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This Day, March 22, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 22

 

1144: This date marks the first ritual murder libel which took place in in Norwich, England. It set the pattern for subsequent accusations that would be made into the 20th century all across Europe.. A 12 year old boy, William, was found dead on Easter Eve, and the Jews were accused of killing him in a mock crucifixion. They were not, however, accused of using his blood for the making of matzos, although this would become a standard feature of later libels. It was later presumed by scholars that the boy died during a cataleptic fit or else he was killed by a sexual pervert. After Easter, a synod convened and summoned the Jews to the Church court. The Jews refused on the grounds that only the king had jurisdiction over them and they feared that they would be subjected to "trial by ordeal." William was regarded as a martyred saint and a shrine was erected in his memory. In spite of this episode, there was no immediate violence against the Jews. Over the years, despite denunciations by various popes, ritual murder libels continued. Possession of a saint's shrine bestowed great economic benefits on a town because sacred relics drew pilgrims who spent money on offerings, board, and lodging. For bones to be considered sacred relics they had to be killed by a heretic (i.e. a Jew). Such charges were used as an excuse to murder Jews as late as 1900.

 

1190: In England, King Richard angered by the riots and the loss of crown property ( since the Jews belonged to the crown) renewed a general charter in favor of the Jews first issued by Henry II. His Chancellor Longchamp instituted heavy fines against the Pudsey and Percy families thus at the same time enriching the treasury and hurting his political opponents. Only three people who were also accused of destroying Christian property were executed

 

1349: The townspeople of Fulda Germany massacred the Jews because they blamed them for the Black Death.

 

1369: In France, Charles V sought to force Jews to attend church services by issuing an order that included a penalty for defiance. Unless they complied "the Jews might suffer great bodily harm".

 

1457: The Gutenberg Bible became the first printed book. The printing revolution would soon reach the world of Jewish literature. Thanks to Gutenberg's remarkable invention, books would soon be much more readily available to the People of the Book.

 

1503: After 8 years of exile, Jews are allowed to return to Lithuania

 

1510: The Jews were expelled from Colmar Germany. Jews had been living in this town in Upper Alsac for at least three centuries prior to their expulsion for which no reason is given.

 

1564: In Mantua, Italy, David Provensalo and his son Abraham asked the Jewish notables to help him create a Jewish College. The idea was to allow Jews to learn languages and science while also receiving a “Jewish education.” Although they did establish a Talmudic academy they were opposed by the local Church and did not succeed in opening the College.

 

1609: In Mexico, “a bailiff of the Holy Office carried a statue of Jorge de Almeida in a procession and the bailiff tied the effigy to a stake” and publicly burned it.  Almeda was the wife of Donna Lenor “a Jewess” and escaped the Inquisition when he was charged with Judaizing so he was tried in absentia which meant that his effigy could not suffer auto de fe.

 

1749: “Solomon,” an oratorio by George Handel based on the biblical stories about King Solomon had its final performance at the Theatre Royal in London.

 

1797: Birthdate of German-Jewish jurist Eduard Gans.

 

1797: Birthdate of Kaiser Wilhelm I German whose reign lasted from 1871 1888. The Prussian monarch became the first ruler over a united Germany. In 1869, the emancipation process for the Jews of Germany was completed. “All still existing limitations of the…civil rights which are rooted in differences of religious faith are hereby annulled.” Jews rose rapidly during his reign. Guided by Chancellor Bismarck, the German government actually became champion of the less fortunate Jews living to the East.

 

1799(15th of Adar II, 5559): Shushan Purim

 

 

1814: In Dresden, Naftali and Bertha Nachod gave birth to “German banker and philanthropist Jacob Nachod.

 

1817: In Charleston, SC, David Nunes Carvalho and Sarah Carvalho gave birth to Emanuel Nunes Carvalho

 

 

1827: Birthdate of William Lafayette Strong, the last Mayor of New York City elected prior to its modern consolidation. As befitted a Mayor of New York, Strong spoke positively of his Jewish constituents of whom he said, “The Jews take care their own.  They are taught to be self-supporting.” He expressed the view that while he had seen many applications for public assistance, he did not “one single application came from a Hebrew.”

 

1818(14thof Adar II, 5578): Purim

 

1832: German writer J W Goethe passed away at the age of 82. The creator of Fuast admitted to being ant-Semite from his earliest days. His attitude towards Jews changed when he came to realize that they were the same people who had authored the Bible, especially the Songs of Songs, a book for which he had a special affection. While Goethe could admire the Jews from an historic point of view he was an opponent of Jewish emancipation in the Fatherland. Goethe was not the first or the last intellectual who loved Jews, so long as they were dead Jews.

 

1833(2ndof Nisan, 5593): Thirty-two year old poet Michael Beer, the brother of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and astronomer Wilhelm Beer, passed away today.

 

1845: Birthdate of Father Theodor Kohn whose appoint as Archbishop of Olomouc drew a great deal of opposition because his grandfather was born Jewish.

 

1848: Birthdate of German historian Harry Breslau under whose chairmanship “the Historical Commission for the History of the Jews in Germany was founded by the Union of German-Jewish Congregations.”

 

1853: Birthdate of Isidor Kaufman, the Hungarian born painter whose works include “Portrait of a Yeshiva Boy” and “Day of Atonement”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaufmann_Day_of_Atonement.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isidor_Kaufmann_Portrait_of_a_Yeshiva_Boy.jpg

 

1861: Jacob and Amalia Freud gave birth to Maria “Mitzi” Freud

 

 

1862: During the American Civil War, as Union forces under the command of General McClellan moved up the peninsula in an attempt to take the Rebel capital of Richmond, an articled entitled "Clippings From Rebel Papers” Conditions of Richmond” published today reported that only soldiers returning to their regiments were being issued permits to leave the city. At the same time “The Jews have packed up their goods, and gold and silver ornaments, and are in great tribulation and ferment that their flight has been stopped.”

 

1864: In Albany, NY, the Assembly passed a bill “authorizing the New-York City authorities to convey to the Hebrew Benevolent Society certain real estate.”

 

1864(14th of Adar II, 5624): Purim

 

1864: “The Jewish festival of Purim will be celebrated this evening, by a grand, fancy dress ball, at the Academy of Music. It is recognized as one of the most important of Jewish festivals, as it commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from the tyranny of Haman, who was prime minister to King Ahasuerus. The arrangements for the ball are very extensive, and the ornaments appropriate and beautiful. But one thousand tickets have been issued, and these only to be obtained by personal introduction to a member of the committee, the party introducing being held strictly accountable for the character and conduct of the persons introduced. With such strict rules and such liberal preparations, the ball cannot fail to be one of the best of the season.”

 

1868: Birthdate of Vilmos Vázsonyi the Hungarian political leader who served as Minister of Justice and was beaten to death by “a notorious anti-Semite.”

 

1873: It was reported today that of 11,859 people committed to New York’s public lunatic asylums since 1847, 402 of them were Jews.

 

1874; The Young Men's Hebrew Association was founded in New York City. It was the first of several such organizations found in cities across the United States intended to provide for the “mental, moral, social, and physical improvement of Jewish young men.” In part the YMHA was a Jewish response to the YMCA.

 

1875: Sixty-two year old Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman, the American theatrical manager known as H.L. Bateman passed away. Bateman was responsible for bringing Henry Irving so that he could star in The Bells, the play based on “Le Juif Polonias” (The Polish Jew)




1875: Samuel Alexander, the famed Australian-born British philosopher who was the first Jewish fellow of an Oxbridge college “matriculated at the University of Melbourne where he entered an arts course.

1875: It was reported today that the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York had raised $17,455.08 in the past year, spent $13,345.96 leaving a balance of $4,109.12.

 

1877: Albert von Rothschild and Baroness Bettina Caroline de Rothschild gave birth to their first child, Georg Anselm Alphonse.

 

1871: In Frankfurt Flora Goldschmidt married  Emil Schwarzschild the son of Emanuel Schwarzschild and Rahel Fraenkel

 

1883(13th of Adar II, 5643): Fast of Esther

 

1883: In New York City, Rudolph and Virginia (Kohlberg) Sampter gave birth to Jessie Ethel Sampter “poet, Zionist thinker and educator, social reformer, and pacifist” who “was a member of the inner circle of Henrietta Szold’s female friends in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s.” (As reported by Baila R. Shargel)

 

1885: Birthdate of Reb Aryeh Levin.

 

1887: Birthdate Chico [Leonard] Marx, one of the famous Marx Brothers.

 

 

1890: The will of Solomon Adler was filed for probate today.

 

1890: Harold Nathan will deliver a lecture tonight on “The Use of a Library” at the downtown branch of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. (The public libraries of the United States were “the poor man’s university, especially for the immigrant population that came to the United States at the turn of the century.)

 

1890: Colonel Jacob E. Bloom, a New York attorney “is suing James M. Seymour and Francis J. Patton to establish an interest in Patten’s electrical inventions and to recover $200,000. (Bloom would serve as Superintendent of the Baron de Hirsch Industrial School)



 

1891: It was reported today that the Jews were the first to feel the effects of the resurgence of “semi-savage orthodoxy throughout the Muscovite Empire” although they no longer have a monopoly “on the pains of persecution” since the Protestants are now under government surveillance.

 

1891: It was reported today that “the proposal of Baron Hirsch to” settle 300,000 Russian Jews in Argentina, “which was at first very favorably received by the government” has now been rejected as a result of objections “stirred up in the press.”  The government of Uruguay has also rejected the proposal.

 

1892: The creditors of the Jewish banker J.E. Guenzburg met in St. Petersburg today.

 

1892: The New York City Health Department received information today that the SS Massilia, the ship that had brought a large number of Jewish immigrants infected with typhus on its last trip to New York was on its way back to the city with another load of immigrants.

 



1893: Thousands of people gathered outside of the Reichstag waiting to hear the details of Hermann Ahlwardt’s proof that while Bismarck was Chancellor “fraudulent contracts” had been entered to with Jewish financiers resulting in “the loss of vast sums of money belonging to the State” Ahlwardt was a high school president, who ironically, had been extricated from his financial problems by Jewish friends before turning on them to pursue a career as an anti-Semitic agitator.

 

1893: Dr. Louis Fischer will deliver a lecture “Cholera – What It Is and How To Cure It” at the Hebrew Institute.

 

1893: Arabs attack Jews at Rehovot

 

1893: Senda Berenson, the "Mother of Women's Basketball", officiated at the first women's basketball game at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Born in Lithuania and raised in Boston, Berenson was weak and delicate as a child. An athletic career would have seemed unlikely for the woman whose poor health rendered her unable to complete her training at the Boston Conservatory of Music. But in 1890, she entered the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, in a bid to improve her strength and health. There, she trained in anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, and was hired by Smith College upon her graduation in 1892. Berenson, the director of the physical education department at Smith, first heard about a new game called "Basket Ball" soon after her arrival in Northampton. Invented as a class exercise for boys, the game — like most team sports — was considered too strenuous for girls, who were instead encouraged to participate in individual sports like swimming, archery, and horseback riding. Berenson observed the game being played in Springfield, and met its inventor, Dr. James Naismith, who encouraged her to adopt the game as exercise for her female students. At the first basketball game on March 22, 1893 (some sources cite March 21), Smith freshmen were pitted against Smith sophomores, with no male spectators allowed. With rules intended to avoid the roughness of the men's game, the new game became a hit, and soon swept the country. By 1895, there were hundreds of women's basketball teams, and these teams helped open the door to other team sports programs for women. Berenson wrote the first official rulebook for women's college basketball, as well as a number of articles on the new sport. She continued to edit the rules until the 1916-17 season, and many of the rules she developed remained standard until the 1980s. Berenson died in 1954. Over thirty years later, in 1985, she was the first woman to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA.

 

1894(14thof Adar II, 5654): Purim

 

1895: The will of the late Dr. Bernard Grunhut was filed for probate following the end of the challenge brought by the two children of the descendant. The judge’s ruling that enough evidence had been presented that their father’s marriage was valid, “even if he was not of sound mind” at the time of the ceremony.  This means that the Hebrew Benevolent Society an Mount Sinai Hospital will each receive bequests of $25,000 with the widow receiving the residual of the estate with the exception of $25,000 that had been bequeathed to a baby that reportedly died fifteen days after it was born.

 

1896: An article entitled “Easter Cookery” published in the New York Times includes a description of Chad Gad Ya, “The Kid of Passover,” which it compares to “The House That Jack Built.”

 

1896: Dr. Gustav Gottheil delivered the second in a series of sermons on “What Is a Christian Nation” at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.

 

1896: In Vienna, Erna (née Weinstein) and stage (and later motion picture) actor Rudolph Schildkraut to American actor Joseph Schildkraut.

 

1897: Rabbi Ignatz Grossman, who passed away two days ago in New York, will be buried in Detroit, Michigan where his son Dr. Louis Grossman serves as a rabbi.  Two of his other sons, Julius and Rudolph, are also rabbis while his fourth son Adolph is a businessman in Chicago.

 

1897: “The Austrian Elections” published today described the various factions competing for seats in the Reichsrath that meets in Vienna including “the anti-Semites, the Jews baiters of Vienna and Lower Austria” who are “closely connected with the Clericals.”

 

1897: Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Schiff were unable to attend the Purim Ball at the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids because they were in Frankfort-on-the-Main.  Schiff is President of the of the Montefiore Home and he sent a telegram from Germany expressing his regrets.

 

1897: “Home For Aged Hebrews” published today included a history of the organization which “is an outgrowth of the B’nai Jeshurun Ladies’ Benevolent Society.” In 1870, a young men’s organization, the Benevolent, Dramatic and Musical Association, gave the women $3,500 as seed money and the home was incorporated in 1872. The home was designed to serve those over the age of sixty who are “entirely dependent on themselves for support and unable to support themselves.

 

1897: Dr. S.N. Leo is the director of the pharmacy at the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York.

 

1898: It was reported today that 300 children from the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society and the New York Orphan Asylum are going to attend the upcoming show at the Harlem Music Hall.

 

1899: Rabbi Gottheil is among the speakers scheduled to address a meeting of workers at the Hebrew

Institute

 

1899: The “liberal synagogue” was dedicated in Cologne.

 

 

1903: Birthdate Levi Arthur Olan, the Ukranian native who served Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas from 1949 to 1970.

 

1904: Birthdate of Isaac Goldberg, the native of Poland, who gained fame as “Itche Goldberg, a champion of Yiddish who wrote and edited and taught his beloved language in the face of all those who said keeping Yiddish alive was a lost cause.” (As reported by Ari L. Goodman)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/obituaries/03goldberg.html

 

 

1909: Birthdate of Brooklynite Nathan Rosen, the MIT graduate who gained fame as an American-Israeli physicist working with Albert Einstein.  Among other things he is known for the “The Einstein–Rosen Bridge, later named the wormhole, which was a theory of Nathan Rosen.”  The only person I know who understands any of this is Dr. Joe Rosen, the son of Nathan Rosen, a prominent physicist in his own right and a son of which his father would be proud.

 

1912: Birthdate of Eliyanu Kitov the native of Poland who made Aliyah in 1936 and in 1954 established Aleph Institute Publications. His works include Is U’Veito which was translated into English as A Jew and his Home by Rabbi Nachman Bulman the New York born son of Rabbi Meir and Etil Bulman

 

1912(4thof Nisan, 5672): Sixty-three year old Mark Arnheim, a “clothing merchant” in New York passed away today.

 

1912: Dedication ceremonies for Anshe Chesed’s new temple on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio began.

 

1913: Louis-Lucien Klotz completed his service as Minister of Finance.

 

1913: Louis-Lucien Klotz began serving as Minster of the Interior.

 

1914: The United Synagogues of America, an organization of Conservative Congregations, held its second annual convention in New York City. During his address to the convention, Professor Solomon Schechter, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, called for worship services to be conducted in Hebrew with English replacing Yiddish as the language in which the sermons were to be given. Schechter also refused to serve another term as President of the organization and Dr. Cyrus Adler of Dropsie College was elected to serve in his place. Among the other highlights of the convention was a presentation by Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, Chairman of the Education Committee in which he outline an aggressive program to upgrade and modern the Jewish educational opportunities in a manner consistent with the challenges of modern day America.



1915: It was reported today that Just Gustave Hartman of the Municipal Court, President of the Israel Orphan Asylum has expressed “some objections” to plans for building a second home for Jewish orphans in the Bronx sponsored by the Hebrew National Orphan Asylum.

 

1915: It was reported today that “more than 7,000 persons come to the building housing the Educational Alliance daily” most of whom come to study and that the Alliance spends “upward of $110,000 annually” to support its educational work.

 

1915(7th of Nisan, 5675): Fifty-five year old “Professor H.L. Sabsovich, General Agent of the Baron De Hirsh Fund and the first mayor of the Jewish Agricultural Colony at Woodbine, NJ” who was well known for his social work among the Jews passed away tonight in New York. A native of Russia, where he gained famed as a chemists and “manager of estates,” he organized the Committee of Safety during the Pogrom of 1881 and help found the Society of Am Olam. He came to the United States in 1888 and worked as an agricultural chemist for Colorado State before joining the Woodbine Colony and joing the Baron de Hirsch Fund.






1915: The Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association issued an appeal to the New York Jewish community asking that its members open their homes to serviceman for the first Seder on March 29 and the second Seder on March 30. According to the Association, “there are 300” Jewish serviceman in the New York area “who have no friends or relatives here.” The Association will provide lodgings at a local hotel and the servicemen will attend services at the synagogue or temple of their choice. Those who cannot offer hospitality are urged to send a contribution to suppot the groups efforts toe Joseph S. Marcus, the association’s treasurer.

 

1915: BritishLieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson backed byMajor-General Alexander Godley was appointed commander of the force he was to recruit, with Captain Trumpeldor as Second-in-Command after which they left Cairo for Alexandria where there was a large Jewish refugee community.

 

1915: The majority of the Palestine Refugees' Committee under the encouragement of Joseph Trompledor and Vladimir Jabotinsky endorsed a resolution calling for the formation of a “Jewish Legion" and propose to England its utilization in Palestine. Within a few days about 500 enlisted.

 

 

 

1916: During on World War I, on the Western Front, the first British tree observation post was put up today.  The camouflages for these posts was developed and produced by a unit under the command of Lt. Col. Solomon Joseph Solomon, the artist who had been hand-picked by the British General Staff to fill this role.

 

1920: Birthdate of actor Werner Klemperer who played Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.

 

1922: In Manhattan, “Morris Neuman and the former Ida Mitnistky gave birth to Charlotte Sandra Neuman who gained fame as “Charlotte Spiegel, a civic leader and Democratic politician from the Lower East Side who created New York’s pioneering and lifesaving window guard program in the 1970s.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/nyregion/charlotte-spiegel-politician-who-safeguarded-new-yorks-windows-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

 

 

1923(5th of Nisan, 5683): Max Nordau, early Zionist leader, passed away at the age of 73. Born in 1849 in the city that would later be known as Budapest, Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire), Nordau’s life followed a conventional pattern for many Jews of his time and social class. Raised with a traditional Jewish background, he drifted away from Judaism finding fame and fortune as a writer and physician. As the 19th century came to a close, Nordau was alarmed by the rise of anti-Semitism and became and early supporter of another Austrian Jew, Theodore Herzl. When Herzl died, Nordau was asked to take his place. He declined offering to serve as an advisor to David Wolffsohn. Nordau drifted away from the formal organization as Zionism changed from Herzl's grand political approach to a more practical approach. After World War I, Nordau advocated the immediate immigration of half a million Jews to Palestine. Nobody heeded his advice. He died in Paris, far from the limelight, an almost forgotten figure who had believed in the cause of the Jewish state when most said it was an impractical dream or the scheme of lunatics.

 

1923: In Strasbourg, France “Ann Werzberg and Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher” gave birth to Marcel Mangel, who gained fame as mime Marcel Marceau. After having seen Charlie Chaplin, he became interested in acting. At 15, his Jewish family was forced to flee their home as France entered the Second World War. He later joined Charles De Gaulle’s Free French Forces and, because of his excellent English, worked as a liaison officer with General Patton's army. He began studying acting at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris in 1946.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/24/local/me-marceau24

 

 

1924: Birthdate of Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today.

 

1928(1st of Nisan, 5688): Rosh Chodesh

 

1929: The month long celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv began with a Purim Carnival.

 

1930: Birthdate of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Born in New York City, the son of a successful dress manufacturer, Sondheim's childhood was comfortably upper-middle class. He was a precocious child: he skipped kindergarten, began reading the New York Times in the first grade, and at ten began studying lyric writing with Oscar Hammerstein, who was a family friend. Sondheim went on to compose his own music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Follies (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979) and Sunday in the Park with George (1984)

 

1931: Birthdate of actor William Shatner, Captain Kirk on Star Trek.

 

1931: Moghannam Elias Moghannam, a member of the Palestine Arab Executive declared that “it was totally untrue that certain Arab politicians had met Jewish representatives I Palestine into to establish the preliminary basis of a peace parley.” The Arab leader was especially critical of any Arab who was willing to meet with Dr. Chaim Weizmann who had arrived in Tel Aviv in an attempt to reach a modus Vivendi that would restore peace to Palestine.

 

1931: “Marshall Letter Won $500,000 Gift” tells the hitherto unknown story of how a letter from Louis Marshall to Julius Rosenwald resulted in the latter’s decision to make a major donation to the Jewish Theological Seminary.

 

1932: In Germany, premiere of “Peter Voss, Thief of Millions” with a script co-authored by Bruno Frank and directed by Ewald André Dupont for whom this would his penultimate film in Germany before being forced to flee due to the rise of the Nazis even though he was not Jewish

 

1933: “The Concentration Camp at Dachau was opened today with the arrival of about 200 prisoners from Stadelheim Prison in Munich and the Landsberg fortress.”  According to the official press statement (yes the Nazis issued a press release for this) on March 22, “Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 people. 'All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as soon as they are released.”

 

1935: In Camden, NJ, Rabbi Philip Lipis addressed Congregation Beth El during its search for a new spiritual leader.  In April, the congregation offered him the position which he accepted.

 

1936: In article previewing the upcoming tourist and cruise season, the New York Times reports that a spring fair in Tel Aviv will attract large crowds “from overseas and Near Eastern cities.”

 

1937(10th of Nisan, 5697): Dr. Henry J. Wolfe, a general practitioner who “had also done extensive work in neurology and psychiatry” passed away today at the age of 75. A graduate of City College, Wolf earned his M.D. at Heidelberg University in 1884. One of his daughter, Mrs. Prsscilla Litavsky has made Aliyah and lives in Tel Aviv.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Dov Zemel, a lorry driver, was shot at an ambush near Kfar Saba and was in critical condition.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that British troops captured two terrorists in a battle with an Arab gang near Acre. There were sporadic shooting accidents in Jerusalem and Safed.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Six Arab prisoners sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to penal servitude for life by the High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that Two cooperative groups settled on the Jewish National Fund land, allocated by the Arlosoroff Memorial Fund in the Jordan Valley. Important archaeological finds were discovered near Afula.

 

1938: “Following the annexation of Austria, journalist and author Heinrich Eduard Jacob was arrested today and eventually shipped to Dachau.

 

1939: The German army occupied Memel and the region around the Lithuanian town. By that time about 21,000 people had left the city, most of them Lithuanians as well as a small number of Jews, the majority of the latter having left beforehand. The Nazis confiscated private and public Jewish property valued at tens of millions Litas. Jews had lived in Memel since the 14th century.

 

1943: The first group of Macedonian Jews were shipped from Skopje to Treblinka.

 

1943: The first of four new crematoriums at Auschwitz was ready for use and began operation.

 

1943: Time magazine reported on speech by Henri Honoré Giraud in which the High Commissioner of North Africa disavowed the conditions of the German armistice and the subsequent decrees of Vichy ("promulgated without the participation of the French people, and directed against them"). He said that Vichy's anti-Jewish laws "no longer exist," promised to hold municipal elections in North Africa. He also revoked the Cremieux Decree of 1870, which granted French citizenship en bloc to Jews in Algeria, but excluded the Arabs. Henceforth, Moslems and Jews must complement each other economically, "the latter working in his shop, the former in the desert, without either having advantage over the other, France assuring both security and tranquility."

 

1944: The Washington Post reported "Poles Report Nazis Slay 10,000 Daily." (Jewish Virtual Library)

 

1944: Shlomo Venezia and his family who were living in Thessaloniki were deported to Athens, the first leg of a trip that would take them Auschwitz.

 

1944: In Poland, at the Koldzyczewo Work Camp Shlomo Kushnir succeeded in leading almost all the Jewish inmates who were still alive out of the camp after killing ten Nazi guards. Kushnir committed suicide when he was caught with twenty-five others. The others joined the partisans in the forests.

 

1945: The Arab League was formed today in Cairo. "The League's first resolutions included a restriction on Egyptian Muslim contact with those who were call 'supporters of Zionism,' that is, all Egyptian Jews."

 

1946: Gotthil Wagner was killed by as yet unidentified gunmen today outside of Tel Aviv. Wagner was a German national who had been detained by the British as an enemy alien. The British were permitting Wagner to engage in his various business interests. Reportedly several younger Jews were not happy with Wagner and other Germans to return to a normal life in Palestine because they had openly sympathized with Nazi policies before the war “and openly voice anti-Jewish sentiments.”

 

1947: For the first time in eight days, all 12 members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine were at the hearing in Jerusalem where a variety of Christian leaders described their view (and needs) of the current conflict between Arabs and Jews. The Anglican Bishop in Jersualem described the conflict as one of “differing civilizations and different tempos of progress.”

 

1947: Sigmund Menkes was award the Corcoran Gold Medal and the first W.A. Clark Prize for his entry “Day’s End, 1946” in the Twentieth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Painitings sponsored by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Thirty-two year old Jack Levine of Boston won the Bronze Medal for his entry “Apteka” making him the youngest of the winners.

 

1947: “Hagannah posted pamphlets in Tel Avi” today “accusing the Irgun…of being deserters from the Zionist struggle and of wasting their efforts in murder while Haganah strove to rescue Jews from Europe. As the principal organizer of illegal immigration Haganah charged the Irgun with neglecting that primary function.”

 

1947: Dr. Nahum Goldman addressed the Tel Aviv Journalists Associate today telling them that “the historical alliance between Britian and Jewry is nearing its end. That alliance has existed since 1917 when the Balfour Declaration gave Zionists their first legal claim on Palestine as a national home. Its virtual dissolution obviously brings the Zionist movement to an hour of decision. It must ovtain a new international guarantee, another protector among the great powers.



1948: In Augusburg, Germany, Holocaust survivors Cesia Blitzer (née Zylberfuden), a homemaker, and David Blitzer, a home builder gave birth to Wolf Blitzer the graduate of the University of Buffalo (NY) who is best known for his work on CNN.

 

1949: Holocaust survivors Moryc Brajtbart (later Morris Breitbart) and Lucy Gliklich “married in the Rosenheim displaced persons camp today and immigrated to the United States the following December.”

 

1950: According to New York Times correspondent C.L. Sulzberger, the future of Israel depends on its ability to make peace with the surrounding Arab nations and developing normal commercial relations with them while receiving continued political support from the the United Kingdom and the United States and getting additional American aid so that it can meet is “grandiose economic development plans.

 

1951(14thof Adar II, 5711): Purim

 

1952: Birthdate of sportscaster Bob Costas

 

1953: Arthur Miller's "Crucible" premiered in New York City.

 

1955: Release date of “Yellowneck,” film set in the Everglades of 1863 with music by Laurence Rosenthal.

 

 

1957: Israeli forces withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula as part of the peace process following the Suez Crisis of 1956. Failure of the international community and United Nations to honor its guarantees will lead to further crisis that will boil over into the Six Day War of 1967.

 

1958(1st of Nisan, 5718): Rosh Chodesh Nisan;Shabbat HaChodesh

 

1958(1st of Nisan, 5718): Movie producer Michael Todd died in an airplane crash in New Mexico. Born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen in 1909, Todd won an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1956 for producing Around the World in Eighty Days. At the time of his death he was married to Elizabeth Taylor who would later marry Jewish crooner, Eddie Fisher. Along the way, Ms. Taylor would convert to Judaism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeoJFUT6m28#aid=P7JYwcjLtNA

http://documents.latimes.com/mike-todd-plane-crash/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0865239/bio

 

 

1960: Arthur Leonard Schawlow whose father was a Jewish immigrant from Latvia and Charles Hard Townes receives the first patent for a laser.

 

1962: In another reminder of the depth of Jewish involvement in the world of the Broadway Musical “ I Can Get It For You Wholesale” premiered at the Schubert Theatre. It was based on the novel by Jerome Weidman who wrote the script, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome, directed by Arthur Laurens, starring Elliot Gould and introducing Barbra Streisand as “Miss Marmelstein.”

 

1963(26thof Adar, 5723): Fifty-five year old composer Abraham “Abe” Ellstein passed away.

http://www.milkenarchive.org/people/view/all/511/Abraham+Ellstein

 

 

1965: Yitzhak Rafael completed his service as Deputy Minister of Health.

 

1965:More than 400 persons paid tribute tonight to Dr. David de Sola Pool, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel–the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue–in honor of the rabbi’s 80th birthday. (JTA)

 

 

1965: Bob Dylan "goes electric," releasing his first album featuring electric instruments, Bringing It All Back Home.

 

1972: In an aritcle in the Jerusalem Post, Walter Eytan, who has served as Amabassador to France and Chairman of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, wrote that he was sure Israelis would vote overwhelmingly in a favor of a move to leave the West Bank if that departure would guarantee peace. He was equally sure that Israelis would reject a call for withdrawal just for the sake of withdrawal that was not part of a guaranteed peace.

 

1973: Lyndon B Johnson President died at his Texas Ranch at the age of 64. As a young member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1930’s, Johnson intervened to help bring Jews from Hitler’s Europe to the United. In 1945, he visited concentration camps in Germany where he was visibility moved by the suffering inflicted on the Jewish people. At the time of the 1956 Suez Crisis, As a U.S. Senator in 1956 and 1957, Johnson opposed the Eisenhower Administration's pressure on Israel and supported her position. During the crisis that led to the Six Day War in 1967, President Johnson urged the Israelis to act with caution. Pre-occupied with the Vietnam War, Johnson attempted to organize an International Flotilla that would enter the Straits of Tiran and break the Egyptian Blockade of Elath. His attempts failed. Based on his intelligence reports, Johnson assured the Israelis that he knew they would emerge victorious. As the war came to a close, the Soviets attempted to repeat their 1956 diplomatic rescue of their Arab allies. The Soviets threatened military action unless the Israelis immediately withdrew. Unlike Eisenhower, Johnson did not cave into the threat. Instead he mobilized the Sixth Fleet and sent into the eastern Mediterranean. The Soviets got the message. After the war, Johnson saw to it that America filled the void left by France's new anti-Israel policy and the United States became the main arms supplier for the IDF. Thanks to Johnson’s efforts, the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law which, among other things, banned discrimination against religion. Last but not least, one of Johnson’s favorite lines was from Isaiah, “Come let us reason together;” a line when uttered was a sure sign that an opponent was about to get “The Treatment” intended to turn foe into political friend.

 

1977: The second season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin comes to an end.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the 4,500 employees of the country's three ports went on a general strike to back up their demands for an increase of IL 600 per month. Only passenger ships were exempted.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Supreme Court set a precedent in declaring an Israeli citizen extraditable. An Israeli businessman who was wanted by the Swiss government on charges of defrauding a bank was declared extraditable in a precedent-setting ruling.

 

1979: The Israeli Parliament approved the peace treaty with Egypt.

 

1981(16th of Adar II, 5741): Shusan Purim

 

1983: Chaim Herzog was elected President of Israel today by the Knesset defeating Menachem Elon.

 

1987: The New York Times reviews "The Messiah of Stockholm" by Cynthia Ozick, a novel that is dedicated to Philip Roth.

 

1993: The third round of talks comes to an end at Oslo, Norway.

 

1995: Hilary Koprowski was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President of the Republic of Finland. 1995: Hillary Koprowski was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President of the Republic of Finland. A native of Poland, Koprowski is an American virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine. He was one of three Jews – the other two being Salk and Sabin – who played a leading role in developing a Polio Vaccine.

 

1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including Laughing Matters: On Writing ''M*A*S*H,''''Tootsie,''''Oh, God!,'' and a Few Other Funny Things by Larry Gelbart, A March to Madness: The View From the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference by John Feinstein and Spin Cyle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine by Howard Kurtz.

 

1999: Eliezer Sandberg left the Israel in the Centre party to establish HaTzeirim

 

1999(5th of Nisan, 5759): Eighty-five year old British historian Max Beloff, passed away. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Beloff served as governor of the University of Haifa and as Baron Beloff served as an active member of the House of Lords. According to the Unbroken Chain, the Beloff’s family lineage traces back “to the House of David as descendants of Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Maharam of Padua.” For about Beloff see his autobiography An Historian in the Twentieth Century.

 

2000: In an article entitled “A Victim's Sang-Froid in Very Coldblooded Times,” Richard Bernstein not only reviews I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 by Victor Klemperer; translated and with a preface by Martin Chalmers but provides a valuable picture of the privation faced by this hidden Jew.

 

2004: Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of Hamas, and his bodyguards are killed in the Gaza Strip when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.

 

2005: The New-York Historical Society opened an exhibit entitled "First Ladies of New York and the Nation." Among the unusual items on display in the exhibit were four handbags created by Judith Lieber.”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/22/2005/judith-leiber

 

 

2006: Rabbi Joseph Telushkin delivers a speech on "A Code of Jewish Ethics", followed by a book signing at Barnes and Noble Bookstore in New York City.

 

2006: In Seville, Spain, the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for peace came to a close.

 

2006: Haaretz reported that a string of anti-Semitic incidents in the aftermath of the torture and murder of a young Jewish vendor is fueling concerns that anti-Jewish feelings are spreading in France's black community. The incidents - three physical attacks allegedly committed by blacks of Muslim descent - occurred in recent days, following the extradition from Ivory Coast of Youssouf Fofana, the alleged leader of the gang that kidnapped and murdered 21-year-old Ilan Halimi. The alleged involvement of blacks has added a new twist to the wave of anti-Semitic incidents in recent years, which mostly were the work of young Muslims of North African descent responding to the Palestinian intifada. A judge charged Fofana for the premeditated murder of Halimi, with the aggravated circumstance that the crime was motivated by race, after evidence surfaced that the gang had targeted Halimi because they believed that Jews are rich and the community would pay a ransom. Fofana has told investigators that the plot was not motivated by ethnicity, but by money, and has denied that he killed Halimi. "This affair has transformed Fofana into a hero in the eyes of quite a few people," said Sammy Ghozlan, president of the National Office of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a former police chief who has been criticized by some Jewish groups for what they say is his tendency to exaggerate the anti-Semitic threat. "The attitude of [black] people has changed in recent years." Patrick Klugman, vice-president of the anti-racism group SOS Racism, said that recent events "have reawakened the fears of Jews after a period of calm, and is creating tensions with the black community and this is very worrying." The attacks and their aftermath have prompted some virulent exchanges on the Internet. An e-mail allegedly sent by a small group of black radicals known as Tribu K.A to several Jewish and antiracist organizations warned against any effort to deny Fofana a fair trial. "We will take special care of your rabbis' sidelocks," the group threatened, adding, "Let the brother be judged fairly or you will pay." Black-Jewish tensions were virtually unheard of in France a few years ago, but they began to surface after well-known comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala started accusing Jews of controlling the world and enslaving blacks, prompting a flurry of defamation lawsuits by Jewish organizations. Dieudonne, who is of African origin and made his name a decade ago while partnering with a Jewish humorist, has made a series of statements about Jews and Israel in his shows and in the media. In addition to stating that Jews played a "central role" in the 15th-century slave trade, he most famously appeared in December 2003 on a popular French television program dressed as an Orthodox Jew and performed the Nazi salute while shouting "Isra Heil." All the defamation charges against him have so far been rejected by the courts. Dieudonne is also considering running in next year's presidential elections on a far-left platform. Late last month, Julien Dray, the spokesman for the main opposition socialist party, blamed the Halimi murder on the "Dieudonne effect." In response, the comic issued a statement calling Dray the "Zionist militant" and demanding that he apologize. Last weekend, three anti-Semitic attacks took place in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles, where 20 percent of the city's 58,000 inhabitants are Jewish. On March 3, a local rabbi's 17-year-old son was attacked by two black men near their synagogue, suffering a broken nose. That same afternoon, an 18-year-old man was attacked by a group of five men, who insulted him and stole his cell phone. Four of them were black and the fifth was of Arab origin, according to the police. The next night, a 28-year-old wearing a yarmulke was verbally and physically abused by four men and suffered a dislocated shoulder, according to police sources. The culprits, four underage black men, have been arrested and charged. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy announced at a meeting with families and local officials that police reinforcements would be deployed in Sarcelles, which is located in an area where several days of rioting by young Arab immigrants took place a few months ago. Other anti-Semitic incidents have occurred in the country's second-largest city, Lyons, and the nearby suburb of Villeurbanne, where a sizable Jewish community lives. According to a poll taken by the weekly news magazine Paris-Match after the Halimi murder but before the recent incidents, nearly two-thirds of the French believe anti-Semitism is currently rising. Ghozlan, who in 2000 founded the Antisemitism Vigilance Bureau to monitor anti-Jewish acts in France, has pointed out that at least two Jews - a doctor and a high-school student - had been beaten up by blacks of Muslim origin in the Paris area just before the grim ordeal of Halimi was revealed. According to police, Halimi, a cell phone vendor, was lured into a trap by a young girl. He was held for three weeks by a gang of youths of mixed origins, whose leaders made frantic and disjointed demands for ransom to his family. He was beaten and burned with cigarettes and acid. His body was dumped, half-naked, on rail tracks near Paris. He died on his way to the hospital. Despite the swift reaction from the authorities and the decision to prosecute the murder as a hate crime, the Halimi affair and other recent incidents have revived the heated discussions in some Jewish circles about the need to set up self-defense groups or leave the country. Such talk had waned after a sharp drop in the number of anti-Semitic incidents last year, but is starting to pick up again. In a statement issued last week titled "France in danger!", the Jewish umbrella organization CRIF warned the authorities that "this insurrectional situation risks creating uncontrollable self-defense reactions. We solemnly ask the president of the Republic to declare war on anti-Semitism and give back some confidence to all citizens. Let's make no mistake! The Jews are the sentinels of the Republic, and the violence directed against them today will tomorrow hit the rest of the population. The unity of the nation is in danger." An online petition addressed to the U.S. Congress and calling for Jews to seek asylum in the United States has gathered more than 5,200 signatures.

 

2007: Ira Glass and company began airing a television version of This American Life as half-hour episodes on the Showtime network.

 

2008: Shushan Purim, 5768

 

2008: As part of the Israel at 60, the 92nd Street Y presents Danny Sanderson, Israeli lyricist and pop icon. Sanderson, a singer-songwriter legend whose album, Kongo Blues, was voted January 06 album of the month in Israel, performs some of Israel's best known and most beloved songs.

 

2008: Publication of selected writings of Pfc. Daniel Agami, of blessed memory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/4000agami.web.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

 

2009: An exhibition featuring the works of Israeli born photographer Shai Kremer at the Metropolitan Museum comes to a close.

 

2009: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents a speech by Dr. David Fishman of the Jewish Theological Seminary on the topic "The Problem of Religion and Secularism among Secular Yiddishists in Eastern Europe.

 

2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently published paperback edition of “Now You See Him” by Eli Gotlieb.

 

2009: At Temple Sinai in Los Angeles, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen “faced off against some 400 Iranian Jews and Bahais” who took exception to his recent columns describing the plight of Jews living in Iran.

 

2010: The 14th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to present “Tribute: Observations on Survival and Spirit - Lessons from the Holocaust” featuring eight short films including “Holding Leah,” “Pigeon,” “Sarah and Hayah,” “The Next Harvest,” “The Wall,” “Torte Bluma,” “Toyland” and “Waiting for Dachau.”

 

2010: Shots were fired at an Israeli army patrol this evening next to Aduraim in the southern Hevron Hills. No injuries or damage were reported. Additional troops were sent to search the scene.

 

2010(7th of Nisan, 5760): Rabbi Zachary Heller, past president of the World Council of Masorti Synagogues and a congregational rabbi for nearly 30 years died today after a long battle with cancer. He was 71. He served as senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, a Conservative congregation in Bayonne, N.J., for 29 years, and was considered "a rabbi's rabbi," according to a death notice in The New York Times. Heller worked as the associate director of the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies for 12 years from 1997. As president of the World Council of Masorti Synagogues from 1989 to 1994, he lectured and taught in 22 countries and mentored rabbis in many communities. The Masorti movement in Israel is affiliated with Conservative Judaism.

 

2011: Tony Kushner’s latest play, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures,” is scheduled to open today.

 

2011: Moshe Katsav was sentenced to seven years in prison and two years’ probation for rape, indecent acts, sexual harassment and obstruction of justice, becoming the first former President of Israel to be sentenced to prison. In addition, he was ordered to pay one of the women compensation totaling 100,000 NIS and another a sum of 25,000 NIS

 

2011: “James’ Journey to Jerusalem” is scheduled to be shown in Iowa City as part of the Hillel Film Series.

 

2011(16h of Adar II): On this date on the Hebrew Calendar the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem began under King Agrippa I.

 

2011: The three major film schools in Manhattan-- Columbia University School of Arts, The School of Visual Arts Film School and NYU Tisch School of the Arts--,are scheduled to host the opening night of a three day salute to the achievements of the Sam Spiegel Film School. “Over the last decade The Sam Spiegel Film School played a pivotal role in the film renaissance of Israeli cinema by virtue of its distinctive focus on a personal and sensitive dialogue with the audience.”

 

2011: Thirty-five congregations including shuls from cities as large as Phoenix and Las Vegas, and as small as Chesterfield, Mo. and Norfolk, VA have registered for the 3rd annual Emerging Communities Conference sponsored by the Orthodox Union which is scheduled to begin today.

 

2011: Today, the Tel Aviv District Court sentenced former president Moshe Katsav to seven years in prison and two years’ probation for rape and sexual harassment, which he was convicted of in December. Judges George Karra, Judith Shevach and Miriam Sokolov also ruled that Katsav pay NIS 100,000 to victim "Aleph" from the Tourism Ministry.

 

2011: Palestinians reported that four people were killed, including several children, and several others were injured when IDF shells hit a house east of Gaza City this afternoon.  The IDF Spokesman Unit overnight confirmed that IAF aircraft attacked two terror tunnels, two sites used for the manufacturing and storage of weapons and two further terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip. "Direct targets were identified and all planes returned safely to their base," a statement by the IDF read. "The attack was in response to recently conducted attacks on southern communities," the statement continued. "The IDF will not tolerate the continued attack of settlements close to Gaza," the IDF statement said.

 

2011: Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin slammed the “dangerous” military conversion bill, while calling on the rabbinate to increase and enhance its conversion efforts as a countermeasure to the massive assimilation taking place in Israel. Speaking at a Knesset event marking 90 years to the Chief Rabbinate’s inception, Rivlin noted the wealth of religious bodies that supplement the religious services provided by the rabbinate, but warned of one service that can never be in the hands of a body that is not an official arm of the state. (As reported by Isaac Harari)

 

2011: A Grad rocket fired from Gaza exploded south of Ashdod today after a day of escalation along the border.



2011: The opening of the exhibition by artist Sharon Poliakine and painter Oren Eliav, takes place at The Tel Aviv Museum of Art

 

2011: In “New edition out for Maxwell House Haggadah, part of Passover tradition for many American Jews” that “From the White House to the Schein house, Passover is good to the last drop thanks to the Maxwell House Haggadah, lovingly passed down through generations, red wine splotches and gravy smears marking nearly 80 years of service at American Seder tables.

http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=118438959

 

2012: Spokane Jewish Cultural Cultural Film Festival is scheduled to open in Spokane, Washington

 

2012: The 16th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to a close.

 

2012: The Jewish Music Festival is scheduled to present the Bustan Quartet in Berkley, CA.

 

2013: Julius Genachowski announced that he would be leaving the FCC which he had been chairing since June of 2009.

 

2013: “The Gang’s All Here” which features Benny Goodman playing himself is scheduled to be shown as part of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series.

 

2013: Portugal’s national soccer team is scheduled to square off against its Israeli rivals at the national stadium in Ramat Gan this afternoon.

 

2013: Political leaders flocked this morning to the bedside of Acre Mayor Shimon Lankri, who survived an assassination attempt in what doctors describe as a lucky escape



2013: Barack Obama ended his first presidential visit to Israel and headed off to Jordan today, after another packed day.



2013:President Barack Obama scored a diplomatic coup just before leaving Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey for a 2010 commando raid that killed nine activists on a Turkish vessel in a Gaza-bound flotilla.




 

2014: The Jewish Children’s Regional Service (JCRS) which has done an outstanding job of serving Jewish families and youth since 1855, is scheduled to host a gala fundraiser “The Jewish Roots of Broadway.”

 

2014: “The German Doctor” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: “A Palestinian militants sent threatening text messages to a large number of Israelis this evening, calling on them to leave the country and warning them they would be “the next Gilad Shalit.”

 

2014: “Hunting Elephants” and “The Attack” are scheduled to be shown at the Houston Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: “A joint IDF, Shin Bet and Border Police raid early today killed a wanted Hamas operative in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank who was reportedly plotting a major terrorist attack.”



 

2014: Flexiblity Key to Survial” published today described the way that Lebo’s the 91 year old family owned footwear business founded by Sidney Levin has changed to meet the needs and challenges of its customers.



 

 

2014: In Rockville, MD, The Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled host its fundraiser “Casino Night”


 

2015: “Disobedience - The Sousa Mendes Story” (Desobeir) is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

 

2015: Ron Arons, author of "Jews of Sing Sing" and of "Mind Maps for Genealogy," is scheduled to introduce basic concepts of "family systems theory" at the Center for Jewish History.

 

2015; In Cedar Rapids, Dan Bern, the son of Marianne Bern, is scheduled to perform as CSPC.

 

2015:“Letters to Afar: Installation by Péter Forgács and The Klezmatics,” a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York is scheduled to closed today. (As reported by Cathryn J. Prince)


 

 

This Day, March 23, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 23

 

1369: King Pedro of Castile who employed Abraham ibn Zaral as his physician was beheaded by his rival and brother, Henry of Trastamara marking the end of their civil war for control of the kingdom. . Henry “was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. . He was as hostile to the Jews as Pedro had been friendly. His long-cherished hatred of his brother burst forth when a Jew named Jacob, an intimate of the king, praised the latter excessively to Henry. In his fury he stabbed the Jew with a dagger. Pedro would have revenged himself on Henry forthwith, but his courtiers restrained him by force. Henry saved himself by a hasty flight. This was the immediate cause of the civil war which brought untold suffering upon the Jews of the country. During their struggle for control, Henry continuously depicted Peter as "King of the Jews," and had some success in taking advantage of popular Castilian resentment towards the Jews. During his reign, “Henry of Trastamara instigated pogroms beginning a period of anti-Jewish riots and forced conversion] in Castile that lasted approximately from 1370 to 1390.”

 

1475: Trent (Italy) was the scene of one of the more notorious ritual murder libels. A Franciscan monk, Bernardinus of Feltre, had recently arrived and began preaching Lent sermons against the Jews. A week before Easter a boy by the name of Simon drowned in the river Adige. The monk charged the Jews with using the body for its blood. The body washed up a few days later near the house of a Jew who brought it to the Bishop Honderbach. Seventeen Jews were tortured for over two weeks. Some confessed while being tortured and 6 Jews were burnt. Two more were strangled. A temporary hiatus was called by Pope Sixtus IV, but after five years the trial was reopened and 5 more Jews were executed. The papal inquest agreed with the trial, Simon was beatified, and all Jews were expelled for 300 years. The trial served as the basis for anti-Semitic writings for hundreds of years. Only in 1965 was Simon de –beatified

 

1490: The first dated edition of Maimonides'“Mishneh Torah” was published. Maimonides was born in Cordova, Spain in 1135. His family fled as one group of Moslem rulers replaced another. Eventually he settled in Egypt where he was a distinguished physician for the ruling Moslems as well as head of the Egyptian community. According to one source he provided medical advice for both Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted. He died in 1204 and is buried in Tiberias in Israel. Simply put, the Mishneh Torah was "an orderly restructuring of the entire legal literature of the Talmud." The Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law) is "one of the most distinguished codes of Jewish law...”

 

1555: Pope Julius III passed away. Despite opposition, Julius allowed Jewish refugees from Spain settle in Ancona in northeast Italy. He spoke out against the blood libel and opposed baptism of Jewish children without the approval of their parents. At the same time, he was unable to stand up to the power of the Inquisitor General from the Holy Office and he acquiesced in the burning of numerous copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books.

 

1712(15th of Adar II): Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Koidonover author of Kav ha-Yashar passed away

 

1714: Duke Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Courland

 

1784: Reverend Gershom Mendes Seixas returned to New York City from Connecticut and took up his position as “Minister.” He returned while New York City was evacuated by the British, and most of the members of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue were in the safety of Connecticut and Philadelphia. Seixas was very patriotic, and was thanked by President George Washington at one time. Seixas instituted a recital of a prayer for the government in English, it having been always read in Spanish prior to this time.

 

1801: Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle. Paul’s reign was a comparatively short one, starting in 1796 with the death of his mother Catherine the Great. The shortness of his time on the throne was a good thing for the Jews of Russia. In 1799, Paul sent one of his closest advisors, Gabriel Derhavin to Belorssia. Derhavin decided that the problems in that part of the realm, as well as the rest of Russia were caused by the Jews “who were irredeemably corrupt.” He was planning on urging the Czar to move most of the Jews to the “frontier territories or drive them from the empire altogether.” These and other harsh measures would have become the law of the land if Paul had not been killed and replaced by his comparatively more enlightened son, Alexander I.

 

1807(13th of Adar II, 5567):Ta'anit Esther

 

1831: Christian-Hebraist Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi passed away.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12896-rossi-giovanni-bernardo-de

 

 

1837: Birthdate of Joseph Wieniawski, Russian born pianist and composer.

 

1846: In New York, Moses and Esther Lazarus gave birth to Josephine Lazarus.

 

1848: In Manchester, UK, Charles Sydney Grundy and his wife gave birth to English dramatist Sydney Grundy who combined with Edward Solomon to produce two comic operas – “The Vicar of Bray” and “Pochoantas” - and produced “An Old Jew” at the Garrick in 1894, five years before Zangwill’s “Children of the Ghetto.

 

1849(29thof Adar, 5609): Fifty-four year old Hananeel de Castro, the husband of Deborah de Jacob Mendes da Costa who was the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews at the time of the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840 passed away today.

 

1853: While delivering a speech welcoming Father Gavazzi, the celebrated Roman patriot and orator to the United States, Reverend Dowling pointed out a peculiarity of the American experience. “This government, alone of all others, never persecuted or endeavored to persecute Jews.”

 

1861: “The Hebrew Son” is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden Theatre in NYC.

 

1862: During the American Civil War, Judah P. Benjamin completed his short stint as “acting” Secretary War. Benjamin continued to serve as Secretary of State.

 

1863: According to “The Books of the Week” column published today, Scribner’s has published "Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, -- Part 1, Abraham to Samuel" by Arthur Penryn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. According to this Stanley “the roots of the Jewish Church must be sought deep in the Patriarchal Age, its prelude commencing with the Call of Abraham, then from the time it takes determinate shape and recognized status with the Exodus, the first great period extends to the absorption of the ancient and primitive constitution in the new institutions of the Monarchy. This “period is generally called by the name of the Theocracy; its great characters are Abraham, Moses and Samuel. It embraces the first revelation of the Mosaic Religion, and the first foundation of the Jewish Church and polity." Two future volumes will continue to describe the history of the Jews up to Roman times. The second volume will describe the period of the Monarchy. The third will describe the period “from the Captivity to the destruction of the Jewish Capital and State by the Emperor Titus.”

 

1864(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim

 

1864: “Purim: Our Jewish Citizens in Their Glory” published today reported that Purim Association has given their “third Grand Fancy Dress Ball, at the Academy of Music. The Association was formed in 1862 by nine young men of the Jewish faith, its first ball was given at Irving Hall in 1862, its second at the Academy of Music in 1863, and its third at the same hall last evening. The festival of Purim is one of the oldest and most important festivals recognized by the Jews, commemorating, as it does, one of the most important events in their history as a nation. It was instituted by Queen Esther and by Mordecai about the year 510 B.C., and commemorates the remarkable deliverance of the children of Israel from the tyranny and machinations of Haman, who was Prime Minister to King Ahasuerus, who reigned from India unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces. Mordecai had been carried captive from Jerusalem, and with him the fair and beautiful maiden Hadassah or Esther, whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter. Esther being exceedingly beautiful and pleasing found favor in the eyes of King Ahasuerus, who married her and made her his Queen. About this time Haman was appointed to the high position of Prime Minister to the King, and he demanded and received homage from all except the Jew Mordecai, who not only refused to pay homage, but also refused to give any reason why he would not. Haman, highly incensed at the conduct of Mordecai, ordered made a gallows of extraordinary height, on which to hang him for the insult be had offered to one in high office and favored by the King. Queen Esther, hearing of this, informed the King of the relation which existed between her and Mordecai, and also of the great benefit Mordecai had done the King some time previous in informing of two men in his confidence, Bigthana and Teresh, who sought to lay violent hands upon the King and kill him. The King remembering all these things and the iniquity, or Haman, ordered him hanged upon the gallows erected for Mordecai, placed Mordecai in the position held by Haman, made him chief over the house of Haman, and released the children of Israel from bondage. This was celebrated by great rejoicing all over the land and, in every way the joy and happinees of the people was exhibited. From that to the present the festival of this deliverance of the Jews has been celebrated by the most extravagant expressions of happiness, calling upon each other at their houses, in every dress and guise which could possibly add merriment or joy to the occasion, and using every means they could devise for the utmost enjoyment and celebration of this great and happy event. Of late years their number has so increased that time would not allow them to visit all the friends they wished, nor would their houses hold all the friends they wished to entertain. To obviate this difficulty, nine young gentlemen on the Jewish faith, in the year 1862, organized the "Purim Association," the object of which was to collect all the parties together for the general enjoyment of the festival, and that all friends might meet. Thus far they have been particularly fortunate nothing has occurred to mar their pleasure, and they have also by this means been enabled to do a great deal of good. Last year they presented to the Orphan Asylum and other charitable institutions a handsome sum, and this year they intend, first, to present to the Sanitary Fair a good round sum, and then take care of the charitable institutions, as is their custom. The officers of the association, who have been and are working hard and steadily for the promotion of this society and its good influence, and to whom, in a great measure, the success of the ball is due, are as follows: M.H. Moses, President; Jos. A. Levy, Vice-President; A.H. Schutz, Treasurer. The hall was crowded with a most brilliant assemblage, who entered into the enjoyments of the occasion with a zest seldom equaled; the costumes were very rich and beautiful; the diamonds worn by the ladies magnificent and in brilliancy almost rivaled the bright eyes of their fail owners. Among the best of the characters represented were those of Mrs. Partington, Lucretia Borgia, Penobscot Squaw, Chippewa Chief, and Joan of Arc, several beauties of the Court of Charles H., the Duke of Buckingham, Faust, a Priest, and several Jewish maidens. Merriment reigned supreme within the hall. Wives, well-disguised, teased their liege lords almost to distraction; sweethearts by sly winks and actions, drove their devoted lovers almost frantic; husbands thinking they were not known or noticed, paid sweet compliments to fair maidens only to be rapped over the knuckles for not reserving them for their wives, and staid old bachelors and maidens entered into the spirit of the fun in a manner which fairly astonished themselves. Two Bands gave constant music, to which the feet of the merry dancers kept time. At twelve o'clock they unmasked and then what surprise was created. Husbands found they had been flirting all the evening with their own wives; lovers had been confidentially extolling the beauties of their sweethearts to their-sweethearts themselves; old maids had been telling old bachelors how disagreeable they thought that class of men to be, and old bachelors had been sympathizing, perhaps, with the old maids themselves, upon the unhappy condition of these unfortunate ladies. The mistakes, however, were speedily and amicably settled, and after the excellent supper prepared by the caterer, M.S. Cohen, had been fully enjoyed, were entirely forgotten.” New York Mayor Charles Gunther was among the dignitaries who attended the event.

 

1866: James Disraeli who resided in Cromwell Place wrote his will today.

 

1868(15th of Adar II, 5624): Shushan Purim

 

1868: The University of California is founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act is signed into law. Today the University of California at Berkley has approximately 3000 Jewish students out of a student population totaling approximately 24,000. The school offers ten Jewish studies courses and a Major in the field.

 

1870: Jay Gould appeared before the New York State Senate Railroad Committee and that his opponents were being financed by “Jewish bankers” from London. (“Robber Baron” Jay Gould was attempting to use anti-British and anti-Jewish prejudice to deflect attacks on his unscrupulous business tactics when dealing with the Erie Railroad.)

 

1871(1st of Nisan, 5631): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

 

1872: In an article entitled “Persecution of Jews In Romania” the New York Times compares the attacks on the Jews with the suffering “in England in the days of Isaac of York” and calls upon the European Powers to intervene on behalf of the Jews if the government of Romania will not stop the attacks on its Jewish citizens.

 

1872: This evening, as Jews celebrated Purim, synagogues in New York “were all crowded” as they listened to the unique musical narrative of the story of Esther. “In the…strictly Orthodox synagogues such as those on Chrystie and Allen Streets, the audience stamped their feet or struck the ground with the heavy sticks whenever the detested name of Haman was pronounced.”

 

1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will host its final “entertainment of the season” this evening at the Standard Hall in New York City.

 

1878: Birthdate of Austrian composer and conductor Franz Schreker. Schreker was the oldest son of the Jewish court photographer Ignaz Schrecker and his wife Eleonore von Clossmann. He passed away on March 21, 1934.

 

1879: It was reported today 800,000 Philadelphians are served by 564 houses of worship including 9 synagogues.

 

1879: Dr. Henry S. Jacobs will deliver a lecture this evening at the Norfolk Street Synagogue sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Union.

 

1880: In Russia an editorial entitled “The Yid is Coming” is published in the anti-Semitic journal Novoe Vermie.

 

1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Lubny, Russia. This would not be the first or the last time that death would strike the Jews of Lubny which is actually located in the Ukraine, In 1648 during the horror known as the Chmielnicki Massacres, thousands of Jews died at Lubny and other nearby towns. In October of 1941, the Nazis massacred the Jewish population as the German armies swept across the Ukraine. The rioting in 1881 probably was a mini-pogrom sparked by the killing of Czar Alexander II "at the hand of revolutionary bomb throwers." They presaged a series of such riots that would sweep much of Russia during the Spring and Summer of 1881.

 

1883(14th of Adar II, 5643): Purim

 

1886: Secretary Taylor of the American Yacht Club called the members together in a special meeting this evening to listen to a lecture by the popular Sephardic raconteur Mr. R.J. de Cordova on "The New York Stock Exchange." Instead of of lecture, Mr. de Cordova amused the "twoscore members" of the club humorous rhyming story about a stock broker in search of a rich wife, the daughter of a Pennsylvania farmer made rich by the discovery of petroleum on his farm and "a rejected bucolic lover" who happily marries the maiden after she loses her fortune while pursuing an extravagant urban lifestyle.

 

1887: Birthdate of Sidney Hillman. Sidney Hillman was a major figure in the American labor movement and became a leading advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, one of the two major unions in the garment industry from 1915 until his death in 1946. An untiring champion of the working class and the underprivileged, Hillman was a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organization, the CIO. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, we have lost a sense of appreciation for the improvement in the American way of life wrought by Hillman and similar giants of the American labor movement, many of whom were Jewish.

 

1887(27th of Adar): Rabbi Eliezer Landshuth, author of Amudei ha-Avodah passed away

 

1890: “Art Notes” published today described the ten illustrations of “The Merchant of Venice” by Edwin Abbey that will appear in the April edition of Harper magazine.  They include “the figure of Portia exhorting the Jew” to show mercy and a “frontpiece” showing the Ducal Palace “with the Jew demonstrating why he does not love Christians.”

 

1890: The late Solomon Adler bequeathed $500 to both the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital and $250 to each of the following: Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York.

 

1891: Alice Goldmark marries Louis Brandeis at her parent’s home in New York City.

 

1891: “The Baron de Hirsch Club” published today described the accomplishments of the newly formed social club.  Among the seventy-five charter members are Dr. Leon Sherurg, Elias Gluskin, Morton Britton, John W. Jacobus, William Bellamy, Louis Henderson and M.J. Rosinski

 

1892: It was reported today that after the claim of Adolf Grube for 1,600,000 rubles has been satisfied J.E. Guenxburg will only have 14 million rubles in his accounts with which to satisfy the rest of his creditors.

 

1893(6thof Nisan, 5653): Seventy-six year old Adolf Fischoff, the doctor turned Austrian political leader and author passed away today.

 

1893: Max Judd of Missouri has been nominated to serve as Consul General at Vienna. Judd, a native of Austria, came to the United States as a child and has lived in St. Louis for the last twenty-five years.  A man of “well and fine education” “his appointment is the result of the almost universal request of the people of” St. Louis which speaks well of Judd and the regard in which the Jews of Missouri are held by the general population.

 

1893: A case involving the seizure by police of liquor which members of Boston’s Adath Israel’s congregation claimed was intended for use on Passover began making its way through the court system. The Jews claim that the vice president of the congregation was holding the liquor for his co-religionists which he will be distributing during Passover. The police claim that this is a ruse and is merely a way for the Jews to get around local liquor ordinances.

 

1893: Kosher slaughtering was prohibited in Saxony, which is in a part of Germany that Martin Luther had dominated during his rise to power. Some claim that the ban was part of the anti-cruelty to animal movement but this claim has a very hollow sound to it considering what else was going on in the society.

 

1895: Edwin Einstein, a New York Republican, was appointed to serve as Dock Commissioner today by a Mayor who was a Democrat.

 

1895: In Budapest, the House of Magnates rejected the clause of the Religious Freedom Bill that gave Jews equal rights with the Christians by a vote of 117 to 111.

 

1896: Congregation B’nai Shalom was founded in Brookhaven, Mississippi.

 

1896: “What Is A Christian Nation?” published today described the views of Dr. Gustav Gottheil who “claims that the so-called Christian nations are not so in fact and that the Jews are, from the ethical standpoint, the true Christian nation.”  A Christian nation would make the Sermon on the Mount the basis for its Constitution entailing “the returning of good for evil, the breathing of a blessing upon those who curse us, the rendering of good for evil.” (Editor’s note –This view should provide food for thought for those who claim the U.S. is a “Christian nation.”)

 

1897: Mrs. Rebecca Kohut gave a talk today on “The Training of Children in Reverence in Jewish Homes” at the Manhattan Congregational Church.

 

1897: Oscar S. Straus, the former U.S. Minister to Turkey who has just returned to the United States said that he had met with Baroness de Hirsch while in Europe but did not care to discuss the details of continued financial assistance for immigrants from Europe who will be settling in the Western Hemisphere.

 

1899: Dr. Joseph Silverman delivered a lecture on the “Longevity of the Hebrews.”

 

1899: It was reported today that during the month of February the United Hebrew Charities had received 2,815 applications for assistance which covered 9,377 individuals.  Jobs were found for 477 applicants while over 1,800 people were seen by either a doctor or a nurse.  The charity raised over $17,000 during February and spent almost $13,000 in providing aid to the needy.

 

1900: Birthdate of Eric Fromm.

http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell9.htm

 

1902(14th of Adar II, 5662): Purim

 

1907: In New York this evening, enough poor Jews presented their tickets which could be exchanged for 10 pounds of Matzoth and 5 pounds of floor to the store on Attorney Street, that 20,000 pounds of matzoth and 10,000 pounds of Matzah floor were needed to meet the demand.

 

1907: When “a small boy with red brick hair” presented his ticket entitling him to 10 pounds of Matzah and 5 pounds of Matzah flour, he was told that “these matzoth are only provided for person of true Hebraic faith.” The lad replied, “Me name is Mickey O’Brien, but sure me mother needs the matzoth. We’re most staring and if it’ll do any good I’ll be an Irish Hebrew.” The lad got his matzoth and flour. [It was not unusual for non-Jews to show up for when free food was passed out at Passover time. The Jews did not seem to mind apparently remembering the words of the Haggadah inviting the poor to come and join us in eating at the Seder.]

 

1911(23rd of Adar, 5671): Daniel Abramovich Chwolson passed away.

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2009/05/08/the-israeli-health-ministry-and-the-rehabilitation-of-daniel-chwolson/

 

1912(5thof Nisan, 5672): Ninety-year old communal worker Hezekiah Kohn passed away today in New York.

 

1913(14thof Adar II, 5673): Purim

 

1914: The New York Times reports from St. Petersburg “that as …Passover approaches more blood ritual allegations are being circulated.” In Uman, in the Ukraine, reports are circulating “that a Christian boy, Anton Zummer, who was working in a bakery at a machine for making matzoth…had his hand thrust in the machinery by the Jewish boys and lost a large quantity of blood which went to the making of the bread…Another report speaks of the finding of an 8-year old boy’s body under a railway bridged at Kovel…with the head, neck and chest pierced with wounds.” [This is the same Uman that is the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov which Jews visit each year at Rosh Hashanah.]

 

1915: The United Hebrew Community has sent out an appeal for more funds to so it can distributed matzoth and other food to the poor Jews of the Lower East Side before the beginning of Passover. Moses H. Phillips, President of the Hebrew Community said that the demand is greater this year than in years past and at least 90,000 pounds of food will be needed to feed the needy. The United Hebrew Community is only one of several Jewish organizations that will be distributing food at Passover time to their less fortunate co-religionists.

 

1915: The fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee has collected $579,996. 53 as of today.

 

1915: The Zion Mule Corps, consisting of Jewish volunteers from Palestine, was formed to serve with the British Army. This was the first Palestinian Jewish military unit attached to a regular army in the modern times. The unit was organized under the command of Joseph Trumpeldor, an early military hero of the future state of Israel and Vladimir Jabotinsky who would become leader of what was known as the Revisionist Movement, forerunner of today's Likud part. The united fought against the Turks who were allies of the British. The success of the Zion Mule Corps paved the way for the Jewish Legion which was formed in 1918.

 

1915: Sixty-six year old “Judge Leonard S. Roan of the Court of Appeals of Georgia before whom Leo M. Franks was convicted and by whom he was sentenced to death on August 16, 1913 for the murder of…Mary Phagan” passed away today.

 

1916: In Ireland foundation stone of the Greenville Hall Synagogue was laid. Coincidentally it took place on the same date as the Easter Rising, the Irish rebellion against English rule.

 

1917: Birthdate of Yevgeny Khaldei the Soviet born Jewish World War II combat photographer whose work included  one of the most famous of that genre showing a Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag as the Red Army triumphed in  the Battle of Berlin.  According to some reports Khaldei patterned the picture after the one of the flag raising over Iowa Jima, another iconic WW II photo taken by a Jewish photographer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstag_flag_original.jpg

 

 

1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy. The ashes of the First World War were not even cool yet when the seeds for World War II and the Holocaust were being planted.

 

1921: KH-UIA was registered as a British limited company, whose members, together with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, were chosen by the WZO's Executive Board. KH-UIA's founders included such luminaries as Chaim Weizmann, Aharon, and Isaac Naidich. The first Directors were Barth Berthold Feiwel, Georg Halpern, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shlomo Kaplansky, Shemaryahu Levin, Issac Naidich, Israel M. Sieff (later Lord Sieff) and Hillel Zlatopolsky.

 

1921: Accompanied by Sir Herbert Samuel and T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) Winston Churchill left Egypt for Palestine to begin his projected four week long fact finding tour.

 

1922: Birthdate of comedian Marty Allen.

 

1923: “Louis Marshall was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities at which campaign plans of the Charities were discussed.” (As reported by JTA)

 

1924(17th of Adar II, 5684): Moses Cattaui Pashe, President of the Jewish Kehillah of Cairo, Egypt passed away.

 

1928: Birthdate of Mortimier H. Rydell, the multi-talented New York known as Mark Rydell whose accomplishments including directing one of the greatest westerns ever made – The Cowboys in which John Wayne actually acts instead of just portraying John Wayne.

 

1930: ““The Administrative Committee of the enlarged Jewish Agency is meeting in London” today.

 

1932(15thof Adar II, 5692): Sixty-five year old Boris Schatz, the Lithuanian born sculptor who became known as the "father of Israeli art," founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem passed away today.

http://www.schatz.co.il/en/boris

 

1933: Hitler “told the Reichstag today that Positive Christianity was the "unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people", and promised not to threaten the churches or the institutions of the Republic if granted plenary powers.”

 

1937: It was reported today that sixty-four year old Jacob de Haas one of the last surviving founding fathers of the Zionist movement had passed away

http://archive.jta.org/article/1937/03/23/2838214/jacob-de-haas-herzl-collaborator-dead-here-at-64

 

1938: In New York, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland delivered his first address as national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal. After being introduced by Louis Nizer, associate chairman of the division and chairman of the Film Board of Trade, Rabbi Silver asked a luncheon meeting of more than 100 theatrical and motion picture executives to support the drive to raise $4,500,000 to support Zionist activities. He gave a glowing account of the progress that had been in creating a Jewish Homeland. He spoke specifically about the challenges created by the worsening situation in Europe and the efforts that have been to settle refugees, especially those from Germany, in Eretz Israel. Silver equated the Zionist work in Palestine with the fight against the rise of totalitarianism.

 

1938. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver spoke to a meeting of the Long Island Conference for Palestine at the Jamaica Jewish Center this evening. The more than 1,000 attendees representing thirty-four communities in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties adopted a resolution agreeing to raise $75,000 for the United Palestine Appeal.

 

1938: In Paris, Adam and Pauline Kaufman gave birth to Michael Kaufman a “foreign correspondent, reporter and columnist for The New York Times who chronicled despotic regimes in Europe and Africa, the fall of Communism and the changing American scene for four decades”

 

1940: The All-India-Muslim League called for a Muslim homeland in the Indian sub-continent. The British response would be to partition India into a Hindu state of India and a Moslem state, Pakistan. The demands of the by the Muslims living in India were part of a wave of Muslim nationalism that had been sweeping the lands of North Africa and the Middle East since the start of the 20th century. The conflict in Palestine should be viewed within that context. The similarity of the British response in Palestine and India (Partition) is also worth noting.

 

1940: David Samuel Margoliouth, the Oxford University Professor whose father Ezekiel had converted from Judaism to Anglicanism passed away today.

 

1942: Of the approximately 4,000 remaining Jews in Lublin, Poland 2,500 were massacred and the rest of them were deported to Majdanek for extermination. At the start of the war, 40,000 of the 125,000 inhabitants of Lublin had been Jewish.

 

1942: Birthdate of Yevhen Lapinsky who played on the Soviet Union Volleyball Team that won the Gold Medal at the Olympics in 1968.

 

1943 (16th of Adar II, 5703): Twenty-nine Jewish orphans at La Rose Orphanage in Les Accates, France, as well as Alice Salomon, the guardian who refused to leave them two months before, were gassed at the Sobibor death camp. The Alice Salomon mentioned here is not to be confused with the famed German intellectual who fled Nazi Germany before World War II and passed away in New York in 1948. At the same time, one must wonder who says Kaddish for this otherwise unknown brave soul and the 29 youngsters who were in her care.

 

1943: In France, 4000 Jews were deported from Marseilles, interned briefly at Drancy, France, and then deported to Sobibór

 

1943: The Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple stood up in front of the House of Lords in London and pleaded with the British government to help the Jews of Europe. "We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility," he said. "We stand at the bar of history, of humanity, and of God." Ever since news of Hitler's plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe reached the public in late 1942, British church leaders and members of Parliament had been agitating for something to be done. Temple's plea marked the culmination of the clamoring.

 

1944: British Major-General Orde Wingate died in airplane crash while fighting the Japanese in Burma during World War II. ”Wingate was an unconventional person in many respects. Among his other unique qualities was that he was an officer in the British Army, who, while serving in Palestine during the 1930's supported the Jewish cause. Then Captain Wingate served in Israel from 1936 until 1939. Born in 1903 to a religious Christian family and a firm believer in the Bible, Orde Wingate passionately embraced the prophetic vision of Jewish redemption and the Jews' ultimate return to Eretz Yisrael. During his service in Eretz Yisrael, he worked to help realize that ideal. The son of a British officer, Wingate was born in India, received a military education, and was commissioned in 1923. He served in India and then in the Sudan, where he studied Arabic and Semitics, and acquired a familiarity with the Middle East. Wingate was recognized as a talented officer, and by 1936 he had earned the rank of captain. That same year he was transferred to Eretz Yisrael, and served there for the next three years. Wingate arrived in Eretz Yisrael as an intelligence officer at a time when small bands of Arab rioters were regularly attacking both the British and the Jews. To counter this offensive, Wingate organized and trained “Special Night Squads,” comprised primarily of Haganah fighters, which were successfully employed throughout the Yishuv. Their tactics were based on the strategic principles of surprise, mobility, and night attacks and they served effectively both as defensive and offensive units, successfully pre-empting and resisting Arab attacks. Wingate maintained good contacts with the heads of the Yishuv and the Haganah. He learned Hebrew, and he demonstrated his ardent belief that the Jews were entitled to their homeland in Eretz Yisrael. He also recognized the need for a working military force, and he dreamed of heading the army of the future Jewish state. Because of his efforts and support, he was called in the Yishuv “ha-yedid,” the friend. Wingate's intense support for the Zionist viewpoint, however, was controversial, and in 1939 the British succumbed to Arab pressure and transferred Wingate from Eretz Yisrael. His passport was stamped with the restriction that he not be allowed to re-enter the country. His personal involvement with the Zionist cause was thus curtailed, but many of those he trained became heads of the Palmach and, later, the Israel Defense Forces Wingate returned briefly to Great Britain, but, recognized for his military talent, he was transferred to further active duty. In 1941 he led the force in Ethiopia against the Italians and was a major figure in liberating the country. He then worked in Burma, organizing and training the Chindits, a special jungle unit that operated behind Japanese lines. Wingate was killed in an airplane crash in Burma in 1944, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Wingate's friendship for the Yishuv and his contributions to its defense has been recognized through the several places in Israel named for him, including the College of Physical Education near Netanya."

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

http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Charles_Orde_Wingate.htm

 

1944: At Ioannina in Greece, 1,860 Jews were seized by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz.

 

1945: Forty-three year old Elisabeth de Rothschild, the Catholic wife of Baron Philippe de Rothschild was murdered today at Ravensbruck concentration camp.

 

1947: The executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine ended its deliberations today. The committee has been meeting in Jerusalem to plan tactics for the upcoming special session of the United Nations being held to deal with the issue of Palestine.

 

1947: Birthdate of classical pianist Kaplinsky, the native of Tel Aviv who became a professor of music at Julliard.

 

1948: David Ben-Gurion “cabled the United States State Department a warning that he and his colleagues would with all of their strength oppose any postponement of Jewish independence.” The U.S. State Department, the body that had done so much to keep Jews from getting to the United States during the Hitler period, was busy trying to sabotage President Truman’s support of partition and the creation of a Jewish state.

 

1949: Israel and Lebanon signed an armistice agreement. Israeli troops withdrew from border towns they had occupied during the fighting. Lebanon would not become a major area of operations until decades later when the PLO was thrown out of Jordan and took refuge in Lebanon.

 

1949: In an attempt to break the deadlock between Israel and Transjordan over the shape of the border between the two states, Yigael Yadin, Walter Eytan, Moshe Dayan and Yehoshafat Harkabi (future director of Israeli Military Intelligence) went to meet King Abdullah at his villa in Shuneh Yigal. Yadin’s flawless recitation of apoem in Arabic served as an icebreaker. Despite initial setbacks, the two sides would reach an understanding that night.

 

1950: “The new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Msgr. Alberto Gori, paid his first official visit to Israel today. He met the diplomatic corps and senior officers of the Foreign Affairs, Interior and Religious Affairs Ministries at a reception in Jaffa.”

 

1951(15th of Adar II, 5711): Michael H. Cardozo Jr. of 163 East Eighty-first Street, veteran attorney, passed away today in his office at 115 Broadway at the age 70. He was a cousin of the late Associate Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo of the United States Supreme Court.

 

1957: The University of North Carolina led by Lennie Rosenbluth won the NCCA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, MO.

 

1959(13thof Adar II, 5719): Sixty-seven Sam Born, the Russian born American “candyman” who founded Just Born Company, maker of such sweet treats as Peeps passed away today.

http://www.justborn.com/

 

 

1962: Abraham Ellstein’s only opera, “The Golem”  which he created with his wife Sylvia Regan premiered today at the New York City Opera a year and a day before he passed away under the baton of Julius Rudel who had fled his native Austria when the Nazis took over.

 

1962: In its review of the Broadway musical “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” The New York Timesproclaimed "The evening's find is Barbara Streisand, a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh. Miss Streisand is a natural comedienne" By the time Streisand made her Broadway debut in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” she had already developed a loyal following as a singer. In performances at the Lion Club, one of New York City's premier gay clubs, and in other clubs around the country, the young Streisand developed her trademark outsider persona, impromptu one-liners, and theatrical delivery that brought audiences to their feet. Streisand's performance as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get It for You Wholesale was so successful that the role was expanded for her, with new songs added. Despite national acclaim for her performance, she was considered too Jewish, too eccentric, too unattractive, and too marked by her Brooklyn upbringing for a record contract. When Columbia Records finally released The Barbra Streisand Album in 1964, however, it remained on the charts for eighteen months. Streisand's movie debut in Funny Girl four years later, in the Oscar-winning role of comedian Fanny Brice, cemented her place among the stars of American theatre and film.

 

1963: Duke’s Art Heyman was named the outstanding player at the 1963 NCC Men’s Division I Basketball tournament which came to a close today

 

1963: Rolf Hochhuth's "Der Stellvertreter" (The Deputy), premiered in Berlin. The Catholic Church was outraged at the portrayal of Pius XII as being complicit in the murder of the Jews of Europe.

 

1964(10th of Nisan, 5724): Actor Peter Lorre passed away passed away at the age of 59. Born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein in what was then the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lorre gained fame as a character actor with parts in such films as Casablanca and Arsenic and Old Lace. In the 1930’s he played the title character the Mr. Motto detective films.

http://www.hitchcockwiki.com/wiki/The_Times_(25/Mar/1964)_-_Obituary:_Peter_Lorre

 

1972 (8th of Nisan, 5732): Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager, who had been revered as Vizhnitzer Rebbe for 35 years, passed away in Israel tonight.

 

1978: The first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line. The Blue Line was a demarcation between Israeli and PLO forces.

 

1980: In “The Two Faces of Israel’s Masada: Glory and Tragedy,” Carmia Borek describes the varying view of this famous Jewish landmark.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=FB061EFA395C11728DDDAA0A94DB405B8084F1D3

 

1980: Birthdate of Asaf Avidan an Israeli folk/rock musician known for his breakthrough debut album, "The Reckoning", which was created with a group of backup musicians under the name "Asaf Avidan and the Mojos". The album received positive critical reviews and earned Avidan a nomination for Best Israeli Artist at the upcoming MTV Europe Awards.

 

1980: Release date in the United States for “Christ Stopped at Eboli” (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli), a 1979 film adaptation of the book of the same name by Carlo Levi.

 

1981: Shimon Peres said in Tel Aviv today his party would make an effort to negotiate the future status of Jerusalem with Saudi Arabia and would look seriously at the possibility of peace with the Saudis.

 

1983(9thof Nisan, 5743): Eighty-four year old Rabbi Saul Lieberman passed away.

http://www.joshyuter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Saul-Lieberman-and-the-Orthodox-31.pdf

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

 

 

1985: Jewish singer Billy Joel wed supermodel Christie Brinkley

 

1986(12th of Adar II, 5746): Rabbi Moshe Feinstein passed away.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/25/obituaries/thousands-mourn-talmudic-scholar.html

 

1988: In Wellington, NZ, Israel national football team defeated Chinese Taipei, nine to nothing.

 

1987(22ndof Adar, 5747): Eighty-five year old Morton Minsky, the last of the Minsky brothers, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/24/obituaries/morton-minky-is-dead-at-85-last-of-a-burlesque-dynasty.html

 

1989: Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe) announced that they had unlocked the mystery of cold fusion at the University of Utah.

 

1990: Release date of “Pretty Woman” the comedy filmed under executive produce Laura Ziskin and co-starring Jason Alexander (born Jay Scott Greenspan)

 

1993: Judith Kaye began serving as Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals

 

1993: A third revival of “3 Men On A Horse” a play co-authored by George Abbott with a cast that included Tony Randall, Jack Klugman and Jerry Stiller began previews at the Lyceum Theatre.

 

1994(11th of Nisan, 5754): Victor Lashchiver, employed as a guard at the Income Tax offices in East Jerusalem, was shot and killed by terrorists near Damascus Gate on his way to work. The Popular Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

1995(21st of Adar II, 5755): Author and screenwriter Irving Shulman passed away at the age of 81.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-28/news/mn-47894_1_irving-shulman

 

 

1997(14th of Adar II, 5757): Purim

 

1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Vulnerable Observer Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart" by Ruth Behar and "The Journey Home Jewish Women and the American Century" by Joyce Antler. Among the more than 50 Jewish women chronicled in this tome are: Sonya Abuza, an overweight immigrant in Hartford who had been deserted by her husband, later became famous as a ''Gypsy of the footlights'' named Sophie Tucker. Henrietta Szold, the eldest of five daughters of a distinguished Baltimore rabbi, established Hadassah, the largest women's Zionist group in the world, in 1912. Ruth Gruber, who at 20 was declared the youngest person in the world to hold a doctorate, flew a secret mission for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II to help 1,000 refugees find asylum in Oswego, N.Y. Goldie Mabovich Meyerson was born in Kiev, was raised and married in Milwaukee, then moved to Palestine in 1921, where, known as Golda Meir, she became Prime Minister of Israel. In this unique volume, Joyce Antler, who teaches American studies at Brandeis University, blends history, anecdote and biography to emphasize the achievement of these women, who attempted to satisfy family, God and their own dreams at the same time. The book illuminates their struggles for identity as well as the sexism and anti-Semitism they encountered.

 

1999: Emanuel Zisman left The Third Way and continued serving as independent MK.

 

2000: During his meeting with President Ezer Weizman, Pope John Paul II “blessed the state of Israel” after which he visited Yad Vashem.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/speech.asp

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pope/john_paul/portrait.asp

 

 

2003(19th of Adar II, 5763): Fritz Spiegl passed away. Born in 1926, Fritz Spiegl was an Austrian-born musician, journalist, broadcaster, humorist and collector. He fled to England in 1939 to escape the Nazis. He lived and worked there until his death.

 

2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including Regarding "The Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag and "Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication From the Vietnam War" by Henry Kissinger.

 

2005: March Madness, the popular name for the national American collegiate basketball champion competition took on a Jewish twist. A sixteen year old feud was reignited by comments made by Deon Thomas a professional basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv about University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Coach Bruce Pearl, whose skill at bringing his unheralded hoopsters to the Sweet Sixteen may mark him as the next Red Auerbach.

 

2005: The Ensemble for the Romantic Century presented Fanny Mendelssohn: Out of Her Brother’s Shadow, a theatrical concert featuring the music of Fanny Mendelssohn at the Jewish Museum in New York.

 

2007(4th of Nisan, 5767: Paul J. Cohen, American mathematician, and winner of the Fields Medal, passed away.

 

2007: Tal Friedman sang with “The Krayot” band in Tel Aiv today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tal_Friedman_23032007.jpg

 

2007: An international conference for Jewish theater professionals, artists, and aficionados hosted by The Association for Jewish Theatre in conjunction with the Jewish Theatre of Austria comes to an end.

 

2008: An exhibition organized by guest curator Murray Zimiles entitled “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel has its last showing at the American Folk Art Museum. From gilded lions to high-stepping horses, the sacred to the secular, and the Old World to the New, "Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel" traces the journey of Jewish woodcarvers and other artisans from Eastern and Central Europe to America and the unsung role they played in establishing a distinct Jewish culture in communities throughout the United States. The exuberant artworks stand as a testament to a history of survival and transformation and provide a surprising revelation of the link that was forged between the synagogue and the carousel as immigrant Jewish artists transferred symbolic visual elements into this vernacular American idiom. The first major study of this important aspect of the Jewish contribution to American folk art, the exhibition features approximately one hundred artworks and objects, including rare documentary photographs of Eastern European synagogue arks and carved gravestones, sacred carvings, papercuts, and carousel animals. The show is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog co-published with Brandeis University Press, an imprint of the University Press of New England.

 

2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of "Liberty Of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality" by Martha C. Nussbaum.

 

2008: The Washington Post book section featured a review of Mark Evanier’s "Kirby: King of Comics" that describes the life and times of Jack Kirby, the son of Austrian Jewish immigrants who had such an impact on the comic book genre including the creation of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk and Captain America.

 

2008: As pilots began undergoing tests for cancer, a team of technical personnel from the Israel Air Force flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for consultations with their American counterparts and Lockheed Martin concerning the recent discovery of carcinogenic material in an Israeli F-16I.

 

2008(16th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum, an ultra-Orthodox educator and innovator who created a series of dial-in phone lines with lectures on sacred texts, died today at the age of 68 http://forward.com/articles/13039/rabbi-eli-teitelbaum-dial-a-daf-creator--/

 

2009: At Rutgers University, Professor Martin Bunzl, director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois at Urbana delivers a lecture on Israel, Islamophobia, and the Right Wing in Europe entitled “The New Philo-Semitism.”

 

2009: Sports Illustrated magazine reported on the recent death of 86 year old Bill Davidson who amassed a fortune in the glass business owner the Detroit Pistons for 35 years and free spending philanthropists. The magazine also noted that Davidson had run track at Michigan and “was a charter member of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

 

2009: The Aviv String Quartet, founded in Israel in 1997, performs at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

 

2009: In the on-going sage of what was once the country’s leading kosher slaughtering operation four companies bid for the assets of Agriprocessors in an auction that began today. The bidding ended this evening night with offers reaching as high as $5.5 million.

 

2010: The AIPAC Policy Conference comes to a close.

 

2010: The New York Times Knowledge Network and the Israeli Consulate are scheduled to team up together to present the opening night of a weeklong event entitled The New Israeli Cuisine in which participants will take a tour through the fascinating evolution of Israel's culinary scene. A melting pot of more than 60 different ethnicities - from India to Morocco to Argentina - Israeli cuisine is one of the world's fastest emerging kitchens.

 

2010: The Temple Mount Human Rights Group has scheduled a gathering for today in front of the Mashbir department store in Jerusalem.

 

2010: The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel met this evening in Washington, D.C.

 

2010: The UK expelled an Israeli diplomat owing to claims that an embassy official from that country forged passports, and David Miliband gave a public warning against travel to Israel because of identity theft concerns

 

2010: As German authorities pursue suspected Nazi war criminals to the last, a court in Aachen convicted an 88-year-old former SS soldier today on charges of killing three Dutch civilians in reprisal for attacks by Dutch resistance fighters in 1944.

 

2010: The ex-convict who killed a Canadian Jewish leader in Barbados last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Curtis Joel Foster, 25, was sentenced today in a Barbados court for killing Terry Schwarzfeld, who had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel.

