: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassmann, “a pioneer in surgical gynecology.”

1886: It was reported today that the Honorable S.S. Cox will address the upcoming opening exercises of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

1887: “From Anjou to Touraine” published today described the history of the region during Medieval times including the fact that “in 1329, when the Jews were accused of having formed a plot to poison all the wells and springs in France, 160 unfortunate people of that race were burned at the stake in Chinon.”

1887: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at New York City’s Temple Beth-El gave the second of his Sunday lectures today which was entitled “What is Judaism?”

1888: In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment met today and provisionally approved expenditures for several agencies of the city government and charitable institutions including an expenditure of $60,000.00 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

1889: In Rockford, Illinois, Professor E.L. Curtis delivered a sermon in which he declared that the Book of Job is only a poem written by some pious Jew during the period of the exile.

1889: A group of Russian Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms and persecution who had arrived in Argentina aboard the SS Weser founded Moisés Ville a small town in Santa Fe province which was part of the Jewish agricultural settlements to be financed by Baron Maurice Hirsch.

1889:Birthdate of Avshalom Feinberg one of the leaders of Nili, a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine helping the British fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Feinberg was born in Gedera, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and studied in France. He returned to work with Aaron Aaronsohn at the agronomy research station in Atlit. Soon after the beginning of war, Aaronson founded the Nili underground along with his sister Sarah Aaronsohn, Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. In 1915 Feinberg travelled to Egypt and made contact with British Naval Intelligence. In 1917, Feinberg again journeyed to Egypt, on foot. He was apparently killed by a Bedouin near the British front in Sinai, close to Rafah. His fate was unknown until after the 1967 Six-Day War when his remains were found under a palm tree that had grown from date seeds in his pocket to mark the spot where he lay. In 1979 a new Israeli settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, Avshalom was named after him. Although it was abandoned following the Camp David Accords, a new village by the same name was founded in Israel in 1990.

1892: Birthdate of Gummo Marx. This actor and comedian was one of the famous Marx Brothers. He died in 1977.

1892: Professor Adolph Cohn of Columbia delivered the address of welcome at this evening’s dinner honoring French Admiral Abel de Libran and his staff which was attended by many prominent New York dignitaries including President Rosenthal of the French Hebrew Society.

1892: Fifty-two year old Mehmed Emin Pasha passed away today, reportedly by two Arab slave traders in the Congo Free State while working for the German East Africa Company. One of the minor romantic figures of the 19^th century, he was born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, to a German-Jewish family. He converted to Christianity and then to Islam, as he played multiple roles in different parts of the Ottoman Empire.

1892: In his formal speech which the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City delivered at the Hebrew Institute Hall last night, Edward Einstein called on his mostly Jewish audience to go to the polls and “rebuke the present City Government.

1893: Richard Mansfield’s unique portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venicewas seen for the first time at Hermann’s in New York City.

1893: “Cholera Panic” published today described the reaction to outbreak of the disease including the decision by the Chief Rabbi of Leghorn to close “the grand marble synagogue which is the wealthiest synagogue in the world” with the exception of the one in Amsterdam and the “panic and flight” of the Jews living in Baghdad.

1894(23^rdof Tishrei, 5655): Simchat Torah

1896(16^thof Cheshvan, 5657): Sixty-eight year old Adolph H. Maas who “began his business career in Savannah, GA before moving to New York in 1852 where he developed a successful chemical manufacturing company passed away today at his home on Lexington Avenue.

1898: Dr. Joseph Krauskopf, who served as the rabbi to several American Congregations was the founder of The National Farm School said today "Tolerance of another's rational faith is the truest stamp of the genuineness and high standard of one's own faith."

1898: The Judeans hosted a dinner at the Tuxedo honoring Israel Zangwill. Dr. Danzinger, President of the Association and Judge Sulzberger from Philadelphiaflanked Zangwill on the dais. Zangwill spoke to the group of literary, civic and academic leaders about the evolution of the Jew over the centuries including the development of Jewish culture in the United States. Other attendees at the kosher dinner were Isidore Strauss and Adolph Ochs of New York.

1899(19th of Cheshvan, 5660): One day after his 62^nd birthday Australian businessman and political leader Ephraim L. Zox who held several leadership positions in the Australian Jewish community including serving as President of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation passed away today.

1902: Max Brod met Franz Kafka for the first time when he gave a lecture on Arthur Schopenhauer at Charles University.

1904: Birthdate of American artist Edward Biberman

http://www.lacma.org/art/installation/edward-biberman

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/

1905: Birthdate of Felix Bloch who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952.

1907:W.R. Wheeler, who is a member of the commission appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to visit foreign countries for the purpose of studying matters bearing on the American immigration problem, sailed for America on the Adriatic. Before he left England he met with Israel Zangwill, the novelist, who is the President of the Jewish Territorial Organization. Among other things, Zangwill expressed his concern that Jews immigrating to the United States quickly assimilated into the general American culture and lost their Jewish identity. Zangwill felt that America was a much better place for Jews to be than other hostile countries such as Russia, but he looked forward to a time when Jews would be united within their own national territory.

1908: Birthdate of Iya Frank, the Russian born physicists who won the Nobel Prize in 1958. Establishing the Jewish lineage of those who lived in the Soviet Union can present quite a challenging. Frank’s father definitely was Jewish.

1909: Birthdate of Avraham Bergman, the Petah Tikva native who as Avraham Biran was the archaeologist who led the dig at Tel Dan and “headed the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.”

http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/biran.shtml

http://huc.edu/chronicle/60/biran.shtml

1914: “Mass Meeting for Palestine Cause” published today described plans for an upcoming meeting sponsored by Hadassah to deal with the crisis faced by the Jewish community due to World War.

1914: “Wars Horrors In Russia” published today described a Jewish soldier in the hospital at Petrograd “who was raving mad” after having taken part in a bayonet charge against the Austrians where “he drove his bayonet through the chest of his opponent" and heard him “gasp the Hebrews death prayer which begins ‘Hear, O Israel.”

1914: “Nathan Straus for Glynn” published today described the Jewish leader’s support for Martin H. Glynn, the first Catholic chief executive of the state of New York.

1918: Birthdate of Meri Vilner, the native of Vilnius who as Ber Kovner became a leader of the Communist Party of Israel. He was a cousine of Abba Kovner, the famous resistance fighter and Israeli poet.

1927: In Israel, a moshav that would later be known as Netanya is founded by Nathan Strauss.

1929: Birthdate of Leonard Freed, the son of Jewish immigrants who became a leading documentary photojournalist who photographed everything from the Amsterdam Jewish Community to the Civil Rights movement with a special emphasis on Martin Luther King, Jr to the Yom Kippur War passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/arts/design/04freed.html?_r=0

1929: The city of Netanya named in honor of philanthropist Nathan Strauss. Originally, a coastal Moshav, within a decade it was thriving Mediterranean seaside resort.

1931: The part of recently deceased playwright Dr. Arthur Schnitzler’s will, dealing with the disposition of his property is scheduled to be read today.

1934(14^thof Cheshvan, 5695): Seventy-nine year old Samuel Samuel the British businessman who founded Samuel Samuel & Co in Yokohama in partnership with his brother Marcus and who served as a Conservative MP from 1919 until he passed away today.

1934: Birthdate of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

http://bible.ort.org/books/help.asp?action=displaytext&type=1&id=2

1934: Nathan L. Goldstein, President of the United States Maccabiah Association announced today that “the United States will be represented by a team of twenty five athletes at the second Maccabiah” scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in April of 1935.

1935: Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz are fatally shot in a bar in Newark in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre. Were there Jewish gangsters? Yes! But contrary to a recent revisionist books on the topic, these thugs were not role models or heroes.

1936: In Amsterdam, violinist Bronislaw Huberman who was the founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra performed as a soloist this evening with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Bruno Walter.

1936: Birthdate of director and screenwriter Philip Kaufman.Kaufman became involved with the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he receives story credit. While the character of Indiana Jones was created by George Lucas, it was Kaufman who came up with the story and the pursuit of the Ark of the Covenant.

1939: Warner Brothers released The Roaring Twenties, a “crime thriller” produced by Hal Wallis with a script co-authored by Mark Hellinger, Jerry Wald and Robert Rossen..

1940: 21^stof Tishrei, 5701): Hoshanah Rabah

1940: The Jewish Hospital in Warsawwas forced to close and move into the Warsaw Ghetto.

1940: Hitler and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco met in Hendaye today where the Nazi leader demanded that his fascist client join his war effort; a demand that the Spaniard turned down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/20/franco-gave-list-spanish-jews-nazis

1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Odessa "action" continued as 19,000 more Jews were gathered into the city square, sprayed with gasoline and burned alive.

1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Thousands of Jews are murdered at Kragujevac, Yugoslavia.

1941: Father Bernhard Lichtenberg was arrested for protesting against German deportation of the Jews. He died on his way to Dachau

1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis executed 10,000 Jews of the Vilna ghetto

1942: The Battle of El Alamein began with a major attack by British forces on Rommel’s Afrika Corps and their Italian Allies. When the fighting started the Axis were on the verge of sweeping the British out of Egypt, seizing the Suez Canal, cutting the Imperial lifeline to India and destroying the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. The well-supplied Allied forces overcame the usual timidity of their generals and broke the Axis lines, starting the Germans on a long retreat that would end with surrender in Tunisia in 1943.

1942: Algerian-Jewish resistance leader José Aboulker meets with American General Mark Clark in Morocco. Aboulker is given 800 Sten guns, 800 grenades, 400 handguns, and 50 portable radios. This is in preparation for Operation Torch, the November, 1942 landing of American and British forces in North Africa. One of the big unknowns was how the French forces would react. Would they resist since the French Vichy government was allied with Germany, or would they greet the Allies as liberating comrades in arms. The Americans hoped for the latter, but as this action showed, they were preparing for the former.

1942(12th of Cheshvan, 5703): Ralph Rainger who was born Ralph Reichenthal was among ,the 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner who are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Ralph Rainger was the award-winning composer responsible for such hits as Love in Bloom,Blue Hawaii and Bob Hope’s signature song, Thanks for the Memory. Rainger was 41 at the time of his death.

1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704): Five days after their deportation train left Rome, its 1,060 Jewish passengers were gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: Eighteen hundred Polish Jews formerly held at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, arrive at Auschwitz, where the women revolt outside the gas chambers, killing one SS guard and wounding two. SS reinforcements use gas grenades and machine-gun fire to subdue and kill the resisters.

1943: In Lithuania, a Jewish partisan unit destroys telegraph and telephone lines along the Vilna-to-Lida railway

1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: One thousand, seven hundred-fifty Polish Jews, believing they were awaiting transport to South America, were sent to Birkenau instead. The women took part in a minor revolt in response to SS Sergeant Josef Schillinger's request for them to strip. He was shot and other SS men were injured. Rudolf Hoess ordered the removal of each of the women into the camp grounds, and had each one shot. According to Jerzy Tabau, who later escaped, "the extermination of the Jews continued relentlessly. . ."

1944: In Budapest, Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg and Swiss consul Carl Lutz continue to issue protective documents to Jews, partly in response to a decree that Jews in Hungary who are of foreign nationalities or those holding foreign passports will be exempt from forced labor.

1944: Hungarian authorities agreed to send another 25,000 Jews to Germanyfor purposes of forced labor. Charles Lutz, the Swiss Consul managed to save thousands of others by issuing collective passports and protective documents.

1945: Birthdate of Kenneth Feinberg, an American attorney, specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution who first came to fame as the Special Masster of the September 11^thVictim Compensation Fund. He has remained in the public eye as the TARP “pay czar” and the man who was supposed to sort out the mess related to compensating the victims of the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

1946: The original Kibbutz Ein Tzurim was founded today in Gush Etzion. The Jordanian Army destroyed the Kibbutz during Israel’s War for Independence.

1947: In Kiriyate Bialik, Hadasa and Moshe gave birth to Yosef (Yosi) Barena who at the age of twenty would perish aboard the INS Dakar.

1949: An Israeli government spokesman reports hundreds of Jews in Iraq had been brutally arrested, and all their property confiscated.

1950(12th of Cheshvan, 5711): Al Jolson passed away. Born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania in 1886, Jolson’s father was a Cantor for a synagogue in downtown Washington D.C. at the turn of the century. Jolson chose to use his singing talents in a different manner. As one of America’s first “superstars, he starred on Broadway, radio and film. He is most famous for starring in the first talkie – the first full length film with sound. It was called the Jazz Singer.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/1950/oct/25/derekmalcolmscenturyoffilm

http://jolsonville.com/

1951(23^rd of Tishrei, 5712): Simchat Torah is celebrated by congregants of Adas Israel in its new home at Connecticut Avenue and Porter.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported at length on the research conducted in the Negev wadis by Dr. Nelson Glueck, the president of the HebrewUnionCollege in Cincinnati. Dr. Glueck discovered and described many wadis, situated deep in the Negevwastes, whose sides had been terraced from bottom to top. There were numerous cisterns to catch the run-off rainwater, as well as many dams and irrigation channels, a testimony to the former intense cultivation and human presence in that currently uninhabited territory. Glueck would eventually record all of his findings in a popular tome entitled Rivers In The Desert.

1955: In New York, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, held a cornerstone ceremony which was designed to serve as fund raiser for erecting a new community center. The inscription on the stone read: "Dedicated to Sephardic Unity and Community Service."

1955: It was reported today that Dr. Benjamin Mazar, the President of Hebrew University is visiting the United States as part of an effort to highlight the observance of the school’s thirtieth anniversary. The university currently has 4,000 students and a faculty of 560.

1956: The Hungarian Revolution began as Hungarians sought to remove Soviet forces from their country. The revolt would turn violent as Soviet tanks returned to the streets of Budapest. The Hungarian Revolt came at the same time as the Suez Crisis when the Israelis rolled across the Sinai and an Anglo-French force intervened. In an interesting role reversal the Eisenhower Administration did nothing meaningful to stop the Soviets. At the same, the Eisenhower Administration joined forces with the Soviets to support the Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser against the English, French and the Israelis.

1958: Russian novelist Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author of Dr. Zhivago was born to Jewish parents in Moscow. His father was a professor of painting and his mother was a concert pianist.

1960: U.S. premiere of “The Magnificent Seven” the classic western with a most memorable score created by Elmer Bernstein and a script co-authored by Walter Bernstein

1961(13th of Cheshvan, 5722):Harold K. Guinzburg, founder of Viking Press, and the father of publisher Thomas Guinzburg, passed away.

1963: Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre.

1963: Ivry Gitlis performed in Vilna making him the first Israeli violinist to play in the Soviet Union under the cultural exchange between the two countries.

1970(23^rdof Tishrei, 5731): Simchat Torah

1970:“The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” co-authored by Jerome Lawrence was performed professionally for the first time at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

1973: Rabbi Sally J. Priesand offered the opening prayer in the United States House of Representatives, at the invitation of Congresswoman Bella Abzug. According to Abzug, Priesand was not only the first Jewish woman, but the first woman to be accorded this honor. October 23, 1973 also turned out to be the day on which the first resolution to impeach President Richard Nixon was offered. Priesand became the first woman to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary in June 1972. While Priesand was the first American woman rabbi, she was not the first woman to study toward that goal. She was preceded at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion by other women including Martha Neumark, Helen Levinthal Lyons, Toby Fink, and Norma Kirschner.

1973: The UN Cease Fire Resolution was proving a difficult document to enforce on the ground. There was opposition in Israel to accepting a cease fire. In particular, Menachem Begin, speaking for the coalition of right wing parties, opposed accepting the cease fire as long as Arab forces occupied our territory i.e. any part of the Sinai east of the Suez Canal. Ironically, this would be part of the very land that Begin would trade with Sadat to gain a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association, reacting to the recent passenger aircraft hijacking incidents and the murder of a Lufthansa pilot, had postponed its threatened 48-hour global air-transport strike, after the UN agreed to hold a full meeting of the General Assembly on the subject of air piracy.

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Lev Ovsiher, a highly decorated Jewish Red Army veteran, gave his 17 medals back to the Soviet government, to protest the refusal to let him immigrate with his family to Israel. Yes, it was only a quarter of a century ago that the Refusniks were fighting to leave the Soviet Union. Change does happen and sometimes it is for the better.

1983: A suicide terrorist truck bomb killed 243 US personnel in Beirut. President Reagan responded by withdrawing the Marine peacekeeping force from Lebanon. There are those who feel that this response was viewed as a victory by the terrorists who moved forward with attacks on airports in Europe and the downing of an airliner over Scotland.

1983: While serving as a chaplain for the United States Sixth Fleet, Arnold Resnicoff was present in Beirut, Lebanon, during the suicide truck bomb attack that took the lives of 241 American military personnel, and wounded scores more.

1983(16th of Cheshvan, 5744): Thirty-six year old newscaster Jessica Savitch and 34 year old Martin Fischbein, the vice president and assistant general manager of the New York Post were killed in an automobile accident today. (As reported by Peter Kerr)

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/25/obituaries/jessica-savitch-of-nbc-tv-killed-in-car-accident.html

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086321,00.html

http://www.raynesmccarty.com/newsevents/93-no-publication-listed/173-savitch-settlement-8125-million-in-newswomans-death.html

1983: Following a lengthy and intense debate within the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) faculty senate, voted 34-8 to admit women to the JTS Rabbinical School. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)

1992: U.S. premiere “Zebrahead” starring Michael Rapaport.

1996: In Providence, RI, pediatrician Scott Berns and pediatric intern Leslie Grove gave birth to Sampson Gordon Berns “a Massachusetts high school junior whose life with the illness progeria was the subject of a documentary film recently shortlisted for an Academy Award.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1998: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the Wye River Memorandum, thus bringing about the end of his first government. He did this with his own mouth: After being perceived as undermining the Oslo Accords, and after declared that any withdrawal from more than nine percent of the West Bank would harm Israel's security, he ratified the accords and sought a 13-percent withdrawal. His term was rife with conflicts with the United States president, and he made both the right and left heartily sick of him. A decade later, Netanyahu is at a similar juncture.

1998 (3rd of Cheshvan, 5759):Dr. Barnett Slepian, , was murdered at his home in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., when a sniper who was a "right to life advocate" fired a shot through his kitchen window. Slepian was murdered on a Friday night after his family had returned home from Shabbat eve services.

1998:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat signed a land-for-peace agreement at the White House, following nine days of talks at Wye River, Md.

2002(17^thof Cheshvan, 5763): Sixty-nine year old Al Lerner, the billionaire owner of the Cleveland Browns passed away today.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/26/local/me-lerner26

http://www.cbssports.com/print/nfl/story/5827319

2003:Israel honored Hans von Dohnányi by recognizing him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for saving the Arnold and Fliess families, at risk to his own life.

2005: The New York Times reviewed The Life of David by Robert Pinksy. This biography is one of the first books in the “Jewish Encounters” series, which will match prominent Jewish writers with a variety of subjects.

2005: In an article styled “Curacao’s place in the Diaspora,” the Boston Globe reports on the history of this Jewish community including the founding of Mikve Israel-Emanuel which was built in 1732, nearly 100 years after the first Jews arrived. Most of them were Sephardics fleeing persecution in Europe.

2006(1^stof Cheshvan, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that Indonesia will purchase four Israeli unmanned planes, or drones, through a Filipino distributor. The deal was a surprise to some because Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has long supported Palestinian independence efforts and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

2006: Max Kellerman began hosting the 10 AM to noon program on WEPN, replacing ESPN's nationally broadcast Colin Cowherd program.

2007: The Upper Midwest Region of Hadassah hosts its annual Big Gifts Dinner honoring Barbara Melamed with Hadassah’s Myrtle Wreath Award. Babara Sofer,The Israel Director of Public Affairs and Communications for Hadassah and popular columnist for the JerusalemPost is the featured speaker for the event. .

2007: “Avenue Q,” Moshe Kepten’s Israeli version of the Broadway hit musical debuts at Beit Lessin, in Tel Aviv.

2008: “Mother Economy,” the 19-minute film on view at New York’s Jewish Museum since July 1, comes to an end

2008:As part of the Israel@ 60 Celebration, the Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish presents a screening and discussion of the award-winning Israeli documentary, "No. Seventeen was Anonymous." The event is facilitated by Professor Tova Weitzman of VassarCollege.

2008(24th of Tishrei):Friends and family of Avraham Ozeri voiced sorrow and anger at the killing of the 86-year-old they described as "salt of the earth" in today's stabbing attack in Jerusalem.

2008:Vandals rampaged through a sprawling Jewish cemetery in Romania's capital, toppling tombstones and smashing markers for as many as 200 graves.

2008:Today, the German government handed Israel's national Holocaust memorial personal details of the 600,000 Jewish residents of Nazi Germany, the most comprehensive record to date of German-Jewish life during the Nazi era. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann presented the "Directory of Jewish residents in Germany 1933-1945" during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial.

2009(5^thof Cheshvan, 5770): Ninety-fiver year old Canadian-born character actor Lou Jacobi passed away in New York City.

2009: As part of his World Tour, Leonard Cohen performs at Madison Square Garden.

2009: The New York Times featured a review of The Humbling, Philip Roth’s latest novella

2009: “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis” opens at the Cinema Village in New York City. This is a cinematic presentation of material covered in the recently publish, Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust by Anna Porter.http://www.killingkasztner.com/

2010(15th of Cheshvan): Yahrzeit of Shlomo Carlebach

2010: Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple is scheduled to open tonight as Theatre J kicks off its 2010-2011 season in Washington, DC.

2010: New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman said that many Americans are becoming "fed up" with Israel. Friedman's comments came in an interview with Channel Two reporter Dana Weiss to be aired today. Friedman stated that while the American public was by no means anti-Israel, they no longer care about the Israeli-Arab conflict and this could eventually hurt Israel's national security interests.

2010:The vote on a bill that would reinstate stipends for men who study Torah full-time will not take place tomorrow as was previously scheduled, the Prime Minister's Office announced today.

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor “A Walking tour of Old Town Alexandria” that will include visits “to the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses along King Street-including some that show traces of past Jewish owners.”

2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a Walking Tour of Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery that will include visits to “memorials by or for Jews, and headstones of prominent Jewish leaders buried at Arlington.”

2011: Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C.

2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alice Hoffman’s latest book, a novel entitled “The Dovekeepers,” which attempts to retell the story of the Jewish resistance during the Roman siege of Masada in the first century and “The End:The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-45” by Ian Kershaw.

2011: Israel has offered to aid the Turkish government in any way it can after a massive earthquake shook the Turkish southeast, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today.

2011: Police have arrested a third suspect in the torching of a mosque in the Beduin village of Tuba Zanghariya in the Galilee in early October, police announced today. The suspect, a minor, was arrested day before yesterday and brought before the Rishon Letzion Magistrate's Court on Sunday morning, where his remand was extended by five days

2011:National Infrastructures Ministry announced today that Egypt has resumed natural gas deliveries to Israel.

2012: Israeli cellist Elad Kabilio is scheduled to appear at the Joyce Theatre in New York

2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “An Evening with Romanian Jewish Author Norman Manea” during which he will from his latest novel, The Liar

2012: An IDF officer was critically wounded while carrying out a routine patrol near the Gaza border fence today.

2012:The Emir of Qatar embraced the Hamas leadership of Gaza today with an official visit that broke the isolation of the Palestinian Islamist movement, to the dismay of Israel and rival, Western-backed Palestinian leaders.

2013:The Jacqueline and Myron Blank Fund along with The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are scheduled to host a program in dedicating the Iowa Holocaust Memorial at the State Historical Building

2013: Emmy Award winning theatre critic Pat Launer is scheduled to discuss “Broken Glass” one of the last plays by Arthur Miller that combines themes of Kristallnacht with anxieties of a American Jewish couple living in New York.

2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to host a screening of “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” which “chronicles the efforts of Gilbert Kraus and his wife, Eleanor, two Americans who undertook the successful rescue of 50 Jewish children from Vienna in the late spring of 1939.”

2013: Israeli warplanes hit a convoy of advanced missiles heading out of Syria and into Lebanon where they were to be delivered to Hezbollah, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported today (Reported Stuart Winer)

2013: When the Red Sox take the field agains the Cards tonight in the opening game of the World Series, Craig Breslow will be in the Boston bull-pen.

2013: According to unofficial figures released today 35.9% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Jerusalem and 31.5% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Tel Aviv during the just completed mayoral elections.

2013:Israel's unusual period of seismic activity continued today as yet another small earthquake was felt - this time in the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. (As reported by Ari Soffer)

2013(19^thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-year old sandal maker and musician Allan Block passed away today, (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/nyregion/allan-block-whose-sandal-shop-was-folk-music-hub-dies-at-90.html?hpw

2013(19^thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-two year old Bill Mazer“who was a voice and face of sports coverage in New York for decades, pioneering sports-talk radio and becoming a television fixture while earning the nickname the Amazin’ for his encyclopedic recall of sports facts and figures” passed away today. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/sports/bill-mazer-a-sports-fixture-of-new-york-radio-and-tv-dies-at-92.html?hpw

2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a screening of “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco.”