 

2011: The 75-minute dramatic oratorio, “From the Fire,” is scheduled to be presented in New York City to mark the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and bring attention to contemporary examples of unsafe working conditions.

 

2011: Kathryn Gleason, a professor of Archaeology and Landscape Architecture at Cornell, who has excavated at Herod's tomb and other sites in Israel is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the 92nd St Y entitled “Archaeology In Israel: Herod's World .”

 

2011: Today a committee of the Knesset is scheduled to debate whether J Street is sufficiently "committed" to Israel to be called a pro-Israel organization.

 

2011: “Two rockets exploded in Beersheba this morning, and ten mortar shells fell in the Sha'ar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils.

 

2011(17, Adar II, 5771): “One woman died and 50 were injured after an explosion took place at a bus station in central Jerusalem this afternoon. Police said that a bomb exploded outside Egged bus number 74 at a station opposite the Jerusalem Conference Center (Binyanei Ha'uma) in the center of town. Fifty people were injured in the attack. Three were injured seriously from the explosion itself, four moderately from shrapnel packed into the explosive device and the remainder were in moderate to light condition. The 50 injured were taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem, Hadassah Mount Scopus, Bikur Holim and Shaare Tzedek hospitals. All hospitals in the area were opened to receive casualties. One woman, aged 59, died from injuries sustained in the blast. Police said that this was the first terrorist attack in four years that involved an explosion. Police were looking for one specific person who left the bag that contained the bomb. There were reports that witnesses were able to identify the man who left the bag and police were searching for him. Police suspected that an explosive device inside a bag was left at the bus stop, which then exploded. Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said that the explosive device was between one and two kilograms and was packed with shrapnel. Authorities said that there was no connection between the attack and events in the Gaza Strip in recent days. However, they suspected a connection between this attack and one several weeks, in which an explosive device was left on the side of a main road near Gilo. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said his main concern is that this could happen anywhere. He called the incident a "cowardly terrorist attack." Barkat added that he believes in the police's capability to catch the perpetrator. He added that in 99 percent of cases, the terrorists are found. The mayor added that he will still participate in the Jerusalem Marathon scheduled to take place on Friday. Most importantly, he said, is to return to your normal lives so that the terrorists don't think they can win. Large numbers of police and ambulance forces were on the scene. Roads surrounding the scene were closed to traffic and authorities were searching the area for additional explosive devices and for a suspect. Police raised the alert level in the capital, following the explosion. Police were beginning to reopen Highway 1 following the attack.”

 

2011: It was reported today that “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is trying to identify more than 1,000 children in photos that date from when they were scattered across Europe at the end of World War II and taken in by relief agencies. The museum’s “Remember Me” project seeks the public’s help in identifying 1,100 children among tens of thousands who were uprooted by the war. The museum is posting the pictures, which are part of its collections, online and plans to publish many of the images in newspapers and online forums. Museum officials hope to learn who the children are, what happened to them and help reconnect them to relatives who may also have been scattered. The museum says the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling with time.” (Associated Press)

 

2011(17, Adar II, 5771): Famed defense attorney Leonard I. Weinglass passed away today at the age of 77. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25weinglass.html

 

2012: “Gripsholm,” a movie about Berlin cabaret life in the inter-war years featuring the life of a German-Jewish publisher as the leading character, is scheduled to be shown in Atlanta, GA.

 

2012: “Remembrance and “Ahead of Time” are schedule to be shown at the NoVA International Jewish Film Festival in Fairfax, VA.

 

2012: As a part of the movement started by National Day of Unplugging Jews will begin a weekend complying with the Sabbath Manifesto.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/Themes_and_Theology/sabbath-manifesto.shtml

 

2013: Barak Obama is scheduled to return to the United States after completing his first trip to Israel since being elected President.

 

2013: Violinist Vadim Gluzman and pianist Agnela Yoffe are scheduled to perform at the High School of Fashion Industries.

 

2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Shabbat HaGadol

 

2013(12thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-three year old Canadian born American bodybuilder Joe Weider who along with his brother carved a special niche in the world competitive bodybuilding passed away today.


 

2013: The worsening crisis in Syria necessitated restoring relations with Turkey, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page this evening, explaining the reasoning to his apology to Ankara over the death of nine Turkish activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla.

 

 2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry began nitty-gritty efforts at re-starting talks between Israel and the Palestinians with a late night meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

 

2013: An IDF jeep on patrol near the Syrian border was hit by gunfire this evening. The IDF said the shots were fired from Syria, and that it was "checking the circumstances surrounding the incident."

 

2014: Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to return to Miami, for a concert featuring Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 in C minor which is being dedicated in memory of Dr. Shulamit Katzman, who was a devoted supporter of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

 

2014: A youth center in Jönköping in southern Sweden is vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs, including “Jewish pigs,” “you’ll burn in hell,” and swastikas.

 

2014: Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to perform his only New York recital at 8 p.m.

 

2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Jewish Poetry Now: Celebrating the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry”

 

2014: In New Orleans, the Jewish Children’s Regional Service (one of America’s premiere provider of social services for the Jewish community) is scheduled to hold its Annual Meeting this morning at the Uptown Jewish Community Center.

 

2014: In Springfield,  VA, Congregation Adat Reyim is scheduled to host Robert H. Gillette, author of The Virginia Plan that described the plan of department store own William B. Thalhimer’s  plan to rescue the students of Gross Breesen Instiutute and create “a safe haven on Burkeville, VA  farm.

 

2014: “The Jewish Cardinal” with “Moses on the Mesa” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: “The Zigzag Kid” is scheduled to be the last picture shown at this year’s Houston Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the Chair of Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to host a lecture “Tortosa” presented by David Goldstein

 

2014: “The mystery of where Islamist hackers got phone numbers and email addresses to send threatening text and email messages grew today, when it emerged that a database belonging to the IsraelDefense magazine and web site had been hacked over the weekend.” (As reported by David Shamah)

 

2014: “The Foreign Ministry’s Workers Union today declared a full-blown general strike, shutting down the ministry’s headquarters in Jerusalem and all Israeli embassies and consulates across the world.´(As reported by Raphael Ahren)

 

2014: “Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix: A Retrospective,” is scheduled to come to a close at The Jewish Museum in New York City


 

2015: “Touchdown Israel – Tackle Football in the Holyland” is scheduled to be sown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival

 

2015: Dr. Tom Barton is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Battle Over Jews in Medieval Spain” in Carlsbad, CA.

 

This Day, March 24, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 24

 

809: Harun al-Rashid (Aaron the Upright, Aaron the Just), fifth caliph of the Abbasid Empire who had issued a decree that Jews wear a yellow belt in 807, passed away.

 

1244(18th of Nisan): Rabbi Meir Abulafya Ha-Levi (Ramah) an opponent of Maimonides and author of Yad Ramah passed away today.

 

1267: The government of Barcelona gave the Jews permission to repair their synagogue.

 

1488(13th of Nisan): Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro, author of a popular Mishnah commentary arrived in Jerusalem

 

1564: The Pope authorized the printing of the Talmud in Mantua on condition that the word Talmud would be omitted from the text. From the opening years of the sixteenth century, Mantua was a leading center of Jewish printing. A husband and wife duo, Abraham and Estellina Conat shared equally in printing and promoting Jewish texts. By the seventeenth century, the situation of the Jews of Mantua had worsened as they, like Italian Jews in many other cities, were forced to live behind Ghetto Walls.

 

1564: The index of Pius IV. of Trent, which appeared today permitted the Jews to use Hebrew and even Talmudic books, provided they were printed without the word "Talmud," and were purged from vituperations against the Christian religion. The expurgation of Hebrew books, thus expressly declared admissible, was henceforth regularly undertaken before printing, either by the Jews themselves or by Christian correctors; and this accounts for the more or less mutilated state of reprints since the middle of the sixteenth century.

 

1575(3rdof Nisan, 5335): Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, passed away today at Safed.

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

 

1603: Queen Elizabeth I passed away at the age of 69, having ruled since 1558. Although Elizabethan England was supposedly Jew-free, there were several small Marrano communities in the British Isles. In 1588, Dr. Hector Nunes, one of these secret Jews provided the English leaders with the invaluable intelligence that the Spanish Armada had reached Lisbon which was its first stop as it headed north to attack England. On the other hand, Dr. Roerigo Lopez was Elizabeth’s physician in 1586 and he ended being accused of being part of a plot to kill the Queen. While the evidence was flimsy, it was thought better to execute him given the many threats against her life. The fate of Lopez gave rise to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. This in turn inspired Marlowe’s competitor, William Shakespeare to write The Merchant of Venice.

 

1630(11th of Nisan, 5390): Isaiah Horowitz, Shelah ha-Kadosh (the holy Shelah) passed away in Tiberias.

http://shl2gur.tripod.com/shla.htm

 

1648(27thof Adar, 5408): Leon of Modena passed away. Leon of Modena was a Jewish scholar, born in Venice in 1571, of a notable French family which had migrated to Italy after the expulsion of the Jews from France. He was a precocious child, but, as Graetz points out, his lack of stable character prevented his gifts from maturing. "He pursued all sorts of occupations to support himself, viz. those of preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers, interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi, musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets." Though he failed to rise to real distinction he earned a place by his criticism of the Talmud among those who prepared the way for the new learning in Judaism. One of Leon's most effective works was his attack on the Kabbala, Ari Nohem, first published in 1840, for in it he demonstrated that the "Bible of the Kabbalists", the Zohar, was a modern composition by Moses de Leon. He became best known, however, as the interpreter of Judaism to the Christian world. At the instance of an English nobleman he prepared an account of the religious customs of the Synagogue, Riti Ebraici (1637). This book was widely read by Christians; it was rendered into various languages, and in 1650 was translated into English by Edward Chilmead. At the time the Jewish question was coming to the fore in London, and Leon of Modena's book did much to stimulate popular interest. He died at Venice.

 

1656: After the outbreak of war between England and Spain, Jews living in England petitioned Cromwell to stay insisting that they were not Spaniards but rather Marranos. Although Cromwell chose not to officially reply to today’s request, he permitted the community to establish a Jewish Cemetery, and for protection during prayers. His unwritten agreement was conditioned on there being no public Jewish worship. This is considered by many to mark the official end of the expulsion of the Jews from England.

 

1664: Roger Williams was granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island. Unlike Massachusetts, Rhode Island was not governed as a theocracy. Rhode Island helped create the atmosphere of toleration that would become the American model thus making the United States a unique place for Jews to live.

 

1733: Birthdate of British theologian Joseph Priestly who 1786 published “Letter to the Jews” in which he urged them to convert that elicited a length answer from David Levin which led to the publication of his three volume Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Old Testament.

 

1743(28th of Adar): Rabbi Raphael Immanuel Ricchi author of Mishnat Hasidim passed away

 

1794: Start of the Kościuszko Uprising. Tadeusz Kościuszko, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, announced the general uprising against the Russian occupiers and assumed the powers of the Commander in Chief of all of the Polish forces. Jews, in a Jewish regiment led by Berek Joselewicz, took part in the failed uprising which led to the third and final partition of Poland in 1795.

 

1795: Birthdate of Zvi (Zwi) Hirsch Kalischer “an Orthodox rabbi and one of Zionism's early pioneers in Germany.”

 

1801: Alexander I became Czar of the Russian Empire. He ruled until his death in 1825. His treated his Jewish subjects poorly at the beginning and at the end of his reign. In the middle years which were marked by the wars with Napoleon, Alexander was impressed by the loyalty of his Jewish subjects in the fight against the French. He received unexpected help from the head of the Chabad Chassidim. Like other Christian leaders, Alexander sought to convert the Jews which was the source of any beneficence he might have shown them. When “killing them with kindness” failed, he went back to killing them with starvation, misery and impoverishment.

 

1807(14th of Adar II, 5567): Purim

 

1813: In Argentina, the inquisition was officially abolished. Two months later the Assembly passes regulations allowing freedom of practicing religion if it is observed in ones home

 

1818: American statesman Henry Clay wrote: 'All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty.' No, Henry Clay was not Jewish. But his statement on the relationship between government and organized religion provides a clue as to why Jews have flourished in America and how wrong some modern politicians are in their statements about separation of church and state.

 

1820: Birthdate of Elizabeth Rachel Felix, who gained fame as Mademoiselle Rachel, the great French Tragedienne

 

1820: First public performance of Marche Funebre et De Profundis en Hebreu, a funeral march composed by Jacques Fromenthal Halevy that had been commissioned by the Consistoire Israélite du Départment de la Seine, for a public service in memory of the Duke de Berry, in the Jewish community's temple. This liturgical composition which helped launch Halevy’s career was meant to be performed by a vocal trio and orchestra. On its engraved title page, Halevy was described as a member of the Royal Institute of Music and a recipient of the patronage of the King of France at the Academy of Rome. One of France's greatest composers, Jacques Fromenthal Halevy (1799-1862), was also the son of a cantor. His father, Elie Halfon Halevy was the secretary of the Jewish community of Paris and a Hebrew teacher and writer as well. Musically gifted, Jacques was accepted as a student by the Paris Conservatory at age ten and subsequently became a member of its faculty, rising to the rank of professor in 1833. His lasting fame was assured by his grand opera La Juive which premiered in 1835.

 

1841: “Another important step for emancipation was the law adopted today, for Galicia, which promised certain improvements for the Jews of that province who should dress in European costume and acquire a knowledge of either German or Polish”

 

1847: In London, Rabbi D.A. De Sola delivered a sermon at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Bevis Marks, on the subject of the Irish Potato Famine which began with the following statement, “"For devastation has gone forth through the land, Death stalks around, with disease in its train...."

 

1853: In Jerusalem, English missionaries ended up fighting instead of praying on Good Friday. First, they “were turned out of the Church of the Holy Seplucher because they behaved in an unseemly manner when the Procession of the Host” passed by. Then “a missionary named Crawford preached a sermon outside the Synagogue while the service was going on…and indulged in invectives against the Talmud. One of the Children of Israel incensed at the this, hurled a dead cat” in his face. A fight then broke out between the Protestant missionaries and the Jews during which “it rained mud and rocks.”

 

1859: In Savannah, GA,  Johanna Peyser became Johanna Wessolowsky when she married Charles Wessolowsky

 

1860: In New York, the Supreme Court granted an “order of the payment of surplus in the case of Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society vs. Fitzpatrick.

 

1860: An editorial published today that reviewed the current debate over the death penalty stated that the legislature should refrain from discussing “What the law of Moses says on the subject, or how far that law is binding on modern communities; questions which they are not competent to decide” and should stick to the question at hand – should life imprisonment replace hanging as a punishment for murder.

 

1862: Judah P. Benjamin completed his service as Secretary of War for the CSA.

 

1862: The Purim Association of the City of New York was organized for the purpose of arranging annual Purim balls. Meyer S. Isaacs, prominent New York Lawyer, civic leader and Jewish activist, was one of the founders of the Purim Association which lasted until 1906.

 

1872(14th of Adar II, 5632): Purim

 

1872: Hyman Israel, one of the wealthiest members of Beth Israel Bikur Cholim in New York City hosted a Purim Open house at his home on 25th Street. The party included a large number of masked young men and women including the host’s daughter, Miss Annie Israel.

 

1873: Following a speech by Benjamin Disraeli, the government of Prime Minister Gladstone was defeated on the issue of the Irish University Bill. Disraeli, who was seen as a “Jew” and Gladstone alternated as leaders of British governments during the middle decades of the 19th century.

 

1874: Birthdate of Harry Houdini. Born Eric Weiss, Houdini's father was a rabbi. Houdini showed promise as a contortionist and acrobat at an early age. He later took the name of Harry Houdini and gained fame as an escape artist. He died a tragic death on November 1, 1926. Many magicians, escape artists and people with similar interests gather to commemorate his passing each Halloween, October 31.

 

1878: Proving that Jews can be found all over the world , it was reported today that Parva, a Brazilian city deep in the heart of the Amazon on the Equator has a population of 35,000 that “includes a few Jews.

 

1878: The Young Men’s Hebrew Union hosted an evening of culture at the Norfolk Street Synagogue this evening that included a lecture by A. Oakly Hall on “The Great Pertersham Will Case” followed by a musical program that included a violin solo David Bimberg.

 

1878: Birthdate of Moissaye Joseph Olgin “a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator” who was active in the first three decades 20th century

 

1887: President Grover Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Strauss ambassador to Turkey. Strauss was the first American Jew to serve as an ambassador. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt would appoint Strauss Secretary of Commerce and Labor, making him the first American Jew to hold a cabinet post in the government of the United States. The year 1887 was a busy one for the Strauss family. That was the year that Oscar's brothers, Nathan and Isidor bought Macy’s Department Store.

1889: Meier Selig Goldschmidt Selma Cramer the daughter of Salomon Cramer and Therese (Röschen) Oppenheimer today

 

1891(14th of Adar II, 5651): Purim

 

1892(25thof Adar, 5652): Fifty-four year old Moses Mehrbach, a native of Bavaria and the husband of Carolyn Meyer passed away today in New York.

 

1894: The Don Quixote Club will give a benefit performance tonight at the Manhattan Athletic Club Theatre to raise funds for the United Hebrew Charities.

 

1894: “Rights of Foreign Jews in Russia” published today described an order issued by the Russian Minister of the Interior to the police that they are not to interfere with activities of foreign Jews who have “proper passports” in their possession. The order was issued in response to pressure from various governments whose Jewish citizens have complaint about ill-treatment and expulsion by the Czarist government.

 

1894: The New York Times stated erroneously that on Friday, March 23, “with the setting of the sun the Hebrew Feast of the Passover began.” (The first Seder would not come until the evening of April 20, with the first day of the holiday falling on April 21.)

 

1895(28th of Adar, 5655): Babet Karl, the aunt of wealthy real estate lawyer Abraham Stern passed away today in New York.

 

1895: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture this morning at the Carnegie Music Hall entitled “The New View of Childhood and Its Effects on Education.”

 

1895: Birthdate of Arthur Murray. Born Murray Teichman, he would become America’s Dance Teacher with his chain of Dance Studios and the television show, Arthur Murray's Dance Party.

 

1897: It was reported today that during the month of February the United Hebrew Charities had received 3,306 applications for assistance on behalf of 11,020 people.  Jobs were found for 611 people and 466 people were seen by either doctors or nurses. The charity raised $19,253.40 during February and spent $11,736.53.

 

1897: Birthdate of Wilhelm Reich a Jewish-Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and author, who was trained in Vienna by Sigmund Freud. He passed away in 1957.

 

1897: “Theatrical Notes” published today described Oscar Hammerstein’s decision revamp his production of “Greater New York.”

 

1898: Hertig and Seamon have donated the use of the Harlem Music Hall to the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for tonight’s charity event that will benefit the Society and the Montefiore Home.

 

1899: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Silverman attributes “the long life and freedom from epidemics enjoyed” by the Jews “to their Mosaic laws.  “To the Jew his religion is a philosophy of life” and the Jew “is the only real cosmopolitan” who “can live in any country and enjoy health in every climate.”

 

1899: The Jewish Messenger reported that Congregation Orach Chaim opened its new sanctuary. "An ornament to Manhattan in general and to the inhabitants of E. 51st in particular, is the handsome new edifice of this synagogue. The only thing that mars the beauty of the structure is the $15,000 mortgage. It would be, indeed, permissible even for the most ultra-orthodox to learn from Roman Catholic neighbors not to dedicate a place of worship in the presence of a mortgage."

 

1900(23rdof Adar II, 5660): Sixty-eight year old “Austrian scholar and author Solomon Joachim Chayim Halberstam, the son of Isaac Halbestram, passed away today.

 

1902(15thof Adar II, 5662): Shushan Purim

 

1902(15thof Adar II, 5662): Poet and author Salomon Mandelkern who was born at Mlynov, Volhynian Governorate in 1846 passed away today in Vienna. Mandelkern, whose son Israel lived in New York, had translated the works of several American writers including Henry W. Longfellow into English.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_13144.html

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Mandelkern%2C%20Solomon%2C%201846-1902

 

1909(2ndof  Nisan, 5669): Fifty-five year old German architect Alfred Messel whose most famous work was the Wertheim Department store on Leipziger Platz and who became a Protestant in 1899 passed away today.

 

1911: Reports reached the West of the massacre and looting of Moroccan Jews.

 

1915: In Lynn, MA, Ann and Israel Sack gave birth to Albert Milton Sack the “prominent New York antiques dealer and the author of a guidebook to early American furniture that became the bible for a generation of weekend antiquers and a standard for professional collectors.”

 

1915: Among those listed today as contributors to the fund of the American Jewish Relief Committee were the Calgary, Alberta, Jewish Relief Committee, Congregation House of Israel, Hot Springs, AR; the Sunday School of the Hebrew Bible Class Association, Newport News, VA and the Ladies Temple Sisterhood of B’nai Jeshurun, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

 

1917: Birthdate of Brooklynite Alex Steinweiss, the son of women’s shoe designer and a seamstress, who as “an art director and graphic designer…brought custom artwork to record album covers and invented the first packaging for long-playing records.” (As reported by Steven Heller)

 

1918: In Chicago, Ida and Abe "Melech" Levin give birth to Joseph B. Levin.

 

1919: Birthdate of Robert Heilbroner. He was an American economist. The author of some twenty books, Heilbroner was best known for The Worldly Philosophers published in 1953, a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. He passed away in 2005.

 

1920: Birthdate of Cracow native Mieczyslaw Pemper, the concentration camp inmate who actually compiled what came to be known as “Schindler’s List.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)

 

1921: The Chief Rabbinate of Palestine was established under the British Mandate. The first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Palestine was the scholar and sage, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was one of the leading intellectual and religious leaders during the Yishuv period.

 

1921: Winston Churchill’s train arrives in Gaza, the first large town he would visit on his trip to Palestine.

 

1922: In an attempt to calm Arab fears over Jewish immigration to Palestine, Churchill “approved a proposal from Sir Herbert Samuel that Jewish immigration would be limited by the ‘economic capacity’ of Palestine to absorb newcomers.” Of course, Churchill saw that Palestine would have a growing economic capacity given the improvements brought about the Jewish settlers.

 

1924: Birthdate of actor Norman Fell whose most lasting role came as Mr. Rope in the television hit “3’s Company.”

 

1933: “The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) an amendment to the Weimar Constitution that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichsta passed in both the Reichstag and Reichsrat today and was signed by President Paul von Hindenburg later that day

 

1936(1st of Nisan, 5696): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

 

1936: The House of Commons discussed a proposal for setting up a Legislative Council in Palestine that would give the Arabs control over the future of Jewish immigration into Palestine i.e. the end of such immigration and the Zionist dream. Churchill delivered a stirring speech against the proposal.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that in London the Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, was asked in the House of Commons what steps had been taken to prevent any future Arab disturbances and why Palestinian Jews were not allowed the same right of self-defense as enjoyed by the British people.

 

1937: The Palestine Post reported that The High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wauchope, visited the Jezreel Valley and discussed matters of security at Merhavia and Balfouria. An announcement was later made that over 700 supernumerary constables would be re-enlisted for service in the north of the country

 

1940: An hour long production of “June Moon” co-authored by George S. Kaufman co-starring Jack Benny and Benny Rubin was presented today.

 

1941: Birthdate of Michael William Masser, the Chicago born stockbroker turned popular music composer.

 

1944(28th of Adar, 5704): In Markowa, a patrol of German police came to the house of Wiktoria and Józef Ulm, where they found 8 Jews, members of the Szall and Goldman families. First the Germans executed all the Jews. Then they shot down pregnant Wiktoria and her husband. When the 6 children began to scream at the scene of dead bodies of their parents, Jozef Kokott, a German policeman (killed them. Markowa was a Polish village near Lancut. During World War II many families hid their Jewish neighbors to help them survive the Holocaust. It is estimated that at least 17 Jews survived the war in Markowa. Seven members of Weltz family were hidden in a barn of Dorota and Antoni Szylar. Jakub Einhorn was hidden by Jan and Weronika Przybylak and the Jakub Lorbenfeld family was hidden by Michal Bar. Two girls from Reisenbach family were initially hidden by Stanislaw Kielar, before joining the rest of 5 members’ of the family in the house of Julia and Józef Bar. Righteous Gentiles came in all shapes and sizes. Some were industrialists called Oksar and others were simple peasants who showed real courage.

 

1944: An unidentified Turkish Jew who was an eyewitness to the event, reported to the United States government that on this date the Germans had deported all the registered Jews of Athens.

 

1944: Shlomo Venezia and his family were deported from Thessaloniki to Athens before being shipped to Auschwitz.

 

1944: In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in the Ardeantine Caves Massacre.

 

1944: As the Nazis assert control over Hungary, President Roosevelt warns the Hungarians “to refrain from anti-Jewish measures.” (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library)

 

1944: Two British constables were killed in Tel Aviv and three others were killed in Haifa when a bomb exploded at the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters in Haifa. These and other attacks conducted tonight were believed to be the work of the Stern Gang and were condemned by The Tel Aviv Municipal Council and the Federation of Jewish Labor.

 

1945: A train carrying 200 Jewish women, exhausted from a death march from Neusalz, Poland, arrived at Bergen-Belsen, Germany.

 

1945: The Arabs held protest demonstrations at the same time that their leaders rejected a compromise that would have rotated the position of Mayor of Jerusalem among members of the Jewish, Arab and British communities. The Jews had agreed to the compromise even though 61 per cent of the city’s population was Jewish.

 

1947: Dr. Nahum Goldman is scheduled to leave Palestine today for London and New York so that he can begin planning for the upcoming meeting of the special sessions of the United Nations that has been called to deal with the problem of Palestine.

 

1950(6th of Nisan, 5710): Harold Joseph Laski an “English political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946” passed away.

 

1950: An Israeli government official “said today that Jordan suddenly broke off negotiations on a five-year non-aggression pact” between the two countries which was close to completion. “Earlier today, a high diplomatic source in Beirut reported the break in negotiations had been forced by the resignation last week of Jordan’s Premier Tewfik Abul Huda.”

 

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the atmosphere at the opening of the Hague reparations talks between world Jewry and West Germany was "official, cool and tense." The German delegation claimed that their willingness to make reparations was restricted by Allied legislation.

 

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that in Jerusalem a man who escaped from a mental home was shot and killed by an Arab Legion sentry near the Jaffa Gate. Infiltrators murdered Mordecai Harkabi, a watchman from Hadera.

 

1955(1stof Nisan, 5715): Rosh Chodesh Nisan

 

1955(1stof Nisan, 5615): Terrorists threw hand grenades and opened fire on a crowd at a wedding in the farming community of Patish, in the Negev, killing a young woman and wounding 18 others.

 

1955: United States Customs officials seize copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" because it was obscene.

 

1956: In Brattleboro, VT, Kitty Prins Shmulin and “George J. Shumlin, a third generation American who was Jewish, and descended from Russian immigrants” gave birth to Peter Elliott Shumlin, the 81st Governor of Vermont.

 

1956: Birthdate of Steve Ballmer, Vice President of Microsoft.

 

1959(14thof Adar II, 5719) Purim

 

1965: Shlomo-Yisrael Ben-Meir began serving as Deputy Minister of Health.

 

1965: Rabbi Saul Leeman of Cranston and Rabbi William G. Braude were among those marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

http://jwa.org/media/what-i-learned-in-alabama-about-yarmulkes

 

1968: This afternoon Suzie Burger, a 7 1/2-year-old artist, helped dedicate the new Henry Kaufmann Building at the 92d Street Young Men's-Young Women's Hebrew Association.

 

1969(5thof Nisan, 5729): Seventy-eight year old Neville Laski, the British jurist who was the brother of Harold Laski passed away today.

 

1970: “It Takes A Thief” which had co-starred Malachi Thorne in its first two seasons completed its run in prime time television.

 

1972: An estimated 50,000 mourners accompanied Rabbi Chaim Meir Hager’s aron to its final resting place. He had been revered as Vizhnitzer Rebbe for 35 years.

 

1973(20th of Adar II, 5733): Award winning Israeli novelist Haim Hazaz passed away. A native of the Ukraine, he made Aliyah in 1931. His only son, Nahum died during the War of Independence. Hazaz spent the last decade of his life in Talbiya.

 

1975: Eliyahu Moyal replaced Jabr Muadi as Deputy Minister of Communications.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Postreported that a Haifa Labor Court ordered the striking Haifa and Ashdod port workers to return to work, but they were still debating whether to respond to the court's orders.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that five hundred and eleven out of 566 members of the Herat's Central Committee voted for Menachem Begin to head the party's list for the forthcoming Knesset elections.

 

1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that leading Israeli scientists gathered at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot to protest against the latest wave of Soviet persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union.

 

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Shabbat HaChodesh

 

1979(25thof Adar, 5739): Eighty year old Sir Jacob Edward Cohen, founder of the Tesco supermarket chain passed away.

 

1979: One person was killed and 13 people were injured, most of them lightly, when an explosive charge blew up in a trash can in Zion Square in Jerusalem.

 

1981(18thof Adar II, 5741): Eighty-four year old Nathaniel Lawrence Goldstein who served as New York State Attorney General from 1943 to 1954 passed away.  A Republican, he teamed with Thomas E. Dewey to break the Democratic hold on Albany.

 

1981: Today Saudi Arabia rejected a suggestion by the Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres that he would try to explore the possibility of peace with the Saudis if his Labor Party wins the Israeli general elections on June 30.The official Saudi press agency quoted Information Minister Mohammed Abdo Yamani as saying the nation ''rejects allegations in the enemy's press to implicate the kingdom in positions contrary to its present and future policies.'' Mr. Abdo Yamani said the remarks were meant for local consumption in Israel during the campaign. ''The peace we want is not that which Peres and Begin want,'' he said, referring to Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel. ''The peace we support is based on rights, justice, international law and the resolutions of the United Nations.''

 

1981: In “About Education; Nature vs. Nature: Psychologist Urges Active Intervention,” published today, Dr. Reuven Feuerstein the clinical psychologist serving as director of the Youth Aliyah Research Institute, professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University, explains his unique views on mental health including the concept of intelligence. “Heredity, shemeredity! You have to do something” is his answer to the endless argument over whether disadvantaged children do poorly in school because of inherited traits or because of their environment. The human organism is an open system, very plastic. It can be changed and modified. The question is whether educators have the will, the confidence to do something.”

 

1984(20th of Adar II, 5744): Ninety-three year old Sam Jaffe who performed with Cary Grant in Gunga Din,  with Marilyn Monroe in Asphalt Jungle and Charlton Heston in Ben Hur (amongst other accomplishments) passed way.

http://www.mtv.com/artists/sam-jaffe/biography/

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&dat=19840325&id=SXhJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SgsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=885,7539643

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19840326&id=mr4yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=S-8FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4470,3041652

 

 

1986(13th of Adar II, 5746): Reb Moshe Feinstein, a leading expert on Halachah, passed away 21 days after celebrating his 91st birthday.

 

1987: In New Haven, CT, Dr. Ira and Karen Zeid gave birth to major league pitcher Joshua Alexander ("Josh") Zeid who played college ball at Tulane University where majored in English.

 

1989: A videotape version of the 1960 production of “Peter Pan” a musical by Mark "Moose" Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green was broadcast today.

 

1991: Rabi Laurence Kotok officiated at the wedding of Nancy Anne Stein and David Mark Woolf at the North Country Reform Temple.

 

1991: Mr. and Mrs. Sam Witchel of Scarsdale N.Y. have announced the engagement of their daughter Alexandra Rachelle Witchel to Frank Hart Rich Jr.., a son of Mr. Rich and Mrs. Joel Fisher, both of Washington. A June wedding is planned. Ms. Witchel, 33 years old and known as Alex, is a reporter in the news department of The New York Times. She writes the "On Stage, and Off" column. Mr. Rich, 41, has been the chief drama critic of The Times since 1980.

 

1992: “Jakes Women” written by Neil Simon and directed by Gene Saks opened at the Neil Simon Theatre.

 

1993: Award winning author John Hersey passed away. While most of the world remembers the non-Jewish Hersey for his writings about Hiroshima, many Jews remember him for his epic novel, The Wall. It was one of the first and finest books to be written about events during the Holocaust. In this case, The Wall, portrayed the events leading up to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

 

1993: Ezer Weizman was elected President of Israel. The nephew of Chaim Weizman enjoyed a distinguished military career before entering politics. He flew for the RAF during World War II and was one of the founders of what would become the Israeli Air Force. He played an instrumental role in developing it into one of the finest military units of its kind in the world.

 

1994(12th of Nisan, 5754): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th Nisan is on Shabbat

 

1996: “The Jew Who Fought to Stay German” published today famed Israeli author Amos Elon uses the recent publication of Victor Klemperer’s "Diaries 1933-1945" to review this unique literary work and to examine the world in which this “disenfranchised German Jew” struggled to survive as he came to grips with the reality the “real” Germany despites his best efforts to deny that reality.

 

2001: “Inherit The Wind” the controversial play co-authored by Jerome Lawrence is scheduled to have its final performance at the Sheffel Theatre of the Topeka (Kansas) Civic Theatre & Academy

 

2002: The New York Times included a review of The Good, The Bad &The Difference: How to Tell Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations by Randy Cohn, a Jewish author born in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

2005: Paula Abdul ” was fined US$900 and given 24 months of informal probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor hit-and-run driving in Los Angeles.”

 

2005: Broadcast of a re-union episode of Krovim Krovim an Israeli television sitcom.

 

2006: The Japanese Foreign Ministry “issued a position paper” today “that there was no evidence the Ministry imposed disciplinary action on Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who defied his government while serving in Lithuania by issuing thousands of transit visas to Jews enabling them to escape the Nazis.

 

2006: Lily Elstein holds the first concert at the former Mivtahim Inn in Zichron Yaakov which she purchased January of 2006.

 

2006: Hazel Josephine Cosgrove, Lady Cosgrove, completed her service as a Senator of the College of Justice.

 

2008: Time features an article entitled “Israel’s Secret War” which describes the “invisible battle being waged in the West Bank as Israel uses a mailed fist and a network of Palestinian informers to stop suicide bombers before they can reach their targets.” As one IDF officer said, “Our people sleep comfortably because the IDF is putting in a huge effort in the West Bank to prevent terror.”

 

2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “A Festival of Hebrew Literature,” with David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Meir Shalev and Zeruya Shalev.

 

2008: Edmund “Levy was elected by the Supreme Court justices to serve on the Judicial Selection Committee in place of the court's Vice-President Eliezer Rivlin.”

 

2009: The Princeton Program on Judaic Studies presents “A Celebration of Tel Aviv at 100” featuring talks by Todd Hasak-Lowy (University of Florida) on “Tel Aviv's Accelerated History,” and Alona Nitzan-Shiftan (Technion) on “Architecture from the Sand” and a ‘screening of the first two installments of the new Israeli documentary "Tel Aviv," with creators Modi Bar-On and Anat Zeltser.

 

2009: In an event co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel, Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret, author of the short story collections “The Nimrod Flipout” and “The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God &

Other Stories,” as well as creator of the award-winning film "Malka Red-Heart," discusses the relationship between the short story and film as part of the Nextbook series at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

 

2009: An effort to auction off bankrupt Agriprocessors has been continued to next week after two days of bidding failed to yield an offer acceptable to the largest creditor.

 

2009: Senior Labor minister Isaac Herzog announced his support for party leader Ehud Barak's bid to bring the center-left Labor into a coalition headed by Prime Minister-Designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

2010: The Knesset's State Control Committee is scheduled to hold a special hearing today to discuss the cabinet's decision to delay proceeding on a rocket-resistant emergency room for Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon while a new location is sought to avoid tampering with old graves.

 

2010: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “From Black Market to Dinner Table: International Clandestine Aid and Its Hungarian Jewish Recipients in the 1950s” as part of its graduate seminar program.

 

2010: Israel will continue building in all of the Jerusalem municipality and a construction plan that raised questions during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current trip to Washington is nothing new, Netanyahu's spokesman said in a statement today.

 

2010: The Washington Post featured a review of a memoir entitled "Devotion" by Dani Shapiro.

 

2010(9th of Nisan, 5770): Ninety-three year old pharmaceutical executive and patron of the arts Mortimer D. Sackler passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01sackler.html

 

2011: Prof Mandy Merck, Royal Holloway, University of London is scheduled to deliver a talk entitled “Charlotte loves Harry – Ethnic stereotypes and Jewish jokes in Sex and the City” at the Wiener Library,in the UK.

 

2011: Ely Levine is scheduled to give a lecture at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa entitled "Building in the Bible:From Babel to Bathsheba." Levine, a visiting professor at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, "will discuss how the study of ancient architecture has shed light on biblical mysteries."

 

2011: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not leave for Russia today as planned due to the terrorist attack in Jerusalem yesterday.

 

2011: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and American Society for Jewish Music presented “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire.”

 

2011: The British Foreign Office confirmed today that a UK national, Mary Jane Gardner, died in yesterday's terrorist attack at a Jerusalem bus stop, the Associated Press reported. The 59-year-old woman was critically injured in the blast and succumbed to her wounds the same day at Haddasah-Ein Kerem Medical Center. Thirty-nine others were injured in the attack; two are still in serious condition.

 

2011: The Israeli Air Force struck targets in the Gaza Strip in the early hours today, a day after Palestinian militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortars across the border.

 

2012: Ricky Ullman’s final performance “as the character Alex in the New Group's production of "Russian Transport" Off-Broadway in New York.”

 

2012: Shabbat of the “Sabbath Manifesto” is scheduled to end this evening.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ritual/Shabbat_The_Sabbath/Themes_and_Theology/sabbath-manifesto.shtml

 

2012: “The Syrian Bride” is scheduled to be shown this evening at Tifereth Israel’s Israeli Movie Night in Washington, DC.

 

2012: “The Flood” is scheduled to be shown at the 16TH Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival

 

2013: Join Beyhan Cagri Trock, author of The Ottoman Turk and the Pretty Jewish Girl: Real Turkish Cooking is scheduled to teach a class featuring “authentic, delicious Sephardic and Turkish family recipes” at the Lorinda "Annie" Hooks Demo Kitchen

 

2013: The Trio Sefardi is scheduled to provide an afternoon of music that focuses on the traditions of Pesach at the Abraham Lincoln Hall.

 

2013: Visitors to the Weiner Library in London will have the opportunity to view the exhibition Wit's End: The Satirical Cartoons of Stephen Roth', a compilation of the works of the “Czech Jewish artist whose cartoons lampooned fascist dictators and put a wry spin on political events during the Second World War.”

 

2013: IDF soldiers fired a Tammuz missile at a Syrian army position in Tel Fares, from which shots were fired both that day and the previous day across the border into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

 

2013: Ben Zygier, the alleged Mossad agent also known as Prisoner X who committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in 2010, was arrested for passing sensitive information to Hezbollah that led to the arrests of two informants within the ranks of the Shi’ite organization, Der Spiegelreported on today.

 

2014: Reform Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, is scheduled to be to speak on “Christianity and Judaism: God’s Double Helix Through Time” at Loyola University in New Orleans.

 

2014: “Dancing in Jaffa” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.

 

2014: Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled to present a benefit performance at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in Palm Beach.

 

2014: Majn Alef Bejs, “a book on Yiddish published by a Polish Jewish group has won first prize in the non-fiction category of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair which is scheduled to open today.

 

2014: “For the second time in as many weeks, Economy and Religious Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett came under fire today over an accusation that he has been using his position to funnel money to associates.”

 

2014: The results of a new survey of anti-Semitic attidues presented at a news conference today organized by the Action and Protection Foundation headquarters “showed up to 40 percent of respondents accepted some anti-Semitic attitudes. (As reported by JTA)

 

2015: In La Jolla, CA, the Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to host “Turning Inward: Jews and American Life, 1965-Presentish.”

 

2015: The 5thJ Street National Conference is scheduled to come to an end.

 

2015: William Brumfield is scheduled to deliver at lecture on the “The Jewish Moment in Russia” at Tulane University.

 

2015: The 16th Street Book Club is scheduled to discuss A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev, translated by Evan Fallenberg

 

This Day, March 25, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 25



 


1271: King Jaime (Kings James I of Aragon) freed all the Jews in Murviedro, a city in Valencia of debts from Christians. It should be noted this came after the Christians burned down a synagogue, and then were forced to rebuild it themselves.



1303(7th of Nisan): Massacre of the Jews of Weissensse, Germany



1488:Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro “a 15th-century Italian rabbi best known for his popular commentary on the Mishnah, commonly known as "The Bartenura" arrived in Jerusalem where he rejuvenated the moribund Jewish community.



1303: The Jews of Weissensee, Germany, were massacred.



1597(6thof Nisan, 5357): Rabbi Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, known as “Samuel Judah of Padua, the son of Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Katzenellenbogen and the father of Saul Wahl passed away today.



1601(21stof Adar II, 5361): Doña Mariana was tried and put to death at an auto-da-fé held in Mexico City today. She was one of the two surviving daughters of Doña Francisca, who had been put to death earlier. The entire family had been found guilty of the same crime – relapsing from Catholicism to Judaism. Only the youngest daughter would escape death.



1735: For the year beginning today, Jews accounted for 13 of the entries in the journal recording maritime trade for the port of New York.



1748: “For the quarter beginning today there were seven Jewish entries”. “Jacob Rivera had three entries and Mordecai Gomez, Jacob Franks, Samuel Naphtali and Abraham Hart had one each.”



1795: Birthdate of Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, a German born Orthodox Rabbi who supported the Zionist ideal before it officially became a movement.



1801: In Padua, Baruch Hayyim Almanzi, a wealthy merchant and his wife gave birth to Joseph Almanzi “an Italian Jewish bibliophile and poet.”



1807(15th of Adar II, 5567): Shushan Purim



1817: Tsar Alexander I recommended formation of Society of Israeli Christians, whose primary function was to convert Jews to Christianity. It failed.



1828: Shaare Chesed, which was re-named Touro Synagogue, the first congregation formed in New Orleans was incorporated today.



1838: In Jamaica, Hannah and Isaac Kursheedt gave birth to Edwin Israel Kursheedt



1840: During the Damascus Affair, Adophe Cremieux, vice president of the Central Consistorie of French Israelites, hears the appeals Jews from the Syrian community seeking relief for the Jews who have wrongly been imprisoned. A future member of the Chamber of Deputies, this Sephardic lawyer, takes up the cause of his co-religionists enlisting the support of no less than Adolphe Thiers, the French Prime Minister.



1860: Austrian banker Jonas Freiherr von Königswarter was knighted today.



1861(14thof Nisan, 5621): As the storm clouds of secession roll across America, Jews on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line sit down to the Seder tonight on the first night of Pesach.



1861: Thirty-one year old Henry Straus, a native of Alsace living in Jackson, MS enlisted in the Confederate Army today.



1863: Birthdate of Simon Flexner. Simon Flexner was a fighter against all diseases. He probed and pushed to find the causes and cures for human ailments. As a result of his work, he became the director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Simon was the fourth of nine children of Esther and Morris Flexner. His brother Bernard became a famous lawyer and an ardent Zionist. Another brother, Abraham, was the first director at the Institute for the Advanced Study at Princeton. Simon went to the University of Louisville to study medicine, and received his M.D. in 1889. Finding that the laboratories at the school had very few supplies, he acquired a microscope and taught himself how to use it. He then went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to study pathology. He soon began to publish papers on pathology and in 1892. He became an associate in pathology in the newly opened Johns Hopkins Medical School. He became involved with many epidemics, including one of cerebrospinal meningitis in western Maryland in 1893. In 1899, he was in Manila where he found the strain of dysentery bacillus that became known as the Flexner type. In 1901, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was created and he was chosen to be one of seven members on the board of scientific directors. He was asked to organize and direct the laboratories on medical research. This concept of research was new to America and it was financially secure through the Rockefellers' endorsements. In 1905, New York City was hit with a severe epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis, which Flexner had encountered 12 years before. He experimented with monkeys until he found a serum to conquer the disease. In 1907, he found himself trying to fight an epidemic of poliomyelitis which had spread through the eastern states. He was able to isolate the infectious agent but he couldn't find a cure, since the disease was caused by a filterable virus rather than a bacterial organism. His discovery laid the basis for others to find polio vaccines some 40 Years later. Simon was the only editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine for 19 years. During this time he wrote many articles on public health, research and education. In World War I, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps and went to Europe to inspect and establish the medical facilities of the expeditionary forces. After the war, his role in the Rockefeller Institute became greater, and now included involvement in the animal pathology department at Princeton. Flexner was active in many organizations and became an officer of quite a few. He retired from the Rockefeller Institute in 1935 and a year after was appointed an Eastman Professor at Oxford University. He died in 1946, leaving behind a legacy in the field of pathology.



1864: The Jewish Chronicle published the following description of the death of famed musician Isaac Nathan who had died in January of that year. Mr. Nathan was a passenger by No. 2 tramway car […] [he] alighted from the car at the southern end, but before he got clear of the rails the car moved onwards […] he was thus whirled round by the sudden motion of the carriage and his body was brought under the front wheel. “The horse-drawn tram was the first in Sydney: Nathan was Australia's (indeed the southern hemisphere's) first tram fatality.”



1869(13th of Nisan, 5629):Ta'anit Bechorot



1869: “The Jewish Passover” published today reported that “tomorrow evening at sundown the feast of the Passover will be commenced by Israelites everywhere, in commemoration of their ancestors having remained intact on the night when all of their oppressors, the Egyptians, were smitten by the angel of death.



1869: The New York Times reports that “To-morrow evening at sundown, the feast of the Passover will be commenced by Israelites everywhere, in commemoration of their ancestors having remained intact, on the night when all the first-born in the families of their oppressors. the Egyptians, were smitten by the angel of death. The feat will continue eight days, during which but unleavened bread will be eaten…On the first and second evenings various commemorative rites will be indulged in in every household including the recital of Scriptural and legendary narratives, and familiar conversations on the subject of the deliverance. Appropriate psalms will also be chanted.”



1870: It was reported today that the ladies of the B’nai Jeshrun Benevolent Society in New York have established an Industrial Home for impoverished Jewish Women.



1871: in the Suwałki Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire Duvvid Schubart and Katrina Helwitzin gave birth to Lee Shubert, the “American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family.”
http://www.shubertfoundation.org/about/brothers.asp



1872(15th of Adar II, 5632): Shushan Purim



1874: Birthdate of Russian born American chazzan Zevulun "Zavel" Kwartin



1877: In Alpena, Michigan, the Hebrew Benevolent Society met today and decided that their meeting room would “be used for holding ‘prayer meeting on the following Holy Days despite the fact that a dispute had broken out over a “divergence” between Orthodox and Reform beliefs.



1878: Rabbi Abram Isaacs will delivered a lecture tonight on “A Hero of the Synagogue” at the 34th Street Synagogue in New York City.



1879(1st of Nisan, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1880: In an article explaining the origins of Easter Eggs, the New York Times reports that “the old Jews introduced eggs at the feast of Passover…”



1880: Miss Emita Wolf and Mr. Lewis May were married this evening at the home of Mr. Charles Wolf, the prominent New York banker who is the brother of the bride. The groom is President of Temple Emanu-El and “the head of a large banking house at No. 33 Broad Street in New York City.



1881: Among the winners of the Grave Prize Essays at Williams College was Austin B. Bassett of Albany, NY who wrote on “Ancient and Modern Jew.”



1882: A fire broke out at nine o’clock tonight at a tenement house located at 159 Attorney Street in New York destroying a supply of Matzah which a baker named Louis Schoenthal had stored on the building’s first floor. Schoenthal claims that the Matzah which he had prepared for the upcoming holiday of Passover was worth $6,000. Fortunately, he has insurance which should cover the loss.



 



1883(16th of Adar II, 5643): Shushan Purim observed since the 15th of Adar fell on Shabbat.



1883(16th of Adar II): Rabbi Simeon Sofer of Galicia, founder of Mahazikei  ha-Dat passed away



1888: In New York, Mrs. Mary Isaacs, the mother of six, was the first of over eight hundred poor Jews who received meat orders courtesy of funds raised by Mrs. M. Rosendorff. This was part of an annual project to provide food for the city’s poor Jews so that they can celebrate Passover.



1890: Zadoc Kahn was inducted as Chief Rabbi of France, a position to which he had been elected in 1899 following the death of Chief Rabbi Isidor. Kahn “then entered upon a period of many-sided philanthropic activity. He organized the relief movement in behalf of the Jews expelled from Russia, and gave much of his time to the work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which elected him honorary president in recognition of his services. He aided in establishing many private charitable institutions, including the Refuge du Plessis-Piquet, near Paris, an agricultural school for abandoned children, and the Maison de Retraite at Neuilly-sur-Seine, for young girls. He was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1879 and Officer in 1901. He was also Officer of Public Instruction. He was one of the founders, the first vice-president, and, soon after, president, of the Société des Études Juives (1879). He was considered a brilliant orator, and one of his most noteworthy addresses was delivered on the centenary of the French Revolution — "La Révolution Française et le Judaïsme".



1891: T. H. French and Frank Daniels have purchased tickets so that all of the children attending the Industrial School supported by the United Hebrew Charities can attend this afternoon’s performance of “Little Puck” at the Grand Opera House. (Frank Daniels was a stage actor who would pursue a film career in the early days of cinema.  He was not Jewish – just generous)



1891: In the Court of Common Pleas, Joseph Abrahamson, a wealthy young Jew, changed his his name to Joseph Abraham Edison.



1893: “Russian Hatred of Jews” published today described yet another manifestation of anti-Semitism in the Czar’s Empire where “grain speculators and merchants” are forming “a new produce exchange from which Jews will be excluded.”



1894: As the United States copes with an economic depression, the Finance Committee of the 6-15-99 Club, a businessmen’s funded relief organization allocated $1,600 to various charities including $100 to the United Hebrew Charities.



1896(14thof Adar, II, 5746): Purim



1896: The Monte Relief Society which was started by former opera star Sofia Nueberger who is now known as Sofia Monte Loebinger and 16 women in 1893 now has 350 members. Mrs. Monte-Loebinger continues to serve as Prsident.  Other officers including Louise Simon – Vice President; Mollie Teschner  Recording Secretary; Emma Marx – Financial Secretary; Carrie Heyman – Treasurer.



1898: “Vaudeville for Poor Children” published today described a vaudeville show performed by members of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society for the benefit youngsters under the care of the society and the Montefiore Home.



1899 (14th of Nisan, 5659): This evening, as Jews begin the observance of Pesach, services are held at New York’s Temple Emanu-El conducted by Rabbi Joseph Silverman and Dr. Gustav Gottheil with Mr. Sparger serving as Cantor.



1899: “The Hebrew Passover At Hand” published today described the observance of the holiday that “s the anniversary of the going of the Children of Israel out of Egypt and their freedom from bondage under Pharaoh.” “During the feast no leaven is eaten” but “with the more radical Jews the feast is not now closely observed and the unleavened bread is not eaten, but a quantity is kept at the table…”



1901: Birthdate of British anthropologist Camillia Wedgwood, the daughter of Josiah Wegwood, the British leader who spoke out against appeasement and supported the settlement of Jews in Palestine in opposition to the White Paper.  “From 1937 she was secretary of the German Emergency Fellowship Committee, which included Max Lemberg and Sydney Morris. She pleaded the cause of Jewish and non-Aryan Christian victims of Nazi persecution before (Sir) John McEwen, minister for the interior. In close contact with her father, she raised money for refugee passages to Australia, but confided to her sister Helen that she felt like 'a mouse nibbling at a mountain'. She publicly protested against the treatment of the internees in the Dunera and the refugees in the Strouma which sank in the Black Sea.” (As reported by David Wetherell)



1902: Herzl is informed that the Sultan studied his plan. Herzl is asked what plans he has for the regulation of the Turkish debts under more favorable conditions than those submitted by the French.



 



1903: Herzl met Lord Cromer and Boutros Ghali in Cairo. The Zionist Commission returned to Suez.



1903: The Jewish quarter of Port Said, Egypt was invaded and looted by Arabs in consequence of an earlier ritual murder charge that took place on September 17, 1902.



1904: Anatole Leroy Beaulieu visited Hebrew Union College.



1905: The New York Times reviews “Volume 9,” the newest volume of The Jewish Encyclopedia to be published. Eventually there will be a total of 12 volumes. “Volume Nine” opens “with a record of the Marawezyk family of Polish scholars that flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and closes with the Philippson family, a family of German authors and scientists, who rose to fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”



1907: The East Side Business Men’s Protective Business Association continued their annual distribution Matzoth and Matzah flour to the poor Jews



1910(14thof Adar II, 5670): Purim



1910: Birthdate of Benzion Mileikowsky, the native of Warsaw who gained fame as Benzion Netanyahu, a leading Jewish historian whose Benjamin became Prime Minister of Israel. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



1911: Birthdate of Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.



1911: The discovery of the mutilated body of Andrei Yishinsky, near Kiev, Russia, led to the infamous trial of Mendel Beilis on ritual-murder charges



1911(25thof Adar, 5671): In New York City, 146 garment workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire. Many of the victims were young immigrant Jewish girls working in the sweatshop environment of the garment industry. The first helped spur the formation of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Approximately 500 workers were sewing shirtwaists in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company's sweatshop near Washington Square in Manhattan when a fire broke out. The building lacked adequate fire escapes, firefighting equipment was unable to reach the top floors, and — most tragically — exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized breaks. Some women, unable to reach an exit, jumped from ninth- and tenth-floor windows in a vain effort to save themselves. The fire did its work within twenty minutes. In the end, 146 died and many more were injured. Most of the dead were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Just two years before, the Jewish owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company had been among the targets of the strike known as the uprising of the 20,000, which had sought union recognition through the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Though the strike had forced some firms to settle with their workers, Triangle had fired union members there and remained an anti-union shop. In the wake of the fire, the Jewish community and leading women in the labor movement sprang into action. The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), a cross-class coalition that worked as an ally of the ILGWU, organized a public meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2. There, Rose Schneiderman, the leader of the 1909 strike, called upon all working people to take action. Three days later, 500,000 people turned out for the funerals of seven unidentified victims of the fire. Under pressure from the ILGWU, the WTUL, and others, New York State established a Committee on Safety in the wake of the fire. In addition, the state legislature set up a Factory Investigating Committee, which drafted new legislation designed to protect workers. Their recommendations included automatic sprinkler systems and occupancy limits tied to the dimensions of exit staircases. Thirty-six labor and safety laws were passed in the three years after the fire, thanks to the agitation of working people.



Even as these regulations went into effect, the site of the Triangle fire remained a rallying point for labor organizing. Some survivors, galvanized by their experience, went on to lifetimes of labor activism. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the fire, later became Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. She said that the Triangle Fire was what motivated her to devote her career to helping workers. The last survivor of the fire, Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, died in 2001 at age 107.



1911: Louis Waldman was a shocked member of the crowd on the street that witnessed the catastrophic Triangle Waist Company fire of 1911, an event which clearly always remained with him and served as one of the landmarks of his life. Waldman described the grim scene in his 1944 memoirs:



"One Saturday afternoon in March of that year — March 25, to be precise — I was sitting at one of the reading tables in the old Astor Library... It was a raw, unpleasant day and the comfortable reading room seemed a delightful place to spend the remaining few hours until the library closed. I was deeply engrossed in my book when I became aware of fire engines racing past the building. By this time I was sufficiently Americanized to be fascinated by the sound of fire engines. Along with several others in the library, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed crowds of people to the scene of the fire.



"A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we arrived at the scene, the police had thrown up a cordon around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames."Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.



"The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines."



1911(25thof Adar, 5671): Seventeen year old Tillie Kuperschmidt died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Along with many others, her tombstone is still standing at the Hebrew Free Burial Association's Mount Richmond Cemetery.



1915: Professor H.L. Sabsovich, the General Agent of the Baron De Hirsch Fund and the First Mayor of the Jewish Colony at Woodbine, is scheduled to be buried today at Woodbine, NJ.



1915: In Camden, NJ, Rabbis Brenner and Friedman of Philadelphia, PA officiated at the dedication of a new synagogue at 419 Arch Street.  The officers of this reform congregation included Barnard Levin, President; Jacob Tarter, Vice President; Louis Levin, Secretary and Max Greenberg, Treasurer.



1915: As The Great War rages across Europe, Albert Einstein wrote from Berlin to the French writer and pacifist, Romain Rolland “When posterity recounts the achievements of Europe, shall we let men say that three centuries of painstaking cultural effort carried us no farther than from religious fanaticism to the insanity of nationalism? In both camps today even scholars behave as though eight months ago they suddenly lost their heads.”



1915: As the Gallipoli Campaign gave rise to all kinds of flights of political fancy, “The British Colonial Secretary, Lewis Harcourt, sent the members of the War Council a memorandum headed ‘The Spoils’ in which he suggested that, on the defeat of Turkey, Britain…should offer the Holy Places (in Palestine) as mandate to the United States” (How different History might have been had the United States been an active participant in the settling of the Jewish homeland immediately after WW I.)



1915: The largest segment of the civilian population of Prezemysl which has just been occupied by the Russians was composed of a few thousand Jews who had remained after the general evacuation of the town last October.



1915: It was reported today that Europeans, Ottomans and the Jews are fleeing the Turkish capital because of fear of the Russians



1918: Lucien Millevoye the French right-wing anti-Semitic politician who delivered numerous public attacks on Dreyfus during the 1890’s passed away today in Paris.



1918: Birthdate of sportscaster Howard Cosell. While many think of Cosell as being the quintessential loudmouth New Yorker, he was actually born in Winston Salem, North Carolina.



1919: The Committee of Jewish Delegations is formed during the Peace Conference at Versailles



1921: Arab demonstrations begin in Haifa protesting Jewish immigration. Following police action designed to break up the gatherings, anti-Jewish riots broke out “during which ten Jews and five policeman were injured” by the rioters.



1923: Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner of Palestine denied the demands of the Arab Excuitve



Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner of Palestine,that those arrested in the demonstration of March 14th to celebrate the success of the Arab boycott of the Legislative Council elections be released and that the Jerusalem chief of police be placed on trial for causing their arrest.” (As reported by JTA)



1923: Birthdate of Murray Klein, the driving force behind making Zabar’s Delicatessen into a New York institution.



1925: On a visit to Palestine, Lord Balfour of Balfour Declaration Fame, who is still a supporter of the Zionist cause, drives from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem stopping to visit with Jewish settlers and Arab Sheiks, “who told him they lived quite happily in proximity with their Jewish neighbors.”



1925: Dr. David de Sola Pool, rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue addressed a dinner of the Jewish Education Association at the Hotel Astor in New York City. He strongly supported the need “for Jewish religious education entirely free from the public schools. He voiced his support for the public schools remaining non-sectarian while calling for an improvement in the quality of Jewish education which will ensure the teaching of Jewish values, culture and character.



1925: In a speech delivered at the City College of New York, Rabbi Stephen Wise called on Jews all over the world to contribute to the support of the newly created Hebrew University which will officially be inaugurated on April 1.



1929: Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases decided today to seek a fund of $1,200,000 to provide more modern facilities for wheel chair custodial cases. S.R. Guggenheim donates $50,000 and intends to given a similar sum when an additional $1,150,000 has been raised from other sources.



1930: George J. Feldman, of Boston, for a number of years secretary to Senator David I. Walsh, of Massachusetts, has resigned to accept appointment as special attorney of the Federal Trade Commission, with the New York office of the Commission. (As reported by JTA)



1934: Birthdate of feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem creator of Ms Magazine. Born into a dysfunctional family in Toledo, Ohio, she loved to watch Shirley Temple movies, hoping to be rescued miraculously from poverty, just like the little girl on the screen. Her first book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), wasn't published until she was almost fifty. Steinem said, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."



http://www.gloriasteinem.com/



1934: Birthdate of Rabbi Berel Wein There is no way to do justice to this eminent, literate, Jewish scholar. For those interested in finding out more about him, you might begin at



http://www.rabbiwein.com/



1935: Reynaldo Hahn's three act French opera “Le marchand de Venise” based on “The Merchant of Venice” was first performed at the Paris Opéra,



1936: In the U.S. premiere of “Ever of “Everybody’s Woman,” the only Italian film directed by Max Ophuls.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that Petah Tikva had become Palestine’s second purely Jewish town and had been granted municipal status. The newly formed municipal council was to consist of 15 councilors, of whom one was to be mayor and another deputy mayor.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that Mr. Ormsby-Gore, the Colonial Secretary, told the House of Commons that many arrests had been made in Northern Palestine, but the security situation in the South was better. Meanwhile Rehovot police fought a short battle with Negev Bedouin, searched their encampments and made some arrests.



1938: In Poland, after several attempts, the Seym outlawed the ritual slaughter of meat. The bill was never enforced because the Seym dissolved in September during the Czech crisis.



1940: Birthdate of Susan Fromberg who became famous as Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, a novelist with a gift for evoking complex characters in the grip of extreme psychological stress and physical suffering, notably in “The Madness of a Seduced Woman” and the Vietnam War novel “Buffalo Afternoon.” (As reported by William Grimes)



1941(27th of Adar, 5701): Dr. Froim Ephym Syrkin, the brother of the Zionist leader Nachum Syrkin (of blessed memory) passed away today at the age of 52. For the last five years, Dr. Syrkin has been serving as the superintendent of Beth Moses Hospital in Brooklyn. Born in Russia in 1889, Dr. Syrkin served with the Russian Army Medical Corps during World War I before starting a medical practice in post-war Warsaw where he also served as regional director for the American Joint Distribution Committee. Syrkin came to the United States in 1920 and worked at the Beth Abraham Home and Hospital for Incurables in the Bronx and the Bronxwood Sanitarium before going to work for Beth Moses in 1936. Syrkin was a bachelor who was survived by his mother and three sisters, two of whom are doctors.



1942: The government of the Slovak Republic began to deport its Jewish citizens today. The Slovak Republic was one of the countries to agree to deport its Jews as part of the Nazi Final Solution. Originally, the Slovak government tried to make a deal with Germany in October 1941 to deport its Jews as a substitute for providing Slovak workers to help the war effort. After the Wannsee Conference, the Germans agreed to the Slovak proposal, and a deal was reached where the Slovak Republic would pay for each Jew deported, and, in return, Germany promised that the Jews would never return to the republic. The initial terms were for "20,000 young, strong Jews", but the Slovak government quickly agreed to a German proposal to deport the entire population for "evacuation to territories in the east". The willing deportation was only the latest in a series of anti-Semitic actions taken by the government. Soon after gaining its “independence,” the Slovak Republic began a series of measures aimed against the Jews in the country. The Hlinka's Guard began to attack Jews, and the "Jewish Code" was passed in September 1941. Resembling the Nuremberg Laws, the Code required that Jews wear a yellow armband, banned intermarriage and denied Jews the opportunity to hold a variety of jobs.



1942: Seven hundred Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached Belzec Concentration camp



1942: The second wave of deportations of the Jews of Laupheim took placed today when “a large number of them were transported to Poland.”



1942: Lazar Kaganovich completed his second term as People’s Commissar for Transport.



1943: Birthdate of William H. Ginsburg, the Philadelphia born California lawyer best known for representing Monica Lewinsky.



1943: A second group of Macedonian Jews who had been imprisoned in tobacco warehouses in Skopje was shipped to the Treblinka Death Camp.



1943: In a surprise move, 97% of all Dutch physicians went on strike against Nazi registration



1943: One thousand Jews are deported from Marseilles, France, to the Sobibór death camp.



1943(18th of Adar II, 5703): The Jewish community from Zólkiew, Poland, was marched to the Borek Forest and executed. [Ed. Note – Who says Kaddish for these people?]



1943: An anonymous letter written by a non-Jewish German citizen, critical of Nazi ghetto-liquidation techniques, was forwarded to Hitler's Chancellery. There is no record of the author’s name or his/or her fate.



1944: In the Ukraine, the Ghetto at Bar was liberated.



1944: After weeks of political wrangling and German invasion, official word came that Hungary was ready to deal with its Jewish "problem".



1944: In response to last night’s attacks by members of the Stern Gang, the government imposed a curfew on the Jewish sections of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Hadar Hacarmel in Haifa.



1945: After 87 performances, the two-act musical composed by Arthur Gershwin “A Lad y Says Yes” closed at the Broadhurst Theatre.



1946: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry heard testimony from twelve witnesses today in Jerusalem. Among those testifying were Golda Meyerson representing the General Federation of Jewish Labor in Palestine, Sami Taha representing the Arab Worker’s Society who “called Zionism a trick of British Imperialism” and E.A. Ghory who “said that Palestine Arabs were supported against Zionism by the entire Moslem world.”



1946: “A shipload of illegal immigrant arrived” off the coast of Tel Aviv tonight. Several of the immigrants evaded capture by the British and reportedly “found shelter” in the homes of Jews living in Tel Aviv.



1946: In the first outbreak of its kind since the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry arrived in Palestine, unidentified attackers stuck the Saronoa police camp.



1947: Meir Feinstein, a British army veteran, Daniel Azulai, Massoud Bouton and Moshe Horowitz appeared before a three man military tribunal to answer charges that they were responsible for the bombing of a Jerusalem railway station last October resulting in the death of a British constable. The quartet will face the death penalty if they are found guilty



1947: A bank in Tel Aviv was robbed today in broad daylight by a gang believed to belong to the Irgun.



1947: In what appears to be another example of an on-going conflict among Arabs over the sale of land to Jews, gunmen attacked the home of Fakhri Eddine, a prominent Arab living in Beisan, seriously wounding five men and a girl.



1948: Birthdate of Eliezer Kalina who lost his leg during the Yom Kippur War and went on to be a Gold Medal Winning Paralympic Champion.




1948(14thof Adar II, 5708): Purim



1949: The Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace arranged by a CPUSA front organization and sponsored by Herbert Aptheker opened today in New York City.



1950: The United States, Great Britain and France issue a joint declaration promising to “take action against any aggression “designed to alter the frontiers in the Middle East.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that the Israeli delegation to the reparations talks feared that there was little hope of attaining early substantial grants and had asked for a detailed clarification of the opening statements made by the West German delegation. The atmosphere at the talks continued to be formal. In Israel the police and Histadrut pickets stood by while Herut was making final preparations for a huge mass demonstration against German reparations.



 



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that three Arab infiltrators were killed in the Sharon; a fourth escaped



1953: Dedication of a new road leading to Sodom, Israel



1957(22nd of Adar II, 5717): Max Ophuls passed away. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0649097/bio



1958: In Los Angeles, CA, Barbara and Anthony H. Pascall gave birth to American movie executive Amy Pascal.



http://www.timesofisrael.com/can-amy-pascals-career-survive-sony-cyberattack/\



1960: The head of the Jewish Labor Committee called on the State Department and other Federal agencies today to cease what he termed discrimination against potential employees of the Jewish faith.



1963: At a surprise meeting with David Ben Gurion, Meir Amit was ordered to take over Mossad following the resignation of Isser Harel ("Little Isser"). Amit was forced to double as the director of military intelligence and head of Mossad. (As reported by the Telegraph of London)



1965: Birthdate of actress Sarah Jessica Parker



1965: The Bundestag voted to extend the statutory deadline on war crimes prosecutions.



1974: Barbra Streisand recorded the album "Butterfly"



1975: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot at point-blank range and killed by his half-brother's son, Faisal bin Musa'id, who had just come back from the United States. It is a commonly-held, but so far unsubstantiated popular belief in Saudi Arabia and the Arab and Muslim world that Faisal's oil boycott was the real cause of his assassination, via a Western conspiracy. [For once Israel and the Jews were not blamed for something gone wrong in the Middle East. The event is a yet another reminder that Israeli is not the cause of murder and mayhem in that part of the world as the anti-Semites would have us believe.]



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that port workers returned slowly to work under Labor Court orders. But the workers of the Land Registry went on a wildcat strike unauthorized by the Histadrut.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a terrorist cell of 16 members, preparing a car bomb, was caught at Jenin. A number of dentists were put on trial for income tax evasion.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported Israeli scientists concluded that some of the trees of the Gethsemane area in Jerusalem were at least 1,600 years old.



1978: During Operation Litani, the PLO ordered a ceasefire in its fight with the IDF.



1979: Six year old Etan Patz, a Jewish child living in Manhattan, disappeared as he walked to the bus stop for the first time by himself.



http://forward.com/articles/156788/clerk-lured-etan-patz-with-cold-soda/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekly%20%2B%20Daily&utm_campaign=Weekly_Newsletter_Friday%202012-05-25



1981(19th of Adar II, 5741): Seventy-two year old Uriel Shelach, the Israeli poet who wrote under the pen name of Yonatan Ratosh passed away today.



http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modern_judaism/v019/19.2rabin.html



1981(19th of Adar II, 5741): Ninety-year old chess champion Edward Lasker passed away today. (As reported by Thomas W. Ennis)



http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/26/obituaries/dr-edward-lasker-is-dead-at-95-5-time-us-open-chess-winner.html?pagewanted=print



1982: Eighty-three year old Goodman Ace (born Goodman Aiskowitz) known as “Goody” the husband of Jane Ace an the creator of “Easy Aces” passed away today.



http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/27/obituaries/goodman-ace-humorist-dead-co-star-of-easy-aces-on-radio.html



1982: Rabbi Ronald Sobel officiated at the wedding of Joan Treble Sutton, a columnist for the Toronto Sun and Oscar S. Straus, a former career Foreign Service officer and the grandson of Oscar Straus who served under President Teddy Roosevelt, in his study at Temple Emanu-El



1984: “Glengarry Glenn Ross,” a Pulitzer Prize winning play written by David Mamet, opened today on Broadway.



1986: The ILGU will host a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.



1986: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Goldman v. Weinberg a “case in which a Jewish Air Forceofficer was denied the right to wear a yarmulke when in uniform on the grounds that the Free Exercise Clause applies less strictly to the military than to ordinary citizens.”



http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/475/503



http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/275075~1.pdf



 



 



1991: At a meeting with prominent Jews President Lech Walesa of Poland repeatedly made explicit statements denouncing anti-Semitism and vowed to fight bigotry in his country.



1992(20thof Adar II, 5752): Seventy-nine year old Max I. Dimont, the native of Helsinki  who enjoyed a 35 year career in public relations with Edison Brothers and is best remembered for writing several books on the history of the Jews the best known of which was Jews, God and History, passed away today.



http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=36887302



1998(27thof Adar, 5758): Fifty-one year old Congressman Steve Schiff passed away.



http://www.anomalies.net/archive/cni-news/CNI.0999.html



1998: U.S. premiere of “A Price Above Rubies,” directed and written by Boaz Yakin



1999: Raik Haj Yahia, Amir Peretz and Adisu Massala broke away from the Labor Party to form One Nation.



2001(1stof Nisan, 5761): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



2001(1stof Nisan, 5761): Ninety-one year old “Canadian businessman and philanthropist” Jack Diamond passed away today.



http://www.orderofbc.gov.bc.ca/members/1991-jack-diamond/



2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro and Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates.



2001: Dick Schapp is honored by The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.



2003(21st of Adar II, 5763): Eighty-nine year old Eddie Jaffe, a legendary New York press agent, passed away today. (As reported by Ralph Blumenthal)



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/theater/eddie-jaffe-the-press-agent-of-broadway-is-dead-at-89.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm



2004: The Times of London reports that the chairman of Signature Restaurants, which owns celebrity eateries in London such as The Ivy and Belgo, is backing plans by the Giraffe’s owners, Jewish business people Russel and Juliette Joffe, to double the size of the business to 16 sites over the next two to three years.



2005(14thof Adar II, 5765): Purim



2006: Shabbat Hachodesh.



2007: “International Jewish Artists of the Year Awards” begins at Christies Auctions House, in London, England (UK).



2007: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is holding an academic symposium in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Uriel Weinreich, an exploration of the legacy of this premier scholar of Yiddish linguistics in America.



2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Secret U.S.-German Collaboration to End World War II” a lecture by Maria (Maki) Haberfeld and Sigrid MacRae who offer startling facts about the war with Hitler’s Germany and the way we might want to think about the resurgent anti-Semitism in Germany today. What were Roosevelt’s real responses to Hitler? How did the United States end up inadvertently strengthening the resistance of the Germans and the Swiss to a Holocaust?



2008: Israeli artist Sigalit Landau opens a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 2008: Israel's UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman, slammed the "trend" of equating the "lawful actions" of a state defending its citizens with the "violence of terrorists," in a bitter exchange at the Security Council's monthly session on the Middle East.



 2008(18th of Adar II, 5768): Eighty-three year old Abby Mann, the American film writer and producer who wrote the screenplay for “Judgment at Nuremberg”, passed away, one day after Richard Widmark who starred in this epic died. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/movies/28mann2.html



2009: At New Jersey’s Atlantic Cape Community College Janna Gur Israeli culinary delivers the second of four lectures on the cuisine of Israel and Tel Aviv in particular entitled “Celebrating the Food of Tel Aviv.”



2009: The government of Israel hosts a public celebration marking the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty 30 years ago.



to bring people together. "I'm here to raise spirits," Younis said. "These are poor, old people."



2010: The Annual Downtown Seder is scheduled to be celebrated tonight at the City Winery in New York.



2010: The Jerusalem Municipality finance committee approved a plan for the construction of a new cinema complex in the Haleom parking lot opposite the Supreme Court, on condition that it closes during Shabbat, Israel Radio reported today.



2010: “Monkey Business in a World of Evil” published today described the Curious George exhibition at the Jewish Museum.



http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/275075~1.pdf



2011(19thof Adar II, 5771): Ninety-six year old “Irving J. Shulman, who founded the Daffy’s clothing store chain and brought discount fashion to Fifth Avenue through quirky marketing and a promise of “clothing bargains for millionaires,” passed away today. (As reported by Christine Hauser)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/business/30shulman.html?_r=0



2011(19thof Adar II, 5771): Eighty-one year old Thomas Eisner the “groundbreaking authority on insects whose research revealed the complex chemistry that they use to repel predators, attract mates and protect their young” passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Chang)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/science/earth/31eisner.html



2011: “Last Folio” which has only been exhibited in Cambridge, England is scheduled for display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York in 2011, starting today” a date which “marks the 68th anniversary of the first ever transport to Auschwitz — of young Jewish Slovak girls. As the first inmates there, they were responsible for establishing the routines that would keep them alive, and many became the dreaded and despised kapos, or prisoner-guards.”



2011: In Albany, NY, The Reform Congregations of the Capital District are scheduled to begin the celebration of Founder Day’s.



2011: A Netanya Conservative and Reform house of worship became the target of stone-throwing attacks during Shabbat evening prayers.



2011(19th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-one year old Dr. Thomas Eisner, “who cracked the chemistry of bugs” passed away today. (As reported by Kenneth Change)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/science/earth/31eisner.html



2011: The Jerusalem Marathon ended in some confusion as the three leading runners apparently took a wrong turn and arrived at the wrong finish line.



2011: U.S. release date for “Peep World,” a comedy narrated by Lewis Black and co-starring Ron Rifkin, Ben Schwarts and Sarah Silverman among others.



2012: “White Balance is scheduled to be shown tonight at the 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2012: As part of a month-long national conversation about Spinoza's impact and legacy, Theatre J in Washington, DC is scheduled to sponsor “Spinoza: A University Debate.”



2012: “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951” which has been on display at The Jewish Museum New York is scheduled to close today.



http://www.forward.com/articles/144903/#ixzz1cnoqvT00



2013: The Wiener Library is scheduled to host Compliant or Confrontational?: The Protestant Church and the Holocaust,”  a program that “will examine the role of the Protestant Church during the Second World War and the impact and legacy of the Holocaust upon the Protestant Church in post-war Germany.


2013(14thof Nisan, 5773): Fast of the First Born; Erev Pesach


2013(14thof Nisan): On the Jewish calendar today marks the seventieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.   Erev of Pesach 5703 (April 19, 1943), the German forces began their final drive to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto. When the SS entered the ghetto they were met with armed resistance.  Much to everybody’s surprises a handful of fighters armed with a few pistols, rifles and Molotov Cocktails inflicted casualties on the tank led German troops. At the end of the day, the Jewish “fighters felt that the day was theirs. They had taken on heavily armed and trained units and inflicted losses.  They could not win or even hold out, but they would die avenging the silenced dead.”  It would take the Germans more than a month to subdue the Jewish fighters.  When you consider that the French surrendered to the Germans after only six weeks of fighting, the valor of the Jewish men and women is even more impressive.  There are several sites that are calling attention to this anniversary including http://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/april-19-1943-anniversary-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising/ and http://www.juf.org/news/thinking_torah.aspx?id=419902


For those of you who would like to add a reading to your Seder to mark the moment you might want to consider the one below.  It is an eyewitness description of what the fighters saw as they set up a new position in a rabbi’s apartment at 4 Kuzia Street on the night of the first Seder.


The apartment was in a state of chaos [a youth observed]. Bed linens were spread all around, chairs were turned upside down, various household items were strewn on the floor, and all the window panes were smashed into little bits. During the daytime, while the members of the family had sought shelter in the bunker, the house had become a mess; only the table in the middle of the room stood: festive, as if a thing apart from the other furniture. The redness of the wine in the glasses which were on the table was a reminder of the blood of the Jews who had perished on the eve of the holiday. The Hagada was recited while in the background incessant bursts of bombing and shooting, one after the other, pounded throughout the night. The scarlet reflection from the burning houses nearby illuminated the faces of those around the table in the darkened room. When the rabbi reached the passage, "Shofoch Chamatcha" ["Pour out Your wrath on the nations who have not wished to know You"], he and his family broke down and cried bitterly. I had the feeling that it was the weeping of people condemned to death, people who, outwardly, had re- signed themselves to the idea of their deaths, yet were terrified when the moment neared. The rabbi lamented those who had not lived to celebrate this Seder.  From The Holocaust by Nora Levin


 


2013: This evening, President Barak Obama is scheduled to host his annual White House Seder.


2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today that he would resume the routine transfer of tax revenues collected for the Palestinian Authority, ending a freeze that began in December 2012 following the Palestinian bid for upgraded status at the UN in late November.


2013:Two leaders that have been in the limelight this month sent their thoughts to world Jewry today, as both Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama wished their respective communities a happy Passover.


2013(14th of Nisan, 5773): Eighty-five year old two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis of whom “Nicholas B. Lemann, the dean of Columbia University School of Journalism, said: "At a liberal moment in American history, he was one of the defining liberal voices” passed away today.



2014: “Two Sided Story” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2014: “The Rolling Stones confirmed today that they will perform in Tel Aviv on June 4 as part of their “14 On Fire” world tour.”


2014(23rd of Adar II, 5774): Eighty-eight year old sculptor Mon Levinson passed away today.



2014(23rd of Adar II, 5774): Seventy year old journalist Robert Slater passed away today.



2014:A strike by Israeli diplomats over salaries has foiled preparations in Nepal for what coordinators say is the world’s biggest celebration of the Jewish Passover holiday, organizers announced today.”


2014: “The Beginning” and “Among Believers” the opening episodes of “The Story of the Jews” with Simon Schama are scheduled to be shown this evening.





2015: Sol Levinson & Bros. Funeral Home and Jewish Community Services are scheduled to present “The Empty Place at the Table: Coping with Loss During the Holidays.”


2015: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a “Workshop: Help Make a Museum” as part of the planning process to create “a new regional Jewish museum.”


2015: National Museum of American Jewish History is scheduled to host the “3rd Annual Freedom Seder Revisited.”


2015: The Hadassah Book Club is scheduled to meet in Cedar Rapids, Iowa


2015: Thomas Barton is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Battle Over Jews in Medieval Spain” in Coronado, CA.


 

This Day, March 26, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 26



1027: Coronation of Conrad II as Holy Roman Emperor, whose court was the site of religious disputation between Bishop Wazon “the overlord of” Liege and an unnamed Jewish physician. (As reported by the Jewish Virtual Library) 



1147: Jews of Cologne, Germany, fasted to commemorate anti-Jewish violence.



1481: “Seventeen Marranos perished at the stake on the Quemadero (place of burning) in Seville, Spain.



1671(15th of Nisan 5431): In Amsterdam, the Great Synagogue was consecrated on the first day of Pesach (Passover).



1692(9th of Nissan, 5452): The Jewish community of Carpentras, France escaped from a rioting mob causing this date to be celebrated as a Private Purim



1780: Birthdate of Isaac Elias Itzig, who as Julius Eduard Hitzig served Prussia as a civil servant before gaining fame as a German author.



1796: Carel Asser was among those who signed a petition to the States General seeking the emancipation of the Dutch Jews.



1801(12th of Nissan, 5561): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th falls on Shabbat.



1808: Sephardic Jewish leader and MP Ralph Bernal and his wife Ann Elizabeth gave birth to Ralph Bernal Osborne



1831: Rabbi David de Aaron de Sola preached the first sermon in English at Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. Born in Amsterdam in 1796, de Sola was the son of Aaron de Sola. He began serving at Bevis Marks in 1818. A prolific author he published his first work, The Blessings, in 1829 followed by his six volume translation The Forms of Prayer According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in 1836. De Sola was also a musician whose accomplishments included musical rendition of Adon Olam which is still used in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi synagogues in the United Kingdom. He passed away in 1860.



1832: Birthdate of Michel Jules Alfred Bréal, the native of Bavria who became a leading French philologist and “is identified as the father of modern semantics.



1840: Birthdate of George Smith, the Englishman who provided some of the first and most meaningful investigation into the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, with an emphasis on Assyria. His work provided historic context for, and proof of, the ancient Israelites including his discovery in 1866 of the date when Jehu, king of Israel, made a tribute payment to Assyrian King Shalmaneser III



1851: Birthdate of “German art historian”Julius Langbehn who attacked “Jews as corrupters of German culture” saying that they “no place in Germany” – a position that would later be part of the Nazi movement.



1852: It was reported today that an Imperial Ukase has been issued in Russia that classifies Jews into two categories, “those who have a fixed residence and a trade and those who have neither. The latter are to be employed in the public mines and fortresses.”



1852: In a sign of the crumbling power of the Sultan and the commensurate growth of European power, in Palestine, it was reported today that the Ottomans had agreed to grant France the right to build a church in a suburb of Bethlehem and to allow Catholic priests the right to repair their church in Jerusalem.



1852: The congregation of Ohabei Shalom dedicated its own synagogue building on Warren Street, the first synagogue in Boston and the second in New England.



1853: Birthdate of Hugo Rheinhold the Prussian born businessman turned sculptor whose most famous work maybe “Ape with Skull.”



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affe_mit_Sch%C3%A4del#/media/File:Affe_mit_Sch%C3%A4del.jpg



1855: Nahum Steiner, a Jew who converted to Christianity, delivered a speech at the Knickerbocker Hall in New York entitled “Our Present Christianity Compared With Primitive Discipleship or Judaism Again.” During his presentation he attempted to answer questions regarding the destiny of the United States when compared to Jewish History.



1859: In Hildesheim, Hanover, Elise Wertheimer and Salomon Hurwritz gave birth to mathematician Adolf Hurwitz.



http://www.numbertheory.org/obituaries/LMS/hurwitz/page1.html



 



 



1860: The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution offered by Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham “calling for the correspondence relative to the Swiss Treaty” including the limitations that this treaty placed “upon Hebrew citizens of the United States.” This is the same Congressman Vallandgiham who would be labeled as a Copperhead during the Civil War. The issue of the discriminatory nature of the Swiss treaty as it affected the Jews was one of the first times that the civil society moved to protect its Jewish citizens.



1861(15thof Nisan, 5621): Pesach



1861(15th of Nisan, 5621): The New York Times reported that “The Jewish Passover, a festival commemorative of the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, commenced last evening, and will continue for eight days. The origin of the festival is given in the 12th Chapter of Exodus, and the Bible prediction that it should be forever observed by the Israelites throughout the world, has this far been strikingly fulfilled. The duties imposed upon the Jews during the Passover are, total abstinence from all kinds of leaven and leavened bread attendance of the males at the Tabernacle, and cessation of business on the first two and last two days of the festival. On the evenings of the first two days, the reading of the Seder takes place in every Jewish family, the members, meanwhile, sitting round a table, on which are placed the bone of a lamb, representing the sacrifice of the "paschal lamb," and some bitter herbs, symbolical of the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage. After the reading of the Seder, the family chants a service reciting their bondage and deliverance. Previous to the Passover, every Jewish household undergoes a thorough renovation, corresponding to the house-cleaning process customary among Christians.”



1862(20th of Adar II, 5622): Uriah Phillips Levy, Commodore of the United States Navy, passed away in Philadelphia. Levy was a descendant of the original 23 Jews who settled in New Amsterdam in 1654. He was buried in the Cypress Hill Cemetery in the Congregation Shearith Israel portion. On his stone was written, "He was the father of the law for the abolition of the barbarous practice of corporal punishment in the United States Navy."



http://www.fau.edu/library/brody8.htm



1863: According to a report published today, during the month of February, there 7 Jewish children staying at the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers in New York City.



1868: The Orphans' Guardians or Familien Waisen Erziehungs Verein was organized in Philadelphia “chiefly through the efforts of R. Samuel Hirsch of the Congregation Keneseth Israel. Instead of keeping the children together in one institution, this society endeavored to find homes for them among respectable Jewish families.



1869(14th of Nisan, 5629): Erev Pesach



1870: Birthdate of Isaac Elias Itzig as Julius Eduard Hitzig worked as a civil servant and author in Germany.



1871:Leó Frankel “was elected as a member of the Paris Commune.”



1872: In New York, Hirsh Bernstein came to the D.A.’s office where he posted bail after having been indicted on charges of libeling Rabbi Ahrenson. The dispute revolves around a dispute about the sale of wine which may or not be considered “kosher.”



1875: In Danzig,Moritz Abraham and Selma Moritzsohn gave birth to German physicist, Max Abraham



1875: E.G. Holland delivered his lecture on “The Hebrew Race” this evening at a meeting of the Liberal Club in Plimpton Hall.



1876(1st of Nisan, 5636): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1880(14th of Nissan, 5640): Ta’anit Bechorot



1882(6thof Nisan, 5642): Seventy-nine year old German born dramatist Leopold Feldman passed away today in Vienna.



1888(14th of Nisan, 5648): The New York Timesreported that “the Jewish feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will begin at sunset this evening, and continue for eight days. This feast was ordained to commemorate the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt, under the leadership of Moses after they had been held in bondage for upward of 400 years…There is a peculiar observance connected with the first evening of the festival on which occasion the head of the household gathers about him at the table all the members of the family, including servants if they be Hebrews, and with ancient rites and ceremonies he recounts the story of the deliverance of his forefathers from the bondage under which they had been held by the Egyptian Pharaohs for so many years.”



 



1891: It was reported today that Joseph Abrahamson had changed his name to Joseph Abraham Edson because he was getting ready to marry a young Christian girl “and that both…were desirous that his surname should have every semblance of a Jewish named removed.”



1892: The Brooklyn Chess Club is scheduled to host Willliam Steinitz, the Prague born Jewish chess champion.



1892: The Oratorio Society presented the Biblical opera “Samson and Delilah” under the direction of Walter Damrosch the German born conductor whose paternal grandfather was Jewish.



1893: Arthur Reichow of New York notified Louis Hahn that a check for $800 would be sent to him to meet the needs of the Jews living in Chesterfield, Connecticut.



1893: The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith was organized today



1893: “Suffers in Russia” published today described the worsening conditions of the Jews living in the Pale.  They cannot find work in the Pale and the government will not allow them to leave the Pale to find jobs.  Only the charity of English Jews has prevented a larger number of deaths.  The Minister of the Interior is waiting for a report from the Governor of the Pale on the possibility of further Jewish immigration.  (This is further evident of the infamous 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 Policy of the Czarist governments)



1893: Members of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York heard a presentation by Reverand Hermann Warazawiak on the origins, customs and practices of Passover. Warazawiak spoke with an air of authority since he had been raised as an Orthodox Jew in Poland before converting in 1889.



1894: “Of The Jews and Their State” published today provided a detailed review of The Jewish question and the Mission of the Jews, an anonymous work published by Harper & Brothers.



1895: “Russia’s New Business Rules” published today described the additional restrictions placed on “Foreign commercial travelers of the Jewish persuasion” which do not apply to non-Jewish businessmen.



1896(12th of Nisan, 5656): Fast of the First Born observed since the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat



1896: The "Sion" society in Sofia adopts an enthusiastic resolution proclaiming Herzl as their leader.



1896(12thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two year old Hungarian communist Leó Frankel passed away today in Paris.



1896: Among the books on art sold by Bangs & Co in New York was The Gentile and the Jew, a two volume work by J.J. Dollinger published in London in 1862 that included 113 engravings by Bartolozzie which cost $10.



1896: In “Persecution Under Nero” published today L.D. Burdick questions the reliability of the Roman historian Seutonius who incorrectly identified Chrestus, who had been crucified in Judea by Tiberius as the leader of rebellion by the Jews of Rome that took place later of who was a leader of the New Christians.



1897: Birthdate of Polish-born, French movie director Jean Epstein



1898: Isaac Blond went to the Barge Office to greet his wife Liebe and their four children who arrived today aboard the SS St. Paul but was told by authorities that he could not see them and that they would probably be sent back to Europe because “two of the children had a contagious disease and could not land.”



1898: In Albany, New York, the Assembly passed a bill introduced by Senator Cantor that exempted the real estate of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association from assessments and water rates.



1898: New York State Senator Jacob A. Cantor addressed a meeting organized by the Merchant’s Association of New York where he spoke against transferring the control of the canal system of the State to the Federal Government and in favor of a passage of the seven million dollar appropriation bill, known as the Cantor-Hill bill, which would preserve the states control over its canal properties which are estimated to exceed a hundred million dollars in value,



1899(15th of Nisan, 5659): Last Pesach of the 19th century.



1899: It was reported today that Ferdinand Blumenthal “recently described to the Academie des Sciences of Paris a process of making sugar from albumen which throw light on the obscure disease known as diabetes.”



1899: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish Feast of the Passover began with sundown last evening. Services were held in all synagogues and also many private residences the festival will last one week, during which time services will be held daily.”



1900(25th of Adar II, 5660): Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise passed away at the age of 80. The German born Wise is remembered as the father of Reform Judaism in the United States. He was instrumental in founding the three basic organization of the movement: Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, Hebrew Union College in 1875 and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in1889.



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



1902: Zalman Shapira and Rosa Krupnik gave birth to Israeli political leader Haim-Moshe Shapira



1902: The Rumanian government prohibited Jews from engaging in handicrafts or trade.



1902: “Mayor Low, Borough President Cantor and Jacob H. Schiff spoke” tonight” at the dedication exercises of the Luas A. Steinam School of Metal Working, at 225 East Ninth Street which has been erected for the Hebrew Technical Institute by Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Steinam in memory of their son Lucas.



1904: Funk and Wagnalls published the sixth volume of the Jewish Encyclopedia, a compendium of knowledge that will eventually consist of twelve volumes. The volume includes articles ranging from “God” to “Istria.”



1904: The New York Times featured a review of "The Seder Service" a new Haggadah by Lillie Goldsmith Cowen which was published by her husband Philip Cowen. This edition of the Haggadah contains the Hebrew text, a revised English translation and notes by Dr. Solomon Schechter, the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Haggadah is decorated with reproduction of pages from older Haggadot some which were printed four hundred years ago.



1905: Birthdate of Viktor E. Frankl, famed psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and author of one of the greatest books ever written, Man’s Search For Meaning. What makes Frankl’s work and philosophy so powerful is that he took them with him into the camps and came out with his philosophy intact. There would be no better way to celebrate this centennial than read or re-read this slender tome. Viktor Frankl in his own words: “The best of us did not return.” “Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Quoting Nietzsche he wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” “Man, however is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!” “Man needs something for the sake of which to live. The first goal of most people “was finding a purpose and meaning to their lives.” “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it…Success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”



http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html



1907: Today marked the last day of this year’s distribution of free Matzoth and Matzah flour by the East Side Business Men’s Protective Business Association the poor Jews of the lower east side.



1908: Birthdate of Samuel Bronshtein, the Bessarabian born nephew of Leon Trotsky who gained fame movie producer Samuel Bronston.



1911: Birthdate of Sir Bernard Katz who shared in the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.



1911: In London, two actions are to be heard before Justice Darling in a libel suit "in which Baron de Forest, adopted son of the late Baron Hirsch and Lady Gerard are principals."



1912: Osip Brik married Lila Kagan



1913: Birthdate of mathematician Paul Erdos. “Never, mathematicians say, has there been an individual like Paul Erdös. He was one of the century's greatest mathematicians, who posed and solved thorny problems in number theory and other areas and founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. He was also one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, with more than 1,500 papers to his name. And, his friends say, he was also one of the most unusual.” (I make no claim to understand anything about any of his work.



1913: On the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City Nathan and Sophie Riesel gave birth to crusading journalist Victor Riesel.



1914: The siege of Adrianople which had begun in October, 1913, came to an end. Both poor and middle class Jews were affected with three thousand seeking shelter in schools and 9,200 being left “completely helpless.”



1915:  According to reports published today the Russian forces that have taken the town of Przemysl from the Austrians are calling up the “panic stricken Jews” who have fled the town to return and are reassuring the civilian population that remained, most of whom were Jews, that they have nothing to fear.



 



 



1915: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the officers of Congregation Ahev Zedak in Camden, NJ were Bernard Levin, President; Jacob Tarter, Vice President; Louis Levin, Secretary and Max Greenberg, Treasurer.



1915: Dr. Nathan Blaustein who delivered the infant of Mrs. Sadie Mager, a widow who died of a heart attack last December is now seeking a family to adopt the girl saying tonight “that the only thing he demanded was those who would adopt her would prove to him they were in a position to give her a good home and that they should be Jews.”



1916: Birthdate of Christian Anfinsen winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry



1916: In Johannesburg, Eva, née Kirkel and Israel Rabinowitz gave birth to composer and conductor Harry Rabinowitz whose most famous score may be the one he wrote for “Chariots of Fire.”



1916: Birthdate of bandleader Vic Schoen. There is no evidence that Schoen was Jewish but he played a key role in the creation of the era of Yiddish Swing. Schoen was the bandleader whose featured singers were the Andrews Sisters. Lyricist Sammy Cahn gave the Yiddish song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” English lyrics and turned it over to the singing sisters. Schoen had a notion of how to swing it. The Andrews Sisters' debut 78 rpm for the Decca label hit almost immediately. The era of Yiddish swing had begun.



1916: Birthdate of Mort Abrahams. Abrahams gained famed as the producer of Dr. Doolittle and Planet of the Apes.



1916: Organization of the American Jewish Congress



1917: In World War I, British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks blocked their advance at the First Battle of Gaza. The setback would prove to be temporary and the British would later resume their drive to take Palestine from the Ottomans.



1920: In Göttingen, Germany, mathematician Richard Courant and Nerina Runge Courant gave birth to American physicist Ernest Courant



http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/2007/bb051807.pdf



1920: Shabelsky-Bork, a “supporter” of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" tried to assassinate Pavel Milyukov (former leader of the Cadets, who fled Russia in 1918) at a meeting of Russian refugees. Instead, he killed Vladimir Nabokov and was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. After only staying in prison for a short time, he was released and befriended by Alfred Rosenberg, the "Nazi philosopher".



1923(9th of Nisan, 5683): Actress Sarah Bernhardt passed away. She was born in Paris as Henriette Rosine Bernard, the eldest surviving illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard, a Dutch Jewish courtesan known as "Youle."



http://www.wetcanvas.com/Museum/Posters/Entertainers/Bernhardt/



1925(1st of Nisan, 5685): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1925: Lord Balfour visited Rishon L”Zion where he said “he rejoiced at this opportunity to visit the oldest Jewish settlement in Palestine.



1926: Birthdate of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan



1926: Premiere of “The Fiddler of Florence,” a German silent film directed and written by Paul Czinner.



1929(14thof Adar II, 5689): Last Purim before the Great Depression



1929: The dirigible Graf Zeppelin appeared over three cities in Palestine. At five in the afternoon it circled Jaffa where the large colony of German settlers waved flags of welcome. At six, the airship appeared over Tel Aviv where it became a welcome partner in the city’s Purim celebrations. As night descended the German craft circled Jerusalem for an hour before heading north towards Syria.



1930 In London, Lord Melchett, Chaim Weizmann, Oscar Wasserman, Felix Warburg and Max Warburg will meet this afternoon in an “attempt to reach a settlement regarding the functions of the Administrative Committee and the Jewish Agency's Executive, the immediate raising of an internal loan of $5,000,000, and Lord Melchett's demand that before any larger colonization scheme be undertaken in Palestine, the 1,500 Chalutzim in Palestine for many years be settled on the land.” (As reported by JTA)



1931: In Boston, MA, Dora (née Spinner) and Max Nimoy gave birth to Leonard Simon Nimony, Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. Do you remember the hand gesture that went with the Vulcan credo - Live long and prosper? In case you missed it, it is the same gesture as that made by the High Priest when giving his benediction. And now you know why.



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/television/leonard-nimoy-spock-of-star-trek-dies-at-83.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=1



1931: Arab leaders in Palestine urged Moslems not to participate in the celebration Maier Dizengoff’s seventieth birthday. Dizengooff is the Mayor of Tel Aviv.



1934: Twenty-eight year old Nathan N. Rosen was officially installed as the Rabbi at Temple Petach Tikva in Brooklyn. (As reported by JTA)



1934: Hitler agreed to a nationwide boycott of Jewish businessmen and professionals to be known as “Boycott Day” which would take place on April 1. The boycott is designed to last indefinitely or until the Jews have been completely eliminated from the German economy.



1934: In Brooklyn Beatrice (Wortis) and David I. Arkin gave birth to actor Alan Arkin who has played a myriad of roles during his long career including the lead in the famed anti-establishment film “Catch-22.”



1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish Ghaffir (supernumerary policeman) was wounded, an Arab brigand killed and a number of Arabs taken prisoner during a battle with a terrorist gang which attacked Jewish settlers plowing their fields at the foot of Mount Tabor. Jewish settlers were assisted by police reinforcements which arrived from Afula and Nazareth.



1940: Birthdate of James Langston Michael Caan. This son of refugees from Nazi Germany is known to American audiences as the movie and television actor James Caan



1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): At Jungfernhof concentration camp, Rudolf Seck, the commander sent 1,840 to be “resettled” today which meant they were shot to death at the Bikernieki forest.



1942(8thof Nisan, 5702): Fifty-nine year old Rabbi Joseph Hirsch Carlbach was murdered near Riga today.



http://www.jci.co.il/?cmd=aboutus



1942: Birthdate of Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying



1942: The first "Eichmann transport" began moving to the camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau



1942: The first of 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reached the concentration camp at Belzec



1942 The first Jewish transportation arrived at Auschwitz under the command of Rudolf Hoss, containing 1000 Jews from Slovakia and 1000 women from Ravensbruk. According to a conservative estimate from March 1942 until the liberation on January 27 1945 over 750,000 Jews were gassed within its gates. Hoss himself estimated it at 1,135,000



1943: Wilfrid B. Israel, a German born Jew and ardent Zionist departed London for Lisbon. Once in Portugal he stayed in the Iberian Peninsula for two months, where he found over 1,500 stateless Jews in Spain. He issued 200 of them certificates to go live in Palestine, and did what he could to intervene on the other's behalf.



1944: The twenty-third Beth El Ball was held this evening at the Walt Whitman Hotel in Camden, NJ. It was dedicated "to our fighting allies".



1944: The New York Times includes a review of "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow



1945: General Patton sent 307 officers and men in tanks, half-tracks and support vehicles under the command of Captain Abraham J. Baum on a mission to liberate approximately 1,300 POWS being held at a camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The group of POWs included Patton’s son-in-law who had been captured during fighting in North Africa. In the words of historian Stanley Weintraub, “Nine GIs in Baum’s small column were killed and 31 others were wounded and captured – a hairy business for Baum as his dog tag identified him as Jewish.”



1946(23rdof Adar II, 5706):“Phineas Horowitz, veteran Zionist leader, and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, passed away today in London.” (As reported by JTA)



1949: Birthdate of Helene Middleweek who as Valerie Hayman, Baroness Hayman, became the Lord Speaker of the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.



1950: Lafayette College in Easton, PA announced that its round the world student tour this summer which is designed to increase their “intellectual, cultural and spiritual horizons” will include a stop in Tel Aviv.



1950: It was reported today that the government of Israel is using the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research under the direction of Dr. Uriel G. Foa to deal with a variety of problems facing the infant Jewish state including assisting immigrants in adjusting to life in “their new homeland.”



1951: Final broadcast of the ABC panel show “Can You Top This?” co-starring Harry Hershfield.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the anti-reparations demonstration in Tel Aviv, organized by the Herut political party, lasted two hours and passed off quietly after a week of general tension. At The Hague the Conference on Reparations started discussing the respective Jewish claims on Germany. The German delegation contested the Jewish claim for $500 million as "exaggerated," while the Jewish delegation claimed that the sum was "only a fraction" of the heirless property actually remaining in German hands.



 



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Knesset debated the final reading of the Nationality Bill and the principle of dual nationality, held by a number of Israeli citizens.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Israeli-Jordanian Mixed Armistice Commission reaffirmed the Israel-Jordan demarcation line in the Kalkilya area. The line was marked by a deep ditch, dug by a tractor to prevent further infiltration and other incidents



1956: In Sweden, premiere of “The Rose Tatoo” with a script adapted by Hal Kanter and directed by Daniel Mann.



1960: Birthdate of actress Jennifer Gray, star of Dirty Dancing. She is the daughter of actor Joel Gray and the granddaughter of comedian and musician Mickey Katz.



1960: Birthdate of Steve Feinberg the Princeton graduate who is the co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management.



1961: Birthdate of Mitchell Simpson, who gained fame as Amanda Simpson.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/amanda-simpson-test-pilot-mitchell-simpson-senior-post-commerce-department-article-1.460198



1964: Birthdate of comedian Todd Barry



1964: "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand opens at Winter Garden Theater in New York City for the first of 1,348 performances



1967(14thof Adar II, 5727): Purim



1967(14th of Adar II, 5727): Joseph Jacobs, president and founder of Joseph Jacobs Organization, a merchandizing and advertising organization that specializes in the Jewish mark and “has been credited with being responsible for the wide currency of kosher symbols on food labels” passed away today at the age of 75. A 1911 graduate of City College, Mr. Jacobs taught school while doing graduate work at Columbia before going to work as an advertising salesman for the Daily Forward in 1919, the same year that he founded his own company. Mr. Jacobs’ most lasting contribution to American Jewry is the famous Maxwell House Hagaddah.



1970: "Minnie's Boys" opened at the Imperial Theater. Minnie’s boys were better known as the Marx Brothers.



1970: Seventy-seven year old artist Fritz Ascher passed away today.



http://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/



1971: NBC aired “Gideon,” a play by Paddy Chayefsky based on the Biblical Judge with Peter Ustinov in the title role.



1971: Outbreak of the nine month long Bangladesh Liberation War. A Jewish military leader, Lieutenant General JFR (Jacob-Farj-Rafael) Jacob gained fame in his homeland when he headed the Indian armed forces that vanquished the Pakistani army in the war that broke out between the two countries over East Pakistan which after the war became the independent state of Bangladesh).



1973: In East Lansing, Michigan Dr. Carl Page and Computer Professor Gloria Page, who was Jewish, gave birth to Lawrence “Larry” Page who along with Sergey Brin co-founded Google.



1976: In Chicago, the Dearborn Station, which has been designed by Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) today.



1979: Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty at the White House. This historic event ended three decades of fighting including three major wars. It took Sadat to break the “Gordian Knot” and come to Jerusalem. It took Begin to gamble that the Egyptians would keep their word and not turn the Sinai into a springboard for another war. And it took Carter's tenacity to keep the talks on track. All Arabs are not the same. Likud, right wingers, are willing to make peace. And American Presidents can provide the leverage for agreement. Critics say it has been a cold peace. But the border between the two has comparatively remained tranquil and the armed forces of the two nations have not clashed in a quarter of century. Hatikvah - hope.



1984(22ndof Adar II, 5744): Seventy-one year old Bora Laskin passed away while serving as the 14th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Canada.



1987: U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Jerusalem. Former Prime Minister Begin who has been living in virtual seclusion for years declined Carter’s request for a meeting. Begin did visit with the President by phone.



1991: David Wolfson who as knighted in 1984 was “created a life peer with the title Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, of Trevose in the County of Cornwall” today.



2000: U.S. President Bill Clinton meets with Syrian President Hafez Assad.



2000: Pope John Paul II ended his trip to Israel by visiting the Western Wall and, in keeping with a centuries-old tradition left a message in one of its cracks.



2000: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King and The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice That Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Lawby Alan M. Dershowitz



2001: Dalia Rabin-Pelossof became the only member of New Way to remain in the Knesset when two other New Members resigned from the Israeli Parliament.



2001(2ndof Nisan, 5761): Ten month old Shalevet Pass was murder this afternoon by a Palestinian sniper belong to the Tanzim terrorist group while sitting in his stroller.



2002(12th of Nisan, 5762): Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel, one of the last surviving combatants of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis, died in Montreal at the age of 81. She had been hospitalized for about two years, her family said. Probably no more than 10 other combatants from the uprising are still alive, said her son-in-law, Eugene Orenstein, who teaches modern Jewish history at McGill University in Montreal. In January 1943, Chaike Belchatowska joined the Jewish Fighting Organization, known by its Polish acronym ZOB, which had been formed the previous year to resist the deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp by the Nazi forces that had overrun Poland in 1939. On April 19, the first night of the Jewish feast of Passover on the secular calendar, a Nazi force, equipped with tanks and artillery and under the command of Col.Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, entered the ghetto to resume the deportations, which had been suspended in January after running into stiff resistance. This time the Nazis were repulsed from the ghetto altogether, suffering heavy losses at the hands of the ZOB and other resistance groups, all of them poorly armed with only a few smuggled guns, little ammunition and homemade gasoline bombs. Colonel Sammern-Frankenegg was relieved of his command and replaced by Gen. Jürgen Stroop, who attacked again. But the Nazi forces found themselves blocked once more by fierce Jewish resistance after several days of vicious street fighting. The Germans then changed tactics and, using flame throwers, began systematically burning down the houses of the ghetto. The ZOB headquarters fell on May 8, but sporadic resistance continued into June and July. Meanwhile, Ms. Belchatowska, together with her husband-to-be, Boruch Spiegel, the leader of a ZOB fighting unit, and some 50 other Jewish resistance fighters, managed to escape from the ghetto to the forests outside Warsaw; from there, they continued to harass the Germans until the end of the war. After the Germans were driven from Poland by Soviet troops, Ms. Belchatowska and Mr. Spiegel moved to Sweden, where they married and where their son Chil, or Julius, was born. In late 1948 they went to Montreal after failing to obtain a visa for the United States. Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel, who was often known in English as Helen, was born in Warsaw. Her parents separated shortly afterward, and she was raised by her mother, who was an active Jewish socialist. She inherited much of her mother's political philosophy, becoming a member of the Jewish Labor Bund, an organization founded in Czarist Russia to promote a brand of Marxist socialism that would provide cultural autonomy for Jews. After the first mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942, she encouraged Jews to resist being moved by every means possible. She helped circulate a Yiddish-language paper warning that their real destination would be Treblinka and that the Nazis were lying when they encouraged volunteers by promising them more food and greater freedom. In November of that year, she herself was herded onto a train bound for Treblinka but managed to break out of a cattle car and escape back to the ghetto. After moving to Montreal, Mrs. Spiegel and her husband ran a business making purses and other leather goods. She is survived by her husband; their son, Julius, who is the Brooklyn parks commissioner, and their daughter, Mindy Spiegel of Montreal.



2003: Rabbi Janet Marder was named president of the Reform Movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis. This meant that she had become the first woman to lead a major rabbinical organization.



2005: Robert Iger reassigned Peter Murphy, the Disney’s chief strategic officer, and pledged to disband the company's strategic planning division. Iger also vowed to restore much of the decision-making authority that the division had assumed to the company's individual business units.



2006: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) strongly condemned the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for remarks urging two leading Jewish property developers to "go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach." The two property developers, brothers Simon and David Reuben, are of Iraqi Jewish origin and were born in India. Both are British citizens. Mr. Livingstone has refused calls for an apology. Instead, he stated: "I would offer a complete apology to the people of Iran to the suggestion that they may be linked in any way to the Reuben brothers. I wasn't meaning to be offensive to the people of Iran."



2006: The New York Times featured a review of "My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud" by Janna Malamud Smith.



2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum English lecture series presents: "The Classical Islamic Attitude to Jerusalem," by Professor Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University



2008: Haaretz reported that in a rare departure from government practice, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is planning to convene an interfaith conference for Muslims, Christians and Jews, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.



2008: Two people were lightly wounded and nine were in shock after Palestinians fired a volley of Kassam rockets at Sderot. Six rockets were lobbed at Sderot, two of them landing inside the town.



2008: The Israel Defense Forces captured a senior Hamas terrorist who helped mastermind the 2002 suicide bombing at a Passover Seder at Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 29 people were killed and nearly 150 others wounded. Omar Jabar, who headed Hamas' military wing in the West Bank city of Tul Karm, was among seven wanted Palestinians already detained by the IDF.



2008: Students at Haifa University expressed their anger today after the university decided to schedule tests on the Holocaust Memorial Day, some during the siren that marks a moment of silence.



2008:Double Sextet" a composition by Steve Reich was performed for the time in Richmond.



2009: Israeli culinary writer Janna Gur gives a lecture on the Cuisine of Israel at the College of Technology in New York City accompanied by a cooking demonstration by students



2009 (1st of Nisan 5769): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



2010: Keren Ann Zeidel is scheduled to perform at The City Winery in New York City.



2010: In Washington, D.C., Robyn Helzner, one of the leading interpreters of world Jewish music, and Cantor Larry Paul are scheduled to lead a Carlebach-inspired service at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue.



2010(11th of Nisan,5770): Major Eliraz Peretz 31, from Kiryat Arba, who was the deputy commander of the Golani battalion and Staff Sergeant Ilan Sviatkovsky, 21, from Rishon Letzion were killed during fighting on the Gaza border today. Peretz’s brother had been killed while fighting in Lebanon.



2011: In Rockville, MD, Tikvat Israel Congregation is scheduled to sponsor an old fashioned Sock Hop.



2011: “The Infidel” and “Vidal Sasoon: The Movie” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: “Berlin '36” is scheduled to be shown on opening night of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2011(20th of Adar II): Eighty-six year old “Stanley Bleifeld, a figurative sculptor whose bronzes adorn the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Navy Memorial in Washington and museums including the Museum of the City of New York” passed away today.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/arts/design/stanley-bleifeld-sculptor-for-navy-and-baseball-hall-of-fame-dies-at-86.html



2011(20th of Adar II): Ninety-four year old internet pioneer Paul Baran passed away. (As reported by Katie Hafner)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/technology/28baran.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Paul%20Baran&st=cse



2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to host a “Book and Film” event commemorating the Kindertransport.



2013(15thof Nisan, 5773): First Day of Pesach



2013:: “At dawn this morning, a large group gathered on a mountain in the Negev desert to reenact the moments leading up to the Israelites exodus from Egypt.” (As reported by Andrew Esentein)



2013:In the evening numerous congregations are scheduled to host community Seders including Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Agudas Achim in Iowa City and Kol Ami in Arlington, VA



2013: Bahrain’s lawmakers voted today to label the Lebanese militia Hezbollah a terrorist organization, the Lebanon-based news outlet Now Lebanon reported.



2013: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the start of the process of improving Israeli-Turkish ties, not the end of it, a government official said today.


2014: In Fairfax, VA, Gesher Jewish Day School is scheduled to open its 6th annual Used Book Sale.


2014: “Igor and the Cranes' Journey” is scheduled to be shown a the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2014: In Portland, the Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Night of the Maggidim” when real life becomes a Chassidic Tale.


2014: Bowing to pressure from Arab states UN Human Rights Council President Remigiusz Henczel rejected the candidacy of Georgetown Law lecturer Christina Cerna as the of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories choosing instead Indonesian Makarim Wibisono, “an outspoken critic of Israel.” (As reported by Times of Israel)


2014: The Israeli Navy fired on two Palestinian boats this morning and a third one tonight that were thought to be involved in smuggling operations between Egypt and Gaza.


2015: Holocaust survivor Halina Peabody is scheduled to speak at the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum today as part of its “First Person Series.”


2015: The Jewish Film Festival of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a screening of “24 Days” which “offers a gripping and carefully-plotted thriller that tells the true story of the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi in a Paris suburb by The Gang of Barbarians, who expect a huge ransom as they assume that all Jews have money.”


2015: In New York, Eléonore Biezunski is scheduled to deliver a lecture on Creating Songs in Boiberik: Singing Peace at "Felker Yontev" in which she “examines the structure of these pageants and how they continue to impact the music scene in Yiddish today.”


 


 

This Day, March 27, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 27



538 BCE: Cyrus was crowned “King of Babylonia and King of All Lands.”  Cyrus was the King who made it possible for the Jews to return to Judea marking the end of the Babylonian exile.



196 BCE: Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt. Ptolemy was one of the Graeco-Egyptian rulers who fought with Antiochus for the control of Judea.



1188: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, who was comparatively protective of his Jewish subject “took up the Cross” and joined what would become the Third CRusdae.



1191: Pope Clement III died. Clement was one of the Popes locked in a power struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV. The Jews were pawns in this battle. Henry considered the Jews to be his subjects and beyond the control of the Church. During the First Crusade, the hordes going through Germany killed and robbed the Jews. At the same time, many Jews were forced to convert. Henry was in Italy and much to the dismay of the Pope, when he heard what was going on in Germany, the Emperor set about punishing those of the perpetrators who were still around including at least one archbishop. He also ordered that any Jew who had converted under duress should be allowed to return to the faith of their fathers. Clement over-ruled the Emperor on this one. He did not how people were brought to Jesus, but once they were there, there was no going back.



1309: Pope Clement V, who in 1305 became the first pope to threaten Jews with an economic boycott in an attempt to force them to stop charging Christians interest on loans, excommunicated Venice and all its population.



1378: Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon Popes, passed away. In 1375 Gregory had issued an order “to compel” Jews to hear sermons.  The order would later be vacated and replaced by the older formula allowing one to “exhort” the Jews to listen. (For more see Popes, Church and Jews in the Middle Ages by Kenneth Stow)



1639: In Rome, a child is forcibly baptized after his father jokingly remarked that he would not mind it, on the condition that the Pope acted as godfather. The Jews rioted and were violently crushed. As a result, two of his children were taken, one a baby, and were carried in a ceremony by the Pope.



1775(25th of Adar): Rabbi Chaim Ben David Abulafia, author of Nishmat Chaim passed away.



1786(27th of Adar, 5546): Based on a tombstone found in the original Jewish cemetery in Ghent, date on which an unnamed Jew passed away. This unknown Jew or Jewess was the first Israelite to be legally buried in the city under the reign of Joseph II.



1820: In Baghdad, David Sassoon and Hannah Joseph gave birth to businessman Elias David Sassoon.



1827(28th of Adar): Rabbi Samuel ben Nathan Ha-Levi author of Mahat-zit ha Shekel passed away



1827: Birthdate of Wolf Frankenburger, the native of Obbach who became a successful lawyer and represented the Constituency of Middle Franconia in the Reichstag.



1836: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Maria (nee Hacker) and Samuel Goldstein gave birth to cantor and composer Josef Goldstein who “was chief cantor at the Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna, Austria from 1857 until his death” in 1899.



1836: During the Texas Revolution, an untold number of Jews died when Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POW's who had fought under James Fannin at Goliad, Texas.



1839 (12th of Nisan, 5569): On March 27, 32 Jews living in Meshed, Persia were massacred and the remaining 100 families were forced to convert to Islam.



1839(12thof Nisan): The Jews were forced to convert in Meshed, Iran. Influenced by other anti-Jewish riots under the Kajar Dynasty in Iran, the local community attacked the Jewish quarter. The Synagogue was destroyed, over 30 Jews killed and the rest of the community threatened with annihilation. Moslem leaders offered to prevent further riots on condition that the Jews convert, which they did. The Jews became known as Jadid al-Islam or New Moslems thus ending the presence of the Jewish community. They continued to practice their Judaism in secret and fled the city with their families whenever an opportunity for escape presented itself.



1847: Birthdate of German born chemist Otto Wallach who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1910.



1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Ta’anit Bechorot; Erev Pesach



1850(14thof Nisan, 5610): Fifty three year old banker and astronomer Wilhelm Wolff Beer for whom the crater Beers on Mars is named and who is the brother of Giacomo Meybeer  passed away.



1860: Birthdate of Eugene C. Kahn, one of the first, if not the first, Jewish child to be born in Morgan City, a port city on the Atchafalaya.



1861: The New York Times reports a drop in the sale of livestock this week due to Lent and the observance of Passover.



1862: Captain Nathan Davis Menken, a merchant from Cincinnati who was serving with Company A, 1st Ohio Cavalry in the Union Army served with distinction today at the Battle of Kernstown in Virginia.



1863: In response to the “recommendation by the President of the Confederacy” that this be a Day of Prayer, Rabbi M. J. Michelbacher, of the German synagogue Bayth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia, preached a sermon, "to which he added a prayer for the Confederate States of America "to crown our independence with lasting honor and prosperity," and for its president, Jefferson Davis, "grant speedy success to his endeavors to free our country from the presence of its foes." [On a personal note, it never ceases to amaze me that Jews could support slavery. How does one go to a Seder after reciting such a prayer?]



1869: The New York Times reported that “At sundown last evening the Jewish Feast of Passover commenced. It was instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of God's chosen people from Egypt, in bondage, and the passing over by the destroying angel of those families the doors of whose dwellings were marked with the blood of the Paschal Lamb.”



1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): First Day of Pesach; in the evening count the Omer for the first time.



1869(15th of Nisan, 5629): In New York, Temple Emanuel and the Nineteenth-street synagogue were among the Jewish houses of worship holding services on the first day of Passover.



1876: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association moved from its temporary quarters to the Harvard Rooms at Forty-Second Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City.



1877: In New York City, Justice Murray dismissed charges filed against Henry Sollinger for having obtained money under false pretense from Mrs. Jane Ferguson. Sollinger was born Jewish but claimed to have converted to Christianity at which time he began using the alias Frederick E. Hall.



1879: It was reported today that the Hebrew Free School Association has received $10, 840.60. The money was raised by the Purim Association at its dress ball that had been held on March 6th.



1880(15th of Nisan, 5640): First Day of Pesach



1880: It was reported today that Baron James de Rothschild is President of the newly formed society established in Paris to promote Jewish studies.



1883: In Teplitz, Rabbi Adolf Aharon Rosenzweig and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Arthur Rosenzweig who passed in Prague in 1935.



1884(1st of Nisan, 5644): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1887: “The first organized effort on the part of” Jews in Brooklyn “to tender a public tribute to the late Henry Ward Beecher too place” today” at the Kane Street Temple where…a large number of prominent Israelites met ‘in order to co-operate with other creeds and societies in raising a fund for a statue and free library to perpetuate the memory of the great friend of humanity and champion of religious liberty --- Henry Ward Beecher.’”



1888(15thof Nisan, 5648): Pesach



1890(6thof Nisan, 5650): Emanuel Berhnheimer a native of Germany who came to the United States in 1844 and formed a partnership with August Schmid that led to formation of Lion Brewery, passed away today. 



1891: The Citation for First Sergeant Jacob Trautman Medal of Honor was issued today.



1892: The Biennial Convention of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.



1893: The Bowery Amphitheater “reopened as a Hebrew theatre under the management of Sigmund Magulesko, Isidore Lindeman and Joseph Levy.



1893: Birthdate of sociologist Karl Mannheim, author of "Ideology and Utopia." Born in Hungary, he passed away in London in 1947.



1893: “Jews and Intermarriage” published today contains a refutation by Rabbi Mendes of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of previously published sermons that Jewish law does not prohibit intermarriage between a Jew and his earnest request that further discussion of this topic be limited to the Jewish press.



1895: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture tonight at the Hebrew Institute on “The Influences of Organized Labor.”



1898: “In Algeria the sixth paper devoted to anti-Semitism, L'Anti-Juif Algérien, appeared, with an illustrated supplement”



1898: “Austro-Hungarian Polity” published today described the some of the cause of that have led to unrest in certain agrarian districts including “a marked contempt and dislike for commerce and trade” among Hungarians, “so that the industry of this country is to a large extent, in the hands of the Jews.”



1899: New York Mayor Van Wyck met with six boys from the Hebrew Institute  at Jefferson and East Broadway.



1900: Herzl had a meeting with Prime Minister Ernest von Koerber about sanctioning the Viennese electoral reform. He requests that the “Neue Freie Presse” should not oppose the reform too massively.



1901: Anti-Jewish riots began in Smyrna, Turkey. The riots were triggered by the reports of the disappearance of a child who was said to have been slaughtered by the Jews for 'ritual murder.' Though the riots continued for four days, the child was eventually found and paraded through the streets to show he was indeed alive.



1901(7thof Nisan, 5661): Seventy-seven year old “German manufacturer and philanthropist” Heinrich Blumenthal was “for a quarter of a century Blumenthal was a member of the city council, and for more than two decades the president of the Jewish community of Darmstadt” passed away today



1902: It was reported today that President Theodore Roosevelt had sent a letter of regret expressing his disappointment at not being able to attend the dedication of the Lucas A. Steinam School of Metal Working which is new addition to the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York.



1903: The Zionist Commission met Herzl in Cairo.



1904(11thof Nisan, 5664): Colonel Albert Edward Goldsmid the distinguished British officer who founded the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and the Maccabaeans passed away.



1906: At the insistence of the Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, the Minister of the Interior of Bulgaria issues a circular to his governors to take every form of precaution against anti-Semitism over Easter.



1906(1st of Nisan): First publication of Der Yiddisher Kemfer, a publication American Labor Zionism



1909: Birthdate of historian Golo Mann. Golo Mann was the son of Thomas Mann. His mother was Jewish, which, according to Halachah, means the younger Mann was Jewish as well.



1913: Birthdate of SS Captain Theodore Dannecker, one of Eichman’s underlings who was a “ruthless” participate in the Final Solution.



1912: A Jew, for the first time, receives an appointment as an officer in the Ottoman Turkish Army upon graduation from the Imperial Military Academy.



1914: Birthdate of Budd Schulberg, the novelist and screenwriter whose credits include “What Makes Sammy Run” and “On the Waterfront.”



1915: Starting today, Dr. Nathan Blaustein will accept applications at his office from 3 to 6 pm for those who wish to adopt the three month old daughter of Sadie Mager who died while giving birth to the child.



1915: Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon at Temple Emanu-El this morning “choosing as his text ‘And Abraham bowed down to the people of the land’” in preparation of the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Dr. Isaac Meyer Wise, the found of Hebrew Union College and the driving force behind the Reform Movement in America.



1915: As the celebration of Passover approaches, the American Jewish Relief Committee for the Suffers from the European War sent out a special appeal to American Jews.



1917(4th of Nisan, 5677): Seventy-two year old Civil War veteran and sculpture Moses Jacob Ezekiel passed away in Rome, Italy
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ezekiel.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/mezekiel.html



1918: Henry Adams passed away. To many he was part of the last generation of the distinguished Adams family. For Jews he was that and a little more or should I say a little less. In 1894, Henry Adams organized the Immigration Restriction League to limit the admission to America of "unhealthy elements" -- Jews being first among these. In his famous book, The Education of Henry Adams, he wrote about those he was trying to keep out of America: "Not a Polish Jew fresh from Warsaw or Cracow - not a furtive Jacob or Isaac still reeking of the Ghetto, snarling a weird Yiddish to the officers of the customs..." He found many supporters for his cause, but he did not win



1921: During his fact finding visit to Palestine, Winston Churchill went to the British Military Cemetery on the Mount of Olives to attend a service of dedication honoring the sacrifice of Allied soldiers who had fought against the Turks.



1922: In San Francisco, Joseph and Lillian Kurzman gave birth to military historian Daniel Halperin Kurzman whose works included include Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire. (As reported by Daniel Slontnik)



1923: Birthdate of British impresario Victor Hochhauser who, along with his wife, promoted numerous events including those for the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.



1923: Lord Grey, who “had been the foreign secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations”, addressed the House of Lords today.  During his speech, “he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915.



1923: Sidney and Helen Livingston Weinberg gave birth to Sidney J. Weinberg, Jr. who would become a senior director at Goldman-Sachs.



1923: Birthdate of Prof. Nahum M. Sarna, z"l the father of Jonathan Sarna and a noted scholar in his own right.
https://www2.bc.edu/~langerr/NMSarna/



1927: In New York City, Kassel Lewis and Sylvia Surut gave birth to New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis, the author of Gideon’s Triumph



1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki, son of Rabbi Chaim Yitzchak Ber Plotzker of Kutno, the President of Kollel Polen and a prolific author whose works included Chemdas Yisrael on Sefer ha-Mitzvot passed away today. When Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki visited America, he “pronounced Manischewtiz matzah to be thoroughly reliable – ‘there is none more faithful to be found’ – citing “constant supervision of one of the sages of Jerusalem,” Rabbi Mendel M. Hochstein.



1930: Birthdate of actor David Janssen. Born David Meyer, Jansen gained fame playing the lead in the long running TV drama, “The Fugitive.”



1930: “The meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency ended this morning after a short session with Felix M. Warburg, chairman, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Agency, expressing their satisfaction with the work that had been accomplished. There was a general feeling among the participants that the meeting had been fruitful of practical results for Palestine, and there was particular gratification that the complete budget of three and a half million dollars was confirmed.” (As reported by JTA)



1931: Charlie Chaplin received France's distinguished Legion of Honor



1933: In “Germany: Scared To Death,” Time reported that “To say that most German statesmen & politicians outside the Government's charmed circle were scared to death last week, would be understatement. Panic made cowards of the bravest of brave German Socialists and Communists. Even Catholics trembled—except Dr. Hans Luther. It was accurately said that in less than two weeks Chancellor Hitler has reduced his opponents to a lower level of groveling fear than did Premier Mussolini in the two years after the March on Rome, Oct. 30, 1922.”
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,745404,00.html



1933: A gigantic anti-Nazi protest rally, organized by the American Jewish Congress, was held in New York City. 55,000 people attended and threatened to boycott German goods if the Germans carried out their planned permanent boycott of Jewish-owned stores and businesses.



1935(22ndof Adar II, 5695): Sixty one year old Croatian architect Rudolf Lubiniski who designed the Croatian State Archives, passed away today in Zagreb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Lubinski#/media/File:Sove_HDA_2_1009.jpg



1937(15th of Nisan, 5697): First Day of Pesach.



1937: In New York, at Shaarey Tefilah “two fires occurred simultaneously in the basement of the synagogue and caused minor damage. Later that same morning, at 10 o'clock, 700 persons assembled to celebrate the second Seder of the Passover. A few hours after the congregation had gone, a third fire was reported at 3:15 o'clock. This fire damaged the Ark of the Covenant and destroyed 18 hand-illuminated Torah kept in the Tabernacle. The $25,000 pipe organ was badly damaged and the entire south end of the synagogue was wrecked by flames, smoke and the axes of the firemen. After investigations by the Fire Marshall, it was discovered that the incendiary fires had been set by the synagogue's caretaker. The synagogue was reconstructed and remodeled to designs of S. Brian Baylinson, and a four-story synagogue house was added.



1938 After meeting him while performing with the Phil Harris orchestra, Leah Ray married MCA executive and future Jets owner Sonny Werblin with whom she had three sons during their fifty year marriage.



1938: Miss Henrietta Szold, 77-year-old founder of Hadassah, the Woman's Zionist Organization of America sent a cable from Jerusalem to Hadassah headquarters in New York describing her efforts to arrange for the transfer of Jewish children from Austria to Palestine. “The change is described as vital and as being the only hope for the youngsters to ever lead normal lives.”



1940: Himmler ordered the building of Auschwitz concentration Camp in southern Poland



1941: A Yugoslav government that was sympathetic to the Nazis “was toppled by an anti-German military coup” which lead to a Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April.  This would prove to be disastrous for the Jews of the Balkans since it would bring them into the grasp of the Final Solution.  Ironically, the long term effect of this would lead to the ultimate defeat of the Germans in WW II.  The invasion of the Balkans delayed the German invasion of Russia.  That delay meant the German army would be mired in the Russian Winter, which was a major factor in handing the Nazi war machine its first defeats on the eastern front.



1942: On day after the start of the deportation of Slovokian Jews, Slovakia’s Chief Rabbi Micahel Weissmand and the Slovokian Zionist leader Gisi Fleischann sent a message of SS Captain Dieter Wisliceny offering him a bribe stop the shipment of the Jews to the death camps.



1942: Goebbels described in his diary, Belzec and the cremation of the Jews, "The procedure is pretty barbaric, one not to be described here most definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. . . fully deserved by them."



1943: “Blue Ribbon Town” featuring Jewish comedian Groucho Marx was heard for the first time on CBS Radio



1943: The CKC resistance movement including Jewish cellist Frieda Belinfante “organized and executed the bombing of the population registry in Amsterdam today, which destroyed thousands of files and hindered Nazi attempts to compare forged documents with documents in the registry.”



1944: Several of the leaders of the Yishuv including executives of the Jewish Agency and General Council of Palestine Jews, Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach and the municipal councilors of Tel Aviv and Mayor Joseph Saphir of Petak Tikvah met in Jerusalem this morning to deal with the latest outbreak violence by “the small terrorist group whose sabotage activities have led to a new and grave situation.” Among those calling for action to end the violence were chief Rabbis Isaac Herzog and Bension Uziel.



1944: In A Children’s Aktion, the Nazis collected all of the Jewish children of Lovno.



1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Forty Jewish policemen were shot by the Gestapo in the Riga Ghetto.



1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Two thousand Jews were murdered in Kaunas Lithuania



1944: One thousand Jews left the Drancy Concentration Camp in France for Auschwitz Concentration Camp



1944(3rd of Nisan, 5704): Resistance fighter Abraham Geleman, born in Lodz was killed in Belgium.



1944: As the Red Army approached Riga, Kovno and Vilna, Germany picked up the pace with actions against the surviving inhabitants of the ghettos. Children everywhere were being seized and driven off to their death. "The Children's Action" in Kovno resulted in the death of thousands of children under the age of 17. Most of them were shot. In order to spare their children from such horrors, some parents poisoned them. In Lodz, a mother killed her severely handicapped boy with a lead pipe across the head instead of allowing him to meet his fate with the Germans.



1945: Task Force Baum, the unit under the command of Captain Abraham Baum that had been sent behind enemy lines to liberate camp OFLAG XIII-B, near Hammelburg whose POW’s included the son-in-law of General Patton broke through the bridgehead at Aschaffenburg and “arrived in sight of the camp” by the afternoon.



1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): Jacob S. Kahn, the president of the Refrigeration Maintenance Company passed away today at the age of 62. Kahn had been a builder during the 1920’s, who erected the Hyde Park Hotel.



1945(13th of Nisan, 5705): The Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Moshe Avigdor Amiel, passed away today at the age of 65.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~szwetch/Stamps.of.Israel/6.html



1946:USCGC Northland (WPG-49), a cruising class of gunboat especially designed for Arctic operations that served in World War II was decommissioned today by the U.S. Coast Guard which would lead to its eventual acquisition by a Jewish group who would renamed it Jewish State and use it to transport refugees to Palestine.



1947: A.H. Weaghorn, a British police sergeant who is an expert on Jewish political affairs was attacked by three men outside of Tel Aviv’s central police station. Two of the men opened fire and one threw a bomb. The sergeant, who was wounded, returned fire along with several of his comrades.



1949(26th of Adar): Russian born Hebrew poetess Elisheva Bikhowsky passed away



1949: The Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, co-sponsored by Herbert Aptheker came to a close today.



1950: After having been "rebuffed" by Levi Eshkol, the Treasurer of the Jewish Agency, Shlomo Hillel, "one of the Israeli organizers of the Iraqi Jewish emigration""went to see Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion who was totally supportive of the mass emigration from Iraq.’Tell them to come quickly,' Ben-Gurion said to Hillel...'What if the Iraqis change their minds and rescind the law? go and bring them quickly.'" Hillel would return to Iraq and try to expedite matters but the Jewish Agency "held the purse strings" and insisted on slowing down the immigration movement to what it considered were more manageable numbers.



1950: Dr. Serge Koussevitzky, the 75 year old conduct emeritus conductor of the Boston Symphony is scheduled to leave for Europe today after having conducted 16 concerts in Israel.



1950: Anglo-Israeli financial negotiations on problems dating from the days of the mandate are scheduled to come to a successful conclusion today with the planned signing of an agreement in London.



1950: The New York Times publishes a picture of Charlotte Johnson, The American Red Cross representative in Israel, watching as Jewish children who have arrived in Tel Aviv from Europe receive clothes made from textiles donated by the Brooklyn Chapter of the American Red Cross.



1950: An adaptation of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” a comedy written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart was broadcast on the Lux Radio Theatre.



1952(1st of Nisan, 5712: Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jewish Agency decided to send 100 disgruntled immigrants from India, who had been squatting outside the agency's offices in Tel Aviv, back to where they came from, announcing that this should not serve as a future precedent insofar as other immigrants were concerned.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Ministry of Health had announced that every Israeli between the ages of four and 60 would be inoculated against typhoid.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at The Hague the German delegation to the Reparations Conference expressed surprise at the extent of the Jewish request of the sum of $500 million, to be paid within five years. They expected a smaller sum, but agreed to recognize all claims as "urgent" and had "shown willingness" to meet them. Jewish delegates pointed out that they didn’t want to wait until all the Nazi victims were dead, but intended to help the living.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli delegation in London held extensive talks on possible oil deliveries and economic cooperation.



1952: New York premiere of “Singin’ in the Rain,” a musical comedy directed by Stanley Doenen written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green



1959: Twenty-seven year old "Elizabeth Taylor took the Hebrew name Elisheba Rachel and converted to Judaism."



1975(15thof Nisan, 5735): Pesach



1977: In Allentown, PA, Donald and Melina Kohn gave birth to Sally Rebecca Kohn founder and chief education officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a contributor to Fox News and “a distinguished Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute.”



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the week-long port workers’ go-slow strike continued and ships were loaded at half the normal rate. Angry citrus farmers called on the government to allow them to load their fruit by themselves. The Bank Leumi strike ended and its 300 branches opened for business. The hospital doctors’ strike was called off at the last moment. But radio and TV broadcasts were halted for seven hours as the result of a strike by the Broadcasting Authority administrative staff.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance promised Jewish leaders that during his forthcoming visit to Moscow he would discuss the problems of Soviet Jewry at the Kremlin.



1986: Birthdate of Vania Heymann, the native of Jerusalem who creates novel video including commercials for PepsiMax.



1991: Isaiah Berlin met with author Lewis M. Dabney, a professor of English at the University of Wyoming in London at the Athenaeum Club. Dabney was editing Edmund Wilson's last journal, ''The Sixties,'' and had begun a biography. Dabney wanted Berlin to fill out the account of Wilson he had begun in a short memoir published a few years earlier. In the course of their conversation, Berlin told Dabney two “funny stories” about Wilson’s visit to Israel. Wilson “went to Jordan and when he came back he had to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate. The Israeli passport officer looked at his passport, noticed it was Edmund Wilson, then said: ''I think your dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not quite right. I think it should have been 50 years before.'' And Edmund answered, and the chief officer said: ''Stamp Mr. Wilson's passport. You can't discuss the scrolls here, not on the Government's time.'' He talked to me about that afterward, saying, 'Only in Israel would I find a passport officer who wished to question the date of the scrolls.'’ That amused him. It pleased him. Then he went to see the man he most admired in Israel, who was a scholar called Flusser (David Flusser) in Jerusalem, who talked to him about the Bible and the scrolls. Edmund asked him what he thought of Israel. Flusser said: 'Israel est un tres petit pays. Et je ne suis pas patriote.’ He was delighted with that. Anybody who said he wasn't a patriot went straight to his heart.”



1994(15th of Nisan, 5754): First Day of Pesach



1996: The New York Times featured a review of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen



1996: Final broadcast of the HBO sitcom created by Marta Kaufmann and David Crane.



1998: After meeting with Israeli Defense Minister  Yitzhak Mordechai in the U.S. today U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen indicated that Washington has agreed to expand the joint Arrow anti-missile project and provide $45 million in funding for a third battery of missiles for Israel.



1998: The Times of London included a review of John Murray’s biography of Edmund de Rothschild entitled "A Gilt-Edged Life."



2000: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urges Israel to return the annexed Golan Heights to Syria.



2000: U.S. premiere of “The Audrey Hepburn Story?” in which “Emmy Rossum appears during early scenes of the film playing Hepburn in her early teens.”



2000: Jack Lang began serving as Education Minister of France for a second time today.



2001: Islamic Jihad took credit for a bombing in the Talipot industrial zone in which 7 people were injured.



2001: Hamas too credit for the bombing an Egged bus at French Hill in which 28 were injured in Jerusalem.



2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): A suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis during a Passover Seder in Netanya, Israel. The stark statement speaks for itself.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1389228/Hotel-blast-survivors-relive-the-Passover-massacre.html



2002 (14th of Nisan, 5762): Milton Berle passed away. Born Mendel Berlinger on July 12, 1908, Berle's career began at the age of five when he modeled as Buster Brown. He starred in a variety of entertainment mediums. But he gained his greatest fame as Uncle Miltie, star of the Texaco Milton Berle Show. The show began airing in 1948. It was the first national television hit and became a must see every Tuesday night. Berle was also one of the first to learn that television was a devouring medium that used you up and spit you out. Although his career would last for another half century, he would never know the success he gained with his Tuesday night television triumph. Berle died at the age of 93, smoking cigars and stealing other people's material almost to his last day.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/arts/milton-berle-tv-s-first-star-as-uncle-miltie-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm



2002(14th of Nisan, 5762): Director Billy Wilder passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/29/us/billy-wilder-master-of-caustic-films-dies-at-95.html
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/mar/30/guardianobituaries



2004: Eighty-one year old Dr. Sabina Zimering sat in the audience at the Great American History Theatre in Saint Paul, MN and watched the remarkable story of her own survival in Nazi Europe unfold on stage.
http://jwa.org/thisweek/mar/27/2004/sabina-zimering



2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of topics of special interest to Jewish readers including "Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages" by Jaroslav Pelikan and the recently released paperback edition of "Someone to Run With" by Israeli novelist David Grossman; translated by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz.



2006(27th of Adar, 5766): Eighty-one year old  Rudolf Vrba, who as a young man escaped from Auschwitz and provided the first eyewitness evidence not only of the magnitude of the tragedy unfolding at the death camp but also of the exact mechanics of Nazi mass extermination passed away at a hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/world/europe/07vrba.html



2006: Ehud “Banai sang a duet with David D'Or on D'Or's CD, Kmo HaRuach ("Like the Wind"), which was released” today.



2008: Sammy Ofer donated £20 million to London's National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, as part of a £35 million program of expansion.



2008: The 92nd Street Y presents a lecture by Professor Robert Seltzer a professor of history at Hunter College and Director of the Hunter Interdisciplinary Program in Jewish Studies who answers the questions “Why was the State of Israel needed? What were the reasons behind its establishment by the Jewish Diaspora?”



2008: Haaretz reported that two of its writers Shmuel Rosner and Or Kashti were recently named winners of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism for 2007 on the basis of their work for the paper.



2008: As President Georgi Parvanov of Bulgaria’s visit to Israel came to an end, Bulgaria accepted responsibility for the genocide of more than 11,000 Jews in its jurisdiction during World War II.



2009: In Baltimore, Maryland B’nai Israel Synagogue presented a Friday night event featuring Philip J. Tulkoff, President, Tulkoff Food Products who delivered a talk entitled “Memories of Horseradish Lane and the Growth of Tulkoff Foods” in which he reminisced about “the good old days.” Thanks to the efforts of Lena and Harry Tulkoff that began in the 1920’s Tulkoff Horseradish Products Company became one of the nation's largest manufacturers of prepared horseradish products.



2009(2 Nisan, 5769): Eighty-six year old Irving R. Levine whose ever-present bow tie was his unique visual signature while he covered business and the economy for NBC News passed away. Unlike the blowhards and blow dried talking heads who read this news beat today, Levine understood the subject matter and conveyed it a low keyed professional manner. (As reported by Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/28levine.html



2010: Shabbat HaGadol



2010: Sidney Ferris Rosenberg, the radio personality who is the cousin of former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman “returned to WFAN hosting a show in Port St. Lucie before the New York Mets faced the Washington Nationals.”



2010: the Jewish Ensemble Theatre is scheduled to present Wendy Kesselman’s newly adapted version of The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, MI



2010: Opening of the “Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival” at John Jay College in New York City. The opening night features Forgotten Transports: Women’s Stories – Estonia, Children of the Night by Marion Wiesel and a discussion with the award-winning director Lukas Pribyl.



2011 Dr. Jane Katz “was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Commack, New York for her pioneering athletic contributions to the field of aquatics”



2011: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest including “Great Soul Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India” by Joseph Lelyveld and the recently released paperback edition of” Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” by Lori Gottlieb



2011: YU Center for Israel Studies, Yeshiva University Museum, YU Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies presented Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine.



2011: “Norman Gorbaty: To Honor My People,” exhibition at the Walsh Art Gallery is scheduled to come to a close at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.



2011: “The Chosen” is scheduled to be performed at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC under the sponsorship of Theatre J.



2011: The Harry Houdini Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York is scheduled to come to an end.



2011: The second annual Limmud Conference is scheduled to take place in Chicago, Illinois.



2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor A Walking Tour of Old Jewish Alexandria.



2011: Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story and God & Co.are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2011: “The Infidel” and “The Human Resources Manager” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: “The Whipping Man,” featuring a Seder on the first night of Pesach as its dramatic hook, is scheduled to have its last performance at the City Center State in New York.



2011: Six gunmen in Sinai targeted the pipeline that carries natural gas from Egypt to Israel and Jordan today, overpowering a guard and planting an explosive device before fleeing, The Associated Press reported.



2011: Bank Leumi and Hashava – The Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets ended months of arbitration by signing an agreement in which the bank will pay the company NIS 130.8 million, the two sides announced today. The money will go to heirs of Holocaust victims and toward projects that help Israeli Holocaust survivors – more than a quarter of whom live under the poverty line, according to government estimates.



2011(21st of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-five year old Bernard B. Roth; founder of South Gate-based World Oil Corporation passed away today.(As reported by Shan Li)
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/31/local/la-me-bernard-roth-20110331



2012: The 16th Annual Hartford Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end with a reception and a tango party.



2012: The Andy Statman Trio is scheduled to perform klezmer music at the Charles Street Synagogue.



2012: Peter Gruber became a minority owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers through his affiliation with Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC



2013(16thof Nisan): Second Day of Pesach



2013: “Jews of Egypt” a “controversial documentary on Egypt’s expulsion of its long-resident Jewish population opened” to at three movie theatres in Cairo and Alexandria “despite an initial effort by the Egyptian government to block its release.”



2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to open at the Haifa Municipal Festival Theatre Complex.



2013: Bulgaria will provide more evidence that Hezbollah planned the airport bus bombing that killed five Israelis in Burgas last year, and to use that proof to pressure the European Union to formally label the Iran-backed Islamist group a terrorist organization, Reuters reported today



2013: Some of Israel’s most sensitive computer information is stored on servers in a building above ground in the south of the country, acutely vulnerable to attack or natural disaster, a TV investigative report said today.



2014: “Aftermath” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2014: In Boston, attendees of the Keshet Cabaret are scheduled to have the opportunity to bid on a personal voicemail from Sarah Silverman.


2014: “For the first time since 1993, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled to perform at Jones Hall in Houston.”


2014: Leon Botstein , the president of Bard College and the music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra for whom he is scheduled to conduct Max Bruch’s ‘Moses’ at Carnegie Hall


2014: Pears Institute for the study of Anti-Semitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host “No Stab in the Back!” Race, Labour and the National Socialist Regime under the Bombs, 1940-45”


2014: “The Israel Anti-Fraud Unit said today that it is investigating former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is suspected of obstructing justice and witness tampering.”


2014:The IDF Northern Command announced today that it was changing its orders regarding opening fire in areas along the Golan border fence. Anyone from the Syrian side who comes near the fence should expect to be shot, the IDF said.


2014: Pears Institute for the study of Anti-Semitism in partnership with the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London and The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide is scheduled to host the opening session of “Labour and Race in Modern German History”


2014: In commemoration of “the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the nationwide mass deportations in Hungary, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a screen of “Free Fall” a documentary that “explores the unique circumstances of the Holocaust in southern Hungary.”


2015: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2015: “Cupcakes” a film “set in contemporary Tel Aviv” is scheduled to open at the Quad Cinema in NYC.


2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear in Westhampton Beach, NY.


 


 

This Day, March 28, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 28



364: Roman Emperor Valentinian I appoints his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor dividing the Roman Empire between two rulers. Valens, The Emperor of the East “was an Arian and had suffered too severely from the powerful Catholic party to be interplant himself. He protected the Jews and bestowed honors and distinction upon them. Valentinian, who was Emperor of the West, also “chose the policy of tolerance in the struggle between Catholics and Arians, and permitted the profession of either religion without political disadvantage…” He extended this level of toleration to his Jewish subjects as well.



1038(20th of Nisan): Ravi Hai Gaon passed away
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112498/jewish/Rav-Hai-Gaon.htm



1193: On his way back from the Crusades, King Richard I of England becomes the prisoner of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. When it came time to pay his ransom, the Jewish community was forced to contribute 5,000 marks to the total.  This was more than three times the amount contributed by the entire City of London.



1285: Pope Martin IV passed away. “In 1281, Pope Martin IV” reminded “inquisitors that Jews should not be accused of encouraging converts to return to Judaism if all that was known that the Jews and converts had been engaged in conversations.” (For more see Between Christian and Jew by Paola Tartakoff)



1482: Lucrezia Tornabuoni the wife of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici passed away.  She was doubly unusual for a woman of her time.  First because she wrote poetry that was published and second because one of the subjects of her sonnets was Jewish – the Biblical figure of Esther.



1487: In Naples, Joseph Günzenhäuser printed “Psalms” with a commentary by Kimhi



1515: In Spain, in an example of how the Jews were treated,  Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda whose father “Juanito de Hernandez, was a marrano (Jewish convert to Christianity) and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith” and his wife gave birth to Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada the future St. Teresa of Ávila



1537(16th of Nisan): King Sigismund I of Poland issued a decree granting a monopoly of importation and publication of Hebrew books to the Helitz brothers who had established the first Hebrew printing press in Poland. The Jews resisted the edit since the Helitz brothers had converted to Christianity.



1592: Birthdate of Czech educational reformer John Comenius. Three hundred years later, the imperial government would thwart plans by Czech nationalists to celebrate his birth which would lead to mob violence that would eventually be directed against the Jewish quarter of Prague.



1610(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Ben-Zion Zarfati of Venice passed away



1737: Joseph Suess Openheimer (Jud Suess), former confidential adviser to Karl Alexander, duke of Wuerttemgerg, was interrogated for the first time by a judicial examiner preparing an indictment on charges of high treason, violation of the constitution, and oppression of religion.” Although the charges were totally bogus, he would be convicted and hung. He died a proud Jew reciting the Shema as he climbed the scaffold to his death. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)



1795: As part of the Third Partition of Poland, the Polish Duchy of Courland ceased to exist when it became part of Imperial Russia. From 1772 until 1795 there were three successive partitions of the land that included Poland and Lithuania. The partitioning powers were Prussia, Austria and Hungary. Russia had gone to great lengths to limit its Jewish population. However, when it acquired its portion of Poland, it acquired a large Jewish population that it greeted with increasingly vicious anti-Semitism.



1797(1st of Nisan): Rabbi Saul Shiskes of Vilna, author of Shevil ha-Yashar passed away



1807: In London, Solomon and Sarah Polack gave birth to Joel Samuel Polack, the first Jew to settle in New Zealand (1830).



1818: Birthdate of Wade Hampton III the Confederate General and governor of South Carolina with whom Edwin Warren Moise served during the war.  In 1876, Moise supported Hampton in his run for governor and ran successful for the position of adjutant general on Hampton’s ticket.



1820: Birthdate of Italian author Moses Soave, the native of Venice who wrote biographies on 16th century Jewish poet Sara Copia Sullam, 16thcentury Portuguese physician Amatus Lusitanus, 16th century Italian physician Abraham de Balmes, 10th century Italian physician Shabbethai Donnolo and 16th century French born Italian scholar Leon de Modena.



1824: In Nachod, Bohemia, Joseph and Sulamith Mautner gave birth to Isaac Mautner.



1825(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi Yales, author of Melo ha-Roim, passed away



1826(19th of Adar II): Rabbi Jacob Kahana of Vilna, author of Ge’on Ya’akov passed away.



1832(26th of Adar II, 5592): Sixty-nine year old mathematician Lazarus Bendavid passed away today in Berlin.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Bendavid,_Lazarus



1832: In Mlečice (modern day Czech Republic) Marcus and Maria Lobl gave birth to Jacob Lobl.



1840: Birthdate of Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer the German born Jewish doctor who converted to Islam and gain fame as Mehmed Emin Pasha, a prominent leader of the Ottoman Empire who served as governor of Egypt.  During his service, he would be captured by rebels and the international Emin Pasha Relief Expedition led by the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley would come to his rescue.



1849: Birthdate of French orientalist James Darmesteter
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4906-darmesteter-james



1850(15thof Nisan, 5610): Pesach



1851: In Neuilly-sur-Seine,Nathaniel de Rothschild and Charlotte de Rothschild (née de Rothschild) gave birth to Baron Arthur de Rothschild who bequeathed his artworks to the Louvre and “provided the prize money for the America’s Cup.”  (This date is provided by the Jewish Encyclopedia which conflicts with other sources.



1854: Great Britain and France declared war on Russia marking the start of the Crimean War. The Paris Treaty of 1858, concluding the war, granted Jews and Christians the right to settle in Palestine, forced upon the Ottoman Turks by the British for their assistance in the war effort. This decision opened the doors for Jewish immigration to Palestine.



1857: According to reports published today, the Jews Hospital in New York has enough beds to care for 170 patients. Currently, approximately 50 of those beds are in use.



1858: Birthdate of Imar Boas, he native of Exin, Prussia, a specialist in abdominal medicine who also authored several works on the topic.



1861: "The Hebrew Son" is scheduled to be performed at the Winter Garden in NYC, “for the special delectation of our Judaic brethren.”



1863: During the U.S. Civil War, two Jews were arrested today on the Thomas A. Morgan while she was sailing from Fortress Monroe to Yorktown, on charges that they had a lot of contraband goods in their possession



1864: In New York, the Assembly adopted a bill “authorizing the conveyance of property to the Hebrew Benevolent Society.”



1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1865(1stof Nisan, 5625): Sixty-eight year old Leopold "Löbl Jünger" Strakosch the husband of Julia Strakosch passed away in Brno, Moravia.



1867: A meeting was held today in Richmond, VA where the participants expressed their indignation at the decision by the insurance companies “to take no more ‘Jew Risks.’” Those in attendance, many of whom were Jews, adopted resolutions stating that they would not do business with any company that took such action. The Mayor of Richmond, Joseph C. Mayo, told the meeting that he had been in the insurance business for several years and had most of his dealings with Jews whom he described as upright and “honest in their conduct.” While serving as prosecuting attorney, he could only think of three Jews who had been brought before and while sitting with them while serving in the City Council “he had found them trustworthy.”



1869(16th of Nisan, 5629): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer.



1873: After accusations of ritual murder surfaced in Turkey, letters were sent to the Christians leader in Marmara, Gallipoli, Bursa , Salonica, Smyrna, Manisa, Chios, Adrianople, Janina, Silistria and other cities to warn of this behavior. The letters were formulated by the Turkish Jewish leadership in conjunction with the Greek Patriarch.



1875: It was reported today that Rabbi Brettenheim of Baltimore’s Howard Street Congregation recently officiated at the wedding of Rosa Stern, daughter of the later Bernhard Stern and Mr. Solomon Hochschild.



1876(3rd of Nisan, 5636): Eighty-year old Hungarian born violinist Joseph Böhm “who was a member of the string quartet, which premiered Beethoven's 12th String Quartet” and “a director of the Vienna Conservatory” passed away today.



1877(14th of Nisan, 5637): Fast of the First Born



1878: Birthdate of Herbert Lehman, one of the founder of Lehman Brothers who went on to serve as New York Governor and U.S. Senator.



1880(16th of Nisan, 5640): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1880: Birthdate of Louis Wolheim the multi-lingual Cornell football player who was fluent in Yiddish who gained fame as an actor in silent films, Broadway and finally in talkies including “All Quiet on the Western Front.”



1880: It was reported today that in Tula, Orel, and Kharkoff , the Russian government has “ruthlessly expelled” the Jews who have established businesses over the last several years.



1880: It was reported today that instead of improving the conditions of his Jewish subjects, the Czar has begun treating them with “increased severity.” The Jews have been forced to claim that they are Protestants to avoid be expelled from St. Petersburg by the police.



1880: It was reported today that an international conference is going to be held at Madrid aimed at adopting measures to protect the Jews of Morocco.



1880: It was reported today that the Jewish Messengerhas expressed its gratitude for the influence the United States has exerted on behalf of the Jews of Morocco. The paper views the United States diplomat serving in Morocco as “the best and most powerful friend the Jews of that country have.”



1882: A pogrom begins in the largely Jewish town of Balta, in Podolia, Russia.



1883: Jennie E. Lyman, a young gentile girl from Cleveland, Ohio, married Max Rosenberg while studying in New York City unbeknownst to her parents.



1890: Rabbi Gottheil will officiate at the funeral of Emanuel Bernheimer one of the oldest members of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Silverman will officiate at the graveside services when the deceased is interred in the Salem Field Cemetery.



1892: The newly elected officers of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association are Joseph Blumenthal, President; M.I. Asch of Philadelphia, Vice President; Simon Heizig, Vice President; Daniel P. Hays and Jacob Singer of Philadelphia, Secretaries. 



1892:L'Osservatore cattolico, reported that a leading German anti-Semite has thanked them and their extensive reporting on the crimes of the Jews "for having furnished him with such good scientific material" to him and his conservative political party.



1893: Joseph H. Senner was appointed Commissioner of Immigration at New York which means he will be charge in Ellis Island, the entry point for tens of thousands of eastern European Jews – a position formerly filled by Colonel Weber.



1895: The Monte Relief Society hosted a grand cakewalk at the Terrace Garden tonight.



1896(14thof Nissan, 5656): Shabbat HaGadol; In the evening, the first Seder



1896: Over 150 poor Jewish immigrants from a variety of European countries took part in a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering House on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. There was no charge for the Seder. The Hebrew Sheltering House also provided meals throughout the holiday at no charge.



1896: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil conducted Passover services this evening at Temple Emanu-El.



1896: Herzl took part in the Seder of the Zionist student association "Unitas".



1896: “Mll. Marsy’s Testimony” published today described the appearance of one of the key witnesses in the case brought by the state against ten conspirators including Armand Rosenthal to blackmail Max Lebaudy, the son of a wealthy sugar refiner.  Before his arrest, Rosenthal used the pen name Jacques Saint Cere in his role as correspondent for Le Figaro and The New York Herald.



1897: M.S. Isaacs, the President of the Board of the Baron de Hirsch Fund presided over a meeting held at Temple Emanu El in New York which was also attended by Emanuel Lehman (Tea surer), Julius Goldman (Secretary), Henry Rich, James Hoffman, William B. Hackenberg and Judge Myer Sulzberger of Philadelphia.



1897: “Mucha’s famous Sarah Bernhardt cartoon” is among the works that will be shown at the poster exhibit sponsored by the Albany Club that is opening today.



1897: “The United Brothers,” a Jewish fraternal organization, celebrated its 50thanniversary “at the Grand Central Palace…with a reception this afternoon and a banquet followed by a ball this evening.”  Among the speakers were Marks Fishel, George Hahn, Judge Joseph E. Newburger and Jacob Marks.



1899: “Boys Call On The Mayor” published today described an unscheduled visit six Jewish boys paid on the Mayor of New York. The boys were members of the City History Club of the Educational Alliance and they hold “his honor” that they were studying the history of the city and they thought they “would like to meet its ruler.” The mayor gave them each an autograph and then had a policeman give them an escorted tour of city hall.



1900(29th of Adar II, 5660: Mendel Hirsch, the eldest son of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch passed away. Born in 1833, he Bible teacher and commentator as well as a poet. After receiving his PhD in 1854, he taught at a school founded by his father. Several of his articles were published in the monthly magazine Jeshrun. His daughter Rachel Hirsch was the first woman to be appointed as a professor of Medicine in Prussia.



1901(8th of Nisan, 5661): Eighty three year old German physician turned poet and dramatist Max Ring who “in 1856 married Elvira Heymann, the daughter of publisher Karl Heymann passed away today in Berlin.



1901: Birthdate of Charles E. Smith, a Russian immigrant who became a successful real estate developer in Rockville, MD where he is philanthropies included the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School



1902: Birthdate of violinist Paul Godwin. Born Pinchas Goldfein in Poland, Godwin first gained fame playing under that name in his native country. He moved to the Netherlands where his career flourished under the name of Godwin. Godwin miraculously survived the Holocaust. A virtuoso in his day, his works are largely unknown to modern audiences.



1903: As part of another meeting with the Commission, Herzl, Goldsmid and Stephens visit Lord Cromer. He states that the Zionists should now demand the concession from the Egyptian government. He recommends that they engage lawyer named Carton de Wiart, to assist in this endeavor.



1903: Birthdate of Rudolf Serkin, Austrian-born American pianist and teacher.



1905: In Pittsburgh, PA, Henry Berman who served as a general manager at Universal Pictures and his wife gave birth to producer Pandro Samuel Berman.



1907: Jews on the Lower East Side sponsored a benefit performance in a Bowery theatre this evening with the funds to go to starving people in China. Local Chinese had raised thousands of dollars to relieve the suffering of Russian Jews and the Jews were responding in kind. The turnout was less than expected because many of the Jews were preparing for Passover which begins tomorrow night and since the performance was in Yiddish, Chinese patrons would not have been able to understand the performance.



1907: As violence bordering on revolution continues in Romania, the peasants in Northern Moldavia are reportedly prepared to renew their plundering and pillaging at the start of Passover, if the government does not fulfill all of its promises. This does not give the government much time to act since Passover begins tomorrow evening, March 29, 1907.



1908: Birthdate of Isaak Kikoin the physicist who won both the Stalin and Lenin prizes and who played a key role in the development of the Soviet atomic program. He was born at Žagarė the same town that was the birthplace of Rabbi Israel Salanter and American labor leader Sidney Hillman.



1911: Max Florin’s black and white photo was printed in thumbnail size, along with a one-paragraph story” published today under the headline, “His Friends Think He Was Rescued.”



1914: Birthdate of Oscar winning screen writer Edward Anhalt



1915: During World War I, The Holland-America liner Maastendyk arrived in Amsterdam today from New York carrying ten pounds of Matzoth which were to be shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen in Berlin. As part of the laws adopted to conserve resources for the war effort, the German government had issued an order banning the use of wheat for making Matzah, so the Rabbi was depending on this shipment from the United States for his Seder. At this point in the war, both the Netherlands and the United States were neutral so no laws were being violated by sending goods to Germany.



1915: Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, who will become Governor of Georgia on May 1stcommented on the Leo Frank case saying “the Supreme Court will not be through with the case until some days after I take office and it is quite possible that I may never be asked to pardon Frank.”



1915: The American Jewish Relief Committee issued a special appeal for funds needed to alleviate the suffering of Jews caught in war-torn Europe. With Passover starting tomorrow evening, the committee invoked holiday motifs in its appeal. Responding to the appeal would be a fitting response to the words of the Haggadah, “let all who are hungry come and eat; let all al that are needy come and celebrate the Passover.”



1915: In “Russia of Today and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” published today French author Jean Finot presents a portrait of a “civilized Russia” that has been erroneously portrayed as Cossack barbarians by Germans – a portrait that includes the statement that “Jews, Moslems and Christians live together in harmony” and that “Jews” among others “should feel convinced that their martyrdom will cease when normal life is resumed and Germany decisively defeated” – statements that stand at odds with those who know a different reality of the Russian Jewish experience.



1917: As the British forces advanced in Palestine, the Jews of Tel Aviv and Jaffa were expelled by the Turks. The Turks were sure that the Jews were secret (and not so secret) allies of the British Army. Tel Aviv had been founded by Jews eight years earlier and was truly the only all Jewish city in existence at the time.



1918(15thof Nisan, 5678): The last Pesach of World War I



1919: Birthdate of composer Jacob Avshalomov. Born in Tsingtao China, Avshalomov, was the son of the famous Russian composer Aaron Avshalomov. Avshalomov moved to the United States in 1937 where he pursued his musical career. He also provided a haven in the United States for his more famous father after World War II.



1921(18th of Adar II, 5681): Fifty-two year old Julia Wormser Seligman the former of wife of Jefferson Seligman from whom she had been divorced for several years, passed away today in New York City.



1921: In Hanover, Germany, Sendel and Riva Grynszpan gave birth to Herschel Grynszpan the alleged assassin of Ernst vom Rath whose death was the pretext for Kristallnacht.



1921: Birthdate of Jerzy Bielecki the Polish member of the resistance who was named a righteous gentile by Yad Vashem. (As reported Dennis Hevesi)



1921: In Jerusalem, Churchill met with Abdullah ruler of Transjordan who sought to have an Arab Emir (himself) appointed to rule Palestine saying that this was the best way to avoid violence between Arabs and Jews. Churchill sought to reassure the Abdullah, that his fears were groundless. He told him that if Abdullah would not oppose Jewish settlement west of the Jordan, he would not have to worry about Jewish settlements east of the Jordan in Transjordan.



1928: The Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region.



1928(6th of Nisan): Rabbi Dan Plotzki, author Kelei Hemdah, passed away



1928: In Berlin, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, the Chassi turned anarchist gave birth to French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/math-great-grothendieck-son-of-jewish-nazi-victim-dies-at-86/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/world/europe/alexander-grothendieck-math-enigma-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1



1930: Birthdate of Jerome Isaac Friedman, the physicist who co- discovered the quark and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1990.



1932: The first Maccabiah athletic games took place in Tel Aviv with representatives from 14 countries.



1933: The German Bishops' Conference bestowed a new level of acceptance of Hitler and the Nazis when the church leaders “conditionally revised prohibition of Nazi Party membership.”]



1934: Word of “Boycott Day” leaks out causing prices on the Berlin Stock Exchange to drop. Responding to economic reality Hitler decides that Boycott Day will go forward, but will last only for one day instead of serving as the kickoff day for an on-going boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals designed to destroy the economic well-being of Germany’s Jewish population.



1934: Rogers and Effie D. Pinner sold their house at 39 Riggs Place in South Orange, NJ.



1935: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia attended the formal opening of Reuben’s Restaurant and Delicatessen on East 58th Street in New York City.



1937(16th of Nisan, 5697): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1938: Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen had a formal opening at 6 East 58th Street which was attended by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in attendance. It stayed at this location for three more decades until it was sold in the mid-1960s, afterwards moving to a location at 38th Street and Madison Avenue.



Arnold Reuben, a German immigrant, had first opened the restaurant in 1908 on Park Avenue Eight years later, the restaurant moved Broadway and in 1918 it moved again, this time Madison Avenue.



1938: Birthdate of businessman Leonard Stern former owner of the Village Voice and head of Hartz Pet Supply



1938: Bronislaw Huberman leaves The Hague as he prepares to move to Tel Aviv where he will conduct the newly formed Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra.



1941: Jacques Masson, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger the product of an Ashkenazi family gave birth to Jeffrey Masson, the author of The Assault on Truth, a controversial book about Freud and psychoanalysis.



1942: The first transport of French Jews to Auschwitz began. This represented one of the first transports of Western Jews to the Death Camps. The Jews were from Paris and were rounded up with the help of the French Police. One of the popular myths of World War II was that the French people were united in the Resistance to the Nazi occupation. In truth, there plenty of collaborators both in Vichy and the German occupied zones. This had tragic consequences for the Jews of France as well as Jews from other parts of Europe who had sought refuge there before the outbreak of the war.



1943: In San Francisco, Huntington Sanders Gruening, the son of Ernest Gruening, and his wife gave birth to Alaska politician Clark S. Gruening.



1944(4th of Nisan, 5704): Rabbi Chayyim Most, Maggid of Kovono, was killed by the Nazis. Apparently Rabbi Most was a leader of outstanding character although there is little about him in the official records that I have found so far. He appears to have not been killed with most of the other Jews of Kovno; but met death at the same time that the remaining youngsters of the ghetto were slaughtered.



1944: Anne Frank and her family hear Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile; deliver a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation. "History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone," he said. "If our descendants are to understand fully what we as a nation have had to endure and overcome during these years, then what we really need are ordinary documents -- a diary, letters."



1944: The Irgun issued a statement today claiming credit for the attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jerusalem and Haifa. It also claimed that it had called ahead and left warnings about the impending attacks. The Irgun denied responsibility for shootings in Tel Aviv and blamed those on the Stern Gang.



1945(14th of Nisan): Fast of the first born



1945: After having sustained a nighttime attack by a superior German force, Captain Baum and the remnants of his ill-fated  task force suffered further losses as they tried and failed to make their towards American lines.



1945: Birthdate of Israeli law professor Ruth Gaviszon.



1945: Members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army celebrated a Seder in Faenza, Italy.



1945: Members of the Jewish Brigade's First Camouflage (PAL) Royal Engineers celebrated Pesach in Libya using” a specially designed haggadah of their very own. The cover page of the soldiers' haggada bears their unit's emblem - a long-tailed wolf, outstretched in the center of a Magen David, the tail protruding between a couple of the star's corners. On either side of the insignia is written the unit's name, in English on one side and in Hebrew on the other, the letters sitting in what looks like fluttering ribbons.” (As reported by Lydia Aisenberg)



1947: As Jerusalem prepared for its 17th night under a twelve-hour curfew, Haim Salomon and Dr. Jacob Thon, representing the Jewish Community Council, met with Brigadier General J.F. Bedford-Roberts in attempt to get him to lift the ban on Jewish movement and commerce.



1947: An explosion and fire rocked the Iraq Oil Pipeline near its terminal in Haifa Bay today. Five youths dressed as Arabs whom authorities believe were really Jews are assumed to be responsible for the attack.



1947: Lt. Gen Sir Alan G. Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine and LT. Gen. G.H. Macmillan, commander of the British troops in Palestine, left London for Palestine this morning after having conferred with Prime Minister Atlee on a new “get tough” policy for Palestine.



1947: An announcement was made today that the United States has given its approval for a special session of the United Nations General Assembly to deal with the issue of Palestine. U.N. officials think that the session could take place sometime during the month of May.



1948: In refugee camp at Prague, Samuel Freilich, a lawyer and rabbi from Munkács, in the Carpathian Ruthenia and Ella (Wieder) Freilich, who along with her husband had survived both Auschwitz and Dachau gave birth to Hadassah Freilich who gained fame as Hadassah Lieberman, the wife of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman who ran for Vice President on the ticket with Al Gore.



1948: On his radio show, Jack Benny hits the laughter jackpot with the immortal “Your money or your life” bit.



1949: James Grover McDonald, the first United States Ambassador to Israel presented his credentials today



1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1956(16thof Nisan, 5716): Sixty-seven year old Tilly Newman, the wife of Joseph Newman passed away today and was buried in the Ella Street Cemetery.



1960: Birthdate of Uri Orbach, the native of Petah Tikva who became an author and politician who served as Pensioner Affairs Minister.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-jewish-home-minister-uri-orbach-dies-at-54/



1966: Birthdate of James Douglas Bennet, an American journalist whose mother was Jewish and who became editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in 2006.



1966(7thof Nisan, 5726): Sixty-four year old actress Helen Menken, the first wife of Humphrey Bogart, passed away today.



1969(9th of Nisan, 5729): Rabbi Aryeh Levin passed away. Born in 1895, Reb Aryeh, was an Orthodox rabbi dubbed the "Father of Prisoners" for his visits to members of the Jewish underground imprisoned in the Central Prison of Jerusalem in the Russian Compound during the British Mandate. He was also known as the "Tzadik ("saint") of Jerusalem" for his work on behalf of the poor and the sick.”



1969: President Dwight D Eisenhower died in Washington DC at the age of 78. Eisenhower was President during the Suez Crisis of October, 1956. In a rare of Cold War harmony, Ike sided with the Soviets. He allowed the Russians to threaten the British and the French with atomic attack if they did not withdraw from Suez in effect supporting the Nasser, the Egyptian dictator. After the fighting ended, he threatened the Israelis with economic destruction if they did not withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza. Gaza was a base from which Egyptian supported terrorists attacked Israel. The Israelis wanted to trade withdrawal from the Sinai for and to the Egyptians illegally barring Israeli vessels or vessels that stopped at Israeli ports from using the Canal. None of this seemed to matter to Eisenhower. Instead he chose to take actions that bolstered Nasser who repaid Ike’s kindness with an even more virulent anti-Western, pro-Soviet policy. At the same time, it should be noted that Eisenhower was horrified by what American troops found when they liberated the concentration camps during World War II and insisted that all of it be filmed immediately so that nobody could ever denied what had happened.



1969: In Miami Beach Marsha Pratts and Ronald Ratner gave birth to director Bret Ratner



1970(20th of Adar II, 5730): Natan Alterman “an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist, and translator who - though never holding any elected office - was highly influential in Socialist Zionist politics, both before and after the formation of the state of Israel” passed away.



1974(5th of Nisan, 5734): Sixty-eight year old Dorothy Fields “one of the great Broadway lyricists, who wrote popular songs for revues, films and shows for nearly 50 years” passed away  today.
http://www.dorothyfields.org/home.htm



1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.



1975(16th of Nisan, 5735): German born political scientist Ernst Frankel passed away.



1977: Birthdate of Lauren Weisberger, the native of Scranton, PA author of The Devil Wears Prada which was later made into a successful movie.  (A book about a Jewess in the clothing industry – how novel a novel)



1978: The PLO leadership finally ordered a ceasefire today, after a meeting between UNIFIL commander General Emmanual Erskine and Yasser Arafat in Beirut



1980: The Eldridge Street Synagogue was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places



1980: U.S. premiere of “When Time Ran Out,” a disaster epic produced by Irwin Allen, with a script co-authored by Carl Foreman, with music by Lalo Schifrin and co-starring Paul Newman



1985: Neil Simon's "Biloxi Blues" premiered in New York. The Jewish author wrote a hit play (and later successful movie) based on the clichéd collision between New York Jews and the U.S. Army during World War II.



1985(6th of Nisan, 5745): Marc Chagall passed away. Born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus), Chagall studied in St. Petersburg and then moved to Paris before World War I. He returned to Russia where he served for a time during the 1920's as art director for the Moscow Jewish Theatre. He left the Soviet Union in 1923 and moved back to France. Distinguished for his surrealistic inventiveness, he is recognized as one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. Many of his paintings draw upon his life as a Jew and use Jewish themes of which the Praying Jew is one of the most famous. His twelve stained glass windows at the Hadassah Hospital-Hebrew University Medical Center are another example of Chagall's open identification with his Jewish heritage. There are numerous cites where you can find out more about him and view his works. I cannot do justice to him in this limited space.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/chagall.html
http://www.artnet.com/artists/marc-chagall/
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Marc-Chagall-1887-1985-6891



1986: 20thCentury Fox releases Lucas an “American teen tragicomedy film directed by David Seltzer and starring Corey Haim.”



1988: In Northridge, Los Angeles, Steven and Eileen Plata Kalish gave birth to major league outfielder Ryan Michael Kalish.
http://www.jewishbaseballnews.com/players/ryan-kalish/



1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.



1994(16th of Nisan, 5754): Russian born Playwright Eugene Ionesco passed away in Paris. Two of his more noted works were the Bald Soprano and The Rhinoceros.



1996:The Shamgar commission, the official Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, submitted its findings today.



1998: Arab Israeli politician, Haj Yahia entered the Knesset today as a replacement for Moshe Shahal. Upon taking his seat, he resigned his position as mayor of Tayibe.



1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including recently released paperback editions of "Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later" by Yehudi Menuhin and "Barney Polan's Game: A Novel of the 1951 College Basketball Scandals" by Charley Rosen.



2000: The police recommend filing corruption charges against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara



2001: Canadian born Jazz musician and composer Moe Koffman passed away. He was accomplished on at least three woodwind instruments including flute, saxophone and clarinet.



2001(4th of Nisan, 5761): Itzhak Mr. Yaakov, known as the father of the Israeli technology industry, was quietly taken into custody by a special security division of the Defense Ministry



2001(4thof Nisan, 5761): Fifteen year old Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat and 13 year old Naftali Lanskorn were murdered by Hamas during a bombing at Mifgash HaShalom.



2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): Pesach



2002(15thof Nisan, 5762): “Rachel and David Gavish, 50, their son Avraham Gavish, 20, and Rachel's father Yitzhak Kanner, 83, were killed when a terrorist infiltrated the community of Elon Moreh in Samaria, entered their home and opened fire on its inhabitants. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.”



2004: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "Bobby Fischer Goes To War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time" by David Edmonds and "John Eidinow and Hirschfeld’s Harlem with Illustrations" by Al Hirschfeld.



2005:“The Knesset again rejected a bill to delay the implementation of the disengagement plan by a vote of 72 to 39. The bill was introduced by a group of Likud MKs who wanted to force a referendum on the issue.”



2006: Delta Airlines launched a route from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Atlanta and is also competing on the Tel Aviv-Newark route with El Al and Continental Airlines.



2007: Shai Agassi resigned his position as President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG to pursue interests in alternative energy and climate change.



2008: In Jerusalem, The Bible Lands Museum in conjunction with the Rubin Academy of Music present Hot Slavic Winter – The Passion of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and more, as part of the Opera in the Morning series.



2008: With a theme of “Shake it up on Shabbat with your Shabbat Egg Shakers!” Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa sponsors its second Musical Shabbat.



2008: Three Kassam rockets were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, one of them hitting the outer wall of a preschool in one of the kibbutzim in the Sha'ar Hanegev region moments after the children were taken inside by their teacher.



2009(3rdof Nisan, 5769): Eighty-eight year old Janet Rosenberg Jagan, the wife and political partner of Cheddi Jagan who held numerous political offices in Gyuana including the presidency passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/americas/30jagan.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/30/janet-jagan-guyana-america-marxist



2009: Jews all over the world begin reading the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus)



2009: In Iowa City, the U of I Hillel sponsors “Blintzes, Bubbly & Bingo” an enjoyable evening of food, drink, good company...and fabulous prizes!