2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Philip Balma on “Hiding in Plain Sight: Italian Jews and the Film Industry.”

2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to “I Have No Right to Be Silent” -- a panel discussion on the social activism and human rights work of Rabbi Marshal Meyer.

2014: The Chicago International Film Festival which has included a screening of “Gett” is scheduled to come to an end today.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Two Jewish Loves: Food and Literature.”

2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Rita Jahan-Foruz is scheduled to introduce her biographical film this evening at the Skirball Center.

OCTOBER 24

51: Birthdate of Titus Flavius Domitianus, who gained fame as the Roman Emperor Domitian. Domitian was the son of Vespasian and the brother of Titus, all three of whom played a key role in the destruction of Jerusalem which was one of the cornerstones of power for the Flavian dynasty. Domitian was even more hostile to the Jews than either of his predecessors as can be seen by his ruthless enforcement of the ban on Romans converting to Judaism and his rigorous efforts to collect the special taxes assessed against the Jews. His death in 96 would not be mourned by the Children of Israel.

69: At the Second Battle of Bedriacum, forces under Antonius Primus, the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian, defeat the forces of Emperor Vitellius. This victory help paved the way for Vespasian to become Emperor of the Roman Empire. According to Jewish mythology, it was Yoachanah Ben Zachai’s prediction that Vespasian would attain this goal that led to him being able to establish the academy at Yavneh. Vespasian turned matters around Jerusalem to his son Titus who would destroy the Temple within the year.

996: Hugh Capet, King of France who was being treated by a Jewish physician, passed away. The king's decision to use a Jewish doctor gave created the myth (which was believed by many) that the Jews had killed the king.

1147: After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques defeated the Moors and re-conquered Lisbon. According to one source, Alfonso was concerned about his chances of defeating the Moors. He looked to the Bible for support and comfort; something he found in the story of Gideon where a force of 300 Israelites defeated a Midianite army numbering 125,000. Following his victories at Santarém and Lisbon, Alfonso allowed the Jewish population to remain, to build synagogues and to enjoy most of the same rights as the rest of the citizens of his realm.

1273: Coronation of King Rudolf I who in 1286 “instituted a new persecution of the Jews, declaring them servi camerae ("serfs of the treasury"), which had the effect of negating their political freedoms

1492: The Jews were again accused of stabbing a consecrated wafer in Mecklenburg, Germany. Twenty-seven were burned including two women, and all the Jews are expelled from the duchy. The spot where they were killed is still called the Judenberg.

1648: The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War. While the Jews of Europe were not combatants or participants in the peace talk, this treaty did have far-reaching impact on them. The treaty brought an end to the Holy Roman Empire which meant that the various states of Germany were able to choose their own religion and develop on their own. The independence of the Netherlandswas recognized. The tolerant Dutch nation had already proven itself as a hospitable for Jews and six years after the treaty European Jews would find haven in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. According to some historians, the treaty marked the end of the religious wars that had gripped Europe (much to the detriment of the Jews) and marked the rise of the modern nation-state system. While anti-Semitism would continue to be part of the European landscape, the Jews of Europe would fare better after 1648 under a system of national citizenship.

1669: William Prynne, a lawyer, author and political leader who opposed re-admitting Jews to England passed way. One of the pamphlets published by Prynne that decried “their ill deportment” and “misdemeanors” found favor with the merchants in London who claimed to oppose the admissions of Jews on religious grounds but who were “jealous of the wealth of the Hebrews” and did not want to compete with them for business.

1764: In Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn and his wife gave birth to their oldest daughter, Brendel Mendelssohn who gained fame as German novelist Dorothea von Schlegel, and the mother of painter Philipp Veit.”

1777(23^rdof Tishrei, 5538): Simchat Torah

1784: Birthdate of Sir Moses Montefiore, who in a life time that spend more than a century, proved to be not only a great leader of the Anglo-Jewish Community, but one of the most formidable Jews of the 19^th century. There is no way to do justice to this great man’s life in this brief blog. You are encouraged to examine the many sources available about this successful financier, public servant and philanthropist whose generosity was integral source of support for the Jewish settlers of 19^th century Palestine.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/montefiore.html

1795: Third partition of Poland, between Austria, Prussia and Russia. This is an example of the law of unintended consequences. Russia, which had been trying to keep Jews out, now found itself with millions of Jewish Poles as Russian citizens. For the next hundred years the various Czars devised plans to control or destroy the Jewish community in Russia. The most famous example was the one-third, one-third, one-third program. One third of the Jews would convert, one third would immigrate and one third would die. Thus Russia would be rid of its Jews.

1811: Birthdate of Ferdinand Hiller the native of Frankfurt am Main who gained fame as composer and director and who founded the Cologne Conservatoire in 1850 where he served as Kapellmeister until 1884.

1826(23^rdof Tishrei, 5587): Simchat Torah

1826(23^rdof Tishrei, 5587): German actor and theatrical manager Jacob Herzfeld passed away.

1841: Birthdate of Jacob Bettelheim, the Austrian-German author and writer.

1844: Birthdate of Karl Lueger, the Austrian politician who exploited popular anti-Semitism to be elected Mayor of Vienna. There are those who contend that his successful exploitation of anti-Semitism served as a role model for another resident of Vienna - Adolph Hitler.

1845(23rh of Tishrei, 5606): Simchat Torah

1851: It was reported today that "the emigration of Jews is on the increase in consequence of the oppressive ukases of the Emperor."

1852: American statesman and unsuccessful Presidential candidate Daniel Webster who served his country as a Senator and Secretary of State passed away. While serving as Secretary of State in President Millard Filmore’s administration, Webster actively opposed as treaty with Switzerland that would have discriminated against American Jews trying to do business in Switzerland. Webster and the American Jewish community enjoyed a positive relationship as can be seen by the fact that he was asked to speak at the Hebrew Benevolent and German Benevolent Society meeting in 1849 in New York City. He had to turn down the invitation because of ill health but he expressed his “respect and sympathy” who have “preserved through darkness and idolatry of so many centuries.

1853(22nd of Tishrei, 5614): Shemini Atzeret

1853:The New York Times reported that Dr. Raphall, a New York rabbi, will deliver a lecture about Russia at a meeting of the Young Men's Literary Association on October 26. Tickets will cost fifty cents.

1853: When an army of Kurds attacked the city of Al-Jazira, it was Muslims, Christians and Jews who picked up arms to defend the city.

1856: Birthdate of Sir Stuart Samuel, the brother of Sir Herbert Samuel. ”He was educated at Liverpool Institute and University College School, London” and “was a member of the banking firm of Samuel Montagu and Company.” “Sir Stuart…was president of the Board of Jewish Deputies” and “headed the commission of inquiry sent by the British government to Poland to investigate the anti-Jewish excesses in 1919”

1848: Birthdate of Wilhelm Fleiss, the native of Arnswalde who became a noted otolaryngologist and a friend of Sigmund Freud.

1862(30^thof Tishrei, 5623): On Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, Abraham Lincoln continues his quest to find winning generals by replacing Don Carlos Buell with William S. Rosecrans for his failure to pursue the Confederates after the Battle of Perryville.

1870: In Algiers under the leadership of Adolphe Cremieux, France granted French citizenship to all Algerian Jews. Prior to this date, citizenship was conferred on individual Jews based on their application. Algeriahad been taken over by the French and this move was part of the French program of colonization. Approximately 50,000 Jews gained French citizenship in this way.

1872(22^ndof Tishrei, 5633): Shemini Atzeret

1874: According to a travelogue published today, most of the establishments for money changing in Bayonne, France are owned by Jews.

1875: “The Wild Huntsman” published today provides a brief summary of the legend of the Wandering Jew, one of those canards which has helped to fan the flame of anti-Semitism for centuries. This mythic figure supposedly refused the suffering Jesus a drink of water from a horse trough or refused to provide shelter for the Virgin Mary and Jesus when they were fleeing to Egypt. Regardless, “in some countries” he is now seen “as kind of personification of Jews” in general.

1877: “Receiving Stolen Goods” published today described a scheme to buy stolen cloth that has landed Louis Lazarus, the owner of second-hand clothing store and his son in Samuel in the Tombs.

1879: Birthdate of Sydney G. Gumpertz, the native of San Raphael, CA, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during WW I.

1879: In Providence, Rhode Island, the Unitarians are holding a convention where they are “discussing the subject of Monotheism’ and have concluded that the only true monotheists are the Jews, Moslems and the Unitarians. They feel that the Trinitarian belief of Christians moves them away from true monotheism.

1880: Fifty five year old Oswald Hönigsmann an Austrian lawyer and parliamentarian who spoke out on behalf of the emancipation of the Jewish people passed away today.

1880: In Russia , Ada and Louis Landman gave birth to American Reform Rabbi Isaac Landman who “was editor of the ten-volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia,” “the first Jewish chaplain in the United States Army to serve on foreign soil” during World War I and a leading anti-Zionist.

1883(23^rdof Tishrei, 5644): Simchat Torah

1883: Police arrested Aaron Hammer and Moses Rauch, two Jews whose celebration of Simchat Torah got so rowdy that Bernard Levy felt the need to call the authorities for protection.

1883: Jews throughout the world celebrated the 99^th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore.

1883: “Mr. Oscanyan’s Varied Show” published today included a description of that part of the lecture the Turkish born American writer gave about the conditions of “the Jews of the East” with whose persecution he commiserated.

1884: Sir Moses Montefiore celebrated his one hundredth birthday, an event that was marked with celebration throughout much of the world including a letter from Queen Victoria to the successful businessman, philanthropist and humanitarian.

1884: Services are to be held “simultaneously” at four o’clock this afternoon at synagogues in the United States to mark the 100^th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore. The speeches delivered during these services will be given to the Anglo-Jewish statesman on November 8 “which corresponds with the 24^th of October in the Jewish calendar.

1884: “A Home for Hebrew For Orphans” published today provided a complete description of the newly opened Hebrew Orphan Asylum. The four story building on the corner of 10^th Avenue and 136^thStreet is designed to accommodate 1,000 children of both sexes and was built at a cost of $60,000.00.

1886: It was reported today that the Wendell Phillips Literary Society is scheduled to “give a dramatic entertainment” at upcoming fundraising event sponsored by the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.

1886: The Independent Hebrew Citizens’ Association of the Tenth Ward endorsed “Tommy” Grady who is running for seeking to represent the Eighth District in Congress.

1887(6^thof Cheshvan, 5648): Sixty-six year old Charlotte Beyfus the wife of Abraham Oppenheim and the granddaughter of Meyer Amschel Rothschild passed away today.

1887: “The Religion of Humanity” published today provides a summary of the Dr. Kaufmann’s recently delivered addressed entitled “What is Judaism?” Kohler feels that Judaism is a religion of humanity and that “It is the Jew’s mission to stand by that religion of human which teaches the unity of the Cosmos in God, the spirit of truth and the social unity of man as based upon his God’s childship.”

1888: “Starving and Freezing” published today described the plight of the Polish Jewish farmers in Ramsey County, North Dakota. The seventy families who came from Chicago two years ago and settled 18 miles from Devils Lake have lost everything as a result of an early frost that wiped out their Wheat crop this year.

1889: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association began its 16^th season tonight with a program at Chickering Hall in NYC.

1889: “Thinks Job A Poetic Myth” published today described a skirmish in the battle between those who read the Bible literally and those who think it is subject to interpretation – a schism that was found in both 19^th century Judaism in Christianity. In this case, it was a Presbyterian Minister, E.L. Curtis who “startled his orthodox congregation” by asserted that the Book of Job “was only a parable and the other persons mentioned were but the creatures of poetical fancy.”

1891: In Russia, where the onset of winter has worsened the effects of the famine, two or three riots broke out aimed at the Jews.

1892: After spending three months at A.B. Simpson College “an institution where converted Jews are trained for missionary work thirty three year old Isaac Hertzfeld was baptized today – a an action that he would later publicly renounce.

1892: The New York Times described a change “in the future career” of Baron Hirsh, “who having devoted his youth to accumulating millions is now devoting his old age to philanthropy.” One example of this was the Baron’s decision to donate all of his “turf winnings,” a sum of 14,500 English pounds, to “deserving English charities.”

1893: The will of David James, the well-known Anglo-Jewish actor left £15,000 to various legatees and provided that his widow should receive the interest on the remaining £30,000 with the principle reverting to various Hebrew charities at the time of her death or re-marriage whichever comes first. (Smith’s birth name was Belasco, which he dropped as he developed his acting career)

1893: “Mr. Mansfield As Shylock” published today reviewed the latest New York production of The “Merchant of Venice” which featured Richard Mansfield in the role of Shylock. Unlike Edmund Kean who played Shylock as a Biblical figure, Mansfield portrayed him as a character from the Middle Ages who “loves his daughter” but “hates his enemy with deadly bitterness

1894: Professor Willis J. Beecher delivered a lecture “The Old Testament as a Whole, “ the second in his series on the “Study of the Old Testament.”

1895: “Correct Spelling of Barnato’s Name” published today speculated on the correct spelling of the diamond mine mogul wondering if it was “Barney” or Barnie” a point rendered moot by the fact that his name is “Barnett which is a common surname among Christians and Jews.”

1896: In New York, the Hebrew Institute Literary Society hosted a debate on the abolition of capital punishment tonight.

1896: The teachers and pupils of the Kaminsky Conservatory of Music performed at the Hebrew Institute tonight.

1896(17^thof Cheshvan, 5657): Seventy-eight year old Sir Albert Abdullah David Sassoon, the son of David Sassoon, who was a leading merchant in Baghdad who settled in Bombay where his business success reportedly made him “one of the richest men” in the city, passed away today.

1898(8th of Cheshvan, 5659):Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto died at Guantanamo, Cuba, from the effects of fever contracted during the Spanish-American war.A member of a prominent Sephardic family that had settled in New York, this son of Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto volunteered to join the U.S. Army at the outbreak of the war with Spain serving “with the Third United States Volunteer Infantry, first as first lieutenant and acting quartermaster, and then as captain of Company D. At the time of his death he was military governor and provost marshal of Guantanamo.”

1898: Ralph Disraeli was buried today in Buckinghamshire, UK.

1902(23^rdof Tishrei, 5663): Simchat Torah

1902: Herzl had another meeting with Lord Rothschild and an appointment in the British Foreign Office.

1903: It was reported that “The American Jewish Year book for the year 5664 (which began September 22, 1903)…has been issued. This fifth annual volume, which is 316 pages in length, was edited by Cyrus Adler. Ninety-six pages are devoted to the annual report of the Jewish Publication Society. While the volume contains a great deal of information about Jewry there is no description of the Zionist Convention held at Basel or the Pogrom at Kishinev. The former “was held too late to be included. The latter will be covered in a special pamphlet issued by JPS.

1904: Birthdate of producer, director and playwright Moss Hart. Hart achieved success both on Broadway and in films. One of Hart’s most famous cinematic triumphs was “Gentlemen’s Agreement” which he produced. One of his greatest Broadway triumphs came at the end of his career when he served as director for “My Fair Lady.” He was married to Kitty Carlisle. Unbeknownst to many of her fans, the sophisticated Ms. Carlisle was actually Catherine Conn, a Jewess from New Orleans whose mother was an aggressive social climber. Hart himself passed away in 1960. You can read more about the fascinating life of Moss Hart in his autobiography, Act I.

1905: Birthdate of French Trotskyist leader Pierre Frank.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1984/04/frank.htm

1908: The New York Times publishes an interview with Israel Zangwill entitled “Israel Zangwill’s Serious Purpose,” in which the Jewish author discusses his views on the literary worlds of the United States and Great Britain and the reaction to his “The Melting Pot.”

1910(21^stof Tishrei, 5671): Hoshana Rabah

1910: Birthdate of Yoel Zussman, the native of Krakow who became the fourth President of the Supreme Court of Israel.

1910: The Oscar Hammerstein production Victor Herbert’s “Naughty Marietta” opened its pre-Broadway run in Syracuse, NY.

1913(2nd of Tishrei, 5674): Simchat Torah

1914: Dr. J. L. Manges and Dr. Schmarya Levin are scheduled to address tonight’s meeting hosted by the New York chapter of Hadassah at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building where they will seek ways to alleviate the threat faced by the Jewish settlers in Palestine resulting from the start of the World War.

1914: The American Jewish Relief Committee was established by Jacob H. Schiff, Louis Marshall, and Felix Warburg. It soon combined with the Central Relief Committee founded by Orthodox leaders and the People's Relief Committee representing labor, into one organization the American Joint Distribution Committee. The “Joint” would become a vital force in providing aid to Jews caught up in the hostilities of World War I which had begun in August of 1914.

1915: In Manchester, UK, Mr. and Mrs. Neville Laski gave birth to English author Marghanita Laski

1915: British High Commissioner, Henry McMahonreached an agreement with Abdulla Hussein of the Hashemi family, trading a revolt against Turkey for Arab independence everywhere except Eretz-Israel. This agreement, which was in direct contradiction with the Sykes-Picot treaty, was like the Balfour Declaration - vague and ambiguous. Many of the problems that we face in the Middle East today can be traced back to the various deals (many of which were dishonest to say the least) made by the British and the French as they sought to break the back of the Turkish Empire and defeat Germany through the “back door.”

1917: As part of the final push to publish the Balfour Declaration, Ronald Graham writes Lord Balfour, “Almost every Jew in Russia is a Zionist, and if they can be made to realize that the success of Zionist aspirations depends on the support of the Allies and the expulsion of the Turks from Palestine, we shall enlist a most powerful element in our favor.”

1918: Sarah Friedman, of blessed memory, the wife of Hyman Friedman is scheduled to be buried today in New York City.

1920: “Organizations of young Jews” are scheduled to gather “in the Great Hall of City College” today “to honor the memory of Dr. Israel Friedlander” who was ‘slain by bandits” while delivering aid to Jews in the Ukraine.

1923: Birthdate of British born American poet Denise Levertov. Her pedigree is of interest since it provides a picture of the fate of European Jews. Her mother was Welsh. Her father was an Anglican parson. In point of fact, he was an immigrant from Germany who had been raised as a Chasidic Jew before converting to Christianity.

1923: In the Bronx, Betty and Dr. Lee Fisher gave birth to Edwin Zalmon Fisher a cartoonist whose work was a regular feature in The New Yorker magazine.

http://www.edfischer.com/

http://edfischer.com/cartoons.html

1925: In Brooklyn Max and Beatrice Feldstein gave birth to Albert “Al” Bernard Feldstein “who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Madin 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)

1926: Suffering from acute appendicitis and having ignored medical advice that he have immediate surgery, Harry Houdini performed at the Garrick Theatre despite having a fever of 104 °F (40 °C).

1926: Following what be his last performance, Houdini was taken to the Grace Hosptial in Detroit.

1927: At Temple Sinai in Chicago, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Clarence Darrow debated “Is Zionism a Progressive Policy for Israel and America? Wise argued the affirmative and Darrow the negative. Darrow, the famous defense lawyer “had many Jewish friends and denounced anti-Semitism” but like so many of his generation (Jew and non-Jew alike) “he never supported a separate homeland for Jewish people.

1929: Birthdate of Daniel Donald Dorfman “a highly visible financial journalist whose televised market reports could send a stock soaring — or plummeting — but whose career was tarnished by accusations of insider trading.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1929: On what is known as Black Thursday, a record number of shares are traded on the NYSE as stock prices tumble, only to rebound when Richard Whitney steps on the floor and dramatically purchases large blocks of Blue Chip stocks. This provides only a brief respite on the road to Black Tuesday when the bottom fell out of the market marking the start of the worldwide Great Depression with all of its negative consequences including the rise of Hitler. The money for Whitney’s dramatic purchases was provided by the three leading New York Bankers, none of whom were Jewish.

1930:Birthdate of Elaine Feinstein Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator who was born in Bootle, Lancashire. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester. She has worked variously as an editor for Cambridge University Press (1960-62), as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963-6), as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Essex (1967-70), and as a journalist. She contributes to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsoe, Norway. Elaine Feinstein's first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye, was published in 1966. Her later work has been influenced by the poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva, a poet whose work she has translated from the Russian. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1990. Her first novel was The Circle (1970), which, like much of her early work, explores themes of female identity seen both inside and outside the family unit. Later novels, such as The Survivors (1982), draw on her knowledge of 20th-century European history and an awareness of her own Jewish heritage. Her most recent novel is The Russian Jerusalem (2008).She is the author of a number of plays for television including “Breath,” televised by the BBC in 1975, and “The Diary of Country Gentlewoman,” a twelve-part series (based on Edith Holden's novel) produced by ITV in 1984. She has also written radio plays, including “Foreign Girls” (1993) and Winter Meeting (1994), and is the author of several biographies, among them studies of the singer Bessie Smith and the writer D. H. Lawrence and a portrait of the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, published in 2001. Her book, Anna of all the Russias: The Life of a Poet under Stalin (2005) is a biography of Anna Akhmatova. Elaine Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was elected on to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. She lives in London. Her most recent poetry collection is Talking to the Dead (2007), dedicated to the memory of her husband, Arnold.

1930: British Labour Party MP Harry Gosling passed away today opening the way for Barnett Janner to seek this seat in constituency that had a large Jewish population – something did help the Jewish politician in his first campaign but helped him to gain the set in the next general elction.

1933:Nazis pass a law against “Habitual and Dangerous Criminals” that justifies placing the homeless, beggars, unemployed and alcoholics in concentration camps. (Jewish Virtual Library)

1935:Final day for the publication of the American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune.

1935(27^th of Tishrei, 5969): Abraham "Abe" Landau, a henchman of gangster Dutch Schultz succumbed to his wounds today.

1935: Mussolini’s Fascist Italian Army invaded Ethiopia. This act of naked aggression helped to make Mussolini a pariah among many Europeans. In turn, this pariah status helped to drive Mussolini into an alliance with Hitler that had disastrous results for Italian Jews. Strange as it may sound, the road to Auschwitz for Italian Jews went through Addis Abba.

1936: Bronislaw Huberman, founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra told the Times he had just conferred with Arturo Toscanini on arrangements for the opening concert of the PSO which will be conducted by Toscanini. The symphony has seventy members most of whom are refugees from various European countries where they were leading performers. The concert is schedule for December and is the first of a series of scheduled performances.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Avinoam Yellin, Senior Jewish Education Officer succumbed to his wounds inflicted by an Arab terrorist. The entire Yishuv mourned this outstanding national leader. The Palestine Police offered a £1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Yellin's assassin.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that two Arabs were killed and two others wounded by unknown persons, believed to be Jewish, in Haifa and Jerusalem.

1937: The second season of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra begins today in Tel Aviv under the direction of Hans Wilhelm Steinberg.

1939: The Jewish Big Band Leader Benny Goodman recorded "Let's Dance"

1939: Jews in Wloclawek, Poland, are required to wear a yellow cloth triangle identifying them as Jews

1940(22^ndof Tishrei, 5701): Shemini Atzert

1941: Six thousand work passes were distributed in Vilna. This meant 4,000 Jews without work passes would be sent to their doom in Polna. They were hunted down by the Lithuanians. Among the dead were 885 children.

1941 Sixteen thousand Odessa, Ukraine, Jews are force-marched out of the city toward Dalnik, where they are bound together in groups of 40 to 50 and shot, at first in the open and later through holes drilled in the walls of warehouses. Three of these structures are set ablaze and a fourth is exploded by artillery fire.

1941: Twenty thousand Jews fell into Nazi hands at Kharkov.

1941(3rd of Cheshvan, 5702): As part of the Odessa Action, an additional 16,000 Jews were taken from Odessa and sent to Dalnik. In Dalnik, they were all shot in ditches; machine gunned down, or burned alive in warehouses.

1942: The Jews of Lichtenstein were deported.

1945:The UN officially came into existence today upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. Whatever one’s view of the UN is, it must be remembered that this organization played a key role in the creation of the state of Israel and unlike its predecessor, the League of Nation, it has not witnessed the start of a World War.

1947: Birthdate of actor Kevin Kline. Kline whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not appeared in such films as The Big Chill and Sophie’s Choice.

1947: Members of the Haganah attacked forty members of the Irgun who were posting “propaganda posters.” Two members of the Haganah were wounded during the fight that took place fifteen miles south of Tel Aviv.

1948(21^stof Tishrei, 5709): Hoshana Raba

1948(21^stof Tishrei, 5709): Seventy-two year old Rustem Vambery, the jurist who had opposed the Communists and Fascists and was the son of Armin Vambery, the biographer of Theodor Herzl, passed away in New York today.

1948:The IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire upper Galilee, driving the ALA, and Lebanese army back to Lebanon, and successfully ambushing and destroying an entire Syrian battalion.] The Israeli force of four infantry brigades were commanded by Moshe Carmel

1952: The Arab Liberation Movement became the only party in Syria. For those who keep asking what happened to the Moslem/Arab world, they might want to consider this entry. While Israel was working to develop democratic institutions from the very birth of the nation, its northern neighbor was set on a course of one-party totalitarianism

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the German Chancellor, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, defended the presence of former Nazis in his Foreign Ministry by claiming that they were irreplaceable and indispensable. It was things like this that caused many Israelis and Jews living elsewhere to want to reject any reparation payments by the West German government. As far as they were concerned, the new Germans were the old Germans in disguise.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jerusalem District Court ruled that according to the Nationality Law, a child whose father is Israeli and whose mother rejected Israeli citizenship, for both herself and her child, is nevertheless a citizen of Israel. The question of “who is a Jew” has taken on many guises and shapes from ancient to modern times.

1954: Birthdate of Congressman Brad Sherman, representing California’s 27^th District in the House of Representatives.

1956: As the Israelis, French and British worked on plans for what will become known as the Suez Campaign or the One Hundred Hours War, the British negotiators made it clear to the Israelis that they must move towards the Canal so that the British and French would have an excuse to intervene. The Israelis primary point of interest was seizing Sharm el-Sheik which would open the Straits of Tiran. The Israelis said they would move to take the MitlaPass in the central Sinai and the British conceded that this would suffice for their needed “fig leaf.”

1959: Birthdate of Yakov Kreizberg, the Russian born American orchestra conductor.

1961: Italian premiere of “El Cid,” on which Michał Waszyński served as Executive Producer.

1961: United Artists released “The Manchurian Candidate,” with a screenplay by George Axelrod, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant and a score by David Amram.

1966: Birthdate of oil magnate and “Russian Oligarch”, Roman Abramovich.

1970: Birthdate of actor Adam Goldberg who was featured in Saving Private Ryan

1971: Birthdate of Caprice Bourret. Born Caprice Valerie Bourret, she gained fame as an actress and model, including her role in introducing the Wonderbra.

1973: As the Yom Kippur War was coming to an end Israeli troops were 65 miles from Cairo and 26 miles from Damascus. While the Arabs scored major victories early in the conflict, the Israelis turned things around and the aggressors were actually worse off from a military point of view at the end hostilities than they were when the shooting started. However, the military victory did little to heal the aching Israeli psyche or ease the sense of loss over those who fell in defense of the Jewish homeland. The IDF death toll stood at 2,522. These losses were over three times the number suffered during the Six Day War. Furthermore, as Yigal Yadin pointed out, this was the first war in which fathers and sons went into action at the same time. It was also the first time where the IDF casualty list included fathers and sons. The war proved once again that the Arabs nations could fight and lose, time after time and still exist. For Israelis, the wars were beginning to seem interminable and there was no margin for error. All they had to do was lose once and the state would cease to exist. The Yom Kippur War showed just how dependent Israel was on the United States for its military and economic wellbeing. The war further heightened Israel’s sense of isolation as Third World countries caved into the Arab Petro-Power and broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Strangely enough, the Egyptian ability to cross the Suez Canal would provide Sadat with a sense that he had redeemed his country’s national honor and provide him with the impetus to negotiate the Camp David Peace Accords. At the same time, the sense of malaise that would grip Israelas a result of the Yom Kippur War would provide some of the momentum that would end the Labor-Zionist control of the Israeli government and bring Begin and his Right Wing nationalist forces to power.

1973: Colonel Giora "Hawkeye" Epstein “downed three more MiG-21s west of the Great Bitter Lake.”

1974: David Fyodorovich Oistrakh, Ukrainian born violinists, passed away.

1977: Menachem Begin completed his term in office as Communications Minister of Israel.

1976: The cabinet resolved, without prejudging the charges against Asher Yadlin concerning improper conduct in the management of Kupat Holim that it could no longer delay the appointment, and named Director-General of the Treasury Arnon Gafni as governor of the Bank of Israel

1977: The political party founded by Yigal Yadin joined the government formed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Begin had won an upset victory over the Labor Zionist who had governed the country since 1948. Yadin believed that by joining the new government he could help fashion a much need policy of social reform and play a key role in future negotiations with the Arabs. He based this second hope on the key role he had played in negotiating the cease fire with the Jordanians in 1948. Much to his bitter disappointment, Yadin would find that his plans for social reform would fall victim to Ariel Sharon’s need for money to finance his plan for an expansion of settlements in the West Ban.

1977: The Democratic Movement for Change (DASH), which had won 15 Knesset seats in the last election, joined Menachem Begin in a new coalition with Meir Amit, the retired Major General, serving as minister of transport and communication. He would resign within a year.

1976: FirstJewish film & TV festival

1978(23^rdof Tishrei, 5739): Simchat Torah

1980: The first national US tour of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” started today in Washington, D.C.

1981: Birthdate of American fashion designer Zac Posen. As a child Posen reportedly stole yarmulkes to use as materials for dresses he made for dolls.

1986(21^stof Tishrei, 5747): Hoshanah Rabah

1983: Following a lengthy and intense debate within the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) faculty senate voted 34-8 to admit women to the JTSRabbinicalSchool today.( Editor’s Note – “The next fall, in September 1984, 23 women entered JTS as members of the seminary's first class to include female rabbinical students. In the spring of 1985, Amy Eilberg, who was already studying at JTS when women's ordination was approved, became the first woman ordained as a rabbi by the Conservative movement.”)

1986: In Toronto, Sandi Graham (née Sher) who was Jewish and Dennis Graham gave birth to Canadian rapper, songwriter, and actor Aubrey Drake Graham who “was raised by his mother in Toronto's predominantly Jewish area of Forest Hills (and attended Forest Hills P.S. and Forest Hills Collegiate)

1993: The Art Institute of Chicago presents the work of Israeli photographer Michal Rovner

1993(9th of Cheshvan, 5754): “Two IDF soldiers, Staff Sgt. (res.) Ehud Rot, age 35, and Sgt. Ilan Levi, age 23, were killed by a Hamas Iz a-Din al Kassam terrorist squad.

1994: A revival of “Mother,” the teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky was featured on the PBS Great Performances series today

1997(23^rdof Tishrei, 5758) Simchat Torah

1999: Bruce Fleischer won the EMC Kaanapali Classic.

1999: The New York Times includes reviews of the following books by Jewish authors: The Play Goes On: A Memoir by Neil Simone and In Search of American Jewish Culture by Stephen Whitfield, one of TulaneUniversity’s most illustrious graduates and AEPi’s most illustrious “brother.”

2001: Benefit Premiere for the NYC Theatrical Release of the controversial movie “Trembling Before G-d” at Film Forum.

2002: Premiere of “Broken Wings” an Israeli film directed by Nir Bergman.

2004:The New York Timesbook section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on Jewish topics including Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies by George S. Kaufman with Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Ring Lardner and Morrie Ryskind, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenmentsby Gertrude Himmelfarb, Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs and ChroniclesVolume One by Bob Dylan, an autobiography of the life of Robert Zimmerman

2004: TempleJudahin Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sponsored its annual Big Dinner fund raising activity. For once, the city of Cedar Rapids was awash with real corned beef and Dr. Brown's Cream Soda. “Es, es mien kinder; es.”

2004: The Jerusalem Post reported that approximately 140,000 Muslim worshippers attended Ramadan prayers on the Temple Mount on the previous Friday afternoon. Considering the violence of the Intifada, it is rather amazing that Israel was willing to risk this large a gathering. It speaks well of the Israelis that they were willing to run the risk so that others, even those who oppose its very existence, might celebrate their religious observances.

2005 (21 Tishrei 5766): Hoshana Rabbah

2005: “The Luddite from York University” published todaydescribed the antics of David Noble, who teaches at Canada’s third largest university. (As reported by Steven Plaut) [This item is an example of the anti-Semitism that has cropped up on college campuses in North America.]

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=6841

2006:In her first weekly column which is called "Breaking the Sound Barrier" Amy Goodman wrote, "My column will include voices so often excluded, people whose views the media mostly ignore, issues they distort and even ridicule]

2006(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5767): Eighty-seven year old Sally Lilienthal the peace activist who founded Ploughshares Fund passed away today. (As reported by Patricia Sullivan) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102601603_pf.html

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Sally-Lilienthal-founder-of-the-Ploughshares-2486670.php

2006(2^ndof Cheshvan, 5767): Eighty-eight year old “ Benjamin Meed, a leading advocate for Jewish Holocaust survivors who in the decades after the war gathered them together by the tens of thousands, reuniting people with friends, neighbors and family members presumed to have been lost forever, died today at his home in Manhattan. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/obituaries/26meed.html?pagewanted=print

2007: “Third World Love” celebrates the release of its fourth album, “New Blues,” with a performance of Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine.

2007: Terrorists went on a shooting spree in an attack on the West Bank in and around the Ariel junction, seriously wounding one IDF soldier. Hamas and Fatah both claimed they were each responsible for the attack.

2008: Opening of Fall Chavurah (SLIID), hosted by CeRTY of Central Reform Congregation, in St. Louis.

2008:At New York University Etgar Keret joins Todd Hasak-Lowy, professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Florida, for a fiction reading and conversation with NYU professor Matthew Rohrer.

2008(25 Tishrei, 5769): Sixty-five year old “ Rabbi Moshe Cotel, an acclaimed pianist and composer whose works were often infused with themes emanating from his deep Jewish roots, a weave of influences that only later in life led him to the pulpit, passed away today at his home in Manhattan. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/arts/music/03cotel.html?_r=0

2008:Gottschalks, a department store chain founded by German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in 1904 as a dry goods store in downtown Fresno, California, “was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE officials stated that the value of the stock was too low to continue to be listed, and that its average global market capitalization had remained below $25 million for 30 straight trading days.”

2009(6th of Cheshvan, 5770):Norma Fox Mazer, an award-winning novelist for young people whose work helped illuminate many dark corners of adolescence, exploring subjects like poverty, betrayal, abandonment and loss, passed away at her home in Montpelier, VT at the age of 78.

2009: At the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a program entitled “SLAM! An Evening of Spoken Word Poetry” featuring Jake Marmer who “merges poetry and performance into philosophically viral mixtures like existentialist dancehall, talmudic jazz poetry and personalized bop apocalypse.”

2009: In Jerusalem, Khan Theatre presents "Happiness," a comedy written and directed by Michael Gurevich.The show won two Israeli Theatre Awards for 2004: Best Director and Best Choreography.

2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure by Nathan Rabin and The False Friend by Myla Goldberg

2010: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to conduct “A Walking Tour of Old Town Alexandria” that will enable participants to learn about the long and storied Jewish history of this Virginia’s city, from the 1850s to today including the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses along King Street-including some that show traces of past Jewish owners.

2010:Max Weinreich Center at YIVO along with Hunter College and the Posen Foundation are scheduled to present: A Conference on the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Simon Dubnow. Dr. Brian Horowtiz of Tulane University is scheduled to be one of the presenters.

2010(16^thof Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-eight year old “Joseph Stein, the Tony Award-winning author of “Fiddler on the Roof” and more than a dozen other Broadway musicals, died today in Manhattan. (As reported by Anita Gates and Bruce Weber)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E6DF153DF935A15753C1A9669D8B63

2011: A Dramatic Reading entitled “The Civil War at 150 United By Faith, Divided by War: Jews and the Civil War” is scheduled to take place tonight at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival at the Washington DC JCC.

2011:A new memorial honoring 14 Jewish chaplains who died in the service of the United States is scheduled to be dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.

2011: In a tale of two Jews in the city of Chicago, incoming Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein arrived at Wrigley Field this morning to meet some of the team's employees and check out his new digs while Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced to defend the decision to arrest two nurses who remained in Grant Park after the 11 pm closing time as part of the Windy City’s local version of the national protest against economic inequality.

2011:An IDF soldier was arrested by Military Police today on suspicion of leaking information to right-wing elements over military activities in the West Bank.

2011: In “Ruth Weiss: Beat ‘Goddess’ True Innovator of Poetry & Jazz” Lourdes Acevedo described the life and impact of the beat generation poetess.

http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/10/24/ruth-weiss-beat-goddess-true-innovator-of-poetry-jazz/

2012: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to sponsor a lecture by Thomas E. Mann entitled “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: The Clash Between Our Constitutional System and Political Extremism.”

2012:Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University, Berlin) is scheduled to deliver a lecture, “The Witness and the Holocaust - Oral Testimonies and Historical Knowledge” in London, UK.

2012: The Annual Conference of the Program Directors of Reform Judaism that has been meeting in Denver, CO, is scheduled to come to an end.

2012: Today, Pesident Shimon Peres accused Palestinians of using aid donations to fund their rocket campaign against Israel.

2012: More than 60 rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza have hit southern Israel in the last 24 hours, striking several homes and injuring three.

2012: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia are scheduled to host a lunch where attendees can question Tim Kaine, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia about his views and policies

2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to co-host the Chicago book launch of Against A Tide of Evil by Dr. Mukesh Kapila.

2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present Fritz Stern and Elisabeth Sifton, authors of No Ordinary Men who will lead a discussion about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Von Dohanyi.

2013: The RAC is scheduled to observe Food Day with a webinar that will feature special guests, Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea; and Rabbi Mary Zamore, editor of "The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic,” discussing the various challenges within our global food system, and how we can apply our Jewish values to conscious eating, and the concept of “food with integrity.”

2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said today that a "civil war" has erupted in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Global Jihad elements that have attempted to drag Israel into the conflict (As reported by JPost Staff)

2013: Los Angeles premiere of “The Pin,” a love story about two Jewish teenagers hiding in a barn in Lithuania during WW II.

2013: IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz announced that Colonel Rasan Alian has been appointed to commander the Golani Brigade making him the first Druse officer to hold the position.

2014(30th of Tishrei, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a piano recital by Tom Zalmanov as part of its “The Future Generation Series.”

2014: Temple Judah is schedule to host its first Musical Shabbat of the season along with addition of the Caster/Barnum baby naming as another generation makes its first appearance on the pulpit.

2014:Nick Kotz is a former reporter for The Washington Post and The Des Moines Register is scheduled to discuss The Harness Maker’s Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise Of South Texas at the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2014: An untold number of Jews are scheduled to join in a unique Shabbat experience – ShabbatUK

http://www.shabbatuk.org/

OCTOBER 25

732: Christian forces led by Charles Martel clash defeat the invading Moors at the Battle of Tours which is near Poitiers in modern day France. The victory at Tours ensured that Western Europe would be Christian. For Jews, it also meant that the Sephardic culture would flourish for several centuries to come.

1147: The armies of the Second Crusade (1147-49) were destroyed by the Saracens at Dorylaeum (in modern Turkey). The Crusaders went on with fruitless campaigns against Damascus, Syria. The Jews were bystanders during the Crusades. Unfortunately they fell victim to the wrath of the Islamic and Christian combatants at various times throughout this tumultuous period. Furthermore, one cannot understand what is happening in the part of the world best described as the “Islamic/Arab Arc” if one does not have a sense of the period of the Crusades.

1154: King Stephen of England died. Stephen was an inept monarch who reigned during a period of turmoil and civil war. The first blood libel took place in during his rule in 1144. Unlike the nobles and monarchs of France and Germany, Stephen protected his Jewish subjects from the kind of suffering that the Crusaders were inflicting on their European co-religionists. Stephen reportedly did burn the house of Jew living in Oxford but that was because the Jew refused to contribute to the maintenance of the monarch. While the act is inexcusable it is consistent with the greed of many of European nobles who were in constant need of money and saw the Jews as a cash-cow to be milked to death.

1187: Gregory VIII, the Pope who called for the disastrous Third Crusade, began his papacy. Each of the crusades was a disaster for the Jewish people in way or another. On top of everything else, the Third Crusade removed the protective hand of King Richard from England and left the Jews to suffer under the anti-Semitic Prince John.

1268: Jucef ibn Astrug Ravaya, a Jew, was appointed bailiff of Besala (modern day Spain). Jucef later became chief bailiff in Aragon and Valencia. Jucef and his brother were the chief administrators in the government of King Pedro III. Under Jucef's administration, he and his brother were able to raise funds from within the Jewish community to finance an invasion of Sicily.

1400: The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer passed away. Born in 1340, Chaucer is viewed as one of the great pre-Shakespearian writers. From a purely Jewish perspective, the author of The Canterbury Tales is slight bit on the flawed side. In the “Prioress’s Tale” Chaucer tells of an eight year old hymn signing Christian boy who is murdered as he passes through the Jewish section of his town. The boy is seized by “this accursed Jew” who cuts “his throat and casts him into a pit.” In the end the Jewish community is wiped out as punishment for the crime. This is remarkable when you consider that the Jews had been expelled from England almost a century before Chaucer lived. This version of the blood libel proves that you did need Jews around to preach anti-Semitism, that anti-Semitism was part of the fabric of Christian civilization and that Jews are not the cause of anti-Semitism.

1408: In Spain, The Council of Regency, under the inspiration of the apostate Paul de Santa Maria, reinstituted all previous anti-Jewish legislation of Alphonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284).

1495: Manuel I the Portuguese monarch who released all the Jews imprisoned by his predecessor John II, began his reign today

1541: The Jews of Algeria escaped capture by the Spanish Army which gave rise to Purim Edom

1742: Birthdate of Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, the Christian native of Parma who was a noted Hebraist. After being named Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Parma, he delivered “His inaugural lecture on the causes of the neglect of Hebrew study.”

1760: King George III assumes the throne of Great Britain. The Jews of the 13 colonies would adopt the view of their non-Jewish neighbors and see George as a modern day Pharaoh.

1765: A group of Philadelphia merchants gathered in the State House to sign the non-importation agreement to fight the hated Stamp Tax of the British government. The merchants and other citizens of Philadelphia agreed "not to have any goods shipped from Great Britain until after the repeal of the Stamp Act.” “The first man to step forward to sign his name was the president of Mikve Israel Congregation, Philadelphia's only synagogue, Mathias Bush.”Other Jewish signers included Benjamin Levy, David Franks, Samson Levy, Hyman Levy, Jr., Moses Mordecai, Michael Gratz, and Barnard Gratz.”

1796(23^rdof Tishrei, 5557): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1800: Birthdate of British historian and Whig MP Thomas Babington Macaulay who advocated full civil rights for English Jews as can be seen by his support of Robert Grant’s bill for the “Removal of Jewish Disabilities.”

1822(10th of Cheshvan, 5583: Abraham Touro died today in Boston at the age of 48.Born in 1774, he was the “oldest son of Isaac Touro, Abraham was born in Newport, Rhode Island. After the death of his father in Jamaica, he lived with his mother and siblings in the home of his uncle Moses Michael Hays in Boston, Massachusetts. As an adult, Abraham lived in Medford, Massachusetts. He entered into the merchant trade and insurance business with his cousin, Judah Hays, taking over the family business when his uncle died. Like his brother Judah, Abraham was known for his philanthropy, contributing to, among others, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Female Asylum, and the Boston Asylum for Indigent Boys. It was his caring and concern for the synagogue and cemetery in Newport, however, that he truly is remembered. In addition to the maintenance of the synagogue, he also contributed funds and oversaw the erection of a fence around the cemetery, the sidewalk from the cemetery to the synagogue, and maintenance and repair of the street that would one day bear his family name.”

1845: A fire broke out at Constantinople which had consumed the greater part of the Jewish quarter, and destroyed several Synagogues. "Distress, starvation, and misery of all kinds prevail among the unfortunate Jewish population."

1848: In Galcia, Dr. and Mrs.Heinrich Franzos gave birth to author Karl Emil Franzos.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Franzos_Karl_Emil

1853:23rd of Tishrei, 5614):Simchat Torah

1853:The Five Academies comprising the Institute of France held their annual meeting today. Among the presenters was M. Holely of the Academy of Fine Arts, composer of the "Wandering Jew" who read "an interminable discourse on Frohberger, a German organist whom no ever heard of, and whom the writer himself acknowledge was snuffed out by Handel.

1858: In his role as President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews, Sir Moses Montefiore sends a letter to the leaders of the American Jewish community asking that they join “with the Jews in England, Holland and France” in seeking the support of their respective governments to take whatever action is possible to ensure the return of Eduardo Mortara to his parents after he had been seized by Catholic authorities so that he could be raised in their faith.

OR

1858: TodaySir Moses Montefiore, the President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews wrote a letter the President of the Hebrew Congregation in the United States and others that urged the American Jewish community to join its co-religionists in England, Holland France in seeking the support of their government in having the Mortara child returned to his parents and to avoid any such future seizures. It summarized the threat that the seizure Edgardo Mortara posed to Jews and “every other denomination of faith” except the Roman Catholics. Montefiore reiterated that this was not just a matter of religious freedom. The behavior of the Catholic Church placed “in peril, personal liberty, social relations and the peace of families.”

1860:“Affairs in Syria,” published reports that "The Anglo-American Committee, while it retains its original name, has now among its members leading men from the Greek, the Roman Catholic and the Jewish persuasions, and relief is extended to men of every creed irrespective of any peculiarity of faith…It will perhaps interest your readers to know that Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler the Chief Rabbi of the Jews, who resides in London, has issued an address to the Jews throughout Europe, calling upon them for liberal contributions for the poor in Syria, and that the Rothschilds and other eminent and wealthy Israelites are feeling much interest in the subject. Dr. Adler bases his appeal upon the ground that Syria and Palestine is the land of their fathers, and that as it is a land so full of holy associations connected with the past, and so replete with hope for the future, they must rally to the aid of their Christian brethren in the East, who are children of the same Almighty Father, and calls upon them to give liberally as they hope to be restored to the land to which their traditions, prophecies, and hopes, point as their future home."

1862(1^st of Cheshvan, 5623): As Jews observed Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, General U.S. Grant assumed command of the 13^th Army Corps and the Department of Tennessee, a move that would position him to lead the Union to victory at Vicksburg.

1862: The New York Timesspecial correspondent traveling with the Army of the Potomac reported that the recent order relating to sutlers have, to a great extent, cleared out the "Jews" as well as "Gentiles," who had turned Bolivar Heights into a Chatham-street. Bolivar Heights was the site of the Union Army’s camp. Chatham-street was a reference to a street of that name in NYC which was the site of much of the second-hand clothing business; a business allegedly dominated by Jews who were rumored to always taking advantage of their Christian customers.

1863:A writer for the Richmond Examiner proposes a plan for stowing the population of the entire Confederacy in Richmond, and supplying them with food. While the article is allegedly a satire, the paragraphs about the Jews have the whiff of anti-Semitism.Now“we approach naturally enough the Jews, a class which includes not only the unworthy Israelites, but all who indulge the alleged Hebraic propensity for exacting the pound of Christian flesh and amassing riches at the expense of the life-blood of their fellow-citizens. Such are Yankee tradesmen of whatever denomination, restaurant keepers, confectionery and apple sellers, oyster-cellar men, proprietors of hotels and boarding-houses, and the like. All these come under the same head, and are to be disposed of in the same manner…I am told that the Jews, in addition to the shop in which they are now reduced to the unprofitable business of selling lead pencils at a dollar apiece, meerschaum pipes made out of plaster of Paris, empty pocket-books, and rotten shoe-strings, at similar rates, own a vast number of the best houses in the city, purchased by their honest gains, and now filled with flour, bacon, sugar, salt, coffee, tea, corn, meat, oats, hay, fodder, shucks and other necessaries of life. If this be true, not a moment is to be lost in ousting them, in order to save the army and the people from starvation. They are said to have packed away in their cellars and garrets enough clothing, made and unmade, to furnish every respectable man, woman and child in the Confederacy with two complete Winter suits, besides whisky, brandy and wine enough to keep the taro-banks, cannal-pockets, Congress and Governor Letcher supplied for nearly three months to come. These must be obtained without delay or regard to law or peril to life or limb. My neat and simple plan for effecting this with the required promptness, is to detail the provost-guard, city battalion, night watch, Col. Bronner's cavalry, and any other force that may be needed, to seize Jews, restaurant men and chattels, expose the same to sale -- not at Yankee auction, but at a ladies' fair, to be conducted exclusively by the poor women of the city, assisted by some honest hospital steward (if such can be found,) and in the meantime to lodge the said Jews, restaurant, confectionery, oyster, hotel and boarding-house men in the exceeding capacious and patriotic flour mills of the metropolis, which are now lying idle for lack of the wheat and confidence of our long-headed, good-memoried country gentlemen. If the several mills do not suffice to contain them all, plenty of room can be found in the various tobacco warehouses, which are to be emptied in pursuance of my plan, as will be shown further on. Having packed the Jews, foreign or native born, everyone in the mills and warehouses, it would be cruel to forget that they have been accustomed to active, industrious life, and to leave them a prey to idleness and their own villainous imaginations. I propose to be guilty of no such inhumanity, but to give them constant and laborious employment during the whole term of their incarceration. With this view I have consulted Adjt.-Gen. Richardson, and find that he has now in the Virginia Armory something above one thousand tons of old flints, which he has kindly placed at my disposal. These flints must be carefully skinned by the imprisoned Jews, and the hides thus obtained are to be sold to the Navy Department...”