2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb” by David Kushner



2010: An episode of the “Simpsons” titled "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed," is scheduled to be shown this evening. The episode includes scenes of Homer and Bart at the Western Wall with their Israeli tour guide, who will be voiced by British comedian Sascha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Bruno fame. In the episode, Homer gets "Jerusalem Syndrome" and believes that he is the Messiah. Also, the tour guide bickers and exchanges political barbs with Marge. In one scene, tour guide Jacob (Baron Cohen) presses the Simpsons for positive marks on a comment card. When Marge accuses him of being “pushy,” he snaps back, “Try living next to Syria for two months and see how laid back you are.”Ned Flanders, the Simpsons’ neighbor who has taken it upon himself to redeem Homer, is the one who invited the Simpsons on a Christian tour of the Holy Land.“[Flanders] feels that when Homer sees the sacred sites that he’ll become a good person,” Jean said in a phone interview. When the family visits the Western Wall, Bart reads some of the notes and responds, “Nope, not gonna happen.” At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Homer’s behavior gets Flanders banned for life. It is the Israeli hotel’s opulent breakfast buffet that appeals most to Homer. In the end, Producer Al Jean said, “Homer tries to unite the faiths through a message of peace and chicken because everybody eats chicken, no matter what religion they’re in.” “The Simpsons” have delved into Jewish subject matter in the past, including an adult bar mitzvah for Krusty the Clown (nee Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofski) and a 2006 “Treehouse of Horrors” segment titled “You Gotta Know When to Golem.” "This is an episode that people from all three religions will be equally offended by," said Simpsons’ producer Al Jean.



2010: Kathe Goldstein, “the musical voice” of Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is scheduled to hold a piano recital for the enjoyment of the senior citizens living at Meth-Wick House who would otherwise be bereft of such cultural pleasure.



2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including "The Sabbath World" by Judith Shulevitz and "The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010" by Edward Hirsch.



2010: The second and final day of The Legacy of the Shoah Film Festival is scheduled to take place at John Jay College in New York City featuring “Forgotten Transports: Family Stories – Latvia,” “Forgotten Transports: Men’s Stories – Belarus,” “Forgotten Transports: Fighting to Survive - Poland” and “Distant Journeys” by Alfred Radok



2010: Two Israeli soldiers killed in a firefight with Palestinian terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip were buried in separate ceremonies today. Thousands attended the funeral for Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. He is the father of four young children. His brother was killed in action in 1998. Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, Staff Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky of the Golani Brigade, was buried later in the day.



2011: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously awarded Hiram Bingham IV their Medal of Valor in New York City with a film tribute” that showed how US Vice-Consul Bingham saved lives as the Nazis marched across western Europe.



2011: A ruckus broke out in the lobby of the Supreme Court on today when right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel hurled insults at Balad MK Haneen Zoabi as she came out of the courtroom..



2011: Evergreen is scheduled to perform a concert “Enchanted Celtic Music from Israel” sponsored by The Embassy of Israel, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and Sixth & I Historic Synagogue.



2011: “An Article of Hope” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2011: “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” and “Eichmann’s End: Love, Betrayal, Death” are scheduled to be shown at The Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: Under legislation approved unanimously today by the Maryland House of Delegates, SNCF must catalog and put online records relating to its transportation of 76,000 Jews and other prisoners from the suburbs of Paris to the German border from 1942 to 1944. (As reported by JTA)



2011: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host a lecture by Michael O’Hanlon entitled “The Limits of Foreign Policy: Reconsidering the Future Role of the U.S. In World Affairs



2012: Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and President of The Israel Project, is scheduled to discuss "The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership" with its author, Ambassador Yehuda Avner.



2012: In New York City, The Center for Traditional Music and Dance's An-sky Institute for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present the year's first installment of the Tantshoyz Yiddish Dance Party series, as part of the Sixth Street Community Synagogue's klezmer series.



2012(5thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty-two year old “Irving Louis Horowitz, an eminent sociologist and prolific author who started a leading journal in his field but who came to fear that his discipline risked being captured by left-wing ideologues” passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/nyregion/irving-louis-horowitz-sociologist-dies-at-82.html?_r=1&hpw



2013: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present Boris Sandler's Film "Yosef Kerler"



2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series is scheduled to present “Those Angry Days’ Roosevelt, Lindberg, and America’s Fight Over World War II” featuring Lynn Olson and Tom Brokaw.



2013: Artists Ben Schacter and Yona Verwer are scheduled to lead a discussion of “It's a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond´ at the Yeshiva University Museum.


2013: Jewish dead lie forgotten in East L.A. graves” published today” described a snapshot of a forgotten world as seen through Mt. Zion Cemetery

2013: The traditional Birkat Kohanim mass priestly blessing took place this morning at the Kotel.

2013:The escalation of Palestinian violence in the West Bank is reminiscent of the second intifada, but has not yet turned into a third one, Judea Brigade Commander Col. Avi Baluth told The Jerusalem Post today.


2014: In Chile, “an art school that promotes Nazi ideology scheduled to open today in the southern island of Chiloé.”


2014: Paramount is scheduled release the biblically based epic film “Noah” to the general movie-going public.


2014: Israel told the Palestinians it will not free the final batch of prisoners they had been expecting alongside US-brokered peace talks, a senior Palestinian official said today.


2014: This afternoon, “Under the Same Sun” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2015: In keeping with its annual tradition Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to hold Shabbat morning services at the home of Joseph and Kineret Zabner, to honor the Torah scroll which is a long-time family possession.


2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Garden of Laughs Benefit in NYC.


2015: “The Green Prince” and “Magic Men” are scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Film Festival.


2015: Sonia Kaplan, author of My Endless War, is scheduled her experiences during the Shoah at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015(8thof Nisan, 5775): Shabbat Hagadol

 


 


 


 


 


 

This Day, March 29, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 29



835 BCE (1st of Nisan, 2926): According to some Joash assumed the throne as King of Judah



1188: Emperor Frederick was convinced (both diplomatically and financially) by Moses bar Joseph Hakohen of Mayence to issue a decree declaring “that anyone who wounds a Jew shall have his arm cut off, he who slays a Jew shall die. This decree succeeded in preventing most of the excesses of the pervious crusades in the third crusade soon to follow.



1244(11th of Nisan, 5004): Rabbi Meir Abulafia Halevi (Ramah), noted Talmudist, masorete, and poet passed away today at Toledo, Spain at the age of 74. (As reported by Abraham Bloch)



1349: Emperor Charles IV “declared that the city of Speyer had no blame for” the riots in January, 1349 during which “the Jewish community was totally wiped out.”



1366: Coronation of Henry II as King of Castile and Leon. Henry denigrated his rival Peter by portraying him as a friend of the Jews; a portrayal that including calling him “King of the Jews.” Henry exploited Castilian animosity towards Jews by instigating pogroms and forcing them to convert to Christianity.



1559: Polish King Sigismund II grants the Jews a charter despite opposition of the local authorities at Przemysl.



1602: In Stoke-on-Trent, Vicar Thomas Lightfoot and his wife gave birth to clergyman John Lightfoot who authored several books on the Old Testament and its positive relationship to Jesus as well as such works as A Handful of Gleanings out of the Book of Exodus
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/john-lightfoot-theologian-and-hebrew-scholar-11630049.html



1614(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Joshua Falk ben Alexander Katz of Lemberg author of Sefer Me’irat Einayim, passed away today.



1629: Birthdate of Alexis Mikhailovich, the second of the Romanov Czars. He reigned during the period marked by the Chmelnicki Uprising that decimated eastern European Jewry and the appearance of Sabbati Zvi. Considering the fact that we have records of the Czar ordering sharpshooters to protect Jews on their travels, sending Jewish merchants abroad to purchase wine and allowing Jews living in territory he acquired under the Treaty of Andrussev to continue living there as Russian citizens, he is considered to have been “kindly disposed toward the Jews.



1632: The Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629. Return of the city to French control would keep Jews from settling in Quebec for another 130 years. The French gave up Canada to the British in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War, known in America as The French and Indian War. Once the British were in control, Jews began to openly settle in the former French colony.



1664: Consecration of Giulio Rospigliosi to whom apostate Jew Giovanni Battista Jona, dedicated a Hebrew translation of the New Testament when he became Pope Clement IX



1714(13th of Nisan): Rabbi David ben Solomon Altaras, author of Kelalei ha-Dikduk passed away.



1719(9th of Nisan): In Venice, Rabbi Jacob Pardo of Ragusa and his wife gave birth to David Pardo who accepted the position of Chief Rabbi at Sarajevo in 1764 and passed away in Jerusalem in 1792.



1744(16th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia of Smyrna, author of Ez ha-Hayyim passed away.



1773:Pope Clement XIV confirmed the bull issued by Clement VII concerning “Jus Gazaka” which the Jews viewed positively since it dealt with their right to rent houses in the ghetto of Rome.



1793: In a decree issued today, the restriction on Austrian Jews “farming rural property” was modified to allow for it on “the estates of noblemen” “and even then hereditary tenancy or acquisition was prohibited.”



1801(15th of Nisan, 5561): First Day of Pesach – the holiday is observed for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson



1814: The King of Denmark officially allowed Jews to find employment in all professions and makes racial and religious discrimination punishable by law.



1819: Birthdate of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Isaac Mayer Wise was one of America's most influential Jewish leaders during the 19th Century. His major achievements were the establishment of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873, the Hebrew Union College in 1875, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1889. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life a man who had such an impact on the American Jewish community.



1819: In Larraine, France Simon and Pauline Levy gave birth to Kalmus Calmann Levy.



1821: Birthdate of engraver and publisher Frank Leslie whose Illustrated Newspaper carried pictures of Jewish events including a Hebrew Purim Ball and Chanukah Celebration.
http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2014/03/a-purim-treat-from-archives-of-library.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraelsHistory-APictureADaybeta+%28Israel%27s+History+-+a+Picture+a+Day+%28Beta%29%29



 1832: Birthdate of Austrian philosopher Theodore Gomperz, the native of Brno, who “was elected a member of the Academy of Science, received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa from the university of Königsberg, and Doctor of Literature from the universities of Dublin and Cambridge.”



1848: In Great Britain, Samuel Joseph Rubinstein married a daughter of David Moses Dyte, a London quill merchant.



1848: A decree issued today granted civil rights to the Jews of Alessandria, Italy which allowed to serve in the army and hold government jobs.



1858(14th of Nisan): Jews who had served in the Russian army received the right of residence in the province of Abo-Bjorneborg, Finland upon its annexation today.



1860: Todays "Personal" column reported that “The Cincinnati papers notice the arrival in that city of Mr. Israel J. Benjamin, author of Eight Years in Asia and Africa -- a Jew, who is making the tour of North America to examine the condition of his race. His design is to cross the Plains, spend a short time in the Rocky Mountains, and thence proceed through California to Asia.



1861: Opening night at the Winter Garden for “The Hebrew Son” a play designed to appeal to the Jews in the audience.



1862: Birthdate of Swiss born American portrait painter whose work includes a painting of Isaac Newton Seligman that has disappeared and one of his five year old son Joseph L. Seligman which was done in 1891 and first exhibited in January of 1892.



1863 “New From Fortress Monroe “published today reported that two Jews were arrested while on board the SS Thomas A. Morgan which was making her trip from this Fortress Monroe, VA to Yorktown, VA. The Jews had “a lot of contraband goods” in their possession. [The implication of the article is that the Jews were trading with the Rebel forces further upriver.



1863: The New York Times reported that Colonel Crane and a group of Union soldiers captured a schooner towing a lighter filled with cotton in Florida. Of the 12 men aboard the schooner, 10 were rebels while the others were a man named Titus from Rhode Island and “a Jew from New York named J. Cohen.” [The correspondent does not say how he ascertained that Cohen was a Jew or why his was the only one whose religion was mentioned.]



1866(22nd of Adar II, 5646): Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch passed away. Born in 1789, Rabbi Menachem Mendel was the grandson of the first Chabad Rebbe and was the third Chabad Lubavitch Rebbe. "He was also known as the Tzemach Tzedek (Righteous Sprout), the name for a voluminous compendium of Jewish halachah that he authored. He also authored Derech Mitzvotecha (Way of Your Commandments), a mystical exposition of Jewish law." According to some sources, the seventh Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was named in honor his illustrious predecessor. This brief summary can in no way do justice to the life and writing of this illustrious sage.



1867: “Affairs In Illinois” published today reported on the victimization of the insurance companies by a series of fraudulent claims. The article concludes by stating “And the fire insurance companies have been so frequently victimized by Jews practicing arson, that many of them are declining Israelitish risks.’ The article does not contain any details about these Jewish arsons.



1867: “The Purim Ball” published today reported that this event is different from the other balls that make up the New York Social Season. Unlike the other festivities, the Purim Ball is rooted in the national traditions of the Jews and calls for form of costume and masquerade that makes it a unique event.



1873(1st of Nisan, 5633): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1875: It was reported today that there is a dispute among the members of New York’s Beth-El congregation over how to deal with the remains of those buried at the two cemeteries owned by the congregation. Beth-El was formed by a merger of Anshei Chesed (Norfolk Street Synagogue) and Adas Jeshurun which is why Beth-El has two cemeteries.



1877(15th of Nissan, 5637): First Day of Pesach – the holiday is observed for the first time during the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.



1878: Birthdate of Albert Gumm, the Indiana native who gained fame as a songwriter under the name of Albert Von Tilzer, the author of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.”



1880: Myer Stern represented the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society at today’s meeting of the New York State Board of Charities meeting.



1880(17thof Nisan, 5640): Sixty-year old Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim, the scion of a Jewish banking family who served as editor of the liberal Die Reform (The Reform) who served in the German Reichstag.



1880: Birthdate of pianist Rosina Lhévinne whom Juilliard president Peter Mennin called "quite simply one of the greatest teachers of this century." Born in Kiev, she began her piano studies at age six and entered the Moscow Conservatory at age nine. Over the next nine years, she perfected her piano technique, graduating in 1898 with the school's gold medal. Among her classmates at the Conservatory were Sergei Rachmaninoff and Josef Lhévinne, whom Rosina married after her graduation. After getting married, Lhévinne abandoned her fledging solo performance career in order to keep her husband, also an accomplished pianist, in the spotlight. However, she did not abandon the performance circuit, often playing two-piano concerts with her husband. The Lhévinnes toured the U.S. for the first time in 1907, and moved permanently to New York immediately after World War I. In 1924, they joined the faculty of the newly established Juilliard Graduate School, where they shared a studio. After Josef Lhévinne's death in 1944, Rosina continued to teach at Juilliard, where her students included such promising musicians as Van Cliburn, David Bar-Ilan, James Levine, and Arthur Gold. As her students made their mark in national and international piano competitions, Lhévinne's fame grew. However, it was only in 1956, at the age of seventy-six, that Lhévinne resumed her own solo piano career. Her first concert was with the Aspen Festival Orchestra; she went on to perform with orchestras around the country. In 1963, she appeared in four performances with the New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein's direction. Despite a busy performance schedule, Lhévinne continued to teach at Juilliard until she passed her ninety-sixth birthday.



1881: In Leadville, CO a fire broke out in the Pioneer Salon which spread to the next door liquor business owned by the Schloss family.



1882: A two day Pogrom in the largely Jewish town of Balta (Russia) comes to an end leaving nearly half of the homes and shops in ruins.



1884: Mrs. Max Rosenberg claimed that on this day her husband forced her to pack her trunk, leave their New York apartment and stopped providing her with financial support. (Rosenberg would subsequently deny these claims, citing proof that she left of her own volition, that he continued to support her, that she still loved him and that the cause of their problems was that he was Jewish – a fact resented by her gentile father.)



1887: In Leadville, CO, Simon Schloss “was a member the committee of arrangements for the eighth annual Purim Masque Ball held at the Tabor Opera House today



1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1888(16thof Nisan, 5648): Seventy-four year old composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan whose “Op. 31 set of Préludes includes a number of pieces based on Jewish subjects, including some titled Prière (Prayer), one preceded by a quote from the Song of Songs, and another titled Ancienne mélodie de la synagogue (Old synagogue melody)
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Alkan-Charles.htm



1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Shabbat HaGadol



1890: Birthdate of daughter Pauline Herzl, daughter of Theodor Herzl who passed away in 1930.



1890: “Emanuel Bernheimer” published today listed the philanthropies and charities supported by the founder Lion Brewery including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for the Chronic Invalids.



1890: It was reported today that in St. Petersburg, university students have presented Professor Menelieff with demands that entrance fees be reduced and the restrictions against Jewish admission be removed.



1890(8th of Nisan, 5650): Forty-five year old Morris Eising, a Jewish immigrant from German was found dead in his boarding house at West 24th Street.



1892: The Russian government published the edict that expelled 14,000 Jews from Moscow. Two thirds of Moscow’s Jewry were disposed and violently removed to the Pale of Settlement.



1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1892(1st of Nisan 5652): Rabbi Elimelech Szapira of Grodzhisk passed away. Born in 1832, he “was the leading Hasidic rebbe of his time in Poland. He was a chosid (follower) of the Rizhiner Rebbe. After the death of his father, the Sorof of Mogelnica, he assumed leadership of the chasidim, who eventually numbered ten thousand. His sons-in-law were the Kozhnitser Rebbe and Rebbe Osher the Second of Stolin-Karlin.”



1893: In Boston, Judge Ely dismissed charges against Tavia Angus, the defendant charged by the police with illegally possessing wine and liquor which his co-religionists from Adat Israel claimed he was holding for them and which would be distributed prior to Passover which begins at sundown on March 31. The Jews will now be able to get their wine and brandy back from the police in time for the first Seder.



1893: “New Immigration Commissioner” published today described Secretary of Treasury John G. Carlisle’s appointment of Joseph H. Senner as the Commissioner of Immigration at New York. (Carlisle was not Jewish; Senner was)



1895: “Grand Cake Walk For Charity” published today described the fund raiser sponsored by the Monte Relief Society which began with an address by the founder and President Sofia Monte-Loebinger. The society which is named for its founder was founded by a handful of Jewesses and provides financial aid to the city’s destitute.1895(4th of Nisan, 5655): Bernhard Bernhard, a benefactor to many Jewish charities including the Hebrew Benevolent Association, passed away today at his home on East 62nd Street in New York leaving behind two children



1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): First Day of Pesach



1896(15th of Nisan, 5656): The New York Times reported that “Pesach, or the Feast of the Passover, with which the Israelites celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from bondage in Egypt, was inaugurated at sundown yesterday. The feast continues eight consecutive days and will close with the setting of the sun next Saturday.”



1896(15thof Nisan, 5656): Fifty-two year old Hungarian born revolutionary Leó Frankel who took part in the Paris Commune of 1871 passed away today.



1896: It was reported today that Lucien L. Bonheur is chairman of the committee planning the 19th annual Strawberry Festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He is being assisted by Isaac Newton Lewis, Falk Younker, Levi Hershfield, Edwin M. Schwartz and Dr. Louis S. Rosenthal. Percival S. Menken is President of the Association.



1897: “Millions For Charity” published today described a “stupendous project” to be underwritten by the Baron de Hirsch Fund that will “relieve the congested district of” New York’s “east side by building homes and establishing industries in the suburbs.”



1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Sixty-six year old David Weinberg, a retired furrier, passed away at his home leaving behind a widow and four children in New York.



1897(25thof Adar II, 5657): Forty-nine year old Louis Israel, “proprietor of the one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn” passed away today.  A native of Brooklyn, he was President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society and a member of the Independent Order of the Free Sons of Israel, the King Solomon Lodge and the B’nai Sholom Benefit Society.



1898(6th of Nisan, 5658): Rabbi Emanuel Schwab who was 101 years old passed away today in New York City.  A native of Frankfort on Main he came to the United States 53 years ago where he served as rabbi of congregations at Schenectady, NY and Bridgeport, Conn.  He was preceded in death by his wife the former Miss Sophie Hirsch whom he had married in 1862.



1899: Baroness Hirsch the widow of the late Jewish philanthropist is reportedly to be critically ill.



1899: The Jewish Colonial Bank in London begins to accept subscriptions.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/jct.html



1900: The American Israelite announced the death of Isaac Mayer Wise.



1903: Herzl meets with the Belgian born barrister Leon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart now living in Egypt. Herzl tells him that “We will give up the word 'Charter' but not the thing itself."



1905: At 07:00 today Dorothy Levitt “departed from the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street London, and arrived at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool at 18:10, having completed the 205 miles in 11 hours” thus establishing “a new record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver.”



1907(14th of Nisan, 5667): On Ellis Island, Rabbi Adolph Radin joined 180 Jewish immigrants in a Seder this evening which marked their first Passover in the United States.



1907: As of today 140,000 soldiers had been recruited to help quell the Romanian Peasant Revolt. The peasants were revolting against the Christian nobles who were the landowners responsible for their exploitation. An untold number of Jews fell victim to the peasants because they were the one who collected the rents. Once again, a dispute between groups of Christians results in dead Jews.



1910: Eugène-Melchior, vicomte de Vogüé a 19th century French archaeologist and author “who is known for his architectural studies of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the surrounding areas. (For more see Digging Through The Bible by Richard A. Freund)



1912: By decree of the King of Italy, Jews in Tripoli can now organize as a community.



1913: Birthdate of Hyman Bloom who came to the United States with his family in 1920, at the age of seven. He lived for most of his life in Boston, Massachusetts and at a young age planned to become a rabbi, but his family could not find a suitable teacher. Bloom and Jack Levine, another Jewish painter from Boston, received scholarships in the fine arts given by the famous Harvard art professor Denman Ross. Bloom, along with Levine and another painter, Karl Zerbe, eventually became associated with a style named Boston Expressionism. He passed away in 2009.



1913: Birthdate of comedian Phil Foster. Born Phil Feldman in Brooklyn, Foster gained lasting fame as Frank De Fazio on the 1970’s sitcom “Laverne and Shirley.” He passed away in 1985.



1915: Emanuel Beckerman, an interpreter in the Bronx Municipal Court was pleased to learn today that the ten pounds of matzoth that he had shipped to Rabbi Bernard Pressen for his Seder in Berlin had arrived in Amsterdam and should have made it to Berlin in time for the Seder. Beckerman had met Pressen in 1907 did not want his co-religionist to go with unleavened bread because the Kaiser’s government had banned using wheat to make matzoth.



1915: “More than 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors along with Admiral Charles Sigsbee who had commanded the Battleship Maine, were the guests tonight at a Seder hosted by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A.



1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Ninety men and one hundred and five women ranging in age from 67 to 110 held a Seder at the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in New York City. Nissen Rosen, 105 years old, will sit at one end of the table where he will face 110 year old Ethel Rosenstein. It will be a double celebration for Hannah Perlaeur who was born on the night of the Seder 95 years ago.



1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): One hundred Jews who had recently arrived from Jerusalem were among those who participated at a Seder at the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society’s home on Broadway.



1915(14th of Nisan, 5675): Dr. M.J. Leff conducted a Seder for the staff at the Beth Israel Hospital in New York City.



1915: As Jews ran their last errands in preparation for the Seder at Ostrolenka, Russia, German planes began bombing the city with what appeared to be a decision by “the enemy to raze the city to its foundations.”



1915: It was reported today that Judge Nathaniel E. Harris, the governor-elect of Georgia believes “the bitterness against Leo Frank has largely passed away and there are now many who take the view that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice” while “on the other hand, there are plenty of them who do not.”



1919: “The centenary of the birth of the late Dr. Isaac M. Wise” is scheduled to “be celebrated by the Jews of America” today according to Rabbi Joseph Silverman.



1921: Birthdate of Bronx native Abraham H. Baum, who would lead the raid commanded by Blood and Guts Patton to rescue his son-in-law from a German POW camp.



1921: Winston Churchill, British Colonial Secretary, is greeted by 10,000 Jews on Mt. Scopus in Palestine. Both the Chief Sephardic and Ashkenazic Rabbis were in attendance. They gave him a Sefer Torah. Churchill planted a tree on the future site of Hebrew University and spoke in support of the Zionist endeavors in Palestine.



1921: It was reported today that the late Julia Wormser Seligman was a native of San Francisco who was the only daughter of the late Isidore Wormser from whom she inherited two million dollars.



1923(12th of Nisan, 5683): Fast of the First Born observed because the 14th of Nisan falls on Shabbat.



1923: Birthdate of Jack David Dunitz the Glasgow born British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer who was a Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990 and is the husband of Barbara Steuer as well as the father of Marguerite and Julia Gabrielle Steuer



1925: While visiting Palestine, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, “reads the lessons in the Anglican Cathedral of St. George.”



1926: In Kecskemét, Hungary, Solomon and Margaret Sandberg who were murdered in 1944 gave birth to Gusztáv Sandberg who gained fame as Dachau survivor and Israeli economist Moshe Sanbar.



1927: Birthdate of Martin Fleischmann. A chemist at the University of Utah, Fleischmann (and his partner Stanley Pons) claimed to have discovered Cold Fusion in 1989.



1928: Yeshiva College received its charter in New York City. Yeshiva College began as a Cheder on the lower east side of Manhattan in 1886. During the first decades of the twentieth century the school began offering dual curriculum including secular level high school courses. At that time it became known as The Talmudical Academy. Yeshiva College was founded to provide TA grads with alternative to secular colleges when going on to higher education. The college became Yeshiva University in 1946 and eventually altered its charter to become a secular university. None of these changes came without protests. But these changes show how Modern Orthodoxy has dealt with need to maintain Jewish education and tradition while equipping generations of youngsters with the skills to live in the secular world.



1930: The first American convention of the promoters and adherents of the Yiddish language, literature and culture opened this evening at the Irving Plaza Hall in New York City. Eight hundred people from the United States and Canada attended the opening session of a convention working to foster Yiddish Culture.



1931: Birthdate of Evelyn de Rothschild. Rothschild headed the English branch of the family and its banking business for twenty-one years. In 2003, the English and French branches merged and Baron David de Rothschild, head of the French branch assumed the new leadership position. The Rothschilds continue to be "one of the world's largest private banking dynasties."



1932: At the first Jewish Olympic Games, officially known as the Maccabiah, American Sybil Koff of New York, finished first in the semi-final of the 100 meter race while the American team finished second in the semi-final of the relay race. The opening contests in which American Jews played a prominent part took place “in the newly built stadium situated at the junction of the Yarkon River and the Mediterranean Sea” before a crowd estimated to exceed the venue’s 25,000 seat capacity.



1932: Jack Benny debuted on radio. This legendary Jewish entertainer moved from vaudeville to the electronic medium - radio, the movies and finally television.



1933: The front page of the Nazi newspaper, Volkisher Beobachter, stated "Let Jewry Know Against Who it Has Declared War".



1933: “In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, the management of UFA, a leading German motion picture production company, decided to fire several Jewish employees.”



1934(13th of Nisan, 5694): Otto Hermann Kahn passed away. Born in Germany in 1867, this noted banker, collector, philanthropist and patron of the arts moved to the United States in 1893. He joined the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company and continued to add to his fortune. He was a founder and President of the Metropolitan Opera Company. He bankrolled numerous artists including Hart Crane, George Gershwin and Arturo Toscanini. Kahn uttered the following warning, “The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof.” To work “it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.”



1934: Birthdate of Ehud Netzer, the native of Haifa who became a leading Israeli archeologist.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-me-ehud-netzer-20101106-story.html



1935: In Brooklyn, Abraham M. and Belle Lindenbaum gave birth to Samuel H. Lindenbaum, who was widely considered New York City’s top zoning lawyer and who was credited with doing as much as any of the powerful developers among his clients to shape the modern skyline of Manhattan…” (As reported by David W. Dunalp)



1936: The SS guard formations were renamed SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death's Head Units). They provided guards for concentration camps



1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.



1937: Birthdate of Moacyr Jaime Scliar a Brazilian writer and physician who passed away in 2011.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that the body of Jacob Zwanger, an engineer who had disappeared some 18 days earlier, was found near Rehovot. He was apparently strangled. A Jew and his Arab partner were arrested, both suspected of Zwanger's murder.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that Arab brigands held up and robbed drivers near Jenin.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that a plea was made in the House of Commons to reduce the British tariff on Palestine oranges which was devised to protect the South African citrus industry.



1938: The New York Times reported that Dr. Sigmund Freud has been denied a passport so that he cannot leave Vienna for the Netherlands. A delegation that included Princess Marie Bonaparte had gone to Vienna to make Freud aware of the warm welcome that would await him in what would be his new Dutch home.



1938: A total of $20,000 was contributed tonight to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.



1939: Birthdate of Roland Arnall, the French native who became a successful American businessman, diplomat and financial contributor to the well-being of Chabad-Lubavitch.



1939: The Soviet NKVD secret police arrested Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the father of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson for his outspoken efforts against the Communist Party’s efforts to eradicate Jewish learning and practice in the Soviet Union. After more than a year of torture and interrogations in Stalin's prisons, he was sentenced to exile to the interior of Russia. He died there in 1944. Rabbi Schneerson was a distinguished Kabbalist. Some of his writings have been published under the name Likkutei Levi Yitzchak. Most of it, however, was burned or confiscated by the Soviet authorities and has yet to be returned to the Chabad movement.



1942: SS Captain Dieter Wislicey wants $50,000 in cash as the price for stopping the deportations of Slovakian Jews to the death camps. He will get the money, but the deportations will continue



1942: Founder's Day in honor of Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of Reform Judaism, was observed this afternoon in the Central Synagogue, with a special service under the auspices of the Greater New York City Alumni of the Hebrew Union College



1943: Third and final shipment of Macedonian Jews from Skopje to Treblinka.  Of the 7,144 Jews shipped there over three days only about 200 survived the war/



1944: Anne Frank mentions in her diary that Gerrit Bolkestein, Education Minister of the Dutch Government in exile, delivered a radio message from London urging his war-weary countrymen to collect "vast quantities of simple, everyday material" as part of the historical record of the Nazi occupation and writes "Ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding."



1944: Tel Aviv was declared off limits to all military personnel today, including those who have family living in the city. The ban was in response to attacks on police stations in Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem for which the Irgun has taken public credit.



1945(15th of Nisan, 5705: First Day of Pesach



1945(15th of Nisan, 5705): On the first day of Pesach least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre. SS sergeant Adolf Storms SS sergeant Adolf Storms was among the perpetrators of the killing.



1945: In the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8thArmy serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.



1945: The ill-fated and ill-conceived mission ordered by General Patton to rescue his son-in-law John K. Waters under the command of Captain Abraham Baum came to an ignominious end with Baum who had been shot in the groin joining the wounded Walters in a German hospital for POWS.



1946: U.S. premiere of “Night Editor” directed by Henry Levin



1947: Clifton Daniel interviewed Jewish refugees at Caraolos, a British run displaced persons camp outside of Famagusta, Cyprus. “An appeal for the outside world to consider their plight was the first and only formal proposal addressed” to him by these immigrants. Currently, there are 11,000 Jews living in camps like this all across Cyprus. If the British stick to their policy of releasing 750 Jews a month to go to Palestine, it will take at least fourteen months to empty these camps.



1947: “A ship carrying 1,600 Jewish unauthorized refugees was intercepted tonight off the northern coast of Palestine by the Royal Navy.” The ship which was known as the Patria or Moledeth was taken to the harbor at Haifa.



1947: At a mass meeting in Tel Aviv, Golda Meyerson, the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department “assailed the underground extremists’ warfare today in these words: ‘Terrorism is assisting Palestine’s British administration it has put Palestine Jewry on the defensive, whereas but for terrorism the Zionists could have pursued a more vigorous line in their political efforts…we don ot want to embark on internal warfare, but if it be thrust upon us we shall finish with the terrorists, although without cooperating with the Government in doing so.’”



1949: In a meeting with Zionist leaders in New York, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill offers assurance that his commitment to the Jewish state is as solid as it has ever been.



1950: The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine issues a memorandum designed to “meet the Israeli demands for direct negotiations and the Arab desire that the commission act as mediator.”



1950: The “first contingent of ‘hard core’ cases from the refugee camps in German and Austria arrive in Israel” three days before Pesach. “These unfortunates, the halt, the lame and the blind were brought in by the combined efforts of the international relief organizations, the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Israeli Government.” Their arrival is an example of David Ben Gurion’s belief that Israel is the home for all Jews regardless of their condition.



1951: Judy Holliday, born Judy Tuvim, won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Dawn in the film “Born Yesterday.”



1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage. The prosecutor in the case and the judge who would pronounce the death sentence were also Jewish. However, right-wing politicians would overlook this and use the Rosenberg case as further proof that the Jews were part of the Communist Conspiracy.



1953: Birthdate of Samuel Elliott Chwat founder of the Sam Chwat Speech Center.



1954: In “Massacre at Scorpion’s Pass” published today the Time correspondent described the terror attack that took place south of Beersheba.
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,819663,00.html



1956: Syria returned 4 Israeli soldiers who had been held captive for fifteen months in return for an the prisoners the Israelis had taken during Operation Olive Leaves.



1956: Be'er Sheva or Beersheba was linked to Israel's railway system. Yes, this is the ancient city mentioned connection with Abraham and Isaac. This is just one example of how the young state of Israel was developing its economy and infrastructure while confronting on-going threats of Arab attacks as well as the reality of cross-border raids by fedayin (the name given to the terrorists of those days.)



1959: Birthdate of Nouriel Roubini, the Turkish born son of Iranian Jews who became a leading American advisor on economics and the chairman of Roubini Global Economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roubini_Global_Economics



1959: Birthdate of Perry Farrell, lead singer of Jane’s Addiction



1959: Release date for “Some Like It Hot” a great comedy film directed, produced and co-authored by Billy Wilder.



1963: U.S. premiere of Miracle of the White Stallions” directed by Arthur Hiller.



1965: In the United Kingdom, premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” with a script by Ernest Lehman.



1965: Birthdate of Elisheva Greenbaum. In June of 2003, at the Metulla Festival of Poetry, Ellisheva was awarded the prestigious "Tevah" prize in poetry. Earlier, in 2002, Elisheva was awarded The Prime Minister's prize for poetry.



1967(17th of Adar II, 5727): Israeli author, Isaac Dov Berkowitz passed away. Born in Belarus in 1885 he made aliyah in 1928. The son-in-law of Sholom Aleichim, he was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize and a winner of the Israel Prize for literature in 1958.



1970: Eighty-four year old Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor of Germany who tried to save the Weimar Republic in the wake of the anarchy created by the Communists and the Nazis and sought to thwart Hitler’s rise to power passed a way today.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/82225/Heinrich-Bruning



1973(25th of Adar II, 5733): Ida Cohen Rosenthal, the woman who created the modern brassiere industry passed away.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197610



1977: Robert Stauss began serving as United States Trade Representative.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, said that he would allow the early reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference without PLO participation. The conference might later decide on the PLO's eventual participation.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Egged management threatened to withdraw public transport service to and from Lod due to hooliganism, personal attacks, theft and other difficult conditions at the Lod Central Bus Station.



1979: U.S. premiere of “Real Life” the first feature film directed by Albert Brooks who co-authored the script and co-starred in the picture.



1981: The New York Times reviews "The Geneva Crisis" by Matti Golan, an Israeli diplomat writing about a fictional attempt by idealistic Jews who are duped when they attempt to work for peace with Palestinian rebels.



1983(15thof Nisan, 5743): Pesach



1986(18thof Adar II, 5746): Seventy-eight year old Harry Ritz, one of the famous three Ritz Brothers passed away today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zishe_Breitbart



1987: Yitzhak Shamir was re-elected chairman of right wing Herut Party. Born in Poland in 1915, Shamir moved to Palestine in 1935. While attending Hebrew University he joined the Irgun. He later left the Irgun and joined what was the Stern Gang. Shamir would later rise above what some people might think of a rather dubious past to become Prime Minister in 1988. To his credit, in May 1991, Shamir ordered the airlift rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jewry, codenamed "Operation Solomon." In September, Shamir provided living proof that people can change, when he represented Israel at the Madrid Peace Conference which brought about direct negotiations with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians.



1987: Tonight Colonel Aviem Sella, the Israeli Air Force who was indicted earlier this month in the United States for his role in recruiting Jonathan Pollard as a spy, said that he was giving up his recent promotion to the rank of general because of “the problems it had caused between the United States and Israel.”



1987: An American Rabbi, Arthur Schneier, said that “that the Soviet Union has agreed that future Jewish émigrés will be sent to Israel by way of Rumania.” In the past, those Jews who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union traveled through Vienna where many of them obtained visas for the United States even though they had said they were leaving to go to Israel. Schneier hopes the change will lead to an increase in the number of Jews who are allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The Rumanians have asked that the transit cite in their country not be identified so that it will not become a target for terrorists.



1991(14th of Nisan, 5751): The Kesim celebrated the last Pesach for their community at the Israeli embassy in Addas Abba, Ethiopia.



1993: Billy Crystal served as host at the 65th Academy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Taylor was co-winner of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award



1993: Simone Veil replaced Bernard Kouchner as Minister of Health in France



1993: Jack Lang completed his first term in office as Education Minister of France.



1994(17th of Nisan, 5754): During Chol Hamoed Pesach, Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva, was attacked on a construction site by two residents of Khan Yunis by axe blows to the head. He died several days later of his wounds.



1996: Actress Rebecca “Schaeffer's life and death became the topic of the first E! True Hollywood Story episode, which originally aired” today,



1998: The 27th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship was played today. The namesake of this major LPGA event was born Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tenn. in 1917. She adopted the name Dinah from a hit 1930's tune of the same name that was her signature song in the early days of her career.



1998: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Diplomacy for the Next Century” by Abba Eban, “Clement Greenberg: A Life” by Florence Rubenfeld,” The Castle: A New Translation, Based on the Restored Text” by Franz Kafka; translated by Mark Harman and “Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System” by Susan Estrich.



1998: Famed basketball player Henry "Hank" Rosenstein Rosenstein was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame



1999: In the ever-changing revolving door of Israeli party politics, Eliezer Sandberg”s HaTzeirim faction joined Shinui.



1999: Emanuel Zisman left the Third Way political party and served the rest of his term as an independent MK.



2000: Israel's high court orders that about 700 Palestinians be allowed to return to their traditional homes in caves in the southern West Bank.



2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Second Day of Pesach and 1st day of the Omer.



2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): “Tuvia Wisner, 79, of Petah Tikva and Michael Orlinsky, 70, of Tel-Aviv were killed Friday morning, when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Neztarim settlement in the Gaza Strip.” (Jewish Virtual Library)



2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Rachel Levy, 17, and Haim Smadar, 55, the security guard, both of Jerusalem, were killed and 28 people were injured, two seriously, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. (Jewish Virtual Library)



2002(16thof Nisan, 5762): Lt. Boaz Pomerantz, 22, of Kiryat Shmona and St.-Sgt. Roman Shliapstein, 22, of Ma'ale Efraim were killed in the course of the IDF anti-terrorist action in Ramallah (Operation Defensive Shield. (Jewish Virtual Library)



2002: In response to the suicide bombing at a Seder in the Park Hotel that claimed the lives of 30, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield.



2002: U.S. premiere of “Clockstoppers” a “science fiction comedy film” with a script co-authored by David N. Weiss.



2002: U.S. premiere of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” a comedy directed by Harry Shearer who also wrote the script.



2002: In the U.K. premiere of “Invincible” a drama based loosely on the life of Jewish vaudeville strongman and circus performer Siegmund “Zishe” Breitbart.



2003: In her presidential installation sermon Rabbi Janet Marder spoke about the need to develop and sustain progressive Judaism in Israel, and about "developing an inner life — about personal prayer, about seeking the Holy One, and quiet hours inside a book, and the solitude that is essential for a life of clarity and integrity."



2005: The New York Times reported that “as Columbia University awaits a report on charges of intimidation of Jewish students in classes in Middle East studies, a group of graduate students began circulating a petition calling for the resignation of Columbia’s president, Lee Co. Bollinger, because he ‘failed to defend our faculty, thereby nurturing an environment of fear and intimidation throughout the university.’” Columbia’s faculty has been divided about Mr. Bollinger’s performance ever since the showing of a videotape last fall that demonstrated some professors of Middle East studies intimidating Jewish students in classes and on campus.



2006: With 95 percent of the ballots counted, the election results for the 17th Knesset appeared as follows:



Kadima: 28 Knesset seats



Labor: 20



Shas: 13



Likud: 11



Israel Beitenu: 12



NRP / NU: 9



Pensioners: 7



United Torah Judaism: 6



Meretz: 4



Balad: 3



Hadash: 3



United Arab List: 4



While it appears that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party gained the largest number of seats, it was fewer than had been estimated in earlier polls. Once the results are final, Olmert will probably be asked to form a government. If the total holds at or around thirty seats, Kadima will have to gather another 31 seats to gain the 61 seats necessary to control the Knesset and govern the country.



2007: The Tel Aviv Museum of Art presents, for the first time in Israel, a retrospective selection of works by Mark Rothko, one of the pillars of the New York School artists, identified in the late 1940s and early ‘50s as the painters of Abstract Expressionism.



2008: Shabbat Parah, 5768



2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “Gershwin Brothers’ Dream of a Great American Opera: Porgy and Bess and beyond” the third lecture in a series entitled “Music as Melting Pot Mosaic: The Gershwins.”



2009: In the 2nd of a four part lecture series marking this special year of Hakhel Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of England a noted author and lecturer delivers a talk on Unity and Redemption - Celebrating Freedom Together.



2009: Model Matzah Baker takes place at Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook with participants learning about Passover and enjoying the thrill of baking their own Matzah.



2009: The Chicago Tribune reviews “The Kindly Ones” a Holocaust novel by Jonathan Littell which the reviewer calls a “helpless narrative” and “missed opportunity.”



2009: The Times of London reported today that the Israel Air Force used unmanned drones to attack secret Iranian convoys in Sudan that were trying to smuggle weapons to Palestinian militant organizations in the Gaza Strip. Defense officials were quoted as saying that the trucks were carrying missiles capable of striking as far as Tel Aviv and the nuclear reactor in Dimona.



2009(4thof Nisan, 5769): Ninety-five year old American photographer Helen Levitt passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/arts/design/30levitt.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1427511695-KVhjlQzyQlYzOLiARUxbMg
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-helen-levitt1-2009apr01-story.html#page=1



2010: Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a performance in London by the acclaimed Jerusalem Quartet. Today’s lunchtime concert, which was being broadcast live on BBC Radio, was taken off the air in the middle due to the disruption, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The quartet completed its program. About five protesters took turns disrupting the concert with anti-Israel epithets at 10-minute intervals throughout the performance at Wigmore Hall, according to reports. They were removed from the audience. Protesters in other countries also have disrupted the quartet's performances. In a statement, the quartet noted that all four musicians served in the Israeli army as musicians and not in combat, and also perform as regular members of Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings Israeli and Arab musicians together. "We no more represent the Government of Israel than the audience at the Wigmore Hall represented the Government of the United Kingdom," read the statement. Only one of the four musicians is a native Israeli; one lives in Portugal and another in Berlin



2010: In New York, a week long program entitled The New Israeli Cuisine is scheduled to come to an end.



2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): Fast of the First Born



2010(14th of Nisan, 5770): In the evening, Jews around the world sit down to the Seder. Have a zissen Pesach



2010(14thof Nisan, 5770): Seventy-five year old author Alan Isler whose works included The Prince of West End Avenue, a novel “set in a Jewish old person’s home” which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize passed away.



2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Precious Life” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: President Obama nominated Daniel B. Shapiro to serve as the Ambassador of the United States of America to the state of Israel.



2011: Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute presented “Romantic Piano Trios: Schumann and Rachmaninoff.”



2012: The Andy Statman Trio (Andy on mandolin and clarinet, Jim Whitney on bass, Larry Eagle on drums & percussion) is scheduled to wrap up the season at the Charles Street Synagogue.



2012: Al Munzer is scheduled to moderate “Spinoza, Superstar of the millennium?” as part of Theatre J’s backstage program.



2012: Jon Lebowitz was confirmed for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.



2012: “Footnote” is among the films scheduled to be shown today at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2012(6thof Nisan, 5772): Seventy-four year old “Kenneth Libo, a historian of Jewish immigration who, as a graduate student working for Irving Howe in the 1960s and ’70s, unearthed historical documentation that informed and shaped World of Our Fathers, Mr. Howe’s landmark 1976 history of the East European Jewish migration to America” passed away today. (As reported by Paul Vitello)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/books/kenneth-libo-historian-of-jewish-immigration-dies-at-74.html



2013: The Ruach Minyan at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. is scheduled to host a Pesach Shabbat dinner.



2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a concert “Passion and Fire in the 20th Century.”



2013(18thof Nisan, 5773): Ninety-one year old linguist John H. Gumperz passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/education/john-j-gumperz-linguist-of-cultural-interchange-dies-at-91.html?hpw&_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Gumperz



2013: The 23rdannual Haifa International Children’s Theatre Festival is scheduled to come to an end.



2013: The Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series is scheduled to present “That Hamilton Woman” the classic directed by Michael Korda



2013: Forty year old Michael Steinberg, a SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager who had worked for discredited billionaire Steven Cohen, was arrested by federal agents today.



2013: A man claiming to represent the hackers behind one of the biggest attacks in Internet history made anti-Jewish statements.



2014: “Fountains of the Deep: Visions of Noah and the Flood” is scheduled to be shown for the last time in a pop art space at 462 West Broadway.



2014: “Labor and Race in Modern Germany,” co-sponsored by the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism is scheduled to come to a close today


2014: “The Zigzag Kid” is scheduled to be shown at the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.


2014: “A Jewish woman and her partner were among the first same-sex couple ever to be officially married in Britain today, after a law authorizing same-sex marriages went into effect throughout the country. Twenty-nine-year-old Nikki Pettit, who is Jewish, married Tania Ward, 28, in a Jewish ceremony in Brighton, on Britain’s south coast.”


2014: “Trebilinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine is scheduled to air tonight on the Smithsonian Channel.


2014: Israel did not conduct the fourth stage of the prisoner release tonight,


2014: “New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson today for using the controversial term "occupied territories," saying he "misspoke" during his speech to a Republican Jewish Coalition event, Politico and CNN reported.”



2014: “Rabbi Yousef Hamadani Cohen, chief rabbi of Iran since 1994, who passed away over the weekend was laid to rest” today.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-chief-rabbi-yousef-hamadani-cohen-dies/



2015: Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a screening of “Defiance.”



2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Country of Ice Cream Starby Sandra Newman


2015: Suite Française a film “based on the best-selling book by Irène Némirovsky, written by her during the Nazi occupation and before she was sent to Auschwitz is scheduled to be shown today as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival


2015: “A Happy End” by Iddo Netanyahu is scheduled to be performed for the last time at the June Havoc Theatre in Manhattan.


2015: The 64th Annual Israel Folk Dance Festival and Festival of the Arts is scheduled to take place in NYC.

2015: Professor Derek J. Penslar is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “1948 as a Jewish World War” in Miami Beach.

 


This Day, March 30, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 30



1135: On the secular calendar, birthdate of Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon) in Cordova, Spain. According to Jewish tradition he was born Erev Pesach. "From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses.' This folk saying sums up the greatness of the man. There is not space enough to do justice to his amazing life. Such were his intellectual capabilities that one person said, if you did not know that Maimonides was the name of the man you would think that it was the name of a university. He is most noted for his codification of Jewish Law called the Mishneh Torah (Review of the Torah) and his philosophic work Moreh Nevuchim (Guide To The Perplexed). But for some the true measure of the man is the lesser known Letter of Consolation and Letter on the Sanctification of God. He wrote both of these to reassure the Jews of Fez that to encourage them in their steadfastness to Judaism and to emphasize the fact that God hears our prayers and that our sins do not detract from our good deeds. He wrote a great deal more including medical books. Maimonides refused to "make a profit from the crown of the Torah" so while he served as the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt; he earned a living as a leading physician. Maimonides died in Egypt in December, 1204 or Tevet, 4965. He is buried in Tiberias and many make a point of visiting the grave of this sage. If you do the math this is the 870th anniversary of the birth of Maimonides. This would make this an especially auspicious year for Jews to devote study time to this sage who has influenced non-Jews as well as Jews eight centuries.


http://www.amazon.com/Maimonides-Biography-Abraham-Joshua-Heschel/dp/0374517592
http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/marmur/Heschel's%20Two%20Maimonides.pdf



1191: King Philip II of France set sail from Sicily to begin his campaign against Saladin in what is called the Third Crusade. Throughout his reign, Philip persecuted his Jewish subjects by variously holding them hostage for ransom, releasing Christians from paying their debts to the Jews and expelling them so he could seize all of their property and assets.



1218: Henry III of England enforced the Yellow Badge Edict. The badge was a piece of yellow cloth in the shape of the Tablets of the Law and was worn above the heart by every Jew over the age of seven.



1296: Edward I sacks Berwick-upon-Tweed, during armed conflict between Scotland and England. This is the same King who expelled the Jews from England in 1290. He expelled them so that he could finance his various wars against the French, the Welch and the Scots



1432: Birthdate of Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed’s reign was a positive period for the Jews. After he conquered Constantinople in 1453, he allowed Jews from today's Greek Islands and Crete to settle in Istanbul. His declaration of invitation said, in part, "Listen sons of the Hebrew who live in my country...May all of you who desire come to Constantinople and may the rest of your people find here a shelter". After fighting off a crusade led by Jean de Capistrano, Mehmed invited the Ashkenazi Jews of Transylvania and Slovakia to the Ottoman Empire. The invitation may have been as a sign of appreciation for fighting prowess of a Jewish regiment called “the Sons of Moses.” Mehmed ordered that various synagogues that had been damaged by fire should be repaired and several Jews held positions at Court.



1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed a decree expelling the Jews from Spain.



1526: In Antwerp, Belgium, Emperor Charles V issued a general safe-conduct to the Portuguese "New Christians" and Marranos allowing them to live and work there. Although they still had to live under cover they were safe from the Inquisition.



1581: Pope Gregory XIII issued a Bull banning the use of Jewish doctors. This did not prevent many popes from using Jews as their personal physicians.



1690: Alexander VIII issued “Animarum Saluti,” a papal relating to the neophytes in the Indies.



1739(20th of Adar II): Rabbi Moses Meir Perles of Prague, author of Megillat Sofer passed away



1773: In Newport, Ezra Stiles, the future President of Yale invited Hebron born Rabbi Chaim Isaac Caregal and Aaron Lopez to his home for a meeting that would be the beginning of strong friendship that lasted for the next 6 months when the Rabbi left town to continue his travels.



1801(16th of Nisan, 5561): Second day of Pesach; The Omer is counted for the first time during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.



1804: Birthdate of Salomon Sulzer the Austrian Chazan and composer whose "Shir Tziyyon" a work in two volumes that “established models for the various sections of the musical service—the recitative of the cantor, the choral of the choir, and the responses of the congregation—and contained music for Sabbaths, festivals, weddings, and funerals which has been introduced into nearly all the synagogues of the world.”



1804: Birthdate of Austrian Chazan and composer Salomon Sulzer



1816: In Moravia, Jacob Steinschneider and his wife gave birth to Moritz Steinschneider “a Bohemian bibliographer and Orientalist who passed away in 1907.



1820(15thof Nisan, 5580):  As Americans enjoy political season of “good feelings” Jews observe Pesach



1831(16thof Nisan, 5591): In Mayence, Rabbi Samuel Bondi and Sophie Sueschen Bondi gave birth to Marcus Meir Bondi.



1839(15thof Nisan, 5599): Pesach



1849: In New York, Isidor Bush published the first edition of Israel’s Herald, “the first Jewish weekly in the United States” that folded after only 3 months.



1856: Birthdate Charles Waldstein, the native of New York who became a leading Anglo-American archaeologist who was knighted in 1912 and changed his name to Walston in 1918 so he became known as Sir Charles Walston, husband of Florence Seligman.



1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War. One of the stranger aspects of the conflict that most remember for “The Charge of the Light Brigade” was the creation of Mickiewicz’s Jewish Legion. A Polish nobleman and nationalist who was living in exile in Paris at the start of the war, Mickiewicz went to Constantinople where he and Armand Levy organized a military unit made up of Jews from Poland and Palestine. The group was also called the Hussars of Israel. Mickiewicz died before he could lead them into action.



1856: The attempts of the Turkish sultan, Abed Almagid, to ally his kingdom with the west came to fruition today when the Ottoman Empire “was officially included among the European family nations’ today during the Congress of Paris.  Abed Almagid had showed his support for the cause of the Jews when he issued a decree in 1840 absolving the Jews of Rhodes from the charges of having killed a Christian child so his blood could be used in making matzah.



1858: Hyman Lipman, a Philadelphia Jew patented the lead pencil. Lipman was a printer who also played a key role in the early development of the postal card.



1862: In Brooklyn, Congregation Beth Elohim dedicated its new facility on Pearl Street which gave rise to its nickname “the Pearl Street Synagogue.”



1863: During the Civil War, President Lincoln issued a proclamation proclaiming Thursday, April 30, 1863 as a National Day of Fasting.



1864: Birthdate of German- born sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, the father of Hillel Oppenheimer, a professor of botany at Hebrew University.



After a distinguished career in Germany, Oppenheimer passed away as a refugee in Los Angeles in 1943.



1873(2ndof Nisan. 5633): Eighty-eight year old Count Abraham Camondo passed away. Born in Istanbul, he “was a Jewish Ottoman-Italian financier and philanthropist and the patriarch of the Camondo family.”
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3949-camondo



1877(16th of Nisan, 5637): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1879: “Egyptian Influence on Hebrew Names” published today described the work of Dr. Brugsh that there is no Hebrew derivation for the names Moses, Aaron or Miriam but they do contain Egyptian roots. Also, the name Pinchas (the famed slayer in the Book of Numbers) comes from an Egyptian term for “the Negro” which was applied to dark-skinned men in Egypt



1880: It was reported today that a new opera, “The Queen of Sheba” by Goldmark has been successfully performed in several German cities.



1881: In Leadville, CO, the liquor business owned by the Schloss family was determined to have sustained $250 in damages in a fire that began last night.



1882: Birthdate of Austrian-born English psychoanalyst and child psychologist Melanie Klein. Klein developed methods of play technique and play therapy in analyzing and treating child patients. She passed away in 1960.



1883: Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Westmount, a Reform synagogue in Westmount, Quebec, the oldest “Liberal” or “Reform” synagogue in Canada, was incorporated today.



1888(18thof Nisan, 5648): Forty-one year old “German Jewish physician and Arctic explorer” Dr. Emil Bessels suffered a stroke today and passed away in Stuttgart, Germany.



1890: Ida Levy of New York will marry Henry Naftal of Asbury Park today.



1890: Authorities concluded that Morris Eising, German-Jewish immigrant who had been found dead in his rooming house had died by his own hand.  Apparently he was despondent over the loss of his job which meant he could not send money back to his wife in Bavaria.



1890: This morning Rabbi Gustav Gottheil will officiate at the funeral Emanuel Bernheimer, “one of the owners of the Lion Brewery” and one of the oldest brewers living in New York.  Born in 1817, he learned his craft in his native Germany before coming to the United States in 1844.  In 1850 he and August Schmid formed the Constanz Brewery and in 1860 they took over and enlarged the Lion Brewery.  Bernheimer was one of the oldest member of Temple Emanu El and a patron of several charities including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids. After the funeral, Dr. Silverman will officiate at the burial in the Salem Field Cemetery.



1890: “The Theatrical Week” published today provides highlights of current and upcoming productions including  “The Shatchen,” a new play by Charles Dickson and Harry Dobbin whose protagonist is Myer Petooksy  a peddler who also works as “an unlicensed marriage broker.”



1891: “New Books” published today contains a complete review of The Persecution of the Jews in Russia that includes an “appendix containing a summary of special restrice laws, a map showing the pale of Jewish settlements.”



1892: It was reported today that Prague after police quelled a riot by a mob upset by the Imperial authority’s refusal to allow a celebration of the anniversary birth of a medieval educational reformer, John Comenius.  When the rioters were thwarted by authorities, they cried “Let’s make for the Jews!” followed by calls to head for the Jewish quarter where they could “vent their fury on the inoffensive Hebrews.” The mounted policemen wanted an end to the rioters and drove them from the streets including those in the Jewish quarter. (Yes, this mindless anti-Semitic attack took place in the supposedly civilized confines Prague.  The anti-Semitic outburst that consumed Paris during the Dreyfus affair was really not such an aberration after all.)



1892: A cable was received today in Toronto from London describing the death of sixty nine year old Canadian Jew Mark Samuel



1892: Birthdate of Erwin Panofsky, the husband of Dorothea (Dora) Mosse, the German art historian who was forced to pursue his career in the United States after the rise of the Nazis.



1895: Birthdate of Pierre Péteul, who as the Capuchin Franciscan friar Père Marie-Benoît saved approximately 4,000 Jews from the Shoah.  He was was honored with the Medal of the Righteous among the Nations and was known as Père des juifs  (Father of the Jews.



1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer



1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Citizens are required to return their census papers in London. While most citizens are required to return their census papers today in London, the Jews have been given an extension and do not have to return them until tomorrow since today is the second day of Passover and the English respect the need to observe the holiday.



1896(16th of Nisan, 5656): Fifty-one year old Rabbi Aaron Wise who had gone to Rodelph Sholom to officiate at Passover Services this morning, complained of being ill and went home after consulting with Benjamin Blumenthal without preaching lay down on a longue in the basement dining room as passed away before medical help could arrive.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D04EFDA143BEE33A25752C3A9659C94679ED7CF



1897: Colonel Goldsmid asks Herzl to stay away from the Zionist Congress in order to prevent a split in the ranks of the Hovevei Zion.



1897: Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, and Moritz Güdemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, led anti-Zionist attacks. They were known as the "Protestrabbiner" - "Protest Rabbis".



1897: “In Memory of General Grant” published today described the units that will be marching in the parade to honor the late President and Civil War hero including a contingent from the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Cadets under the command of Major Martin Cohen and Adjutant Max Saltzman.



1897: In New York City’s Lower East Side, Bessie and Jakob Riskin gave birth to “screenwriter and playwright Robert Riskin who won an Oscar for the timeless comedy “It Happened on Night” as well as “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” – an example of the American cultural myth actually created by Jewish immigrants and their children in Tinsel Town.



1898: Liebe Blond and her four children who had arrived in the United States were put on a ship bound for Europe after authorities refused to let her husband who has been working here see her or listen to his entreaties to let them stay in the United States.



1899(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Hayyim Leib Tiktinski, head of the Mir Yeshivah for 49 years passed away



1899: It was reported today that when Baron Hirsch passed away he left a fortune estimated at 125 million dollars, most of which was tied to railroad companies.  Both before and after his death, Hirsch had given large sums to the poor including 10 million dollars for the Jewish Colonization Association of the United States.



1899: It was reported today that since the death of her husband, Baroness Hirsch has been very generous in providing aid to the poor including $1,500,000 to the need of Paris and an even large amount to the Educational Alliance which assists the Russian Jews.



1899: Birthdate of movie producer Irving Thalberg., an early pioneer in the film industry. His brief career (he died of pneumonia at the age of 37) left such a mark on the world of cinema that a year after his death the Academy of Motion Picture Artists created a special award in his name that is given annually at the Oscar Presentations. Thalberg was the inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Last Tycoon. In explaining why his name did not appear in the film credits, Thalberg said, “if you’re in a position to give yourself credit, you don’t need it.”



1900: Birthdate of Charles A. Robinson, Jr. the Professor of Classic at Brown University who married Celia Sachs, the daughter of art historian Paul J. Sachs who played a key role in planning to save and retrieve works of art in World War II.



1903: Birthdate of Sol C Siegel, journalist turned movie producer who helped to create such hits as “High Society,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “No Way to Treat a Lady,” “Alvarez Kelly” “Three Coins In A Fountain” and “A Letter to Three Wives” the last two which were nominated for Oscar’s as Best Picture.



1903: As part of negotiations to secure land for a Jewish homeland, Carton de Wiart talked to a lawyer with the Egyptian government who recommends that the concession should be in the form of a lease, not a freehold. Herzl demands a 99-year lease.



1904: It was reported today that the children of the late Mayer Lehman, who was a Director of Mount Sinai Hospital for 19 years, have given $93,000 to cover the cost of constructing the Dispensary Building which is to be dedicated in memory of their father.



1904(14th of Nisan, 5664): At Ellis Island, three hundred Jewish immigrants who “have been detained while awaiting inspection” held a Seder on the first night of Passover. The meal was served on dishes that were brand new having been brought straight from the storeroom. All of the utensils used in the kitchen were also brand new and the meal was prepared under the supervision of the Jewish immigrants. The meal included chicken soup, roast goose, apple sauce, mashed potatoes, black tea, oranges and, of course, Matzah and ground horseradish.



1904: Alice Weinberg, the twelve year old daughter of Max Weinberg was reported missing by her father. The girl had gone to play with her friends this morning while her family prepared for tonight’s Seder. The family called off its Passover celebration so it could search for Alice.



1907(15thof Nisan, 5667): Pesach



1909(8th of Nisan, 5669): Mrs. Michla Shilotzdky passed away this morning at the age of 106. The cause of death was pneumonia. Mrs. Esther Davis, 115 years old; Mrs. Rosei Aaronwald, 108 years old; and Mendel Diamond, 107 years old were at her bedside at the Daughters of Jacob Home in New York.



1909: Official opening of the Queensboro Bridge which two Jewish boys from Queens named Simon and Garfunkel would immortalize in the 1960’s hit "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"



1910: The Mississippi Legislature founds The University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, Mississippi. At the time of the founding of USM, there was a small Jewish population in Hattiesburg including Maurice Dreyfus who operated a saw mill and Frank Rubenstein who opened a department store called “The Hub.”



1913: B’nai Israel Congregation was founded in Greensburg, PA.



1913: Ahavas Achim Congregation was founded in Buffalo, NY.



1915(15thof Nisan, 5675): Pesach



1915: Rabbi Aaron Elseman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “America the Hope of Humanity” this morning at Temple Beth Israel in Manhattan.



1915: The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Nay Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet.



1915: The Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58thStreet.



1919: Birthdate of Oscar Benjamin “Ossie” Schectman the Queens born son of Jewish immigrants who won the NIT while playing basketball for Long Island University and “is credited with having scored the first basket in what became the National Basketball Association.



1920: A British soldier digging a trench in Syria uncovered ruins of Dura Europus which would include the discovery a synagogue that dated back to 244 “making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world.



1920: In Baranovichi, Poland, Brakha née Sokolovsky and Shraga (Feivel) Tunkel gave birth to Yaakov Tunkel who would gain fame as Yaakov Banai, a leader of Lehi also known as the Stern Gang.



1921: Birthdate of Clemens Kalischer, the German born American photographer whose skill raises the question “What is there about Jews and cameras?”
http://forward.com/articles/175376/photographer-clemens-kalischer-survived-holocaust/?p=all



1921: Churchill visits Tel Aviv where he delivers a speech praising what the Jews have accomplished in the last twelve years since the city was first founded.



1921: Winston Churchill visits the “39 year old agricultural colony of Rishon le-Zion where he spoke approvingly of the accomplishments of the Zionists and the positive affect their activities have had on the surrounding Arab population.



1921: British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill completes his fact finding trip to Palestine and leaves Jerusalem for Egypt.



1925: Birthdate of Edward Sidney Finkelstein, the native of New Rochelle, NY, “a master merchandiser who turned Macy’s into one of the nation’s smartest, fastest-growing department store chains.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/business/edward-s-finkelstein-89-is-dead-took-macys-to-its-highs-and-lows.html?hpw&rref=obituaries



1925: Timemagazine published the following account Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s attempt to make changes at his synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio.
In spite of generations of prophets and reformers, Jewish ritual with all its shrilly "orthodox" punctilio has lived with few radical changes. In Cleveland, Ohio, some months ago, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, spiritual head of the local "Jewish Center," proposed to rid his congregation of some bits of orthodoxy. In particular, he decided that men and women might sit in the same pews. Here was reform indeed! Not since Solomon built his great temple had the thoroughly orthodox Jewess sat with the thoroughly orthodox Jew at worship. She had been relegated to one side of the temple, or to the gallery, or to a seat in the rear behind a curtain. It was custom not merely Jewish, but Pan-Asiatic. Muhammadan women do not squat with men folk in the pit of the Mosque. And even in the new Christian Churches in China, Japan and elsewhere, women have always, until very recently, sat in a special section railed or curtained off for them. Now Rabbi Goldman of Cleveland has changed all this in his congregation. At once A. A. Katz, one of Rabbi Goldman's flock, cited him to appear before the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of America to answer for his ecclesiastical liberality. Rabbi Goldman refused to appear. In this, he was supported by his congregation. When the week ended, it was still the turn of the Jewish Fundamentalists to move. It should be noted that departure from Jewish orthodoxy is not equivalent to becoming a Reformed Jew. The latter class, whose most prominent leader is Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, disregards many customs from which Rabbi Goldman is not likely to depart, among which are:
Blessing - At each service, men are called up before the congregation to say a blessing before and after portions of the Torah, which is read— on all Sabbaths and holidays. In congregations where Jewish customs are meticulously observed, this privilege is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Music - No instrumentation is permitted. Weird half-shouted chants, led by a slippered cantor, are the only melodies.
Costume - Both men and women must wear hats. The enthusiastically orthodox wear skullcaps, shawls. Men also wear the talis, a fringed scarf, draped over the shoulders.



1926(15thof Nisan, 5686): Pesach

1926: Birthdate Thomas Guinzburg, an editor and publisher who helped create The Paris Review, and who later became president of Viking Press, the publishing house founded by his father,



1928: While serving in the final year of her term as President of Hadassah Irma Levy Lindheim the American women's Zionist organization, declared that the administration of the ZOA was "not an effective instrument for the achievement of world Zionist aims for the up-building of Palestine." In so doing, she asserted her opposition to the leadership of ZOA President Louis Lipsky. Although Lindheim was careful to note that she spoke as an individual and that Hadassah had no quarrel with the World Zionist Organization led by Chaim Weizmann, she came under attack for her comments from both ZOA leadership and other Hadassah members. During her presidency, Hadassah was in frequent conflict with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which wanted to control and dispense the funds raised from the Hadassah membership. The Hadassah-ZOA conflict had roots dating back to 1918, when Hadassah (founded in 1912) first joined the umbrella organization, giving up some of its organizational authority. Seven members of the Hadassah board had been expelled in 1920 when the organization's Central Committee refused to raise money for the ZOA fund Keren Hayesod. Despite Hadassah's loss of autonomy, the organization's membership steadily increased even as general ZOA membership declined.



1928: Birthdate of American Jewish author Carl Solomon.



1929: U.S. premiere of “Chinatown Nights” based on the story “Tong War” by Samuel Ornitz and produced by David O. Selznick.



1929: It was reported today that Hadassah has acquired a portrait of Nathan Straus painted by Eward Salzan which will be hung in the Straus Health Center currently under construction in Tel Aviv.



1930: Birthdate of Gene Selznick, the native of Los Angeles who helped to make volleyball the popular sport in southern California.
http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-gene-selznick-20120612,0,4439222.story#axzz2x2Jxl7y2



1930: It was reported today that if the government’s case against New York’s Century Club ever reaches the Supreme Court on appeal, Justice Benjamin Cardozo would be one of the one the judges who would have to recuse himself because he had been a member of the exclusive New York social organization.



1930: A citrus tree was planted on the 140 acre plot purchased in 1926 under the direction of Mrs. Ada Maimon marking the official founding Ayanot, a women’s farm that took its name from the two springs located on the acreage. For the next two years, the women workers lived in Ness Ziona and came to Ayanot every day to cultivate the soil. In 1932, Ada Maiomon and ten girls would being living on a cowshed on the property.



1932: Birthdate of A. J. (Arie) Zuckerman, Dean of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine. Zuckerman’s area of expertise is the study of hepatitis.



1936(7thof Nisan, 5696): Seventy year old David Eder, a British psychoanalyst who treated soldiers for mental problems during World War I and served as President of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain passed away today.



1938: Mrs. Joseph Stroock, a member of the national Youth Aliyah committee of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America announced that a total of $20,000 was contributed last night to the Youth Aliyah (immigration) fund of Hadassah to remove children from Austria as well as Germany and Poland.



1940: At today’s meeting of its stockholders, The Workers Bank, Ltd. Of Tel Aviv, the central bank of the cooperatives in Palestine, declared the tenth annual dividend of 4 per cent on its common stock.



1942: After being open for only two weeks, the Belzac Concentration Camp has processed 15,000 Jews most of whom were from the Liviv Ghetto.



1944: Moshe Sertok, the head of the international department of the Jewish Agency, asked Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary to allow any Jew reaching Istanbul from Nazi-occupied Europe to be admitted to Palestine.



1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): SS Sergeant Adolf Storms reportedly shot “a Jew who could no longer walk during a forced March in from Deutsch Shuetzenn to the village of Hartberg.”



1945(16th of Nisan, 5705): Nine women tried to escape from Ravenbruck. They were caught and executed.



1946: “St. Louis Woman,” a Harold Arlen musical opened its Broadway run at the Martin Beck Theatre



1946: Birthdate of Lesley Sue Goldstein who gained fame as recording star Lesley Gore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/arts/music/lesley-gore-teenage-voice-of-heartbreak-dies-at-68.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0



1947: Benjamin Teller, who is managing the Hapoel’s American Tour announced today that the soccer team is scheduled to fly out of Tel Aviv on April 6 and arrive in New York on April 10.



1947: The Rabbinical Council of Palestine called on the terrorists to halt their actions and “issued a strong denunciation of terrorism as ‘completely contrary to Jewish religious feeling.’”



1947: The 18 Americans who made up most of the crew of the SS Ben Hecht, formerly the Abril, boarded the Marine Carp, an American ship headed for New York. The British had declined to press charges against the crew.



1949: Yigal Yadin and Walter Eytan returned to King Abdullah’s villa at Shuneh to try and reach final armistice terms with the Jordanians.



1950: In Ottawa, Canadian attorney and CFL owner Sam Berger and his wife gave birth to Canadian MP David Berger.



1950(12th of Nisan, 5710): Seventy-seven year old Léon Blum French, the former French premier, passed away. Leon Blum was born in Paris, France, on April 9, 1872. The son of Jewish parents, he studied law at the Sorbonne. He became active in politics as result of the Dreyfus Affair. Blum became a leader of the Socialist Part. He was part of a group of left-wing parties in France known as the Popular Front that opposed Hitler in the 1930's. As leader of the Popular Front and head of the Socialist Party, Blum became Prime Minister of France, the first Jew to hold that position in the history of France. Blum lost his post before the outbreak of the war over the issue of the Spanish Civil War. After the Germans invaded France, Blum was arrested by the Petain Government which tried him along with other officials of the Third Republic on charges of betraying France. He was found guilty in 1942 and held by the Germans until 1945. Blum briefly returned to public life after the warhttp://jbuff.com/c031110.htm



For more see Leon Blum: From Poet to Premier by Richard Stokes
http://books.google.com/books?id=T8fSuMogggoC&pg=PA270&lpg=PA270&dq=Prime+minister+leon+blum+obituary&source=bl&ots=rockzz3E_L&sig=LWk1kL-fs3g1EBjDto1KANL1Sps&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ExBWUaOkBpDY9ATpkoDwBA&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Prime%20minister%20leon%20blum%20obituary&f=false



1951: Neve Shalom, a new synagogue, was dedicated in Istanbul,. The building holds more than 1,000 people, and the 400,000 Lira it cost to be built was raised by the Jewish community of Galata, Pera, and Chichli.



1953(14th of Nisan, 5713): Ta'anit Bechorot



1953(14th of Nisan): Yiddish novelist and poet Abraham Reisen passed away



1953: Albert Einstein announced his revised unified field theory.



1957: "The Libyan government began to enforce a law forbidding any individual or corporation in Libya 'to make personally or indirectly an agreement of any nature whatsoever with institutions or persons residing in Israel.' The penalty was eight years in prison and a heavy fine."



1957: In New York City, Helen and Sam Reiser gave birth to Paul Resier whose credits include “My 2 Dads,” “”Diner, “Aliens” and “Mad About You.”



1958: Syrian forces attack Israelis at Lake Hula



1962: “Delousing of Harry Bogen” published today reviewed “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” starring Elliot Gould as Harry Bogen and introducing Barbra Streisand as Miss Marmel-stein.
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,895977,00.html



1965: In Los Angeles “Mission Impossible” stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain gave birth to actress Juliet Rose Landau



1967(18thof Adar II, 5727): Linguist Uriel Weinreich of whom Dovid Katz said, "Though he lived less than forty-one years, Uriel Weinreich ... managed to facilitate the teaching of Yiddish language at American universities, build a new Yiddish language atlas, and demonstrate the importance of Yiddish for the science of linguistics” passed away today.



1970: “Applause,” the Tony Award musical “with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Charles Strouse  and starring Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske) in her Tony Award winning portrayal of “Margo Channing” and featuring Bonnie Franklin opened on Broadway today.



1972(15thof Nisan 5732): Pesach



1973: Birthdate of Adam Michael Goldstein, the native of Philadelphia known as DJ AM who found fame and fortune in Los Angeles.



1975: Agudas Achim, the Orthodox congregation in Little Rock, AR, breaks ground for its new building which is located in western Little Rock.



1976: Israeli Arabs hold their first Land Day which was public held a protest strike against the expropriation of lands in the Galilee "for purposes of security and settlement."



1976: Five Israeli Arabs were killed by security forces during mass protests in Nazareth, Israel. As a result of this deadly incident congregants of Mishkan Israel, a synagogue in New Haven, raised $10,000 so that their rabbi, Bruce M. Cohen, could go to Israel to promote peace. Three weeks later, while giving a speech in Jerusalem, Rabbi Cohen was approached by a young Israeli Arab, Farhat Agbaria, who shared his dream. Together they founded Interns for Peace.



1976: The first season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin ended tonight.



1980: Yakov Kreizberg made one of his first public appearances as conductor today, when he led an orchestra at the Marble Collegiate Church in a performance of Haydn's Symphony no. 88.



1981: In the United Kingdom, premiere of “Chariots of Fire” based, in part on the life of Harold Abrahams with a score conducted by Harry Rabinowitz.



1988: U.S. premiere of the Geffen Film Company’s “Bettlejuice,” costarring Winona Ryder with music by Danny Elfman.



1994: The two terrorists who attacked Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70, of Petah Tikva with axes yesterday were arrested today.



1997: The New York Times includes a review of "The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century" by Alan M. Dershowitz



2000: At least 23 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs are injured in clashes with Israeli security forces during an annual day of protests.



2002(17thof Nisan, 5762):Border Policeman Sgt.-Maj. Constantine Danilov, 23, of Or Akiva was shot and killed in Baka al-Garbiyeh, during an exchange of fire with two Palestinians trying to cross into Israel to carry out a suicide attack. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.



2002: Al Aqsa terrorists took credit for today’s bombing of an Allenby Street coffee shop in Tel Aviv.



2002: Joelle Fiasham, a member of the CPUSA, was among those who endorsed the call today for a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez.



2003: Het Parool, which began “as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands” “became the first newspaper in the Netherlands to switch from broadsheet to tabloid format.”



2003: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including "The New Face of War: How War Will Be Fought in the 21st Century" by Bruce Berkowitz and the newly released paperback edition of SOROS: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman.



2003: Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference



2005: Release date of “Live and Become” a French film about an Ethiopian Christian boy who disguieses himself as a Jew to escape to Israel was directed by Romanian born Jewish director Radu Mihăileanu



2005: Eli Aflalo began serving as Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor.



2005: Ruhama Avraham, a member of Kadima began serving as Deputy Internal Affairs Minister.



2006(1st of Nisan, 5766): Three Israelis were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated explosives in a car after nightfall at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, located west of Nablus. The vehicle blew up around 9:45 P.M. next to the Kedumim gas station. Security forces sealed roads in the area immediately in the wake of the attack. A new group linked to Fatah, the party headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, from the Balata refugee camp in nearby Nablus, called itself Kateb al-Shahid Chamuda and identified the bomber as Mahmoud Masharka, 24, from the West Bank city of Hebron. Al-Manar TV in Lebanon broadcast a claim of responsibility from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Fatah. The three Israeli casualties had apparently picked up the suicide bomber, who was likely dressed as an observant Jew, as he was hitchhiking on the road. He then exploded in their car. It is not clear if the terrorist got in the car at the entrance to Kedumim or rode with the Israeli victims to Kedumim from another location. A rescue service official said medics could not approach the car, because it was still on fire nearly an hour after the blast. The blast scattered pieces of the car across a wide area. Rafaela Segal, who lives in Kedumim, said she heard the blast from her house, from where she can see the gas station. "I saw thick smoke rising from the gas station and at first I thought the gas station was on fire," she said. "Now all the roads are closed except for the emergency vehicles. The smoke has reached my windows," she told Israel Radio more than an hour after the blast. "Security forces are searching the area. "The Prime Ministers' Office blamed the Palestinian Authority for the attack, PMO official David Baker told Haaretz. "The Palestinian Authority continues to do nothing to prevent terror against Israelis. There are currently scores of terrorist alerts concerning attacks against Israelis in the works," said Baker. "The Palestinian Authority continues to be fertile ground for terrorist attacks, most notably because of the PA's aversion to taking any necessary steps to prevent terror," he added. The last suicide bombing in the West Bank was December 29, 2005, at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint. An IDF soldier and two Palestinians were killed in addition to the bomber. This was the first suicide bombing claimed by a group other than Islamic Jihad since a cease-fire was declared in February 2005



2006: Lisa Kron's sparkling autobiographical play "Well” opened on Broadway when it premiered tonight at the Longacre Theater.



2006: Haaretz reported on how a piece of a Torah scroll passed from a former Nazi offer to a “holy man.” Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman was sitting  in his home in Migdal Ha'emek and touching, for the umpteenth time, the parchment cut over 60 years ago from a Torah scroll in an Eastern European synagogue. Although the piece of parchment has been in his possession for several days, apparently it is still a source of great excitement for him. This parchment was cut by an officer in the German air force, the Luftwaffe, during World War II, from a Torah scroll; he used it as a cover for his officer's ID document. Now it has come into the hands of the rabbi of Migdal Ha'emek, head of the Migdal Ohr youth village and an Israel Prize laureate. Rabbi Grossman says Moti Dotan, the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, recently came to his house with a notebook in hand. Dotan had returned from a ceremony in honor of the 25th anniversary of the twin cities pact between the regional council and the Hanover district in Germany. Dotan said that at the conclusion of a festive evening, a member of the Hanover district council approached him and asked to speak to him. "My father, Werner Herzig, died a few weeks ago," said the man. "Before his death he said he wanted to speak to me, and he told me he had participated in the war and been involved in crimes. 'It's important for me to tell you this, because today there are Holocaust deniers,' [said the Herzig senior]." Dotan says Herzig added that his father told him he had participated in the burning of a synagogue on the Russian front. According to Dotan, Herzig junior gave him the ID document and asked him to find a holy man in the Lower Galilee and give it to him. "I thought that Rabbi Grossman did holy work, and he was the most suitable person to receive the notebook," says Dotan. "When I came to him and gave him the document, I told him the story, he held the parchment and began to cry," recalls Dotan. He says that Rabbi Grossman symbolizes all that is good in Judaism, and will make proper use of the item. Rabbi Grossman turns over the piece of parchment and reads from the text. The parchment is from the book of Deuteronomy, from the weekly portion "Ki Tavo." The rabbi reads: "...and distress wherewith thy enemy shall distress thee in thy gates ... then the Lord will make thy plagues remarkable, and the plagues of thy offspring, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and severe sicknesses, and of long continuance ... also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this Torah, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou art destroyed. And you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of the heaven for multitude" (Deuteronomy 28, 57-62). The rabbi is convinced that this is a "supreme message, with personal supervision. After 60 years, this notebook arrives in Israel, wrapped in these words of reproof, and is calling on us 'to awaken.' After all, the German could have cut the parchment from other books, from any of the Five Books of Moses, and he specifically cut out the section that speaks of redemption," said the rabbi. In recent days, Rabbi Grossman has shown the notebook to young people whom he met in the city, and according to him, it is causing a great deal of excitement. "It's a tangible thing, which you can see with your own eyes. You can see here the embodiment of evil, how after the destruction of a synagogue, this man had the daring to enter and to cut from the Torah scroll, only because he thought that the parchment was a suitable way to preserve his document." The rabbi promises to visit schools and young people with the notebook and to show it to them.



2008: In Jerusalem, as part of the Contemporary Music Concert at the Jerusalem Music Centre The Israeli Contemporary Players perform music by Josef Bardanashvili, Tristan Murail and Arnold Schoenberg.



2008: The Sunday New York Times featured a review of "The End of the Jews" by Adam Mansbach.



2008: In Washington, D.C., Aaron David Miller, a 20-year veteran of the State Department (most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations), discusses his new book, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace at Politics and Prose Bookstore.



2008: Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, a Jewish delicatessen located at the intersection of 172nd Street and Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, which opened in 1954 and closed today. Sporting a large neon sign in the front, the building was designed in the 1950s "MIMO" style (Miami Modern) which is common too much of the northern precincts of the Miami-area beaches. The neon sign makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the video for "Night Fever" by the Bee Gees. Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House was not the same as the original Wolfie's, another famous Jewish deli and restaurant in Miami Beach, also started by Wolfie Cohen, on the corner of 21st Street and Collins Avenue (closer to South Beach). For several years, Wolfie's featured a sign that read "The only thing that needs to come dressed is our chickens!" (meaning dining was casual, not clothing optional). That restaurant closed in 2001. Cohen also founded a third Jewish deli, Pumpernik's, at 67th Street and Collins Avenue, which also closed. (Personal note: One of the great joys of my childhood was eating at Wolfie's and Pumperniks - escpecially the latter. It was billed as the home of the pumpernickel bagel which for lovers of dark bread was indeed a delight)



2009: Reuven Rivlin was chosen to serve as the Speaker of the Knesset when he got 90 out of the 120 possible votes.



2009: Yeshiva University hosts the first day of the Israel and India International Conference styled"A Relationship Comes of Age" which includes the following presenters: Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).



2009(5th of Nisan, 5769): Fifty-two year old Frank Stein, 'the face of Australian Jewry in Israel passed away today. (As reported by Raphael Ahren)
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/frank-stein-the-face-of-australian-jewry-in-israel-dies-aged-52-1.273264



2010: 80th anniversary of the founding of Ayanot



2010(15th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of Pesach



2010: A Chabad house in Budapest was stoned during a Passover Seder. The home of Rabbi Shmuel Raskin was stoned twice during the Seder on tonight, according to Israel Radio. Police came after the first incident, and the second incident reportedly took place after the police left. The incident comes amid an election campaign in Hungary some have described as worrisome due to the expected rise of the far-right Jobbik party. No suspects were reported arrested in the attack.



2011: “The Matchmaker” and “Seven Minutes in Heaven” are two of the movies scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2011:”Norman Mailer: The American” and “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: A memorial service for George Einstein is scheduled to be held at the Sandestin Beach Club in Sandestin Resort, Fl.



2011: Today the World Jewish Congress lauded Colombia’s decision not to recognize a Palestinian state, saying it showed courage in the face of pressure from neighboring countries.



2011: “Israel Air Force jets struck a group of Palestinian militants in southern Gaza, killing one gunman and wounding another as they rode a motorcycle. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed carrying out the dawn strike, saying it targeted Palestinians who had launched a short-range rocket across the border yesterday. No one was hurt in that attack, which followed a surge in fighting around Gaza this month.”



2012: One World One People, an exhibit of the works of renowned photographer Arnold Newman, is scheduled to come to an end at the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee.
http://www.jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/index.php



2012: “The Kid With a Bike,” “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “Footnote” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Film Festival.



2012: Shabbos Zingt - A Bay Area Yiddish ensemble that has created a new kind of Shabbos service, with Yiddish melodies and a Klezmer feel – is scheduled to appear at Shir Hadash in San Francisco.



2013: In Coralville, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host Shabbat Yeladim



2013:  An ensemble consisting of violinists Anna Ioffe and Alina Keitlin and harpsichordist Natilie Rosenberg is scheduled to perform at the Edin-Tamir Music Center.



2013: "The ( * ) Inn”, an early touchstone for experimental theater in Yiddish, is scheduled to be performed at the Abrons Arts Center in New York.



2013:Natural gas flow from the Tamar natural gas field began flowing this afternoon



2013: In Memphis, TN “Paul Goldenberg, the burly former cop who runs the Secure Community Network, the security arm of the national Jewish community” has played a key role with the Jewish community including Cantor Rick Kampf in preparing for today’s scheduled rally by the KKK. (As reported by JTA)



2014: “Thousands of French Jews attended an information fair today in Paris about moving to Israel amid an unprecedented spike in immigration to the Jewish state and a wave of anti-Semitic attacks.”



2014: The musical “If/Then” starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth” is scheduled to official open on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.



2014(28thof Adar II, 5774): Seventy-one year old Rivka Haut, a founder of the Women at the Wall and fighter for the rights of women within traditional Judaism passed away today.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/rivka-haut-71-champion-agunot
http://forward.com/articles/195683/rivka-haut-quiet-warrior-who-battled-for-orthodox/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202014-04-02&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29



2014: “Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story” is scheduled to be shown on the last night of the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival.



2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Pittsburg Jewish Film Festival and the New Jersey Film Festival.



2014: “If/Then,” a musical starring Idina Menzel as “Elizabeth Vaughn” opened on Broadway at the Richard Rogers Theatre.



2014: “The Jews of Ioannnia gathered…to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the destruction of the community by the Nazis.”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/greeces-romaniote-jews-face-extinction-70-years-after-auschwitz/



2014: The 6thannual Gesher Jewish Day School Used Book Sale is scheduled to come to an end in Fairfax, VA.



2015: “The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer” is scheduled to be shown at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, PA.



2015: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a faculty colloquium featuring historian Elisha Russ-Fishbane on “Maimonidean Controversies in Egypt.”



2015: Dr. Derek Penslar is scheduled to speak on “Dreyfus Was Not Alone: Jewish Military Officers in the Modern World” at FIU.



2015: At the Center for Jewish History, Jeffrey S. Gurock, author of The Holocaust Averted is scheduled to deliver a lecture that asks the question “What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?What might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred?



2015:Carolyn Starman Hessel is scheduled to retire as Director of the Jewish Book Council.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-book-councils-oprah-turns-the-page/



2015(10thof Nisan): “According to the Book Of Joshua” that date on the Jewish calendar “of the first-ever mass Aliyah with the Biblical narrative relating that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River” today “ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.” (As reported by Deborah Kamin)



 


 


 


 


 


 


 

This Day, March 31, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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March 31



1084: Henry IV, who had been embroiled in a conflict with the Papacy, was crowned Emperor by Clement III, called by some an anti-Pope. Within six years after this second coronation, Henry granted the Jewish community of Worms , the privileges of free commerce and exemption from taxation” and “designating the Jews as ‘subjects of his treasury,’”  placing  “them under his immediate protection, so that neither royal nor episcopal functionaries could exercise any jurisdiction over them” including the power of taxation.



1146: Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade. Unlike the First Crusade, the Second Crusade is led by two monarchs - Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. The “German connection” led to more suffering for the Jews of the Rhineland. Thanks to the incitement by one monk, the town of Wurburg was demolished during the massacres of Jews living along the Rhine River. As had happened during the First Crusade, the Christian warriors decided to slaughter the Infidels in their midst as they moved to free the Holy Land from the Infidels. The growing class of Christian merchants benefited from the violence since the destruction of the Jewish community destroyed their Jewish competitors. All Christians did not engage in this anti-Semitic behavior. Bernard himself tried to protect the Jewish population. His message of Crusade was heard. His message concerning the Jews was not.