1871: An article published today compared the methods of Irish men and Jews who are engaged in the second-hand clothing business. The Irish rely on a network of their fellow country men and women who work as servants in the homes of the wealthy. “The Jewish old-clothes man” works in the street relying on his ability to trade and barter as opposed to using cash for the purchase of items.

1872(23rd of Tishrei, 5633): Simchat Torah

1875: William F. Kintzing, the defense attorney for the three man charge with the murder of a Hebrew peddler in the woods at Westchester (NY) opposed the district attorney’s motion to transfer the case from the Court of General Sessions to the Oyer and Terminer, the court with criminal jurisdiction. Judge Sutherland ruled that since this was a capital case, the transfer was proper and he approved the motion. The three would eventually be convicted of the immigrant Jewish peddler who was supporting his children still living in Europe.

1875: The New York World, a newspaper that supports Democrats published an attack on Jacob Hess, a Republican and leader in the Jewish community

1877: It was reported today that New Yorker Abraham S. Isaacs, an editor of the Jewish Messenger, plans to publish a work on Hebrew literature.

1877: It was reported today that a volume written by Helen Zimmern on the life and works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing will be published in London this fall. Lessing was the close friend of Moses Mendelssohn and wrote “Nathan the Wise.”

1879: The Yuma Arizona Sentinel reported today that “Pinafore Company” bound for Tucson that included Pauline Markham had stopped in Yuma, AZ.

1879: It was reported today the Senate in Bucharest has passed a bill that would revise the Romanian Constitution to allow for the emancipation of the Jews by a large majority.

1882: “Mordecai Lyons,” a new play by Edward Harrigan is scheduled to open at the Theatre Comique in New York City. The three act plays includes scenes in a pawnbroker’s shop and a chop-house on Houston Street.

1881: Birthdate of Pablo Picasso. Picasso befriended the Italian-Jewish painter Amedeo Modigliani. He posed for a portrait by Modigliani and tried to help him be a commercial success. According to a 2004 film featuring the relationship between these two artistic giants, Picasso painted a portrait of Modigliani. Picasso reportedly uttered Modigliani’s name on his death bed.

1882: In Vienna, along with Moses Schnirer, Ruben Bierer and Peretz Smolenskin, Nathan Birnbaum founded “Kadima” the Zionist student association whose future members would include Sigmund Freud, Isidor Schalit and Fritz Löhner-Beda.

1882: It was reported today that “Jew” Rosa was among the confederates of the “notorious counterfeiter” Van Rensselaer Abrams. (It has not been ascertained if Rosa’s appellation was indicative of his religious origins.)

1882: A review published today of “Mordecai Lyons” by Edward Harrigan decried it is a “another ‘Jew play’” which reminds us that “when the Jew is not honestly reproduced that he should not be reproduced at all.”

1883: “Celebrating A Fest Too Well” published today described a Simchat Torah celebration that a group of Polish Chassidim held in room above the crockery store owned by Bernard Levy. When Levy heard furniture and windows breaking, he attempted to control the group. But the abundance of liquor and beer prevented this and Levy was forced to call the police.

1884:The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will hold a Montefiore centenary celebration in Chickering Hall this evening starting at 8 o’clock.

1884: In New York City, Jess Seligman delivered the opening remarks at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association “ Montefiore Centenary Celebration” which the Anglo-Jewish leader’s one hundredth birthday

1884: Baltimore’s Lloyd Street Synagogue was the scene of special ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore

1885: “The Strength of Ideas” published today contends that “No race has ever been affected by its wars as the Jews have been affected by the single idea that it was their duty to remain a separate people.”

1886: The Financial News which had been founded by Harry Marks in 1884 began running a series of articles that exposed corruption in local government many of which were written by Marks himself.

1886: It was reported today that Tommy Grady, who is running against Tim Campbell for in the 8^thCongressional District gave an hour-long address to the Tenth Ward Hebrew Citizens’ Association during which he tried “to impress his listeners that he was a friend of the” Jews. (This “courting of the Jewish vote, is yet another example of what differentiated the Jewish American experience from life in Europe, Asia and/or Africa)

1889: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman and Judge Richard O’Gorman addressed the meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association held at Chickering Hall. The speeches were followed by a musical event featuring soprano Isabelle Rockwell and tenor Hugo Distlehurst.

1889: In New York City, The American Hebrew reports that Dr. Abraham Neumark "...will hold regular discourses on the Talmud and lectures in German every Saturday afternoon." at Orach Chaim.

1891(23^rdof Tishrei, 5652): Simchat Torah

1891: “Russia’s Grim Outlook” published today described the impact of the famine in the Czar’s domains where it is predicted there will be increasing violence aimed at the Jews

1891: Birthdate of Charles Coughlin, an American Roman Catholic priest in Detroit and a vicious anti-Semite. In October, 1938 he began his weekly anti-Semitic broadcasts over national radio. The program was very popular, to say the least. He also formed the Christian Front in New York City which carried out anti-Semitic street meetings and boycotted Jewish businesses. Those who are critical of Roosevelt’s policies regarding European Jewry and the apparent passivity of American Jews in response to the menace Hitler posed to the Jews, would do well to read about American during the 1930’s when anti-Semitism was both public and acceptable.

1894: In New York, The Board of Estimate and Apportionment acted today on the provisional estimates for 1985 for charitable institutions which included $80,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and $85,000 for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York Orphan Asylum.

1894: In Newark, NJ, A mob of angry Polish and Russian Jewish unemployed hat-makers “surrounded the non-union hat factor of J.L. Kreidel threatening death to Kreidel and his nephew” if they did not join the union within the next 24 hours

1894: In a move to attract Jewish support, the Woman’s Municipal Purity Auxiliary which is part of the anti-Tammany movement, is scheduled to hold its meeting this afternoon at the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway.

1895: Birthdate of Levi Eshkol. Everybody knows the names of the glamorous Israeli leaders – Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, etc. But few know the name of Levi Eshkol. This little known Israeli political leader succeeded Ben Gurion as Prime Minister of Israel in 1963. He was a compromise candidate of whom little was expected. Yet he was the Prime Minister in 1967 when Israel won its great victory over the Arab states and Jerusalem was re-united. Born in Kiev, Eshkol moved to Palestine in 1914. He served in the Jewish Legion during World War I was active in the Labor Zionist movement during the inter-war period. His major accomplishment was the establishment of what would become Israel’s water authority. In a parched land, this was work of major importance. Eshkol joined the Haganah serving as a recruiter and later as the “chief supply officer” for it and its successor, the IDF. As should be obvious, Eshkol’s biggest accomplishment was to serve successfully in a variety of unglamorous positions that were vital to the establishment and growth of Israel. He died of heart attack in 1969.

1896: Rabbi Beisnmar is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Brooklyn dry goods merchant Joseph Wechsler followed by burial in Salem Fields, Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1896(25^thof Cheshvan, 5657): Retired real estate broker Moses kind who “was a member of Stchelberg & Co (cigar makers) and who was a Director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital passed away today.

1896: The funeral for New York businessman Adolphus H. Maas who began his career in Savannah, GA before manufacturing chemicals in Newark, will be held today at 9:30 this morning.

1903: In Debrecen, Hungary, Yosef Weissmandl, a shochet and his wife gave birth to Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, the rabbi and community leader “best known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination during the Shoah.”

1905: British Major-General Sir Charles Wilson passed away at Tunbridge Wells (UK). Born in 1836, Wilson received his first commission in the Royal Engineers in 1855. In 1864, at the instigation of George Grove, Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts helped finance the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. Volunteers were called for from the Royal Engineers to carry out the work and Wilson who had just been promoted to the rank of Captain was selected. The aim of the work was to lay the basis for the improvement of the water supply of Jerusalem, which at the time was severely polluted. In addition to producing a topographical map of the city and its immediate environs, in 1865 the survey party carried out a series of levels from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, which established the relative levels of the two bodies for the first time.While Wilson was still in Palestine engaged on the Survey, the Palestine Exploration Fund was founded. On Wilson’s return to England, the PEF Committee engaged him to carry out a 'feasibility study' for proposed Survey of Western Palestine and to identify suitable sites for future exploration. In November 1865, Wilson and his party landed in Beirut and surveyed their way south to Palestine, planning the Great Mosque of Damascus along the way. From January to April 1866, Wilson carried out reconnaissance and survey work in Palestine, paying particular attention to the archaeology and ancient synagogues of the region. In the same year, Wilson was appointed to the Ordnance Survey of Scotland and, in 1867, acted as Assistant Commissioner on the Borough Boundary Commission. In this year, also, he became a member of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1868, he volunteered to take part in the Ordnance Survey of Sinai, along with Capt. H.S. Palmer. The report of their work contains Wilson’s chapters on the route of the Israelites and the prehistoric and Byzantine archaeology of the region. In recognition of Wilson’s work in Jerusalem, he was awarded the Diploma of the International Geographical Congress in 1871.Throughout his military career Wilson remained in touch with the Palestine Exploration Fund, serving as its Chairman during the period from 1901 to 1906. (As reported by the Palestine Exploration Fund)

1906: Major General Georges Picquart, who risked his career when he identified Ferdinand Esterhazy as the author of the bordereau that had been wrongly attributed to Dreyfus was named Minister of War.

1906: Birthdate of Reuven Borstein, the native of Taurage who made Aliyah in 1926, after which he gained fame as Reuven Barkat.

1910(22^ndof Tishrei, 5671: Shemini Atzeret

1906: Installation of Rabbi Jacob Meir as Hahambashi of Palestine. Six months later In April he was deposed by the Sultan of Turkey, and Eliahu M. Panigel was put in the position instead to oversee the orthodox community. Jacob Meir went on to become Chief Rabbi of Salonica.

1913: Birthdate of Avraham Yoffee, the native of Yavne’el who served as a general during the Six Day War and as a member of the Knesset.

1914: The first meeting of a special committee formed to alleviate the suffering of the Jews in war-torn Europe chaired by Jacob H. Schiff took place today at Temple Emanu-El.

2014: As part of the campaign to raise $100,000 to alleviate the suffering the Jews in Palestine Louis Brandeis, Chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, addressed the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall.

1917: On the Julian calendar a revolt St. Petersburg marks the start of the October Revolution which will topple the Provisional Government and bring the Bolsheviks to power. This corresponds to November 7 on the Gregorian Calendar but it explains why the “October Revolution” took place in November.

1918: In Emsworth, Hampshire, Air Commodore P.J. Wiseman and his wife gave birth to archaeologist and biblical scholar Donald J. Wiseman who served as vice president of the British Academy under Sir Isaiah Berlin who among other things established the date of Nebuchadnezzar's first capture of Jerusalem as 15/16 March 597 BCE after extensively examining the Babylonian texts.

1918: The funeral of Julius M Guinzburg, of blessed memory, the brother of Edwin, Adolph, Fernando, Eleanor and Flora Buchbinder is scheduled to take place at the West End Synagogue in New York City.

1919: Winston Churchill “wrote a memorandum for the Cabinet proposing that the Ottoman Empire should not be divided among the victorious powers, but preserved intact, and placed under the authority of the League of Nations. Such a plan would bring an end to the British Mandate in Palestine, and would have led to the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration pledge of a Jewish National Home.”

1921(23^rdof Tishrei, 5682): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Warren Harding and for the second time under the strictures of the Volstead Act.

1923: In Vienna, Leo Sirota and Augustine Horenstein gave birth to Beate Sirota who gained fame as Beate Sirota Gorden, “who at 22 almost single-handedly wrote women’s rights into the Constitution of modern Japan” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1924:The Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election. This document, which was a forgery, called for increased Communist agitation in Great Britain. Zinoviev was Grigory Zinoviev, the son of Jewish dairy farmers, who was head of the Comintern.

1925: In Sosnowiec, Poland, chocolate salesman Issachar Feiner and his wife Rivka Herzberg gave birth to Haim Feiner who gained fame as Israeli entertainer Haim Hefer.

1929: Arthur Ruppin wrote in his diary describing the devastation the Arabs had wrought on the settlement of Hulda in Palestine. In 1930, Hulda was resettled as a Kibbutz by a group of young Zionist pioneers known as the Gordonia, followers of A.D. (Aaron David) Gordon.

1930: Birthdate of American Jewish author Harold Brodkey.

1930(3^rdof Cheshvan, 5691): Seventy year old Russian-Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine passed away.

1930: Several thousand people gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the “British government’s new…policy on Palestine.” The demonstration turned violent when the protestors marched passed the city’s main synagogue which was surrounded by a guard of mounted officers. Several of the people in the group who were identified as being Orthodox resorted to violence over what they considered was a desecration of the Sabbath by having the Jewish guards mounted on horses, a violation of halachah. At the same time a picture of Lord Passfield was ripped to shreds by the mob.

1935: A Zionist Committee in Locarno signed a contract with a steamship company that would provide transportation to Palestine during 1936 for 80,000 Jews who will be settling in Tel Aviv.

1936: Peter and Miriam Gilbert give birth to their son, Martin, in London. Martin Gilbert, grandson of Eastern European immigrants, became Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill. As the author of over 80 volumes, he is one of the most prolific historians of our time. As anybody who has read his works knows, he is also one of the most reliable authorities who turns works of history into works of literature.

1936: The Berlin-Rome Axis was formed. This was the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini that helped paved the way to World War II and the Holocaust.

1936: At Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, “a successful penalty kick by Gauol Machlis…enabled the touring Maccabee soccer team from Tel Aviv to defeat the Illinois All Stars 1 to 0…” in front of a crowd of 20,000 ran soaked fans. The receipts from the game will be shared by various Chicago charities.

1939: Mayor La Guardiapraised the Youth Aliyah Fund which is providing financial support to send Jewish children to Palestine. At the same time, New York’s mayor warned the members that they must be vigilant in guarding the rights of all minorities.

1940(23^rdof Tishrei, 5701): Simchat Torah

1940: General Government (the Nazi government of Poland) ended the granting of any more visas to Polish Jews.

1940: As part of Operation Wagner-Bürckel it was decided to evacuate the Jews from Baden (between 6,500 and 7,500) as well as 895 Jews from Karlsruhe,to Gurs where they were locked up under French, not German, administration.

1941: In Melbourne, Stella Campbell and David “Max” Reddy gave birth to Australian-American singer and actress Helen Reddy.

1941(4th of Cheshvan, 5702): Romanian soldiers massacred 26,000 Jews in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union. The Romanians were allies of the Germans and participated in their crimes.

1941: Jews at Tatarsk in Soviet Russia revolt against murderous peasants and SS killing squads. The rebellion is put down by regular German Army units, artillery, and air power. All Jews in Tatarsk are murdered.

1941:As of today according to an order issued by the Nazis, all Jews were to have relocated to the Moscow suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small area known as the Moscow Forshtat by the end of October 1941.

1941: Einsatzgruppen report to Berlin complains the local population of White Russia was not being helpful in the various actions. “Actions” was the expression for rounding up and murdering Jews. Therefore the Germans themselves would have to step up efforts.

1941: In what is described as “The Birth of the Gas Chamber,” in Germany Dr. Viktor Brack rolled out the new plan for mass execution with "the installation of the necessary buildings and gas plants." Eichmann approved of this method. Such a procedure would assure a systematic method of extinguishing the Jews and reduce incidents of public killings.

1941: U.S. premiere of “The Tell-Tale Heart” direct by Jules Dassin, co-starring Joseph Schildkraut with music by Sol Kaplan.

1942: Dutch resistance leader Jaap Nunes Vaz, founder of the underground paper Het Parool was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sobibor.

1942: In Oszmiana, Lithuania the Nazis demand that the community give up 400 of its 1000 Jews. The selection of the victims is assigned to the Jewish police in the nearby city of Vilna. Vilna Ghetto leader Jacob Gens decides to hand over Oszmiana's elderly Jews in order to save the others.

1942: Male Jews in Norway are arrested and sent by sea to Szczecin, Poland, then by railcar to Auschwitz;

1943(26th of Tishrei, 5704): In Birkenau, 2,500 girls from Salonica, Greece, held in Block 25 were all gassed. They sang Hatikvah as they were marched to the death chambers.

1943: The Germans begin the liquidation of the corpse-burning squad at the labor camp in Janówska, Ukraine.

1943: SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons at the Reich Anatomical Institute at Strasbourg.

1944: Birthdate of Ronit Lentin, the Haifa born Associate Professor of Sociology at Dublin’s Trinity College whose works include Racism and anti-racism in Ireland and Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence http://www.worldcat.org/title/israel-and-the-daughters-of-the-shoah-reoccupying-the-territories-of-silence/oclc/44720589?tab=details

1944: The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers' occupation. During the 1920, Joel Teitelbaum had served as a rabbi in Carei. Teitelbaum would later be named Grand Rabbi and head of the Satmar.Liberation came too late for most of the Jews of Romania. Over 264,000 Jews perished in Nazi death camps during World War II. Most of the survivors fled postwar communism and emigrated to Israel or the United States. Only 14,000 Jews, most aged over 60, live in Romania today.

1945: Jews are attacked in Sosnowiec, Poland. Yes, the war and the Holocaust ended in May of 1945. But Polish anti-Semitism seems to have a life of its own.

1945: A Haifa military court sentenced 21 year old Joseph Morakh to five years in prison for possession of 23 hand grenades, 20 bombs and assorted other ammunition.

1945: Representative Andrew L. Somers, a Democrat from New York, challenged the British Ambassador to find out the “true facts” surrounding the sentencing of twenty “boys and girls” in Tel Aviv. Members of the group, who range between the ages of 15 to 20, will be sentenced tomorrow to a total of 118 ages on weapons possession and other charges despite the fact that, according to the Congressman, “twenty six prosecution witnesses had failed to establish the connection between the children and the arms.”

1945: Lee Krasner married Jackson Pollack. Krasner was Jewish – Pollack was not.

1946 Twenty-three former Nazi doctors are tried at Nuremberg on charges of conducting unethical experiments on camp inmates. The various experiments included the drinking of seawater, bone grafting, exposure to mustard gas, and other atrocities. This is the so-called "doctors' trial";

1947: The Irgun threatened to fight a “civil war” with Haganah following recent clashes between the two organizations.

1948: A new road to S’dom was opened during the Israeli War for Independence. In November a military contingent made up of new immigrants would move through the Negev and break the six month long siege of S’dom. Yes, this is the same place as mentioned in Genesis.

1953:”Salute to Israel” published today described plans to honor Professor Benjamin Mazar and President Harry S. Truman at a dinner to be held next month at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

1955(9th of Cheshvan, 5716): Sixty-four year old Edward “Eddie” Jacobson, the Man from Missouri who helped convince that other Man from Missouri, Harry Truman, to support the creation of the state of Israel, passed away in Kansas City, Missouri.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_09918.html

http://theholocaustmuseum.info/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=new1_flypage.tpl&product_id=978&category_id=47&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=265

1956: David O. Selznick” the scion of Jewish family from Pittsburgh contacted director John Huston at the Blue Haven Hotel in Tobago and enthusiastically welcomed him to the project – filming a re-make of Farewell to Arms with a script by Ben Hecht.

1956: In preparation for the Sinai Campaign, the Israeli government begins to mobilize its reserves and orders a battalion of paratroops to be ready to go into action within four days.

1959(23^rdof Tishrei, 5720): Simchat Torah

1965(29th of Tishrei, 5726): Fifty-five year old Eduard Einstein, second son of Albert Einstein passed away at the age of 55.

1968: Birthdate of American sports announcer Josh Lewin.

1973: A second cease fire went into effect marking the end of the Yom Kippur War.

1973:After the official end of the Yom Kippur War, General IsraelTal, serving as commander of the southern front, received an order from Chief of Staff General David Elazar and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to attack Egyptian forces. Tal refused to follow the order, insisting that it was an unethical order and requesting authorization for the requested attack from the prime minister and the Supreme Court. Such authorization never came. Tal won the argument, but his refusal to follow the illegal order as a practical matter eliminated the chances of his being nominated for the position of Chief of Staff to succeed General Elaza (As reported by Haaretz)

1974: An Arab summit at Rabat Morocco put an end to Jordanian involvement in the lands west of the Jordan River which it had seized in 1948 and held until 1967. The Arab governments agreed that the PLO, fresh from the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, was designated as the “sole representative’ of the Palestinian people. This ascendancy of extremism in the Arab world fueled Israeli support for the expansion of settlements on the West Bank and gave impetus to Right Wing politicians seeking to unseat the Labor Zionists.

1978: Israeli Cabinet approved "in principle," a draft compromise peace. This was a necessary step on the road to peace between Israel and Egypt.

1980: Barbra Streisand's "Guilty," album goes #1 for 3 weeks and her single "Woman In Love," goes #1 for 3 weeks.

1984: An off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” opened today at the Promenade Theatre.

1986(22nd of Tishrei, 5747): Shemini Atzeret

1992: After 245 performances Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women was performed for the last time at the Neil Simon Theatre.

1992: Latvia adopts its first constitution in the post-Soviet period. There are approximately 11,000 Jews living among 2.5 million Latvians. Jews have lived in Latvia since the 17^thcentury. There were approximately 90,000 Jews living in the Baltic republic at the outbreak of WW II. There were approximately 320 left on Latvian soil at the end of the war. The President of Latvia has publicly apologized for the role Latvians played in the decimation of the Jewish populace.

1995: In Washington, Prime Minister Rabin countered Arab slogans by declaring, “There are not ‘two Jerusalems.’ There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours and will be ours – forever.”

1996: The first community bar mitzvah is held in Beijing for Ari Lee, the son of community founders Elyse Silverberg and Michael Lee.

1998:The New York Times included reviews of two books by Jewish authors: Too Good To Be Forgotten: Changing America in the '60s and '70sby David Obst and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David Remnick.

2002(19th of Cheshvan, 5763): Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota along with his wife, daughter and five others, just 11 days before Election Day. The anniversary of Wellstone’s death should serve to remind us that by the end of the 20^th century Jewish political leaders were no longer confined to major metropolitan areas with significant Jewish populations. In Minnesota, the heart of the American heartland, there were actually Jewish senators who came from both the Republican and the Democratic Party. This achievement is all the more remarkable when one remembers that a United States Senator could use the word “Kike” in a speech on the Senate Floor in the 1940’s and get away with it.

2002:In an article entitled “Jews rank high among winners of Nobel, but why not Israelis?” published today, Shule Kopf examines reasons for Jewish over-representation among Nobel Laureates and the future of Jewish intellectualism.

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/18676/jews-rank-high-among-winners-of-nobel-but-why-not-israelis/

2003: Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general's office on charges of fraud.

2004: Former ALP minister Barry Cohen describes his belief that the Australian Labor Party is becoming anti-Semitic in article appearing in The Age. Barry Cohen was arts minister in the Hawke government. The article is quoted in attempt to give American Jews a sense of the Jewish community “down under.”

It's a sepia-toned family portrait taken in the late 1930s of Mendel and Mindel Kozerwoder and their children Itzek, Charna, Malka, Mania, Yidel, Moishe and baby Faigele. There's nothing unusual about it but it is very precious to me, for they are all members of my family who, with one exception, perished in the crematoriums of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Clasped in the hands of my great-uncle is a photograph of my grandparents, Moishe and Zelda Kozerwoder. Itzek, the only survivor, gave me the photograph after I returned from a visit to Poland, during which I went to the villages of Pajcczno and Dzialoszyn, from which my grandparents departed in the late 1890s. Their travels took them to England, South Africa (where my father was born) and finally to Australia, just after the outbreak of World War I. The photo is the only image I have of the many members of my family who were murdered by the Nazis. When I look at it, my emotions range from gut-wrenching pain to seething rage. It has ensured that I belong to that school of Jewish resolve whose motto is "never again”. There is nothing special about what happened to me and my family. Many Jewish families suffered the same fate. I became aware of the Holocaust in 1944 as the Allied armies swept across Europe and liberated the death camps. I was only nine years old but I can still recall the pain I felt as I watched the newsreels of the emaciated survivors and the mountains of corpses. oon afterwards I was sent to boarding school to prepare for my bar mitzvah. There was a noticeable shortage of synagogues in the country town of Griffith, NSW, where I was born and where my father was the local dentist.My introduction to anti-Semitism commenced on my first day at school. The school sergeant refereed three fights between myself and classmates who called me "a dirty f---ing Jew". I was lucky. Bloody noses and black eyes were nothing compared to what happened to those members of my family who did not have the prescience to depart Europe as my grandparents had done. t didn't, however, make it easier to ignore the taunts and the occasional vicious remark that came at the most unexpected moments and from the most unexpected quarters. Like most Jews in a predominantly Christian society, I developed a defense mechanism to cope. Humor was one weapon. Knowing the history and roots of anti-Semitism was another. So, too, was the pride in seeing the survivors of the Holocaust recreating a Jewish nation for the first time in 2000 years. he survivors of the camps, a million Jews expelled from Arab countries and idealists from all over the Diaspora overcame the combined Arab military forces to ensure that not only did Jews have a haven, but one that was free and democratic. Israel has remained that way, in stark contrast to its Arab neighbors. ustralia is probably the least anti-Semitic country in the world, but what happened to my family made a deep impression on me. I became obsessive about discrimination; be it fighting for civil rights in the US, or against apartheid or the appalling treatment of our indigenous people was, however, an armchair critic mouthing off endlessly about what the government should do. Then a friend hit a sensitive nerve. "What are you doing about it?" he asked. It wasn't difficult to decide. I knew the enemy was on the political right: Nazis, fascists, conservatives, whether from the extreme right that led to the Holocaust or the social exclusion practiced by the genteel middle class. In 1964 I joined the ALP. Not that the Labor Party of the early 1960s was a beacon of light, for there were many ALP members still steeped in the White Australia philosophy and indifferent to the suffering of Aborigines. But those who spoke up about such injustices were almost all from the ALP. By the time I arrived in Canberra in 1969 as the MP for Robertson I felt at home in the company of those led by Gough Whitlam, who forced the Labor Party to change. However, I can still recall the wry amusement my opposition to apartheid caused colleagues. I was accused of being obsessive on the question of racism and to that charge I plead guilty. I became deeply involved in the fight for Aboriginal rights and to this day one of the proudest moments of my life was to be one of a small group of "yesterday's heroes, looking frail and aged", who were brought on stage at the Reconciliation Conference in Melbourne in 1997 to be honored for our work in the 1967 referendum. I have often been asked if my being Jewish was ever an issue during my 20 years in Federal Parliament. Not to the best of my knowledge. I cannot recall a single anti-Semitic remark from either side of the House. That did not mean that everyone agreed with my views on Israel. Nor did I expect them to. However, while my views remain the same, the Labor Party's these days are very different. The Labor Party has always had Palestinian supporters but they used to have little influence on the party's policy. They were more than counter-balanced by the influence of then ACTU president Bob Hawke. In the immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur War and before my first visit to Israel I attended a meeting he addressed in Sydney. I have not heard a more passionate, nor better informed, defense of Israel or more scathing indictment of its opponents. Convinced that MPs could understand Israel's problems better if they went there, I organized a series of delegations. By the time I retired in 1990 more than half the ALP caucus had visited Israel. But gradually, Labor's Left and more extremist elements, such as the Greens and Democrats, became increasingly shrill in their denunciation of Israel. I found out what Israel was up against when representing Australia at Inter-Parliamentary Union conferences from 1973 until 1981. Created to foster peace and democracy, the union was dominated by communist dictatorships, Third World "democracies" and the 22 Arab countries. Every IPU conference devoted a major part of its sessions to denouncing Israel. It was a mirror image of the UN, whose obsession with Israel was aptly illustrated by Israeli ambassador Abba Eban when he said: "If a resolution was put before the UN that the earth was flat and that Israel caused it, 145 would vote for it, five against with 45 abstentions." That trend has infected the ALP. The handful of pro-Palestinian supporters has grown steadily as the party has become dominated by the education mafia; former public servants and party union apparatchiks. Plenty will say: "Why shouldn't the Labor Party support the Palestinians?" No reason, providing the case they put is not based on the lies spouted by the Palestinian propaganda machine. Nowhere is Israel subjected to more criticism than in Israel. Demonstrations in excess of 100,000 are regularly held in Rabin Square. Supporters of the Peace Now movement have protested in support of Palestinians. In contrast, when Jews have been massacred by terrorists there have been wild celebrations in the Arab streets. How can any social democrat ignore such barbarism? There are Labor MPs who are vigorous supporters of Israel but their numbers are diminishing and they are being drowned out by the more vociferous members of Labor's hard Left. When Australian Jews respond to the grotesque exaggeration about Israel, we are accused of being part of the "Jewish lobby". Israel's opponents in Australia now include those who support the Palestinians not for ideological reasons but because of the increased number of Arab voters in their electorates. This trend reached a crescendo in the aftermath of September 11. For me September 11 was the clearest demarcation ever between good and evil. Yet many Australians could not contain their glee that at last "the Yanks had got their just deserts". I have never been able to fathom the vicious anti-Americanism that permeates so much of Western society. Despite all their faults, Americans have been the one constant bastion against totalitarianism of the right and left. Does anyone doubt that fascism and communism would have been defeated without the US? From the left's point of view, the triumph over communism has been America's greatest crime. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the revelation that matters were far worse than even the Americans had claimed, forced the left to face up to the fact that for decades their defense of tyrants such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro et al was inexcusable. There were no apologies, however. Being on the left means never having to say you're sorry or admit you're wrong. This goes a long way to explaining their attacks on George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, while ignoring the monstrous crimes of the Assads, Saddams, Gaddafis and other Arab despots. The war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have given the left a new lease on life. But this time it has a new twist, a distinctly anti-Semitic one. It surfaced immediately after September 11 and was summed up in comments by Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey, who suggested that the cause of September 11 was America's Middle East policies and their failure to rein in the Israelis. This has been repeated ad nauseam by one left/liberal commentator after another. Israeli scientist Haim Harari nailed this nonsense in a speech earlier this year: "The millions who died in the Iraq-Iran war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Muslim regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam did not invade Kuwait, endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel . . . The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. I could go on and on." Anyone who believes that "reining in the Israelis" will bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East should change their medication. The ranting and raving, common among the extreme right, has been taken up with gusto by the left. When it started to infect the social democratic wing of the Labor Party I became extremely worried. There will be those in the ALP who will say "our policies support Israel's right to exist, so what are you complaining about?" That's not good enough. Not for me. I'm sick of the calumny heaped on Israel - most of which is a pack of lies. I'm sick of Labor leaders making all the right noises to Jewish audiences while an increasing number of backbenchers launch diatribes at Israel. When the likes of Labor MP Tanya Plibersek rise in the House of Representatives and call Ariel Sharon "a war criminal" and Israel a "rogue state", or Opposition whip Janice Crosio makes the absurd claim that Israeli forces had destroyed Bethlehem, Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, I want to hear more than stony silence from those in the Labor Party who say they support Israel. Some do. Most don't. How long is it since any Labor leader gave the sort of passionate and accurate defence of Israel we used to hear from Hawke or Kim Beazley? I don't want even-handedness when it ought to be obvious to all but the blind that there is no moral equivalence between a country that seeks to defend its citizens from thousands of terrorist attacks, and the terrorists themselves. I want to hear Labor MPs stand up and be counted. I want to see an end to well-known Labor identities marching behind banners equating Israel with Nazism. Silence on these issues isn't good enough for me. If people want to criticize Israel, fine - plenty of Israelis do. But let it be reasoned criticism, and if they want even-handedness let them also berate the Arab world for its denial of basic human rights for any of its citizens. Let's hear the Labor feminists take the Arab nations to task for their abominable treatment of women. Let's hear those Labor supporters, who are so loud in their denunciation of homophobia, demand an end to the barbaric treatment of gays. Let's also hear civil rights activists bemoan the lack of basic freedoms available to most of the 300 million Arabs in the 22 Arab countries. There will be some who will argue that I am exaggerating; that the evidence is sparse; that this typical Jewish paranoia. Not at all. It came from the horses' mouths, and the head horses at that. Before the Iraq war one of the most senior NSW right-wing MPs told me: "I understand and support Israel's position, but in my group, I'm the only one."Soon after I told a Labor legend: "Anti-Semitism is now rampant in the Labor Party." I expected a vigorous denial. His response confirmed my worst fear: "I know," he said. For better or worse my character and life were shaped by the anti-Semitism I experienced as a boy and a young man. I was proud to belong to a party that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer. The Australian Labor Party can choose any path it likes. So can I.

2005 (22 Tishrei, 5766): Shemini Atzeret.

2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish interest including "Team of Rivals," Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “look at Lincoln through his relationships with his former political rivals turned cabinet members…”

2006: Andy “Bachman, a graduate of University of Wisconsin–Madison with a 1996 rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College, became Beth Elohim's first new senior rabbi in 25 years” today.

2006 (3 Cheshvan 5767): Fifty-four year old Robert Rosenberg, author, poet, Internet pioneer and journalist, died of cancer in Tel Aviv.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/journalist-robert-rosenberg-dies-at-54-1.203476

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2006/10/25/robert-rosenberg-israeli-internet-pioneer-journalist-and-social-activist-dies-at-54/

2006: One day before her 70^th birthday Deborah Poritz, the first female Chief Just of the New Jersey Supreme Court, resigned her postion.

2007: In New York the Center for Jewish History sponsors a showing of a Russian language film directed by Paul Loungin entitled “Roots”

2007: New York’s Erez Safar celebrates the launch of his new website called Shemspeed (www.shemspeed.com) with parties at Hamaabada in Jerusalem and the Knitting Factory in New York.

2007: French President Nicolas Sarkozy honored Avner Shalev director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial with a Legion of Honor award.

2007(13^thof Cheshvan, 5768): Ninety-six year cellist Harvey Shapiro passed away today.

http://www.juilliard.edu/journal/remembering-master-cellist-and-teacher-harvey-shapiro

http://www.jameskreger.com/article5.htm

2008: The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company presents a production “Chaim’s Love Song” by Martin Chernoff at the Hillcrest Center in Saint Paul, MN.

2009:In Cedar Rapids, Iowa the Hadassah Donor Dinner features Temple Judah’s own Murray Wolfe, an award-winning playwright, who will read from his just completed one-man autobiographical play, “My Name is Moses Volvovic.” Murray’s many interests and accomplishments mark him as the epitome of the term Renaissance Man. Of course Murray is fortunate to enjoy the support of his wife Charlene a culinary virtuoso and an Ashish Chayil in the truest sense of the term.

2009: A revival of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” opened at the Nederlander Theatre.

2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb and the recently released paperback edition of The Journey by H. G. Adler; translated by Peter Filkins

2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude

2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Deborah Bodin Cohen reads from her new children's picture book, "Nachshon, Who Was Afraid to Swim: A Passover Story" (illustrated by Jago),

2010:The Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation is scheduled to hosts its Hall of Fame Induction Dinner Gala in Southfield, Michigan, where they will honor the MJSF Hall of Fame Class of 2010, including George Cantor (of blessed memory), Richard "Hap" Foreman, Richard Goldberg, and Larry H. Sherman. The honors will continue with the Jewish News Athletes of the Year and Bill Hertz Scholarship winners, Alvin Foon Humanitarian and Book of Life awards.

2010: Capitalism and the Jews by Jerry Z. Muller is scheduled to be the featured volume at tonight’s sessions of The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2010: The New York Times featured a review of Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart who said, “These days, you can call me a Russian writer, American writer, Jewish writer, lefty writer. I don’t care. Anything is good, as long as it’s part of the big soup of literature.”

2010:Ehud Netzer “an Israeli architect, educator and archaeologist,” who was leaning against a railing at the dig at Herodium was seriously injured when the railing collapsed.

2010:Thirty-nine year old Joshua Frydenberg, a graduate of Bialik College in Melbourne who is Australia’s first Jewish lawmaker for the federal Liberal Party paid homage in his maiden speech to all of his family members who perished during the Holocaust and one who survived – his great-aunt Mary Frydenberg.

(As reported by JTA)

2010: A report in the French daily Le Figaro late today revealed new information on the military wing of Hezbollah’s structural make-up, with details on the guerrilla group's 10,000 operatives and arsenal of some 40,000 rockets. The report also focused on Syria's role in Hezbollah operations, in both manufacture and transportation of rockets.

2011: Theo Epstein was introduced today as the head of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs. Under Epstein’s leadership, the Boston Red Sox finally won a World Series for the first time since 1918. The Cubs hope that the Jewish baseball executive will end their draught which dates back to 1908. This is a miracle that even Moses might not be able to pull off.

2011: "The Intimate Grammar, "a cinematic adaptation of David Grossman's book of the same name, is scheduled to be shown at The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, D.C.

2011: Ben-Gurion: A Political Life by Shimon Peres with David Landau is scheduled to go on sale in the United States.

2011: A day-long symposium ,Jews in Britain: Medieval to Modern is scheduled to take place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.

2011: The friends, family and fans of Sir Martin Gilbert celebrate the 75^thbirthday of this remarkable man. His career is a tribute to his drive, intellect and artistic skills. The grandson of Eastern European immigrants, he became the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill. He has found time to write over 80 volumes that are rock solid history written with the flair of a novelist while teaching and serving the public as a member of the Commission of Inquiry on the Iraq War. At the same time, he has not comprised his personal values describing himself “as a proud practicing Jew and a Zionist.”

2011:Today, Israeli police forces raided three buildings in Jerusalem allegedly being used by Palestinian militants for illegal activities.

2011:Today, Turkey finally accepted Israel's earthquake aid, two days after a devastating temblor hit eastern Turkey, and following a number of rebuffed Israeli government offers of assistance.

2012: The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall. This “one-night performance” will be under the baton of Zubin Mehta and will be followed by a “black –tie benefit supper at The Plaza.” (The IPO has come a long way since Leonard Bernstein conducted them in Tel Aviv as the artillery boomed during the War for Independence in 1948

2012: Over 100,000 worshippers are expected visit Rachel’ Tomb to mark the anniversary of her death. (The actual anniversary falls on Shabbat this year so the observance has been move to Thursday to avoid desecrating the Sabbath)

2012:Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a lecture Dr. Jack Minker, “Saving Soviet Scientists during which he will discuss his new book , will discuss his new book, Scientific Freedom and Human Rights: Scientists of Conscience during the Cold War.

2012: As we celebrate the 76^th birthday of Sir Martin Gilbert, his family, friends and multitude of admirers pray for his a refuah shlemah while standing in awe of the support being given to him by his loving wife during these trying times

2012: Despite a Gazan mortar shell exploding in an open field near the Eshkol Regional Council Area this morning, a tense quiet prevailed in the South as an informal cease-fire brokered by Egypt appeared to be holding.

2012: An earthquake and tsunami could cost Israel NIS 100 billion to NIS 150b., Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter said today. Speaking at a meeting of economic officials convened as part of a five-day earthquake preparedness drill, Dichter said he was referring to a possible scenario in which thousands of Israeli would be killed.

2012: The NBA announced today that David Stern will be retiring as league commissioner in 2013. Adam Silver will be replacing him in the top job.

2012:“The Tragedy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi” published today.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/oct/25/tragedy-dietrich-bonhoeffer-and-hans-von-dohnanyi/

2012:Britain favoured execution over Nuremberg trials for Nazi leaders

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/26/britain-execution-nuremberg-nazi-leaders

2012: Nicolas Rapold reviewed “Orchestra of Exiles” which “retraces the world-renowned violinist Bronislaw Huberman’s heroic feat of organizing an orchestra far from the genocidal scourge of the Nazis”

2013: Guest artists Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor are scheduled to perform at Rutgers University

2013: At Rutgers University, Dr. Jeff Friedman is scheduled to facilitate a discussion “on reconstructing historical dance works with differently gendered casting.”

2013: The Edin-Tamar is scheduled to host “Excellence-The Future Generation” which will also be broadcast on Kol Israel.

2013: The Jewish National Fund Conference is scheduled to begin in Denver, CO.

2013:A supposed makeshift grenade was thrown at an Israeli bus transporting students to schools this morning

2013: The Republican Jewish Coalition called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) to advance a new sanctions bill against Iran through the Senate toward final approval. The coalition could not appeal to any Republican Jewish senators since there are none. (The House has one Jewish Republican member)

2013(21^stof Cheshvan, 5774): Eighty-three year old Viennese native Paul Reichmann, the Canadian real estate mogul who made and lost a fortune passed away today. (As reported by Jonathan Kandell)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/business/paul-reichmann-who-helped-develop-the-world-financial-center-dies-at-83.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1414112755-JDYzC7WiAp4yB3iVGqei1Q

2014: In Fairfax, VA, Major General Jeff Jacobs is scheduled to be the speaker at Congregation Olam Tikvah’s fifth annual Military Shabbat.

2014: In conjunction with the Chief Rabbi’s Shabbat UK, the Central Synagogue in London is scheduled to host a special Shabbat service followed by “Just One Shabbos Communal Lunch”

http://www.shabbatuk.org/

2014: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Fall Comedy,” an “evening of comedic storytelling with Annabelle Gurwitch, a Jewish mother, a passionate environmentalist and a reluctant atheist.”

2014: “Zero Motivation,”a “comedic portrait of everyday life for a unit of young, female Israeli Soldiers” is scheduled to be shown at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival.

2014: Jerusalem’s Japanese Cultural Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.

2014: The Coe College Concert Band & Jazz Band under the direction of William S. Carson is scheduled to perform tonight in Cedar Rapids.

2014: Regardless of your interest, celebrate the birthday of Sir Martin Gilbert’s birthday by reading any one of his marvelous books including Churchill and the Jews, In Ishmael’s House and the classic Israel: A History

2014(1^stof Cheshvan, 5775): Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan – Noah

http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

OCTOBER 26

1235: King Andrew II of Hungary passed away. During the reign of King Andrew II (1205–1235) there were Jewish Chamberlains and mint-, salt-, and tax-officials. The nobles of the country, however, induced the king, in his Golden Bull (1222), to deprive the Jews of these high offices. When Andrew needed money in 1226, he farmed the royal revenues to Jews, which gave ground for much complaint. The pope (Pope Honorius III) thereupon excommunicated him, until, in 1233, he promised the papal ambassadors on oath that he would enforce the decrees of the Golden Bull directed against the Jews and the Saracens (by this time, the papacy had changed, and the Pope was now Pope Gregory IX; would cause both peoples to be distinguished from Christians by means of badges; and would forbid both Jews and Saracens to buy or to keep Christian slaves.

1407: Mobs attacked the Jews in Cracow, Poland. The so-called Cracow Accusations was one of the first libels in Poland. The Jews tried to defend themselves and were forced to take refuge in the Church of St. Anne which was surrounded and then set afire. Any children left alive were forcibly baptized.

1496: An edict expelling the Jews was signed in Naples.

1631: Birthdate of Cardinal Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch who advised the King to repopulate Hungary with Catholic Jews from Germany and who “held that the Jews could not be exterminated at once but must be weeded out by degrees as bad coin is gradually withdrawn from circulation. To that end he called for the enforcement of the decree by the Diet of Pressburg, “imposing double taxation on the Jews” and deny them right to “engage in agriculture” or “to own any real estate.”

1689: General Piccolomini of Austria burned down Skopje in Macadeonia to prevent the spread of cholera. Skopje was part of the Ottoman Empire and it was one of the towns where Jews fleeing from Spain after 1492 found refuge and were able to prosper in the fields of trade, finance and medicine. In the 21^st century, most of the handful of Macedonian Jews lives in Skopje, the country’s capital.

1819: On the Isle of Jutland, Aaron Goldschmidt and Leah Rothschild gave birth to the “distinguished Danish poet, novelist and journalist,” Professor Meyer Aaron Goldschmidt.

1825:The Erie Canal opens with passage from Albany, New York to Lake Erie. Eventually the canal would provide a water access to Buffalo, thus opening a water route that would stretch from the Atlantic Oceans to the all of the lands bordering on the Great Lakes. This would create immeasurable commercial opportunities for all Americans, including the Jews. It would lead to the creation of thriving Jewish communities in places like Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. Mordachai M. Noah, one of the most prominient Jews of the early 19^th century was originally an opponent of the canal but changed his mind when he saw that successful development of the land along the Canal would help make his dream of Ararat, A City of Refuge for Jews, a reality.

1826: John and Julia Solomons gave birth to Adolphus Simeon Solomons, the New York native who became “an influential Washingtonian with strong White House and Congressional connections.”

1841: Birthdate of Viennese born German dramatist Jacob Bettelheim

1844: Birthdate of American playwright and producer Edward “Ned” Harrigan the author and producer of “Mordecai Lyons” an 1882 drama which unlike some “Jew plays” is “serious and valuable” when it comes to portraying its Jewish characters.

1853: Dr. Raphall, a New York Rabbi, delivered an address about Russia at a meeting of the Young Men’s Literary Association.

1853: Following Dr. Raphall’s address to the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association, Mr. Mosely Lyon delivered an address describing the purpose of the organizations.

1854:Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt discovered Asteroid 32 Pomona.

1858: Albert Goldsmid was promoted to the rank of major-general in the British Army. Born in 1794, the son of Benjamin Goldsmid, he entered the army in 1811 which gave him the opportunity to fight the French in Spain to serve at the Battle of Waterloo.

1858: The Personal Column published today reported that a "A Moldavian Jew, Israel Benjamin, is preparing for a journey through Afghanistan and China. Since 1845, he has gone over the Eastern countries of Europe, as well as Egypt, Palestine, Persia, the Regencies of Tripoli and Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. The Geographical Society of Berlin have charged him to solve several geographical and ethnographical questions. He has just published Eight Years Travel in Asia and Africa by Israel Benjamin

1859: Bernhard Bettmann who had “established a men’s clothing business in 1856 at Cincinnati, Ohio married Tillie Wald of New York City with whom he had seven children.

1861: During the American Civil War, the 9^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered into service as part of the United States under the command of Colonel Frederick C. Salomon. When Salomon was appointed Brigadier General, he brother Charles became the Colonel commanding the regiment. This may have made the 9^th Wisconsin the only unit on either side of the conflict to be commanded successively by two brothers who were Jewish.

1864: Myer Isaacs sent a strongly worded letter to President Lincoln warning him against a deal that he allegedly made with a group of New York Jews who, presenting themselves as leaders of the community, had promised to deliver the “Jewish vote” for him. This letter is one of the germinal documents of early Jewish participation in the American political process.

Your Excellency,

As a firm and earnest Union man, I deem it my duty to add a word ... with reference to a recent "visitation" on the part of persons claiming to represent the Israelites of New York or the United States and pledging the "Jewish vote" to your support, and, I am informed, succeeding in a deception that resulted to their pecuniary profit.

Having peculiar facilities for obtaining information as to the Israelites of the United States, from my eight years' connection with the Jewish paper of this city and my position as Secretary of their central organization, the "Board of Delegates" . . . I feel authorized to caution you, Sir, against any such representations as those understood to have been made.

There are a large number of faithful Unionists among our prominent coreligionists — but there are also supporters of the opposition, and indeed the Israelites are not as a body, distinctly Union or democratic in their politics ... the Jews as a body have no politics.

Therefore, Sir, I am pained and surprised to find that you had been imposed upon by irresponsible men ... such acts are discountenanced and condemned most cordially by the community of American Israelites ...

There is no "Jewish vote"— if there were, it could not be bought. As a body of intelligent men, we are advocates of the cherished principles of liberty and justice, and must inevitably support and advocate those who are the exponents of such a platform — "liberty and union, now and forever."

Pardon the liberty I take in thus trespassing on your attention, but I pray that you will attribute it to the sole motive I have, that of undeceiving you and assuring you that there is no necessity for "pledging" the Jewish vote which does not exist — but at the same time that the majority of Israelite citizens must concur in the attachment for the Union and a determination to leave no means untried to maintain its honor and integrity.

Yours most Respectfully,
Myer S. Isaacs

1865: In Philadelphia, PA, “mining magnate Meyer Guggenheim” and his wife Barbara Meyers gave birth to their fifth son Benjamin Guggenheim whose marriage to Florette Seligman would unite to of America’s wealthiest Jewish families and whose death at age 46 aboard the RMS Titanic was an unexpected tragedy.

1872: It was reported today that the Jews of Rumania want to immigrate to the United States en masse. They have written to the Interior Department to see if they can acquire a large enough section of public lands to meet the needs of a large colony. Current laws preclude the granting of their request.

1881(3rd of Cheshvan, 5642) Eighty-six year old Austrian Talmudist Aaron Kornfeld passed away today at his home town of Goltsch-Jenikau Bohemia.

1881: The Gunfight at the OK Corral takes placed in Tombstone, Arizona. The most famous participant in the fight is Marshall Wyatt Earp. Earp was not Jewish but his last wife Josie was. When Earp died she had his remains buried in the Marcus family plot in a Jewish cemetery in Coloma, California. When Josie died, she was buried next to him. The man with the star lies under the star – of David that is.

1882: “Mordecai Lyons” was performed tonight before a very large crowd at Theatre Comique in New York City.

1883: The Paris Figaro contained a detailed account of the duel between Hungarian attorney Dr. Jules Rosenberg and Count Battyany over the affections that the former had displayed for Mlle. Hona de Schossberger, the daughter of a Jewish family whose patriarch sought to marry his daughter off to a Hungarian nobeleman.