1283: Massacre of the Jews of Mayence in Germany.



1310: At the auto da fé held at Paris today, a converted Jew who had returned to Judaism also died at the stake.



1324: In his 53rd year, Henry II, “the last ruling and first titular King of Jerusalem” (part of the Christian fiction of control dating from the Crusades) passed away today.



1381: During a popular uprising in France known as The Revolt of the Maillotins, Jews in France were murdered and their property plundered for next three or four days. The regent exercising royal power for the youthful Charles VI was unable to save the Jews or gain them indemnification for their loss.



1492: Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Alhambra Decree or Edict of Expulsion, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. Jews, unlike conversos and Marranos, were not subject to the Inquisition. So, the Church leveled a ritual murder accusation against them in Granada and was thus was able to call for the expulsion of both Jews as well as Marranos from Spain. The Marranos themselves were accused of complicity in the case so both groups were ordered to leave within four months. Torquemada, the director of the Inquisition (and incidentally of Jewish descent), defended this against Don Isaac Abarbanel. The edict was passed, and over fifteen thousand Jews had to flee - some to the Province of Aragon and others, like Abarbanel, to Naples. Still others found temporary sanctuary in Portugal.



1547: Henry II succeeded his father as King of France on his 28th birthday. Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, the Italian Rabbi dedicated his commentaries on “The Song of Songs” and “Ecclesiastes” to the French monarch.



1596: Birthdate of Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher who was one of the two main sources from which Spinoza derived his view of the world.



1647: Ralph Cudworth who had been Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge since 1645 and who “maintained an extensive correspondence” with Isaac Abenda the hakam of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in London preached a sermon in the House of Commons that advocated “principles of religious toleration and charity.”



1648: In an attempt to explain the drop off in the production of vanilla, Commander Beekman of Essequibo and Pomeroon wrote the following letter to his superiors in Amsterdam today



“The Jew Salomon de la Roche having died some 8 to 9 months ago, the trade in vanilla has come to an end, since no one here knows how to prepare it, so as to develop proper aroma and keep it from spoiling. I have not heard of any this whole year. Little is found here. Most of it is found in Pomeroon, whither this Jew frequently traveled, and he sometimes used to make me a present of a little. In navigating along the river, I have sometimes seen some on the trees and picked with my own hands, and it was prepared by the Jew....I shall do my best to obtain for the company as much as shall be feasible, but I am afraid it will spoil, since I do not know how to prepare it.” [The letter is illustrative of the vital role Jews played in the production of vanilla.]



1688: The German Jews received permission to participate in the tobacco industry “but only on condition that they would build houses in Christianshavn, a suburb of Copenhagen on the island of Amager.



1722: Fifty –two year old Campegius Vitringa, the Elder, “a Dutch Christian Hebraist” whose works included a dissertation on the Synagogue and a “Commentary on Isaiah” passed away today at Franeker.



1745: The Jews of Prague were exiled.



1781: Today “the Hungarian government issued a decree known as the Systematica gentis Judaicae regulatio, which wiped out at one stroke the decrees that had oppressed the Jews for centuries. The royal free towns, except the mining-towns, were opened to the Jews, who were allowed to settle at leisure throughout the country. The regulatio decreed that the legal documents of the Jews should no longer be composed in Hebrew, or in Yiddish, but in Latin, German, and Hungarian, the languages used in the country at the time, and which the young Jews were required to learn within two years.”
 1783: Emperor Joseph II issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to live in so-called "Royal Cities" including Pest, which would later be the “Pest” in Budapest. By 1787 81,000 Jews would be living in Hungary. The Hungarian Jewish community would grow large and prosper but would all but perish in the Holocaust. Tragically, it was the Holocaust that produced Hungary’s most famous post-War Jew, Elie Weisel.



1796: Birthdate of Hermann Hupfeld, the German Biblical commentator who specialized on ‘the Old Testament” and whose writings “included a treatise on the early history of Hebrew grammar among the Jews” published in 1846.



1799(24th of Adar II, 5559): Lorenzo Bertran was subjected to an auto-da-fe ("act of faith," in reality the public ceremony when the sentence of the Inquisition was read and carried out) in Seville. Supposedly he was the last person to be punished for attempting to lead others to Judaism in Spain. It was not the end of the auto-da-fe; a ceremony that was reported to have taken place in Mexico in isolated instance in the early 19th century.



1808: In Westphalia, which was ruled by Jerome Bonaparte a Jewish consistory “was introduced by decree.”



1808: The French created Kingdom of Westphalia ordered Jews to adopt family names



1810: Birthdate of Hayyim Selig Slonimski a native of Byelostok, who was “a Hebrew publisher, astronomer, inventor” and a pioneer in providing Jews of Eastern Europe with a scientific education.



1817(14th of Nisan, 5577): Ta'anit Bechorot



1821: Abolition of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition was established in 1531 meaning it lasted for 290 years.



1825(12th of Nisan, 5585): Ta'anit Bechorot



1843: Birthdate of anti-Semitic political leader Bernhard Forster, the brother-in-law of Friedrich Nietzsche.



1851: Birthdate of Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell, the first native of New Zealand and the first Jew to serve as Prime Minister of the land of the Kiwis.



1853: In Hungary Michael Heilprin and his wife gave birth to Angelo Heilprin “an American geologist, paleontologist, naturalist, and explorer.”



1856: 40 Harmonia, a large main-belt asteroid was discovered today by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt



1856: The Jews of Belarus or White Russia were denied the right to wear any distinctive garments that would mark them as different from the rest of the citizenry. At the time White Russia was part of the Czar's Russia with Poland and Lithuania to the west, Ukraine to the South, and Russia to the east. Minsk, home to a large Jewish population is today the capital of an independent Belarus



1863(11thof Nisan, 5623): Abraham Abraham, a native of Bath and an “optician and scientific instrument maker” who was the son of optician Jacob Abraham, and who served as President of the Liverpool Jewry’s Philanthropic Institute and Warden of “the Old Hebrew Congregation” passed away today.



.1863: “The Will of Commodore Levy--The Bequest of the Monticello Estate to the People of the United States Void” published today described the litigation surrounding attempts to “break” the late Jewish naval hero’s will. “This was an action to obtain a construction of the will of Commodore Levy, in respect to the bequest of the People of the United States of a farm owned by him, and 200 acres adjoining it, at Monticello, Virginia, and also in respect to a bequest of $1,000 to the Jews' Hospital in this City. The Court now rendered the following judgment, declaring the devise and bequest of the Monticello estate, and the 200 acres adjoining, to the people of the United States void, and that said portions of the estate descended to and vested in the heirs at law and next of kin of the testator; also that the Jews' Hospital of New-York are entitled to have their bequest." Such was the endorsement upon the papers.”




1865(4th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Zevi ben Gamaliel Konigsberg author of Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah passed away



1865: The new Synagogue of the Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, (Gate of Heaven), in Rivington-street, between Ludlow and Orchard, was formally consecrated this afternoon. The building, which was erected in 1835, was occupied by a Presbyterian congregation until last November, when it was sold to its present occupants.



1867: “The Insurance Companies and ‘Jew Risks’ “published today reported on a meeting where members of the community including the mayor or Richmond expressed their anger over the decision of insurance companies to no longer accept ‘Jew Risks.’ The mayor, who had been in the insurance business for years, told the crowd that he had numerous dealings with Jews over the years and found them to be honest. No reason was given for the decision of the insurance companies.



1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants.



1871: A poem in Hebrew about the Western Wall by Henry Vidaver, who served as a rabbi at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, United Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis, B’nai Jeshrun in New York and Sherith Israel in San Francisco, appeared in the newspaper Havatzelet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Vidaver_poem_1871.jpg



1878: “The Order of B’Nai Brit” published today traces the history of the history of the Jewish fraternal organization which was founded 35 years ago in New York City.



1878: It was reported today that “foreign Jews trading in Russia” are now have the same legal standing as native Russian merchants



1880: Alexander II of Russia was assassinated, and with him his half-hearted liberalism. He was succeeded by Alexander III who, devoted to medievalism, urged the return to Russian civilization. The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title "the Second Torquemada."



1885(15THof Nisan, 5645): Pesach



1885: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish festival of Pesach, or Passover, instituted to commemorate the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, commenced last evening and its celebration will be continued among the orthodox Hebrews throughout the world for the next eight days. This festival is also known as Hag Ha’Matzos, or the fest of the unleavened bread.”



1889: The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated. One of Chagall’s most famous paintings was “Eiffel Tower, Serenade.”



1890: The New York Times reported that “the diary of Sir Moses Montefiore and Lady Montefiore which the Belforde Clark Company published in two octave volumes covers the period from 1812 to 1883. The papers of Sir Moses were left to his Secretary, Dr. Lowe, for arrangement and publication, but Dr. Lowe died upon completing the work and son of Sir Moses, now a resident of this country, then carried it forward.”



1891: In Bilgoraj, Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman gave birth to Hinde Ester Singer Kreytman, the sister of Joshua and Isaac Bashevis Singer who gained fame as Yiddish author Esther Kreitman.



1892(1stof Nisan, 5652); Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1892: It was reported today that 69 nine year old Mark Samuel, a former resident of Toronto, has passed away in London. He had found M & L Samuel in 1855 and helped found the Toronto branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  He was a supporter of efforts to settle Russian Jews in the Northwest Terriotories.



1892: The SS Massilia, the steamship which had previously brought several Jews from Russia who were infected with typhus is scheduled to arrive in New York today.  Health authorities will be paying close attention to the passengers since they are similar to the ones brought here before.



1893(14th of Nisan, 5653): Ta'anit Bechorot



1893(14th of Nisan, 5653: Alexander Levi passed away. Levi was one of the earliest settlers and earliest Jewish settlers of Dubuque, Iowa.



1893: A group of Boston Jews belonging to Adath Israel petitioned Judge Ely for the return of wine and brandy which the Judge had previously ruled had been wrongfully seized by the police. Passover begins tonight and the Jews need the wine for the Seder. While the Judge said he would do all that he could to help with the return, “he could find no authority to order the wines returned before May.”



1893: The New York Times reported that “the celebration of the feast of Pesach, or the Passover, will be begun by Jewish people throughout the world at sunset this evening and will be continued for eight days by the Orthodox Jews. Those who have accepted the reform ritual, among them a large number of the Jews in America, continue the celebration only seven days, the first and last days of that period being alone regarded as of special significance and celebrated as holy days.”



1894: It was reported today that Russia is changing its rules about naturalizations and that “foreign Jews will be excluded” from applying for citizenship in the Czarist Empire.



1894: “For the Jews in Palestine” published today described the appeal made by Abraham Neurmak, the rabbi at New York’s Orach Chaim to provide aid for those living in Eretz Israel.  “The North American Relief Society” under the presidency of Myer Isaacs has already responded with a donation of one hundred dollars.



1894: As of today there are about 4,000 Polish Jews living in Zarephath, Hebron, Tiberias and Jerusalem. They came to Palestine to seek refuge from Russian persecution.



1895: “Cider in Etymology” published today traces the origins of the English word “cider” which according to Sir George Birdwood has its origins in the Hebrew word “Shekar.”



1895: “A Charity For Children” published today described “the good work of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.”



1896: In New York, the Herald Square Theatre will host a special performance of “The Heart of Maryland” that is a fundraiser for the Hebrew Infants’ Asylum.



1896: “More than 1,000 pushcart vendors” attending a meeting tonight at the Hebrew Institute which was held under the auspices of the City Vigilance League and presided over by New York May Strong.



1896: In New York, Palmer’s Theatre was the site of fundraiser for the benefit of the A.C. Sisterhood, a Jewish organization headed by Rebecca Kohut, the wife of the late Dr. Alexander Kohut, that “supports a kindergarten, day nursery, relief bureau and employment bureau.”



1897: The improbably named “Jack the Jew” that went off at odds of 9 to 10 won the first race on a sloppy track in New Orleans.



1897: Funeral services for the late Louis Israel, the owner of one of the largest livery stables in Brooklyn, will take place at Temple Beth Elohim today.



1897: Massachusetts Congressman introduced the following resolution in the House of Representatives:



“Resolved, That the Secretary of State be requested to demand from the Russian Government that the same rights be given to Hebrew –American citizens in the matter of passports as now are accorded to all other classes of American citizens and also to inform the House of Representatives whether any American citizens have been ordered to be expelled from Russian or forbidden the exercise of ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants because of their religion.”  (Editor’s Note – This champion of Jewish rights is John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald who provided the name for his famous grandson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy)



1898: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at Temple Beth-El will officiate at the funeral of the late Rabbi Emanuel Schwab. Cantor Hass of Adas Israel will preside over the internment in the Machpel Plot at Cypress Hills Cemetery



1899: Rumania barred Jews from professional and agricultural schools



1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): As T.R. prepares to run for re-election the Jews celebrate Passover



1904(15thof Nisan, 5664): Sophia Karp, born Sara Segal in Romania, who became a leading performer in the New York Yiddish Theatre working with such giants as Abraham Goldfaden, Israel Grodner and Sokher Goldstein passed away today at the age of 42 or 43



1904: The New York Times reported that “at sunset last evening the Jewish people throughout the world began the celebration of the festival of "Pesach," or the Passover. This festival was instituted to celebrate the deliverance of the children of Israel from their long bondage in the land of Egypt, and, lasting for eight days, is a season of peculiar observances.”



1905: Dorothy Levitt, the first English woman ever to compete in a motor race drove from the Adelpi Hotel in Liverpool, to Coventry and then on to the De-Dion showroom in Great Marlborough Street in London, retracing the 205 mile trip she had made the day before.



1912: It was reported that “Interesting archaeological discoveries, showing the observance as far back as 430 B.C. of the Jewish Passover, the festival commemorative of the exodus from Egypt, which Jews throughout the world will celebrate for a week beginning the evening of April 1, are described in the current issue of The American Hebrew.”



1912: The Patriotic League of America, an organization dedicated to helping Jewish young men pursue careers in the army and navy has invited 200 service men stationed in and near New York City to be its guests at Seders for the first two nights of Passover at the Tuxedo Hall in New York. Adjutant General A.F. Ladd of the War Department has responded positively to the League’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the Jewish servicemen and has directed commanding officers to allow the Jewish soldiers to have furloughs so that they can observe the holiday which begins on the evening of April 1.



1912: It was reported that Leopold Plaut, President of the United Hebrew Charities has issued a circular asking that the families of deceased Jews donate the money normally spent for flowers at a funeral to his organization. The organization will send acknowledgements to the donor and the family of the deceased, acknowledging the gift without mentioning the amount.



1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Second Day of Pesach



1915: Lord Oxford and Asquith wrote in his diary “I think I have already referred to Herbert Samuel’s dithyrambic memorandum, urging that in the carving up of the Turk’s Asiatic dominion we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews would in time swarm back from all the quarters of the globe and in due course obtain Home Rule.” “Curiously the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George, who, I need not say does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of agnostic, atheistic France” (As reported by JTA)



1915(16thof Nisan, 5675): Seventy-four year old Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, the eldest son of Baron Lionel de Rothschild and the grandson of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the founder of the English branch of the famous banking family passed away today.



1915: In Egypt,  Colonel John Henry Patterson swore in the new volunteers for the Zion Mule Corps and invited them to ‘Pray with me that I should not only, as Moses, behold Canaan from afar, but be divinely permitted to lead you into the Promised Land’



1921: Albert Einstein lectured in New York on his new theory of relativity.



1922: Birthdate of Lionel Davidson



1923(14th of Nisan, 5683): Shabbat HaGadol and Erev Pesach



1923: Birthdate of Shoshana Damari
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/damari-shoshana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaL7mllWVG4



1925: The town of Afula was founded in the Jezreel Valley. Afula means The Town of Jezreel and it was started with the support of the American Zion Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the town never lived up to the original expectations with the settlers in the Jezreel Valley preferring to go to Haifa for rest and relaxation. The hospital at Afula did prove to be of lasting importance. Afula is a friendly crossroads town with numerous small stores selling what the locals claim to be the "best pistachio nuts in the world."



1926: Jacob Adler, who had suffered a stroke in 1920 and had been in declining health ever since, suddenly collapsed today.



1928: Real birthdate of Jacob Lateiner, Cuban born American pianist. His father would not get around to registering his birth until May of 1928 which has led to confusion about when he was really born.



1929: Birthdate of Ilya Piastetski-Shapiro, famed math theorist who clashed with Soviet authorities. He passed away at the age of 79 on February 21, 2009 in Tel Aviv.



1932: At Tel Aviv, on the final day of the first Jewish Olympics, Americans captured the lion’s share of the victories Sybil Koff of New York “won the women’s triathlon and the high jumps. Gus Hemann … won the men’s 100 meter dash…Leslie Flaksman won the 500 meter race…and Harry Schneider won the javelin, shooting, discus-throwing and men’s triathlon contests.” Victories by European teams included an Austrian first place finish in the 400 – meter race and first place finish by the a team from the Middlesex Regiment in the relay race that earned it the High Commissioner’s Cup.



1933: Adolf Bertraim, archbishop of Breslau rejected the request of Oskar Wasserman for aid in protesting against the boycott of Jewish business organized by the Nazis but this was refused as he regarded it as purely an economic matter”
1934(15th of Nisan, 5694): Pesach



1935: German mathematician Felix Hausdorff who would later commit suicide when ordered to report to a concentration camp, was granted emeritus staus
1935: Hebrew novelist Samuel I. Agnon was awarded the Bialik Prize in Hebrew Literature. The Bialik Prize was established in memory of the dean of Hebrew literature, Chaim Nachman Bialik and is considered the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. S.I. Agnon is considered by sum to be a worthy candidate for the Nobel Prize.



1935: The Italian liner Roma arrived in Haifa carrying 1,650 passengers, which is believed to the largest number of people ever brought to Palestine on one ship. Most of the passengers are believed to be headed for Tel Aviv, site of the upcoming Maccabiad.



1935: The Palestine police (an instrument of the British mandatory government) “issued an order today prohibiting a parade of athletes participating in the Maccabiah, the world Jewish athletic games.” The parade was scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv on April 1. The police reportedly were responding to threats of violent outbursts by the Arab populace.



1936: Birthdate of poet, playwright and novelist Marge Piercy who grew up in the racially divided city of Detroit, where her Jewishness made her the target of bullies. One grandparent was Yiddish-speaking and Orthodox; another was a union organizer murdered for his activism. These influences, together with grief over relatives murdered in the Holocaust, aroused Piercy's political activism. They also strengthened her commitment to remaining involved with issues and matters of Jewish importance.



1937: The Palestine Post reported from Glasgow that the International Labor Party conference deplored the bloodshed in Palestine by terrorists and called upon Jews to resist all attempts by Arab reactionary elements, sometimes supported by the British authorities. The first regulation made by the High Commissioner under the New Palestine Orders allowed the authorities to seize and retain accommodation and food, as they thought fit for the execution of their duty.



1938: According to reports published in the New York Times, Dr. Sigmund Freud cannot leave Vienna and move to the Hague because “the authoritieis have refused to give him a passport.” In other words, the Nazi Austrian government has madet the prominent Jewish psychiatrist a prisoner.



1940: Birthdate of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank.



1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce



1941: With encouragement from the Axis powers (Italy and Germany) Rashid Ali al-Gaylani led an anti-British revolt in Iraq much to the detriment of the Jewish population.



1941: After 7,500 Jews arrived from Vienna, a decree was issued to establish a ghetto at Kielce



1942: The Gestapo “disbanded” the Neu-Isenburg orphanage and deported the girls living there to Theresienstadt.



1942: In the western Ukraine, the Gestapo organized the first deportation of 5,000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzac death camp.It was one of the biggest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the camp.



1942: Birthdate of radio personality Michael Savage



1942: Six thousand Jews from Eastern Galicia were deported to Belzec and gassed to death.



1943: This was the deadline the Germans gave Spain to repatriate any Spanish nationals of the Jewish "race."



1943: Broadway premier of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical “Oklahoma.” Yes, it took a team of Jews to create this most famous of all American musical comedies. This is yet another example of how it was Jews who helped to create what some call "the American myth." It was this ability and not some Jewish plot that explains, in part, the success of Jews in various parts of the American entertainment industry.



1943: Crematorium II at Auschwitz begins operation



1944: It was announced that every Jew in Hungary would be required to wear a yellow badge as of April 5.



1945: Mother Maria of Paris, a Russian nun who had saved many French Jews by hiding them, was killed by the Nazis.



1945: The deportation of Jews from Slovakia comes to an end. In all, German and Slovak authorities deported about 70,000 Jews from Slovakia; about 65,000 of them were murdered or died in concentration camps. The overall figures are inexact, partly because many Jews did not identify themselves, but one 2006 estimate is that approximately 105,000 Slovak Jews, or 77% of their prewar population, died during the war.



1946: Birthdate of Gabe Kaplan in Brooklyn, New York. The comedian and actor gained famed as the teacher in “Welcome Back Kotter,” a television show that launched the career of John Travolta.



1946(28th of Adar): Yiddish author and translator Leon Kobrin passed away
http://books.google.com/books/about/Fun_Deitmerish_Tzu_Yiddish_In_Amerike.html?id=Z8bNPgAACAAJ



1948: Birthdate of Rhea Perlman who gained fame for her roles in the television comedies “Taxi” and “Cheers.”



1949: The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. There were somewhere between 215 and 360 Jews living in Newfoundland at this time. “The real history of the Newfoundland Jewish community began with the arrival in St. John's of Israel Perlin from the United States. He was instrumental in founding the first synagogue in Newfoundland, the Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland, in 1909. The census of 1935 reported 215 Jews living in Newfoundland. The census of 1971 showed that that number had grown to 360.



1953: Birthdate of Ehud Banai, an Israeli singer and songwriter.



1953(15th of Nisan, 5713): First Day of Pesach



1954: As tensions grew between Jordan and Israel due to the attacks by terrorists based in Jordan, the British cabinet discussed military options for responding to a possible strike by Israel into Jordan.



1958: The US Navy formed an atomic submarine division. Admiral Hyman Rickover is considered the “father of the atomic Navy.” Thanks to his efforts, America developed a fleet of nuclear submarines that provided the United States with its strongest strategic edge during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had become the ninth nation to ratify the agreement to eliminate trade barriers on the import of educational, scientific or cultural materials, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Forty tons of Jerusalem stone, hewn from the Castel quarry, went into the building of the UN headquarters in New York as Israel's contribution to the project. The stone was sufficient for 300 sq.m. of flooring. Israel purchased 40,000 tons of wheat from South Africa.



1953: The number of Israeli unemployed as of this date was 16,350.



1956: In Boston, Albert Sinofsky and his wife gave birth to documentary filmmaker Bruce Jeffrey Sinofsky.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/movies/bruce-sinofsky-documentary-filmmaker-dies-at-58.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1



1975: Boris Tsitlionok and Mark Nashpits were the defendants in the Soviet anti-Zionist trials that began today.



1976: U.S. premiere of “W.C. Fields and Me” directed by Arthur Hiller, produced by Jay Weston, written by Bob Merrill, featuring Allan Arbus and Milton Kamen.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that West Germany protested to Israel that it had not been told for more than a year of the arrest of two young West Germans, Brigitte Schultz and Thomas Reuter, who planned, on January 18, 1976, to shoot down an El Al plane in Nairobi. Five terrorists were arrested by Kenya: two Germans and three Arabs. Israel announced that they would soon be tried in camera, by a military court.



1979: In Jerusalem, Israel, Gali Atari &; Milk and Honey win the twenty-fourth Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing "Hallelujah.



1981: “The Yellow Star - The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45” lost out for an Oscar tonight as Best Documentary Feature



1991: The 1960 television version of “Peter Pan,” with music by Mark Charlap and Jule Styne and lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden and Adolph Green which had become a classic was re-broadcast today.



1993: The “first season” of “Homicide: Life on the Streets” a television adaptation of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon whose creators included Barry Levinson came to an end.



1993: With Israel reeling from its worst wave of Arab violence in years, including the shooting deaths of two policemen this morning, the Government indefinitely closed the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip today.



1994: Yosef Zandani, age 28, of Bnei Ayish, was found killed in his apartment near Gedera. Near the body was a leaflet of the DFLP "Red Star", explaining that the murder was carried out in revenge for the shooting of one of its members by an Israeli citizen. The Israeli acted in self-defense



1995: Al HaMishmar, a “paper owned by and affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair as well as the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party of Palestine and Mapam” which was first published in 1943 ceased publication today.



1997: The Union of Orthodox Rabbis issued “A Historic Declaration which stated Reform and Conservative are not Judaism at all. Their adherents are Jews, according to the Jewish Law, but their religion is not Judaism...we appeal to our fellow Jew, members of the Reform and Conservative movements: Having been falsely led by heretical leaders that Reform and Conservative are legitimate branches and denominations of Judaism, we urge you to be guided by this declaration, and withdraw from your affiliation with Reform and Conservative temples and their clergy. Do not hesitate to attend an Orthodox synagogue due to your inadequate observance of Judaism. On the contrary, it is because of that inadequacy that you need to attend an Orthodox synagogue where you will be warmly welcomed



1998(4th of Nisan, 5758): Former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug passed away at the age 77 (As reported by Laura Mansnerus)
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0724.html



1999: Did you ever wonder how Jews celebrate Pesach, the holiday of “Spring,” in the Southern Hemisphere where it is really Autumn? In “An Argentine Passover, Then and Now,” Joan Nathan gives us some sense of the celebration.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/31/dining/an-argentine-passover-then-and-now.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm



2001: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Energy and Water Resources Minister of Israel



2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of "Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History" by James Carroll and "Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses" by Bruce Feller.



2002(18thof Nisan, 5762): 4th day of Pesach and 3rd day of the Omer.
2002(18th of Nisan, 5762): Fourteen “people were killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in Haifa, in the Matza restaurant of the gas station near the Grand Canyon shopping mall. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Suheil Adawi, 32, of Turan; Dov Chernevroda, 67, of Haifa; Shimon Koren, 55; his sons Ran, 18, and Gal, 15, of Haifa; Moshe Levin, 52, of Haifa; Danielle Manchell, 22, of Haifa; Orly Ofir, 16, of Haifa; Aviel Ron, 54; his son Ofer, 18, and daughter Anat, 21, of Haifa; Ya'akov Shani, 53, of Haifa; Adi Shiran, 17, of Haifa; Daniel Carlos Wegman, 50, of Haifa. Carlos Yerushalmi, 52, of Karkur, died the next day of wounds sustained in the attack.” (Jewish Virtual Library)



2002(18thof Nisan, 5767): Hamas took credit for today’s attack at the Erfat Medical center where four people were injured.
2003: Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman gave birth to their youngest child, Abraham “Abie” Wolf Waldman



2003(27th of Adar II 5763): Eighty-five year old Sidney Greenberg, one of the Conservative movement’s leading rabbis, passed away.
http://forward.com/articles/8526/rabbi-sidney-greenberg--wrote-on-prayers-holi/



2003: National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice addressed the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference.



2005: ABC News reported that Ted Koppel will leave that organization when his contract expires in December of 2005. Mr. Koppel has been with the network for 42 years and has hosted the popular late night news program “Nightline” for the past twenty-five years.



2005: At the Jewish Museum in New York, a distinguished panel of speakers, including exhibition co-curators Emily Bilski and Emily Braun, as well as Whitney Museum curator Elizabeth Sussman and Union College professor Brenda Wineapple, consider the contributions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Margherita Sarfatti, and Florine Stettheimer to literature and the visual arts from the late 18th century through the 1930s.



2007: Shabbat Ha Gadol.



2007: In Cedar Rapids, the show “Remnants of Memories” Interpretations of the collage by artists Tom Lee and Elizabeth Levi sponsored by Ginsberg’s Jewelry comes to a close.



2008: Hillel receives a $10.7 million grant, from the Jim Joseph Foundation which the college oriented organization says is the largest in its history. The grant will be disbursed over five years and enable Hillel to engage an additional 30,000 students, according to a news release



2008: In New York, The Center for Jewish History presents a lecture by Dr. Atina Grossman entitled “Close Encounters: Jews and Germans in Occupied Germany during which she will discuss the story of the "close encounters" in Allied occupied Germany between Jewish survivors of the Nazi Final Solution who found themselves on "cursed German soil" after the German surrender, and the defeated Germans with whom they continually interacted.



2008: End of Women’s History Month.



2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions.”



2008: “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” was among the nominees for the 23rd annual Lucille Lortel Awards, celebrating excellence in Off-Broadway theatre,



2008(24thof Adar II, 5678): Ninety-six year old movie director Jules Dassin the son of Russian immigrants who began his career as a Yiddish actor and was a victim of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/movies/01dassin.html?_r=0
http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=jules-dassin&pid=106710732

2008(24th of Adar II, 5768): Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, a dominant figure in American Jewish philanthropy during Israel’s formative years, passed away at his New York home at the age of 89. (As reported by Dennis Heves

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/nyregion/04friedman.html?_r=0



2009(6th of Nisan, 5769): Ruth Fredman Cernea, 74, a cultural anthropologist who wrote on topics that included the Jews of Myanmar and the annual mock debate at the University of Chicago on the respective merits of Jewish holiday foods such as latkes and hamantaschen, died today of pancreatic cancer.



http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-04-07/news/36922526_1_jewish-humor-sephardic-jews-jewish-community



2009: Danny Ayalon began serving as Deputy Foreign Minister.



2009: Moshe Kahlon replaced Ariel Atias as Communications Minister.



2009: Gideon Sa'ar was appointed Minister of Education



2009: Yeshiva University hosts the second day the Israel and India International Conference which features the theme "A Relationship Comes of Age." Presenters include Nathan Katz (Florida International University), Amit Kapoor (Management Development Institute, India), Efraim Inbar (Bar-Ilan University), Shlomo Mor-Yosef (Hadassah Medical Organization), Maina Chawla Sing (University of Delhi), P R Kumaraswamy (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), Gadi Ariav (Tel Aviv University).



2009: Gottschalks, a chain of department stores that was founded by German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in 1904, “announced it would liquidate its remaining stores.”



2009: Silvan Shalom replaced Yaakov Edri as Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee



2009: Ayoob Karab began serving as Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee.



2009: Ariel Atias replaced Ze'ev Boim as Minister of Housing and Construction



2009: Ya'akov Margi replaced Yitzhak Cohen as Minister of Religious Services



2009: Eli Yishai replaced Meeir Sheetrit as Minister of Internal Affairs



2009: Uzi Landau replaced Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.



2009: Daniel Hershkowitz replaced Raleb Majadele as Minister of Science and Technology.



2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): First Day of the Omer; Second Day of Pesach



2010: “Rethinking the Holocaust and Genocide with Michael Thaler”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMJyjbz_nE



2010: An exhibition presented by the American Jewish Historical Society entitled “Pages from a Performing Life: The Scrapbooks of Molly Picon” featuring the 22 scrapbooks keep by Molly Picon and her husband Jacob Kalish chronicling their extraordinary 50-year career, is scheduled to come to an end.



2010(16th of Nisan, 5770): Steven Zilberman died while serving his country. “Miroslav Zilberman, a Navy pilot known to his friends as Steven, moved with his parents from Ukraine to Columbus, Ohio, in the early 1990s. His parents, Anna and Boris, did not want their son to be forced into military service in their native land. AP reports describe Zilberman as grandson of Gregory Sokolov, a major in the Soviet Army in World War II. Zilberman decided to follow his grandfather’s footsteps and joined the Navy after graduating from Bexley High School in 1997. He went on to graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he majored in computer science. Zilberman’s plane, an E-2C Hawkeye, was returning to the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower following a mission supporting operations in Afghanistan when the plane experienced a malfunction. Zilberman ordered his crew mates to eject before going down with the plane into the North Arabian Sea.

2011(25th of Adar II, 5771): Eighty-three year old Henry Taub, found of ADP, passed away. (As reported by Duff Wilson)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/business/05taub.html



2011: Yosef Begun a former Soviet Prisoner of Conscience is scheduled to speak at noon today in Washington, DC.



2011: The 14th annual Main Jewish Festival opens in Portland, Maine.



2011: “The Army of Crime” and “Hidden Children” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2011: “The Human Resources Manager” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival



2011: In Jerusalem, the Old City Flavors Festival comes do an end.



2011: “How Israel Won the Six-Day War” published today described Operation Yated and the role an Egyptian agent “turned” played in the miracle of June, 1967.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?localLinksEnabled=false
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/how-israel-won-the-six-day-war-1.353213?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.225%2C2.239%2C



2012: Shabbat Hagadol - 81st anniversary of the Bar Mitzvah of Joseph B. Levin, of blessed memory who was Bar Mitzvahed on Shabbat Hagadol



2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in Yemen” are scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.



2013: Jeremy Piven stars in “Mr. Selfridge” a Masterpiece Classics min-series that is scheduled to air for the first time tonight on PBS.



2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Retrospective by A.B. Yehosuha and Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Lifeby Jonathan Sperber 



2013: President Shimon Peres today congratulated Yitzhak Tshuva, the controlling shareholder of the Tamar natural gas field which was first put into use Saturday, for pumping the gas into Israel four years after the deposit was first discovered — adding, however, that the pumping should not have begun on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest.



http://www.timesofisrael.com/peres-gas-pumping-shouldnt-have-begun-on-sabbath/



2013: Pope Francis and Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni exchanged greetings to mark Passover and Easter.




2014: In Little Rock, Lubavitch of Arkansas under the leadership of Rabbi Pinchas Ciment is scheduled to host an evening with “author, comedian, journalist and musician David Nesenoff.”


2014:Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted today of receiving bribes to facilitate the construction of the Holyland housing project in Jerusalem a decade ago.


2014: In their never-ending quest to get something for nothing “The Palestinians today gave US Secretary of State John Kerry 24 hours to resolve a dispute with Israel over prisoners after which they will resume moves to seek international recognition.


2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to lead Passover shopping expedition to Moti’s Market in Rockville, MD.


2015: In Philadelphia, The National Museum of Jewish History is scheduled to host the VIP Opening Reception for “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs” which “features more than 70 portraits by the famed photographer.


2015: The first part of “The Dovekeepers” a dramatization of events at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.

 


 


 


 

This Day, April 1, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 1


515 BCE:  The Second Temple was inaugurated in Jerusalem (As reported by Jona Lendering)


527: Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne. This was a “lose-lose” proposition for the Jewish people. When Justin I assumed the throne he adopted a policy of rigorously enforcing the anti-Jewish laws promulgated by Theodosius including excluding Jews from “all posts of honor” and banning the construction of new synagogues. “Justinian began persecuting the Jews immediately after his accession” as can be seen from the adoption of anti-Jewish legislation in the very first year of his reign.


1205: Amalrik II King of Cyprus/Jerusalem, died. This was the period of the Crusades when followers of Islam and Christians from Europe jockeyed for control of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem.


1557(1st of Iyar):  Iggeret Ba’alei Hayyim, a book on zoology translated by Kalonymus was printed for the first time in Mantua, Italy.


1782: The certificate authorizing Solomon Etting of Lancaster, PA to serve as a shochet was issued today making him the first native born American to receive this distinction


1798(15thof Nisan, 5558): Pesach


1815: Birthdate of Otto Von Bismarck. A Prussian, he served as Chancellor from 1866 to 1890 making Germany into a united modern nation. His record concerning the Jews was mixed, He was Chancellor in 1869 when emancipation legislation was enacted removing limitations on civil rights based on religion. His personal physician was Jewish and there were Jewish department heads in the government. In his earlier years, Bismarck had been opposed to Jews as government ministers. Once again, as his career drew to a close and it fit his political needs Bismarck distanced himself from the Jews but did not adopt the rabid anti-Semitism that appeared in Germany during the 1880's.


1817(15th of Nisan, 5577): First Day of Pesach


1828: In Cassel, Germany, Moses Mordecai Büdinger gave birth to Austrian historian Max Büdinger who served as chair of the history department at the University of Vienna from 1872 until 1902.


1845: In Trieste, Elisa Morpurgo and Giuseppe / Joseph Baron von Morpurgo gave birth to Louise Cahen d'Anvers (de Morpurgo)


1852: Fire broke out in San Francisco destroying a boarding house owned by Abraham Abrahamsohn that boasted a “French cook, three waiters and a dishwashers.” Abrahamsohn would have tried his hand unsuccessfully in the gold fields and as tailor in Sacramento had made the money for the boarding house by working as a mohel. One can only assume that there was a good sized and prolific Jewish population in San Francisco for him to have earned enough capital from performing ritual circumcisions. This latest setback forced Abrahamsohn to head to Australia where he again failed as gold miner, but met with modest economic success when he returned to his original profession – baker – and began providing food for the hungry miners.


1853: When an apprentice named Herman who was working for a boot and shoe shop was arrested on charges of theft that covered the last 9 months, he claimed that he was regular selling eighty dollars’ worth of merchandize of an un-named Jew for twenty-five dollars.


1858: The New York Times reported that one of the reasons for a drop in business at the local cattle markets this week was the absence of Jewish butchers who were observing Passover.


1861: An English play entitled “Babes in the Wood” opened at the Winter Garden Theatre.  According to the reviewer, the play is based on the all too common practice of the impecunious English gentleman who borrows money from “a friendly Hebrew” for which he pays “a liberal interest” so that he may pursue a life style that includes “a generous supply of wine,” cigars and a marriage which all too often does not turn out to be solution to his problems. [It would appear that 3 centuries after the creation of Shylock, the English still are writing about the poor gentile victimized by the Jewish moneylender.]


1862(1st of Nisan, 5622): Rosh Chodesh Nisan


1865: Union forces defeat the Confederates at the Battle of Five Forks which effectively sealed the fate of Robert E. Lee’s Army and therefore the Confederacy.  The rebels were forced to abandon Richmond which would lead to the involvement of Raphael Moses, the native of Columbus, GA who had been with Lee at Gettysburg in the bizarre episode concerning the disposal of the Southern government’s bullion supply.


1865: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, later known as Leslie’s Weekly published a picture of the annual Purim Ball held in New York in March.

1866: In "Southern Jottings" published today described conditions in Charleston, South Carolina, including the observation that "the Hebrew element is largely represented here and speculators are as abundant as tea stores on Vesey Street."


1866: Under the simple heading of “Nathan Meyer Rothschild of London” the New York Times published a lengthy article tracing the history of the family from its earliest beginning to its present prominent role in the world of finance as well as the role of other Jews in the financial growth that has occurred in Great Britain since “the days of the South Sea bubble.”


1870: “April Fool” published today traces the origins of April Fool’s Day. He claims that the prophet Haggai “makes allusion to it in the third chapter of his book.” He also contends that Solomon recognized “the fool” in his writings and even references a specific day for fools in the 29thverse of the 17th chapter of Proverbs, “The fool has his day and the simple man his season…”


1870(10th of Nisan, 5631): Shabbat HaGadol


1870: Sixty-two year old physician and author Moses Philippson passed away today in Breitenfeld.

1871: "Green Street Synagogue” was founded today by a small group of Jews in Baltimore, Maryland.


1872: Birthdate of Conrad Gröber, the Catholic cleric whose eventual opposition to the Nazi regime did not include opposition to the Holocaust.


1874(14th of Nisan, 5634): The New York Times reported that “this evening the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach’ or the Passover will be inaugurated with the observances and ceremonies incident to its celebration. This festival is one of the most important in the Hewish calendar, and was instituted to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the children of Israel from the vile system of slaver imposed upon them during their sojourn in the land of Egypt. The festival begins at sundown this evening and continues for eight days…and is distinguished from all festivals by the banishment of all leavened bread from the houses of the pious Israelites…”  


1876: It was reported today that I.S. Nathans, a Jew who has become an Episcopalian has been authorized by his church to led a mission to convert the Jews of New York which the church number at 110,000.


1876: Sigmund Dringer, an Austrian born Jew, had acquired 4,000 tons of scrap iron and 1,700 tons of car wheels said to be worth one hundred thousand dollars.  This made Dringer the largest scrap medal dealer in the United States supplying foundries and rolling mills from Boston to Cincinnati.


1880: This morning, Shearith Israel, located at West19th Street near 5thAvenue in New York City, celebrated the 150th anniversary of its consecration with special services led by Rabbis Nieto, Lyon and Pereia-Mendes.


1881: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jerusalem.


1882: A blood libel in Tisza Eszlar, Hungary began. “A week and a half before Easter, a fourteen year old Catholic housemaid, Esther Solymossy, left her employer’s home to buy paint. She did not return.” When a week long search failed to turn up any evidence of the missing girl, two prominent Hungarian anti-Semites named Onody and Istoczy began making claims about “ritual murder” forcing the local sheriff to pursue this blatantly false line of accusation. Fifteen Jews were ultimately charged and tried for "murder" for which there was no real evidence. After a year of futile effort, the fifteen were acquitted.


1883: In New York, David Holtz and Pauline Moses, whom he had known for a brief time, were engaged to be married.


1887: Birthdate of Leonard Bloomfield. Bloomfield was an American linguist whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. He is especially known for his book Language published in 1933 that described the state of the art of linguistics at its time. Bloomfield was the main founder of the Linguistic Society of America.


1888: At Temple Beth-El in New York, Rabbi Kaugman Kohler delivered a lecture entitled “The Wandering Jews.”


1890: Three Russian Jewish immigrants – Ed Myers, Isadore Lowenstein and Ike Edeliman – have been charged with arson and are locked up the Central Police Station in Louisville, KY.


1890: Nathan Birnbaum leader of Kadima and the publisher of the journal Selbst-Emanzipation created the term Zionism. Birnbaum was actually a Zionist before Herzl popularized the concept. Unfortunately, Birnbaum was not able to find a "home" in the movement as it grew. In a total role reversal he advocated the development of the Jewish community in the Diaspora, Yiddish instead of Hebrew and orthodoxy over secularism.


1890: Fifty women formed The Beth El Society of Personal Services was formed with the intent of lessening the burden being placed on the United Hebrew Charities.


1892: Grover Cleveland addressed a large crowd of Russian Jews in New York City.


1892: In Great Britain, Mr. Balfour told the House of Commons that the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg had based his expectation that a large number of Jews would be coming to the UK because he believed that the United States was about to put an end to the immigration of Jews from Russa.


1892: In Brooklyn, the Republican faction opposed to Ernst Nathan sent out a call for meeting.


1893: German’s celebrate the 78th anniversary of the birth of Otto Von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor who changed the face of Europe in ways too numerous to mention here.

1893(15th of Nisan, 5653): First Day of Pesach


1894: Professor Felix Adler delivered a lecture on “The Influence of Woman” at the Music Hall in New York City.


1894: “Over In Camden” published today described the purchase by the Sons of Israel of “a portion of the New Camden Cemetery for use as a cemetery for Jews in the New Jersey city.


1894: It was reported today that there may have been a period of time when the Queen Insurance Company of New York did not insure Jews


1894: “All Fool’s Day” published today attributed to the origins of April Fool’s Day as being tied to the fact that Noah made the mistake of “sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated on the first day of the month” on the Jewish calendar which correlates “our 1st of April.”  Since then people would be sent on “fool’s errands” on this date in the foolish manner of Noah sending out the dove.”


1894: “Godfathers and Godmothers” published today described the origins of this popular custom among Christians but for which “doubtless” began with the Jews.


1895: Interview with Alphonse Daudet, French anti-Semitic writer, for whom Herzl translated an article. Herzl unfolds his views on the Jewish question, which produce a deep impression on Daudet. Daudet feels that Herzl should write a novel about his ideas.


1895: First appearance of The "American Jewess," the first English-language publication published by and for American Jewish women.


1896: It was reported today that the recent benefit production of “The Heart of Maryland” raised about two thousand dollars for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum who had just celebrated 21 years of service to the Congregation.


1896: The funeral for Rabbi Aaron Wise is scheduled to be held this morning at Rodeph Sholom, at Lexington and 63rd Street in Manhattan


1896: “Promises For Peddlers” published today described a meeting between 1,000 pushcart vendors led by Abraham Benowitz, President of the Fish Peddlers’ Association  and New York leaders including Mayor Strong and President Teddy Roosevelt of the Police Board to discuss plans for how their business would be conducted on Hester Street on the Lower East Side.


1897: “Rights of Hebrew Americans” published today described the efforts of Congressman Fitzgerald of Massachusetts to have the Secretary State ensure that American Jews are not discriminated by the Czar’s government when they are doing business in Russia. (Congressman Fitzgerald is the grandfather of JFK)


1898: In New York, Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. and Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D. gave birth to child-prodigy and math wizard, William James Sidis


1898: Moses Samuel Zuckermandl who was the rabbi at Pleschen, Prussia “was appointed lecturer at the Mora-Leipziger Foundation at Breslau” today.


1898(9thof Nisan, 5658): Sixty-eight year old German lawyer Hermann Makower who also served as President of the Board of the Jewish Community of Berlin passed away today.


1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): 4th day of Pesach and Shabbat


1899(21stof Nisan, 5659): Three weeks short of the third anniversary of the death of her husband, Baron Maurice de Hirsch; sixty-five year old Clara Hirsch, the Baroness de Hirsch passed away today in Paris. The daughter of Belgian banking family, she knew the personal tragedy of loss when her daughter died in infancy and her son died at the age of 31.  She threw herself into a variety of charitable efforts and after her husband’s used the family fortune to provide for a myriad of causes including settle Russian Jews in agricultural communities and establishing training schools for young girls so that they could learn a trade and be self-supporting.


1899: Philip Michael Ritter von Newlinski, a Polish nobleman whom Herzl wanted to use his contacts with the Ottomans to promote the Zionist cause, dies in Constantinople.


1899: In “Closing of the Schools” published today, “Vox Populi” defends the decision of the school board closing the schools at this time of the year since it coincides with Easter and Passover which means that Christian and Jewish students would not be in school.  Such a decision is not an unwarranted intrusion of religion in public education but an acknowledgement that in the United States we enjoy religious freedom that enables to honor the customs of Christians and Jews.


1899: Despite a total lack of evidence, Leopold Hilsner was sentenced death today in Polna, Bohemia in another case of a Blood Libel. His sentence was later commuted and in 1916, Hilsner received a full pardon. It should be noted that his life was saved thanks to the activities of T.J. Masark, Czech patriot and the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia.


1899: Austrian author Karl Kraus an advocate of Jewish assimilation and a critic of Theodor Herzl renounced the “faith of his fathers” today.


1900: The executors of the estate of Abraham Wolf, a partner in the banking firm of Kun, Loeb & Co turned the estate over to the trustees Mrs. Addie Kahn and her son Gilbert W. Kahn


1903: Birthdate of Chess Champion Salo (Salomon) Landau, the Galician native who will die in Auschwitz.


1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive. Herzl presents the Zionist proposal. McIlwraithe promises that the government will make a counter-proposal.


1905: Tonight over a thousand Jews watched as two Torah scrolls were carried to the First Zolyner Congregation Anshe Sefard from the home of Sigmund Yokel, the President of the Congregation. After a brief ceremony during which the scrolls were placed in the Holy Ark, “the marchers celebrated at a big banquet.”


1905: It was reported today that the third edition of “The Seder Service,” a Haggadah prepared by Mrs. Phillip Cowen and published by her husband is now in available.


1906: Birthdate of Polish born actor Ned Glass known for his portrayal of Uncle Moe in “Bridgette Loves Bernie.”


1908: Birthdate of Abraham H Maslow, renowned psychologist. Born in Brooklyn, Maslow was the oldest of seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants. In a manner typical of this immigrant generation, Maslow's pushed him to succeed academically. Maslow studied law at CCNY and Cornell. He then married his cousin Bertha and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin where he began his study of psychology earning his doctorate in 1931. Maslow is most famous for developing his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow was a professor at Brandeis from 1951 until 1969. He died in 1970. In examining Maslow's life and work, one commentator found a connection between Maslow's Jewish background and his scientific work. Just as Judaism tries to bring order of a chaotic world, so Maslow sought to develop a unifying structure that would enable people to bring order to their chaotic lives.


"Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be." Abraham Maslow.


1909: Birthdate of Abner Biberman. Born in Milwaukee, Biberman gained fame as an actor and movie director. His films included “Gunga Din,” “Bridge At Saint Luis Rey,” “Winchester 73” and “Viva Zapata.” His oriental appearance made him a natural for the role of the Japanese officer in several war movies made during WW II, the most famous of which was “Back to Bataan.” He passed away in June, 1977.


1912(14th of Nisan, 5672): For the first time, the Patriotic League of America sponsored a Seder tonight at Tuxedo Hall for Jewish soldiers and sailors stationed in the New York metropolitan area.


1912( 14th of Nisan, 5672): It what appeared to be a classic SNAFU, 17 Jewish soldiers on Governor’s Island were assigned to guard duty tonight meaning that they could not attend the Seder at the Tuxedo. This was in direct violation of The Secretary of War’s had order that all soldiers in the New York area would receive a furlough to celebrate the holiday. When authorities found out about the mistake they corrected it so the soldiers could attend the Seder.


1915: Based on a resolution adopted today in Chicago, Orthodox Jews will be able to exercise their franchise in the upcoming elections scheduled for April 6, the last day of Passover. Since the Orthodox cannot write on the holiday, the resolution empowered judges and clerks of the election to mark the ballots for the observant Jews.


1915: In Berlin an anti-war protest was held led by Rosa Luxemburg, an act for which she was imprisoned.

1915: As “The Mule Corps swears allegiance to the British army” Jabotinsky refuses to serve “because its duties only involve transportation” and does not fulfill his demand for the establishment of a fighting legion.


1916: The Federation of Rumanian Jews dedicates the new Jewish Home for Convalescents, which formally opens today at Grandview, Rockland County as a permanent memorial to the work of Dr. Solomon Schechter. Schechter was the noted Hebrew scholar and head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, who died on November 20, 1915.


1917: Birthdate of Melville “Mel” Shavelson who would gain fame a writer, director and producer of dozens of films featuring such stars as Lucille Ball, Jimmy Cagney and Frank Sinatra. He was nominated for two Oscars and created two Emmy Award-winning television series, "Make Room for Daddy" and "My World and Welcome to It."


1918: Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission, arrived in Palestine. The Commission had been established by the British to help carry out the promises of the Balfour Declaration. The Commission actually arrived before the war had ended and the Mandate had been established. The British had intended that the Commission be its official contact with the Jewish community (Yishuv) and help in setting policies concerning post-war settlement and development including immigration. Unfortunately this positive start did not pre-sage a continuation of British support during the inter-war period.


1918(19th of Nisan, 5678): Isaac Rosenberg, a leading Anglo-Jewish poet, is killed on April Fool’s Day while fighting on the Western Front.


1919: In Grodno, Yitahak and Dvora Livni gave birth to ham "Eitan" Livni who made Aliyah in 1925, served with the Irgun and became a Likud MK.


1919: Birthdate of Jabr Muadi, the Israeli Druze politician who served in the Knesset for three decades from 1951 to 1981


1920: The emergence of the Nazi Party. (This happened on the anniversary of the day that Haman published his decree of extermination of the Jews.)


1921: In the United Kingdom, Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, completed his service as First Commissioner of Works and began serving as Minister of Health in a cabinet headed by David Lloyd George.


1921: In “Upholds Palestine Plan; Churchill Tells Arabs that Balfour Declaration Must Stand,” published today described“further details of Winston Churchill’s visit to Jerusalem.” Churchill met with a delegation of Arab Congress which had been held much earlier in Haifa and which “asked for the withdrawal of the Balfour declaration. Churchill declared…that the government was determined to keep to the Balfour declaration in both of its parts, namely, the establishment of the Jewish national home and the protection of the non-Jewish population.” Later, when he met with a Jewish delegation, Churchill concluded his remarks “by saying that the British taxpayers could not bear the expense of the establishment of the Jewish national home and that Jews must therefore make greater efforts to obtain the necessary funds.”


1922: Sir Edgar Speyer “and his remaining partner in the London bank dissolved Speyer Brothers.


1923(15th of Nisan, 5683): Pesach I


1925: Amid much pomp and circumstance, Hebrew University was opened in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. Chaim Weizman beamed with pride as he saw his 25 year old dream come to life. Lord Arthur Balfour, of Balfour Declaration Fame, represented the British government. Much of the funding came from the American philanthropist Felix Warburg. The first chancellor of what this first class educational institution was Dr. Judah Magnes, a native of San Francisco. The cornerstones had originally been laid in 1918 when fighting was still going on between the British and Turkish forces in Palestine. Talk about Jewish optimism and dedication to learning.


1925: Chanina Karchevsky, “The Tel Aviv Nightingale,” conducted the Gymnasisa Herzliya Choir in what has been termed an “unforgettable performance” on Mt. Scopus at the ceremony marking the dedication of Hebrew University.


1926(17th of Nisan, 5686):Acting giant Jacob Pavlovich Adler passed away in New York City.  Born in Russia in 1855, he was a dominate figure in the Yiddish Theatre in Odessa, London and New York City. A name unknown to most, he is remembered as the father of the actor Luther Adler and Stella Adler who coached Marlon Brando.


1926: Hebrew Book Day is mounted in Tel Aviv.


1927: The HaShomer HaZair kibbutzim and training groups establish a national organization in Haifa called "HaKibbutz Artzi" - "National Kibbutz". The Kibbutz Artzi is a federation comprising 85 kibbutzim founded by the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. In 1998 it numbered around 20,000 members and its entire population (including children, candidates, parents of members etc.) totaled approximately 35,000.


1928: Birthdate of Herbert G. Klein newscaster and President Richard Nixon’s press secretary.


1928: Konrad von Preysing, a Catholic prelate who would play a key role as an anti-Nazi activist during World War II was made a canon today.


1930: In Melbourne, Australia, a group of Jews interested in forming a “Liberal Community” met for the first time.


1931: Birthdate of Rolf Hochhuth. This non-Jewish German playwright wrote The Deputy which portrayed the role of the Pope during the Holocaust.


1932: Adolph Eichman joined the Nazi Party


1932: The New York Times described the closing day activities at the Maccabiad. “An emotional crowd of 25,000 watched the conclusion of the first Jewish Olympics…The Palestine High Commissioner participated in the ceremonies as did other officials and representatives of foreign governments. There were tears in the eyes of many as the exhibits reached their close. Among the Maccabee displays were those of scouting, gymnastics, motorcycling, bicycle riding and horseback riding led by Abraham Shapiro, the hero of Petch Tikva…A procession of 5,000 Maccabeans led the way to the graves of Achad Ha’Am , Maz Nodeau and the victims of Arab riots, where wreaths were placed. …The procession marched through the main streets of Tel-Aviv” before dispersing at the “Herzlia Gymnasium where the march of the Maccabeans had begun.”


1933: German violinist (and non-Jew) Adolf Busch repudiated Germany altogether and in 1938 he boycotted Italy. 


1933: Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses. Less than a month after coming to power, the War Against the Jews began in earnest. This puts the lie to those who portray Hitler's policies against the Jews as only being an incidental part of his plans and programs.

1933: In Constantine, Algeria, Abraham Cohen-Tannoudji and Sarah Sebbah tp French physicist, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize.


1934: Chevrolet ended its sponsorship of the Jack Benny Program. Benny continued the show with General Tire as the sponsor.


1935: It wasreported today that “the American team is favored to retain the track and field title in the Jewish world games which open tomorrow…The strongest challenge for the Americans is expected to come from the German, French, Czech and Austrian teams.


1935: Democratic leader General Hugh S. Johnson denounced “Father Charles Coughlin, comparing the Catholic priest to Adolf Hitler” because of the anti-Semitic pronouncements on his radio show


1935: Anti-Jewish legislation in the Saar region was passed.


1935:Israelitisches Familienblatt (Israelite Family Paper) began appearing in Berlin and became the organ of the Reichsvertretung


1936: French conservatives condemned French Socialist leader Léon Blum because of his Jewish ancestry and his strongly anti-Nazi orientation. A popular slogan at the time condemned the future French premier: "Better Hitler than Blum."


1937: Birthdate of Sylvia Rafael, the Pretoria native who made Aliyah in 1963 and became an agent for Mossad.

1937: The Palestine Post reported on the festive opening of a new road connecting Hadar Hacarmel and Mount Carmel in Haifa. The new road was 3,100 meters long and 10 to 15 meters wide - the asphalt width was six meters. It was expected that this new road would help to develop Mount Carmel.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that according to the Palestine Review Jews contributed financially at least four times as much to the Arab economy as Arabs returned to the Jews.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that a provision was made in the Pension Ordinance for officials in the Civil Service to retire, under special circumstances, on attaining the age of 50.


1938: Fritz Löhner-Beda, the Bohemian born librettist, lyricist and writer was arrested and deported to Dachau Concentration Camp.


1939: The Spanish Civil War came to an end marking another victory for fascism.  Oddly enough, despite the support Franco got from Hitler and Mussolini he remained neutral during WW II, which proved quite advantageous to the Allies. As far as Franco’s treatment of the Jews, the record appears to mixed but consider the following as one piece of the puzzle.

 1939: At the age of 13, Raul Hilberg who would gain fame as Dr. Raul Hilber a world renowned Holocaust scholar fled Austria with his family a year after the Anschluss, for France, where they embarked on a ship to Cuba. From Cuba the family would make their way to the United States, where Hilberg, after serving with the U.S. Army in Europe would come home and build his academic career.


1939: U.S. premiere of “Dodge City,” a western directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Hal Wallis with music by Max Steiner.


1940: The Institut für deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for German Work in the East) was founded to study Polish Jewry.


1940: Shanghai, China, accepted thousands of Jewish refugees.


1941: A ghetto was established at Kielce, Poland. German overseers of the ghetto renamed some of the streets. New names were Zion Street, Palestine Street, Jerusalem Street, Moses Street, Non-Kosher Street, and Grynszpan Street.


1941(4th of Nisan, 5701): German troops executed 250 members of a Jewish youth group in Subotica, Yugoslavia, who have been carrying out acts of sabotage.


1941: A men's annex was established at the Ravensbrück concentration camp located in Germany,


1941: Seven Warsaw Jews smuggled themselves into Bratislava, Slovakia, and from there to safety in Palestine.


1941: A pro-Axis officer clique headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani seized power in Iraq, and prepared airfields for German use.


1941: The first Croatian concentration camp began operation, at Danica. Four more Croat camps were opened, at Loborgrad, Jadovno, Gradiska, and Djakovo.


1941: Lillian Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine", premiered in New York City. A native of New Orleans, Hellman's father was "of German Jewish ancestry." Hellman was a staunch supporter of the Communists. Many right-wingers mistakenly took her ancestry and her political beliefs, tied them together and used Hellman as an example of the Jewish/Communist Conspiracy to overthrow America.


1941 Bess and Rubin “Honest Joe” Goldestein gave birth to Eddie Goldstein whom Dallas knew as swap shop owner “little Honest Joe King Edward.”


1942: Sobibór death camp was nearly operational; gassings would begin in May.


1942: At the beginning of the first week in April, more than 4400 Jews died of starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto


1942: At the beginning of April, the first transports of Jews arrive at the camp at Majdanek, Poland, which will begin gassing Jews later in the year.


1942: During the first week of April, Sunday Times of London published, but did not highlight news items about the Nazi executions of 120,000 Romanian Jews.


.1942: During the first week of April, Jews were mocked and hanged at Mlawa, Poland.


1942: The Nazis deported 965 Slovakian Jews to Auschwitz.


1942: In occupied Poland the Nazis created the Łachwa Ghetto when the town's Jews were forcibly moved into a new ghetto consisting of two streets and 45 houses, and surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The ghetto housed roughly 2,350 people, which amounted to approximately 1 square meter for every resident


1943: By the beginning of April, Nazi killing squads had murdered almost two million Jews in Eastern Europe.


1943: Starting in the first week of April, the Germans forced Jewish prisoners to burn the bodies of 600,000 Jews exterminated at Belzec.


1943: During the first week of April, the Germans launched an offensive against Jewish partisans active in the Parczew Forest, Poland.


1943: During the first week of April, Resistance members derailed a death train in Belgium.


1943: Pope Pius XII complained that Jews are demanding and ungrateful.


1943: Dr. Julian Chorazycki, a former captain in the Polish Army and a leader of inmate resistance at the Treblinka death camp, took poison when the camp's deputy commandant discovered the stash of currency Chorazycki had planned to use to buy small arms.


1945: On Easter, Jan M. Komski, who was not Jewish, was among the 20,000 prisoners marched from Hersbruck to Dachau


1945: Father Giuseppe Girotti, a Catholic theology professor at the Saint Maria della Rose Dominican Seminary of Turin, who acted to save many Jews by arranging safe hideouts and escape routes from the country died at Dachau. He had been arrested and sent to the camp after having been betrayed by an informer and caught in the midst of helping a wounded Jewish person. It is reported that while in Dachau, he continued to write his unfinished commentary on the biblical book of Jeremiah.


1947: The first Jewish immigrants disembark at the port of Eilat. Eilat is a port the southern end of Israel on the Gulf of Aqaba. Ben-Gurion was determined to make this part of the new state of Israel. The tale of the race for Eliat in 1948 is a tale of daring-do that would worthy of Rambo or James Bond. Ben Gurion realized how important this southern port would be to the development of trade, among other things. The reality has exceeded his vision.


1948: As the military situation for the Yishuv reaches a crisis status, Ben Gurion holds an urgent meeting with his senior Jewish Agency colleagues and forces them to adopt “a single blow offensive.”


1948: Arabs attacked Beit Alpha, a kibbutz near the Gilboa Ridge, with mortars.


1948: The first major report of Ralph Asher Alpher’s work describing the Big Bang Theory appeared in the periodical Nature.


1948: During Operation Nachshon, three large convoys broke through the blockade of Jerusalem bringing food and arms to the beleaguered Jewish population.


1949: Mordechai Maklef wаѕ appointed Head οf one of tһе General Command Departments in the IDF.


1950(14th of Nisan, 5710): Shabbat Hagadol


1950: At sundown, Israelis sit down to celebrate the second Pesach since the creation of the state of Israel. A Seder is being held on Mt. Scopus for the 118 Israelis taking care of the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University campus that have been cut off from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem. The climaxing word of the Seder “Next Year in Jerusalem” take on special meaning for the 80,000 newly arrived immigrants who will be eating their Matzah and Maror in transit camps.


1951: Following the issuance of an order by David Ben Gurion, the “Central Institute for Coordination” or Mossad became operation under directorship of Reuven Shiloah.


1952: The Jerusalem Post   reported that an acceptable formula had been reached at the London External Debts Conference on the eventual Israel-German reparations agreements. At The Hague, however, the German reparations delegation announced that it had no authority to assume any commitments towards Israel or World Jewry's representation. A woman who refused to accept a $10,000 inheritance from her sister, who died abroad, was charged with infringing Israel's financial regulations.


1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the deepest well in Israel, 565 m., was dug at Karkur and had produced 360 cu.m. of excellent water per hour.


1952(6th of Nisan, 5712): Hungarian born dramatist and novelist Ferenc Molnár passed away today in New York.


1953(16th of Nisan, 5713): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer


1953: Birthdate of Barry Sonnenfeld director of the comedy “Men In Black” and “When Harry Met Sally.”


1957: Birthdate of Representative Peter Deutsch, from Florida’s 20th Congressional District.


1957: First Jewish immigrants to arrive by ship disembarked at Eilat.


1958: U.S. premiere of “Teacher’s Pet” a romantic comedy produced by William Perlberg with a script by Fay and Michael Kanin.


1959: An IDF drill for calling up the reserves turned into a fiasco that became known as The Night of the Ducks.


1965(28th of Adar II, 5725): Helena Rubinstein US cosmetic manufacturer passed away. Her age was not accurately determined, but she was reported to be 89 at the time of her death.

1968(3rd of Nisan, 5728): Russian physicist Lev D Landau passed away at the age of 59. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1962 for his pioneering theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium He is also admired for a prolific series of textbooks on theoretical physics, co-authored with E. M. Lifshitz.


1969: Holocaust survivor Fred Kort opened Imperial Toy Corp. on Seventh Street in downtown Los Angeles. His inaugural product: the hi-bounce ball. Kort's sons from his first marriage, Jordan, Steve and David, all joined their father's business.


1973: In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Talmud shiur at Yeshiva University we completed learning the first chapter of Talmud Bavli Tractate Hullin. The Rav gave a dvar Torah at the Siyyum. He explained the meaning of the recitation of the hadran alakh, the prayer that promised upon the completion of learning a Talmud chapter or Tractate that we would return to study you – speaking to the text – again


1974: The Interim Report of the Agranat Commission published today “called for the dismissal of a number of senior officers in the IDF and caused such controversy that Prime Minister Golda Meir was forced to resign.”


1976(1st of Nisan, 5736): Max Ernst passed away. “The German painter-poet Max Ernst was a member of the dada movement and a founder of surrealism. A self-taught artist, he formed a Dada group in Cologne, Germany, with other avant-garde artists. He pioneered a method called frottage, in which a sheet of paper is placed on the surface of an object and then penciled over until the texture of the surface is transferred. In 1925, he showed his work at the first surrealist painting exhibition in Paris.”


1977:  The Jerusalem Post reported that the visit to Israel of the French foreign minister, Louis de Guiringaud, ended with "normalization," if not an improvement of strained relations.


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that while visiting Washington King Hussein of Jordan declared that he was ready for a "full peace" with Israel, but would never give up East Jerusalem.


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the ambitious Netivei Ayalon highway system in Tel Aviv had been revised owing to enormous expenses.


1977: U.S. premiere of “Hot Tomorrows” directed and produced by Martin Brest and starring Ken Lerner


1978: Rafael Eitan was promoted to the rank of General and was appointed by Ezer Weizman to be the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.


1980(15thof Nisan, 5740): Jews observe Pesach as Ronald Reagan sought to unseat Jimmy Carter.


1981: An Israeli communique said today that one Israeli soldier had been wounded in the fighting in southern Lebanon.


1982: In trucks and vans loaded with furniture and farm equipment, most Jewish settlers completed their departure from northern Sinai yesterday, leaving behind a hard core of several hundred militants who vowed to defy the deadline imposed by the army for leaving the area.


1984: The long-term efforts of Arnold Resincoff, a Conservative Rabbi and former military chaplain, to convince the United States Department of Defense to participate in the national annual program for the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust took a significant step forward today when “Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed a memorandum to the military services, urging the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military commanders to participate in the annual program for the first time”


1987: Opening of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair whose offereings have included The ''Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures,'' the first edition in English of what was for generations the standard Jewish-American Bible, translated and annotated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia in 1853 ($1,750) and the first complete, corrected, printed film script of ''The Wizard of Oz,'' dated May 4, 1938, in its original blue wrappers from the files of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ($7,500).


1988: “Beetlejuice” with music by Denny Elfaman and co-starring Winona Ryder,  which opened theatrically in the United States today earned $8,030,897 in its opening weekend.1992: Daniel Goldin begins serving as the Administrator of NASA making him the first Jew to serve as head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.


1996: In an article published today entitled “Challenging a View of the Holocaust,” Danita Smith discusses the new information provided by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."


1997: “Lancit Media Entertainment, Ltd. (Nasdaq: LNCT), a leading creator and producer of high quality children's and family programming, today announced that Susan L. Solomon has been named Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, effective immediately.”1998: “Israel today formally accepted a 20-year-old United Nations Security Council resolution calling on it to withdraw from Lebanese territory. But the Israelis said any pullback would be made only on the condition that Lebanon assume control over the region and prevent its use for attacks on Israel.”1999(15th of Nisan, 5759): Final Pesach of the 20th century.


1999: Publication of “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” by Merle Feld.


1999: In Denmark, premiere of “The One and Only,” a Danish romantic comedy directed by Susanne Bier.


2000: Marvin Miller is inducted into The National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum.


2001: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Stet: A Memoir” by Diana Athill.


2001: Six days after she was killed by Palestinian gunfire, 10 month old Shalhevet Pass was buried today.


2001(8thof Nisan, 5761): Forty-two year old Dina Guetta was stabbed to death by a terrorist today on Ha’atzmaut Street.


2002: In response to the increasing violence or Arab terrorists that climaxed with the suicide bomber murdering 30 people at a Seder in the Park Hotel, the IDF made preparation for Operation Defensive Shield.


2002 (19th of Nisan, 5762) Fifth day of Pesach


2002(19thof Nisan, 5762) Tomer Mordechai, 19, of Tel-Aviv, a policeman, was killed in Jerusalem, when a Palestinian suicide bomber driving toward the city center blew himself after being stopped at a roadblock. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.


2002: “Using doctored pictures purportedly from the Hubble telescope, NASA ‘proved’ that the Moon was made of green cheese an expression that came from a fable that Reb Meir,Rashi, the Iraqi Rabbi Hai Gaoan and the Petrose Alponsi an apostate Spanish Jew helped to popularize.


2003: “A rumor that” Chilean television personality Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld known to his public as “Don Francisco had died surfaced around the New York and New Jersey area. The rumor proved false, but sent many of his fans into a panic until it was revealed as an April Fool's joke.”


2003(28th of Adar II, 5763): Late in the evening Robert M. Levine, Gabelli Senior Scholar in the Arts and Sciences, Director of Latin American Studies, and professor of history at the University of Miami, died after a determined and ever-optimistic fight against cancer. He was 62.


2005: Lewis Wolff was among those purchasing the Oakland Athletics baseball team today.


2005:A sign was dedicated today in Deadwood, South Dakota by the Deadwood Historic Preservation Commission in conjunction with the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation which records information about the purchase of Hebrew Hill and some of those buried there.


2007: The Sunday Washington Post reviewed two books designed to “untangle Biblical tales” that have just appeared in paperback: “David and Solomon In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings And the Roots of the Western Tradition” by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman and “Jesus and “Yahweh: The Names Divine” by Harold Bloom.


2007:The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of “Jesus and Yahweh: The Divine Name” by Harold Bloom.


2007: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of the US Representatives addresses the Knesset in what is her first address to a foreign government legislature. She is the highest ranking American woman to speak before the Knesset.


2007: Based on stories in the secular press, the world of Kashrut is alive and well. The Washington Post featured an article entitled “A Doughnut Shop's Change Leaves a Hole” that tells about the consequences of four Dunkin Donut stores in the Washington area to give up their kosher certification. The Chicago Tribune featured an article entitled “China Firms Clamor To Go Kosher: Businesses covet certification that lets them tap $150 billion market.”


2007: “Gefilte Fish Chronicles” airs at 7 p.m. on New York’s Channel 13. The DVD has its own website


2007(14th of Nisan, 5767): Lou Limmer who played first base for the Philadelphia Athletics in the early 1950’s passed away at the age of 82.


2007: German Chancellor Angela Merkel received an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem "in recognition of her lifelong dedication to the principles of democracy and in appreciation of her warm and constant friendship for the people and State of Israel."


2008: The 92nd Street Y presents “The Year of Living Biblically,” featuring author A.J. Jacobs who discusses his most recent book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he recounts his fascinating, enlightening and delightfully strange year trying to follow all 613 commandments in the Bible.


2008: In Washington, D.C., Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor in the Clinton White House, discusses and signs “The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party” at a Barnes & Noble book store.


2008: Idina Menzel “kicked off her 2008-2009 "I Stand Tour" in support of her new album performing 4 sold out legs.”


2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Radio broadcaster and actress and Shosh Atari passed away at the age of 58 after suffering a serious illness. Atari was born in Rehovot, and grew up in the central town. She spent her military service in Army Radio, and after her discharge from the Israel Defense Forces worked at Channel 1 television. In the 1970s Atari joined Israel Radio as a presenter. In the 1980s, she became one of the stars of Reshet Gimmel radio, where she hosted popular music chart shows, and other programs with Tony Fine as her editor. Atari was also famous as the moderator on the "Pitzuhim" game show on the Israel's educational TV channel. At the end of the 1990s the broadcaster joined Lev Hamedina Radio. A few years ago Atari underwent a kidney transplant operation after suffering from a kidney illness. Following the operation she moved again to Reshet Gimmel, but then returned to broadcast a daily program on Lev Hamedina radio. The broadcaster also performed on the stage at the Be'er Sheva theatre. In 2004, Atari's book "Secrets and Lies" was published. In 2007 she returned to television, starring in the "It's all honey" drama series on Channel 2.


2008(25th of Adar II, 5768): Actor Mosko Alkalai, 77, died of respiratory failure. Alkalai was hospitalized and underwent surgery in Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center several weeks ago, but was unable to recover. Winner of the Israeli Film Academy's 2003 Lifetime Achievement Awards, Alkalai graced the stage and silver screen in a career spanning 21 years, appearing in dozens of theater plays and motion pictures. He also took part in various public activities and was the chairman of the Israeli Union of Performing Arts a member of the Israeli Arts Council and a member of the Israeli Film Academy.


2009:Avigdor Lieberman replaced Tzipi Livni as Minister of Foreign Affairs.


2009: Yitzhak Aharonovich replaced Avi Dichter as Minister of Internal Affiars.


2009: The Center for Jewish History, PEN, Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York and Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival co-sponsor a PEN World Voices entitled “Evolution/Revolution: Meir Shalev in Conversation with Daniel Menaker” featuring Israeli writer Meir Shalev the author of more than 16 highly praised works, spanning fiction, non-fiction and children's books and Daniel Menaker, the former Random House Editor-in-Chief.


2009: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah hosts a congregational meeting as it begins a search for its next Rabbi.


2009: The Centennial Conference for Urban Sustainability opens at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.


2009: A new exhibition by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw that has brought together photos and documents depicting the rich history of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland goes on display today at the European Parliament in Brussels and will run nearly a week. With old paintings and photographs, the show recalls how Jews found refuge in Poland during the Middle Ages after being expelled from many parts of Europe. It also stresses the mark the community made on the larger, mainly Roman Catholic Polish community.


2009(7thof Nisan, 5769):Marcos Moshinsky “a Mexican physicist of Ukrainian and Jewish origin whose work in the field of elementary particles won him the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Investigation in 1988 and the UNESCO Science Prize in 1997” passed away today.


2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles opens with a showing of “Schindler’s List.”


2010: An exhibition entitled “From Dream to Reality: Zionism and the Birth of Israel” presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to come to an end today.


2010: An exhibition entitled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by Yeshiva University Museum featuring carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks, spice containers, and other works created by self-taught craftsman Herman Braginsky who was born in 1912 and passed away in 1999 is scheduled to come to an end today2010:A ceremony officially classifying the Machpelah Cave in Hevron as a National Heritage Site is scheduled to be held today, as tens of thousands visit the city for a Hol Hamo'ed celebration 2010: The New York Timesfeatures a review of “Jenniemae & James: A Memoir in Black & White” in which Brooke Newman writes about her father, the famous mathematician James Newman,”the son of Jewish immigrants “who “had an I.Q. of 175.”


2010:During a visit to Damascus, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reiterated US misgivings about the flow of weapons through Syria to Hizbullah and told reporters the US view is that this is "something that must stop" for there to be peace.


2011: Eatliz, one of Israel’s leading alternative rock bands, is scheduled to perform at the City Winery in New York City.


2011: “Nora’s Will” and “Anita” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2011:A loud explosion was heard outside the house of opposition leader Tzipi Livni today. The blast was apparently a result of a firecracker thrown at the security stand outside Livni's Tel Aviv home. Livni was not at her house when the explosion occurred.


2011:Residents from all over Israel reported that they felt an earthquake this afternoon.Israel's Geophysical Institute said the earthquake, which occurred over 800km from Israel, was mostly felt in the north of Israel, including the towns of Safed and Nahariya. At the same time as residents in Israel reported buildings shaking, a deep 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in the sea 76 miles (120 km) east-northeast of Iraklio, a town on the Greek island of Crete, on Friday, the US Geological Survey said.


2011:Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould and his wife Celia had their first sabra baby girl today. Baby Rachel Elizabeth was born early this morning at the Lis Maternity Hospital in the Tel Aviv Medical Center.We are both incredibly happy and proud new parents," Gould said. "We are very grateful for the fabulous care we've received and all the mazel tovs we've been sent."


2011:“Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,” is scheduled to be published by Abrams today.


2012: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘Enemies: A History of the FBI’  by Tim Weiner and ‘Mudwoman’ by Joyce Carol Oates.


2012: Aluf Ram Rothberg, commander of the Israeli Navy reportedly “ordered senior commanders to prepare for a complex, 10-day exercise in Italy with the US and Italian navies” as part of an April Fool’s Day prank that got out of hand.


2012: Anthony Russell, “an exciting new talent in the world of Yiddish music” is scheduled to perform at Temple Beth Emeth in Brooklyn.


2012: “Footnote” and “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” are two of the films scheduled to be shown at Hartford Jewish Film Festival.


2012(9th of Nisan, 5772): Eighty-year old “Edmund L. Epstein the literary scholar who saved Lord of the Flies” passed away today. (As reported by Bruch Weber)

2012: “Spinozium” is scheduled to take place today at Theatre J in Washington, DC.


2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventh Day of Pesach; Reform Jews recite Yizkor


2013(21stof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-year old William H. Ginsburg, the California civil lawyer who was thrust into the national spotlight when he represented Monica Lewinsky, passed away today.

2013: Those visiting the symphony bar are scheduled to have a chance to “experience Leopold Bloom's passage through Dublin in a dramatic episode from James Joyce’s masterwork Ulysses.”


2013: In New York, Larry Schwartz and Beth Sandweiss are scheduled to offer a course in Jewish mindfulness which is designed to integrate the knowledge and practice of Judaism with mindfulness practice and key ideas that support that practice.


2013: Beginning this morning, Israel “was hit by strong winds and dust” which led to “high levels of air pollution causing breathing complications.” (As reported by Yoel Goldman)


2013: In Ancient Fear Rises Anew Lisa Abend describes the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Hungary.

2014: The Hebrew Language Table at the Library of Congress is scheduled to co-sponsor a presentation by Professor Gabriel Weimann entitled “Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation.”


2014: Episodes 3, 4 and 5 of “The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama,”are scheduled to be shown this evening.

2015: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Its Yiddish Time” with Alex Lieberman.


2015: “Woman in Gold” is scheduled to open today in U.S. theatres.

2015: “Joy of Life: Paintings by Dolorosa Rubens Margulis” is scheduled to open at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.


2015: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of New York City’s Landmarks Law, architectural historian and preservationist Samuel D. Gruber is scheduled to lecture on “Synagogues of New York: History, Architecture, and Community” at the Center for Jewish History.


2015: The second and final episode of “The Dovekeepers” a fictional account of the final days at Masada is scheduled to be shown on CBS.

 

This Day, April 2, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 2


742: Birthdate of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was both King of the Franks and the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite pressure from the Catholic Church and the mighty Pope Gregory, Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects and they played a prominent part in his realm. Unfortunately, after his death in 814, his successors were unable to continue to his policies towards the Jews of Christian Europe.
1118: Baldwin I, who arrogantly styled himself King of Jerusalem.  For Jews nothing more be said then that he was a brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and a leader of the bloody First Crusade.
1279(Nisan, 5039): A number of London Jews were martyred following ritual charges. You will note that during the Easter Season there is a significant increase in these reports for several centuries in different parts of Europe.
1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople. The siege would lead to the downfall of the Byzantine capitol which would improve the lot of the Jews living in the city as well as opening it up to settlement by Jews living Crete, Transylvania and Slovakia.
1550: The Jews were expelled from of Genoa.
1678(10th of Nisan): Rabbi Judah Ashael ben David del Bene author of Kisot le-Bet David passed away
1738(12thof Nisan, 5498):  Joseph Oppenheimer was hanged. Oppenheimer, the finance minister, was arrested after the sudden death of Prince Karl of Wurttemberg. He was offered a pardon on condition of agreeing to be baptized. Although not a practicing Jew, he refused and was placed in a cage in the center of Stuttgart declaring "I will die as a Jew; I am suffering violence and injustice." He died while shouting Shema Yisrael.
1756: Benjamin D’Israeli, the Anglo-Jewish merchant who was grandfather of the British Prime Minister married his first wife, Rebecca Mendez Furtado.
1755(21st of Nisan, 5515):Aryeh Leib ben Saul Lowenstam passed away in Amsterdam. Born in Cracow this Polish rabbi was a member of long line of Jewish sages including his grandfather Rabbi Hoeschl of Cracow and his father Saul who served as rabbi of Cracow from 1700 to 1704,
1770(7th of Nisan): Rabbi PInchas Zelig of Lask, author of Ateret Paz passed away
1787: Ephraim Hart “he was registered as an elector of the Shearith Israel congregation” in New York City.
1791: Forty-two year old Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (known simply as Count Mirabeau) a leader of the French Revolution who was an admirer of Moses Mendelssohn and whose support of Jewish emancipation can be seen in his statement “Confer upon” the Jews “the enjoyment of civil rights and they will enter the ranks of peaceful citizens, passed away today.
1806: Birthdate of Gabriel Riesser, youngest son of Lazarus Jacob Riesser and an advocate for the emancipation of the Jews of Germany.
1817(16th of Nisan, 5577): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer
1825(14th of Nisan, 5585): Shabbat HaGadol; Erev Pesach
1825: “The special privileges granted to the Portuguese Jewish citizens of Suriname were terminated by order of the Dutch crown. Thenceforth, Jews in the Dutch colonies were accorded the same rights as the other inhabitants, and all privileges, concessions and exceptions of whatever nature were abolished.” (As reported by the Suriname-Jewish Community)
1826: In Ancona, Italy, “Anna Costantini, a young girl, was torn from her family and forced into baptism.”
1840: Birthdate of Émile Zola. This non-Jewish French author would become a leading player in the Dreyfus Affair. His J”Accuse would be an indictment of the French military establishment and the anti-Semitic forces that swirled around this entire act of injustice.
1844:"The building” housing the Great Synagogue in Sidney “was consecrated today with the music for the ceremony in the hands of Isaac Nathan, father of Australian music, who was also associated with the music at St Mary's Cathedral. For the occasion Nathan composed settings for Baruch Habba ("Blessed be he that cometh") and Hallelujah.
1846: The last letter in the correspondence between Grace Aguilar and “the philanthropist Miriam Moses Cohen who acted as an agent for her publications in America” was sent today.
1863: During the Civil War, food shortages cause hundreds of angry women to riot in Richmond, Virginia and demand that the Confederate government release emergency supplies, in what became known as the Richmond Bread Riots. In her honor’s thesis entitled The Richmond Bread Riot of 1863: Class, Race, and Gender in the Urban Confederacy, MIDN 1/C Katherine R. Titus wrote that while the rioters targeted speculators and government offices “Richmond citizens also targeted foreigners and Jews. The city had a tradition of blatant anti-Semitism. Once the War erupted, many Richmond citizens openly blamed the Jews and foreigners in the city for speculation and charged them with disloyalty. Sallie A. Putnam, for instance, believed that the Jews in Richmond profited from the war. She exhorted, “They were not found, as the more interested of the people, without the means to purchase food when the Confederate money became useless to us from the failure of our cause.” Major John W. Daniel contended that local stereotypes allowed the rioters to target Richmond Jews. After the War, he reminisced, “certain people down there were credited with great wealth. It was said that they had made barrels of money out of the Confederacy, and the female Communists went at them without a qualm of conscience.”
1865:Twenty Jewish men signed a constitution that became the framework that would guide the future of Reform Jews in Akron, Ohio.
1869: Michael Henry became editor of The Jewish Chronicle – position he would hold until his death in 1875.
1870(1st of Nisan, 5630): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat HaChodesh
1874(15thof Nisan, 5634): Pesach
1877(19th of Nisan): Rabbi Chaim Bezalel of Bielitz, Poland, author of “Derekh Yivhar” passed away
1881: It was reported today that the population of Thessaly, which is moving from Turk to Greek rule includes 50,000 Jews and Muslims as well as 300,000 who are classified as Greeks.
1882:The New York Times reported that “the feast of Passover will commence tomorrow evening at sundown in accordance with the rabbinical ordinance which lays it down that it shall be celebrated from the evening of the 14thof Nisan and continues for eight days. It is regarded strictly as a feast of rejoicing and it’s a pleasant illustration of the liberalizing tendency of the age that many Jews make it a custom to send small presents of unleavened bread to the Christian friends”
1882: The New York Times publishes an excerpt from “Domestic and Artistic Life of Copely” by Martha Babcock Amory in which the author describes a dinner with Baroness Lionel Rothschild in 1857.
1883: After telling him that it was customary for newly engaged couple to announce their intention to become man and wife before an official at City Hall, the relatives of Pauline Moses to David Holtz to City Hall where an alderman performed a marriage ceremony; a fact not understood by Holtz because of his limited knowledge of the English language.
1886(26th of Adar): Rabbi Aryeh Leib Yellin, author of Yefeh Einayim passed away today
1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Shabbat HaGadol
1887(8th of Nisan, 5647): Sixty-one year old Austrian mathematician Simon Spitzer who became a professor of analytic mechanics at the Vienna “Handelsschule” in 1870 passed away today.
1890: The Passover Association distributed free matzoth to over four thousand poor Jews this evening at the Goodfellow’s Hall on Essex Street in New York.
1890: The New York Times reported that the American Hebrew will be publishing a special Passover edition this Friday.
1890: It was suggested at today’s meeting of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the old Hebrew Orphan and Asylum on 77th Street could be used for the proposed new offices of the city’s Board of Education.
1891: Birthdate of Max Ernst founder of surrealism.
1892: Simon Schafer, M.H. Moses, Judge M.S. Isaacs and A.L. spoke at tonight’s meeting of the Purim Association which was held at the Hoffman House tonight.
1892: “Want To Hear Cleveland” published today described the ex-President’s popularity in New York as can be seen by warm reception his supporters receive when they address rallies of Russian Jews.  The Russians barely understand English, but the sound of Cleveland’s name is enough to bring out shouts of approval..
1893(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
1893: At Temple Emanu-El, Dr. Silverman is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Crucifixition.”
1893: It was reported today that in Germany “the Conservatives have definitely thrown over Rector Hermann Ahlwardt the Jew baiter and libeler.”  However, their rejection has not stopped him from making public speeches and holding anti-Semitic rallies.
1893: “Fine British Weather” published today described the social and political events taking place in the UK including plans by “an organization of progressive young Jews…to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogue throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.
1893: Dr. Silverman is scheduled to give an address at Temple Emanu-El on “The Crucifixion.”
1893: The New York Times reported that “an organization of progressive young Jews has arranged to propose at all annual meetings of the synagogues throughout England, most of which are held next week, a resolution that it is not desirable to elect a man engaged in money lending as President of the congregation.”
1894: It was reported today that approximately 50 Jews, many of them women attended the evangelistic service at the Thalia Theatre Auditorium although there was no report of any of them coming forward to convert.  (These services were part of a concerted effort by some Christians to convert Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century)
1896: The will of the late Charles S. Friedlander was filed with the Surrogate today for probate.
1896: The funeral for Dr. Aaron Wise was held this morning at Temple Rodolph Shalom, the New York congregation he had served as Rabbi for several years.
1896(19thof Nisan, 5656): Leonard Friedman, who is approximately 52 years old, passed away today at Lakewood, NU.  A native of Germany, he came to the United States and after fighting his way out of poverty established Leonard Friedman & Co which over the last twenty years has become one of the leading tobacco houses in the United States.
1896: Funeral services were held for Dr. Aaron Wise, who had been rabbi at New York’s Temple Rudolph Shalom at the time of his death. The services at the Lexington Avenue Temple were attended by so many mourners that “not one half could gain entrance to the synagogue.” Several of New York’s leading clergy took part in the ceremony including Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kaufmann Kohler also of Temple Beth-El who delivered an address in German and Dr. Gustav Gottheil of Temple Emanuel who delivered a eulogy in English in which he said of Wise, “The spirit of his words cannot die. The influence of the teacher has not limits as to time or space.” Burial followed the service in Union Field, Cypress Hills Cemetery.
1897: Reverend John Hall delivered a lecture on “Judaism and Christianity” in which he said “There is a distinction between Judaism as described in the Bible and the Judaism of the present generation.”
1897: A school designed to teach students how to cook food according to the laws of Kashrut opened today in Brooklyn in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population.
1897: In New York, Governor Frank Black appointed Jewish philanthropist and Republican party activist Edward Lauterbach to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.
1897: In Austria, Count Casimir Badeni resigned during a government crisis that was precipitated, in part, by his clash with the anti-Semitic partie
1898(10thof Nisan, 5658): Shabbat Hagadol
1898(10thof Nisan, 5658):Austrian pathologist and histologist Salomon Stricker passed away.
1899: At the Hebrews Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum, Chaplain Joseph Kauffman officiated at service were a “bronze tablet in memory of Samuel Lewisohn” was unveiled.
1899: “Disraeli and the Suez Canal” published today provided a summary an article by Arnold White that appeared in Harper’s Weekly describing the British leader’s role in facilitating the purchase of this vital waterway from which he gained no financial advantage.