1882: The Troy (NY) Times reported that Harris Udovitch , who has been jailed on charges of assaulting Mrs. Louis Cohen claims that she was injured inadvertently during a fracas between him and Mr. Cohen over the latter’s refusal “to sell his cred with…for $150.”

1883: It was reported today that when Sir Moses Montefiore celebrated his 99^th birthday two days ago he was hailed as “the most celebrated Hebrew now living England” and the most celebrated Hebrew of our generation with the exception of Benjamin Disraeli. “He is more than an ornament to the Jewish race; he is an ornament to mankind…”

1884: The Montefiore Centenary as described in book by Haim Gudella of the same name published in 1885 began today.

1884: It was reported today that “Sir Moses Montefiore received hundreds of telegrams congratulating him” on reaching his 100^th birthday “from all parts of world” including a large number from the United States.

1884: In a second day of celebration, Baltimore’s Hanover Street Synagogue was the scene of special ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore.

1884: “An Anglican Bishop For Jerusalem” published today described the failure of efforts to convert “Jews and Turks” living in Palestine. The Church Missionary Society has spent more than £120,000 pounds in the last 33 years and “as can be proven from their own papers” has “never made a convert…”

1884: “The Czar’s Views of Justice” published today describes efforts to ameliorate the sentences imposed on those who took part in the anti-Jewish riots at Novogrod. In what appears to be the first decision of its kind, the Czar “has at least to some extent taken sides with the oppressed Jew” by refusing to show any leniency and expressing his determination “to take measures to prevent these bloody excesses.”

1884: It was reported today that “the chief rabbi at Naples” has been “rebuked by ultra-orthodox Jews for shortening the fast on the recent Day of Atonement” as a measure to avoid the cholera outbreak plaguing the city. The precaution must have been “a good one since not a single Jews has yet died of the disease. [Editor’s note – Fourteen thousand peopled died from Cholera in Naples in 1884.]

1884: It was reported today no Jews have died of cholera at Toulon, but five Jews died of the disease at Marseilles.

1884: It was reported today that “the reports of Sarah Bernhardt’s illness have been greatly exaggerated” and she will be able to perform in Sardou’s new play, “Theodroa” which is opening at the Porte Saint Martin Theatre.

1884: “Pereira, the Teacher of Deaf Mutes” published today traced the career of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira, the Portuguese born Sephardic French Jew whose first student was his sister who was born with the ability to speak or hear

1884: “Every pew was filled to over-flowing” and the galleries were completely filled as Temple Emanu-El held services to mark the one hundredth birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore.

1884: “Every seat…was occupied at Shearith Israel, the oldest synagogue in New York, when services honoring Sir Moses Montefiore began at three o’clock this afternoon.

1884: According to the dedicatory plaque, on this day “The Israelites of the City of New York” dedicated the Home for Chronic Invalids in honor of the centennial celebration of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore

1885: The Patrick Divver Hebrew Association of the Sixth Ward held its annual ball today. (Divver who was Irish Catholic, was a Tammany Hall politician who understood the value of the Jewish vote)

1886: President M. Warley Platzek is scheduled to present an outline of the accomplishments of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association when it meets this evening.

1886: Samuel S. Cox, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire delivered an address to the Young Men’s Hebrew Association “on the condition of the Hebrews in the Orient.

1889: It was reported today that August Belmont has contributed $50,000 to New York City’s World’s Fair Fund and that Kuhn, Loeb & Co has contributed $60,000 to the same fund.

1889: It was reported today that that the Order of B’nai B’rith will take part in the upcoming Educational Fair being sponsored by the Jews of New York City.

1889: It was reported today that a dinner is going to be held in honor of Sir Julian Goldsmid during his visit to New York City.

1890: Rabbi Kaufman Kohler will conduct funeral services this morning for Joseph Rosenthal the New York merchant born in Bavaria in 1816 who came to the United States in 1845 where he has operated the dry goods firm of J. Rosenthal & Co. for the last forty-five years.

1890: “In the New York Clubs” published today provides a snapshot of the exclusive private clubs including the five whose members are primarily Jewish -- Harmonie, Progress, Fidelio, Metropolitan and Fredundschatt.

1890: In Philadelphia, PA, eighteen year old Roman Catholic Annie Eichert married Morris Stein who was Jewish – a union that Father Henry Dressman would try and put an end to when he told the family that she had to leave her husband because of his religion.

1890: It was reported today that Oscar Hammerstein’s “bold undertaking to establish grand opera in English permanently in New York City seems destined to succeed.”

1891: “An Indictment Russia” published today described events in the career of Jewish businessman Samuel Polyakov as well as their mistreatment at the hands of “the infamous” Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev.

1892: The Ladies’ Uptown Aid Society gave $50 to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum “in commemoration of the Columbian anniversary” and presented “a gold medal to Colonel Martin Cohen the leader of the Military Bond.”

1892: “No Belgian Jews Wanted” published today described the demand by the Russian Government that Belgian passports to be used by those wishing to visit Russia show their religion which would mean that Belgian Jews will either be denied admission or “treated to many indignities if they visit Russia.” The Belgians have not responded since failure to comply will close Russia to Belgian businessmen.

1894: Plans were announced for the upcoming meeting of the United Hebrew Charities in New York City.

1894: According to a list published today, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum received $79,000 from the Board of Estimates and Apportionment in 1894 and is asking for $80,000 in 1895 while the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York Orphan Asylum received $82,000 in 1894 and is asking for $85,000 in 1895.

1894: In Newark, NJ, “a double force” of policemen under the command of Captain Bergen are standing guard at the non-union hat factory of J.L. Kreidel which has been surrounded by “a mob” of angry Polish and Russian Jewish “hatters” who have been fired by Kreidel’s nephew.

1894: Count George Leo of Caprivi who defended the Jews against the attacks of the

Anti-Semites led by, among other Herr Zimmerman, completed his service as Chancellor of Germany.

1898:A Zionist Delegation led by Theodor Herzl arrives in the port of Yaffo (Jaffa). They visit Mikveh Israel and Rishon LeZion.

1898: After visiting Nes Zionah, Rehovot and Herzl returns to Yaffo where he met with Reverend William Hechler. William Hechler formed a committee of Christian Zionists to help move Russian Jewish refugees to Palestine after a series of pogroms. In 1884, Hechler wrote a pamphlet called “The Restoration of Jews to Palestine According to the Prophets.” A few years later, he befriended Theodor Herzl after reading Herzl’s book The Jewish State and joined Herzl to drum up support for Zionism. Hechler even arranged a meeting between Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II to discuss Herzl’s proposal to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. The two men remained close friends up until Herzl’s death in 1904.

1902: Feminist, Suffragette and Social Activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton passed away. She helped to create The Women’s Bible “a collection of essays by a committee of women intellectuals on passages of the Judeo-Christian scriptures that discuss women.” “Stanton and her contributors highlighted and heightened the role of the women” putting “particular emphasis on Miriam’s role in the quest for Jewish freedom, for instance” and “the important work of Deborah the judge.” At the same time she wrote, “We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch.... I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.”

1905; Norway becomes independent from Sweden. According to the census conducted at the turn of the century, there were 642 Jewish residents in a population totaling just over 2 million. In 1814, when control of Norway shifted from Denmark to Sweden, the Norwegians adopted “The Constitution of 1814 that contained “The Jew Clause” in the Constitution of 1814 which stated "No person of the Jewish creed may enter Norway, far less settle down there". The clause was repealed in 1851 which opened a trickle of Jewish immigration to Norwaywhile it was still part of Sweden. In one of those quirks of history, the man most responsible for the repeal of the Jew Clause was the son of the man who led the fight to have included in the Constitution.

1906: Antoine Louis Targe who helped to clear Captain Dreyfus began serving as the Private Secretary to fellow Dreyfusard George Picquart.

1909:The new ballroom of the Hotel Astor is the scene of an event celebrating the 25^thanniversary of the founding of the Montefiore Home Gifts aggregating $101,500 were announced tonight as the birthday presents to the Montifore Home where . B.J. Greenhut, announces that gifts totaling $101,500 have been donated to support the institution. Greenhut, Chairman of the committee sponsoring the event, said that although he had not been authorized to make public the amount of the gifts and the names of the generous friends, he felt the occasion demanded it. The audience broke into applause when it was announced that J.H. Schiff had donated $50,000 to this worthy cause.

1910(23^rdof Tishrei, 5671): Simchat Torah

1911: Birthdate of NFL Coach, Sid Gillman.

1911:By an order of the Governor all Jews in the RussianProvinceof Ekaterinoslaff are subject to expulsion with some minor exceptions.

1912: As a result of the First Balkan War, Thessalonikibecomes part of modern day Greece. The leaders of the Jewish Community are immediately received by King George I and the Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos who promised to respect the rights of the community and offered full equality in the eyes of the Law.

1912: Birthdate of movie director Don Siegel who directed Clint Eastwood in several of his finest films.

1913: During the First Balkan War, Bulgarian forces begin bombarding the city of Adrianople in what will become the Siege of Adrianople which would last until March of 1914. Three thousand of the city’s Jews sought shelter in the local schools while another 9,200 were left with no place to go.

1913: Louis Marshall denied tonight that he would have any involvement Governor William Sulzer’s planned appeal of the decision of the High Court of Impeachment. Marshall, a prominent lawyer and leader of the Jewish Community, had reluctantly agree to represent the embattled governor.

1913: Rabbi Rudolph I. Coffee expressed his displeasure over the support that many New York rabbis had given to Governor Sulzer during his recent impeachment trial. Coffee felt that there involvement in this partisan political issue compromised their roles as spiritual leaders of the Jewish people especially when one considers the sleazy nature of the Tammany and anti-Tammany forces. Coffee, the rabbi at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, has been visiting the city during the trial. He ended his comments by saying that “these Rabbis have hurt their religion and they certainly do not each nor practice its ideals.”

1913: Temple Sinai (First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland) broke ground at 28^th and Webster on its new building which was completed in 1914.

1914: “Brandeis Speaks on Zionism” published today described a speech by the Boston lawyer who said that Zionist movement “must be considered by the Jews of American not only from the point of view of their own platform but from that of the needs born of the war” which meant that Palestine could a welcome refuge to the Jews of Eastern Europe “relieving in part the inevitable heavy immigration that otherwise must flow from the devastated battlefield countries to the United States.”

1917: In England, The Times“published a leading article attacking” the government for its repeated delays in issuing a statement support the Zionist cause. Ironically, the delay was caused, in part, by the concern among some English Jews that support for Zionism would call into question their loyalty to the Crown.

1918: During World War I, William Sawelson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service at Grand-Pre, France. Sawelson served as a Sergeant, United States Army, Company M, 312th Infantry, 78th Division. His citation reads: “Hearing a wounded man in a shell hole some distance away calling for water, Sgt. Sawelson, upon his own initiative, left shelter and crawled through heavy machinegun fire to where the man lay, giving him what water he had in his canteen. He then went back to his own shell hole, obtained more water, and was returning to the wounded man when he was killed by a machinegun bullet.”

1922: Judge Bernard A. Rosenblatt, the accredited representative for Tel Aviv in the United states announced that “Harvey Fisk & Sons, Inc have been appointed commercial and fiscal agency in the United States for Tel Aviv, the modern section of Jaffa which is the principal port of Palestine.” The announcement is important to commercial interests in the United States since Jaffa has become the principal port in Asia Minor following the destruction of Smyrna.

1926:In Paris, France, the trial of Sholom Schwartzbard comes to an end.A jury of 12 petit-bourgeois Parisians acquitted the Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant and anarchist of the charge of murder for shooting to death former Ukrainian president Symon Petliura.

1930(4th of Cheshvan, 5691): Ninety year old Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine the Russian born bacteriologist who developed “vaccines used against cholera and bubonic plague” and who not only refused to convert to advance his career but was active in Jewish affairs, passed away today.

http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000248/530787p366.pdf

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/odessa/LIF_SCI_Haffkine.asp

http://haffkineinstitute.org/

1931: In Manhattan, Romanian Jewish immigrants gave birth to their second child Larry Lieber, the “American comic book artist and writer” who was nine years younger than his brother “Stanley Martin Lieber, later best known as Marvel Comics editor and impresario Stan Lee.”

1932:The Canada Dry Program, starring Jack Benny is broadcast for the last time on the NBC Blue Network

1936: Birthdate of Deborah Tobias Portiz, the Brooklyn native who was the first woman to serve as the Attorney General of New Jersey and the first Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

1938: “The Gestapo was ordered to arrest and deport all Polish Jews living in Germany immediately resulting in the arrest of 12,000 Polish Jews who were “stripped of their property and herded aboard trains headed for Poland.”

1939: The Nazis prohibited Sh'chita in Polandsupposedly on humanitarian grounds.

1939: The Nazis abolished its military government in Poland. It is replaced by the Military Generalgouvernment under the command of Hans Frank. In his first speech he announced that “there will be no room for . . . Jewish exploiters in a territory under German sovereignty."

1939: The Labor Department of the Generalgouvernement of Occupied Poland issues the Arbeitspflicht (Work obligation) decree, which makes slave labor mandatory for all Polish men and women over the age of 14 and under age 60.

1939: Following a plan devised by Adolf Eichmann, the Nazis deport and "resettle" some 78,000 Jews to a "reservation" located in the Lublin-Nisko region of southeast Poland in a three and half month period ending in the middle of February, 1940. The project is temporarily suspended when rolling rail stock is needed for German military campaigns against the Low Countries.

1941: After the Odessa Action which started on October 23 and ended on October 25 leaving 20,000 murdered Jews, another 10,000 more were sent to various concentration camps from that City.

1941:Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris “addressed a dispatch to Hitler” in an attempt “to save hostages in Nantes"

1941: Germans inform Jews of Kalisz, Poland, that elderly Jews in convalescent homes are to be moved to another home the next day

1942: Birthdate of The Rev. Lawrence Boadt, a Roman Catholic priest, publisher and Bible scholar who used his study of the Old Testament as a vehicle for promoting understanding between Christians and Jews,

1942: In Oszmiana, Poland, 400 Jews were deported. To save the remaining 600, the head of the ghetto decided to send only the old so to make up the quota.

1943: At the Janowska camp in Lvov, the Nazis continued to shoot Jews and burn them on pyres. After the mothers and children would undress, the Germans would swing small children, smashing their heads into trees until they died. All this was done in front of the mothers who themselves would be beaten, hung or shot.

1943: Seventy-nine year old Sir Marc Aurel Stein, the Budapest born Jew who became a Lutheran to advance his career as an archaeologist passed away today in Kabul while on the last of his many expeditions to Central Asia.

1943: Three thousand Jews are deported from Kovno, Lithuania, to the slave-labor camp at Klooga, Estonia.

1946: Kurt Daluege, former SS-Obergruppenführer and deputy Reichsprotektorof Bohemiaand Moravia, is hanged in Prague, Czechoslovakia, after being convicted of war crimes.

1946: “A Jewish agency spokesman said today the inner Zionist Council would call on Palestine Jews…to take certain specified measures in cooperation with the Government against the use of violence…” The move was part of bargain to gain the release of 700 Jews who have been held by the British without charges or trial since last June. Among those who would be released is Moshe Shertok, head of the Jewish Agency’s political department.” The deal would also allow Moshe Sneh head of the Haganah and David Ben-Gurion to return to Palestine from France where they have endured a self-imposed exile in an attempt to avoid imprisonment by the British.

1946: Holocaust survivor and future French political leader Simone Annie Liline Jacob became Simone Veil when she married Antoine Veil whom she met while study law at the University of Paris.

1947: The British ended their occupation of Iraq. The British departure made it possible for the Arab population to move against the Jews of Iraq. The situation would only grow worse once the Israelis defeated the Arab Armies, including the Iraqis the following year. However, the violence against the Jews began before the UN partition and before there was a state Israel.

1947: Arabian King Ibn Saud warned President Harry Truman that American support of partition of Palestine was an unfriendly and useless act. “The Arabs will isolate such a state from the world and lay siege to it until it dies by famine.”

1947:The day before the Hollywood 10 began testifying, the anti-HUAC celebrities aired the first of a two-part national broadcast called "Hollywood Fights Back!," co-written by Norman Corwin and Robert Presnell Jr., and featuring Garland, Kelly, Bacall, "Bogie," Robinson, Lancaster, Henreid, John Beal and William Holden. HUAC’s investigation into the Communist influence in the film business was tainted in many ways including a predilection for anti-Semitism.

1948(23^rdof Tishrei, 5709): Simchat Torah

1951:Emanuel “Manny” Shinwell, Baron Shinwell completed his service Minister of Defense when the Labor Party was defeated in the “snap election” of 1951.

1951: Winston Churchill “became Prime Minister for the second time.” Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, sends a message of genuine congratulations. In his reply, Churchill refers to the Zionist leader as “my old friend.”

1951: Esta Greenberg and Jack Schnabel gave birth to American artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel in Brooklyn. He grew up in Brownsville, Texas. Such a culture clash must have had an effect on his artistic creativity.

1954(29^thof Tishrei, 5715): Eighty-eight year old Jennie Wallenstein Kohnstamm the oldest child of Esther Hellman Wallenstein, the founding president of the Hebrew Infant Asylum, passed away today.

1955: The last American occupation troops left Austria and Austria enacts laws of proclaiming permanent neutrality. The American occupation had been a rather benign affair since the Austrians had been declared the first victim of Nazi aggression rather than a willing partner of the Third Reich. Considering the number of Austrian Nazis, the number of Austrians who served in with the German military and the zeal with Austrian Nazis attacked and helped to exterminate the Jewish population, this was a total misreading of the situation.

1957(1st of Cheshvan, 5718): Dr. Gerty Theresa Cori, the first Jewish-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology passed away today at the age of 61. An internationally known biochemist she and her husband Dr. Carl F. Cori and Dr. B.A. Houssay shared the 1947 Nobel Prize.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10913F63F5511708DDDAE0A94D8415B8789F1D3

1959: “Burning Bright” produced by Lewis Freedman and Henry Weinstein was broadcast today as “The Play of the Week.”

1959: Dr. Arthur Kornberg is awarded the Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)" together with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New YorkUniversity.

1972: Dutifully playing his part to ensure the re-election of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger declares "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam. The November elections would come and go and the war would drag on.

1973: In violation of the ceasefire agreement, the Egyptian Third Army attempted to breakthrough surrounding Israeli; an attempt that was thwarted by the IDF and the IAF.

1974: In “Israeland the River Plate,” C. L. Sulzberger writes from Herzliya that “it would probably astonish most people to know that Israel counts on Argentina as potentially the largest remaining source of Jewish immigration that can answer this dynamic little country's constant clamor for more people.” To make things even better, the Argentinean Jewish community would provide an already-educated cadre of immigrants.

1975“A Talk With Amos Oz,” by Hebert Mitgang published today provides interesting insights into the life and thoughts of one Israel’s most prominent authors:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/home/oz-interview.html

1978(25th of Tishrei, 5739):Alexander Gerschenkron a Russian-born American Jewish economic historian and professor at Harvard who was trained in the Austrian School of economics passed away. He is the grandfather of author Nicholas Dawidoff

1984: Birthdate of Olympic figure skater Sasha Cohen.

1986(23^rdof Tishrei, 5747): Simchat Torah

1989: In Great Britain, Nigel Lawson completed his term as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1990(7th of Cheshvan, 5751: William Paley, the founder and CEOof CBS died of a heart attack at the age of 89. (As reported by Jeremy Gerard)

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/27/obituaries/william-s-paley-builder-of-cbs-dies-at-89.html

1992: The Timesquoted Jewish born financier George Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."

1994: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israeland Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Clinton.

1995: Fathi Shikaki, a leader of the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad was assassinated while staying on the island of Malta. It is claimed that Mossad agents were responsible for his death.

1997:The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interesting including Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank:Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the ''Diary” by Ralph Melnick and Panther in the Basementby Amos Oz; translated by Nicholas de Lange.

2000: Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for today’s bombing in the Gaza Strip.

2001(9th of Cheshvan, 5762): Ninety-six year old Laszlo Halasz, the Hungarian born musician who served as the first director of the New York City Opera in which capacity he mount the first performance of “The Dybbuk,” a three act opera by David Tamkin. (As reported by Allan Kozinn)

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/31/arts/laszlo-halasz-first-director-of-city-opera-is-dead-at-96.html

2003: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interesting including And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frankby Steve Oney and Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Lifeby Caroline Moorehead.

2004: Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco celebrates its 60^thanniversary.

2004:

Israel

's parliament approved Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

2005: Jerry Reinsdorf’s Chicago White Sox win the World Series replacing Theo Epstein’s Red Sox at the top of the major league heap.

2005: Avram Grant announced his resignation as Israel’s national football team.

2005(22nd of Tishrei, 5766): Shmini Atzeret

2005(22nd of Tishrei, 5766): A suicide bomber who had been released from an Israeli prison a month ago and lived on the West Bank struck in Hadera killing five and wounding 55. .

2006: A concert entitled “The Yiddish Voice of Love: Songs of Beyle Shaechnter-Gottesmanon ” is presented at the

92^nd Street

Y in New York City. “

2007: The New York Timesfeatured a review of World War IV: The Long Struggle against Islamofasacism by Norman Podhoretz.

2007: In the evening, five kassam rockets fired by the Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip landed in open fields south of Ashkelon and near Sderot.

2008:Rutgers University presents a lecture on the psychological effects of terrorism on Israelis entitled "Does the War End When the Shooting Stops?" by Zahava Solomon, director of the Adler Research Center for Child Welfare & Protection at Tel Aviv University.

2008: The Center for Jewish History presents "Jewish Youth and Cultural Change:
A Conference on Rethinking American Jewish History" -- a conference that brings together historians, anthropologists, and scholars of culture in order to reflect on the ways in which young Jews experienced their lives as Jews and Americans over the past two centuries, and how communal and cultural change were reflected in anxieties about Jewish youth.

2008: The Washington Postfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interesting including My Father’s Paradise:A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraqby Ariel Sabar,Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W. Ryback, and the paperback edition of Janet Malcolm's dual biography of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, entitled Two Liveswhich is "a meditation on literature and morality, built around the disquieting fact that Stein and Toklas, both Jewish, remained in Europe throughout World War II without either hiding or being swept up in the Holocaust."

2008:Kadima leader Tzipi Livni announced that her efforts to build a coalition government were unsuccessful, and recommended that early general elections be held.

2009: The Center for Jewish History and The Center for Traditional Music and Dance present “Celebrating a Lifetime in Yiddish Song,” conversation and performance featuring Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, America's leading Yiddish poet and songwriter, who will be joined by her son Itzik Gottesman, Associate Editor of the Yiddish Forward.

2009:Steven D. Levitt (a professor of economics at the University of Chicago) and Stephen J. Dubner (a former writer and editor at the New York Times Magazine) discuss their new book, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, in a program at The Washington Post Conference Center.

2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Melvin Urofsky discusses Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, his biography of the Supreme Court Justice (which is the annual Bernard Wexler Lecture on Jewish History)

2009: Yoel Kraus a member of ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit community was conditionally released from prison today, a day after his arrest for allegedly spraying an ultra-Orthodox woman with tear gas in the capital's Mea She'arim neighborhood because she was walking on a "men only" sidewalk, and refused Kraus' demand that she move to the women's side.

2010: George Soros donated $1 million, the largest donation in the campaign, to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19 that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed

2010:Sam Brylawski is scheduled to deliver a lecture styled Emile Berliner: Inventor of the Gramophone, Part II that is a follow up to an earlier lecture on the life of Jewish-German immigrant Emile Berlinerwho “emigrated as a young man from Hannover to Washington in 1870 and became famous internationally for his many inventions and business acumen.”

2010: The Historic 6^th& I Synagogue is scheduled to host Challah & Chutney: An Indian Jewish cooking class where Shulie Madnick, an Indian Jewish food blogger, provides lessons in how to prepare a vegetarian Indian meal, traditional to the Jewish community of India.

2010: The annual trade show of the kosher food industry opened today at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, N.J.

2011: A program featuring a discussion “Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams” by Charles Kings is scheduled to take place at the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, D.C.

2011: Rabbi Nissan Antine, the Associate Rabbi and Director of Education at Beth Sholom Congregation, is scheduled to lead a class entitled Responsa of the Holocaust at the JCC of Greater Washington.

2011: The International Conference on the Life and Work of Israeli author Aharon Applefeld is scheduled to open at the University of Pennsylvania.

2011: Former Shin Bet security service director Yuval Diskin defended Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today, saying that Abbas is against terrorism.

2011: In excerpts of an interview released today from an upcoming interview on Sixty Minutes,the wife of the financial swindler Bernard Madoff claims that the couple attempted suicide by taking pills on Christmas Eve 2008 after his estimated $65 billion Ponzi scheme was exposed. The attempt, which she described as “impulsive” left her “glad” that “we woke up.”

2011:Three Grad rocket were fired from the Gaza Strip at the Ashdod and Bnei Aish areas shortly before midnight today.

2012(10^th of Cheshvan, 5773): Fifty-one year old television producer and comedy writer Alan Kirschenbaum passed away today.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings-20121030,0,2908921.story

2012(10^th of Cheshvan, 5773): Eight year old Arnold Greenberg, the founder of Snapple passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/business/arnold-greenberg-a-founder-of-snapple-dies-at-80.html?hpw&_r=1&

2012: Israeli Cellist Elad Kabilio is scheduled to lead the musical accompaniment to tonight’s performance of the Ballet Next Ensemble at the Joyce Theatre.

2012: “The Other Son” a film about “two young men–one Israeli, the other Palestinian–who discover they were accidentally switched at birth and the complex repercussions facing them and their respective families” is scheduled to appear for the first time in selected theatres in the United States.

2012:The British government opposed the establishment of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals at the end of the second world war because it wanted selected Nazi leaders to be summarily executed and others to be imprisoned without trial, according to a contemporary account that was declassified today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/britain-execution-nuremberg-nazi-leaders

2012:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tie-up with far-right coalition partner Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could backfire by eroding their lead ahead of Israel’s Jan. 22 ballot, a poll said today. http://forward.com/articles/165001/netanyahus-hard-right-alliance-could-backfire/#ixzz2ARoW83Xe

2012: “Orchestra of Exiles,” a documentary that tells the tale of Bronislaw Huberman’s effort to create what became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra opened today in New York.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-europes-top-violinist-saved-hundreds-from-hitler-to-build-israels-orchestra-of-exiles/

2012: Sonja Spear is scheduled to give a talk about Halloween in America after the Shabbat Dinner being held at the University of Iowa Hillel House in Iowa City, Iowa.

2013: Beginning of Jewish Book Month 2013 sponsored by the Jewish Book Council

2013: Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “A Bit of Bling.”

2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a performance of “Don Giovanni” featuring Israel Wind Soloists:

Oboes: Amir Bakman, Josue Cordero

Clarinets: Danny Erdman, Daniel Gurfinkel

Bassoons: Mauricio Paez, Kristijonas Grigas

Contrabassoon: Isaac Ramon Leyva

Horns: Adrian Solis, Edo Hayek

2013: Australian police charged three people today over an anti-Semitic attack on five people in Bondi Beach, Sydney. The five Jews who were taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital included four men aged 27, 39, 49 and 66 wearing yarmulkes and a 62-year-old woman.

2013:Eight Israeli citizens and a Palestinian girl sustained moderate injuries when stones were hurled at the direction of vehicles traveling in south Mount Hebron (As reported by Itmar Fleishman)

2014: Aaron David Miller, the vice-president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars os scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the annual Jewish Endowment Fund Brunch at the Hilton Hotel Riverside where Dr. Edward Soll and his wife Karne will be honred with the presentation of the Tzedakah award. (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News – the source for everything in the land of the Kosher Cajuns)

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War by James Risen, who has been friends with Yossi Klein Halevi “since they both crashed the Nazi Party headquarters in Chicago as student reporters 30 years ago” and recently released paperback editions of You Should of Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz and Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town and the Magic of Theatre by Michael Sokolove.

2014: “Dylan Thomas in America: A Centennial Exhibition” is scheduled to open at the 92^nd Street Y.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/books/a-dylan-thomas-centennial-in-new-york.html?ref=books

2014:In Indianapolis, Lauren and Adam Cantor are scheduled to sing camp songs and share their memories of being song leaders at Goldman Union Camp Institute at the annual meeting of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society

2014: Amid on-going terrorist inspired violence that has shut down parts of the Jerusalem Light Rail, the funeral of the Hamas terrorist who murdered a three month old baby and injured numerous others who were waiting to board the light rail is scheduled to be buried today. (Editor’s note – So far there has been no condemnation of the murder of an infant by the UN)

2014: “Life in Stills” and “The Hangman” are scheduled to be shown on the first day of the Israeli Film Festival sponsored by the Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the leadership of Dr. Brian Horowitz.

2014: "The Wartime Escape: Margret and H.A. Rey's Journey from France" an exhibition that unveils the history behind the children's character, Curious George whose creators The Jewish couple, Margret and H.A. Rey fled Paris on bicycles in 1940 to escape the Nazi invasion and eventually made their way to the United States with their manuscripts and illustrations for the book, "The Adventures of Fifi," which was retitled "The Adventures of Curious George" is scheduled to come to an at the Argenta Branch of the North Little Rock Public Library.

2014: At two o’clock this morning, Israelis change their clocks back to standard time.

OCTOBER 27

312: Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross which will join the Sword of Constantine to the Cross of Christ in the governing of the Roman Empire, much to the detriment of the Jews for centuries to come.

710: Islamic forces, variously described as Saracens, Berbers or Moors, raided Sardinia which is under the nominal control of the Byzantine (Christian) Empire. This is just one more in a series of raids that began in the first decade of the eighth century. Jews had been living on the island from the days of the Emperor Tiberius when 4,000 of them were banished from Rome. While information about the Jews living on Sardinia during this period is sketchy there were numerous Jewish communities including one at Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. Toward the end of the sixth century, a converted Jew named Peter placed images of saints in the synagogue in Cagliari on Easter Monday. The Jews lodged a complaint with Pope Gregory the Great, who ordered Bishop Januarius of Cagliari to have the images at once removed. We also know that the Jews must have survived whatever damage was done to the island by marauding Moors because there is a record of the synagogue in Cagliari having been destroyed by a fire at the end of the 8^thcentury.

1156:Birthdate of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse and Marquis of Provence. He was considered to be so sympathetic to the Jews that Pope Innocent III caused him to take an oath "that he would deprive the Jews of their offices and that he would never appoint any Jews or in any way favor them.

1275: Founding of the modern city of Amsterdam. While there are reports of Jews living in the Low Countries an area that would have included the Netherlands, going back to Roman times, the Jewish community of Amsterdam dates from the 16^th century when Marranos and Sephardim found there way to the Protestant city.

1430: Vytautas the Great, Grand Prince of Lithuania, passed away. According to some Jewish historians, the reign of Vytautas the Great was the golden age for Jews of Lithuania-Poland.

1466: Birthdate of Dutch humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus. While Erasmus may be revered by the world at large, he gets mixed notices from Jewish sources. On the one hand he spoke up for Jews when he said, “If it is Christian to hate the Jews, all of us are only too good Christians.” At the same time he was above a little Jew-bashing when wrote, “Jews are very numerous in Italy; in Spainthere are hardly Christians. I am aft raid that when the occasion arise, that pest formerly suppressed, will raise its head again.”

1495: Coronation of Manuel I, the king of Portugal who had ascended to throne two days earlier and who in 1496 exiled “thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde.”

1682: Founding of the city of Philadelphiaby William Penn. The city’s name means “brotherly love.” Twenty-six years before William Penn, the Quaker leader who founded Philadelphiaset foot in the New World in 1682, a few Jews were trading with the Native Americans along the South River, later known as the Delaware River. After the British took New York, merchants from the former Dutch city, included Jewish merchants, saw opportunity in Philadelphia. One of them was the New York-born son of Moses Levy, established merchant, active in the Jewish community of New York. In 1737, Nathan Levy settled permanently in Philadelphiawhere he built a business of his own. He and his cousin, David Franks, formed the first important Jewish company there, Levy and Franks, importers and merchants. In the 1740’s Levy would be the leader of the group that formed MikvehIsraelCemetery. MikvehIsraelCemeterywould lead to the formation of the first Jewish congregation in Philadelphia, Mikveh Israel.

1708: The community of Metz entered into contract with Abraham ben Saul Broda for him to serve as the community’s rabbi.

1765: The last public Auto da Fe was held in Portugal.

1779: During the American Revolution, Solomon Bush, whose father Matthias had been one of the signers of the non-importation agreement in 1765, was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel today.

1786: Birthdate of Frédéric Cerfberr, the native of Strasburg , the French diplomat who served as consul in New York, New Orleans and Haiti where his daughter was killed in an earthquake and he suffered what would prove to be fatal injuries.

1827: Birthdate of Levi Goldenberger, the native of Germany who came to the United States where he became a successful lace importer.

1844: Ferdinand Eberstadt of Worms/Mannheim and his wife Sara Seligmann gave birth to Elizabeth Eberstadt, the sister of architect Rudolph Eberstadat and the second wife of Sir George Henry Lewis.

1858 RH Macy & Co opened its first store on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Gross receipts for the day totaled $1106. The Straus family, which had been leasing space in Macy's to operate a chinaware department, the store's most profitable section, acquired the Macy’s in 1896 and turned it into one of the country’s leading department stores. One sign of the change came in when they relocated the store to its Herald square location at 34th Street and Broadway in

1858: Birthdate of Theodore Roosevelt 26th President of the United States. In 1903, Rooseveltmoved boldly to confront the Czar over the massacre of the Jews at Kishinev. Roosevelt’s intervention on behalf the Jews was unusual and won him and the Republican Party a great deal of support in years to come. Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to appoint a Jew to a presidential cabinet. In 1906 he named Oscar S. Straus Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Theodore Roosevelt was also the first President to contribute his own funds to a Jewish cause. In 1919, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts while President to settle the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt donated some of his prize money to the National Jewish Welfare Board.

1859: Sir Saul Samuel begins serving the first of two terms as Treasurer of New South Wales.

1862: In a report published today the New York Times special correspondent covering the Army of the Potomac described troop movements in and around Culpepper and Warrenton, VA as well as the disposition of Rebel troops in Richmond. The report is based on an interview that he had with a man whom he described as “a Jew” who has resided in the South for several years, “so that his statement are not considered the most reliable.” This Jew claimed that the reason he had taken refuge within the lines of the Union Army was to escape the rebellion.

1866: Sir George Jessel, Solicitor-General and Master of the Rolls and Amelia Moses gave birth to Herbert Jessel, British soldier and Member of Parliament.

1872: “A Startling Novelty” published today traces the history of embalming. Based on Genesis, “And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians to embalms his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel” and “So Joseph died, and being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.” While the Israelites learned about embalming from the Egyptians, the latter used a much more elaborate process and “the embalmers were regarded as…sacred persons.”

1875: “Hebrews of New York” published today praised the record “which Jacob Hess has made for himself in one session of the Assembly” as “one of which any patriot may be proud.”

1878: It was reported today that the Hebrew Benevolent Society is among those organizations in New Orleans that is continuing to provide aid to those suffering during the region’s Yellow Fever Epidemic.

1878: Birthdate of Murray Seasongood, future Mayor of Cincinnati and Harvard law school professor.

1879: “Bull-Dozing In Mississippi” published today described a political meeting held at Bolivar Landing, in Bolivar Country, MS, where a resolution was allegedly passed denouncing Edward Storm as “a dishonest Jew, the servile tool of the slave-owner before the war, and the convenient and abandoned ally of the corrupt carpet bagger” since the end of the Civil War. (Since no record can be found of a Jew by this name, one has to wonder if labeling him as a “Jew” was an attempt to smear him by his political opponents who had already identified him with the aristocracy, carpetbaggers and Republicans)

1880: Henry Abbey and Louis de Bebian were among those who greeted the famous Jewish actress Sara Bernhardt when she arrived off the coast of the United States aboard the SS Amerique.

1880:“Jewish Longevity” published today reported that the Jews “have become the admired and beloved of the life insurance companies…The reason is that the Christians, after paying one or two premiums, has an unpleasant way of dying…The insured Jew…pays his premium year after year and thus becomes a constant source of income.” There is a great deal of speculation as to why this is true. According to the author, it may be tied to the business practices of Jews which tend to be less speculative than those of Christians. This enables the Jew to sleep soundly at night while his Christian counterpart tosses and turns. Diet is another reason. Jews eat and drink in moderation as compared to their Christian counterparts and do not eat pork. Finally, Jews marry other Jews which preserves “the purity of their blood.”

1881: A woman who claimed to be Mrs. Amelia Goldberg, an English Jew and her 11 year old child were found wandering the streets of New York dressed in rags today which led to them being taken into custody and “being committed to the care of the Commissioners of Charities and Correction.

1882: “Mordecai Lyons” published today reviewed Edward Harrigan’s new play which features “a Jew who, when he finds that his daughter has been betrayed” tries to avenge her. While the reviewer found the play disappointing he felt that Mr. Harrigan “was artistically effective as the Jew, Mordecai, though rather uncertain at the important situations.

1884: “A service was held at Ramsgate to-day in honor of Sir Moses Montifore. Chief Rabbi Adler read a special prayer. Sir Moses insisted upon standing through the entire service, at the conclusion of which he said in a very strong voice: "I cannot tell a thousandth or a ten thousandth part of what I feel when by the blessing of the almighty I have arrived at so full an age.” A reception followed the service. On this day alone, Montifore received more than 800 letters and 600 telegrams from a whole host of well-wishers, Jew and Gentile alike.

1884: “A Life Spent In Charity” published today described the various services held to honor Sir Moses Montefiore on his 100^th birthday. Henry Ward Beecher, the leading Protestant minister of his time, described him as being “the distinguished citizen of the world” who “by his long life and by his splendid services in the way of humanity, has become himself a text that involves in it the truths both of the Old and the New Testament.”

1885: It was reported today “Miss Rebecca Rosenthal, a Baxter Street Blond” joined hands with Patrick Divver, the candidate for Ward 6 Alderman, to lead the opening march at the Patrick Divver Hebrew Association’s annual ball. Jewish political leader Coroner Levy addressed the attendees and urged them to vote for Divver.

1886: Reports published today described the view of S.S. (Samuel Sullivan) Cox, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, on the condition of Jewish communities overseas including the fact that “he had been as favorably impressed by the Hebrews of Turkey as by those of Western Europe and America.”

1889: “A Patriarchal Scribe” published today described the work of an aged Hebrew working in the corner of a grocery store on Division Street in New York’s lower east side who for a small fee, wrote letters in Hebrew to be sent back to families in Europe while demonstrating the skill to complete the information on the envelope so that the epistle would arrive at its proper destination.

1889: It was reported today that while on their way back from raiding the offices of the Louisiana Lotter, police in Boston had arrested “Barnett Gompertz, the little English Jew eyeglass peddler who has had a stand at the head of Williams Court, otherwise known as Pie Alley, for over twenty years.”

1889: “Christians Made Jewess” published today described the process by which a young English woman converted to Judaism before she was married at the West London Synagogue on Upper Berkeley Street.

1891: Birthdate of Paul Grüninger the police commander in Canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland who saved 3,601 from the Nazis following the Anschluss in 1938.

1891: It was reported today that the government of Turkey has prohibited the immigration of Jewish families of any nationality meaning that they cannot settle in Palestine. But individual Jews are allowed to pass through the empire.

1894: At Temple Emanu-El in New York, Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon related to the upcoming election in which he used the life of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes to deliver an apolitical lesson on civic responsibility.

1895:Austrian Prime Minister Badeni revives the "Presse", forerunner and now out-lived rival of the "Neue Freie Press." Herzl is offered the editorship of the "Presse". After some days of negotiations with Moritz Benedikt, Herzl refuses the offer.

1896(20^thof Cheshvan, 5657): Less than a month before his 62^nd birthday, Isaac Bamberger, the rabbi at the reform congregation in Königsberg passed away today.

1902:Herzl arrives in Vienna having finished his trip to London.

1903: Herzl travels to Edlach, Austria.

1906: Mutilated bodies of Jewish women were found in the streets of Arzila, Tangier.

1908: Birthdate of abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner who died in 1984.

1911: An article datelined Yuzivka, Russia, entitled “More Jews to be Expelled: Will Cuase Much Hardship,” reports that the Governor has signed a proclamation stating that all Jews in the Province of Ekaterinoslaff are subject to expulsion, with some limited exceptions.

1912: Erna Reiss and Alfred Döblin, the German born physician and author gave birth to their first son Peter

1913: During the first Balkan war, practically the entire Jewish community of Itchip numbering 710 people fled to Salonica to avoid having to face the conquering Bulgarian army. Only 6 men and 2 youths stayed behind. Two of the old men were killed; all the Jewish homes were plundered and demolished. Synagogues were desecrated and burned, as were 24 Jewish stores and homes.

1914: Twenty-four year old Louis Weinstein “a British subject from Cape Town, described the events that took him from the coast of South Africa to Brazil and eventually to New York where he “is in the care of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society.”

1914: As Americans respond to the needs for funds to relieve the suffering of war torn Europe, Jacob Schiff, the Treasurer of the New York branch of the American Red Cross “announced additional subscriptions amounting to $2, 841.”

1922(5^thof Cheshvan, 5683): Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor winner who received the commendation at the Battle of Franklin (TN) passed away today.

1923: On the upper West Side of Manhattan realtor Milton Lichtenstein and Beatrice Werner Lichtenstein gave birth to Roy Lichtenstein who “did cartoon inspired paintings that helped launch the Pop Art movement. “

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/1417

1924: Grigorii Zinoviev, the Jewish born head of the Comintern issued a denial that he authored the so called Zinoviev Letter that stated in part "The letter of 15th September, 1924, which has been attributed to me, is from the first to the last word, a forgery. Let us take the heading. The organization of which I am the president never describes itself officially as the "Executive Committee of the Third Communist International"; the official name is "Executive Committee of the Communist International." Equally incorrect is the signature, "The Chairman of the Presidium." The forger has shown himself to be very stupid in his choice of the date. On the 15th of September, 1924, I was taking a holiday in Kislovodsk, and, therefore, could not have signed any official letter...” The denial was finally published in the December 1924 issue of The Communist Review, the monthly theoretical magazine of the CPGB, well after the MacDonald government had fallen. Decades later, independent academic research proved that the letter was a forgery.

1924: Premiere of “The Story Without A Name,” a silent film melodrama produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky

1929(23^rd of Tishrei, 5690): Simchat Torah

1933: Arabs protesting Jewish immigration to Palestine clashed with police today resulting in at least twenty deaths and injuries to another 130 of the demonstrators. Among the dead and wounded were Arabs who had attacked a police station in Haifa where a policeman was stabbed in the back.

1935: One hundred and fifty Zionists honored Morris Rothenberg President of the Zionist Organization of America with a banquet at New York’s Hotel Astor. After being introduced by Louis P. Rocker, Rothberg described the progress he had seen on his recent visit to the Palestine but said that “a concerted drive to unite all American Jews in support of the” development of Palestine was necessary for ultimate success.

1937: As the Arab violence against the Jews continued The Palestine Post reported that a Jew and an Arab constable were killed when some 15 Arab terrorists ambushed a six-truck convoy carrying 21 Jewish laborers from the Palestine Potash concession on the Dead Sea back to Jerusalem. A number of policemen were injured in various shooting incidents, reported throughout the country, and in particular in Safed where the Jewish community was almost under siege.

1937: The Palestine Postreported that in Danzig Jewish shops and houses were pillaged and windows smashed. This outbreak of violence against the Jews took place almost two years before the outbreak of World War II. The Nazis did not invent anti-Semitism. They exploited it and made it as efficient as an assembly line for automobiles.

1938(2^nd of Cheshvan, 5699): Fifty four year old Soprano Alma Gluck passed away today in New York

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gluck-alma

1938: German authorities began arresting Jews of Polish citizenship living in the Reich and transporting them to the Polish border. Responding to a Polish decree that all passports of Polish residents abroad would be rescinded by the end of October unless a special permit for reentry to Poland was received, the Germans preempted the Polish government by forcibly deporting thousands of Jews across the border into Poland.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/august/02.asp

1938: Hitler expelled 18,000 Jews from Germany who were born in the former Polish provinces. The Jews were abused and tortured as they made their way to the border. The Poles did not want to admit the Jews and for a while many were left to languish on the border. This was a prelude to the statelessness that would help ensure the death of millions of Jews.

1938: The Germans began arresting Jews with Polish citizenship who had been living in Germany and began deporting them to Poland. The Polish authorities placed the Jews in the border town of Zbaszyn and forbade them from leaving in the hope that the large number of Jews near the border would pressure the Germans into beginning negotiations to allow them back into Germany. The negotiations ended in January 1939- some Jews had already been taken in by friends and family in Poland, while other deportees were permitted to return to Germany to wind up their affairs, and then return to Poland. For a photographic record see:

http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/03.asp

1938: Sendel Grynszpan described the deportation of the Jews to Poland,"Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners’ lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: "Juden raus! Aus nach Palästina!" ("Out with the Jews! Off to Palestine!") The Grynszpans and thousands of other Jews were stranded at the border because the Poles refused to admit them.

1940: Ritual slaughter is banned in Belgium. Were the conquering Germans animal lovers or did they realize the importance of the dietary laws in maintaining Jewish identity.

1941: Jews of Sluzk, 60 miles south of Minsk, Belorussia, are annihilated by Einsatzkommando troops, half of whom are German, half Lithuanian.

1941: In the Polish town of Kalisz a large black truck drove up and took on a passenger load of Jews. Escorted by two Gestapo cars, the truck drove away. Its passengers were never heard from again. This was the first of the gas-wagons. This method of extermination was not efficient and would give way to that ultimate in German efficiency – the gas chamber.

1942: The Nazis sent 3,000 Jews from Opoczno, Polandto Treblinka. At the start of the war almost half the town of Opocznowas Jewish. Jews had lived there since the 14^th century. The Jews had lived there continually since the start of the 18^th century.At the time of the mass deportation in October 1942, scores of Jews fled to the forests and organized partisan units there. The best known unit, "Lions", under the command of Julian Ajzenman- Kaniewski, conducted a number of successful guerilla actions against Nazi forces and the Opoczno-Konskie railway line. After the war, the Jewish Community of Opoczno was not reconstituted.

1942: Seven thousand Kraków, Poland, Jews are deported to Belzec while another 600 are killed in Kraków.

1943: Germany announced that any Pole helping Jews to escape should be dealt with “without the necessary delay of court hearings.” The penalty for assisting Jews was death.

1944: In the parts of Warsawstill under German control the Nazis still search for hidden Jews. Seven would be found and shot. For those who doubt that the War Against the Jews was of primary consideration for the Germans, remember that they were busy tracking down Jews while the Soviet Army was breathing down their necks.

1944: Thirty-nine year old Judith Auer, a genuine resistance fighter was hanged at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin for her role in the fight against Hitler.

1946: Birthdate of Slovakian born Canadian producer-director Ivan Reitman. Reitman’s most famous cinematic effort was the hit comedy “Animal House.”

1947: At Petah Tikva a house belonging to a member of Haganah was blown up, reportedly by members of the Irgun. Haganah leaders said they will not back down despite warnings by Irgun of a looming civil war between the two Jewish organizations.

1947: The quiz show "You Bet Your Life", with Groucho Marx, premiered on ABC radio. The show would later move to television where a whole new generation would discover the rapier wit, the bushy eyebrows and the smoldering cigar of what some consider a comic genius.

1948: During Operation Yoav, Israeli forces capture the Egyptian held fort at Bet Guvrin. The Egyptians had taken the fort when the invaded Israelin May of 1948.

1948 Israelrecaptured Nizzanim in the Negev. Nizzanim is in southern Israel on the,Mediterranean. In 1990, the same people who high jacked the Achille Loro planned a terrorist attack on the beaches of Nizzanim. The attack was foiled.

1948(24^th of Tishrei, 5709): Seventy one year old Rabbi Judah Leon Magnes passed away.

http://www.magnes.org/sites/www.magnes.org/files/wjhc1968-030-ar1.pdf

http://www.jta.org/1948/10/28/archive/dr-judah-l-magnes-president-of-hebrew-university-in-jerusalem-dies-in-new-York

1950: Birthdate of author Fran Lebowitz.

1952: The Jerusalem Postcommented in an editorial that a number of ugly incidents in Nazareth and the arrest of an Arab underground group, undergoing military training in the Majdal Krum area, drew less public attention than it deserved. There were obvious severe shortcomings in the management of the affairs of Arabs living in Israel. The government undertook to build 50,000 concrete dwellings within the next three years in order to accommodate the almost 80,000 families still living in ma’abarot.

1954:Associate Justice of the Supreme Court William O. Douglas and Congressman Emanuel Celler spoke to 500 people attending a dinner sponsored by the American Mogen Dovid for Israel where “Morris Morgenstern and S. Ralph Lazrus were honored at the dinner for donating an ambulance to the Red Mogen David, the equivalent of the Red Cross in Israel.” (As reported by JTA)

1955: A paratroop regiment which “is on a mission to capture the Kuntila Fortress in Sinai, deep in Egyptian territory…kills ten Egyptian soldiers and captures twenty nine” while suffering casualties that included two dead and two wounded.”