1902: “Controversy Over Hen Fattened For Passover” published in today’s Atlanta Constitution described a complaint filed by Leo Fresh with police to retrieve the chicken that he was preparing to take to a “shocket” which had mysteriously ended up in the yard of a neighbor lady who planned to have it killed in a manner not consistent with the laws of Kashrut.



1903: The High Court of Australia sits for the first time. In 1930, Isaacs Isaacs would become the third person to fill this position and the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia.
1903: Herzl meets McIlwraithe, the legal adviser of the Khedive where he finds out that an immediate counter-proposal is out of question. The size of the land and the duration of the contract are discussed.
1907: Birthdate of Irene Mayer Selznick famed as the producer of Street Car Named Desire.


1909: Ahmed Riza Bey, President of Turkish Parliament, offered Russian and Romanian Jews who were suffering tremendous persecution and attacks a chance to come settle in Turkey.


1911: The newly formed Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople expresses loyalty of all Jews of all parties to the Ottoman Empire.


1911:Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House today to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League in which she used the Triangle Fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:


1912(15thof Nisan, 5672): As TR and Taft battled for control of the Republican Party, observance of Pesach began


1912: Today “two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana which has grown to become a city of almost 70,000 people living in Israel’s Central District.


1912(15th of Nisan, 5672): Fifty women attended a Seder tonight at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building on Lexington Avenue. The attendance was limited by the size of the building underscoring the need to build a new facility.


1913:Today, Jews living in New York City brought copies of letters from family members living in Anatolia describing persecution by Greeks living in that part of the Ottoman Empire to the attention of the American Jewish Committee. They called upon the committee to intervene on the behalf of their co-religionists and to organize a protest against these outrages.


1914: The officers of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee met at the Broadway Central Hotel in New York. After the meeting, Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee, reported that Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Navy Daniels had sent letters announcing that Jewish soldiers and sailors would receive furloughs to celebrate Passover this year.


1914(6th of Nisan, 5674): Paul Heyes, the first Jew to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away today at the age of 84. A native of Bonn, “he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910 ‘as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories.’ One of the Nobel judges, said that ‘Germany has not had a greater literary genius since Goethe.’" [Considering what would happen to the Jews of German two decades after his death, this praise has a strange ring to it. Also, Heyes is living proof that winning a Nobel Prize is no guarantee to lasting fame, even among his co-religionists.]


1914: In New York, Mr. and Mrs. Percy Salomon gave birth to William Roger Salomon who would become a long time managing partner of the bond trading house Salomon Bros.



1917: President Wilson asked the United States Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. This was the first official step towards America’s entry into World War I as a combatant on the side of the Allies. While American Jews supported the war effort and served in all branches of the armed forces, there was an unintended downside for the Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. It was easier for American Jews to get aid to their suffering co-religionists when the United States was a “neutral.” Once it joined the Allied side, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) it would be much more difficult to get help to those living in the war torn areas under the control of these nations.


1918: One day after his death on the Western Front, a letter written by poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg which had been written three days earlier arrives in London. In the letter he describes life in the trenches.


1921: Professor Albert Einstein held a press conference aboard the steamship Rotterdam today in New York Harbor. During the conference Einstein talked about his Theory of Relativity and his support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.


1923(16th of Nisan, 5653): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer


1922: “Two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying 4 "Ahuza" members, 3 laborers and 2 armed watchmen. After a 5 hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Ra'anana, a city in the heart of the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel with a population of 68,300, as of 2009.”


1925: According to a cable message that was made public today by Judge Jacob S. Stahl, President of the American Palestine Line steamship company, the SS President Arthur has arrived in Haifa. The liner with 500 prominent American Jews from all parts of the United States sailed on March 12 on her maiden voyage to inaugurate a regular service between New York and the Holy Land.


1925: At “the groundbreaking ceremony of the Hebrew University on April 2, 1925 Edmund Landau lectured in Hebrew on the topic Solved and unsolved problems in elementary number theory.


1925: The Vatucan’s Holy Office published a decree saying that the Catholic Church, whatever its other views on Jew maybe, “condemns hatred against the people elected by God, a hatred that today is vulgarly called anti-Semitism.” (For more see Under His Very Windows by Susan Zucotti)


1928: Birthdate of actress Rita Gam who was the wife of director Sidney Lumet and publisher Thomas Guinzberg (not at the same time) and the mother of producer Kate Guinzburg


1928: In Paris Olga (nee Bessman) and Joseph Ginsburg gave birth to Lucien Ginsburg who gained fame as Serge Gainsbourg, a poet, singer, songwriter, actor, director and finally controversial guest on French television talks shows.


1929: The rabbinical commencement exercises of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College, the first in three years and the first in the new building of the institution, were held today. Dr. Bernard Revel delivered an address in which he warned of the dangers of “religious illiteracy and urged that synagogues become centers of faith. Among those receiving diplomas were forty-one newly minted rabbis and 45 teachers.”


1930: Isaac Isaacs completes his service as Puisine Justice of the High Court of Australia and begins serving as the as Chief Justice of Australia.


1930: Haile Selassie is proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia. Part of his title included the honorific “Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah” which is tied to the contention that the Ethiopian rulers traced their origin to a relationship between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. During World War II, Orde Wingate would aid the king in his fight against the Italians. This is the same Orde Wingate who was stationed in Palestine before World War II. He was one of the few British officers who was supportive of the efforts of the Jews to defend themselves against the Arab who were attacking them. Wingate reportedly provided training for the Zionists in basic military tactics and weapons usage.


1931(15thof Nisan, 5691): Pesach


1931: U.S. premiere of “Skippy” directed by Norman Taurog who won an Academy Award, with a script co-authored by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sam Mintz.


1931: As Jews gathered to observe the second Passover of the Great Depression Rabbis focused their holiday talks on the worsening economic conditions of the day and the need for reform. Sermons mixed holiday motifs and symbolism with the rise in unemployment and deteriorating social conditions. Using the Ten Plagues as his point of departure Rabbi Rosenblum of Temple Israel “declared that the unsettled economic condition of the world was the greatest plague of our era and that the leaders of government and business were responsible for the chaos and misery. Capitalism seems to be a Pharaoh…If Pharaoh listens he will not suffer ten plagues. If he does not, the very first plague will yet come to pass. It will be a revolution and blood.” At Temple Rodeph Shalom, Rabbi Newman “said that Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, commemorated the release of the Israelites not only from political bondage but economic enslavement as well.” Rabbi Samuel Schulman broadened the scope a bit by pointing out the “power of religion to free or enslave man and emphasizing that real freedom required economic freedom which would allow for just and equal opportunity for every individual to use his powers in accordance with his ability and to receive just rewards.” (Sounds a bit like Marx and Moses meeting on New York’s fashionable east side.) But it was left to Rabbi Jonah Wise preaching at New York’s Central Synagogue to pull all elements of religion including Christianity together with the great crisis facing the nation. “Men are trained by loyalties to country, church and self to refuse to share life with foreigners, non-conformists and competitors. We shall never have security and morality until we learn to live at peace. We are making occasional breaches in the Chinese wall of creeds, tariffs and prejudices. Passover and Easter are supposed to be feasts of freedom and salvation. They are farces in the face of humanity starved in the presence of plenty and condemned to hatreds in fact while applauding love in theory.”


1934:Birthdate of Paul Joseph Cohen famed mathematician who developed a technique he called “forcing.” He won the Fields Medal in 1966.


1935: In Tel Aviv, the second Maccabiah Games opened “before 40,000 spectators at the Maccabiah Stadium. The German contingent marched flagless amid the fluttering colors of the other teams entering the venue. The American team including Janice Lifson, Doris Kelm and Lillian Copeland, placed “fourth in the women’s 100-yard relay final, the first of the swimming events.


1936: In an article entitled “Tel Aviv Prepares Its Greatest Fair” Joseph M. Levy describes plan for the upcoming Levant Fair slated to open at the end of this month.


1936: Birthdate of Shaul Paul Ladany, the Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ben Gurion University and two-time Olympian who survived Bergen-Belson and the 1972 Munich Massacre.



1937(21st of Nisan, 5697): Nathan Birnbaum passed away. Born in Vienna in 1864, Birnbaum coined the terms Zionists and Zionism in 1890. He was active with Herzl in the First Zionist Congress. However, he later drifted away from the movement becoming more concerned with a renaissance in Jewish culture and traditional Judaism. He left Germany after Hitler came to power and moved to the Netherlands where he continued his writings.


1937: In Albania, the Jewish community was granted official recognition by the government. The largest Jewish populations were located in Kavaje and Vlora. Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of who were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.


1941: Hungarian Premier Count Pál Telecki committed suicide rather than collaborate with Germany. This is only one small chapter in the complex story of Hungary’s involvement in World War II. For much of the war, Hungary’s Jewish population would remain comparatively untouched by the raging Holocaust. Only in the final year of the war would the final solution come to this eastern European state.


1942: Birthdate of Larry Selman whose life would captured in documentary “The Collector of Bedford Street.” (As reported by Paul Vitello)



1943:At the Thirty-eighth Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which opened its three-day meeting in the Hotel New Yorker today,speakers declared that only through the creation of an international structure of mutual responsibility will the world obtain a lasting post-war peace period.


1944: Today, 90 Jews who were captured by the Nazis at Chalcis, a port on the Greek island of Euboea are shipped to Auschwitz.


1944: In Haifa, British police discovered a cache of arms belonging to the Stern Gang following a bombing which caused the death of a Jewish constable and wounded a British policeman.


1944: At night, British authorities arrested more than sixty individuals many of whom were reported to be “members of the Jewish revisionist party known as the New Zionist Organization.”


1945: In a letter to Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Peter Bergson provides a description of the efforts of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation (H.C.N.L.) to save the Jews of Europe and create a Jewish state.


1948: U.S. premiere of “B.F.’s Daughter” produced by Edwin H. Knopf and filmed by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.


1948: British Forces arrive at the air field south of Beit Darass looking for arms that had been delivered to the Jews. They found nothing since the Jews had hidden the weapons in the surrounding collective settlements.


1950(15th of Nisan, 5710): First Day of Pesach


1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset passed the Nationality Act which was expected to confer automatic Israeli citizenship on all Jewish residents, and some of the non-Jews, on July 14, 1952. The vote was 43 to 17. The Knesset defeated, by a vote of 25 to 16, a proposal made by Herut which would require all persons holding dual citizenship to give up one nationality within two years after becoming Israeli citizens.


1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that a report from The Hague stated that the German delegation to the reparations talks left for Germany for further consultations. The Israeli delegation denied that there was any "crisis" in the talks and explained that the preliminary, informative stage of deliberations drew to a close, and a formula for further talks had been agreed upon. The delegation hoped that this would allow for good progress in the further discussions and actual negotiations. A small letter bomb, containing 40 grams of modern explosives, was sent to the leader of the German reparations delegation at The Hague. It failed to explode when opened in the mail room of the German Embassy.


1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF had completed "Operation Ma’barot," the winter-long assistance extended by various army units to new immigrants in their camps.


1954: In Hong Kong, a Centenary Dinner was held celebrating the 100 anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps which from 1932 through 1942 included Company H or “The Jewish Company.”



 1958: Release date for “The Young Lions,” the cinematic treatment of Irwin Shaw’s novel of the same named produced by Al Lichtman one of the main protagonist of which is “Noah Ackerman”


1962:Frieda Caplan opened her specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market.


1965: Hochhuth’s play "Stellvertreter" was banned in Italy. In English, the play is called "The Deputy." It was a sensation at the time for its dramatic portrayal of the negative role Pope Pious XII played during the Holocaust in terms of saving the Jews from the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis.


1970: An Israeli Phantom jet piloted by Pini Nahmani was shot down over a Damascus suburb. Nahmani was imprisoned in the al-Mazza Prison in Damascus.


1972: Actor Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist in the early 1950s during the Red Scare.


1973(29thof Adar II, 5733): Seventy-four year old Jascha Horenstein, a native of Kiev who became a leading American conductor passed away today

1978: Birthdate of Nicholas Evan “Nick” Berg “the American freelance repairman” who was beheaded by Islamist terrorists in Iraq who were so proud of the act that they put the video on the internet.



1979: Menachem Begin visited Cairo, Egypt. The historic visit followed the historic peace treaty that Begin and Sadat had signed. Begin was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Egypt.


1982:Jewish militants opposing Israel's withdrawal from Sinai tried to reach the area by boat today after the army closed it to unauthorized civilians and set up roadblocks


1987(3rd of Nisan, 5747): Famed drummer and orchestra leader Buddy Rich passed away at the age of 69. According to some sources, only Rich’s father was Jewish. However, on the official Buddy Rich Website, Rich’s religion is listed as Jewish



 


1987:Theater of the Riverside Church offered a rare look at Israeli Experimentalist Theater and dance when it presented Tmu-Na today. The Tel-Aviv group, founded in 1982 by Nava Zukerman, takes its name from the Hebrew word for moving pictures. And that, essentially, is what this good-looking company presents on stage. But the work Tmu-Na chose for this New York debut engagement is a disappointing one. ''Five Screams,'' loosely based on ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' by Milan Kundera, sets a group of men and women on a journey through five ''screams'' that program notes identify as ''signals of disagreement with the absurdity of existence.'' The 90-minute work, which is set to snatches of music composed by everyone from Laurie Anderson to Johann Strauss, opens with ''The Journey'' and moves on to ''Anticipation.''''Obedience and Rebellion'' is next, then ''The Kitsch: The Total Acceptance of Existence.''''Five Screams'' ends with ''Resignation.'' There is nothing so mystifying, often, as elucidating program copy.What we actually see are somber encounters and separations that form a kind of cool if anguished ritual of surviving. There are moments when the performers' individual qualities shine through and give it all a fleeting poignancy or element of surprise. But there is something very familiar in the scattered chairs, the women's flowing hair and drab dresses, the men's casual and inexplicable brutality and the air of unspecified angst that hangs over ''Five Screams.'' Tmu-Na has clearly been influenced by Pina Bausch, who has had great success in Israel.This is diluted Bausch, however, and it says little about the lives and gifts of the performers who helped to create ''Five Screams,'' which was adapted and directed by Ms. Zukerman and Koby Meydan. The performers are Amnon Doyeb, Netta Moran, Phina Bradt, Rama Ben-Zvi, Yael Bechor, Mr. Meydan, Yael Sagi and Yossi Pershitz. ''Five Screams'' will be performed again tonight and tomorrow night at Riverside, 120th Street and Riverside Drive.


1988(15 of Nisan, 5748): Pesach


1989(26th of Adar II, 5749): Jack Ruby Lindo whose tombstone in the Anglican cemetery in Ocho Rio has a “large six-pointed Star of David” passed away today.



1992: Bernard Kouchner began serving as Minister of Health of France.


1992: Jack Lang completed his second term as Culture Minister of France.


1995: Two members of Hamas blew themselves up in Gaza City while preparing for an attack on Israel.


1995: In “Central Synagogue; A $500,000 Restoration of an 1872 Masterwork,” published today Christopher Gray traces the history of Central Synagogue, one of the most spectacular houses of worship in New York City, is a rare surviving example of early Victorian religious architecture. Construction sheds are now going up for a $500,000 restoration of the building's 1872 stone exterior. Central Synagogue, which was originally called Ahawath Chesed, was founded in 1846 by immigrants from Prague and the nearby regions of what was then Bohemia.


1998:”Israel Offers Pullout if Lebanon Bars Raids” published today described the conditions under which Israel will leave its neighbor to the north.



2000:The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “I Will Bear Witness:A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945by Victor Klemperer; translated by Martin Chalmers and the recently released paperback edition of “Playing for Keeps:Michael Jordan and the World He Made”by David Halberstam


2000:Columbia University and the Jewish Campus Life Fund celebrates the dedication and cornerstone-laying, of the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, a new $11.5 million building that fulfills the long-held goal of creating a permanent home for Columbia's vibrant and diverse Jewish student community. The building is named for the family of Robert K. Kraft, a 1963 graduate of Columbia College and University Trustee since 1991. His lead gift in 1993 launched the building campaign for the Center.


2001: Scott Schoeneweis was awarded the honor of being the Angels' opening day starter today (his first such assignment) and he pitched effectively, yielding 3 runs and 8 hits in 7 innings; but Anaheim lost to Texas, 3-2.


2001: Pitcher Tony Cogan played in his first major league game as a player with the Kansas City Royals.


2002: As part of Operation Defensive Shield, the IDF entered the booby-trapped camp at Jenin and “surrounded the headquarters of the Preventive Security Force in nearby Beitunia.”


2002: Israeli forces surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after 200 Palestinian terrorists took refuge inside. Instead of storming the church, the IDF surrounded the building a laid siege to the armed killers.


2002: Frieda Caplan's specialty produce company, Frieda's Inc., which has introduced a wide array of exotic produce to the American market, celebrated forty years in business.


2003: Milwaukee Brewers Pitcher Matt Ford appears in his first major league baseball game.


2005: The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “the search for a new rabbi for Temple Judah has ended with the hiring of Rabbi Aaron Sherman.” Rabbi Sherman and his wife Stephanie Alexander recently purchased a home in Cedar Rapids. A graduate of Brown University, Rabbi Sherman has a Masters in Hebrew Letters and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2000.


2006: Haaretz reported that Poland is going to probe 1940s murder after Israeli meets alleged killer.In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death. Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result. Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive. With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect,Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel. Researchers from Poland's Institute for National Commemoration (IPN) are slated to meet with Lerner tomorrow and to be present for the exhumation of the victims' remains, if found, at the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. The eight victims are Gitl and her five children (Miriam, 22; Hannah, 20; David, 17; Zvi, 15; and Haim, 13) and two young Jewish men known only by their surnames: Zefrin and Pomerantz. They were stabbed to death at their hideout in the small village of Pashgalini, near the family's hometown of Komarovka in eastern Poland, not far from the city Lublin. The family arrived at the hideout in April 1943, after a Polish farmer named Jan Sadovski found it for them. While the family was in hiding, Lerner's father, Yitzhak, was living in Warsaw under an assumed identity. He heard of his family's murder from a Polish friend who lived in the village. In November 1944, after the Red Army had conquered the area from the Germans, Lerner went to the village to investigate. His testimony, preserved in the Jewish archives in Warsaw, states that the murder was perpetrated by Sadovski and four other farmers - one of them being Joseph Radchuk. The testimony stated that the murder had been committed to steal the Lerner family's possessions and those of their two friends, who were wealthy people. Lerner Sr. met with Radchuk, who said he had witnessed the murder and admitted taking many of the family's possessions. Lerner Sr. filed several complaints with the Soviet authorities, but later learned that aside from Sadovski, who was tried and executed, nothing was done to his accomplices. After the war Lerner Sr. fled to Sweden and from there immigrated to Israel. He remarried, to a Holocaust survivor from a neighboring town in Poland and lived with her in Moshav Hibbat Zion. Lerner began investigating his family's tragedy in July 2003, when he accompanied his daughter's school trip to Poland and tracked down his father's testimony at the archives in Warsaw. On returning to Israel, Lerner decided to commemorate his father's life with a book and a documentary film, and headed back to Poland. He kept Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, and his deputy, Yosef Levy, apprised of all his movements there. He also made contact with the local Jewish community and Monica Kravchuk, chair of the Jewish heritage foundation in Poland. Research led to the home of the Ozdovski family, on whose land the Lerners' hideout had been located. The family, whose father apparently participated in the murder, said that the bodies were initially buried near the hideout, but were moved a year later to an unknown location because neighbors complained the place had become haunted. Lerner says that during an unannounced visit to the family's home, he spotted a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to his family and was mentioned in his father's testimony. Last October the researchers located Radchuk, who showed them where the bodies were reburied at the edge of the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. If the skeletons are found there, they will be flown to Israel on Tuesday and the funeral will take place in Hibbat Zion at the end of the week.


2006: Jaclyn Leibson Mintz, daughter of Dale Mintz, the national director of women’s health and advocacy for Hadassah and editor of “The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness” and Stephen A. Mintz were married in a ceremony officiated at by Rabbi A. Rothman.


2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Fair Trade For All: How Trade Can Promote Development” by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton and the recently released paperback edition of “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel by Rebecca Goldstein.”


2007: “Nightrise” the third book in The Power of Five series, by Anthony Horowitz was released in the United Kingdom today.


2007(14thof Nisan): Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Jewish calendar


2007 (14th of Nisan): In the evening, Pesach begins with the first Seder.


2007: The New Republic Magazine featured a review of George Konrad’s autobiography, “A Guest In My Own Country: A Hungarian Life.” Konrad, like the more famous Elie Weisel, survived the Holocaust in Hungary, but spent his adult life in the land where he had faced almost certain death.


2007: Erev Pesach, Newsweek Magazine featured an article entitled “American Jews: The List—Choosing the Chosen” in which three American Jewish multi-millionaires list the top fifty rabbis in the United States. Following the criteria used by this trio, the Rabbis we read about Bnei Berak in the Haggadah would not have made the list.


2007: Chicago real estate billionaire Sam Zell “has won the auction for the Tribune Co.” The 65 year old native of Highland Park, Illinois has bought the company whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune.


2008: In Vancouver, B.C., the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival presents a screening of “Jewish Luck.” which was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. “Based on Sholem Aleichem's series of stories featuring the character Menakhem Mendl, “Jewish Luck” revolves around the daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. Despite Jewish oppression by Tsarist Russia, Menakhem Mendl continues to pursue his dreams and his continued persistence transforms him from schlemiel to hero as the film uncovers the tragic underpinnings of Sholem Aleichem's comic tales. Notes Village Voice critic Georgia Brown, "The movie's best inter-title translated from Isaac Babel's Russian: `What can you do when there is nothing to do?'" A dramatized version of the Menkhem Mendl stories was first staged by the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, under the direction of Alexander Granovsky, who later made this silent film. “Jewish Luck” features some of the finest artistic talents of Soviet Jewry during this period. It has been speculated that the cinematography done by Eduard Tissé inspired the filming of particular scenes in one of his later projects, Sergei Eisenstein's “The Battleship Potemkin.” The original Russian inter-titles were written by Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who later became a victim of the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s.”


2009: Professor Amy-Jill Levine, of Vanderbilt University, delivers an address at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, entitled “Misunderstanding Judaism/Misunderstanding Jesus.”


2009(8th of Nisan, 5769): A terrorist infiltrated Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank and killed Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli boy, by striking him in the head with an axe. The terrorist also attacked a 7-year-old boy with the axe, hitting and wounding him in the head. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and is in moderate condition. Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and an organization calling itself the Imad Mughniyeh Group claimed responsibility for the attack, although this has not been confirmed.


2009: Today in an interview to the Radio Liberty Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg denounced the FSB as an institution harmful to Russia and the ongoing expansion of its authority as a return to Stalinism


2010: Krista Tippe, host of American Public Media's Speaking of Faith and author of, Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, is scheduled to appear with Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More are scheduled , to get together for a dialogue about the role of faith in their lives at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.


2010: “Musical Shabbat” is scheduled to return to Friday Night Services at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


2011:Professor Yosef Shiloh, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School, the first Israeli to receive the prestigious Clowes Award presented by the American Association for Cancer Research is scheduled to be honored at the AACR Annual Meeting that opens today in Orlando, Florida. The prize includes a $10,000 grant, a commemorative plaque, and funding to attend this prestigious event.


2011:Former Israel Olympian, Shaul Landry, a surviving member of the 1972 Munich delegation, is scheduled to celebrate his 75th birthday today by walking his age in kilometers.http://www.jpost.com/Sports/Article.aspx?id=212351


2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Ninety-two year old Morris Parloff, a member of the "Ritchie Boys," a German-speaking unit of the U.S. Army that did intelligence work and psychological warfare in World War II, and who later became a psychotherapist, researcher and an administrator at the National Institute of Mental Health, passed away today. Parloff was among the surviving members of the Ritchie Boys featured in a 2004 documentary.


 



2011(27thof Adar II, 5771): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Traditional Saturday Morning Minyan celebrated Shabbat Ha-Chodesh.


2011(27thof Adar): Yahrzeit of Zedekiah “the last king of the royal house of David to reign in the Holy Land. He ascended the throne in 434 BCE, after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (to whom the kingdom of Judah was then subject) exiled King Jeconiah (Zedekiah's nephew) to Babylonia.In 425 BCE Zedekiah rebelled against Babylonian rule, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem (in Tevet 10 of that year); in the summer of 423 BCE the walls of Jerusalem were penetrated, the city conquered, the (first) Holy Temple destroyed, and the people of Judah exiled to Babylonia. Zedekiah tried escaping through a tunnel leading out of the city, but was captured; his sons were killed before his eyes, and then he was blinded. Zedekiah languished in the royal dungeon in Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar's death in 397 BCE; Evil Meroduch -- Nebuchadnezzar's son and successor -- freed him (and his nephew Jeconiah)” today. Ironically, Zedikiah died on the same day on which he was freed.


2011: “The Matchmaker” is scheduled to be shown at the West Chester Jewish Film Festival.


2011:Early this morning, in the southern town of Khan Yunis, IAF aircraft bombed a car carrying four senior Hamas operatives who, according to Israel, were on their way to Sinai with plans to kidnap or attack Israelis vacationing on the peninsula.


2011: The Israeli Counter-Terror Bureau urged Israelis today to leave the Sinai Peninsula immediately, after revealing that Israeli intelligence agencies had obtained concrete information of plans by terrorists to kidnap or attack Israeli nationals vacationing there over the upcoming Pesach holiday. The bureau said that some terrorists were already in the Sinai.Israel is also concerned about reports of the Egyptian police abandoning Sinai in the face of growing Beduin violence and the territory turning into a breeding ground for Global Jihad. The Counter-Terror Bureau noted today that the terror cell planning the attacks against Israelis in Sinai was using local Beduin to help carry out the attacks.


2011:Naama Shafir, a Sabbath-observing Israeli, scored a career-high 40 points to power the University of Toledo women's basketball team to the school's first national postseason championship in any sport. Shafir hit 13 of 27 shots as the host Rockets defeated the University of Southern California, 76-68 today for the Women's NIT title. The victory also marked the first women's national championship for a Mid-American Conference team in any sport. Shafir, a 5-7 junior guard from the small northern Israeli town of Hoshaya, also sank 13 of 18 free throws in the game. Following the victory on Saturday afternoon, Shafir walked home and held off interviews until long after the conclusion of Shabbat. Shafir is believed to be the first female Orthodox Jew to be awarded a Division I athletic scholarship. She led the Rockets this season with averages of 15.3 points and 5 assists per game. She had been courted by Boston University and Seton Hall before enrolling at Toledo. Getting the OK to play in the United States was no easy layup: Shafir obtained permission from an Orthodox rabbi in Israel to play games that coincided with the Jewish Sabbath, but not to practice, according to The Associated Press. Other special measures have been enacted to accommodate Shafir’s Sabbath observance: For road games, she checks into a hotel within walking distance of the host arena with a coaching staff assistant, bringing with her frozen kosher meals from Detroit. (As reported by JTA)


2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old “Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism” passed away today at his home in Iowa City, Iowa. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2012(11th of Nisan, 5772): Ninety-year old Borscht Belt tumbler Lou Goldstein passed away today. (As reported by Joseph Berger)



2012:Hillel C. Neuer and Bari Weiss are scheduled to discuss “From Eleanor Roosevelt to Qaddafi: An Insider's Account of Human Rights at the UN” at the 92nd Street Y.


2012: “Kosher deli in England a Titanic survivor’s legacy” published today tells the story of restaurant started almost a century ago by a Jewish survivor of the aquatic disaster.



2013(22nd of Nisan, 5773): Final Day of Pesach


2013: Elem, a non-profit organization for runaway homeless and neglected Israeli and Arab youth in distress is scheduled to host an evening of dinner and drinks to support Israeli Jewish and Arab Youth at Risk prepared by some of New York’s finest chefs.


2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon toured the Golan Heights this afternoon, and vowed that Israel would prevent the proliferation of weapons "that could threaten us in the future" to radical elements in Syria



2013:Israel launched its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip today since the Egyptian-mediated truce ended November’s eight-day bout of fighting. The airstrike came in response to the firing of a projectile from Gaza, which had exploded in an open area of southern Israel’s Eshkol region.  Israel had not responded to a previous attack that came while President Obama was visiting the region in March.


 2013: Following the shots fired from Syrian territory into the Golan Heights today, IDF tanks returned fire at a Syrian military target across the border, successful destroying whatever had been doing the shooting.


2014: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to present “Mah Nishtanah: Posing New Questions, Telling New Stories – An evening of inspiring Passover learning.”


2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Chai Fantasy” – a panel discussion about fantasy literature and Judaism.


2014(2ndof Nisan, 5774): Seventy-eight year old Sandy “Grossman, who won eight Emmys, directed broadcasts of 10 Super Bowls, 18 N.B.A. finals, 5 Stanley Cup finals and Olympic hockey” passed away today.



2014: Pierre Moscovici completed his service as Minister of Finance for France.


2015: Alex Schiffman Shilo is scheduled to speak today the “First Person 2015 Series” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015: WQXR is scheduled to broadcast “A Musical Fest for Passover with Itzhak Perlman.



 


 


 


 

This Day, April 3, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 3


309 B.C.E.: Traditional date for the start of the Seleucid Dynasty. The Seleucid dynasty was one of the dynasties founded after the death of Alexander the Great. Its territory included Syria and Babylonia. In 198 B.C.E. the Seleucids took control of Palestine from the Egyptian based Ptolemy dynasty. This change in dynastic role would lead to the uprising thirty years later that we celebrate as part of the Chanukah Story.


33: According to some scholars, the actual date when a Jewish carpenter was crucified by the Romans for inciting rebellion. 


1287: Honorius IV, the Pope who played a key role in the expulsion of the Jews from England passed away. “In November 1286 Pope Honorius wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, reaffirming the decision of the Lateran Councils. He enlarged on the evils of relations between Christians and Jews and warned of the pernicious consequences of the study of the Jews' Talmud. The King joined in the dialogue and condemnation by reviving the crimes of ritual murder. Jewish writers use the word "allegation" with regard to ritual murder with boring regularity.”


1544: Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire confirmed the privileges of Austrian Jews. The Emperor was anti-Jewish and a persecutor of the Marranos. But he was convinced by Josel of Rosheim to condemn the accusations of ritual murder. The fate of Jews under Charles appeared to have been a matter of geography. In 1541 he expelled the Jews from Naples and Flanders he instituted the Inquisition in Portugal in 1543. But in his Germanic holdings, Charles found the Jews to be useful and confirmed their rights in Augsburg, Speyer and Regensburg as well as Austria. As we will see when we study the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, Charles treatment of the Jews must be viewed in terms of the clash between the Catholics and the Protestants and not just in terms of Jews versus Christians.


1546(21st of Nisan, 5306): “Rabbi Jacob Berab, leader of a movement to restore the ancient rite of semichah died today at the age of seventy-two.” (As reported by Abraham Bloch)

1637(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph ben Phinnehas Haan of Cracow author of Yosef Ometz passed away today.


1637(9th of Nisan): Rabbi Yosef Hahn, author of “Yosef Ometz”, passed away.


1673(17th of Nisan): Rabbi Reuben Hoeshke Katz of Prague passed away

1681(15th of Nisan): Rabbi Abraham Kalmansk of Lemberg, author of “Eshel Avraham” passed away


1764: Meyer Hard, one of the founders of Easton, PA took the oath of allegiance to the colonial government today


1790(19th of Nisan, 5550): Ephraim Moses Kuh, the nephew of Veitel Ephraim, Frederick the Great’s jeweler, whose poetry “vividly expresses his patriotism and his reverence for Frederick the Great; but also expresses his resentment at the bad treatment of Jews in Germany and scorn at his own and others' failures and weaknesses” passed away today in his hometown of Breslau.


1818: In Silesia, Schiee Jaffé and his wife gave birth to Samuel Jaffé


1825(16th of Nisan, 5585): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer


1834: Nathan Baeck, a Rabbi in Kromau, Moravia and his wife gave birth to Rabbi Samuel Baeck the father of Leo Baeck.


1844: A newspaper report states that a census was conducted at Constantinople and there were 900,000 people living in the city including 100,000 Jews.


1870:Fifty-one year old Philipp Jaffé, “one of the most important German medievalists of the 19th century” who “was appointed assistant professor of history at Humboldt University of Berlin” in 1862 and who converted to Christianity in 1868 passed away today.


1870: “Reformed Judaism: Advanced ideas in the Ancient Religion--Doctrines and Tenets of the Reformers--The New Temples in Brooklyn” published today reports on the growth of the Reform movement. It describes the activities of New York’s well-established Temple Emanuel including its purchase of the cemetery at Cypress Hill as well as the birth of Temple Israel, Brooklyn’s first Reform congregation. The Temple is led by Raphael Lewin who had served as Rabbi for the Reform Temple in Savannah, Georgia. The article also discusses the doctrines of Reform Judaism based on Lewin’s book, “What is Judaism; Or a Few Words to the Jews.


1871: The New York Times reported that “the Jewish people of Newark are preparing for the celebration of the Feast of Passover, which begins on the 6th of April and last eight days It is calculated that during the feast more than 15,000 pounds of unleavened bread will be consumed.”


1873(6th of Nisan, 5633): Lewin Aron (`Libesch') Pinner passed away today.


1880(22nd of Nisan, 5640: 8th day of Pesach


1880: Birthdate of Austrian philosopher and author Otto Weininger


1882(14th of Nisan, 5642): The New York Times reported that “the Jewish festival of ‘Pesach,’ or the Passover, commences at sundown this evening and will continue for eight days…The festival was instituted to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the Children of Israel from the bondage to which they had been subjected in Egypt.”


1884(8th of Nisan, 5644): Less than a month before his 72nd birthday Ignaz Karunda, the son and grandson of Czech second-hand book dealers who became a successful writer and Austrian parliamentarian passed away today in Vienna.


1884: German painter Gustave Karl Ludwig Richter whose works included a portrait of his wife Cornelie Meyerbeer, daughter of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and their son passed away.


1890: It was reported today that “Count Dleianoff, Minister of Public Instruction, has refused to receive the petition recently prepared by” university students “asking for…the unrestricted admission of Jews.”


1890(13th of Nisan): Aron Arnaud, chief rabbi of Strasbourg, Alsace, author of “Prieres d’un Coeur Israelite passed away”


1890(13th of Nisan, 5650): On the day before Jews are scheduled sit down to their Seders on the first night of Passover, hundreds of people received free meat today thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff. While most of the recipients were poor Polish Jews, several poor gentiles also lined up to get the free meat. Mrs. Rosendorff said she did not care because poverty knows no religious boundaries.


1892: It was reported today that while Jewish refugees have been prevented from crossing the border between Russia and German, 5,000 Russian Christians have been allowed to cross into Germany in the last two weeks.


1892: It was reported today that there “there is a growing belief that” Russian Jewish exiles are not “desirable as immigrants” to United States because “many of the immigrants have been shown to accept a permanent state of dependence and pauperism as a consequence of the immediate relief and help that were…extended to them.” (Editor’s Note – For those following the immigration debate in the United States, these comments have an eerily familiar ring; the only change is in the name of the immigrant group)


1892: It was reported today that “the opinion of Baron Hirsch that the proportion of the Hebrew population of the United States was already as great as was desirable will be shared by most thoughtful Americans, Hebrews or otherwise.  In truth the only solution of the problem raised by the persecution of the Russian Jews is that of Baron Hirsch of a Hebrew colony which might ultimately become a Hebrew state.


1893: Birthdate of actor Leslie Howard. Yes, the blue-eyed blond who played the quintessential Southern gentlemen Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind was Jewish. Lelies Steinner was born in England, the son of a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, and Lilian Blumberg daughter of a barrister named Charles Blumberg. The middle class Blumbergs did not approve of the marriage. However, they mellowed after the birth of young Leslie who was an officer in the cavalry during World War I. After the war, Steiner, now Howard built a career on the stage and later in films. He changed his name to avoid ant-Semitism, a not uncommon need among theatrical people of the time. Howard's death in June of 1943 is still shrouded in mystery. German fighters shot down the civilian plane, which was carrying him from neutral Portugal back to England. According to some, Howard was a British spy and the target of the attack. The mystery may be solved until 2025 when papers concerning the matter will finally be declassified


1895: In Albany, state Senator Wolf introduced a bill “empowering the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York to convey certain property transferred to the society by the city.”


1896: Among the institutions named to receive bequests from the late Charles S. Friedlander are Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, $1,600; Society of Shevet Juda, $600; Hospital of Beth Israel, $600; Mount Sinai Hospital, $600; Hebrew Technical Institute, $600; Ladies Deborah Nursery Sanitarium for Hebrew Children, $600; Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, $600 and the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, $600.


1896: In describing the virtues of Rabbi Aaron Wise who was buried yesterday, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil said “The spirit of his words cannot die.  The influence of the teacher has no limits as to time or space.”


1897: It was said today that Jewish philanthropist and Republican politician Edward Lauterbach “would have been pleased if Colonel George Bliss had been selected by the Governor” to serve as a member of the State Board of Charities.


1897: Rabbi Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El delivered an address on ‘The Talmud’ “at a meeting of the Alumni Association of the Hebrew Technical Institute.”


1898: Birthdate of George Jessel, the self- proclaimed toastmaster general. Jessel gained early fame as the star in the Broadway production of the Jazz Singer. The movie version was the first talking motion picture but it starred Al Jolson. As he aged and survived his contemporaries, Jessel became famous for his eulogies. During the Viet Nam War, he "wrapped himself in the flag" going so far as to equate the New York Times with Pravda and provoking the normally mild-mannered Ed Neuman to literally pull the plug on an interview on a live broadcast. Jessel died in 1981.


1898: The New York Times published a lengthy, laudatory article about Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise on the 90th anniversary of his birth.


1899: It was reported today that Jesse Lewisohn had presented a check for one thousand dollars to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Asylum in memory of his late brother Samuel.


1899: “Judaism and Christianity” published today contain the views of Dr. John Hall on the relationship of these two faiths including that “it would be almost impossible for us to understand” the Epistle to the Hebrews” unless we had the books of Leviticus to refer to.”


1899: “The third of the series of model lessons conducted by Isaac C. Noot, Principal of the Hebrew Schools of New York will be held this afternoon in the vestry of Temple Beth-El.”


1900: Birthdate of Shelomo Dov Goitein, “a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages.


1904(6th of Nisan, 5663): Seventy-five year old Moses Ha-Kohen Reicherson, the Polish born Hebrew grammarian and teacher who moved to New York in 1890 passed away today leaving behind a number of unpublished works including commentaries on the Pentateuch, on the books of Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Psalms, Job, and Proverbs; and a prayer-book, "Tefillah le-Mosheh."


1904: A thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her mother arrived at the White House with a supply of Matzoth. While her mother waited in anteroom, the young girl went into the President’s office and presented the unleavened bread to a thankful Theodore Roosevelt. The President thanked the girl for the gift and complimented her on her tact and courtesy.


1914: Henry Berlin, Chairman of the Arrangements Committee for the Passover celebrations to be held in this city under the auspices of the Jewish Soldiers and Sailors Passover Committee, reported today that with Capt. Lewis Landes of the committee he had called on Commander Moses of the United States battleship Texas and Commander Jackson of the United States battleship North Dakota. They extended invitations to attend the Passover dinner at Tuexedo Hall on April following the regular Passover services. The commanders of the two battleships promised to lend their aid in making the celebrations a success.


1916: Birthdate of Scottish psychologist, economist, advisor to developing countries and author of an autobiographical trilogy Ralph Glasser.

1920(15th of Nisan, 5680): First Pesach of “the roaring twenties”


1921: Birthdate of David Arguete, the native of Aydin, Turkey who gained fame as Turkish “composer, lyricist and guitarist” Dario Moreno who was buried in Holon, Israel when he died suddenly in December, 1968.


1922: Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s anti-Semitism would prove to be stronger than his sense of brotherhood for his fellow Socialist brethren. From his attacks on Trotsky to the Doctors’ Plot that came at the end of his life, Stalin displayed an attitude towards the Jewish people that would have made the Czars proud.


1924: Birthdate of Marlon Brando. See below for Louis Kemp’s account of attending a Seder with the great American method actor.

1925: In Nuremberg, a member of a minor German political group, Julius Streicher, gave a speech calling for the annihilation of the Jews. Eight years leader he would join his mentor Adolf Hitler in making this seeming empty threat a reality.


1930: Birthdate of Max Frankel. “Max Frankel is one of America’s preeminent journalists. He worked for The New York Times for fifty years, rising from college correspondent to reporter, Washington bureau chief, editorial page editor, and ultimately executive editor 1986—1994. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 and is the author of a nationally bestselling memoir, “The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times.” He lives in New York City.


1933: In the wake of the Reichstag Fire, Time published “Germany: Hitler Enabled.”


Before Berlin's Kroll Opera House swarmed a crowd of young Nazis last week. "Give us the Enabling Act!" they chanted, "give us the Enabling Act or there will be another fire!" The Reichstag was meeting in the Opera House because the central hall of the Reichstag building had been gutted by incendiary fire, a fire that despite popular murmurings the Nazis have persistently blamed on Communists. Because of the fire every Communist deputy was in jail. So the young Nazis' cry was easily answered : The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act 441-94. Adolf Hitler became Dictator of Germany for four years to come. Socialists did not let the bill go through without one word of protest. Cried Deputy Otto Wels: "Take our liberty, take our lives, but leave us our honor! If you really want social reconstruction you would need no such law as this." In full Nazi uniform Chancellor Hitler popped from his seat, his little mustache twitching with excitement. "You're too late!" he roared. "We don't need you any longer in molding the fate of the nation!" Not a few U. S. editors, rapidly scanning the Enabling Act for early editions, headlined their stories END OF THE REPUBLIC. Well they might, for the Enabling Act contained the following provisions


1) Emergency decrees no longer need be signed by President von Hindenburg.Chancellor Hitler will proclaim them on the authority of his own Cabinet.


2) Emergency laws need the approval of neither the Reichstag nor the Reichsrat (Federal Council of States). The right of popular referendum on them, expressed in the Weimar Constitution, is specifically set aside.


3) Treaties with foreign powers no longer need Reichstag or Reichsrat approval.


4) The Cabinet can decree the annual budget and borrow money on its own authority.


5) Any law proclaimed by the Chancellor may deviate from the Constitution, becomes effective 24 hours after its publication in the Federal Gazette.


Since the rights of free speech, public assembly and inviolability of the home have long been suppressed, here was more power in the Chancellery than even Bismarck dreamed of, but careful investigation showed that canny old Paul von Hindenburg still held two aces up his detachable cuffs: The President still has power to dismiss any or all members of the Cabinet including Handsome Adolf himself. He still remains Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr, with sole power to proclaim martial law. The Reichswehr is not yet a Nazi organization. If told to turn Adolf Hitler out of office it could theoretically do so. Observers agreed that these two cards had been shoved up the President's sleeve by Vice Chancellor von Papen. At the week's end lean-jawed Lieut.-Colonel von Papen was fighting hard for yet another check on the Nazis: the vital post of Prussian Premier. He was holding his own at the week's end. Chancellor Hitler let it be known that the Premiership would not be definitely awarded for some time yet; possibly until after May 1. Before the vote on the Enabling Act, Chancellor Hitler read a declaration of policy to the Reichstag that was mild as buttermilk compared with his former utterances. There was the old insistence on "rooting out Communism to the last vestige" but on the other hand "the Government regards the question of monarchistic restoration as indiscussible at present." Germany was pledged to refrain from arming if other nations disarmed radically. Hitler welcomed the Mussolini-MacDonald peace projects. To the general surprise he announced that Germany "looks forward to friendly relations with Soviet Russia." Despite world protests over anti-Semitic outrages in Germany and boycott murmurings that offer grave threats to German commerce and industry (see below), German business seemed to approve the Nazi dictatorship last week. In Berlin tycoons of the Reichs Federation of Industry signed a manifesto promising the Government their fullest support. Led by chemical and brewing stocks, the Berlin Bourse continued a boom that had been three weeks under way. carrying some stocks 300% to 400%, above their crisis lows.


1933: Time magazine published “Prayers & Atrocities” which includes a description of the British reaction to the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany

1934: In the Bronx, Benjamin and Esther Hanft gave birth to actress Helen Hanft, "the Ethel Merman of off-off Broadway"


1935: At the Maccabiah in Tel Aviv, American Syd Koff finished first in the 60 meter dash and second in the broad jump. New York prize fighter Solly Hornstein won his first round test while A. Horowitz of South Africa won the 10,000 meter race.


1937(22nd of Nisan): Author and folklorist Judah Loeb Cahan passed away.

1939: Dr. Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion were greeted by cheering crowds when they returned to Tel Aviv from the Palestine Conference that had been held in London. Of the negotiations, Weizmann told the crowd, “We did not return victors, but neither were we vanquished.”


1939: In Brooklyn, Abraham and Mildred Gralnick gave birth to Jeffrey Charles Gralnick “a blunt, gravel-voiced television news executive who got his start in the days of the 15-minute, black-and-white evening newscast and went on to play leading roles in the news divisions of three major broadcast networks.” (As reported by Dennis Heveisi)


1939:Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck author of Prelude To The Past became a naturalized U.S. Citizen today.


1940: Ernst Heilmann, German jurist and political leader was murdered at Buchenwald


1942: This day's deportations from Augsburg, Germany, emptied the town of Jews, ending a Jewish presence that was established in 1212. They were deported to the Belzec death camp.


1942(16th of Nisan, 5702): The Final Solution came to Tlumacz also called Tlumach on the second day of Pesach. Tlumach was a town of about seven or eight thousand people, about a third of whom were Jewish. It was one of those places that changed hands several times including being part of the Soviet Union and Hungary. The Germans took control in 1941 and immediately killed off the leading Jews of the area. On April 3, twelve hundred Jews are taken to Belzac Extermination Camp and the remaining three thousand were placed in a ghetto. Later in the war another two thousand Jews were sent to Belzac. The Jewish community was not reconfigured after the war and is now only a page in the book of Jewish memory. Sad as this event is, it would be sadder still if we did not note their fate and remember (Yizkor) them.


1943(27th of Adar II, 5703): Actor Conrad Veidt who played Major Strasser in Casablanca passed away at the age of 50.

1943: Birthdate of British director Jonathan Lynn, a nephew of Abba Eban.


1944: As an indication that “the backbone of Jewish extremist gangs” may have been broken, British authorities suddenly lifted the rigid curfew in Palestine today.


1944: Moshe Shertok reported to Jerusalem that his negotiations with Oliver Stanley, the British Colonial Secretary had succeeded in creating a breakthrough in the search for a safe haven for Romanian Jews fleeing the Nazis. Henceforth, for an all too brief period of time, “any Jews who reached Istanbul could continue on to Palestine irrespective of Palestine Certificates and quotas in effect because of the 1939 White Paper.


1944: An internal memo of this week from the United States Government War Refugee Board states that it did understand the "attitude" of the Turkish government. On one hand it was "professing a desire to cooperate with the refugee program," while on the other it would not let the United States nor other countries use its ships to transport refugees from Romania to Turkey without formal contracts in place.


1945(20th of Nisan 5705): On the 6th day of Pesach the Fourth Armored Division and the 355th Infantry Regiment of the 89th Infantry Division, part of General George Patton's famed Third U.S. Army, liberated the first death camp, Ohrdruf or North Stalag III, a sub camp of Buchenwald, located near Weimar.


1946: In the United States, premiere of “Deadline At Dawn” directed Harold Cluman, with a script by Clifford Odets and music by Hanns Eislter.


1948: In another act of daring, a ship from Yugoslavia docked at Tel Aviv. Hidden in the ship’s cargo of potatoes and onions, were 500 rifles, 200 machine guns and a large quantity of ammunition. Jewish dock workers unloaded the vital supply of munitions and shipped them to the Haganah without being caught by the British.


1947: The HMT Ocean Vigour was damaged by a bomb planted by the Haganah’s Palyam forces while docked at the port of Famagusta. She was a British freighter which had been converted into a caged prison ship used to deport illegal Jewish immigrants who had attempted to enter the Mandate Palestine back to Europe and to prison camps in Cyprus. “The Ocean Vigour was one of 3 ships used by the British authorities in “Operation Oasis” to deport the refugees from the Exodus 1947, most of whom were Holocaust survivors, to Germany. The Haganah commander on the Ocean Vigour was Meier Schwarz. The ship carried 1,464 deportees to Port-de-Bouc near Marseilles and, when they refused to disembark there, on to Hamburg, Germany, where they were forced off by club-wielding British troops.”


1949: Israel and Jordan signed an armistice agreement. This agreement was part of the negotiations held on the island of Rhodes under the auspices of the U.N. and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dr. Ralph Bunche. The agreement left the Jordanians in control of the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank. When people speak today of Arab East Jerusalem, they are speaking of a result caused by the Arab Armies forcibly removing the ancient Jewish community from that section of the city; a condition that was in violation of the U.N. resolutions but which were made a reality by this armistice agreement. The Jordanians never honored the agreements for free, unfettered access to the Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University Campus on Mt. Scopus.


1950(16th of Nisan, 5710): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer


1950(16th of Nisan, 5710): Kurt Julian Weill, German born composer and socialist passed away in New York City.

1952: The Jerusalem Postreported on satisfactory economic talks held in Great Britain where Israel sought, in addition to the Haifa Oil Refineries¹ deliveries agreement, more trade and credits, and genuinely modern military equipment.


1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that 5 members of the family of Yehoshua Arya, a Tel Aviv municipal employee, slept on the pavement outside the Jewish Agency building after they had been evicted from their one-room apartment in the Hatikvah quarter.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that owing to last-minute red tape, only 324 immigrants arrived aboard the S.S. Transylvania from Romania, instead of the expected 1,000. In Hamburg police arrested a neo-Nazi who mailed a letter-bomb to the head of the German reparations team at The Hague.


1954: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese diplomat who risked his life and career to help Jews escape from Hitler’s Europe, passed away


1955: The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Jewish author Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.


1958(13th of Nisan, 5718): Sixty one year old Theodor Kramer whom Thomas Mann called “one of the greatest poets of the young generation” but whose career in Austria was short-circuited by the Anschluss and an escape to the United Kingdom passed away today.


1958: U.S. premiere of “The Long Hot Summer” produced by Jerry Wald and starring Paul Newman.


1960: George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the newly formed American Nazi Party held his first public rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.


1967: The original version of “I’ve Got a Secret” a popular panel game show co-produced by Mark Goods and created by Allan Sherman was broadcast for the last time today.


1973(1st of Nisan, 5733): Aaron Rabinowitz, a pioneer in public and private house as well as real estate development passed away at the age of 93. The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Rabinowitz’s work in the field of public housing began in 1926 when he began serving on the New York State Board of Housing created by Governor Al Smith. He then worked closely with Lieutenant Governor (and later Governor) Herbert Lehman.


1975: Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.


1977(15th of Nisan, 5737): Pesach


1977: The Jerusalem Postreported that HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) urged Soviet immigrants to bring their relatives from the Soviet Union directly to the US in order to "reduce the growing phenomenon of dropouts in Vienna." Max Fisher, chairman of the Jewish Agency¹s Board of Governors, did not think that this would be at the expense of Jews who wished to come on Aliyah. He believed that if more Jews could be got out from Russia, more will come to Israel


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that US experts hailed the new Israeli tank, the Chariot.


1978: CBS broadcast the final show for the third season of “One Day At A Time” starring Bonnie Franklin.


1979(6th of Nisan, 5739): Seventy-eight year leader of the Arkansas Jewish community Adele Bluthenthal Heiman passed away today.

1980: In one of those moments when you would think that “the theatre” could not exist without Jews Neil Simon’s “I Ought To Be In Pictures” starring Ron Liebman as “Herb” and Dinah Manoff as “Libby” which had first been produced by Emanuel Azenberg in Los Angeles with Tony Curtis as “Herb” opened tonight at the Eugene O’Neil Theatre. (Eugene O’Neil is the only non-Jew in this list)


1986: Birthdate of actress Amada Bynes.


1986(23rd of Adar II, 5746): Israeli mathematician Elisha Netanyahu passed away.

1987: Bob McAdoo, former National Basketball Association scoring champion, scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half today as Tracer Milan won the European Champions Cup by edging Maccabi Tel Aviv of Israel, 71-69, in the final.


1987: The New York Antiquarian Book Fair comes to a close. Among the items offered at the fair was The ''Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures,'' the first edition in English of what was for generations the standard Jewish-American Bible, translated and annotated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser and published in Philadelphia in 1853 which was valued at $1,750.


1990:Gilbert and Sullivan Yield To Gershwin and Ryskind

1991(20th of Nisan, 5751): Charles Henry Goren, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who became “a world champion American bridge player and bestselling author who contributed significantly to the development and popularization of the game” passed away.


1992: Richard Schifter completed his term as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.


1992(29th of Adar II, 5752): Eighty-four year old painter Aaron Bohrod passed away today.

1992: Jack Lang began serving as Education Minister of France for the first time.


1993(12th of Nisan, 5753): Pinky Lee kiddy host (Pinky Lee Show), dies of a heart attack at 85. Born Pincus Leff, in 1916, Lee was a big star in the early days of television. His signature line was "Ha Ha Hee Hee." He was well known as a host of children's shows including the Pinky Lee Show. Lee ran into trouble with the Black List. One of his last programs was the Gumby Show in 1957. (Yes, there was Gumby before SNL.)


1994(22nd of Nisan, 5754): Seventy-five year old Maj. Gen. Aharon Remez, the first commander of the Israeli Air Force, passed away today at the age of 75. General Remez had also served as a Labor Party Member of Parliament, Transport Minister and Israeli Ambassador to Britain. He was buried with full military honors on Monday in Jerusalem's military cemetery. Born in Tel Aviv in British-ruled Palestine, General Remez joined the Haganah underground in 1936. The Jewish Agency, then the governing body of Jewish settlement in what later became Israel, sent him to New Jersey in 1939 to learn how to fly. He flew a Spitfire for Britain in combat against the Germans. In 1947 he helped establish Haganah’s flying service, the predecessor to the Israeli Air Force, and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion appointed him commander shortly after Israel's statehood was declared in 1948. General Remez stepped down three years later in a dispute over attempts to incorporate the Israeli Air Force into the general command. The air force is under separate command today. He served as Ambassador to Britain in the late 1960's.


1997: A revival of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” which uses a verse from Chapter 2, Verse 15 of the Song of Solomon which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes" as the inspiration for its title opens today at the Vivian Beaumont.


2002(21st of Nisan, 5762): Seventh day of Pesach and 6thday of the Omer


2002: During Operation Defensive Shield, IDF troops secured Jenin but the fight for the terrorists’ stronghold still loomed ahead.


2002(21st of Nisan, 5762) IDF reservist Maj. Moshe Gerstner, 29, of Rishon Lezion was killed in Jenin during anti-terrorist action (Operation Defensive Shield).


2003: Release date for the Hebrew Language Israeli film “Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi.”


2004: At the Rainbow Room in NYC, Rabbi Mark S. Golub officiated at the wedding of Anna Chloe Hoffman, a daughter of Dale and Stephen Hoffman and David Russ Steinhardt, a son of Judy and Michael Steinhardt, founder of “Makor, a cultural center which is part of the 92nd Street Y.


2005: Official induction of Pretoian born Warren Goldstein, as Chief Rabbi of South Africa making him the first native of South Africa and the youngest person to hold the post.


2005: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop” by Joseph Lelyveld, “Inside the List by Rachel Donadio” and “Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It” by Alan Wolfe as well as the following monograph about ''Runny Babbit,'' Shel Silverstein's silly tale of a rabbit with a penchant for inverting his consonants that just made its debut at No. 1 on the children's picture book best-seller list. Silverstein, the much loved poet and author of idiosyncratic and often bittersweet books like ''The Giving Tree,''''Where the Sidewalk Ends'' and other children's classics of the past four decades, worked on ''Runny Babbit'' on and off for 20 years, before his death in 1999. Silverstein was a constant reviser. ''He had mountains of poems and stories, in bits and pieces, and in different versions, written on stray pieces of paper,'' his friend and former editor, Joan Robins, told Publishers Weekly. Robins and Toni Markiet, the executive editor of HarperCollins Children's Books, both helped shepherd ''Runny Babbit'' into print. Written in jolly inverse verse, the book recounts the adventures of a kindhearted, rather hapless rabbit, from restaurant to bath to library (''A bience scook? A boetry pook? / Oh, no -- a bomic cook!''). HarperCollins has done a first printing of 500,000 copies, betting that deprived Silverstein fans will be eager to snap it up. A good bet: The Times Magazine reported after his death that Silverstein -- who in the course of his career was a playwright, a regular cartoonist for Playboy and a country-western songwriter -- left an estate worth $20 million, so he clearly knew a thing or two about what people want.


2006: Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz announced that he was closing the Yona Metzger investigation and would not seek an indictment against him, citing a lack of sufficient evidence. He added, however, that in light of various "disturbing" information that came to light during the investigation, including contradictory statements given to the police that the Chief Rabbi should resign


2007(15th of Nissan, 5767): First Day of Pesach


2007: In column published today entitled “For Shtetl by the Sea, Only a Few Fading Signs Remain” Abby Goodnough provides a portrait of the changing face of “Jewish Miami Beach.”


The synagogue at 1415 Euclid Avenue had only a few members left when Daniel Davidson, a New Yorker seeking a standout South Beach retreat, bought it in 2003. “I thought the space magical,” he said of the spare, white 16,000-square-foot building — now back on the market for $9,950,000 — “irrespective of religion. And so the Orthodox synagogue, Kneseth Israel, became Temple House, where Mr. Davidson has not only lived but also allowed Budweiser to film a commercial, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Al Gore to hold a Democratic fund-raising event and Jennifer Lopez to stage a listening party for her latest album, belting out love songs near where the Torah ark used to be. Like so many buildings that served a thriving Jewish population here for decades — synagogues, delicatessens, kosher markets and hotels, even Yiddish theaters — Temple House’s history is all but imperceptible now. The community that earned Miami Beach nicknames like Little Jerusalem and Shtetl by the Sea is largely gone, and many of today’s residents know nothing of it. Miami Beach had roughly 60,000 people in Jewish households, 62 percent of the total population, in 1982, but only 16,500, or 19 percent of the population, in 2004, said Ira Sheskin, a demographer at the University of Miami who conducts surveys once a decade. The decline — due mostly to elderly Jews dying or getting priced out after the city’s Art Deco revival, but also to the migration of others to Broward and Palm Beach Counties as greater Miami became more Hispanic — has forced old-timers to scour for hints of their past. A few remain, like the Hebrew-inscribed doors of a deserted Orthodox shul being converted to condominiums and the old entryway to Wolfie’s, a beloved coffee shop demolished for a condo building that will keep the faded front as a relic. But Miami Beach’s last kosher resort hotel, the Saxony, closed in 2005 to make way for condominiums. Its oldest synagogue, Beth Jacob, also closed that year after membership dropped to 22, from 1,200 in the 1950s. Its domed building is now the Jewish Museum of Florida, housing memorabilia like mah-jongg boards and anti-Semitic real estate ads promising “always a view, never a Jew.” (Residents with “Hebrew or Syrian blood” generally could not rent or buy north of Fifth Street until the 1950s.) On Lincoln Road, the pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of South Beach, Temple King Solomon has given way to Touch, a restaurant and lounge with occasional belly dancers and flame throwers. On Washington Avenue, the Cinema Theater, home to one of the longest-running Yiddish vaudeville shows in the world, is now Mansion, a club favored by Paris Hilton types. Farther north, in Sunny Isles Beach, Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House — Miami’s version of Katz’s Deli in New York, famous for “mile-high” corned beef sandwiches — will soon be demolished and replaced with yet another condo tower. This is not to say all Yiddishkeit is lost here: Talmudic University, which opened in Miami Beach in 1974, remains on Alton Road, along with a Lubavitch center that runs a day school and a rabbinical college. A few miles north of blingy South Beach, beachfront resorts like the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc still fill up at Passover, and an Orthodox Jewish community is flourishing around 41st Street. But in South Beach alone, the number of people in Jewish households dropped by 53 percent between 1994 and 2004, to 4,171 from 8,775. Charlotte Cooper, who came to Miami Beach from New York to perform Yiddish theater in the 1960s and stayed until she was priced out in 1999, said she could hardly stand to return these days.“It’s an entirely different story now,” said Mrs. Cooper, a Holocaust survivor who moved to a condominium in Pembroke Pines but still performs here now and then. “People from Hollywood, movie stars, come to stay in those hotels now. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people anymore.” At Temple Emanu-El in South Beach, Rabbi Kliel Rose is striving to attract young Jews while keeping older, second- and third-generation members. The cavernous stone synagogue drew 1,200 families in the 1980s; it claims about 260 now. Rabbi Rose’s tactics include regular outings to South Beach bars and clubs, lectures on Kabbalah and a recent Havdalah ceremony, marking the end of Sabbath at sundown Saturday, with cocktails at Temple House. Rabbi Rose has added drums, guitar and an element of mysticism to Shabbat services. Still, to ensure the requisite 10 people for morning minyans, or prayer sessions, Temple Emanu-El teams up with the Cuban Hebrew Congregation, one of the neighborhood’s only other surviving synagogues. “We are truly experimenting,” said Rabbi Rose, 36, who wears an earring and was recruited from Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, a booming conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “We are trying to think outside the box.” When his congregants started shifting in their seats toward the end of Shabbat services one recent Friday night, Rabbi Rose asked them not to leave just yet, admonishing, “Lincoln Road can wait.” David Weintraub, who directed “Where Neon Goes to Die,” a film about the Jewish retirees who flocked to Miami Beach from the 1920s through the 1980s, said his research was frustrated by an astonishing lack of documentation. “This legacy went on for over 60 years, and yet there is almost no memory that it even happened,” Mr. Weintraub said. “At the Miami Beach archives, I went through their file drawers for two weeks. There were drawers and drawers of cheesecake on the beach but not one photograph of Yiddish culture.” Now, Mr. Weintraub is thinking of organizing “ghost tours” of Jewish Miami Beach. But he does not want a tourist clientele. “We would target the folks who already live in Miami in the hopes that if people get a better sense of who and what came before,” he said, “they might be more pro-active when city planners destroy another piece of Miami’s past.” Marcia Zerivitz, founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida, said that while the decline of the Jewish population is an old story here, the rest of the country is surprisingly unaware. Filmmakers and writers still call her to say they want to document Jewish culture in Miami Beach, Ms. Zerivitz said. “I get calls like that all the time, especially from California and up east,” she said. “I say: ‘Sorry, you’re many, many years too late. There’s nothing left.’ ”


2008: Don Hewitt was honored with Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcast Journalism.


2008: As part of the Israel at 60 Celebration the 92nd Street Y hosts Israeli “Culture: Past and Present: Examining Pre-1948 Israeli Culture: Art and Literature.” Professor Uri Cohen examines the formation of Israeli culture from its inception to the creation of the state. His presentation includes readings from the works of Agnon, Gutman and Rubin.Uri Cohen is an assistant professor at Columbia University specializing in Modern Hebrew Literature and Israeli culture. His interests include the role of poetic language in political discourse and questions of cultural representation of conflict


2008: Israeli-European economic ties are growing as the parties seek to speedily integrate the strong and expanding Israeli economy into the huge European market, according to statement made by EU officials today.


2009: Richard Stoltzman presents “A Salute to Benny Goodman” at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City. Originally scheduled for Hancher Auditorium, the program was shifted to the smaller venue because of the Floods of 2008.


2009: At Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Vanderbilt University Professor Amy-Jill Levine delivers a lecture entitled “Hearing the Parables in their Jewish Contexts.”


2010: Violinist Joseph Lin is scheduled to perform at the Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.


2010: On Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach, Temple Judah holds its monthly traditional Saturday morning service complete with a Kosher for Passover Kiddush, a one of a kind event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


2010: Nili Shamrat “was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and given a five-year suspended sentence for possession of stolen property” for his role in the 1983 burglary of the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art.


2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Moshe V. Goldblum, rabbi of Pittsburgh’s Beth Shalom Congregation for 24 years, passed away today in Israel. “Goldblum was a 1949 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and came to Pittsburgh from Jacksonville, Fla. He also served congregations in Columbus and Mansfield, Ohio, New York and Baltimore. He was a U.S. Army chaplain from 1945 to 1947.”


2011(27th of Adar II, 5771): Twenty three year old Yale hockey player Mandi Schwartz passed away today. (As reported by Thomas Kaplan)

2011: The Annual Used Book Sale is scheduled to begin at Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, VA.


2011: The Center for Jewish History in conjunction with the Jewish Book Council, the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies are scheduled to present a program entitled “The Jewish Book: Past, Present, Future” which deals with the questions of What makes a Jewish book?, Who are the People of the Book? How have Jewish books changed with changes in technology?


2011: “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” is scheduled to be shown at The Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2011: Agudas Achim Synagogue is scheduled to host the Iowa City Jewish Community’s 3rd Annual Mitzvah Day - A Day of Community Service.


2011: The New York Timesfeatures books by Jewish writers and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘All the Time in the World’ by E.L. Doctorow and ‘The Free World’, David Bezmozgis’s first novel, set in Rome in 1978, which “follows three generations of Soviet Jews as they wait for visas to North America.”


2011: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to leave for Washington, DC where he will meet with several US leaders including President Obama.


2011: The Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs announced the names of people chosen to be light beacons at this year's Independence Day ceremony. Among the torch lighters are Orit Dror, a member of Kibbutz Lavi who, together with her husband, donated her son's organs after he died of a terminal illness, and saved the life of a 13-year-old girl; Zehava Dankner (mother of businessman Nochi Dankner), a philanthropist who supported, among others, residents surrounding Gaza, and who is involved in matters of education, security and health; Barbra Goldstein, a representative of Hadassah, the women's Zionist organization of America, which is marking its 100th anniversary this year; Yovi Tsuma, a social activist who participates in a group of young Ethipian volunteers who help members of the immigrant community who have encountered difficulties in absorption; and Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, a member of the Chabad movement, who lost his daughter and son in law in the November 2008 terrorist attack at the Chabad house in Mumbai.


2012: “The Kid With a Bike” and “The Mill and the Cross” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival


2012: A Concert of Russian and Jewish Music featuring Metropolitan Klezmer is scheduled to take place in New York City.


2012: The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, with the endorsement of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, is scheduled to present a performance by the Yuval Ron Ensemble.


2013: “Numbered,” a film that explores the relationship some Auschwitz survivors have with their tattoos, is scheduled to be shown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at Battery Place in New York City.


2013: Today “it was announced that Lorne Michaels will be taking over as the executive producer for The Tonight Show.”


2013(23rd of Nisan, 5773): Ninety-five year old, Dorothy Taubman, the developer of the Taubman Technique for rehabilitating musicians passed away today. (As reported by Vivian Schweitzer)

2013(23rd of Nisan, 5773): Eighty-six year old cartoonist Ed Fisher passed away today.

2013: Palestinian terrorists fired two rockets at the southern Israeli city of Sderot this morning. The intermittent rocket attacks began while President Obama was touring


2013: Today,A three-judge panel of the Tel Aviv District Court ordered Bank Hapoalim and three pension funds to pay around NIS 2.1 million to the estate of an elderly Holocaust survivor for liability in allowing the illegal withdrawal of her money by her home caregiver.


2013: First baseman Nate Freiman made his major league debut with the Oakland A’s


2014: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host Jews and Baseball: D.C. and Beyond with Phil Hochberg, Jean Leavy and Aviva Kempler


2014: A French court fines a 28-year-old Moroccan man $4,130 for posting photos online of himself giving the quenelle salute in front of Grand Synagogue in Bordeaux


2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Austin Jewish Film Festival.


2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum is scheduled to host the opening reception for an exhibit styled “The Seder: Meanings, Ritual & Spirituality” featuring the work of Samuel Eisen-Meyers.


2014: Friends and family gather to celebrate the birthday of Elizabeth Levin, “daughter extraordinaire” of David Levin.


2015: Francis J. Pruitt, the author of Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble, “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” is scheduled to appear at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015: The friends and family of Elizabeth Levin will have to get her that birthday cake today before the last crumbs of Chametz are swept away.


2015(14th of Nisan, 5775): Fast of the First Born


2015(14th of Nisan, 5575: In the evening first Seder.


14th of Nisan, 5622(1862):In the evening, during the Civil War, Pesach begins with 21 Union soldiers of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment celebrating with a Seder in Fayette, West Virginia.


14th of Nisan, 5660( 1900):  Poor Jews living on the Lower East Side were relieved to find that free matzoth were being distributed at Charles “Silver Dollar” Smith’s “old place on Essex Street.”  There was concern that the distribution would end since Smith had passed away last year.  Before he had changed his name, Smith was known as variously as Charles Goldschmidt or Charles Solomon.  A New York alderman who was part of the Tammany Hall machine, he was called “Silver Dollar” because of the “2,400 silver dollars used as a studded inlay in his saloon…”


 14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.


 14th of Nisan, 5631(1871): As the Jews of Newark, New Jersey, begin the celebration of Passover this evening, it is estimated that they will consume 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of matzoth during the eight days of the holiday


14th of Nisan, 5671(1911): This evening, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association host a public Seder in New York and “special services” for the Jewish immigrants currently detained at Ellis Island.


14th of Nisan, 5674(1914): Four hundred and fifty Jewish servicemen including sailors from the battleships Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Ohio, Wyoming and Louisiana are scheduled to take part in a seder specifically for military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in Manhattan.


14th of Nisan, 5700(1940): The Sommer family sit down to their first Seder in Liechtenstiein.  How this family of German Jewish refugees from Munich came to be there was chronicled by Susi Pugatsch-Sommer in an article entitled “A Pesach Miracle in Nazi Germany.”


14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): Members of Belgium Jewish underground aided by Christian railroad men derailed a train filled with Jewish deportees bound for the extermination camps. Several hundred Jews were saved.


14th of Nisan, 5703(1943): PASSOVER, WARSAW Ghetto UPRISING; The Jews were determined not to be moved without giving up a fight. 2,100 Germans, fully armed, enter the Ghetto. The Jews fighting force consisted of about 700 men and women.  They were armed with 17 rifles, 50 pistols and several thousand grenades and Molotov cocktails.  A small group of Jewish fighters open fire on the entering German troops. After an hour of skirmishing, the Germans retreated. The final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began on the Eve of Passover, April 19, 1943. The deportation did not come as a surprise. The Germans had amassed a military force to carry it out, but did not expect to engage in a confrontation that included street battles. Armed German forces ringed the ghetto at The unit that entered the ghetto encountered armed resistance and retreated. The main ghetto, with its population of 30,000 Jews, was deserted. The Jews could not be rounded up for the transport; the railroad cars at the deportation point remained empty. After Germans and rebels fought in the streets for three days, the Germans began to torch the ghetto, street by street, building by building. The entire ghetto became a sizzling, smoke-swathed conflagration. Most of the Jews who emerged from their hideouts, including entire families, were murdered by the Germans on the spot. The ghetto Jews gradually lost the strength to resist. On April 23, Mordecai Anielewicz the ZOB commander wrote the following to Yitzhak Zuckerman, a member of the ZOB command who was stationed on the "Aryan" side: "I cannot describe the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a special few will hold out; all the others will perish sooner or later. Their fate is sealed. None of the bunkers where our comrades are hiding has enough air to light a candle at night.... Be well, my dear, perhaps we shall yet meet. The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self - defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle". The rebels pursued their cause, even though they knew from the outset that they could not win. The Jewish underground would continue to fight the Nazis until the middle of May. The Polish underground only gave minimal help because of anti-Semitism prevalent among many. Although the Allies will neither publicize events nor try to help, even before the war ended, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol of Jewish resistance
14th of Nisan, 5708(1948): Erev Pesach the rations given out in Jerusalem for the observance of Passover included 2 lbs. of potatoes, ½ lb of fish, 4 lb. of matzo, 1 ½ oz. dried fruit, ½ lb. meat, and ½ lb. of matzo flour. As one who was there later wrote, “For the trapped citizens of Jerusalem, who had become accustomed to privation, the Passover provisions seemed like a banquet. However, for the citizens of Jerusalem, it was not a particularly merry affair. On the verge of their national freedom, the inhabitants of Jerusalemsat somberly around their tables. This was the first time since the nightly shellings that the city's citizens had come together in assembly in the various homes throughout the city that had been the dream of two thousand years' Seders. Tonight is a holiday, but tomorrow the struggle will go on. As they sat to begin the Seder, they heard the beginning of the snipers bullets looking for a straggler in the streets. But tonight was different. As they opened the door, as they had done for scores of generations, to welcome in Elijah, there was no fear. Tonight is a night of divine protection. As the Holy One protected the Jews in Egypt, so shall he protect us here in the war torn city of Jerusalem. "Once we were slaves, but today we are free men" recited in the Haggadah, took on new meaning. The British are leaving, the Arabs are attacking, and we are beginning our new national lives as free men in our own country. "Next year in Jerusalem" had a meaning that we never before understood. We meant it; we would not relinquish our dream to return to our homeland, to the city that has been in our hearts throughout the two thousand year exile. Now we are free men, tomorrow we must continue the fight to remain free.


 


 


 

This Day, April 4, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 4



188: Birthdate of Cracalla, the Roman Emperor who allowed all free Jews within the empire to become full Roman citizens.



397:Aurelius Ambrosius, (Saint Ambrose) a bishop of Milan who became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the fourth century passed away. He lived during a period when the Christian Church was still trying to establish its identity. He was no stranger to Jews as we can see from the following three examples. In “De Abrahamo” Ambrose warned Christians against intermarrying with Jews.  His strong opposition can be seen in the following conflict he had with the Roman Emperor, Theodosius over the rebuilding of synagogue. “It appears that in 388 a mob, led by the local bishop and many monks, destroyed the synagogue at Callinicum. The emperor Theodosius the Great ordered the rebuilding of the synagogue at the expense of the rioters, including the bishop. Ambrose immediately issued a fiery protest to the emperor. He wrote to Theodosius that "the glory of God" is concerned in this matter, and that therefore he cannot be silent. "Shall the bishop be compelled to re-erect a synagogue? Can he religiously do this thing? If he obey the emperor, he will become a traitor to his faith; if he disobey him, a martyr. What real wrong is there, after all, in destroying a synagogue, a 'home of perfidy, a home of impiety,' in which Christ is daily blasphemed? Indeed, he must consider himself no less guilty than this poor bishop; at least to the extent that he made no concealment of his wish that all synagogues should be destroyed, that no such places of blasphemy be further allowed to exist." At the end, he succeeded in obtaining from Theodosius a promise that the sentence should be completely revoked, with the very natural consequence that thereafter the prospect of immunity thus afforded occasioned spoliations of synagogues all over the empire. That Ambrose could nevertheless occasionally say a good word for the Jews is shown by a passage in his "Enarratio in Psalmos" in which he remarks, "Some Jews exhibit purity of life and much diligence and love of study."



1081: Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, beginning the Komnenian dynasty. Most Byzantine Emperors of this period “expressed little interest in combating…religious pluralism.  Alexios was the exception to the rule.  He took “an unusual interest in presenting himself as a defender” of the dominant Christian Orthodox faith. During his reign, St. Nikon agreed to go to Sparta if the Jews were expelled from the community. The town was enduring a wave of unusual illness and Nikon said that cause was the contaminating effect of “abominable” Jewish customs and the polluting effect of their worship.



1285: Philip the Fair, King of France, began his policy of using Jews solely for his financial benefit.  He was called the Fair because of his complexion, not his behavior.  The Jews were caught up in the conflict called the Albigensians Heresy, a conflict within the Catholic Church.  Philip was always looking for ways to enrich himself.  Ultimately he expelled the Jews from his kingdom, abrogating the debts he owed them and confiscating all personal and communal property.



1292: Pope Nicholas IV who had issued “Orat Mater Ecclesla,” a bull designed “to protect the Roman Jews from oppression, passed away today,



1609: English navigator Henry Hudson set sail from Amsterdam harbor under direction from his “employer,” the Duct East India Company to sail east in the quest for a shorter water passage to the Indies.  Fortunately for the Jewish people, Hudson ignored these instructions and sailed west seeking the fabled Northwest Passage to the Orient.  As part of this quest, Hudson sailed past what is now New York on his way up what we know as the Hudson River claiming all of the surrounding for the Dutch.  This meant that the 23 Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam landed in a territory controlled by the religiously tolerant Dutch as opposed to a colony controlled Catholic Spain or Catholic France neither of whom would have allowed the Jews to settle.



1660: King Charles II of England publishes the terms under which he will return to the throne in a document known as the Declaration of Breda. The restoration under Charles II bodes well for the Jews of England since it was Charles II who was the first to declare that the Jewish community could remain in England without suffering harassment.   



1687: King James II issued The Declaration of Indulgence, one of the major steps towards the granting of full religious liberty in Great Britain.  Jews had returned to in 1655 and the next major step in the fight for full religious rights would come with the passage of the short-lived Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753.



1693(27th of Adar II, 5453):Eighty-eight year oldRabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, a kabbalist, scholar and leader of the Dutch Jewish community passed away.



1718: Birthdate of Benjamin Kennicott, English churchman and Hebrew scholar who spent most of his life exploring and collating various Hebrew texts.  Unfortunately, the final printing of his work rendered much of it nearly useless.  One of the most positive outcomes was the recognition of the antiquity and common origins of the text of the Hebrew Bible.



1772(1st of Nisan, 5532): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



1772(1st of Nisan, 5532): In Medzhybizh,Simcha, the son of Rabbi Nachman of Horodenka and his wife Feiga gave birth to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov who was “the founder of the Breslov Hasidic Movement.



1739: “Israel in Egypt,” “an oratorio by George Frideric Handel that “it is composed entirely of selected passages from the Hebrew Bible, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms premiered at London's King's Theatre in the Haymarket”



1762(11th of Nisan, 5522): David Frankel, the chief rabbi of Berlin whose students included Moses Mendelssohn, passed away today.



1776: Celebration of the first Pesach after the firing of the Shot Heard Round the World.



1795(15th of Nisan, 5555): Pesach



1795: Birthdate of violinist Joseph Böhm, the native of Pest who became a director of the Vienna Conservatory.



1830: Birthdate of Albert (Aaron) Siegfried Bettelheim, Hungarian born Rabbi and Hebraist.



1838: Albert Moses Levy married Claudinia Olivia Gervais.  Levy was a Virginia born doctor who moved to Texas where he played a prominent role in the revolt against Mexico.  Levy’s father, a Dutch born Jew married an Episcopalian after coming to the United States.  Levy was raised in the faith of his mother and his wife, with whom he had five children, was also an Episcopalian. While stories like this were not uncommon among 18th and 19thAmerican Jewry, it is amazing that there were not more such cases given the fluidity of the American frontier.



1850:  Los Angeles is incorporated as a city. Jews were active in Los Angeles from its earliest days as an American city. Jacob Frankfort is reported to the first Jew to live in Los Angeles.  He arrived in the city in December, 1841, when it was still part of Mexico.  In the early 1850’s seven prominent, unmarried Jewish merchants occupied space at the Corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets on what was called Bell’s row.  Two were from Poland and five were from Germany.  They ranged in age from 19 to 28.  For the trivia buffs, their names were Abraham Jacobi, Morris Michaels, Morris Goodman, Phillip Sichel, Augustine Waserman, Felix Bachan and Joseph Plumer



1859:Dinorah, originally Le pardon de Ploërmel ("The Pilgrimage of Ploërmel"), a French opéra comique in three acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart), in Paris.



1859: The New York Times reported that “the number of Jews in Oregon, most of whom are engaged in commercial pursuits, is quite large. In Portland, they have a synagogue recently incorporated by the legislature under the name of ‘Congregation Beth Israel’ where religious worship is conducted after the manner of German Israelites.  A large portion of them are, however, free-thinkers.”



1861: The New York Times reported that M. Guranda, the Viennese Jewish editor of the Ost Deutsche Post was elected to serve in the Provincial Diet.



1863(15thof Nisan, 5623): Pesach



1862: Birthdate of Leonid Pasternak, the native of Odessa who became a noted post-impressionist painter and was the father of Boris Pasternak.
http://pasternak-trust.org/leonid/biography/



1865: Private Henry Strauss was discharged from the 10th Mississippi Infantry today.



1866(19thof Nisan, 5626): Twenty-two year old Heinrich Oppenheimer, the son of Marx and Sarah Oppenheimer, passed away today.



1871: An article published today entitled “Matzoth Again: The Feast of Passover Unleavened Bread How They Make Passover Cakes,” describes the process of making Matzah. [Ed. Note: Given the comparatively small Jewish population, this article is remarkable for several reasons.] http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D0CE5DC103EEE34BC4C53DFB266838A669FDE



1877: Birthdate of Yiddish poet and songwriter Mordechai Gebirtig.



1878: In Singapore, the new Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street which had been financed in part by Menasseh Meyer, “supposedly the richest Jew in Asia,” was consecrated today.



1879: A correspondent for the Neue Zilricher Zeitgung describeda massacre of Jews in Satschcheri in the Caucuses. At the beginning of April the body of a child was found in the woods. Seven Jews were accused by the Christian villagers of having killed the child and then having hid the body as part of their Easter Sacrifice.  The accused were taken before a local Judge who dismissed the charges after “a medical witness” testified that the child had died of natural causes and that the wounds on the body “were the work of wild animals.  The Jews celebrated their deliverance with a party which was interrupted by a an axe wielding Christian mob.  The mob, which had been incited by an Orthodox Priest broke into the house killing six of the Jews and injuring many more.


1882(15th of Nisan, 5642): First Day of Pesach



1882: As the Jews of Tisza-Eszlar, Hungary, observe Pesach rumors are circulating that Esther Solymosi, a 14 year old Christian peasant girl who disappeared on the first of the month has been killed by the Jews so her blood could be used in baking matzah.



1884: In Pest, The Supreme Tribunal has confirmed the acquittal of all the Jews who were charged with murdering Esther Salomossy. It was alleged that they had killed her to obtain blood to mix with “Passover Bread”


1885: In Mantua, Lodovico Mortara and his wife gave birth to “economist, demographer and statistician” Giorgio Mortara, the grandson of Rabbi Marco Mortara.


1886(28thof Adar II, 5646): Moritz Warburg, who was born in 1810 who represented his native Altona in the Reichstag passed away today.  He was survived by his first son Albert who was born in 1843 but was pre-deceased by his second son Jacob who was born in 1848 and was killed during the Franco-Prussian War.


1889: Clarence Charles Minzesheimer, “who had entered the banking and brokerage business of his father Charles Minzesheimer became a member of the New York Stock Exchange today.


1890: “The Jewish Feast of Pesach” published today continues a tradition of the New York Times of writing about the holiday stretching back to the earliest days of the paper’s founding before the Civil War.


1890: “Meat Given To The Poor” published today descried the distribution Passover provisions the needy.  While most of those in line were Polish Jews, “there was also a number of poor Gentiles.”  They were given coupons to take to local butchers since those distributing the food felt that there should be no distinction to helping the poor regardless of religion.


1890(14th of Nisan, 5650): As Jews begin the celebration of Passover this evening, the less fortunate Jews living in New York will enjoy a happier holiday thanks to the efforts of the Passover Relief Association which distributed 9,830 pounds of Matzah, 1,000 pounds of sugar, 480 pounds of coffee and 50 pounds of tea at Goodfellow Hall prior to the start of the holiday.



1890(14th of Nisan, 5650):Felix Albert Bettelheim passed away in Baltimore, Maryland. Born in Hungary in 1861 he was the son of the rabbi Aaron Siegfried Bettelheim. He immigrated to the United States in the sixties. In his seventeenth year he was graduated from the University of California with high honors, and three years later from the Medical College in San Francisco. From 1880 to 1881 he was resident physician of the San Quentin state prison; from 1881 to 1883, ship's surgeon of the Pacific Mail steamship "Colima"; 1883-89, surgeon-general of the Panama Railroad and CanalCompany. Through his efforts the first hospital in Panama was built; and he became one of its staff of physicians. He held several high offices and received a number of medals and testimonials from the government in recognition of his services. Bettelheim was the discoverer of a new germ peculiar to tropical countries, an account of which is given in medical records. In 1889 he studied clinical methods in the great European cities. On his return to America he died from a tropical liver complaint which was held by American authorities to be unique and was described by Professor Osler, of Johns Hopkins University, in a London medical journal. He was a frequent contributor to the "Lancet" and other periodicals, and left a posthumous work, "On the Contagious Diseases of Tropical Countries," still unpublished. A text-book by Dr. Thorington of Philadelphia, on the diseases of the eye, is dedicated to Bettelheim's memory.



1890 (14th of Nisan, 5650): The Jewish Messenger reports that “despite the undeniable tendency to change in every direction, the festival of Passover, which begins this evening survives with all its old time strength and picturesqueness.  Our Passover “is over three thousand years old and likely to survive three thousand more.”


1890: Erev Pesach, the American Hebrewpublishes a special Passover edition including an article entitled “Prejudice Against the Jews; its Causes and Remedies.”


1892: It was reported today that newly elected officers of the Purim Association are M.H. Moses, President; Simon Schafer, Vice President; and Sol E. Solomon, Treasurer.   The $16,000 that the association raised at its last charity ball has been donated to the United Hebrew Charities.


1892: It was reported today that “fever and diphtheria” are ravaging Jewish communities on “both sides of the Russian-German border.”


1894(27thof Adar II, 5654): Sixty-eight year old Rabbi Abraham Pereira Mendes passed away in New York.  A native of Kingston, he was educated in England where he served congregations in Birmingham and London and served as the Dayan for the Sephardic community.  He came to the United States in 1883 to serve as Rabbi at the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI.  He and his wife Eliza who was the daughter of Rabbi D.A. de Sola had two sons Frederick de Sola Mendes and Henry Pereira Mendes each of whom became rabbis.


1894: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that in Camden, NJ, “the Hebrew Independent Political Club has endorsed Isaac H. Weaver for Council and Harry Wolfe for Freeholder in the Fifth Ward.”


1895: In Galicia, Sarah and Abraham Teichman gave birth to Moses Teichman who came to the United States with his mother in 1897 aboard the S.S. Friesland who gained fames as Arthur Murray the man who danced his way into a financial empire of the Arthur Murray Dance Studios.  He began teaching dance while attending Georgia Tech as a way to pay for his college expenses. 

1895: The will of Bernhard Bernhard who had passed away last week we filed for probate today.


1896:  Birthdate of poet Tristan Tzara [Samuel or Sami Rosenfeld].  Born in Romania, he began publishing in 1912.  In 1916 he moved to Switzerland where he a founder of Dadaism.  Tzara named this nihilistic movement by opening the dictionary and choosing the first meaningless word.  Tzara moved to Paris and was a member of the Communist wing of the Resistance.  He died in 1963.


1897: “Dr. Grossman on the Talmud” published today included the view Dr. Rudolph Grossman of Temple Beth-El “that while there were many who knew what the Talmud was they failed to thoroughly comprehend the many and interesting truths contained in the book.”


1897: “A new Sefer Torah will be dedicated this afternoon Congregation Adath Israel of West Harlem.”


1897: “Kosher Cooking School” published today described the opening of “school for instruction in the art of kosher cooking;” kosher meaning prepared “in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws.”


1897: It was reported today that Ancient History of the Peoples of the East by the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero has been translated into Hebrew by a publisher in Warsaw.


1897: “In The Public Eye” published today described the phenomena of Hebrew “spring up again as  living literary language in Eastern Europe” as can be seen by, among other things, the publication of monthly Hebrew language review now being published in Berlin.


1897: It was reported today that Israel Zangwill, author of Children of the Ghettowill be speaking in Jerusalem later this month.


1899: In Berlin, sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer and his wife gave birth to Hillel Oppenheimer, the Israeli botany professor who helped to found the “Faculties of Natural Science and Agriculture” at Hebrew University and passed away in 1971.


1899: In Albany, NY, the state Assembly passed a bill “exempting the real estate of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of New York City from taxation.”


1899: In New York City, the trustees of the United Hebrew Charities offered Dr. Lee K. Frankel of Philadelphia the position of manager of the organization.


1899: Birthdate of Carmel Myers, the San Francisco native whose Australian rabbi father used his connections with D.W. Griffith, to help her launch a movie career that began with “Intolerance” in 1916.


1900: Birthdate of St. Louis native Ernest E. Ellman.


1901(15th of Nisan, 5661): At Temple Israel in New York City,  more than $100 was raised after Rabbi Harris delivered a Passover sermon in which he called for funds to be raised to alleviate those suffering through the horrific famine in Bessarabia.


1901(15thof Nisan, 5661): Pesach


1901(15th of Nisan, 5661): R. J. de Cordova passed away in London today at the age of 79.   De Cordova, whose parents were English, was born in the West Indies. He came to the United States in 1849 where he enjoyed a successful business career until the Panic of 1857.  At that time he began a career as humorist, author and journalist who wrote for the New York Express and the New York Times.  Mr. de Cordova was a regular speaker at Temple Emanu-El where he had a contract at one time to give a lecture on every third Saturday of the month.  He moved to London in 1885.


1905: In a speech delivered at a Zionist banquet in London, “Israel Zangwill declared that in the whole history of the world the Jews never had a better friend than President Theodore Roosevelt.”  In the same speech, Zangwill rejected Britain’s offer of territory in East Africa (often referred to as the Uganda Plan) saying that the land might be useful “for rearing goats” but that it “was doubtful if a settlement 500 miles from the sea offered sufficient bais for a prosperous Jewish colony.”


1908: In Great Britain, the conflict between those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and those who believe in a more liberal interpretation heated up today when Sir Samuel Montagu, head of the banking firm of Samuel Montague & Co threatened to withdraw his financial support from the Jewish Religious Education Board unless it severed any further relationship with two of its more “liberal members” – Calude Joseph Goldsmid-Montefiore and Israel Abrahams. Montefiore and Abrahams are noted scholars.  The former is the author of The Origin and Development of the Religon of the Ancient Hebrews and the latter is a reader at Cambridge who is also editor of The Jewish Quarterly Review. Montague, who is officially known as Lord Swaythling, is an active leader and famed philanthropist in the Jewish community.  He is referred to as King of the East End because of his generous support of the less fortunate and is second only Lord Rothschild as its benefactor.  The Jewish Religious Education Board is a major communal organization that “looks after the material welfare and religious education of more than 10,000 Jewish children in the great East End of London.  According to some accounts, the whole matter reached a boiling point over whether or not one really believes that Balaam’s ass actually spoke to its master as described in the book of Numbers.  Montefiore accepts the text literally.  The two biblical scholars apparently think there is room for interpretation.  


1909: Hashomer, the first Jewish self-defense organization was founded to protect Jewish settlements in what was Palestine, a part of the Ottoman Empire.  Until then, local Arab militias had been paid to protect farmers and others from marauding bands.  The early Zionists had already begun providing their own farm labor.  Now they decided to provide their own protection as well.  Needless to say, this did not sit well with the local population.  This is one more example of how the Zionists were resented not for being Jewish, but for failing to conform to the behavior acceptable to the local power structure.  From the Jewish perspective, Hashomer represented yet another break with the European experience.  Jews would no longer be at the mercy of others.  They would provide their own protection.  Having just experienced of wave of Pogroms in Russia, this had an extra special meaning for the early members of Hashomer, many of whose members were recent arrivals from Russia who had organized self-defense organizations in Russia during the pogroms five years earlier. Its founders included Itzhak ben Zvi, Israel Giladi, Israel Shohat and Alexander Zeid. It was eventually absorbed into the Hagannah the Jewish defense force formed in the 1920's that became the foundation for the modern IDF.



1913:  Birthdate of Jerome Weidman“revered New York novelist and playwright who first made a splash with his novel I Can Get It for You Wholesale and later won a Pulitzer Prize with George Abbott for their Broadway collaboration Fiorello!  He died in 1998 at the age of 85.


1917: The Russian revolutionary government headed by Kerensky granted equality to all Russian Jews for the first time in Russian history. Since about 18 percent of the world's Jews were living in areas controlled by the Russian government, this decree would appear to have had a major impact on the fate of the world's Jews.  Unfortunately, such was not the case.  Within the year, the democratic Kerensky government was replaced by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.  That regime spelled the end of real freedom for everybody although Stalin would later have some special twists of evil for the Jewish population.


1918(22 Nisan, 5678): Seventy-five year old German Jewish-philosopher Hermann Cohen, whose works included Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism passed away in Berlin.



1920: Arab orators in Palestine roused crowds into a fiery mob which attacked and killed Jews in three days of violent rioting that began today. At least five Jews were killed and hundreds more were injured during the Arab riots in Jerusalem.  The riots were fomented to protest Jewish immigration.  In a portent of the future, the British arrested the Jewish leaders, including Vladimir Jabotinsky and others for organizing a self-defense league.  The origins of the Arab rioting stemmed from intra-Arab conflicts – those who favored and opposed Feisal’s rule in Palestine.  Chaim Weizmann, who witnessed the riots, wrote to British Prime Minister Lloyd George that British authorities had done little to protect the Jews, a view that was supported by a later commission of investigation.


1921: A Jewish battalion and an Arab battalion are founded by the British.


1922:  Birthdate of composer Elmer Bernstein who wrote the theme songs or other music for more than 200 films and TV shows, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments, The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the fanfare used in the National Geographic television specials. He received 14 Academy Award nominations, but his only win was for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Along with many in Hollywood, Bernstein faced censure during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. He was "gray-listed"—not banned, but kept off major projects—due to sympathy with left-wing causes, and had to work on a series of low budget films.


1922: The Jewish industrial chemist and Liberal politician, Sir Alfred Mond, who was then Minister of Health, wrote to Sir Herbert Samuel warning him that the Arab delegation currently visiting London to express its opposition to the principles of the Balfour Declaration had become ‘a focus and a tool of the general anti-Semitic movement.’


1923(18th of Nisan, 5683): Forty-nine year old Yuily Osipovch Martov, the Russian Revolutionary who led the Mensheviks – one of the many parties to be outlawed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks – passed away as an exile living in Germany.


1923: Today “1923, following the success of the studio's film “The Gold Diggers,” Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. was officially established, with. Harry Warner as president, Albert Warner as treasurer and Jack Warner and Sam Warner as co-heads of production.


1924: The British and French end their dispute over the northern border of Palestine. Metula and its environs are included in the territory of the British Mandate.


1924: The first issue of the periodical "Kiryat Sefer" appears. It is published by the National Library in Jerusalem.



1926: In Berlin, real estate investor Oskar Rohr and Perla Gelbard Rohr gave birth to Sami Rohr who would survive the Holocaust to become a real estate mogul and philanthropist.


1931: U.S. premiere action film “Dirigible” produced by Harry Cohn with a script co-authored by Jo Swerling.


1931: U.S. premiere of “Front Page” for which director Lewis Milestone received an Oscar nomination.


1932: In Brooklyn Herman and Florence Davies gave birth to Clive Davis.

1933: In Germany, a Civil Service Law prohibiting Jews from holding public service jobs was adopted.


1933: A front-page article in the German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Rundschau exhorted Jews to wear the identifying Yellow Star with the headline, Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den Gelben Fleck! (Wear it with Pride, the Yellow Badge!). The article was one of a series written a German Jew, Robert Weltsch, all of which were based on the same theme:"Say 'yes' to our Jewishness." The original article was written in response to the to the April 1, 1933 Nazi-led boycott of Jewish shops, which was the first meaningful anti-Jewish action of the newly-empowered Nazis,
1935: Sixty-eight year old Bettino Levi, “an intimate friend of Theodor Herzl” who has working to provide relief for Jewish refugees from Germany passed away today.  (As reported by JTA)
1935: American competitors at the 2nd Maccabiah in Tel Aviv came in first in their respective events.  Sybil Koff continued her winning ways in the 400 yard hurdles while “Abe Rosenkrantz captured the 1,500-meter run.”  Julius Finkelstein took the top spot in the shot put and James Sandler tied the Maccabiah record as he claimed first place in the high jump.  Lilian Copeland, who had done so well at the 1932 Olympics, won “both the javelin and discuss throws in the women’s division.”


1937(23rdof Nisan, 5697): Seventy-nine year old Henry Goldman the only member of Goldman-Sachs to support Germany during World War I and who moved to Germany in the early 1930’s only to barely escape back to the U.S. in 1936, passed away today.


1937: The Palestine Post commented on the text of the 300-page memorandum submitted by the Jewish Agency to the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine. The agency pointed out that the duty of the Mandatory government was to establish the Jewish National Home in Palestine, to encourage Jews to immigrate, to help them to settle down and to develop self-governing institutions. The Crown Colonist, published in London, advocated Jewish settlement in Transjordan, as a means of getting that country out of its economic plight.
1938: Arthur Sweetser, a director of the secretariat of the League of Nations met with President Roosevelt to discuss the fate of the Jews of Europe and proposal for a “rescue plan.  According to Mr. Sweetser, during the meeting, Roosevelt took credit for this latest proposal to deal with the problem. “Then Roosevelt turned more expansive and said ‘Suddenly it struck me: why not get all the democracies to unite to share the burden? After all, they own most of the free land of the world, and there only…what would you say, 14, 16, million Jews in the whole world of whom about half are already in the United States.  If we could divide up the remainder in groups of 8 or 10, there wouldn’t be any Jewish problem in three or four generations.’”
1939: Four year old Faisal II becomes King of Iraq. Faisal is the King of Iraq during the Israel War for Independence.  Iraq was the largest Arab state without a border with Israel that sent a major contingent “to drive the Jews into the sea.”  More importantly, Faisal was the last king of Iraq.  He was overthrown and murdered in a brutal revolt in 1958 when the Ba’ath Party (the party that would give us Saddam Hussein) came to power. 
1939: The Institut zur Erforschung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben(Institute for the Study of Jewish Influence on German Church Life) was founded
1944: An Allied spy plane flying over Poland happened to photograph Auschwitz while documenting construction of a synthetic-fuels plant providing photographic proof of the existence of the death camp.
1944: German Holocaust victim Anne Frank, 14, wrote in her diary: 'I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift...of expressing all that is in me.'
1944(11th of Nisan, 5704): “Miss Irene Lewisohn, founder and co-director of the Neighborhood Playhouse School” passed away tonight.
1945:The 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry Division liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp.  It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the U.S. Army. General George S. Patton, Old Blood and Guts, described it as "one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen."
1945: Birthdate of Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit who gained famed as student protester in France known as "Danny the Red". Like many other radicals, this son of refugees from Hitler’s Germany later sought political respectability.  In his case, he became a lead of the European Greens and a member of the European Parliament.
1946: As international postal service is begun after a six year hiatus, large numbers of letters and postcards are sent to numerous locations including Tel Aviv.
1946: Eitan Livini was arrested today on charges that he had participated in the “Night of the Trains,” an Irgun led sabotage operation aimed bringing the British transportation infrastructure to a halt.
1948: Birthdate of Michael Kleiner, the native of Munich who made Aliyah in 1951 and whose career in politics led him to be elected President of the Supreme Court of Likud, “the party's highest judicial body in all matters pertaining to its constitution, and party members and divisions are subject to its decisions.”
1948: Following an attack in the Northern Negev,a Palmach Unit destroyed "nine Bedouin lay-bys and one mud hut."
1948: The Arab Liberation Army opened an attack on kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek with a barrage from 7 artillery pieces supplied by the Syrian Army which elicited a successful counter-attack by the Haganah.
1948: “As National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans, Julius Klein organized an enormous show of strength for the establishment of the State of Israel in the form of a JWV parade down New York's Fifth Avenue.
1949:French Labor Leader Leon Jouhaux, who is visiting Israel as a guest of the General Federation of Jewish Labor, was pelted with tomatoes and oranges by Communist hecklers tonight when he made a public address in Tel Aviv Museum.
1949: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion addressed the Knesset on the impact of the armistice signed yesterday with Trans-Jordan.
1950: Birthdate of “American poet, essayist, editor and literary scholar Charles Bernstein who is the husband of artist Susan Bee.



1951: U.S. premiere “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” a film adaptation of Jerome Weidman’s 1937 novel directed by Michael Gordon, produced by Sol C. Siegel, with a script by Abraham Polonsky and Vera Caspary and music by Sol Kaplan.


1951: In what was the first outbreak of anti-Semitism in postwar Austria, 26 Jews were wounded in Salzburg.  The first outbreaks of anti-Semitism in postwar Europe actually began in Poland.  This episode reinforces the notion that the Nazis were so successful because they had willing help from the local populations.


 


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that a critical stage had been reached in the reparations talks held there, after the German delegation, upon its return from Bonn, claimed that it had been denied any authority by the West German Federal Government.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that four Israeli passengers aboard a Cyprus Airways ended up in the Beirut airport. They were flying from Nicosia when heavy fog forced the emergency landing. The four Jewish passengers were allowed to proceed to Lod unharmed.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that on the eve of rather frugal Pesach holidays, Dr. Dov Joseph, minister of commerce and industry, promised a richer menu, better organization and more supplies for the forthcoming summer.


1953: Birthdate of Simcha Jacobovici the Israeli born “Canadian film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer.”


1954: Paddy Chayefsky’s teleplay “Mother” was broadcast by The Philco Televison Playhouse.


 


1960: Seventy-six year old German historian Wilhelm Herzog the author of Die Affäre Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Affair) which “was adapted as the British film “Dreyfus” in 1931 and as the 1937 play “I Accuse!” passed away today.


1960: “A Palm Tree in a Rose Guardian produced by David Susskind was broadcast as “The Play of the Week”


1960: Actress Shelley Winters won her first Academy Award for her performance as Mrs. Van Daan in the film version of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”


1966 (14th of Nisan, 5726): Rabbi Alan Greenspan, a Chaplain in the United States Army, leads a Seder for 135 Americans in Saigon.  This simple statement does not do justice to the efforts of Rabbi Greenspan who overcame a wide-range of obstacles to pull off this fete.


1966 (14th of Nisan, 5726): General William Westmorland issued a Passover greeting to Jewish soldiers in which he compared the Freedom theme of the holiday with the American effort to provide freedom and security for the people of Viet Nam.


1967(23rd of Adar II, 5727): Mischa Elman passed away at the age of 76.  Another in a long list of world-class violinists who were Jewish, Elman was born in Kiev.  The child prodigy eventually made his way to the United States where he spent the bulk of his adult life.


1967(23rd of Adar II, 5727): Lyricist Al Lewis whose most famous work was “Blueberry Hill” passed away. Written in 1940, it gained everlasting fame when it was recorded by Fats Domino in 1956.


 


1967: Dr. Martin Luther King opened his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City by welcoming Rabbi Abraham Heschel.



 


1968: Larry Rosen, the owner of Smith’s Pharmacy at 14th and Clifton Streets, N.W. in Washington spent his last day at his business which would be burned down in the rioting that began tonight after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


 


1971(9thof Nisan, 5731): Seventy year old Shlomo Yisrael Ben-Meir the native of Warsaw who arrived in Israel in 1950 after having worked as a lawyer in the United States and then served as an MK from 1952 until his death, passed away today.


 


1971: “Follies” “a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim,a book by James Goldman” and scenic designs by Boris Aronson opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater


 


1972(20th of Nisan, 5732): Sixty-nine year old German born, American composer Stefan Wolpe, passed away.



1972: Le Mondedescribed Charles Bettelheim as "the most visible Marxists… in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.”


1973:  Birthdate of Magician David Blaine “the son of Patrice White, who may or may not have been a gypsy, but was certainly a Russian Jew living in Brooklyn” and  is sometimes called a modern day Harry Houdini. 



1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat ended talks with French and German leaders by saying that he saw encouraging signs for the reconvening of the Geneva Peace Conference and the establishment of a permanent peace in the Middle East.


1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that El Al planes took off for overseas flights without cabin crews who had absented themselves to protest against El Al's refusal to compensate them for duty on holidays.


1978:Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue was added to the National Register of Historic Places


1979: Birthdate of actress Natasha Lyonne who appeared in Slums of Beverly Hills and FreewayII



1979: Joseph Stephen Stanford began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.



1981(29th of Adar II, 5741):Icko Wakmann, retired president of the Relide Clock Company in Manhattan and founder of the Wakmann Watch Company and father of Tel Aviv resident Margalit Zwiebel passed away at the age of 86.



1982: The New York Times publishes a review of “Kibbutz Makom Report From an Israeli Kibbutz” by Amia Lieblich.



1982: In recognition of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's 80th birthday, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled have issued House Joint Resolution 447 to set aside today as a "National Day of Reflection."



1983:Responding to Iraqi charges that Israel was guilty of ''mass poisoning'' of Palestinian schoolgirls in the West Bank, the Security Council tonight called on Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to investigate ''the causes and effects of the serious problem of the reported cases of poisoning.'' The ambiguous language, necessary to win the approval of all 15 Council members, left open the question of whether the schoolgirls had actually been poisoned and left up to the Secretary General to decide whether the outside medical teams summoned by Israel meet the demand for ''independent inquiries.'' The Council issued its statement through this month's president, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick of the United States. A presidential statement has less political force than a resolution, but the arrangement spared the Council an open meeting. Some Arab diplomats said they would not welcome inflammatory speeches, particularly if the inquiries disclose no poisoning has taken place. Mrs. Kirkpatrick had arranged the outlines of this solution in meetings last Friday with Riyadh al-Qaysi of Iraq, chairman of the Arab group, and Abdullah el-Salah of Jordan, the Council's Arab member. In his letter convoking the Council, Mr. Qaysi charged that ''mass poisoning'' had struck ''more than 1,000 Palestinian schoolgirls.'' He said the poisoning was ''caused by a yellow substance containing sulfur concentrates which emitted poisonous gases with dangerous physical and psychological consequences.'' Yehuda Z. Blum, the Israeli delegate, who termed the charges ''irresponsible and unfounded,'' rejected the Council statement and said references in it to poisoning were ''completely unwarranted.''



1985:Birthdate of Israeli tennis player Dudi Sela



1987(5th of Nisan, 5747): Michael Redstone, the media mogul whose companies included CBS and Viacom, passed away.



1987: Annette Greenfield Strauss won a plurality of the vote for Mayor of Dallas. Winning a run-off election on April 18, she became the city's first elected woman mayor.



1992(1st of Nisan, 5752): Rosh Chodesh Nisan/Shabbat Ha-Chodesh



1992(1st of Nisan, 5752):Samuel "Sammy" Herman Reshevsky, a chess prodigy and grand chess master passed away.  Reshevsky was an Orthodox Jew who did not play on Shabbat.



1993: Israeli tennis star Amos Mansdorf was the runner-up at today’s tournament in Osaka, Japan.



1996(15thof Nisan, 5756): Pesach



1998: Shabbat Hagadol



1999: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or special interest to Jewish readers including “Uncovering Clinton:A Reporter's Story” by Michael Isikoff and “The Rise and Fall of the House of Barneys: A Family Tale of Chutzpah, Glory and Greed” by Joshua Levine.



1999: In an article by Bill Kent,John Mulloy, president of Ginsburg's bread bakery laments the fate of his company’s sales during Pesach.



'What happens to our bread business during Passover?'' sighed John Mulloy, president of Ginsburg's bread bakery here. ''It dies!'' During the eight days of Passover, Jews refrain from eating all foods made from grains except matzah, a flat, cracker-like wheat bread that Mr. Mulloy does not make. ''In the old days the Ginsburgs would just close up and take a vacation when Passover came around,'' Mr. Mulloy went on. ''We never close.'' What started as a family-run business on Atlantic Avenue in 1903 that made bread and cakes for Boardwalk hotels now employs 120 and occupies an entire city block at Mediterranean and New York Avenues. All of the casino hotels use Ginsburg's baked goods. The bread is also sold in six supermarket chains in the area. And eight regional distributors put the bread on grocery shelves as far away as Flordia and California. In the 20 years Mr. Mulloy has owned the bakery, Ginsburg's three Israeli-made, natural gas-fired Thermatron ovens have never grown cold. ''There were some bad years when the business went up and down,'' said Mr. Mulloy, who owned a delicatessen in Philadelphia and ''raised four sons on corned beef specials.'' He bought the bakery from the Ginsburgs with a partner in 1979 partly because of its Jewish rye bread. ''Even in Philadelphia, where you could get all the good Jewish rye you wanted, my customers would rave about the Ginsburg rye. For some of them, before the casinos opened up, it was the only reason to go to Atlantic City.'' Two years later, after moving to the area, Mr. Mulloy bought out his partner and turned over the management of the bakery to his sons -- John, 33; Michael, 32; Dan, 30; and Chris, 29 -- who learned the peculiar difficulties of doing business with a casino industry whose buyers can be notoriously fickle and take four months to pay their bills. An attempt to sell the bread through a retail storefront failed, he said, when ''tourists just couldn't find us.''''There were other times when we didn't think we'd make it,'' Mr. Mulloy said. ''But, as locations go, this one has been very good to us.'' The plant uses no milk ingredients in its dough and is inspected yearly by a panel of local rabbis who assure that its preparation techniques and products are in accordance with Jewish dietary laws. Beyond saying that his plant uses about 75 tons of flour each week, Mr. Mulloy would not disclose how much bread his bakery produces, or how much sales decrease during Passover. ''But there is enough of a downturn for us to use the holiday to make improvements to the plant,'' he said. Ginsburg's has just begun a $1.5 million renovation ''that will just make us a little bit more efficient'' -- in time for September, when the demand for chalah peaks at Rosh Hashanah.



2000: Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary delivered the first public lecture sponsored by the John Cardinal O'Connor Distinguished Chair in Hebrew and Sacred Scripture at St. Joseph's Seminary.



2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): 8th day of Pesach and 7th day of the Omer


2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield a member of the Israel Border Police was killed by terrorists when they went to arrest a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade at Hebron.


2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): “Rachel Charhi, 36, of Bat-Yam, critically injured in a suicide bombing in a cafe on the corner of Allenby and Bialik streets in Tel-Aviv on March 30, died of her wounds. Some 30 others were injured in the attack. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility.”


2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield Border Police Supt. Patrick Pereg, 30, of Rosh Ha'ayin, head of operations in an undercover unit, was killed Thursday while attempting to arrest a wanted member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.


2002(22ndof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive Shield Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Einan Sharabi, 32, of Rehovot; Lt. Nissim Ben-David, 22, of Ashdod; and St.-Sgt. Gad Ezra, 23, of Bat-Yam were killed today.


2005(24th of Adar II, 5765):  Edward Bronfman, Canadian financier and philanthropist passed away at the age of 77.  Part of “the other Bronfmans” to distinguish him and his brother from the more famous Edgar Bronfman family, Edward Bronfman amassed business holdings valued at $80 million.  His generosity and in recognition of his other contributions to the civic good earned Bronfman  the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honor.


2006: Eightieth birthday of Sami Rohr.


2006: “While turning the pages of The Miami Herald” Sami Rohr “was surprised by a large advertisement announcing a new literary award” – The Sami Rohr Prize – that his three children had created without his knowledge to honor him. “It’s the largest prize of its kind in North America, in terms of the amount,” and gives “authors an opportunity to take time off to pursue their craft’” which furthered Rohr’s desire “to make sure that Jewish literature would thrive for generations.”


 


2006: Paula Abdul filed a report at a Hollywood police station claiming she had been a victim of battery at a private party…"According to Abdul, the man at the party argued with her, grabbed her by the arm and threw her against a wall," L.A.P.D. Lt. Paul Vernon said. "She said she had sustained a concussion and spinal injuries


2006:The Justice Ministry confirmed that Yona Metzger would not be able to continue as chief rabbi if the dayanim Appointment Committee disqualifies him from serving as a judge in the High Rabbinic Court


2006: In, “With Yoga, Comedy and Parties, Synagogues Entice Newcomers,” published today Michel Luo reports on the development of Jewish outreach programs



2007: New Mexico’s Bosque Redondo State Monument, a site commemorating “The Long Walk” hosts the traveling exhibition “Anne Frank: A History for Today.”


2007: “A little over three weeks after Robert “Bob” Levinson was arrested, an article today by Iranian state-run PressTV stated that he "has been in the hands of Iranian security forces since the early hours of March 9" and "authorities are well on the way to finishing the procedural arrangements that could see him freed in a matter of days". The same article explained that it was established that Levinson's trip to Kish "was purely that of a private businessman looking to make contact with persons who could help him make representations to official Iranian bodies responsible for suppressing trade in pirated products which is a major concern of his company.”


2007: An exhibition styled “Landmarks” presented by students of the Jewelry and Fashion department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design comes to a close.


2007916thof Nisan, 5767): Second Day of Pesach.


2007: Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehinten, the ranking Republican on the House (of Representatives) Foreign Affairs Committee “stated at a Congressional Hearing” that “‘Jews who were born in Arab countries have lost their resources, their homes, their heritage, and their heritage sites.’” During these same hearings, Irwin Cotler, a member of the Canadian Parliament and a former Justice minister argued that “’the rights for Jewish refugees from Arab countries have to a party of any peace process if the peace process is to have any integrity.’”


2008: The Youth Department of Congregation Beth Judea holds a special Friday Evening Shabbat Service led by the Kadinkers, the Kadima and the members of USY.  The service is preceded by a traditional kosher dinner.  Founded in 1969, the synagogue is in Long Grove, Il and serves families located in nearby Wheeling and Buffalo Grove.  Its website provides an on-line entry into the world of synagogue music.http://www.bethjudea.org/


2008: Army radio reported that Palestinian militants had opened fire on farmers working in the fields of Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, near Gaza. Thirty of the fieldworkers being shot at were volunteers from kibbutzim from different parts of Israel who had come to aid their counterparts at Ein Hashlosha, which has been the target of repeated sniper attacks


2008: Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida announced today that sniper fire from Hamas' military wing, which wounded Public Security Minister Avi Dichter's bureau chief near Gaza, was in fact aimed at the minister himself..


2008: The city of Montreal stated it planned to allow demolition of the building that housed Bens De Luxe Delicatessen and Restaurant originally opened by Ben and Fanny Kravitz in 1908.


2009(10thof Nisan, 5769): In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at Temple Judah, the Traditional Saturday morning minyan celebrates Shabbat Hagadol


2009:Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv hosts the city's Centennial Opening Gala. A showcase for top Israeli and International artists, the event includes an impressive 360-degree audiovisual display and performances by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Israeli Opera.


2009:Several hours after IDF soldiers killed two Palestinian terrorists who were trying to plant a bomb along the Gaza border fence, Border Police forces killed a terrorist who tried to carry out a shooting attack at their base in the Negev this afternoon


2010: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently published paperback edition of One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict by Benny Morris, “the father of Israel’s ‘new historians’” who “was convinced by the failed 2000 Camp David summit that Israel could do nothing to make Arab Muslims agree to its existence as a Jewish state” and “ now sees the two-state solution as a fantasy” while rejecting  “the so-called one-state solution as a call for Israel’s elimination.”


2011: Larry Page “officially became chief executive of Google.”


2011: A revival production of “The House of Blue Leaves” starring Ben Stiller began its preview performances at the Walter Kerr Theatre.


2011: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Leo Baeck Institute are scheduled to present a rare interview with Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek as part of a program entitled “Rechnitz: Austria's Dirty Little Secret.”


2011:SheshBesh - The Arab-Jewish Ensemble of the IPO – is scheduled to perform in New York City.


2011:La Rafle,” a film described as “a European Schindler’s List” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Actor Juliano Mer-Kham was gunned down in Jenin.





2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Fifty-one year old John Adler who “was a U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 3rd congressional district, serving from 2009 until 2011” passed away today.


2011(29thof Adar II, 5711): Ninety year old William Prussoff  “a pharmacologist at the Yale School of Medicine who, with a colleague, developed an effective component in the first generation of drug cocktails used to treat AIDS” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)



2011(29thof Adar II): Anniversary of the giving of the first commandment to the Jewish people. “Shortly before sundown on the 29th of Adar, G-d commanded Moses regarding the mitzvah of sanctifying the crescent new moon and establishing a lunar calendar. This is the first mitzvah the Jews were given as a nation.”


2011:Dirar Abu Sisi was Hamas's leading missile developer according to an indictment filed today at the Beersheba District Court.


2011:The Lehi considered killing Winston Churchill, The Telegraphreported today, citing declassified MI5 files. Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, a member of the underground group during the time of the British mandate, reportedly suggested in November 1944 that Lehi, or Stern Gang, members fly to London to kill the prime minister and force the British out of Mandatory Palestine, sparking concern in MI5 that Jewish extremists might try to assassinate foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, as well. "As soon as [Bet-Zuri] returned to Stern Group headquarters, he proposed to suggest a plan for the assassination of highly placed British political personalities, including Mr. Churchil, for which purpose eimssaries should be sent to London," a sources within the Lehi told Major James Robertson from MI5's Middle East section. Four months later, Bet-Zuri was executed in Cairo for assassinating Lord Moyne, the British Minister in the Middle East.


2011:Requests from charities around the country for food aid packages to help feed the country’s growing needy population have nearly doubled this year compared to last year, Israel’s largest food bank, Leket, reported today (As reported by Ruth Eglash)


2012: “The Kid With a Bike” is one of the films scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2012: The Yuval Ron Ensemble is scheduled to present a program thatexplores music of the ancient biblical Hebrew, Yemenite and Babylonian musical traditions, in Manhattan, Kansas.


2012(12th of Nisan, 5772):On the 12th of Nissan, 3412, Ezra departed from the river of Ahava, for Eretz Israel. This was part of the return from the Babylonian Exile that would lead to the building of the Second Temple and the regular, public reading of the Torah.


2012: Ruth Goodman and Gabi Gabay are scheduled to lead a program of Israeli Dancing at the 92nd Street Y.


2013: A renewal contract for the “Judge Judy” television show with Judith Sheindlin in the title role extended the show through the 2016-2017 season.


2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “At the Edge of the Jewish World: Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews.


2013: As part of the lecture series 'FilmTalk: The Jewish Villian', the Wiener Library is scheduled to present “Reviewing Fagin, 1948-2005”


 2013: The Jewish Theological Seminary is scheduled to host “a concert starring the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble” that “will feature the music of prominent Jewish and African American jazz composers” and “will explore the singular connections between the compositions and the cultures.”


2013: The White House will not hold a Jewish History Month event this year because of the sequester. A White House official confirmed to JTA that the reception, which usually takes place toward the end of May, would not take place this year because of the congressionally mandated across-the-board budget cuts that kicked in last month.


2013: More than 100 U.S. Jewish leaders urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make clear "Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace."


2013: Women who recite the Mourner's Kaddish at the Western Wall will not be arrested, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said he has been assured, despite a police vow to enforce a ban.


2014: Congregants at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa are scheduled to take a trip down memory lane with “Retro-Reform” Shabbat Evening Services featuring Gates of Prayer, the prayerbook which was considered ground-breaking when introduced just a few decades ago.


2014: The 12thannual Austin Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.


2014: “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers” and “Aya with Wherever You Go” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2014: The Cedar Rapids Gazette is scheduled to publish a feature story about Cesare Frustaci the survivor of the Nazi ghetto in Budapest who will be the featured speaker at the upcoming Yom Hashoah Service sponsored by The Thaler Holocaust Remembrance Fund.


2014: “A Legendary Mossad Commander Steps from the Shadows” published today explores the life and times of Mike Harari.



2015: Francis J. Pruitt, the author of Faith and Courage in a Time of Trouble, “a memoir of a Belgian-Jewish girl and her family who were saved during the Nazi occupation of France through the compassion and heroism of French peasants from the southern part of the country” is scheduled to appear at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015(15th of Nisan, 5775):First day of Pesach coincides with observance of Shabbat.



2015(15th of Nisan, 5775):In the evening, second Seder and first counting of the Omer.


15th of Nisan, 5650 (1890):An untold number of poor New Yorkers enjoyed eating meat at their Seder tonight thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Paulina Rosendorff who had provided the funding that enabled butchers to distribute their product free of charge.


15th of Nisan, 5675(1915): The 300 Jewish soldiers and sailors who attended last night’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Y.M.H.A. which also provided a night’s lodging at the Hotel Roland are scheduled to worship at Temple Beth Israel at Lexington and 72ndStreet today while the Secretary of War, the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City have been invited to attend tonight’s Seder sponsored by the Army and Navy Young Men’s Hebrew Association for the benefit of 300 of the 8,000 Jews serving in the military which is being held at Vienna Hall on Lexington and 58th Street.



15th of Nisan, 5677 (1917): One day after U.S. declared War on Germany, Jews gather in the synagogue to observe Pesach and Shabbat



15th of Nisan, 5705(1945): At least 58 Jews were murdered in a forest near the Austrian village of Deutsch Shuetzen, in what would come to be called the Deutsch Shuetzen Massacre while in the evening, members of the Jewish Infantry Brigade of the British 8th Army serving in Italy took part in a Seder at Faenza.



15th of Nisan, 5725(1965):  While Jews in the Soviet struggled to deal with a shortage of Matzah created by the government refusal to let state bakeries prepare adequate supplies of unleavened bread Rabbis in America were encouraged to deliver sermons that related the themes of Pesach with fight for Civil Rights complete with references to the recent voting rights march in Selma.



15th of Nisan, 5728(1968): For the first time, Pesach is observed in a unified Jerusalem



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 


 


 


 

This Day, April 5, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 5



1291: Muslim forces began the siege of Acre, the last Crusader stronghold.  Today, this site, Akko, is back in the control of the true titleholders, the people of People of Israel who were more often than not victims during the centuries dominated by the Crusades.



1419: Sixty-nine year old Vincent Ferrer, the Dominican Friar who used dubious means to force Jews to convert to Catholicism and helped to sow the seeds of anti-Semitism in Spain passed away today. Among the leaders who sought to provide the Jews with the intellectual support to fight this period of darkness was Isaac ben Jacob Canapton, the Spanish rabbi who lived from 1360 to 1463 and wrote A Methodology of the Talmud. ( The Catholic  Church saw fit to canonize the priest)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Campanton;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Ferrer



1464: Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Seville, Spain.



1533: In an effort to stop the Inquisition, Pope Clement VII issued the Bulla de Perdao which was essentially a pardon for all past offenses. This was supposed to help the News Christians living in Portugal. Unfortunately the pope died a few years later and the Inquisition was officially established.


1558: Birthdate of Philosopher Thomas Hobbes.  Hobbes discusses the nature and source of the canonized Biblical texts in Chapter 33 of his seminal work, The Leviathan.


1566:  Two hundred Netherlands noblemen, led by Hendrik van Brederode, force their way into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise which denounces the Inquisition in the Netherlands. The Inquisition was suspended and a delegation was sent to Spain to petition Philip II.(Ed note:  This should provide further explanation of the reasons for the rise of the Jewish community in the Netherlands and ultimately in the United States)


1568: Batpism of Maffeo Barberini who has Pope Urban VIII “ended the custom according to which a Jew, upon enter the pontiff’s presence was expected to kiss the Holy Father’s foot.”  All that he required was that the Jew kiss the spot on the floor where the Pope’s foot had stood. (As reported in The Sword of Constantine, page 384)


1649: Birthdate of Elihu Yale who took a Jewish wife while serving in India and fathered a child with her.  [And you thought the only Jewish connection was the group of Hebrew letters on the crest of Yale University.]


1721(8th of Nisan): Rabbi Benjamin Zev, author Ir Binyamin, passed away today


1760(19thof Nisan, 5520): Centenarian Isaac Ḥayyim de Brito Abendana:Ḥakam of the Portuguese community in Amsterdam, who “published "Sermão Exhortatoria," in 1753 passed away today.


1775: Pope Pious VI issued the “Editto sopra gli ebrei,” a proclamation that reinstituted all former anti-Jewish legislation. The proclamation included forty-four clauses prohibiting the possession of Talmudic writings, erection of gravestones, forbidding Jews from passing the night outside the ghetto, under pain of death, and more. The regulations were in effect until the arrival of Napoleon army 25 years later.


1795(16thof Nisan, 5555): 2nd day of Pesach


1795(16thof Nisan, 5555): After having been arrested as an Austrian spy, accused of corruption and bribery” Moses Dobruschka was sent to the guillotine.

1804: Birthdate of German botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden

1812: In Stuttgart, Germany, Sheinle Ephraim and Isaac Samuel Wormser gave to Lewis Wormser Harris the successful Irish financier who served as Lord Mayor of Dublin and President of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation.


1822(14th of Nisan, 5582):Ta'anit Bechorot


1822(14th of Nisan, 5582): Rabbi Benjamin Zev of Zabrocz , Poland, passed away in Tiberias. (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)



1830, “In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, Thomas Macaulay spoke eloquently in favor of Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. Alluding to but not actually naming, Nathan Rothschild (who had financed the Allied armies ranged against Napoleon), Macaulay noted that "as things now stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England.... The influence of a Jew may be of the first consequences in a war which shakes Europe to the centre," and yet the Jews have no legal right to vote or to sit in Parliament. "Three hundred years ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads." If some members of the House thought it indecent of Macaulay to dredge up this nasty old business about King John extracting gold teeth from Jewish heads, certain opponents of Jewish Emancipation found it still much the best policy. According to J. A. Froude, his biographer, Thomas Carlyle, standing in front of Rothschild's great house at Hyde Park Corner, exclaimed: "I do not mean that I want King John back again, but if you ask me which mode of treating these people to have been nearest to the will of the Almighty about them--to build them palaces like that, or to take the pincers for them, I declare for the pincers." Carlyle even fancied himself in the role of a Victorian King John, with Baron Rothschild at his mercy: "Now, Sir, the State requires some of these millions you have heaped together with your financing work. 'You won't? Very well'--and the speaker gave a twist with his wrist--'Now will you?'--and then another twist till the millions were yielded." Although Macaulay was a liberal, he did not speak for all liberals, some of whom stood much closer to Carlyle on the Jewish question. One of these was Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby and intellectual leader of the liberal or Broad Church branch of the Church of England. Arnold set himself against conservatism as the most dangerously revolutionary of principles: "there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress." (4) When John Henry Newman, leader of the Anglo-Catholic (or "High") branch of the Church of England, declared that liberalism was "the enemy," and that by liberalism he meant "the Anti-dogmatic Principle," Arnold was among the principal culprits he had in mind, particularly "some free views of Arnold about the Old Testament."


But Arnold's preference of improvement to preservation and of free views to dogma drew up short where the Jews were concerned. He might excoriate the High Church party for having, throughout English history, opposed improving measures of any kind; but he shared with his Anglo-Catholic adversaries the conviction that Christianity must be the law of the land. In 1834 (a year after the Jewish Emancipation Bill had been passed by the Commons but rejected by the Lords) Arnold insisted that he "must petition against the Jew Bill" because it is based on "that low Jacobinical notion of citizenship, that a man acquires a right to it by the accident of his being littered inter quatuor maria [on the nation's soil] or because he pays taxes." That indelicate word "littered" suggests that Arnold's opposition to Jewish emancipation was not purely doctrinal, but had a strong admixture of compulsive nastiness (or worse).


1850: The Danish King implemented a law that allowed foreign Jews to settle in Denmark

1860: According to reports published today Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, “editor of the Cincinnati Israelite, has written to several Senators to caution them against the repetition of any clause in the Chinese treaty similar to that in the treaty with Switzerland, which debars the Jews from enjoying the privileges of other American citizens.”


1860: In New York, the Assembly passed a bill “to amend the charter of the Hebrew Benevolent Society”.


1860: In New York, the Assembly passed a bill “to amend the charter of the Cemetery Association of” B’nai Jeshurun.


1861: An article published today entitled “What Made Him Sick” described the desperate financial condition of the Ottomans whose creditors include Jews who left the government undisclosed amounts of money.  [During its last century of existence, Westerners referred to the Ottoman Empire as “the sick man of Europe.’]


1870(14th of Nisan, 5631):Ta'anit Bechorot


1870: Today the Sultan Abdul Aziz issued a firman that allocated the "Alliance Israelite Universelle" 2600 dunams of land east of Jaffa for the establishment of a school of agriculture and also granted permission for importing all kinds of tools and machinery free of taxes and customs. As Ben Gurion, said: "I doubt that the Israeli dream would have been realized if the farm school of Mikveh Israel had not existed."


1871(14th of Nisan, 5631): As the Jews of Newark, New Jersey, begin the celebration of Passover this evening, it is estimated that they will consume 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of matzoth during the eight days of the holiday.



1882(16th of Nisan, 5642): Second Day of Pesach; First Day of the Omer


1882(16th of Nisan, 5642): German born rabbi and educator Max Lilienthal passed away in Cincinnati, Ohio. After a successful career in Europe, “Lilienthal left Russia suddenly in 1844 and went to the United States. Settling in New York, he became rabbi of the Congregation Anshe Chesed, Norfolk street and, later, rabbi of Shaar ha-Shomayim,. His somewhat advanced views led to considerable friction. He resigned his position in 1850 and established an educational institute with which he attained considerable success. In 1854 he became correspondent of the "American Israelite," and in the following year removed to Cincinnati and became associate editor of that journal and rabbi of the Congregation Bene Israel. His activity in Cincinnati extended over a period of twenty-seven years. He organized the Rabbinical Literary Association, serving as its president, and was at first instructor and later professor of Jewish history and literature at Hebrew Union College. He was prominent, also, in the Jewish press as the founder and editor of the "Hebrew Review," a quarterly, and the "Sabbath-School Visitor," a weekly, and as a frequent contributor to the "Israelite," the "Occident,""Deborah" (founded by him), the "Asmonean,""Volksblatt," and "Volksfreund." He published a volume of poems entitled "Freiheit, Frühling und Liebe" (1857), several volumes of addresses and sermons, and left three dramas in manuscript—"Die Strelitzen Mutter,""Rudolf von Habsburg," and "Der Einwanderer."Lilienthal took an active interest in the affairs of the municipality. As member of the Cincinnati board of education, and as director of the Relief Union and of the university board, he contributed much to the welfare of his adopted city. He was a reformer by nature; he was instrumental in introducing reforms in his own congregation in Cincinnati, constantly preached tolerance, and urged a more liberal interpretation of Jewish law.”
1890(15th of Nisan, 5650): First Day of Pesach
1895: “Bequests by Bernhard Bernhard” published today included a partial list of those benefiting from his generosity including the Hebrew Benevolent Association, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Home for the Aged and Infirm Hebrews and the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids each of which received $150 and the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews which received $100. 
1896: Rabbis Gottheil, Silverman and Sparger will officiate at the funeral of Leonard Friedman who died last week in New Jersey. Edward Lauterbach will deliver the graveside address.
1896: Dr. Joseph Silverman spoke today at Temple Emanu El on “Passover and Easter; a Comparative Study.”
1896: “Solomon’ Song” published today contains a detailed review of Elbert Hubbard’s study of the biblical book entitled  The Song of Songs, Which Is Solomon’s
1896: Using information that first appeared in The American Hebrew, “Error in the Jewish Calendar” published today described a lecture “delivered under the auspices of the Graetz College in Philadelphia on ‘The Jewish Calendar’ in which Dr. Cyrus Adler called attention to an error in the calendar” which was first “promulgated by Hillel II” in or around 350 C.E.


1897: Reverend Lyman Abbott of Plymouth Church addressed an event hosted by the Jewish Alliance in the Assembly Hall of Temple Emanu El


1899: Dr. Lee K. Frankel of Philadelphia accepted the offer to serve as the manager of United Hebrew Charities of New York City succeeding N.S. Rosenau who had resigned from the position last February due to poor health.


1899: “Real Estate Exemption” published today described Assemblyman Green’s efforts to gain a property tax exemption for the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of New York City.


1901: Birthdate of actor Melvyn Douglas.  Born Melvyn Hesselberg in Macon,Georgia, Douglas enjoyed a long and distinguished career in films.  One of his most memorable roles was in Hud, in which he played the craggy old Texas father committed to the virtues of the frontier.  This is another example of the Jew portraying the quintessential American.  Douglas gained a different kind of fame when his wife Helen Gagahan Douglas ran against Richard Nixon for U.S. Senator in 1950.  Nixon and his allies combined her liberal politics with his Judaism to create the specter of the Jewish/Communist Conspiracy.  The fact that Douglas had changed his name was considered evidence of the conspiracy. "Californians can do one thing very soon to further the ideals of Christian nationalism, and this is not to send to the Senate the wife of a Jew."  Douglas died at the age of 80 in 1981 just before the appearance of his final film, Ghost Story.


1903: In Maciejowice, Poland, Rabbi Mendel of the Warka Hasidic dynasty and his wife gave birth to Ita Kalish.

1905: The announcement of the engagement of journalist and former cigar worker Rose Pastor to prominent Protestant philanthropist James Graham Phelps Stokes caused a media sensation.


1908: Henry Asquith became Prime Minister of Great Britain today and appointed two rising stars to his cabinet and future Prime Ministers to his cabinet – David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.  Lloyd George would be the Prime Minister whose government issued the Balfour Declaration; a document he would continue to champion during the 1920’s when such support ceased to be “fashionable.”  Churchill enjoyed the support of friendship of members of the Jewish community, supported the Balfour Declaration and was a personal friend of Chaim Weizmann.  This personal friendship did not keep Churchill from turning his back on the Zionists in the waning days of WW II.


1909(14thof Nisan, 5669): As Jews in Atlanta, GA sat down to their Seders, for the first time they had a choice of which matzoth to use – they could either continue with the Manischewitz  or use that offered for the first time in this southern city produced by A. Goodman & Son, of New York which also offered  “Berliner Tea Matzoths, Matzoth Meal, and Imported Potato Flour”  


1909(14th of Nisan, 5669): The New York Times reported that “The celebration of the Jewish festival of Pesach, or the Passover, will commence at sunset this evening and will continue among the orthodox members of the Hebrew community for eight days. The first two days and the last two days of this period are held as strict holidays on which no business should be transacted or servile work entered upon, except such as may be considered works of necessity or charity.”


1910:  Birthdate of Chaim Grade, poet, novelist and short story writer.  Born in Vilna, Lithuania (which at that time was part of Russia), Grade gained prominence in the 1930's as a Yiddish author.  He survived the Holocaust and came to the United States after the war where he continued to write.  Two of his more famous novels are The Agunah and The Yeshiva.  In My Mother's Sabbath, Grade created a memoir praising his mother, "a pious woman, who raised her son alone and worked herself to the bone...but never forgot the holiness of the Sabbath."  Elie Wiesel described Grade as "one of the greatest, if not the greatest of contemporary Yiddish novelists."  Grade passed away on June 26, 1982.


1911:Eight hearses carried the caskets of seven unknown victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire to the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.

1914:Preparations were made today for the free distribution of thousands of pounds of unleavened bread or Matzoth to needy Jewish families, for use duruing the week of the Passover, which begins on Friday night.


1914: The 24th annual convention of the Independent Order of Free Sons of Judah opened today at the Murray Hill Lyceum


1914: The New York Times Magazine features on articledescribing “the almost unrivaled collection of Jewish manuscripts found at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which, thanks to Dr. Solomon Schechter and others is surpassed only by those found at the British and Bodleian Museums.”


1917: Birthdate of Robert Albert Blochwhowrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction. He was a contributor to pulp magazines like Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America. Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He passed away in 1994.


1918: Premier Radoslavoff of Bulgaria praises the patriotism of Jews, and pledges his

Government will be an ally of the Jewish cause in the negotiations with Romania.



1919(5th of Nisan, 5679): The Polish army executed 35 young Jews who had helped in the distribution of packages sent by the Joint to the Jewish community of Pinsk. They were taken from a legitimate business meeting of the Jewish Cooperative and accused of being Jewish Bolshevists. Others also arrested were told to dig their own graves and but were released.  Ironically, the relief activities of the Joint Distribution Committee were used by Russians, in the declining years of Stalin, as a pretext for their anti-Semitic charges of disloyalty against Soviet Jews.



1920(17thof Nisan, 5680): Third Day of Pesach


1920: As Arab violence in Jerusalem grew worse, “the Old City was sealed off and martial law was declared which did not put an end to the “looting, burglar, rape and murder” which makes the decision to withdraw the soldiers that night all the more inexplicable or as the Palin Report would call it “an error in judgment.


1923: Birthdate of Belgian born philosopher and economist Ernest Mandel
1925: Celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding ofMontefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases a leading medical intuition named to honor the memory of Sir Moses Montefiore. During the observance, President Rosenbaum reviewed the history of the hospital and Dr George E. Vincent, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, delivered an address on "The Hospital and the Community."


1926: New York Times correspondent T. Walter Williams reports that the American Zionist Commonwealth and the Palestine Securities Corporation are paying $20 a dunam (quarter of an acre) to the Arabs for land in Palestine and selling it to Jewish settlers for $100 per dunam.


1927: Municipal elections are held in Jerusalem. The election ordinance allocates four seats for Jews and eight for Arabs. Ragheb al Nashashibi is elected mayor. Deputy Mayors are Chaim Salomon and Ya'akuv Faraj (a Christian).


1930: U.S. premiere of “Ladies of Leisure” written by Jo Swerling and produced by Harry Cohn.


1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): 4thday of Pesach


1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): Twenty year old Lewis Warner, the son of Harry Warner, who had been appointed “as head of Warner Bros.” passed away today “when an infected, impacted wisdom tooth was extracted, which led to septicemia and then double pneumonia.”


1931(18th of Nisan, 5691): Seventy-nine year old Nathan Frank,

1934: Birthdate of “Dr. Fritz H. Bach, a physician and medical researcher who helped develop techniques to improve people’s chances of surviving organ and bone marrow transplants.” As reported by Douglas Martin)


1937: The Palestine Post reported in a leading article that the Mandatory government’s delay in granting certificates to workers, apparently for political reasons, had caused a severe shortage of Jewish labor.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jews living Safed were forced to remain in their own quarter since those who dared to go into the Arab parts of the city were stoned.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that a royal palace was been unearthed at Megiddo by the archaeological expedition, organized by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.


1937: The Palestine Post reported in Poland Menachem Begin and members of his Betar Revisionist youth group were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for having demanded free immigration to Palestine, during a demonstration held outside the British Embassy in Warsaw. The Polish government expressed its regrets to the British Embassy.


1937: Birthdate of Aryeh “Arie” Selinger who “served as the head coach of the USA Women's Team in the years 1975-1984.”


1938: Anti-Jewish riots break out in Dabrowa and spread across Poland.


1939(16th of Nisan, 5699): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer


1939(16th of Nisan, 5699): Dr. Moses Gaster passed away today.

1940: Birthdate of Aliza Kashi, Israeli, actress and singer.  She gained some of her popularity as a regular on the Merv Griffin Show.



1942: The Lutheran Church of Norway issued "Kirken grunn"("Foundations of the Church"), a letter condemning Nazism and racism and protesting efforts of Vidkun Quisling, Norway's German puppet, to "Nazify" Norway's churches.



1943: In Aleppo, Syria, Jacob Safra and his wife gave birth to Brazilian businessman and co-founder of the Bano Safra Moise Safra.



1943(29th of Adar II, 5703): Three hundred Jews from Soly and Smorgon, Byelorussia, were transported by rail westward to Vilna, Lithuania. En route, the captives shattered the railcars' wire-reinforced glass and attempted to flee, but were shot to death by guards. The survivors were later shot at Ponary, southwest of Vilna, by German and Lithuanian SS troops. About 4000 Jews from in and around Vilna were trucked to Ponary, slaughtered, and dumped into mass graves. Jews arriving at the Ponary station by rail from Oszmiana and Swieciany, Lithuania, resisted with revolvers, knives, and their bare hands; a few dozen escaped to Vilna and the rest were shot. During the massacre, a Lithuanian policeman was wounded by Jews and an SS sergeant was hospitalized after being stabbed in the back and in the head.



1943(29th of Adar II, 5703): The final trainload of Jews from Macedonia arrived at Treblinka. All aboard were gassed immediately.



1943: Three Tunisian Jews, Joseph, Gilbert and Freddy Scemla, were flown from North Africa to Germany where they would be imprisoned in Dachau and eventually be beheaded.  The three men had been betrayed by an Arab when they were attempting to hide from the Nazis in the days before Tunisia was liberated by the Allies. 



1943: Hans vonDohnányi a German jurist who was part of the Resistance and really did rescue Jews,was arrested at his office by the Gestapo] on charges of alleged breach of foreign currency violations: he had transferred funds to a Swiss bank on behalf of the Jews he had saved



1944: Deadline arrives for all Jews of Hungary to wear a Gold Star on their clothing.


1944: Violette Szabo, who would eventually be murdered at Ravensbruck  began her first mission as a covert agent today when she was flown from RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire in a US B-24 Liberator bomber and parachuted into German-occupied France, near Cherbourg


1944: A prisoner escaped from Auschwitz to warn Czech Jews about the death camp.


1945: Today “units from the American Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army were the first Americans to discover a concentration camp with prisoners and corpses.”

1947(15th of Nisan, 5707): In China, a Seder was held at The Shanghai Jewish Young Community Center


1949: Birthdate of Dr. Judith Arlene Resnik.  Born in Akron, Ohio, Resnik was a design engineer, electrical engineer and biochemical engineer for Xerox, RCA and NIH.  She was a mission specialist on the Challenger where she died in 1986.


1951: U.S. premiere of “Teresa” directed by Fred Zinnemann, produced by Arthur Loew, Jr., with a script by Stewart Stern and music by Louis Appelbaum.


1951: The Rosenbergs and David Greenglass were convicted of spying.  Prosecuted by Jewish lawyers, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death by a Jewish judge.


1953: Birthdate of Ghaleb Majadele, an Israeli-Arab member of the Labor Party who has served as an MK and cabinet minister.


1956: Birthdate of “English author and screenwriter” Anthony Horowitz.


1956: In a case of Jew versus “Abraham Telvi, a mobster and hit man, attacked journalist Victor Riesel with acid, blinding him as he left” Lindy’s Restaurant in New York.  Riesel was a crusading journalist who exposed the connection between mobsters and certain elements of the American labor movement.


1956: Egyptian artillery in the Gaza Strip bombarded settlements in the Negev.  Four civilians and two Israeli soldiers were wounded.  At mid-day Egyptian terrorists were spotted trying to infiltrate from Gaza.  The failed attempt was accompanied by a renewed barrage from the Egyptians which killed three Israeli soldiers.  The Israelis returned fire, killing 63 civilians in the process.  The Foreign Ministry expressed regret at the loss of civilian life but reminded the Egyptians that it was “their folly” which had brought on the exchange in the first place.  Attacks like these from Gaza were one of the causes of the war between Egypt and Israel that took place later in 1956. [Yes, this is the same Gaza from which the Kassam Rockets are being launched during the 21st century.]


1958(15th of Nisan, 5718): First Day of Pesach


1958(15thNisan, 5718): Terrorists lying in an ambush shot and killed two people near Tel Lakhish


1961: Barbra Streisand made her first performance on national television tonight when she appeared on the Jack Paar Show singing Harold Arlen’s “A Sleepin’ Bee.” (Of the three mentioned Paar is the one who was not Jewish.)


1965:Jack Benny, whose weekly television show will not continue after this season, said today he would star on two special hour-long shows next season on the National Broadcasting Company network. The 71-year-old comedian will thus continue the uninterrupted association with broadcasting that began in 1932.


1966(15thof Nisan, 5726): Pesach


1967(24thof Adar II, 5727): Seventy-six year old Nobel laureate Herman Joseph Muller passed away today.

1967(24th of Adar II, 5727): Violinist Mischa Elman passed away.


1971: The Supreme Court rendered a decision in INVESTMENT COMPANY INSTITUTE et al., Petitioners, v. William B. CAMP, Comptroller of the Currency, et al. in which Joseph B. Levin represented the petitioner, National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc.


1972(21st of Nisan, 5732): Pesach VII


1972(21st of Nisan, 5732)::Sixty-five year old MK Reuven Barkat passed away today.


1973: Funeral services are held at Temple Emanu-El in New York for Aaron Rabinowitz, a pioneer in the field of affordable housing and other forms of real estate innovation.


 1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned that his country and Israel must not paralyze ourselves by suspiciousness that deprives our relationship of dignity and our cooperation of significance. He reassured, “We’ll never abandon Israel.”


1977:The Jerusalem Postreported that President Sadat of Egypt, who was in Paris on an arms-purchasing mission, assured his hosts that he had withdrawn the Soviet Union’s right to use Egyptian port naval facilities.


1977: Birthdate of Israeli tennis player Jonathan Erlich.


1982(12th of Nisan, 5742): Abe Fortas Supreme former Supreme Court Justice and advisor to Lyndon Johnson died at the age of 71. (As reported by Linda Greenhouse)

1987: Broadcast of the first episode of “The Tracey Ullman Show” which was created and produced by James L. Brooks


1990: Eighty-one year old Rabbi S. Gershon Levi, a former president of the Rabbinical Assembly and a former editor of the quarterly publication Conservative Judaism, died of heart failure at his home in Jerusalem.

1991: U.S. premiere “The Marrying Man” with a script by Neil Simon and featuring Paul Reiser as “Phil.”


1992(2nd of Nisan, 5752): Actress Molly Picon, the star of the Yiddish theatre who played Yente the Matchmaker in the film version of “Fiddler on the Roof” passed away today

1994: "Jackie Mason Politically Incorrect" opened in New York City for the first of 347 performances.


1995: Alisa Flatow, a Brandeis University Junior from New Jersey, was riding a bus in the Gaza Strip when a van loaded with explosives was driven into the bus. Shrapnel from the bomb went through her skull and she never regained consciousness. Stephen Flatow, her father, flew to Israel to confirm that the brain-dead young woman was his daughter. Staff at Sororkin Hospital in Beersheva asked him if he would be willing to donate his daughter’s viable organs. After consulting with his wife and making a conference call to his rabbis, Alvin Marcus and Rabbi Moshe D. Tendler of Yeshiva University, Alisa’s parents decided to follow the positive mitzvah of Pikuach Nefesh, the "Saving a Life." Alisa’s organs changed the lives of six people on the transplant waiting list. "People have called it a brave decision, a righteous decision, a courageous decision. To us it was simply the right thing to do at the time," said Flatow. The Flatow family decision had an emotional impact on a grieving Israel. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told American Jews in May 1995 that "Alisa Flatow’s heart beats in Jerusalem." Even more, the Flatow’s decision made public a painful issue — Jewish views about organ donation.
Alisa Flatow, 20, was riding a bus in the Gaza Strip when an Islamic Jihad militant drove a van loaded with explosives into the bus. Shrapnel from the bomb went through her skull, and she never regained consciousness. Her heart was successfully transplanted to a 56-year-old man who had been waiting more than a year for one; her liver was donated to a 23-year-old man, and her lungs, pancreas and kidneys to four different patients. Her corneas were donated to an eye bank. Miss Flatow, a Brandeis University junior from West Orange, N.J., had taken a semester off to study at a Jerusalem seminary. She loved Israel and had considered settling there; it was fitting that she could help others in Israel. Alisa was a young Jewish woman of sterling character who came to Israel to study her Jewish heritage; an unusually thoughtful person -- bright, modest, and delightful. Her loss is felt by her family, her community, her classmates and her many friends in the United States, Israel, and throughout the world.


1993: The keel of INS Hanit, the corvette built Northrop Grumman, was laid down today.


1996: Marlon Brando made anti-Semitic remarks about Hollywood on The Larry King Show.


1997(27th of Adar II, 5757): Beat poet Allen Ginsberg passed away.

1998: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz,Good Spirits: The Making of a Businessman” by Edgar M. Bronfman and “Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories” by Miriam Weiner.


2000: Joseph Gutnick was among three men who resigned as directors of Great Central Mining following the exposure of financial irregularities.


2001(12th of Nisan, 5761): German born entertainer, Theodore Gottlieb, known as Brother Theodore, passed away.

2002: Operation Defensive Shield continued today with Israeli forces fighting terrorists in a number of towns including Jenin, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem where their mission was made that much more difficult because the terrorists hid among the Arab civilians.


2002(23rdof Nisan, 5762):Sgt. Merom Fisher, 19, of Moshav Avigdor; Sgt. Ro'i Tal, 21, of Ma'alot; and Sgt. Oded Kornfein, 20, of Kibbutz Ha'on - were killed in exchanges of fire between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield.


2002: Qeis Adwan, head of the suicide bombing network responsible for the Passover Massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya was killed by IDF forces today during Operation Defensive Shield, after the IDF and the Yamam caught him in Tubas, some 70 kilometers north of Jerusalem.


2004(14th of Nisan, 5764): On the Jewish calendar, 61st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.2005(25th of Adar II, 5765):  Pulitzer Prize winning author Saul Bellow passed away at the age of 89.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/07/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries



2006:  In a story that resonates with special meaning as Jews prepare to remember another Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Jerusalem Post reported on the reuniting of two cousins, Holocaust survivors, who had been separated for 66 years. For 66 years, Ella Friedvald, 82, and her 79-year-old sister Lila were sure that their cousin Krystyna had been killed in the Holocaust, just as she was convinced they were long dead. After all, the three women were barely teenagers when the Germans invaded Poland and their families were separated, their paths seemingly forever split as their world shattered before them. After the war, Ella and Lila settled in Israel, while Krystyna, 79, made her home in the US, all having failed to find traces of their respective parents. But, as fate willed it, a faded postcard sent from a German labor camp 60 years ago and the determination of a very persistent octogenarian to claim her family's pre-war life insurance benefits led to their reunification here this week. The Friedvald girls grew up in Warsaw in the 1930s. After the Nazis invaded Poland, their families fled to Lvov, at the time still part of Poland, but under Soviet control. Although they escaped the Germans, Ella, Lila and their parents were forcibly taken by the Soviets to a closed labor camp, while Krystyna and her parents eventually made their way back to Warsaw once the Germans entered Lvov. Krystyna's last childhood memory of her two cousins was that of her father racing to the train station in Lvov in the hopes of bribing the Russian soldiers to free the two girls, only to come back home empty-handed having failed to find the family at the station. Her last piece of information about her cousins for the next six and half decades was a letter that Lila wrote her from the Soviet camp in which she said that her parents and older sister were dying of hunger. The two sisters were indeed soon orphaned, but they managed to survive the war, and eventually made their way to Israel where they married and had families. Their cousin's parents fared no better than their own, as both were killed by the Nazis in Warsaw. But young Krystyna, who was living on the Aryan side of the city and who took part in the Warsaw uprising, managed to survive the war against all odds, largely since the Germans had no clue that the Polish-speaking teen was Jewish. After the Nazis crushed the Polish rebellion, she was taken, together with a group of Poles, to a labor camp in Germany, where she remained until the war ended with the Red Army liberating the camp. While she was still at the camp, Krystyna sent out postcards to various places in Poland in search of family members and friends, but they were returned to the camp with no such persons found. "I was positive they were dead," Krystyna told The Jerusalem Post, "and they were sure I was killed with the rest of the Jews of Poland." After the war, Krystyna's uncle brought her to England, where she would meet her future husband. After the young couple married, they decided to move to the US since they did not want to start a family in war-ravaged Europe. For the next 50 years, Krystyna, of Eastchester, NY, was unaware that her two cousins were alive and well in Israel. Then, five years ago, her cousin Ella began to make inquires about possible remuneration from the Generali Company for life insurance taken out by her family members before the war. The Polish offices of the company did not find any policies for her parents or grandparents but they did find one for her cousin's father. Ella Friedvald then contacted a Polish organization of authors and composers, where he had worked, to see if they had any record of him. The organization wrote back that their cousin had informed them in a letter in 1947 that her father had been killed in 1942. That letter opened up a whole new world for them. "At that moment we knew that she had survived the war," Ella said. The next thing to do was to see if she were still alive. Coincidentally, around the same time that Ella began to make inquiries, her cousin had answered an advertisement put out by the Polish Consulate in New York in search of survivors of the Warsaw uprising. A representative of the consulate then visited Krystyna in her home, and when he asked her if she had any memento for a museum to mark the uprising, she gave him a postcard she had written from the German labor camp 60 years earlier that had been stamped "return to sender." The Polish official was very happy with the postcard, and the museum subsequently put it on its Internet site, which would prove critical in her cousins' search for her, which they carried out with the help of two Polish friends. Last month, Krystyna Friedvald got a call from the Polish museum. "Someone is looking for you," the voice on the other line said in Polish. "Who?" she asked. The museum staffer asked her if she had any cousins, using their married names. Krystyna said she did not know of any such people. "How about Ella and Lila?" the voice - like a dream out of the past - asked. "Where are they?" Krystyna cried, thinking her cousins were in Poland. "They are in Israel," came the reply. The next morning at 5 a.m. Krystyna's phone rang. It was her long-lost cousin calling from Israel. "We talked and we talked and we talked," she said. The following week Krystyna was on a plane to Israel to reunite with her cousins. After 66 years, the three, who look remarkably alike and who communicate with each other in Polish, were clearly trying to squeeze a lifetime into Krystyna's one-week visit, her first ever to Israel. "It's these two stubborn ladies, they decided to find me," she concluded with a smile.



2007: An exhibition opens at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles entitled “The Art of Vintage Israeli Travel Posters” opens. The exhibition is designed as part of a commemoration of Israeli Independence Day. According to the museum, “this insightful new exhibition surveys travel posters produced by Israeli government tourism agencies and both national and private transportation companies during the 1950s and 1960s. On display are more than thirty posters that were designed to promote tourism to Israel drawn from the Skirball's permanent collection as well as from the Collection of Micha Riss. Taken together, these works offer a unique view of the themes, slogans, and images that were developed to help create a national identity during the nascent years of the state of Israel and to give visual expression to its ideals. Among the most popular iconographic themes during this period are the portrayals of Israel as the ancient land of the Bible, as a place of unspoiled beauty and fascinating history, and as a thriving, modern nation.”



2008: The 92ndStreet Y presents a piano recital by Peter Serkin, son of the famous Rudolf Serkin



2008: Shabbat Ha-Chodesh



2008(29th of Adar II, 5768): Eugene Ehrlich, a self-educated lexicographer who wrote 40 dictionaries, thesauruses and phrase books for the "extraordinarily literate," not to mention people just hoping to sound that way, died at his home in Mamaroneck, New York at the age of 85
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/books/15ehrlich.html



2008: The New York Times reported that Sederot, a long neglected immigrant town a mile from Gaza, pounded by Palestinian rockets for the past seven years, is taking on a new identity, edging into the center of Zionist consciousness as a symbol of the nation’s unofficial motto: “Never Again.” Like the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Sderot is now a must-see stop for those who support Israel or are being urged to do so.



2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles continues with a presentation of the works of director Jean-Luc Godard including– In Praise of Loveand Our Music.



2009: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Mainly On Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals”by Arthur Laurents



2009: The Washington Post featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss.



2009:Israeli archaeologists continued their inspection today of the Western Wall stone by stone in a new conservation effort at the Jewish holy site. The oldest stones were laid 2,000 years ago as part of the retaining wall of the Jewish Temple, and the newest by the Ottomans - who ruled the area until 1917. Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Jon Seligman says the work aims to make sure stones don't collapse on those praying below. Today workers on a platform cleaned stones near the top of the 20-meter high wall, which is a religious flash point. The authority says work will likely continue for two months.



2010(21st of Nisan, 5770): In Jerusalem, Isralight is scheduled to host the Seudat Mashiach this evening.



2010:Edom; featuring Israeli guitaristEyal Maoz is scheduled to appear at The Local 269 in New York City.



2011(1stof Nisan, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Nisan



20122(1stof Nisan, 5771): Eighty-seven year old Charles Laufer, the creator of magazines aimed at teenage girls passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/business/media/13laufer.html



2011(1stof Nisan, 5771): Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Baruch Blumberg passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/health/07blumberg.html?pagewanted=all



2011: In New York City, the Guggenheim Museum is scheduled to present “Omer Fast: Art Talk.”Omer Fast is a native of Jerusalem who “works with film, video, and television footage to examine the complex interplay between personal and public histories.”



2011: Irwin and Ginny Edlavitch are scheduled to be honored at the Washington DCJCC Annual Spring Gala.



2011: Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to kick off the 150th anniversary month of the Civil War with t a Lunch and Learn entitled “The Jewish Civil War.”



2011: President Peres joined President Obama for a working lunch at the White House where they will discuss Israeli peace proposals.



2011:A leading US Congressman blasted demonization of Israel and anti-Semitism in the Arab world today, and stressed that action against incitement must be part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “If this is a new era of openness in the Middle East, then the work of defending Israel from ideological attacks becomes even more pressing,” House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer told the Anti-Defamation League’s leadership conference. “That’s because, if this is a new era of openness, it matters more than ever that the Arab people have a view of Israel unclouded by bigotry.



2011:Doctors around the country began a two-day warning strike in the public health and hospital system today after a meeting between representatives from the Finance Ministry and the Israel Medical Association (IMA) ended with no agreement yesterday. The public health sector and hospitals around the country will operate on a reduced Shabbat schedule.



2012: The Timofeyev Ensemble is scheduled to present the NYC premiere of "Shloyme: a Musical Biography of an Imaginary Hero."


2012: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present “All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunal.”


2012(13thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-four year old Bernard Rapoport, the Texas insurance tycoon who became the financial angel for numerous liberal candidates and causes passed away in Waco, TX. (As http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/us/politics/bernard-rapoport-liberal-donor-in-texas-dies-at-94.html

2012: “Fake ‘eviction notices’ scare Jewish Students” published today described efforts by Students for Justice in Palestine to terrorize Jewish students attending Florida Atlantic University.


2013: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a celebration of Verdi’s 200thBirthday in the form of a performance by The Israeli Opera’s Meitar Studio.


2013:  In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its annual Sisterhood Shabbat Service.


2013: “No Place on Earth” a documentary about the Sterner and Wexler families surviving in Ukrainian caves for 17 months is scheduled to premiere in New York City.



2013:Hundreds of demonstrators marched in Tel Aviv this afternoon for the second consecutive year in protest of violence against women in the now world-famous Mitzad Sharmuta (SlutWalk).


2013: Royal Dutch Shell declined to comment on reports that it will divest its stake in an Australian energy firm because of that firm’s investment in Israel’s gas fields. (As reported by Times of Israel)



2014: Yaala Ballin and her Quintent are scheduled to “celebrate the outstanding female vocalists of Jazz history” at their performance at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.



2014: Yoni Rechter is scheduled to perform at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.



2014: “Friends From France” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.



2014: “Cupcakes” is scheduled to be shown at 11th JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival



2014: The European Weightlifting Championships are scheduled to begin today in Tel Aviv.



2014: “An original chamber opera, also titled ‘Regina’" based on the life of Regina Jones, the Berlin born rabbi “written by composer Elisha Denburg and librettist Maya Rabinovitch, premiere in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”



2014: In Waterloo, Iowa, Sons of Jacob Synagogue is scheduled to host Harry Brod, author of Superman is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice and the Jewish-American Way



2014: The Shachar Club, a kosher nightclub, is scheduled to open in Moscow.



2015(16thof Nisan, 5775): Second Day of Pesach



http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/



2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ISIS: State of Terror by Jessica Stern and J.M.Berger, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, Act of God by Jill Ciment and Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes.



 


 


This Day, April 6, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 6


1199: King Richard I of England dies from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder. Richard spent most of his reign fighting to protect his lands in France or on the Third Crusade. While he was in England, he did protect his Jewish subjects.  Jews did suffer during his Kingship.  Among other things, they were forced to contribute a disproportionate amount towards the ransom collected to free Richard from the clutches of an Austrian duke.  Richard’s death put King John on the throne.  John openly exploited Jewish subjects.  His tyranny brought on the Magna Charta which included a special section on treatment of the Jews.


1233: Pope Gregory IX, who was criticized by some for being too protective of the Jews wrote "Mandate, if facts are established, to the archbishops and bishops of France to induce the Christians in their dioceses to stop persecuting the Jews, who had complained to the pope that they were being maltreated and tortured by certain lords, imprisoned and left to die. The Jews are willing to forsake usury. They are to be set free and are not to be injured in person or in property."  A year later, in Decretals,  he invested the doctrine of perpetua servitus iudaeorum – perpetual servitude of the Jews – with the force of canonical law. According to this, Jews would have to remain in a condition of political servitude and abject humiliation until Judgment Day. The doctrine then found its way into the doctrine of servitus camerae imperialis, or servitude immediately subject to the Emperor's authority, promulgated by Frederick II.


 The second-class status of Jews thereby established would last until well into the 19th century.


1443:  In a document from King John of Castile on economic conditions, he mentions Jews are prohibited from exercising certain high offices among Christians, and from being employed as judges, farmers, collectors, directors, or stewards of revenue (taxes).


1453: Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople (Istanbul).  His ultimate conquest of the city would be a positive thing for the Jews since, among other things, he opened the city to their settlement


1568:”Elvira del Campo, a young Marranon woman, was subjected to her first torture session by the Inquisition of Toledo, Spain.” (As reported by Abraham Bloch)


1667: The “Old Synagogue” is among the buildings damaged when an earthquake struck Dubrovnik today. The synagogue dates back to the 14th century and is reportedly the oldest Sephardic synagogue in use today. 


1766: Birthdate of Israel B. Kursheedt, the native of Sing-hafen Germany who when he arrived in Boston in 1796 became the first rabbi to come to the city.


1720: Manuel San Vicente, a Spanish mercenary turned himself in to the Inquisitional Tribunal after living among the Spanish Jews in Constantinople and Salonica as a Jew for a month. He sought pardon for his sin, and/or to avoid being turned in by another party. While he was in the Ottoman Empire he was circumcised, and learned Jewish prayers.


1790(22ndof Nisan, 5550): 8th day of Pesach


1790: According to some sources, birthdate of Rachel Luzzatto, the native of Trieste, who was “called ‘the Queen of the Hebrew Versifiers.”

1808: John Jacob Astor incorporated the American Fur Company.


1809: Jews fled Pressburg (Bratislava) when Napoleon attacked the city


1810: German Jewish author Saul Ascher was arrested on Berlin.


1810: Birthdate of Philip Henry Gosse, the native of Worcester, UK who wrote The History of the Jews from the Christian Era to the Dawn of the Reformation




1812: Birthdate of Aaron David Bernsterin whose works included a “translation of the ‘Song of Songs’ published in 1834.


1819: Birthdate of Elizabeth Magnus the daughter of Sarah Moses and Lazarus Magnus, who was born at Chatham, Kent, England.


1822(15th of Nisan, 5582): Pesach
1841(15th of Nisan, 5601): Pesach


1845: After a year and a half of meeting for worship services a group of Jews whose number grown to 33 voted to establish a congregation called Emanu-El which “then engaged Dr. Ludwig Merzbacher as rabbi and lecture and G.M. Cohn as reader” each of whom was paid $200 per year while Mr. Renau was hired “as secretary and sexton with an annual salary of $150” and a room was rented in house at the corner of Grand and Clinton Streets to be used as a synagogue. (The room was fitted so that the front seats for men and the front seats for women – a configuration that would change as Emanu-El became Temple Emanu-El, the leading Reform congregation in NYC.)


1848: "In every part of Germany excluding Bavaria, Jews were granted civil rights. As a result, Gabriel Riesser (a Jew, and an advocate for Jewish emancipation) was elected vice-president of the Frankfurt Parliament, and became a member of the National Assembly.” It must be noted that for the most part these freedoms existed only on paper and were not enforced."  This paper emancipation was part of the revolutionary ferment sweeping Europe at this time. The revolts failed in Germany.  The result was a migration of German liberals, including many Jews, to the United States.


1853: In Leipzig Rosalie Bettelheim and Dr. Adolf Jellinek, a leading Rabbi in the Austrian Empire gave birth to Emil Jellink who sat on the board of Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft ('DMG') and was responsible for the naming of Mercedes in Mercedes-Benz.


1856:“After a background check” the Board of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes (the Kane Street Synagogue)“decided by a 10–9 vote” that M. Gershon, its newly hired Cantor, “had never held the position of cantor in any other congregation, and was therefore not ‘sufficiently acquainted with the actual requirements to fill said office’, and was furthermore not ‘a competent reader enough to read the Sefer Torah’. As a result, services were led by laymen,[ except during the Jewish holidays, when a professional cantor would be brought in from Manhattan.”


 


1861: According to the “Our Charleston Correspondence” column published today, Benjamin Mordecai was among those who lent the government of South Carolina funds it needed immediately after its declaration of secession.  Mordecai’s “free will offering” was in the amount of $10,000.  Another un-named “Hebrew gentlemen” from Charleston was pressured by his co-religionists into donating five hundred dollars to the cause.  He had just returned from New York where he had made $50,000 speculating as a “Bear” in the stock market.


 


1862: During the American Civil War, The Battle of Shiloh begins in Tennessee when Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston attack forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant.  The Confederate attack surprised the Union troops who literally ended the day with their backs to the river.  On the following day, the Union forces would go over to the attack and drive the Confederates back into Mississippi. The 16th Regiment from Iowa was one of the units engaged in the fight.  Among the “Hebrew Hawkeyes” engaged in the fight were Jacob Jacobs and Charles Weissman of Company B and Abraham Meyers and Jacob Lehman of Company D.  Both Jacobs and Meyers were wounded in the battle.


 


1864(29thof Adar II): Hebrew author Zebi Hirsch Mecklenberg, passed away at Konigsberg


 


1866: The Grand Army of the Republic, an American patriotic organization composed of Union veterans of the American Civil War, was founded today.  Among other things, the GAR worked to establish appropriate burial sites for Union veterans. When the five Grand Army of the Republic posts in Seattle established a cemetery in 1895, Huldah and David Kaufman donated the land.  The Kaufmans were two of the first Jews to settle in Seattle having settled there in 1869.


1870(15th of Nisan, 5631): Pesach


 


1871(15th of Nisan, 5631): In New York, on the first day of Passover, The Forty-fourth Street Synagogue, the Thirty-fourth Street Synagogue and the Clinton Street Synagogue are the only Jewish houses of worship where rabbis will preach sermons in English. All of the others, with the exception of the Sephardic congregations, will hear sermons preached in German including Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue.


1874:  Birthdate of Harry Houdini.  Houdini was the stage name of Ehrich Weiss one of the premier magicians and escape artists of all times.  Born in Hungary, the Weiss family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin. Harry’s “father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. After losing his tenure, Mayer moved to New York City with Ehrich in 1887, where they lived in a boarding-house on East Seventy-Ninth Street. Mr. Weiss later called for the rest of his family to join him once he found more permanent housing. The name "Harry" came from a family pet name for Ehrich, Ehrie (rhymes with and sounds like 'Harry').”


1875(1st of Nisan, 5635): Rosh Chodesh Nisan


1875(1st of Nisan, 5635): Moses Hess passed away.




1876(12th of Nisan, 5636):Ta'anit Bechorot


1878: Birthdate of Erich Mühsam. Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist, writer, poet, dramatist and cabaret performer.  The Nazis imprisoned him in a series of concentration camps following the Reichstag Fire.  After months of beatings and torture guards at the Orianberg Concentration camp murdered him in July of 1934.


1879: An article entitled “A Festival of Thankfulness” published today states rthat “To-morrow evening the Jewish feast of Peach, or the Passover, will commence, and will continue for seven days. This festival, which was instituted to celebrate the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage, is also called Hag Hamatzoth.”


1879: Future Dreyfusard Ludovic Trarieux was elected to the Chamber of Deputies


1881: “The administrators of the Tunis Railway have seized a case of cartridges sent to the Khoumis by Tunisian Jews.” (The Khoumis were a tribe living on the frontier who had rebelled against Mohammed Bey. So far, I have not been able to find a reason for the Jews to be sending them aid since Mohammed Bey had made amends for executing a Jew named Batto Sfoz on charges of blasphemy.)


1882: Birthdate of Rose Schneiderman, the labor organizer who taught Eleanor Roosevelt everything she "knew about trade unionism." Born in Russian Poland, her Orthodox Jewish family was close but exceedingly poor, despite both her parents' employment as tailors. Her mother insisted that Rachel (who would later change her name to Rose) attend school and enrolled her in a traditional Hebrew school and, when she turned six, in a Russian public school. The family immigrated to the United States in 1890 and made the Lower East Side of New York City their home. Two years later, Samuel Schneiderman died of meningitis, leaving his family in a dire economic condition. Deborah, his widow, took in borders and sewed for neighbors; despite her efforts, however, the family descended into poverty and was forced to rely on charity to help pay the rent and grocery bill. A thirteen-year-old Rose dropped out of school after the ninth grade to help support the family by working as a department store sales clerk. Three years later, despite her mother's objections, Rose left sales for a better paying (but more dangerous) job in the garment industry. By 1903, she organized her first union shop, the Jewish Socialist United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers' Union, where she quickly developed a reputation as an effective leader after she organized a successful strike opposing an open-shop policy. By 1907, Schneiderman devoted most of her time to the Women's Trade Union League, which she later called "the most important influence on my life." Within a year, she was elected vice-president of the New York chapter, and thanks to a stipend provided by a member, she was able to work full-time organizing for the WTUL. After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, she helped established the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and led its 1913 strike. Determined to outlaw sweatshop labor, she told New Yorkers, "I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. . . . Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred." Although she was a committed trade unionist, Schneiderman grew increasingly frustrated trying to get male union members to address women's labor issues. By the late nineteen teens, the WTUL was her major focus. As president of both the New York and national WTUL, she concentrated her efforts to lobby for minimum wage and eight-hour-day legislation. In 1921, she helped organize the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. In 1922, Eleanor Roosevelt joined the WTUL and the two women began a lifelong friendship. Schneiderman tutored ER on the issues confronting women workers, the challenges facing the trade union movement, and the problems inherent in labor-management relations. ER responded to Schneiderman's tutorial by chairing the WTUL finance committee, donating the proceeds from her 1932-1933 radio broadcasts to the WTUL, and promoting WTUL in her columns and speeches. As Schneiderman recalled in her autobiography, ER overcame the trappings of privilege to become "a born trade unionist."President and Mrs. Roosevelt enjoyed Schneiderman's company and often invited her to their homes in New York City, Hyde Park, and, after FDR became governor, Albany. In 1933, FDR named Schneiderman to the advisory board of the National Recovery Administration, a position she held until the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in 1935. For those two years, she represented labor's voice on the board, working to see that wage and hour provisions of the NRA codes treated workers fairly. In 1935, she returned to both the New York and the national WTULs, whose presidencies she held until the New York WTUL ceased operations in 1950 and the national WTUL disbanded in 1955. From 1937 to 1943, Schneiderman, balancing her WTUL work with state politics, served as secretary to the New York State Department of Labor. Ninety-year old Schneiderman died in New York in 1972 at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged.


1882(17th of Nisan, 5642): Third Day of Pesach


1882(17th of Nisan, 5642): Sixty-nine year old Austrian Rabbi Ephraim Israel Blucher passed away today in Budapest after having served “at Osviecin, Galicia, and Kosten, Moravia.”


1883: In Bloomington, Illinois, “at a meeting held today, Maik Livingston offered a donation of $100 toward the building of the temple, providing the congregation was named after Sir Moses Montefiore, the great English philanthropist.”


1886:  Vancouver was incorporated as a Canadian City. Jewish people have been on the Vancouver scene since the city's earliest days. The first to take up residence was Polish born Louis Gold who arrived in 1872. His wife Emma was a businesswoman, and by 1882 she had established the West End Grocery and Royal City Boot and Shoe stores. David Oppenheimer, a German native, was undoubtedly the outstanding citizen in Vancouver's formative period. He promoted incorporation of the city. In June of 1886, Oppenheimer Bros.--today Vancouver's oldest business--built the first wholesale grocery in the city's first brick building, still extant in present-day Gastown. The Great Fire passed over its foundation, then under construction. Upon completion, the building was used as Vancouver's first "city hall." Both David and his brother Isaac were members of the 1887 city council, David being chairman of the finance committee. From 1888 to 1891 David served four terms as mayor, among the most constructive in Vancouver's history.


1886(1st of Nisan, 5646): Rosh Chodesh Nisan


 


1886(1st of Nisan, 5646): Rabbi Mordechai Aby Serour of Morocco, who was best known for his work as a geographer and explore passed away.


1889: Baltimore Hebrew Congregation which had been variously known as "Stadt-Schul" or "Fell's Point Hebrew Friendship Congregation" erected its new synagogue at Madison Avenue and Robert Street.


1890(16th of Nisan, 5650): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer


1890: “Aid For Immigrants” published today described the finalization of “the plans for the fund which Baron de Hirsch…has established to the amelioration of the conditions” of Jews living in Russian, Romania “and those other countries in Europe where the Jew is persecuted to martyrdom” to find refuge in more civilized places.


1892: “Rabbi Browne on the ‘Talmud’” published today described the speech delivered on this topic at the Central Musical Hall.  The lecture entitled "Talmud - Its Ethics and Its Literary Beauties" including his assertion that "What the Congressional Record is to the loyal American citizen, the 'Talmud' is to the Jew - an embodiment of the laws and history of his race. And yet the books of the 'Talmud' so dear to every Hebrew heart have gone through a most trying ordeal. At times they have been banished and burned, plundered and torn, and yet their glory lives.”


1895: Three revenue collectors raided a basement at 119 Division Street where  they found 200 galloons of wine that was supposed to be “Kosher.”  The illegal still is operated by a Russian Jew known as “Gordon” who was not on the premises when the raid was being made. 


1895: The Tidings, a weekly Jewish newspaper published in Rochester, NY has been merged with The American Hebrew published in New York City.


1896: The German anti-Semitic agitator Herman Ahlwardt was accompanied by A.M. Woeller, President of the Anti-Semitic Society and Jacob Hoefnagel, the society’s secretary as he made his way to deliver a speech at Germania Hall in Hoboken, NJ.


1897(4th of Nisan, 5657):


1897: Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu El and Cantor William Sparger officiated at today’s funeral for the late Julius Ehrmann.