1957: Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers put her boxing trivia to the test and came away with $64,000. Dr. Brothers, who was appearing on the game show The $64,000 Challenge, took the top prize, competing against a team of seven boxers on boxing lore. This was her second time winning the program's top prize — two years earlier she had claimed her first victory (when the show was called The $64,000 Question), also on the subject of boxing. Brothers' appearance on The $64,000 Question not only garnered her a substantial prize, but also sparked her career as a talk-show psychologist. After her appearance on Challenge, Brothers was picked to co-host WATV's show, Sports Showcase. In 1958, NBC offered Brothers her own talk show, The Dr. Joyce Brothers Show. The show, which counseled viewers on childrearing, marriage, and sex, was an instant success and soon became syndicated nationally. In 1963, Brothers began writing a monthly column for Good Housekeeping, which remains a feature of the magazine today. She also writes a daily column that is published in more than 350 newspapers, and has written several books, including What Every Woman Should know About Men(1982) and How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life (1978). Her most personal and popular work was Widow (1990), which described Brothers' emotional journey after the death of her husband in 1989 after thirty-nine years of marriage.

1964: U.S. premiere of “The Americanization of Emily” with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky

1964: Linda and Malcolm Glazer gave birth to Bryan Glazer, a graduate of American University and Whittier Law School became an executive vice president of the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

1967(23^rdof Tishrei, 5728): Jews celebrate Simchat Torah in a united Jerusalem

1967: In London, Susan Davis and David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, gave birth to Simon Adam Wolfson, Guise the chief executive of the clothing retailer Next and a Conservative life peer who is the founder of the £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize.

1968(5th of Cheshvan, 5729): Lise Meitner, a physicist who played a key role in the discovery of Nuclear Fission passed away at the age of 89.

1969(15th of Cheshvan, 5730): Sixty-eight year old British entertainer and broadcaster Albert Eric Maschwitz passed away today.

http://spartacus-educational.com/SPYmaschwitz.htm

1973: The first season of “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” with Lou Scheimer doing the voice of “Dumb Donald” came to an end.

1973: Cable service which provided telex and telecommunication between Syria and the outside world including Egypt was restored after having been knocked by Israeli frogman on October 18.

1978: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1981: “SOS Children's Village Arad (known as Kfar Neradim) which was built in the southern outskirts of Arad was inaugurated” today.

1983:Four days after the attack on the Marine Barracks the White House team that visited Beirut, led by Vice President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, asked Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff to write a report on the attack and its aftermath

1986: In an article published today Time magazine provides background on the life of Elie Wiesel as describes the Nobel Laureate’s work on behalf of mankind and the Jewish people including his efforts on behalf of Cambodian refugees, the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua and starving children in Africa. “Last week he exhorted Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to allow five Soviet Jews, as well as Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov, to emigrate, and this week he is traveling to Moscow to help organize a conference on non-Jewish victims of Nazism.”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962649,00.html#ixzz1bqTDkv6O

1987: Actor Dustin Hoffman and Lisa Gottsegen Hoffman give birth to Alexandra Lydia.

1988(16th of Cheshvan, 5749) Just days before her 93^rd birthday, Hadassah and ZOA leader Judith G. Epstein passed away. (As reported by Susan Fox)

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/epstein-judith-g

1992(30th of Tishrei, 5753): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1992(30th of Tishrei, 5753): David Bohm, American-born physicist, philosopher, and neuropsychologist passed away.

1994: Judith R. Shapiro, a widely respected cultural anthropologist who has done pioneering research on gender differences, was inaugurated as president of BarnardCollege.

1995: Prime Minister Rabin took the courageous step of agreeing “that when the time came for Palestinian elections, election posters could be placed anywhere in East Jerusalem and that the voting in the city would be supervised by the Palestinian Central Elcetion Commission.

1996(15th of Cheshvan, 5757): Seventy-four year old comedian Morey Amsterdam passed away (As reported by David Stout)

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/29/arts/morey-amsterdam-comedian-and-joke-encyclopedia-dies.html

2000: U.S. premiere of “Requiem for a Dream” directed by Darren Aronofsky.

2002:The New York Times book section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest including Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by Harold Bloom.

2002(3rd of Cheshvan, 5775): Three Israelis – 41 year old Tamir Masad, 22 year old Lieutenant Matan Zagron and 32 year old Sgt.Maj. Amihud Hasid -- were killed, and 20 bystanders were wounded in a suicide bombing at a gas station near the settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. The two officers and soldier were killed while trying to prevent the terrorist from detonating the bomb. Hamas and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

2004: The Jerusalem Postreported that Israel's Knesset approved a plan for disengagement from Gaza. Those citing the Bible for opposing this decision should re-read the text. From David to David - from King David to David Ben Gurion- Jewish leaders have avoided taking control of Gaza. Furthermore, the wise King Solomon is reported in the Book of Kings to have given up 23 towns in Israelto Hiram. And I do not remember any Rabbi threatening to assassinate King Solomon over the issue.

2004: Under the executive leadership of Theo Epstein, the Red Sox win the World Championship for the first time since 1918.

2006: The Anti-Defamation League posthumously presented to Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV its "Courage to Care" award at the ADL’s national conference in Atlanta. As Vice Consul in Marseille, he helped to save 2,500 Jews from the Nazis as they swept through France at the start of WW II.

2006: The Jewish Daily Forward reported “that in a startling move, Primo Levi’s 1975 book The Periodic Table, was named ‘best science book ever written’ by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. The book — which unfolds in 21 autobiographical stories, each tied to an element of the periodic table — edged out works by DNA pioneer James Watson and even The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Tim Radford, onetime science editor of the Guardian newspaper, served as the book’s champion in the contest. ‘The science book is the ultimate in nonfiction,” he said. “This book pinions my awareness to the solidity of the world around me.’” A chemist by training, Levi survived the death camps and fought as a partisan. He passed away in 1987.

2006: “The Last Virgin”, “a bluntly satirical comedy about Jews and Muslims in the Middle East” is performed for the last time in Frankfurt, Germany. The play was written by Tuvia Tenenbom and Maria Lowry. Tenenbom is an Israeli and founder the Jewish Theatre in New York.

2007:New York’s Erez Safar celebrates the launch of his new website called Shemspeed (www.shemspeed.com) with a gala event in London.

2007: The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra performs Broadway show music from Evita, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Cats, Cabaret and more at the Performing Arts Center in Jerusalem

2007: An exhibition entitled “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend” opens at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

2007: The lawyers representing Mariane Pearl, the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, dropped “the lawsuit seeking damages against al-Qaida, a dozen reputed terrorists, and Pakistan's largest bank” citing personal reasons that “should have no bearing on the merits of the lawsuit.”

2008: In Washington, D.C., opening of the Ethics and War Reading and Discussion Series, an interfaith reading series co-sponsored by Theatre J that deals with questions concerning “ethical behavior” when a nation is at war.

2008: The winter session of the Knesset opens with President Shimon Peres calling for early elections since Kadima leader Livini cannot form a government.

2008: Time magazine includes a review of “All My Sons” by Jewish playwright Arthur Miller which is “now getting a revival on Broadway.”

2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Dara Horn reads from and discusses her novel "All Other Nights" (Jewish spies in the Civil War)

2009: At Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, a screening of "Paper Clips" in the Rathskeller. Paper Clips is the moving and inspiring documentary that captures how students from Whitwell, Tenn. responded to lessons about the Holocaust—with a promise to honor every lost soul by collecting one paper clip for each individual exterminated by the Nazis. The amazing result: a memorial railcar filled with 11 million paper clips.

2009:Iran-backed Hezbollah based in southern Lebanon fired a Katyusha rocket into Israel today.

2009:Today, a right-wing comedian was fined 10,000 euros by a French court for "public anti-Semitic insults" after he invited Robert Faurisson, an academic and Holocaust denier, on stage during a comedy show to receive an "award" from an actor dressed as a Jewish deportee. The Paris court told Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, a 43-year-old French stand-up comic, to pay a further 10,000 in damages and legal fees to organizations that sued him, French news agency AFP reported.

2010:Award winning authorRebecca Newberger Goldstein, a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, is scheduled to deliver The Gerald L. Bernstein Memorial Lecture entitled “36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction” on the closing night of the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival

2010:Comedian Jon Stewart is the most influential man of 2010, according to a poll released today by AskMen.com, an American online magazine. Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, was in third places.

2010:The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid (IsraAID) announced on today that it will send a team to Haiti, despite the current cholera outbreak.

2011: Robert Lipsyte and John Bloom are scheduled to take part in “Telling It Like It Is; Jews, Sports and Writing,” a panel discussion that is part of The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2011:Dr. Hasia Diner the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University, and founder and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Between History and Memory: Rethinking the American Jewish Past” in Washington, D.C.

2011:Ilan Grapel, an American-Israeli citizen jailed in Cairo on suspicion of espionage for over four months, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel today after he was released. (As reported by Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya)

2011 The Israel Air Force targeted three centers of terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip and a weapons storage site in the South early this morning, IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement. The attacks hit their precise targets and all planes returned safely to base. The activity came

2011:As the death toll in the deadly earthquake in eastern Turkey rose today, an Israeli cargo plane landed in Ankara, carrying humanitarian aid that Turkish officials at first had declined to accept. The Israeli plane carried seven prefabricated houses and other supplies.

2011(29^th of Tishrei, 5772): Eighty-five year old Allen Mandelbaum, the award winning translator of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/arts/allen-mandelbaum-translator-of-divine-comedy-dies-at-85.html

2012: “Youth movements and social NGOs are scheduled to gather in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square for an alternative ceremony to honor the anniversary of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination” this evening. (As reported by Lahav Harkov)

2012: Israeli cellist Elad Kabilio is scheduled to perform at the Joyce Theatre in NYC.

2012: The Edent-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present “Musica Antiqua” featuring Zohar Shefi on the harpsichord and Drora Bruck on the recorder.

2012: Andras Schiff is scheduled to to play Book 1 of “Well-Tempered Clavier” at the 92^nd Street Y.

2012(11^th of Cheshvan): On the Hebrew calendar, the Yahrzeit of Rachel which is normally observed by pilgrimages to her tomb. Since the event fell on Shabbat, the observant made their pilgrimages on the 25^th.

2012: Seventeen year-old Naomi Cohen won gold today at the 2012 RS:X Youth World Windsurfing Championships in Taiwan. Several other Israeli participated in today’s competition, with Shahar Tibi finishing fifth, Ofri Givati 10th, Noga Geller 12th and Adi Cohen in 18th place, according to Ynet. (As reported by Yoel Goldman)

2012: “Israeli immigrant’s joyful art products designed to be worn, used” published today highlights the life and artistic creations of Giora Neta an Israeli living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

http://thegazette.com/2012/10/27/israeli-immigrants-joyful-art-products-designed-to-be-worn-used/

2012: An American monitoring group said today that satellite images of the aftermath of the explosion on October 24^that a Sudanese weapons factory suggested the site was hit by an airstrike.

2012: An estimated 20,000 Israelis gathered tonight in Tel Aviv to commemorate the 17th anniversary of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination at the square where he was killed in 1995, and which was subsequently renamed in his honor.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality by Edward Frenkel.

2013: Dr. Elliot Lefkovitz is scheduled to moderate a panel discussion among several survivors of the Kindertransport at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

2013: Chicago Premiere of “Signs of Life” a musical which is “based on the true story of Terezin” comes to an end.

2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host its Guardain-Benefactor Luncheon featuring Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff who will speak on the commemoration of the 30^th anniversary of the Bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut.

2013: In New Orleans, Beth Israel, the Orthodox Synagogue that survived Hurricane Katrina, is scheduled to host its annual fundraiser.

2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet today unanimously approved the appointment of Karnit Flug as the first female governor of the Bank of Israel (As reported by Moti Bossok)

2013(23^rdof Cheshvan, 5774): Eighty-one year old Dr.Leonard Herzenberg who “created a device that can pick out individual cells from a mass of trillions of them and then capture, sort and count them so they can be analyzed and used to fight disease” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/us/leonard-herzenberg-immunologist-who-revolutionized-research-dies-at-81.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

2013(23^rdof Cheshvan, 5774): Seventy-one year old rock and roll innovator and icon Lou Reed passed away today.

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Jewish-rock-star-Lou-Reed-passes-away-at-age-71-329871

2013: Daylight Saving Time will switch to Standard Time in the early hours of Sunday morning marking Israel's transition to the winter clock.

2013: Two mortar shells were fired from Gaza into the Eshkol region in the western Negev.

2014: The American Sephardi Federation and the Center for Jewish History are scheduled to honor the legacy of Daniel Pearl with a special concert “Building Bridges: From Bene Beraq to Baghdad.

2014: At the Gerard Behar Theatre the all-male religious dancers of the Ka’et Ensemble are scheduled to perform at the Heaven and Earth Festival starting today.

2014: “The Garden of Eden” and “Life Sentences” are scheduled to be shown at the Israeli Film Festival hosted by the Tulane University Jewish Studies Department chaired by Dr. Brian Horowitz.

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host Rabbi Deborah Prinz speaking about “Jews on the Chocolate Trail.”

2014: Mathew Klickstein, author of Slimed: An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age is the feature at the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.

2014: PuppetCinema which “began in 2009 as an experiment in Israel” is scheduled to open with Zvi Sahar in New York.

2014: Indirect talks between Hamas and Israel which were scheduled to resume today will not take place because Egypt has closed its border to the Hamas delegation following a deadly terror attack in Sinai for which the Egyptians hold Hamas responsible. (As reported by Elhanan Miller)

1469: Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. Their marriage led to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain. This rapacious duo would expel the Jews in 1492. While cloaking themselves in the Cross, they filled their pockets with stolen Jewish wealth.

1756: Birthdate of Isaac Abraham Euchel, the native of Copenhagen and nephew of Rabbi Masos Rintel who was one of the founders of the Haskalah movement.

1762(30th of Tishrei, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1768: Birthdate of Israel Jacobson, the native of Halberstadt Germany who was a sccessful businessman, philanthropist and one of the founders of the Reform Movement

1796(15th of Tishrei, 5557): Sukkoth celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1915: Birthdate of Arthur Miller. Two of this American playwright’s noted works were “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible.” His other claim to fame was his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe conversion to Judaism was tied to her relationship with Miller.

1916: Eighteen year old Mischa Levitz, famed Russian born concert pianist made his American debut in New York, at Aeolian Hall

1916: Cartoonist Rube Goldberg married Irma Seeman after which they set up housekeep at 98 Central Park West in New York City where they gave birth to two sons, Thomas and George.

1919: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) created. RCA and NBC were inextricably linked with David Sarnoff.

1919: Birthdate of Russian physicist Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov

1920: Today South Jersey's first Conservative congregation was officially "organized" and elected Morris Handle as Beth El's first President.

1920: Birthdate of Betty Sarah Wouk, of blessed memory. Born Betty Brown in Grangeville, Idaho, this graduate of USC married Herman Wouk, the great American-Jewish novelist, in 1945. Wouk’s service on the USS Zane gave him two great gifts, Mrs. Wouk and the material for the “.Caine Mutiny.”

1921(15th of Tishrei, 5682): Sukkoth

1923: Birthdate of Isaac Saba Raffoul, “a Mexican businessman.”

1924: The Ku Klux Klan staged its second march in less than six months in Las Vagas, Nevada but found little support for its message of hating Catholics and Jews.

1927(21st of Tishrei, 5688): Hoshanah Rabah

1927: Birthdate of guitarist Barney Kessel.

1930:In Biddeford, ME, Samuel and Leah Osher gave birth to Marion Osher, the future wife of Hebert Sandler her partner in creating Golden West Financial.

1967: Barbra Streisand starred in "Belle of 14th Street" a special on CBS television.

1973: The “Battle of the Chinese Farms” comes to an end when an Egyptian counter-attack fails to dislodge Israeli troops leaving the bridgehead across the Suez Canal intact. The battle, which began on October 15th was one of the bloodiest and costliest of the war.

1984(21st of Tishrei, 5745): Hoshanah Rabah

1989: An army inquiry completed today found that a Syrian MIG-23 fighter-bomber was able to penetrate Israeli airspace unchallenged last week because of an error by the air defense officer on duty at the time.

1990: Publication of William Steig’s Shrek! a picture book for children about a young ogre whose name is derived from the Yiddish work for “fear” or “fright.”

1997(16th of Tishrei, 5758): Second day of Sukkoth

1997(16th of Tishrei, 5758): Ninety-six year old character actor Ben Welden passed away today.

1998: A Palestinian conducted a grenade assault on the Beershebabus terminal, wounding 67 Israelis, including 24 soldiers.

681: The revised laws adopted by the Twelfth Council of Toledo including 28 anti-Jewish measures among which was forbidding converts to Christianity from returning to Judaism went into effect today.

1959: In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This is yet another example of Jewish philanthropy for the civil society.

1959: U.S. premiere of “A Bucket of Blood” a satire with music by composer and cellist Fred Katz.

1961: Author James Michener purchases a painting by Morris Louis, the great Jewish Washington abstractionist whom kingmaker-critics would anoint as the greatest painter since Jackson Pollock.

1962(23 of Tishrei, 5723): Simcaht Torah

1965: Helen Schucman commits the first lines of A Course in Miracles to paper. Dr. Helen Schucman was a Jewish research psychologist who was a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University

196717th of Tishrei, 5728): Third Day of Sukkot

1967: First broadcast of “Twice a Fortnight” co-starring Abba Eban’s nephew Jonathan Lynn.

1976: Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature

1979: Birthdate of Israeli jazz guitarist and composer Assaf Kehati.

1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff arrived in Lebanon to lead a memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert, an American Jewish Marine killed by Arab sniper fire

1983: U.S. premiere of “The Dead Zone” an horror film directed by David Cronenberg.

1986: During “Operation Wrath of God” Munzer Abu Ghazala, a senior PLO official and member of the Palestinian National Council, was killed by a bomb as he drove through a suburb of Athens

1987: Former Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.

2000(22nd of Tishrei, 5761): Shemini Atzere

1727: Coronation of George II who was so moved when he saw Charles Macklin’s portrayal of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice (of which a bystander said “This is the Jew/That Shakespeare Drew”” the English king “was so moved he could not sleep”

1792: French troops take Frankfurt and the tri-color floats above the arsenal located at the north gate to the ghetto. Oddly enough, the Jews of Frankfurt respond as “Prussian patriots” and cheered when the French were to leave a few weeks later.

1799(23rd of Tishrei, 5560): Last Simchat Torah of the 18th century.

1804: Birthdate of Palestinian geographer Joseph Schwarz.

1806: In London,Nathan Mayer Rothschild married Hannah Barnet-Cohen the daughter of Lydia and Levi-Barent Cohen.

1832: In Prussia, Mr. and Mrs. Heinrich Damrosch gave birth to German American musician and conductor Leopold Damrosch “who was baptized a Lutheran when marrying his wife, former opera singer Helene von Heimburg.”

1839: Birthdate of Leon Jacob Wertheim the Amsterdam born banker and author who was a friend of the French poet Lamartine

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Avinoam Yellin, the senior inspector of education and a prominent Jewish leader, was shot and seriously injured by an Arab terrorist lying in wait at the entrance to his office.

1937: Warm tributes were paid to the memory of Felix Warburg tonight at a dinner given by the Joint Distribution Committee of which he was an honorary chairman.

1952: The complete “Jewish Torah” was published in English for the first time. A collection of oral and written commentary (dating 200 BC to AD 500) on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah comprises the basic religious code of Judaism.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from London that Eliahu Elath, accompanied by eight senior members of his staff, presented Queen Elizabeth II with his credentials as the first Israeli ambassador to the Court of St. James.

1961(12th of Cheshvan, 5722): Eighty-two year old film executive Joseph M. Schenck whose interest in young starlets spanned an era from Norma Talmadge to Marilyn Monroe passed away today

1966(8th of Chesvan): Eighty-two year old Michael Noyk, the Lithuanian born solicitor and Irish Republic leader passed away today in London. For more see http://books.google.com/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&lpg=PA72&vq=noyk&pg=PA72#v=snippet&q=noyk&f=false

1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff remained in Beirut after yesterday’s memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert instead of flying back to Italy because it was Shabbat

1984: Abd Rabbo murdered Ron Levy and Revital Seri today when he “came upon the two hiking south of Jerusalem, tied them up at gunpoint, placed bags over their heads and shot them dead.” (As reported by Elhanan Miller)

1986: Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian born physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate passed away. He was an anti-fascist who helped his Jewish friends escape from Hungary.

1989(23rd of Tishrei, 5750): Simchat Torah

1989: The funeral of Israeli journalist Dahn Ben-Amotz was held today.

1992: “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a play by Wendy Wasserstein that focuses on three Jewish-American sisters and their lives “premiered off-Broadway in a Lincoln Center Theater production at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater.”

1993: U.S premiere of “Twenty Bucks” with a script by Leslie and Endre Bohem, co-starring David Schwimmer and photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki.

1999: U.S. premiere of “One Day in September” an Academy Award winning documentary about the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

2000(23rd of Tishrei, 5761): Simchat Torah

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of two books by Jewish authors: The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation by Howard Kurtz and Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

2001: Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad “was able to get a loan at relatively high rate from the Bank Leumi” to cover part of the 1.5 million NIS that his father had had to return to donors.

2002: The Anaheim Angels defeated the Giants in the third game of the World Series. Scott Schoeneweis, whose mother was Jewish, pitched the final two innings of a 10-4 Angel victory -- he allowed no runs, struck out two, and gave up only one hit. The Angels went on to win the series in seven games

2002: Domazlice -- An old Jewish cemetery was desecrated in a southwestern Czech town. Five tombstones were toppled at the cemetery in Domazlice, 94 miles southwest of Prague, and five copper lanterns stolen. Copper plaques with Hebrew inscriptions were removed from two tombstones

2002:At least 14 Israelis were killed and more than 45 injured when an explosives-laden sport utility vehicle driven by a Palestinian suicide bomber rammed a bus near Hadera in northern Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

1853:23rd of Tishrei, 5614):Simchat Torah

OR

1872(23rd of Tishrei, 5633): Simchat Torah

1877: It was reported today that New Yorker Abraham S. Isaacs, an editor of the Jewish Messenger, plans to publish a work on Hebrew literature.

1877: It was reported today that a volume written by Helen Zimmern on the life and works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing will be published in London this fall. Lessing was the close friend of Moses Mendelssohn and wrote “Nathan the Wise.”

1879: The Yuma Arizona Sentinel reported today that “Pinafore Company” bound for Tucson that included Pauline Markham had stopped in Yuma, AZ.

1879: It was reported today the Senate in Bucharest has passed a bill that would revise the Romanian Constitution to allow for the emancipation of the Jews by a large majority.

1882: In Vienna, along with Moses Schnirer, Ruben Bierer and Peretz Smolenskin, Nathan Birnbaum founded “Kadima” the Zionist student association whose future members would include Sigmund Freud, Isidor Schalit and Fritz Löhner-Beda.

1882: A review published today of “Mordecai Lyons” by Edward Harrigan decried it is a “another ‘Jew play’” which reminds us that “when the Jew is not honestly reproduced that he should not be reproduced at all.”

1884:The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will hold a Montefiore centenary celebration in Chickering Hall this evening starting at 8 o’clock.

1884: In New York City, Jess Seligman delivered the opening remarks at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association “ Montefiore Centenary Celebration” which the Anglo-Jewish leader’s one hundredth birthday

1884: Baltimore’s Lloyd Street Synagogue was the scene of special ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore

1796(15^th of Tishrei, 5557): Sukkoth celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.

1921(15^th of Tishrei, 5682): Sukkoth

1927(21^st of Tishrei, 5688): Hoshanah Rabah

1967: Barbra Streisand starred in "Belle of
14th Street
" a special on CBS television.

1973: The “Battle of the Chinese Farms” comes to an end when an Egyptian counter-attack fails to dislodge Israeli troops leaving the bridgehead across the Suez Canal intact. The battle, which began on October 15^th was one of the bloodiest and costliest of the war.

1997(16^th of Tishrei, 5758): Second day of Sukkoth

1997(16^th of Tishrei, 5758): Ninety-six year old character actor Ben Welden passed away today.

2000(22^nd of Tishrei, 5761): Shemini Atzere

1799(23^rd of Tishrei, 5560): Last Simchat Torah of the 18^th century.

1961(12^th of Cheshvan, 5722): Eighty-two year old film executive Joseph M. Schenck whose interest in young starlets spanned an era from Norma Talmadge to Marilyn Monroe passed away today

1966(8^th of Chesvan): Eighty-two year old Michael Noyk, the Lithuanian born solicitor and Irish Republic leader passed away today in London. For more see http://books.google.com/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&lpg=PA72&vq=noyk&pg=PA72#v=snippet&q=noyk&f=false

1989(23^rd of Tishrei, 5750): Simchat Torah

2000(23^rd of Tishrei, 5761): Simchat Torah