1897: President Lewis Parmer of the Hebrew School on Stone Avenue said that the Long Island Water Supply Company is refusing to continue to service because “the supply lines are worn out”


1897: Frances Danzig, the widow of Louis Danzig, a resident of New York City, passed away today while visiting Atlantic City, NJ.


1898(14th of Nisan, 5658): An article entitled “The Feast of Passover” published today states that “The Jewish Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread, will be ushered in at sundown to-day. It will be universally observed by orthodox Jews for eight days and by their reformed and Palestinian brethren for seven days. With the former, however, only the first and last two days are actual holidays, and with the latter only the first and last, the intervening days being only semi-festivals, on which all manner of work may be performed.”


1899: Mrs. Samuel Hirsch will sing at today’s musicale and tea sponsored by the Women’s Committee of the Hebrew Technical Institute being held at Sherry’s.


1899: Adolf von Sonnenthal received a standing ovation when he returned to the Irving Place Theatre as Nathan in Lessing’s “Nathan Der Weise.”


1899: In Paris, L’Figaro published “the evidence given by Examining Magistrate Bertulus before the Court of Cassation hearing the Dreyfus Case.


1903(9th of Nisan, 5663):  The Kishinev pogrom began. “The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, which was back then part of the Bessarabia province of Imperial Russia (currently Chişinău is the capital of independent Moldova).  It started on April 6 and lasted until April 7, 1903.The riot started after a Christian Russian boy, Michael Ribalenko, had been found murdered in the town of Dubossary, about 25 miles north of Kishinev. Although it was clear that the boy had been killed by a relative (who was later found), the government chose to call it a ritual murder plot by the Jews.The mobs were incited by Pavolachi Krushevan, the editor of the Anti-Semitic Newspaper "Bessarabetz", and the vice-governor Ustrugov. They used the ages-old blood libel against the Jews (that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzo). Viacheslav Plehve, the Minister of Interior, supposedly gave orders not to stop the rioters. During three days of rioting, the Kishinev Pogrom against the Jews took place. Forty-seven (some put the figure as high as 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses looted and destroyed.This pogrom is considered the first state-inspired action against Jews of the 20th century. Despite a world outcry, only two men were sentenced to seven and five years and twenty-two were sentenced for one or two years. This pogrom was instrumental in convincing tens of thousands of Russian Jews to leave to the West and to Israel.”


1904(21st of Nisan, 5664): Fifty three year old literary critic Elazar Atlas, the son of David Atas passed away today in Bialystok.


1909(15th of Nisan, 5669): Pesach


1909(15th of Nisan, 5669): Abraham Bengrihan, Chief Rabbi of Marrakech, Morocco, passed away.


1909: Birthdate of Estella Agsterribe, later Estella Blits- Agsterribe, the Dutch Olympic Gold Medal winner who would die at Auschwitz with her children and her husband.


1910: Commanding officers in Constantinople granted Jewish soldiers nine days off for Passover, even though official leave is stipulated only for the first two and last two days. 


1910: In Constantinople in response to a request from the Hambashi The Minister of Justice, ordered all Jews in prison for trivial offenses be liberated in preparation for the celebration of Pesach.


1912: In Chicago,  more than 15,000 thousand Jews found out today that the Orthodox among them will not be able to participate in the primary election being held on Tuesday, April 9, the last day of Passover.  A plan to allow somebody to accompany Orthodox Jewish voters into the booth and mark the ballot for them was rejected “because of the chances of fraud.”


1913: Sons of Israel Synagogue founded in Lawrence, MA/


1914:A committee met at the hotel Astor tonight to make final arrangements for the Passover celebration for the Jewish soldiers and sailors whose release on furlough was obtained a few days ago.


1917: "The United States declared war on Germany. Approximately 250,000 Jewish soldiers (20% of whom were volunteers) served in the U.S. army - roughly 5.7% of the servicemen, while 7of Eastern and Central Europe.  The aftermath, Communism and Fascism, would prove to be even worse.  For American Jews, the aftermath of the war included immigration restrictions and the Red Scare.


 


1917: German soldiers and a military band marched through the streets of Jerusalem which was controlled by their Turkish ally, apparently unaware of the fact that the United States was preparing to declare war on the Kaiser’s kingdom.



1917(14th of Nisan, 5677): Erev Pesach - As Jews sat down to their Seders tonight, they had no idea how much their world was about to change!


1917: One of the British Undersecretaries for Middle Eastern Affairs, Mark Sykes informed his French counterpart Georges-Picot that Britain’s military efforts in Palestine would have to be “taken into account” at the peace conference.  This was a polite way of saying that new realities had changed the British view of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and that the British would be pushing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.


 


1918: The Jewish Administration Commission for Palestine arrives at Tel Aviv.  “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, head of the commission, evokes great enthusiasm when he replied in Hebrew to the address of welcome.  The British Military Governor of Jaffa, who participated in the reception, expresses his sympathy with the Zionist aims.”


 


1920: Despite the declaration of martial law, Arab attacks continue on the Jews of Jerusalem for a third day.


 


1920:  Birthdate of Dr. Edmond H. Fischer. The son of a Jewish father, Fischer shared in the 1992 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.


 


1923: Birthdate of Shoshana Shenburg who moved to Eretz Israel a year later where she would marry Professor Elisha Netanyahu and gain fame as attorney and jurist Shoshana Netanyahu who served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Israel.


 


1925: Birthdate of Helga Deen, a young Jewish girl who kept a diary that was only recently discovered.



 


1925: During his triumphal tour of Palestine, Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, spent tonight at the hotel on top of the historic Mount Carmel, from which he had a superb view of Haifa, on the northeastern slope, and of the bay below.


1929: In Berlin, Charlotte (née Epstein) and Jack Previn, who was a lawyer, judge, and music teacher gave birth to pianist and conductor Andre Previn



1930: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that according to a report submitted by the Zionist Education Council to the Action Committee, “there are 21,031 pupils in the schools maintained in Palestine by the Zionist Organization. The annual budget for the schools is $637,250 which includes…a $37,975 subsidy from the Palestine Colonization Association and $60,000 from the municipality of Tel Aviv.


1930: In an interview on this date “Ittamar Benavi, one of Palestine’s leading journalists” reiterates his support for the creation of a series of Cantons along the Swiss model as a way to govern Palestine.


1931: The first episode of “Little Orphan Annie” Radio Show aired today with a ten-year-old Jewish girl named Shirley Bell playing the lead role.


1931: Birthdate of Deborah Meier “an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement.”


1934: In Brooklyn, Henry and Shirley Guttenplan gave birth to Howard Herman Guttenplan, “who took what began as an antipoverty program on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and transformed it into a leading workshop and showcase for experimental filmmakers.”



1937: In Jerusalem Moshe Baram and his wife Grazia who was born in Aleppo, gave birth to MK and cabinet minister Uzi Baram.


1941: German forces, in alliance with Hungarians and Bulgarians, invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.  The invasion was caused by the Italian Army's failure against the Greeks.  For the Jews, this meant that the Balkans would come under Nazi domination which later resulted in the destruction of some of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world.  According to some, this "diversion" delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union which resulted in the Nazi forces becoming trapped in the Russian Winter.  This in turn was a contributing factor to the final defeat of the Nazis.


1941: In New York City, 23 year old Sylvia Lubow Rindskopf married Ensign Maurice H. Rhindskopf – a marriage that would last nearly 69 years during which she played the perfect Naval wife to Rear Admiral Mike Rindskopf.


1941: The Nazis established two ghettos in Radom, Poland.  Radom's Jewish community dated back to the Middle Ages.  Nine tenths of the Jewish population of 25,000 perished in the Holocaust.  According to some reports, the remaining Jews did not return because of the anti-Semitic riots that took place in Poland after the war.


1942: In Baltimore, MD Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business gave birth to Academy Award winning director Barry Levinson whose works included one the greatest movies ever – “Avalon.”


1944: The Jewish nursery at Izieu-Ain France was overrun by Nazi's


1945: The 14th Armored Division liberated the Serbian hospital at Camp Hammelburg whose patients included Captain Abraham Baum who had been shot in the groin while trying to rescue General Patton’s son-in-law John K. Waters who was also in the hospital recovering from his wounds.



1945: After the USS Bush, an American destroyer was struck by a Japanese suicide bomber today, Raphael J. “Ray” Moses was among those who were rescued from the East China Sea.


1946: The British consulate General in Madagascar reported in confidence to the foreign Office in London that while Madagascar might be suitable for 200 colonists of the peasant class, stress should be laid by Britain on providing the right type of colonist in the first instance and not city-bred Jews who were worn and emaciated through long confinement in concentration camps.


1947: As it begins its American tour, The Hapoel soccer team is scheduled to board a plane a Tel Aviv today as it makes its way to New York City.


1947: The first Tony Awards are presented for theatrical achievement.


1948: The Irgun raided the British Army camp at Pardes Hanna killing seven British soldiers and stealing a large quantity of weapons


1948: Operation Nachshon was launched this evening in an attempt to open the road to Jerusalem.  At the same time, a convoy left the coast and after a ten hour trip arrived in the beleaguered city.  It was the first the first convoy to reach the city in two weeks.  They found a city that was under constant bombardment from Arab Legion (Jordanian Army) artillery situated on the high round north of the Damascus Gate.  For the next three weeks, the Arabs would use their military might to try and re-gain control of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Road. 


1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel Air Force planes bombed Syrian entrenchments in the demilitarized zone near El Hamma where seven Israeli policemen were killed and one wounded. The government lodged a complaint with the UN Security Council listing all recent Syrian border violations.


1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that for the first time since the establishment of the state, Britain announced that it was ready to sell small arms to Israel, on the same terms as had been enjoyed by Egypt.


1952: A Broadway revival of Clifford Odets’ “Golden Boy” starring John Garfield as “Joe” as after 55 performances at the ANTA Playhouse.


1954: The body of Baron Edmond de Rothschild was re-interred in Zichron Yaakov, the wine-producing village which had been established with his help.


1954(3rd of Nisan): Yiddish poet Aaron Leib Baron passed away


1955: David Saul Marshal, a descendant of Indian Baghdadi Jews, began serving as Chief Minister of Singapore.


 


1957: First oil tanker in Eilat arrived filled with Persian Gulf oil.


1958(16th of Nisan, 5718): Second Day of Pesach; First day of the Omer


1959(27thof Adar II, 5719): Sixty-four year old Leo Aryeh Mayer, who worked jointly with Eleazar Sukenik, in connection with the excavations of the "Third Wall" of Jerusalem, built by in 41-44 CE, Agrippa, king of Judea, in 41-44 CE and served as rector of Hebrew University, passed away.


1959: Joseph B. Levin represented the Securities and Exchange Commission before the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in Columbia General Investment Corporation v. the SEC.


1962: Leonard Bernstein causes controversy with his remarks from the podium during a New York Philharmonic concert featuring Glenn Gould performing Brahms' First Piano Concerto.


1967: Avraham Lanir “scored his first aerial kill in a major skirmish along the Syrian border which ended with the downing of six Syrian jets. Lanir, flying Mirage 60, downed a SAF MiG-21 with cannon fire after closing in to a distance of 200 meters. The MiG exploded and Lanir flew right through the fireball, covering his aircraft with soot. Initially blinded, enough soot was eventually blown off his canopy to afford Lanir a safe landing at Ramat David. The scorched aircraft earned the nickname ‘Black Mirage’".


1968: Romanian Jewish playwright Israil Bercovici adapted a collection of Itzik Manger's poems into a two-act stage piece, Mangheriada, which premiered today at the Romanian State Jewish Theater in Bucharest


1969: Birthdate of actor Paul Rudd


1969: Birthdate of actress Ari Meyers best known for her role as "Emma Jane McArdle" in the television series, “Kate & Allie.”


1969:  Gold Meir spoke to 3,000 teenagers in Jerusalem, expressing her absolutefaith that peace would come.


1971: Jews must have felt mixed emotions today when Igor Stravnisky passed away today.  On the one hand he was a giant in the world of music and yet he was also an anti-Semite.



1973: In the aftermath of the Munich Olympic Massacre, Basil al-Kubaissi, a law professor who provided arms and logistic support for Black September was shot to death while returning home from dinner in Paris.


1974(14th of Nisan, 5734): Shabbat Hagadol; Erev Pesach


1974(14th of Nisan, 5734): Canadian born poet Rochelle Mass and her family celebrate their first Pesach in Israel at a kibbutz where she had picked oranges during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.


1975: Birthdate of actor Zach Braff


1975: Sandy Helberg the American actor who is the son of 2 Holocaust survivors married Harriet Birnbaum.


1975(25th of Nisan, 5735): Seventy-one year old Ernst David Bergman, “the father of Israel’s nuclear program” passed a way today.



1976(6th of Nisan, 5736):Sidney Franklin passed away.  A Brooklyn born Jew whose name was originally Sidney Frumkin, Franklin was the U.S.’s first successful bullfighter.




1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that France sold to Egypt Mirage F-1 interceptors, the most advanced French combat aircraft. It is pointless for Israelis, or for Israel friends abroad, to shadow box with PLO, Defense Minister Shimon Peres told the International Conference on Palestinians and the Middle East, since the PLO aspires to liquidate the Jewish State. He added that the PLO had maintained its rigid extremism, and had lined up the entire Arab world behind this position.


1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat called upon US President Jimmy Carter to establish "a political entity where the Palestinians can, at long last, be a community of citizens, not a group of refugees." The Israel Press Council decided to form a team to check local papers’ observance of their ban on publication of criminal suspects’ names before they are remanded. Israeli artillery shelled terrorist concentrations in Lebanon. Israeli meat producers obtained a US permit to export kosher meat to America


 


1982:Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, speaking at the funeral of an Israeli diplomat slain two days ago in Paris, said today that Israeli forces would strike ''without reservation, without end'' at bases and headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon and elsewhere.


1985(15th of Pesach, 5747): Pesach


1986(26th of Adar II, 5746):Pesach Burstein, a Yiddish actor whose singing, dancing and whistling delighted audiences here and abroad for more than 70 years, died today at Lenox Hill Hospital after suffering a heart attack last Monday. Mr. Burstein was 89 years old and a resident of Manhattan and Tel Aviv.



1990:In recognition of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s “vital efforts, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 173, has designated today, as "Education Day, U.S.A.


1990: U.S. premiere of “Tall Story” with a script co-authored by Julius Epstein and Howard Nemerov who wrote the novel on which the film was based.


1992(3rd of Nisan, 5752): Molly Picon passed away at the age of 94..Born in 1898, the petite Molly Picon was a star of both the Yiddish theatre and a variety of American entertainment mediums.  Her career included 19 years of radio broadcasts and roles on Broadway and film.  She performed for American troops during World War II.  She was one of the first entertainers to go to Europe after the war to perform for Jewish refugees.





1992(3rd of Nisan, 5752): Isaac Assimov died at the age of 72. Born in Russia in 1920, Asimov was raised in Brooklyn which he always considered his home.  He was known as a science fiction writer but also wrote about the Bible as well.  A confirmed atheist, Assimov attributed this interest to his devoutly Jewish father.




1992: Ninety-six year old Herman F. Mark an Austrian-American chemist who fled Europe for America because he was the son of Dr. Herman Carl Mark, a Jew who converted to Lutheranism passed away today.



1993(15th of Nisan, 5753): Pesach observed for the first time in the Presidency of Bill Clinton1994(25th of Nisan, 5754): A Palestinian suicide bomber killed 7 Israelis and himself.


1994(25th of Nisan, 5754): Eight people were killed in a Hamas terrorist car-bomb attack on a bus in the center of Afula. This was the first documented car bombing in Israel. The dead included: “Asher Attia, 48, of Afula, bus driver; Vered Mordechai, 13, of Afula; Maya Elharar, 17, of Afula; Ilana Schreiber, 45, a teacher from Kibbutz Nir David; Meirav Ben-Moshe, 16, of Afula; Ayala Vahaba, 40, a teacher from Afula; and Fadiya Shalabi, 25, of Iksal were killed in a car-bomb attack on a bus in the center of Afula. Ahuva Cohen Onalla, 37, wounded in the attack, died of her wounds on April 25.”


1995(6th of Nisan, 5755): Six Israelis were killed in two suicide bombings at Kfar Darom.


1997: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art
and Writing About It a Game
by Roger Kahn.


1999(20th Nisan, 5759): 6thday of Pesach


1999(20th of Nisan, 5759): Eighty-three year old British cellist William Pleeth, the son of Jewish immigrants from Warsaw, Poland passed away today.



2000:The United States Postal Service issued five stamps depicting the work of Jewish sculptor Louise Nevelson.


2000: Habib Bourguiba, President of Tunisia, passed away.  Bourguiba came to power when Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956.  By then the Jewish population had shrunk from its 1948 high of approximately 100,000.  The Tunisian government enacted a series of anti-Jewish decrees. In 1958, Tunisia's Jewish Community Council was abolished by the government and ancient synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters were destroyed for "urban renewal."


The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel. By 1967, the country's Jewish population had shrunk to 20,000. During the Six-Day War, Jews were attacked by rioting Arab mobs, and synagogues and shops were burned. The government denounced the violence, and President Habib Bourguiba apologized to the Chief Rabbi. This apology certainly marked Bourgiba as unique among Arab leaders. His government appealed to the Jewish population to stay, but did not bar them from leaving. Subsequently, 7,000 Jews immigrated to France. Today about 1,000 Jews live in Tunisia.


 


2001: In Out of the Jewish Ghetto and Into the Mainstream,” published today Grace Gluek traces the life and times of one of the earliest of Jewish artists, Moritz Daniel.



2002: During Operation Defensive Shield the terrorist leader responsible for trying to turn Jenin into a massive booby-trip (including the homes of the civilians) and two of his comrades were killed by Israeli troops as they cautiously made their way through the camp in an attempt to minimize civilian casulaities.


2002(24thof Nisan, 5762): Twenty-six year old Staff Sergeant Nisan Avraham from Lod was killed today and five of his comrades were wounded when Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked them at the entrance of Rafiah Yam.


2003: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ''The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror'' by Bernard Lewis.


2003(4th of Nisan, 5763): Leon Levy, the co-founder of Oppenheimer & Co who was praised as an “investment genius and prolific philanthropist” passed away.



2004(15thof Nisan, 5764): Pesach


 


2005:  The New York Times featured a review of “In Satmar Custody.” This documentary written in English, Hebrew, Yemenite and Yiddish describes the fate of Yeminite Jews living in Israel who were brought to the United States to live in the Satmar community in Monsey, N.Y.  The Times describes the fate of such Jews as a “nightmare for a Jewish family from Yemen.


 


2005(26th of Adar II, 5765): Specialist Daniel J. Freeman aged 20, who “had been in Afghanistan for about two months was killed today in a helicopter crash “along with 15 other soldiers. He had not been scheduled to be on board the supply flight to Kandahar, but had volunteered for a friend. “Daniel Freeman was always the boy with the Israeli accent, a remnant of his life on a kibbutz, where he lived until he was 9 years old. Growing up in Cincinnati, he loved playing soccer and rock climbing, and was part of the local fire department’s explorer club, excited to dress up and train like a firefighter. As an older teenager, “Daniel developed a keen sense of right and wrong and would get very upset if he thought something was unfair,” said Shmuel Birkan, Freeman’s stepfather. In high school, Freeman took an enthusiastic interest in military history, a subject he studied in addition to Hebrew. He decided he wanted to enlist in the Army, “because he truly believed it was the right thing to do,” Birkan said. A participant in the Army’s early induction program, Freeman went on to complete his basic and advanced training in Fort Benning, Ga. “Daniel was never particularly in favor of [America’s] reason for being in Iraq and Afghanistan. He just knew that his mission was to keep himself and his friends safe,” Birkan said. (As reported by Maia Efrem)


2006:  The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation (JRF) of Metropolitan New York/New Jersey recognizes their Vatikim: Those Who Inspire Us with a Lifetime of Contribution with a festive evening of celebration featuring the unique Sephardic spirit and sounds of Gerard Edery and the Bnai Keshet a Cappella Singers


2006: “The industry group MarHedge awarded Matador Fund Ltd. and Manchester Trading, two funds managed by Victor Niederhoffer, the prize for best performance by a commodity trading advisor (CTA) in the two years 2004 and 2005.


2006: David Bromberg is featured in a Washington Post article entitled “In Fine Fiddle” by Paul Schwartzman.


2006: In “A Homecoming, in Los Angeles, for Five Klimts Looted by Nazis,” Sharon Waxman describes Maria Altmann’s fight to regain her family’s art.



2007: As reported in Haaretz, during the Intermediate Days of Passover, Israelis visit tourist sites throughout the country, with a wide variety of festivals and activities on hand. More than 13,000 visitors came to the southern sites of Masada, Ein Gedi and Mamshit, with the total number of visitors in the Negev up from last year, according to Gilad Gabai, deputy director of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority (INPPA) southern district. Roads to the Western Galilee were busy as visitors traveled to vacation spots and festivals in the region. Among the attractions is an extreme sports area at Kibbutz Yehiam, a festival at the Montfort Castle in Ma'alot-Tarshiha, the "cotton road" at Kibbutz Afeq and a monologue theater festival at Acre. Meanwhile, Haifa also hosted its 17th annual children's theater festival.


2007: “Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust” opens at Yad Sachem’s Exhibitions Pavilion:


2007: U.S. premiere of “The T.V.Set” directed, produced and written by Jake Kasdan.


2007(18th of Nisan, 5767): Fourth day of Pesach


2007(18th of Nisan, 5767): Seventy-two year old award winning screen writer Stan Daniels passed away today.



2008: David Blatt, the head coach of the the Istanbul-based Turkish Basketball League team Efes Pilsen, “parted ways with the team.”


2008: In Washington, D.C., Jewish authorJonathan Rieder discusses and signs The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. at Politics and Prose Bookstore.


2008(1st of Nisan, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Nisan


2008: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of two books by Jewish authors - Fidelity by Grace Paley and Please Don’t Remain Calm by Michael Kinsley.


2008(1st of Nisan, 5768: Thirty-six year old Major Stuart Wolfer was killed today when his unit was attacked by insurgents in Baghdad. (As reported by Maia Efrem)
http://www.forward.com/articles/135331/profiles-of-our-fallen/#ixzz1r7KLHWdl


2009: Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook and CJE Senior Life present the “Yiddish Club.”


2009:Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University delivers an address entitled "Iran, Israel and the US: Dissecting the Triangular Relationship’ at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.


2009:J. Ezra Merkin, a prominent New York financier whose private clients lost more than $2 billion in the collapse of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, has been accused of fraud and deception in a civil lawsuit filed today by the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo.


2009:A list of 801 Jews saved during the Holocaust by German businessman Oskar Schindler has been recovered from a Sydney library, News Agencies reported today


2010(22nd Nisan, 5770): Yizkor is recited on the Eighth Day of Pesach.


2010: The Home Minister of Maharashtra State, which includes Mumbai, informed the Assembly that the bodies of the nine Pakistani gunmen from the 2008 attack on Mumbai who had murdered 8 people at Nariman House were buried in a secret location in January 2010.


2010:  Model and actress Lisa S. (Lisa Slesner) married David Wu today.


2010:Israeli Author Savyon Liebrecht is scheduled to speak at Yale’s Slifka Center for Jewish life.


 


2010: David Remnick's biography of President Barack Obama, The Bridge, was released today.


2011: Michael Applebaum began serving as Chair of the Montreal Executive committee.


2011: AlexanderMashkevitch announced his intention to found a Jewish version of Al-Jazeera that will "represent Israel on an international level, with real information


2011:Former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner as keynote speaker is scheduled to speak today at an event marking the formal launch of The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israeli Law, Economy and Society at the University of California Law School.


2011:Ruth Messinger, President of the American World Jewish Service is scheduled to speak today during the New CAJE Lehrhaus webinar series.


2011(2ndof Nisan): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of The fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn ("Rashab") who passed away in 1920.


2011(2ndof Nisan): Eighty two year old Igor Yakovlevich Birman, the Russian born American economist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union passed away today.



2011:Tel Aviv has been ranked No. 34 out of 40 cities in the annual Knight Frank global cities index, which was released today, one place lower than last year and three below Cairo.


2012(14th of Nisan, 5772): Fast of the First Born


2012(14th of Nisan, 5772): Fifty-nine year old Elan Steinberg who was head of the World Jewish Congress passed away today.  As reported by Douglas Martin)



2012: Rabbi Greg Wall is scheduled to lead the Seder at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue; an event that will “swing between tradition and utter hipness.”


Chag Kasher v'Sameach!


2013: Tom Arnold who converted to Judaism when he married Roseanne Barr and continues to be a practicing Jew and his fourth wife Ashley Groussman gave birth to their first child Jax Copeland Arnold.


2013: “A Bottle InThe Gaza Sea” is scheduled to be shown at the Hartford Jewish Film Festival.


2013: “Joe Papp In Five Acts” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2013: US Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to the Middle East today on his third trip there in just two weeks in a fresh bid to unlock long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.


2014: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including three written especially for children and young readers about the Holocaust: Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust by Loic Dauvillier; Hidden Like Anne Frank: Fourteen True Stories of Survival by Marcel Prins and Peter Henk Steenhuis; The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren


2014: The Jerusalem Post is scheduled to hold its annual conference in New York City.


2014: “Prior to MIPTV’s official launch tomorrow, “a session titled ‘Business Opportunities in Israel’ is scheduled to be held today.


2014: A special performance of “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” for the benefit of Yiddishkayt and in memory of NPR radio producer Johanna Cooper is scheduled to take place in Burbank, CA.


2014: In Springfield, VA, Congregation Ada Reyim is scheduled to host a Sisterhood Community Women’s Seder using a special Haggadah honoring “the role of women in Passover tradition.”


2014:An Arab-Israeli microbiologist Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, a 33-year-old mother of three, was crowned the winner of Israel’s most-watched television show, Master Chef tonight.


2014: Elections are scheduled to be held in Hungary amid charges by the “leadership of Hungarian Jewry that Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is pandering to nationalist voters who do not wish to be reminded of the role Hungary played in the murder of its Jewish citizens


2015: The Israeli Folk Dance group is scheduled to meet in Metairie, LA.


2015(17th of Nisan, 5775): Third Day of Pesach; in the evening count Omer 3


2015(17th of Nisan): According to tradition, date on which “Noah’s Ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat.”


 

This Day, April 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 7


451: Attila the Hun sacked Metz in what is now Germany as he pillaged his across Europe.  Based on the Thirteenth Tribe, there are those who contend that a large proportion of Europe’s Jews were descended from the Khazars a warrior people connected to Attila.



529: The Roman Emperor Justinian issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Justinian codified the ant-Jewish imperial view of the world that began under Constantine.The code made “anyone who was not connected to the Christian church a non-citizen.” More specifically, the principle of "Servitude of the Jews" (Servitus Judaeorum) was established by the new laws, and determined the status of Jews throughout the Empire for hundreds of years. The Jews were disadvantaged in a number of ways. Jews could not testify against Christians and were disqualified from holding a public office. Jewish civil and religious rights were restricted: ‘they shall enjoy no honors’. The use of the Hebrew language in worship was forbidden. Shema Yisrael sometimes considered the most important prayer in Judaism ("Hear, O Israel, YHWH our God, YHWH is one") was banned, as a denial of the Trinity. A Jew who converted to Christianity was entitled to inherit his or her father's estate, to the exclusion of the still-Jewish brothers and sisters. The Emperor became an arbiter in internal Jewish affairs. Similar laws applied to the Samaritans.”



1285: After a journey of almost two years “German Talmudist Judah ben Asher” arrived in Toledo, Spain today.



1348:  In the first year of the reign of Charles IV, Charles University is founded in Prague. Charles was an enlightened ruler whose years on the throne were good ones for the Jews of Prague. “The long reign of Emperor Charles IV brought the Prague Jews new privileges and relative calm even. The king ensured protection and, among others, offered a chance for them to settle inside the walls of the arising New Town. A sign of the status of the Jewish community is a banner that has survived, given to the Jews of Prague by Charles IV in 1375. From that year on the Jews would, over the centuries, come to the gates of the ghetto to welcome the kings of Bohemia in Prague. The banner was a shield and legacy of the favors of the ruler’s predecessor, a symbol of ambition and sign of hope.” Today Charles University is the home base for a Jewish Studies program offered to American college students that examines the history of Central European Jewry



1486:  The first prayer book (Siddur) was printed in Italy by Soncino. This was the only time that the Siddur was published during the 15th century. For the most part hand copied manuscripts (of which there were plenty) continued to be used.



1498: Louis XII who ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Provence began his reign today.



1506: In Portugal, a group of New Christians was arrested when they were caught conducting a Seder.  Although they were released two Dominican firiars “who paraded through the streets with an uplifted crucifix crying Heresia so inflamed the citizenry that 500 hundred New Christians were murdered on the first day of a multi-day massacre



1615: In Worms, members of the Guilds riot as part of an attempt to force the Jews to leave.



1645: Michael Cardozo became the 1st Jewish lawyer in Brazil. The Dutch West India Company granted Michael Cardoso the right to practice law in Brazil a privilege no other Jew enjoyed at that time anywhere else.  The Dutch would shortly lose control of Brazil to the Portuguese.  And in 1654, it would be a group of Jewish refugee from Recife (part of formerly Dutch Brazil) who would land in New Amsterdam to begin the modern American Jewish Community.



1720: At one of the last large auto-de-fe's in Madrid, was burned five suspected Jews who were found to have committed the crime of praying in a "secret synagogue" which had been found after the Spanish war of Succession.



1767: Christian Old Testament scholar, Johann Gottlob Carpzov, a member of the Carpzov family who specialized in the study of Hebrew and the Old Testament passed away. Carpzov authored Apparatus Historico-Criticus Antiquitatum et Codicis Sacri et Gentis Hebrææ in 1748. “According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Carpzov represents both an advance and a retrogression in Biblical science — an advance in fullness of material and clearness of arrangement (his Introductio is the first work that deserves the name), and a retrogression in critical analysis, for he held fast to the literal inspiration of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and bitterly opposed the freer positions of Simon, Spinoza, and Clericus. His antiquarian writings are still interesting and useful.”



1781: Birthdate of Berlin philanthropist Abraham Muhr



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0014_0_14351.html



1788: American settlers establish Marietta, Ohio, the first new American settlement in the Northwest Territory.   Apparently a thriving Jewish community existed in Marietta during the last part of the 19thcentury and the first part of the 20th century as can be seen by the existence of two Jewish cemeteries, a Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish War Suffers’ Society and a synagogue called B’nai Israel.



1807: Birthdate of Ridley Haim Herschell, the Polish born Jew who converted and founded the British Society Propagating the Gospel Among the Jews in 1842.



1814(17thof Nisan, 5574): Third Day of Pesach



1814(17thof Nisan, 5574):Bernard Mordechi Kornfeld passed away today in Czechoslovakia



1818:In Ḳin'at ha-Emet(Zeal for Truth), a paper written today, and published in the collection “Nogah ha-Ẓedeḳ” (Light of Righteousness), Aron Chorin a Hungarian rabbi and advocated for religious reform, declared himself in favor of reforms, such as German prayers, the use of the organ, and other liturgical modifications. The principal prayers, the Shema', and the eighteen benedictions, however, should be said in Hebrew, he declared, as this language keeps alive the belief in the restoration of Israel. He also pleaded for opening the temple for daily service.



1822(16th of Nisan, 5582): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer



1826: Birthdate of Frederick C. Salomon, the Prussian native came to the United States where he worked as a surveyor and Register of Deeds in Wisconsin before joining the Union Army where he served with distinction and was mustered out as Major General of Volunteers.



1848:Baron Jozsef Eotvos, Hungarian statesman and who supported the emancipation of the Jews became Minister of Education.



1849(15thof Nisan, 5609): Pesach



1849:The Pennsylvania legislature granted a charter today to the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia that “authorized the establishment of schools for general education, combined with instruction in the Hebrew language and literature; the charter also authorized the establishment of a "superior seminary of learning," with power to grant the usual degrees given by other colleges.”



1851: The first school created under the jurisdiction of the Hebrew Education Society held its first class today in Philadelphia, PA.



1851: Birthdate of “German composer and conductor” Martin Roder.



1852: This morning at the Herkimer-street Synagogue in Albany a new Sefer Torah was read for the first time and then placed in the Holy Ark.  Following the reading Rabbi Raphall gave what was called “an appropriate address.”



1855: Marcus Samuel gave birth to Samuel Samuel founder of Samuel Samuel & Co who served as an MP for almost twenty years.  He was the brother of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount of Bearsted.



1855: At the behest of Samuel K. Labatt, The Los Angeles Star published “the lengthy and effective denunciation” William Stow written by his brilliant lawyer brother, Henry J. Labatt of San Francisco.”  Stow is William Stow who had launched an anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish people from the sanctuary of the California State Assembly. Samuel K. Labatt was the first President of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles. He saw part of his role as being the defender of Jews against anti-Semites.



1860(15thof Nisan, 5620): As the war clouds that will bring the Civil War begin to form in earnest during the U.S. Presidential elections, Jews observe Pesach.



1860:  A review of The History of Herodotusby George Rawlinson published today compared the writings of the ancient Greek Historian with information found in the Bible. The reviewer gives credence to the progression of history as presented in the Scripture. “The Hezekiahs, the Isaiahs, the Jacobs, the Zerubbabels, the Maccabees, the Gamaliels,…could never have appeared as the later records describe them, had there been no Samuel, no Joshua, no Moses, no Exodus from Egypt, no law-giving on Sinai, as represented to us in the marvelous yet truthful pictures of the more ancient books.”



1861: Sinai Congregation which was led by Rabbi Felsenthal and President Schoeneman was established in Chicago



1862: The Battle of Shiloh ends with a Union Victory. Among the many Jews serving at the battle was Corporal David Orbansky of the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry who won the Medal of Honor for his “gallantry in action against the enemy.”



1863: Birthdate of Henry Cohen, a Jewish Texan rabbi who served Congregation B'nai Israel in Galveston, Texas from 1888 to 1952.



1868(15thof Nisan, 5628): Pesach



1868(15thof Nisan, 5628): Rabbi Carl Heinemann passed away.  He was hired as the first rabbi in Goteborg, Sweden in 1837 but was forced to resign in 1851 after he opposed the introduction of “radical reform measures.”



1870(16th of Nisan, 5631): Second Day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer



1870: Birthdate of German anarchist Gustav Landauer.



1870: According to the review of the Art Academy, on this date, Russian –Jewish sculptor Mark Arntokolski “was granted personal name of honorary citizen ‘for wonderful knowledge of art’”.



1872: Seventy year old, W.L. Mitchell, a Professor at the Georgia State University Law School, has begun to study Hebrew. [Ed. Note – I have not been able to find out anything about Professor Mitchell i.e. whether he was Jewish or a Christian who was following what had become a popular pastime among 18th& 19thcentury Protestants.]



1880: Birthdate of multi-talented performer Fritz Grünbaum who gave his last performance to fellow inmates at Dachau just days before his death.
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/music-early-camps/dachau/grnbaumfritz/



1880: In Leadville, CO, Jewish businessman Jacob Schloss was elected treasurer of the Turnverin Society



1880: Rabbi H.P. Mendez officiated at the wedding of Frederick Nathan, the son of the late Benjamin Nathan and Maud Nathan, daughter of Robert W. Nathan, which was held at Shearith Israel in New York City.



1883: In “A Movement to Unite Three Congregations” published today, the Brooklyn Eagle described attempts by Brooklyn's three leading synagogues, Baith Israel, Beth Elohim, and Temple Israel to merge.


1883: Birthdate of Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas, the Hungarian born Zionist activist who was one of the main political leaders of Polish Jews during the interwar period, a lawyer, a publicist, and a Sejm deputy from 1919 to 1930.


1888(25th of Nisan, 5648): Fifty-year old Russian businessman and philanthropist Samuel Polyakov the brother of  Lazar Polyakov and Yakov Polyakov, known as the “railroad king” and founder of “World ORT” passed away today in St. Petersburg.


1891: In Leadville, CO, Lotta Schloss married Moses L Stern who became secretary and treasurer of Schloss Bros.


1891: Birthdate of British born, New Zealand cartoonist, Sir David Low.  Low was not Jewish but he was an early and constant critic of Hitler and Mussolini.  Throughout the 1930’s his cartoons skewered the fascist dictators with such skill that no a less a personage than Sigmund Freud wrote, “"A Jewish refugee from Vienna, a very old man personally unknown to you, cannot resist the impulse to tell you how much he admires your glorious art and your inexorable, unfailing criticism."



1891: The cornerstone of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society’s new building was laid this afternoon at 3 o’clock.


1891: Twenty-eight year old German Jewish immigrant Siegfried Lewisohn shot himself twice in the left breast today at 29 Sutton Place in New York.


1892: John L. Stoddard delivered an illustrated lecture designed as “an excursion to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.”


1895: It is expected that several liquor dealers who bought “bootleg” Kosher wine from a Russian Jew known as “Gordon” will be arraigned today for failure to pay the appropriate revenue taxes.


1895: “Free Sons of Israel” published today traces the history of  Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel” which was founded in 1849 by German Jews and has grown to be one of the leading Jewish organizations of its kind throughout the United States.


1895: It was reported today that during his service as Chairman of the Committee on Endowment for the Free Sons of Israel, William A. Gans has written checks totaling $2,300,000 to provide aid for widows and orphans.


1896: Congressman Amos J. Cummings will deliver an address about Horace Greely, as the last lecture “of the regular season’s course under the auspices of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.


1896: The Union Veteran Hebrew Association met today in New York City.


1896: Birthdate of Benny Leonard.  Born Benjamin Leiner, son of Orthodox Jews, Leonard learned his trade on the streets of New York.  Leonard was Light Heavyweight Champion for seven and half years.  He was one of several Jewish boxing champs during the early decades of the twentieth century. Leonard was proud of being Jewish and was quoted that Jews were suited by nature to boxing because it was the highest form of self-defense.  A hall of famer, Leonard died April 18, 1947.



1896: Hermann Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semitic agitator and his two American sponsors are expected to be arraigned for their part in provoking a riot in Hoboken, NJ during which Ahlwardt reportedly drew a pistol and threatened the mob protesting his appearance.



1897: It was reported today that Oscar S. Straus, Isaac Wallack, Emanuel Lehman, Isaac Eppinger and Samuel M. Schafer were among the dignitaries who had attended the funeral services of the late Julius Ehrmann.



1897: Orthodox Jews through the world celebrated the “festival of the new sun” which “comes once every 28 years on the fourth day of the first week of Nisan.”



1898(15thof Nisan, 5658): Pesach



1897: While most services for The Blessing of the New Sun, Birkat Hachama, were held without any problems in New York City, including one held on the banks of the East River, an observance at Tompkins Park was marred by the arrest of the officiating Rabbis.  Rabbi Wechsler and Rabbi Klein had told their congregants to gather at the square.  Since the service had to be completed by nine o’clock, a large group had already gathered by eight when local police appeared on the scene.  They were concerned about the threat posed to the public safety by such a large gathering.  Nobody had thought to get a permit and the two Rabbis were taken away since their English was not effective enough to convey the purpose of the gathering.  A magistrate later released them with a warning.  In the mean time, the Jews in the square conducted the service without the benefit of clergy.



1897: Birthdate of Walter Winchell.  The son of Jewish immigrants, Winchell left school at the age of 13 to go into vaudeville.  He appeared with other such Jewish beginners as Eddie Cantor.  Winchell's career took a different turn.  He entered the world of journalism where he invented the gossip column.  Winchell's column appeared in 2,000 papers every day and his 1930's radio show was heard by 50 million listeners.  Winchell had his friends and his foes.  Both agreed that Winchell outlived himself and he died a much diminished figure in 1972.  However, he is another example of a Jew inventing something that was considered to uniquely American.



1899: “Dramatic and Musical” published today described Herr Adolf Sonnenthal’s recent portrayal of the lead character in “Nathan the Wise” which was described as “his greatest success.”  The audience burst into spontaneous, uncontrolled applause when uttered the monologue during the third act in which “Nathan commenting on Saladin’s desire for money asks, ‘Who is here the Jew?’”



1899: “In Aid of the Hebrew Infant Asylum” published today described the plans for the upcoming fundraiser sponsored by the Young Folks’ League of Hebrew Infant Asylum that has 500 members and has raised over $6,000 in the last two years to support the institution.



1899:”Musicale in Aid of Hebrew Institute” published today described the successful fund raiser held at Sherry’s which raised $4,000 for the Hebrew Technical Institute.



1900(8thof Nissan, 5660): Shabbat HaGadol



1900(8thof Nissan, 5660): Zionist poet Isaac Rabinowitz passed away.



1901(18thof Nisan): Hillel Kahane, teacher and worker for the "Enlightenment," passed away at Bottuschan.



1903: Second and final day of the First Kishinev Pogrom



1906: The Algeciras Conference, which had been convened to settle the dispute between France and Germany over Morocco, came to an end. During the conference, the United States raised the issue of the mistreatment of the Jews in the North African kingdom.  U.S. Ambassador White said, “the American government has always considered it duty…to assure due respect to all religious beliefs…My government has charged me to invoke the cooperation of the Conference…regarding the wishes for the welfare of the Israelites of Morocco.” According to Abraham Bloch, the European powers attending the conference supported the American position.  This included Russia whose anti-Semitic policies had forced untold numbers Jews to live in misery or leave the country, France which had been dealing with Dreyfus wave of anti-Semitism and Spain which had expelled it Jews en masse in 1492.



1907(old style): Second and final day of the Kishinev pogrom.
http://forward.com/articles/8544/kishinev--the-birth-of-a-century/



1908: H. H. Asquith of the Liberal Party takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Herbert Henry Asquith served as Prime Minister until 1916 when he was replaced by Lloyd George.  In a private letter written before he became Prime Minister, Asquith described the Jews as “a scattered and unattractive tribe.”  He did enjoy the friendship of Jews including Edwin Montagu who would become the new P.M.’s private secretary. Montagu and Asquith would have a falling out over the affections of Venetia Stanley a friend of Asquith's daughter.  Montagu gained fame as one of the British Jews who opposed the Balfour Declaration. During the 1930’s, Asquith’s daughter befriended Vladimir Jabotinsky. She is the one who introduced him to Winston Churchill.  One of Asquith’s sons served with the British Army in Palestine during WW II.



1911(9thof Nisan, 5671): Fifty-nine year old French banker and art collector Comte Isaac de Camondo who was a member of the House of Camondo passed away today.



1915: Birthdate of economist Albert Hirschman, “who in his youth helped rescue thousands of artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France and went on to become an influential economist known for his optimism” and was the author of Exit, Voice and Loyalty. (As reported by William Yardley)



1915: New York's Governor Charles S. Whitman signed the Widowed Mothers Pension Act into law. The new statute, which provided state-funded pensions to qualifying women so that they could care for their children at home, was largely the result of the efforts of communal activist and reformer Hannah Bachman Einstein.



1916: Birthdate of Robert V. Tishman, “a real estate developer whose companies — bearing the family name since the 19th century — etched their mark on the skylines of cities around the nation, including construction of the World Trade Center.”



1923:  The 1st brain tumor operation under local anesthetic was performed at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City by Dr. K Winfield Ney


1928: Birthdate of producer Alan J. Paluka, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the cinema classic “To Kill A Mockingbird.”



1929: The New York Times reports that Warner Brother’s recently released Biblical epic, “Noah’s Ark” was panned by critics in London while proving to be a box-office smash success with English audiences.  The criticism seemed to be more an expression of anti-Americanism than related to the quality of the film itself.



1930: Birthdate of German born, British actor Andrew Sachs. 



1930: It was reported today that Palestine Mandatory Authority is preparing a plan for dividing Palestine into cantons, like Switzerland which it will then submit to the government in London. “The first experiment with such cantons will be the establishment of special Jewish district comprising Tel Aviv…with 47,000 inhabitants” and 40 nearby settlements including Petach Tikvah, Rishon Lexion and Rehoboth that would form a contiguous entity with 70,000 Jewish inhabitants.  The aim is to ultimate create 15 or 16 such cantons, seven of which be Moslem, three would be Christian and five or six which would be Jewish.



1931: Birthdate of Daniel Ellsberg, American history’s most famous whistleblower.  He is the man who released the Pentagon Papers.



1932: The first radio station in Palestine was opened today in Tel Aviv under a license from the British Mandatory Government. Mendel Abranovitch operated Radio Tel Aviv.



1933(11th of Nisan, 5693): Fifty-three year old Ukrainian born Jewish intellectual who wrote under the pen-name “Baal Dimion” passed away in Kiev.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Shtif_Nokhem



1933: French premiere of “Zero for Conduct” a featurette filmed by cinematographer Boris Kaufman.



1933:  Hitler approved decrees banning Jews and other non-Aryans from the practice of law and from jobs in the civil service (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). Jewish government workers in Germany are ordered to retire. The term Nichtarier ("non-Aryan") became a legal classification in Germany. This made it "legal" to discharge Jews from their position in the universities, hospitals, and legal professions.  The law was called the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.  The non-Aryan clause would be extended over the next year to include everything i.e. all professional occupations, athletic competition and military service.



1934: Several thousandAmericans attended a pro-Nazi rally in Queens, New York


1934: “The House of Rothschild” a biopic about the famous banking family starring George Arliss, Loretta Young and Boris Karloff was released for public viewing today.


1935: As the 2nd Maccabiah games came to a close before 50,000 spectators the team from the United States had scored 254 giving it a wide lead over second place German (183).  The team representing the Jews of Palestine scored 139.5 points edging out Austria, Czechoslovakia and South Africa. 


1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that according to British political circles, the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine might propose the setting up of two separate Jewish and Arab states, leaving Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other holy places under British Mandate. Haifa was to be a common seaport for all.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jewish students were attacked and beaten at the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute, which closed for a number of days.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that the Polish airline, Lot, initiated a regular three-flights-a-week schedule from Warsaw to Lod Airport.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that ewish laborers complained that they were excluded from various development projects carried out by the government at Lod Airport.



1939: Italy invaded and annexed Albania. Jews were exiled from the coastal port cities and moved to Albania’s interior. Several Austrian and German families took refuge in Tirana and Durazzo in 1939 in hope of making it eventually to the United States or South America. Many Jewish refugees also passed through Albania on their way to Palestine. These refugees were well treated by the Italian forces and by the local population. Jewish refugee families began to scatter throughout Albania and assimilate into society. Jewish children continued to attend school, but under false names and religions. Italians rejected the Final Solution and therefore did not implement anti-Jewish laws. Nevertheless, many Albanians joined the SS Division “Skanderbeg.” Some Jewish refugees were eventually placed in a transit camp in Kavaje, and from there sent to Italy. At one point, nearly 200 Jews were placed in the Kavaje camp. Some Albanian officials tried to rescue these Jews of Kavaje, by issuing identity papers to hide them in the capital Tirana.



                                                                          or



1939: In a prelude to World War II, Mousilliniinvades Albania as he tries to create a modern day Roman Empire. “Approximately, 600 Jews were living in Albania prior to World War II, 400 of whom were refugees. At the beginning of World War II, hundreds of Jews arrived in Albania seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in other regions of Europe.There was little history of anti-Semitism in Albania between the local Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Most of the Albanian population was not hostile toward the Jews and helped to hide them during the war, especially when Italy and Germany occupied the country. When Italy invaded and annexed Albania. Jews were exiled from the coastal port cities and moved to Albania’s interior. Several Austrian and German families took refuge in Tirana and Durazzo in 1939 in hope of making it eventually to the United States or South America. Many Jewish refugees also passed through Albania on their way to Palestine. These refugees were well treated by the Italian forces and by the local population. Jewish refugee families began to scatter throughout Albania and assimilate into society. Jewish children continued to attend school, but under false names and religions. Italians rejected the Final Solution and therefore did not implement anti-Jewish laws.Nevertheless, many Albanians joined the SS Division “Skanderbeg” and committed atrocities against the Serbian and Jewish populations of Kosovar. Some refugees were eventually placed in a transit camp in Kavaje, and from there sent to Italy. At one point, nearly 200 Jews were placed in the Kavaje camp. Some Albanian officials tried to rescue these Jews of Kavaje, by issuing identity papers to hide them in the capital Tirana.”  For more see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/albania.html \



1940: Cyrus Adler, the national Jewish leader from, of all places, Van Buren, Arkansas, passed away today.

1941: Two separate ghettos were established in Radom, Poland. At Kielce, Poland, 16,000 local Jews and about a thousand Jewish deportees from Vienna are herded into a ghetto area.


1943: The Spanish Ambassador has lunch with Winston Churchill at which time the Prime Minister protested in the strongest possible language to the closure of the border between France and Spain to Jewish refugees trying to escape across the Pyrenees. Churchill’s threatening tone had its effect when a “few days later the Spanish authorities had re-opened the border to Jewish refugees.”


1943: Jewish resistance led by Michael Glanz took place at Skalat, Ukraine.


1943(2nd of Nisan, 5703): During the Holocaust in the western Ukraine, the Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress to their underwear and march through the city of Terebovlia to the nearby village of Plebanivka. They were then shot dead and buried in ditches.


1944: Birthdate of Julia Miller who gained fame as Julia Philips co-producer of “The Sting,” “Taxi Driver” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”


1944:  Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz with the expressed the intention of telling the world what was going on. With the help of the resistance movement inside the camp, these two made it out and after two weeks found their way to Slovakia. They met with Adre Steiner and Oscar Krasnansky and described in detail what was happening including plans to murder 800,000 Hungarian Jews. Krasnansky turned their report into the thirty-page long "Auschwitz Protocols" which were then sent to contacts in the West. To say the Holocaust happened because nobody knew was not quite the case; more like people did not want to know or knew but did not care.


1944(14th of Nisan, 5704): In the evening, with the world at war, Jews sit down for the first Seder of the year including American service men and woman.  The different branches of the United States armed forces have made great effort to make it possible for Jews serving in the military to observe the holiday.  “With the cooperation of the Army and Navy, 400,000 boxes Matzah, 7,000 gallons of wine and 190,000 Haggadot have been shipped by the Jewish Welfare Board for distribution” to those serving “in every war sector as well as England, North Africa and Australia.” Holiday supplies have already been parachuted to troops serving in the upper reaches of the Rockies and dogsleds were used to get Passover goodies to those serving in outposts in Alaska.  The South African Army provided a special train so Jewish soldiers in Egypt could enjoy home hospitality in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.



1945: In Italy, the Jewish Brigade received an order to cross the Senio River “and establish a bridgehead on the other side – a move that would force the Germans to retreat in the wake of the advancing British Army.



1946: Syria's independence from France is officially recognized. The Syrian Jewish community which traced its origins back to the reign of King David and had once been thriving and prosperous had, by now, fallen on hard times. As anti-Jewish sentiment increased in the 20th century, many Syrian Jews moved to New York.  In the years just prior to Syrian independence, thousand of Syrian Jews found refuge in Palestine. A year after Syria gained independence, the ancient Jewish community of Aleppo was the victim of a Pogrom. [Reading the works of Haim Sabato, a Syrian Jew whose family moved to Egypt before settling in Israel, will give you some sense of this ancient Jewish Community.]



1949: Rogers & Hammerstein's "South Pacific" opened at Majestic Theater for the first of 1,928 performances.



1950: In one of the ironies of history, a commercial vessel now called the Tsfonit which flew the Swastki when first launched in 1937 will fly Israel’s Blue and White flag complete with the Star of David.  The ship has been purchased by the American-Israeli Shipping Company for Zim, Israel’s shipping line, according to reports published in the New York Times.  As part of Israel’s growing commitment to maritime commerce, a freighter now named the Akko will leave for Haifa next week to join three other war surplus shipping vessles that are already plying the waters between Israeli and U.S. ports.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that at the reparations talks held there, Israel was waiting for a definite commitment and a specific sum to be offered as compensation, by the authoritative German delegation.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the UN Technical Assistance Department proposed to set up in Israel a center for modern adobe (sun-dried earth) housing development scheme.



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The Jerusalem Municipal Council voted for a new entertainment tax and fixed salaries of town councilors and deputy mayors.



1955(15thof Nisan, 5715): Pesach



1955(15thof Nisan, 5715): Sixty-nine year old silent film star Theda Bara passed away today.
http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/thedabara.html



1956(26th of Nisan, 5716): A resident of Ashkelon was killed in her home, when attackers threw three hand grenades into her house. Two members of kibbutz Givat Haim were killed, when terrorists opened fire on their car, on the road from Plugot Junction to Mishmar HaNegev



1956(26thof Nisan, 5716): One person was killed and three others were wounded when terrorists attacked areas around Nitzanim and Ketziot tossing hand grenades and firing guns into homes and cars.



1956(26thof Nisan, 5716): Two members of kibbutz Givat Haim were killed, when terrorists opened fire on their car, on the road from Plugot Junction to Mishmar HaNegev.



1958: Writer Arch Oboler's six-year-old son, Peter, drowned in rainwater collected in excavations at Oboler's Malibu home. The house was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright; the Wright-designed Oboler residential complex is named Eaglefeather. The house is featured in Oboler's film “Five.”



1961: In Mexico City, soap opera star Abraham Stavchansky and his wife gave birth to Ilan Stavchansky who gained famed as Ilan Stavans, “Mexican-American, essayist, lexicographer, cultural commentator, translator, short-story author, publisher, TV personality, and teacher known for his insights into American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures.”



1963: The New York Times published a review of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan



1965: Robert Louis Rogers began serving as Canada’s Ambassador to Israel.



1966: Birthdate of Beersheba native Zvika Hadar who gained fame as a television game show host.



1967: Israeli fighters shot down seven Syrian MIG-21s.  This episode turned out to be one of the many flashpoints on the road to the war that would be fought in June of 1967.  The Syrians were embarrassed and infuriated by the ease with which the Israelis swept their advanced MIG’s from the sky.  So they took action to encourage Nasser to follow an aggressive policy towards Israel that would ultimately lead to a clash of arms from which the region still has not recovered at the start of the 21st century.



1970: Birthdate of Rabbi Aaron Sherman



1974: U.S premiere of “The Conversation” with music by David Shire and featuring Allen Garfield as William P. "Bernie" Moran



1974: Swedish release date for “Cinderella Liberty” produced and direct by Mark Rydell and co-starring James Caan and Eli Wallach and featuring Allan Arbus.



1975: Forty-five year old Beverly Sills debuted at the Metropolitan Opera



1976: U.S. Premiere of “Sparkle” produced by Howard Rosenman who co-authored the script with Joel Schumacher.



1976: U.S. premiere of “The Bad News Bears” co-starring Walter Matthau and Vic Morrow with music by Jerry Fielding.



1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that in Washington Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced that a "normalization" of relations with Israel would be possible only after the signing of a peace agreement at the reconvened Geneva Peace Conference and the establishment of a Palestinian state. A Soviet diplomat called unexpectedly at the Israeli Embassy in Washington to deliver a note from his leader, Leonid Brezhnev.



1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Taiwan was reported to have purchased Israeli missiles.



1977:The Jerusalem Post reported that Senior Israeli pilots expressed criticism of the current safety measures at Ben-Gurion Airport and warned that unless these were taken care of, an eventual disaster was inevitable.



1990: Michael Milken pleaded innocent to security law violations.



1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Yishai Gadassi, age 32, of Kvutzat Yavne, was shot and killed at a hitchhiking post at the Ashdod junction by a member of HAMAS. The terrorist was killed by bystanders at the scene. 1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Based on information it attributed to Israel Radio, The Associated Press in Jerusalem, reported that Palestinian shot and wounded at least two Israelis at a bus stop in the southern Israel port of Ashod early today before he was shot dead by a bystander.



1994(26th of Nisan, 5754):Author Golo Mann, son of Thomas Mann, passed away.  Golo was technically Jewish since his mother was Jewish.



1994: ElioToaff who had been served as Chief Rabbi of Rome since 1951 co-officiated at the Papal Concert to Commemorate the Shoah at the Sala Nervi in Vatican City, along with Pope John Paul II, and the President of Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.



1994:  For the first time theVatican acknowledged Holocaust i.e. the Nazi's killing of Jews.



1998: Under the leadership of Sandy Weill, Citicorp and Travelers Group announce plans to merge creating the largest financial-services conglomerate in the world, Citigroup.



2002: During Operation Defensive Shield, the Vatican “warned Israel to respect religious sites in line with its international obligations ignoring the fact that the Church of Nativity was at risk only because Palestinian terrorist had seized control of the venerable shrine.



2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ''Gershom Scholem: A Life in Letters.''



2002: In a column entitled “A Jewish Avenger, A Timely Legend,” Alisa Solomon reviews the upcoming revival English language production of H. Leivick's Yiddish classic, ''The Golem,''



2002: MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) Special Dispatch  363 quotes Al-Azhar Mosque’s Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi as announcing “every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers are legitimate acts according to religious law, and Islamic commandment until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat.”



2005:The Prince of Wales attended a memorial service for the Hon Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild held today at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London. Rabbi Alexandra Wright, officiated, assisted by Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger. Rabbi Mark Solomon sang and Ms Andrea Hess, cello, played during the service. Attendees included Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, the Hon Emma Rothschild, Professor Sir John Gurdon and Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC.



2006: David Bromberg appears at the Library of Congress to speak on the historic significance of that ever-under-appreciated musical instrument, the American-made violin. The sixty year-old musical legend owns nearly 250, some dating back more than 100 years. It is the largest such collection, and they are displayed in cabinets from one end of his living room to the other.



2007: The UJA-Federation of New York’s Music for Youth initiative holds a fund raising concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.



2007: The three day festival known as Boombamela comes to an end.The festival is described by its organizersas "a place for meeting, experiencing, crossing borders and transcending social limitations through music, creation, and connection with nature." It is held on the sandy beach of Hof Nitzanim, between Ashdod and Ashkelon.



2008(2nd of Nisan, 5768): Eighty-three year old “atomic spy” Ruth Greenglass, the wife of David Greenglass, died today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/09greenglass.html



2008: RSA Conference opens in San Francisco.  RSA was developed by Ronald Rivest (R), Adi Shamir (S) and Leonard Adelman (A) in 1977.



2008:Following the latest attack targeting Yemen’s few remaining Jews during which rebel Houthi militiamen destroyed several homes that had belonged to the now-absent Jewish community in the northwestern Saada province TheJerusalemPost reported on the conditions of Jews living in Yemen.



"The Houthis destroyed part of my house and looted it," Rabbi Yehia Youssuf told Reuters in the capital, San'a. All 67 members of Saada's Jewish community fled following threats from the Houthis, the rabbi says. Some locals say the Jews were threatened because they had been selling wine to Muslims - an accusation the Jews deny, according to Reuters. A local said the Shi'ite rebels attacked the houses of other Jews after looting the rabbi's. Around 400 Jews remain in the majority Sunni state, the remnant of an ancient, close-knit community that, while remaining connected to Jewish intellectual and legal developments outside Yemen, managed to insulate itself culturally until the 20th century. According to Dr. Dov Levitan, a scholar of Yemenite Jewry at Bar-Ilan University and the Academic College of Ashkelon, the Houthi clan targets Jews to embarrass the government internationally. Apparently unrelated intertribal fighting in the province killed at least 15 people in recent days as the Houthi tribe continued its intermittent violence, begun in June 2004, against the central government and its allies. Since the early 1990s, the Yemeni government "has been very conscious of its international image," explains Levitan. "So important is the country's image to its government that the Jews have excellent government protection." When their situation in Saada became precarious about a year ago, "they were flown out in a government plane to San'a. They receive a small stipend and live in a compound protected by state security forces. This kind of concern would have been unimaginable just 15 years ago," he says. The government's concern for its image, together with pressure from American Jewish groups and US legislators, led Yemen in the early 1990s to permit most of the remaining 2,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel and elsewhere, continuing a centuries-long trickle of aliya from the country. At the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, around 35,000 Yemenite Jews lived in Israel. Another 50,000 came in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence. Most of the 1,600 Jews who left Yemen during the 1990s now live in Rehovot. The question of why Jews remain in Yemen remains. "We have contact with these Jews. They're not the Jews who came 60 years ago," the large wave of poor refugees who fled pogroms in Operation Magic Carpet, Levitan says. "They're more educated, they're better dressed, they wear watches and drive cars. Some of them have traveled overseas. They have property there, and they are connected historically. They don't want to leave a place that has been their natural environment for generations." The Yemenite Jewish community claims to have existed since the time of the First Temple, 2,600 years ago. While this claim has not been verified, "we know with certainty that they were there for at least 1,500 years," says Levitan. Despite its unique customs and liturgy, Yemenite Jewry was never disconnected from the broader Jewish world. "For example, we know that the letters of the [medieval Jewish philosopher and legalist] Maimonides arrived in Yemen. We know from the 14th to the 16th centuries they were connected enough to receive the Shulchan Aruch [halachic codex]. And in the 18th and 19th centuries they received printed Jewish prayer books and Talmuds from abroad when there was no Jewish press in Yemen," he said. Other pressures also affect the decision of Jews to remain. The anti-Zionist Satmar hassidim work to persuade the community not to move to Israel. "They give the remaining Jews money and holy books, take them to New York and London - anything to keep them from going to Israel," says Levitan. Also, the government's concern and protection are seen as complete and genuine by the community, he says.



2008:David Grossman's latest novel, Isha Borahat Mibesora (English title: "Until the end of the land") is released by Hasifria Hahadasha, Kibbutz Hameuchad and Siman Kriah books.



2008: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.“In his second volume of a history of the Holocaust, Mr. Friedländer, 75, interwove segments from contemporary journals and letters into the more general description of the atrocities. “Usually the history of the Holocaust is written from the viewpoint of German documents and archives,” said Mr. Friedländer, who was born in Prague, escaped to France in 1939 and emigrated to Israel in 1948. He teaches history at the University of California, Los Angeles.”



2009:The Zionist Organization of America renewed its call today for a boycott of Coca-Cola products during Pesach on behalf of an Egyptian Jewish family that is suing the company over a property dispute. “Members of the Bigio family, now living in the US, are demanding compensation from the soft-drink giant, based in Atlanta, for bottling plants they say were expropriated by the Egyptian government in 1965 and illegitimately bought by the Coca-Cola Company in 1994.  The family, which sued in 1997 in US federal court, failed to reach a settlement with Coca-Cola in mediation talks that ended in March, according to its attorney, Nathan Lewin, who claimed the company had not offered a cash settlement to the Bigios.



2009:Today, two days before Passover, a University of Haifa archaeologist has unearthed foot-shaped structures he believes were constructed by the Israelites at the time of the Exodus from Egypt and move into the Promised Land.  The large structures were found in the Jordan Valley by Prof. Adam Zertal, who describes them as "the first structures the Israelites built on entering Canaan, and [which] testify to the biblical idea of ownership of the land." Zertal's excavating team exposed five such complexes, all of which he has dated to the beginning of the Bronze Age (1200-1300 BCE), and which he collectively identifies with the biblical Gilgal, the site the Israelites reached after crossing the Jordan River. As described in the Book of Joshua, the Israelites were ordered to take 12 stones from the river, one for each tribe, to commemorate the event for posterity. Most modern archaeologists believe do not see the biblical accounts of the Exodus from Egypt and conquest of Canaan as historically reliable, but Zertal is one of the few in Israel who believe they have found archaeological evidence directly corroborating these events. Zertal has previously referred to archaeologists doubtful of the Bible's historical veracity as "Bible deniers." The archaeologist's best-known discovery until now has been on Mount Ebal near Nablus, which he identified as the location of the first great stone altar the Israelites dedicated to God. He also believes he has found potsherds characteristic of those believed to be left by the ancient Israelites. Still, no evidence has been found definitively linking the site to the biblical Gilgal. Zertal said the foot carried significance for ancient peoples in the region as a symbol of ownership over territory and superiority over their enemies. He believes the "foot" complexes he has discovered served as meeting places for Israelite communities after entering Canaan. Zertal said even after Jerusalem became the center of worship, and the Israelites were commanded to make pilgrimages there, the "foot" concept had not vanished, as evidenced in the Hebrew term for pilgrimage, "aliyah laregel" - literally, "ascending on foot.



2009: “Picturing the Shoah,” a film festival sponsored by YIVO that explores  how movies have represented the Holocaust from radical, provocative, and unexpected angles continues with exhibitions of “Black Book” and “Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943.



2009:Israel carried out a test launch of its Arrow II interceptor missile today, the Defense Ministry said, a system designed to defend against possible ballistic missile attacks by Iran and Syria


2010: Savyon Liebrecht, who was born in Munich to Holocaust survivors and is the author of The Women My Father Knewis scheduled to discuss growing up in a home of survivors, the psychological and social phenomena of the "second generation," and how these subjects manifest themselves in her stories and play at Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.


 2010:The Tel Aviv municipality unveiled the city's new large-scale public bomb shelter today, built under the new Habima Theater. The advanced shelter, at 3,740 square meters, can hold as many as 1,600 people over four floors.


2011: “The Miracle Worker” is scheduled to have its final performance today in Talpiot, Jerusalem, in the Way Off Theater.


2011:Yeshiva University Museum, American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History and Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum  are scheduled to present a panel discussion entitled: "Give us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses....or Not: A New Model for Civic Dialogue Within and Beyond the Gallery Walls.


2011:In Rockville, MD, Magen David Sephardic Congregation is scheduled to present a lecture by David W. Jourdan, President & Founder of Nauticos entitled “Never Forgotten: The Search for Israel’s Lost Submarine Dakar.


2011:Philo Bregstein is scheduled deliver a lecture at London’s Wiener Library in which he re-evaluates Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry” by Jacob Presser. When it was first published in 1965, the book triggered a fierce debate on the Holocaust in the Netherlands.”


2011:A number of terrorist cells are operating in the Sinai Peninsula with the goal of kidnapping Israeli nationals, security officials warned today ahead of the upcoming Pesach holiday. According to the official, the threat to Israelis was based on concrete and firm intelligence information obtained by Israel indicating that Hamas and other terrorist groups were trying to abduct Israelis, transfer them to the Gaza Strip and use them as bargaining chips in potential prisoner swaps with the country.


2011: Two people were wounded today after an anti-tank missile exploded into a bus traveling in one of the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  Following the attack, 16 additional mortar shells were fired at Israeli towns in the western Negev, most of them hitting open areas. Following the attack on the bus, in which a 16-year-old boy was seriously wounded and the bus driver was hurt moderately, a barrage of 15 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel, most of them hitting open areas. Defense authorities instructed residents in Israeli towns 4.5 kilometers from the Gaza Strip to stay in their protected areas. Several roads in the area were also blocked.


2011:Today, the Iron Dome missile defense system successfully intercepted for the first time a Grad rocket that was fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon from the Gaza Strip.


2011:  Today, Les editions CNRS will publish the philosopher and translator Nicolas Cavaillès’s “Cioran in Spite of HImself: Writing Against Oneself.” It appears one day before the 100thanniversary of the birth of Emil Cioran


2011:The local government of the Balearic Islands in Spain will, for the first time, officially acknowledge the suffering of a local community, whose ancestors were Jewish, at a ceremony in Palma de Majorca today. Balearic Island President, Francesc Antich Oliver, will attend the commemorative event held on the 320th anniversary of the killing of 33 locals who belonged to the Cheuta minority, and were executed by the Spanish Inquisition for secretly practicing Judaism in 1691. The Cheuta (also spelled Xeuta), is a community of about 20,000 people living on the Mediterranean islands whose ancestors were forcibly converted from Judaism to Christianity in the 15th century.


2012(15thof Nisan, 5772): First Day of Pesach


2012(15thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-three year old television broadcast journalist Mike Wallace passed away today. (Tim Weiner)

2012(15thof Nisan): According to Chabad Lubavitch, “on the 15th of Nissan of the year 2447 from creation (1314 BCE) -- exactly one year before the Exodus -- Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, at the foot of Mount Sinai, when G-d appeared to him in a "thornbush that burned with fire, but was not consumed" and instructed him to return to Egypt, come before Pharaoh, and demand in the name of G-d: "Let My people go, so that they may serve Me." For seven days and seven nights Moses argued with G-d, pleading that he is the wrong person for the job, before accepting the mission to redeem the people of Israel and bring them to Sinai.


2013(27thof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-three year old “American comedy writer and screenwriter” and “lifelong friend of Woody Allen” Mickey Rose passed away today.

2013(27thof Nisan, 5773): Seventy-four year old “Peter Workman, the founder of Workman Publishing, whose knack for landing best-selling trade books like “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” and “The Silver Palate Cookbook” built his company into one of the few remaining independent book publishers in the country” passed away today.

2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Fear Itself by Ira Katzneson and FDR and the Jews by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman


2013: The Arab-Israeli ensemble of the IPO is scheduled to perform in Los Angeles.


2013: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a screening of “Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising According to Marek Edelman.”


2013: Start of “National Days of Remembrance” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

2013: Hamas terrorists, who declare openly their wish to commit genocide against the Jewish people, marked Holocaust Remembrance Day their way today – with a salvo of rockets fired at Jewish civilians. (As reported by Gil Ronen)


2013: Anti-Israel hackers failed in their declared plan to wipe the Jewish state from the internet on Yom HaShoah.


2013: Second season of “House of Lies” co-starring Ben Schwartz came to an end.


2014: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department under the chairmanship of Dr. Brian J. Horowitz is scheduled to host “Nazi Film- Melodrama” a lecture by Visiting Professor Laura Heins author of Nazi Film Melodrama.


2014: In Cannes, the MIPTV event that will include a “Focus On Israel” series “that will include lectures and screenings featuring the hottest content out of the Holy Land” is scheduled to open today.


2014: The anti-Semitic “hacker group known as Anonymous” is scheduled to launch OpIsrael, its second annual attack on the cyber infrastructure of Israel.


2014: Jael Silliman author of The Man With Many Hats and a former Professor at the University of Iowa is scheduled to deliver a talk that “will present a rich visual tour of the Calcutta Jewish community


2014: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund chaired by Dr. Bob Silber is scheduled to co-host “A Service of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocuast” featuring Holocaust Survivor Cesare Frustaci.


2015: “Shall We Dance,” “the award winning Israeli theatre show” is scheduled to be performed at the Kraine Theatre tonight.


2015: The run-off mayoral election in which Rahm Emanuel hopes to be victorious is scheduled to take place today.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

This Day, April 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 8


73: The Great Revolt came to an end today when the defenders of Masada completed their murder/suicide pact


217: Assassination of Roman Emperor Caracalla.  Some Romans may Caracalla who was officially known as Antonius, as a disgrace to his office.  Caracalla extended the right of citizenship to all of those living in the empire as a way of raising additional taxes.  Under the “law of unintended consequences” this improved the status of the Jews.  While Caracalla showed no special affection for his Jewish subjects, he did not single them out for any special disabilities or punishments except for one matter of taxation. This was an improvement over life under some of his predecessors and many of his successors. When it came to taxes, Caracalla took as much as he could.  Since the time of Julius Caesar, the Jews of Palestine had been exempt from paying certain taxes during the Sabbatical Year.  The taxes were paid in produce which was used to feed the army.  Caracalla put an end to the exemption. Caracalla was fighting the Parthians in 216 which was a Sabbatical Year.  Rabbi Janni, a contemporary of Judah haNasi, ruled that it was permissible for the Jews of Palestine to grow crops during the Sabbatical Year so that they could pay these taxes.  He made it clear that this was a special exemption and in no way was intended as an abrogation of the Sabbatical Year.


426: Emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III decree that Jewish parents and grandparents cannot disinherit any children and grandchildren who convert to Christianity.  This was designed to enhance the spread of Christianity since under the decree those who converted to other religions could be disinherited.


1094(19th of Nisan): Mathematician and astronomer Rabbi Isaac ben Baruch Albalia, author of “Kuppat ha-Rochlin, passed away.

1139:  Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated. Roger may have had his problems with Innocent II, but for a monarch of his time, the Jews benefited from his rule.  Roger allowed the Jews to be tried under their own legal system; the same privilege that he had extended to his Greek and Saracen subjects.  One of his close advisors was known to be sympathetic to the Jews going so far as to visit their synagogues and to donate money for the support of the community.  Finally, Roger brought a significant contingent of Greek Jews to Palermo, the capital of Sicily, who were supposed to tend silk-worms in an attempt to develop the silk trade.


1484: Local farmers of Arles, France, led by the town's monks attacked the Jewish section of the town. A number of people were killed and 50 men were forced to accept Christianity.

1559: “Dominican monks distributed inflammatory pamphlets in Cremona, Italy, urging the populace to kill the Jews.” (As reported by Abraham P. Bloch)


1730: In New York, the (first) Mill Street Synagogue which is known as Shearith Israel was consecrated. It was the first structure designed and built to be a synagogue in continental North America. During the time the congregation was at Mill Street, the Sephardic leadership worried it might become Ashkenazic. The compromise within the Jewish community was they agreed the president of the congregation would be Ashkenazi, while the services would remain under the traditional Spanish and Portuguese rite, under the guise of a Sephardic chazzan. It is now known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.  One of its most famous leaders was Gershom Menes Seixas, a patriot during the Revolution, who had to leave when the British took the city.  A 1744 visitor noted that congregation's women "of whom some were very pretty, stood up in the gallery like a hen coop."


1773(15thof Nisan, 5633): Pesach


1773: Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal, the native of Palestine who was reported to be the first ordained Rabbi to visit the colonies that would become the United States was described by Ezra Stiles as wearing "a high Fur Cap, exactly like a Woman’s Muff, and about 9 or 10 Inches high, the Aperture atop was closed with green cloth" at Passover services today.


1790: According to some sources, birthdate of Ruth Luzzatto, who gained fame as “Rachel Morpurgo: Queen of the Hebrew Sonnet.”

1801:  Soldiers rioted and killed 128 Jews in Bucharest.


1817(22nd of Nisan, 5577): 8th day of Pesach


1819: A traveler who stopped in Joannina (Yanina), Greece acknowledged the following:
"In going out of the village this morning, soon after the sun rose, we passed a Turk, richly dressed, sitting upon a carpet, under a fig tree just budding…I know of no European habit of life so picturesque, as the Eastern one. Greek, Turk, and Hebrew enjoy nearly an equal protection."


1845(1stof Nisan, 5605): Rosh Chodesh


1845(1stof Nisan, 5605): Solomon Rosenthal, the younger son of Naftali Rosenthal -one of the most important leader of Hungarian Jewry- who was “active in Haskalah and Jewish culture life” passed away today in Pest. 


1847: Birthdate of Karl Wittegenstein, the Austrian steel tycoon who was often compared to his friend Andrew Carnegie.  Like so many 18thEuropean Jews, Wittegenstein converted.  For him Vienna was apparently well worth a Mass.


1851: Abraham Abrahamsohn arrived in San Francisco.  A baker by trade, Abrahamsohn had left his wife and children in Pomerania (Germany) to seek his fortune in America.  On his first day in San Francisco he “set up a canvas-roofed store” on the Long Wharf” where he made $85 in one day.  After several exciting years, Abrahamson returned to Germany where he published Interesting Accounts of the Travels of Abraham Abrahamsohn to America and Especially to the Gold Mines of California and Australia in 1856.


1863: Birthdate of Jules Huret who authored Sarah Bernhardt, a biography of the famous Jewish performer

1869: Jacob Bibo, an orphan who was the brother of Isaac R. Bibo and who had been working for a pawnbroker in the Bowery after leaving the Hebrew Orphan Asylum “went out on the Bowery to meet some other boys of his own aged” tonight “and has never been seen or heard of by any of his friends or relatives since”


1873:Sir Julius Vogel begins serving his first term as Prime Minister of New Zealand.  Vogel was the first practicing Jew to hold this position.


1876(14thof Nissan, 5636):“Passover: The Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread” published today stated that “this evening will be marked by the peculiar ceremonies incident to the Jewish festival of "Pesach" or Passover. This festival, which is also known as the "feast of unleavened bread," continues for eight days, and, with the exception of the New-Year feast and the Day of Atonement, is more generally observed than any of the very numerous festal days in the Hebraic calendar.”


1879(15thof Nisan, 5639): Pesach


1879(15th of Nisan, 5639): In New York, Rabbi Frederick De Sola Mendes delivered the sermon at Shaarai Tefilla, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs delivered the sermon at B’nai Jeshurun and Rabbi H.P. Mendes delivered the sermon at Shearith Israel.


1884: The Turkish government is a proclamation today “forbidding the immigration of Jews of any nationality, except for pilgrims who were restricted to a stay of thirty days.”


1887(14th of Nisan, 5647): Rabbi Gustav Gottheill led the well-attended Passover eve services at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.


1887(14th of Nisan, 5647): An article published today entitled “The Feast of the Passover” states that “the celebration of Pesach, or the Passover, will begin at sunset this evening.  The feature of the celebration is the substitution of the matzoth or unleavened cakes for bread…”


1890: Among the victims of a riot by 8,000 unemployed workers in Vienna were the several shops owned by Jews which were plundered by the mob.


1891: In Australia, Sir John Monash, who would lead the Aussies during World War I, married Hannah Victoria Moss. Their only child, Bertha, would be born 2 years later in 1893.  


1891: John Duncan is the architect for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society’s building now being built by Lynd Brothers. The new building will be 66 feet wide and 125 feet and will enable the society to double its capacity from 400 t0 800 orphans.  The $90,000 cost will be covered by raised by board members and prominent supports including Philip J. Joachimsen, the founder of the society and Moses Lauterbach, Chairman of the Advisory Board.


1891: It was reported today that the self-inflicted gunshot wounds have proven to be fatal in the case of Siegfried Lewisohn, 28 year old German Jewish cheese importer who fired two bullets into his left breast after having grown despondent over the death of his wife.


1892: In the “Persecuted Jew” published today, a writer using the nom de plume “American Girl” expresses her belief that we can do more for the Jews whom she describes as persecuted outcast than answer “their call for bread” and calls upon the press to help right the wrongs done against these people.


1892: During today’s lecture on Jerusalem and the Holy land, John L. Stoddard displayed a large, rare photographic collection that included views of Jaffa and Jerusalem not seen by most Americans.


1893(22nd of Nisan, 5653): 8th day of Pesach


1893: Karl Luger, a deputy in the Austrian parliament addressed an anti-Semitic rally in Vienna tonight “at which the Jews were violently denounced.”


1893: Cardinal Herbert Alfred Vaughn was appointed Archbishop of Westminster. According to Lawrence Jeffrey Epstein, once when Vaughn was having lunch with Dr, Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, he asked "Now, Dr. Adler, when may I have the pleasure of helping you to some ham?" The rabbi responded: "At Your Eminence's wedding".


1895: Birthdate of Barney Gorodetsky who gained fame as comedian Bert Gordon known as “the Mad Russian.”


1895: “A package of clothing addressed to the United Hebrew Charities” was sold for $23 at today unclaimed parcels auction held by the American Express.  It was the highest price paid for any of the unclaimed items.1895 (14th of Nisan, 5655): “The Feast of the Passover” published today describes the current status of the observance of Pesach.  “The celebration of Pesach…will be begun by the Jewish people throughout the world this evening…Those of the Jewish community who still cling to the orthodox observances of the Hebraic ritual continue the celebration of the festival for eight day, the first two and last two days of that period being observed as strict holy days.  Those who have accepted the modern or reform ritual celebrate only the first and the last day of the festival.”


1896: Lewis May, President of Temple Emanu El has sent “a communication” the Union Veteran Hebrew Association offering the use of the city’s synagogues for memorial services.  Among those planning for the Memorial Day celebration are Isaac Eckstein, Isaac J. Siskin and Otto Lassner.


1896: A committee of the New York State Board of Charities that has been investigating the Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child Protectory submitted its report this afternoon.


1896: “Jews In Our Wars” published today provided a detailed review of The American Jew As A Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, a book written to counter the claims of anti-Semites had shirked their role as soldiers in the United States.


1896: “Scenes in the Orient” published a review of A Cruise Under the Crescent a travel book that includes descriptions of visits to Jerusalem, by Charles Warren Stoddard in which the author “tells of that vexation all travelers feel as the authenticity of the shrines in Palestine”


1897(6th of Nisan, 5657): Hungarian rabbi and Talmudic scholar Samuel Low Brill passed away.


1897: Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic politician, began his services as Mayor of Vienna. Historians do not agree as to the depth of Lueger’s anti-Semitism.  Some, including Amos Elon contend it was more of a political ruse designed to garner votes and power. 


1897: Birthdate of Jo Swerling, the native of Berdichev who grew up on the Lower East Side and became a leading lyricist and writer.


1897: In an article describing the Jewish observance of the Blessing of the New Sun, the New York Times reports that synagogue records “show that the new sun service has been conducted by orthodox Hebrews in this country at intervals of twenty-eight years for 180 years.”


 1898:  Birthdate of E Y "Yip" Harburg.  Born Isidore Hochberg, to Orthodox Jewish parents on New York's lower east side, Harburg appears to have enjoyed a reasonably happy childhood with his parents exposing to him art, literature and the Yiddish theatre.  After trying his hand at everything from journalism to selling appliances, Hochberg began a successful career as a lyricist during the depths of the Great Depression.  His first financial and artistic angel was Ira Gershwin.  Harburg wrote the words to the Depression hit "Brother Can You Spare A Dime."  While you may not know his name, anybody who has seen the Wizard of Oz, has heard several Harburg hits.  Harburg's career disintegrated during the Red Scare of the 1950's.  He died in an automobile accident in 1961.


1899: “The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum” is scheduled to “give its fourth annual amateur performance” this “evening at the Lexington Opera House.”


1899: The approximately 10,000 members of various trade unions who were taking part in the Socialist and Organized Labor Day Parade paused at Greene Street and Washington Place, and stood in front of the ruins of the Asch Building where 145 people many of them young Jews lost their lives in the recent Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.


1899: A review published today of The Bible and Its Transmission by Dr. W.A. Coplinger which is an historical and bibliographical view of the Hebrew and Greek texts, notes that it contains illustrations from the first printed portion of the Hebrew Bible which was completed in 1447 in Bologna


1899: Benjamin Weinstein and official of the Hebrew Trades Union was among the speakers who addressed those participating in the Socialist Labor Day Parade.


1900: Birthdate of Gavriel Mullokandov, the native of Samarkand who was regarded by some “as the greatest Bukharian Jewish singer and musician.”


1902: Birthdate of Josef Alois Krips the Austrian conductor and violinist who left his homeland during the Nazi period because his father’s Jewish would have precluded him from pursuing his career (and might have led to an eventual trip to a concentration camp.)


1904(23rdof Nisan, 5664): In Frankfort-on-Main, author Chaim M. Horowitz passed away.


1908: Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School. Among its Jewish graduates are Donna Dubinksy, Gabi Ashkenazi, Len Blavatnik, Michael Bloomberg, Stephen Allen Schwarzman and Robert Kraft.


1908: The Passover Relief Association of Harlem distributed 2,000 pounds of Matzah, 300 pounds of coffee and other items necessary to celebrate the upcoming holiday of Passover to the needy east side Jews today.


1910: Large Jewish owned mercantile houses in Salonika announce 1% of all cash takings will go toward the cost of new Turkish warships.


1911: In the Bronx, Morris Kaplan a candy store owner who worked as a textile cutter and his wife gave birth to Judge Benjamin Kaplan, “who as an Army officer helped craft the indictment of the Nazi war criminals who were tried at Nuremberg, and who later became a Harvard law professor and served nine years on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)


1915(24thof Nisan, 5675): Sixty-five year old New York William Gans who had been a partner with fellow attorney Samuel B. Hamburger for 35 years and who was active in numerous Jewish charities and fraternal organizations including the Maimonides Library of which he was President, passed away today.

1917: Sir Mark Sykes wrote to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, “That the French were hostile to the notion of bringing the United States into Palestine as a patron of Zionism.”


1917: Chaim Weizmann cabled Louis Brandeis, advising that "an expression of opinion coming from yourself and perhaps other gentlemen connected with the Government in favor of a Jewish Palestine under a British protectorate would greatly strengthen our hands."


1918: During World War I, Charlie Chaplin led a group of Hollywood starts in selling war bonds on the streets of New York City’s financial district.


1923(22nd of Nisan, 5683): 8th day of Pesach


1926: Birthdate of Sheldon Greenfield, the Chicago native who gained fame as comedian Shecky Greene


1929: In Tel Aviv, Sir John Chancellor, the High Commissioner to Palestine, presided over the opening of the fourth Palestine and Near East exhibition.


1930: Mickey Cohen fought his first professional bout in Cleveland, Ohio


1930: During a visit to Palestine where he is gathering material for a novel based on Jacob and Joseph, Nobel Prize winning author Thomas Mann compared Zionism “in its ideals and purposes to the Romantic movement among the Germans in the 19thcentury.”  Mann was especially impressed by the Jews of Tel Aviv who seemed “freer and happier” than Jews living elsewhere.  “He believes that Tel Aviv has a bright future because of the wide-awakeness and intellectuality of its people.”


1931: Publication of “When Judge Cardozo Writes” by Felix Frankfurter, a case of one future Jewish Supreme Court Justice writing about another future Jewish Supreme Court Justice.

1933: Ludwig Kaas met Vice Chancellor Von Papen who was on his to offer a Reichskonkordat to the Vatican met on the train to Rome


1935: Birthdate of Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb.  Along with John Kinder he created numerous musicals including Chicago and Cabaret.


1935: Congressional legislation created the Works Progress Administration, which developed millions of jobs for the unemployed. WPA agencies placed 8.5 million Americans on the federal payroll, including hundreds of Yiddish actors, writers, scene designers and theater directors hired for the administration’s Federal Theatre Project. Among those directly employed by the WPA was economist Solomon Adler.


1936(16th of Nisan, 5696): 2nd day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer


1936(16th of Nisan, 5696):Robert Bárány, who won the Noble Prize for Medicine in 1914, passed away.

1937:  Birthdate of Seymour Hersh.  A graduate of the University of Chicago, Hersh is a Pulitzer Award winning reporter for the New York Times.


1937: The Palestine Post reported from London that there was some concern among members of the House of Commons over rumors of the possibility that the Royal (Peel) Commission on Palestine might propose partition. Col. J.C. Wedgwood, MP, declared that the proposed partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state meant "the scuttling of British responsibilities under the Mandate."


1938: In Laupheim, Germany as the Nazis tightened the economic noose around the neck of the Jews, “the Jewish cattle traders were allocated a separate part on the weekly cattle market


1939: In Philadelphia, PA, Margaret Doris Bruck and Albert H. Schart gave birth to Trina Schart Hyman, artist and book illustrator who won the Caldecott Medal in 1985.


1940:  Soviet troops began the massacre of what would finally total 26,000 Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia. Many Jews were among the victims.


1941: According to some sources the Nazis established Kielce (Poland) ghetto today. Others report that the ghetto was actually established on March 31, 1941.  Regardless, there is no conflict that the ghetto was liquidated in August, 1942 when 21,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka.  A remnant was shipped to Auschwitz in August of 1944.   Kielce's real claim to fame is that on July 4, 1946, the returning Jews were subjected to "an old-fashioned Nazi Pogrom" complete with tales of the blood libel.


1942: The Crimean Peninsula was declared Juednfrei or Jew Free.  When the Nazis and their allies took the Crimea (part of the Soviet Union) in October of 1941, the Jewish population numbered between fifty and sixty thousand.  The Einsatzgruppen Units (special squads assigned to murder Jews) with the help of the local population took part in what was to date, the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the war.


1942:Nora Kaye's performance as Hagar in the world premiere of "Pillar of Fire" at the Ballet Theatre established her as one of the world's prima ballerinas.


1943(3rd of Nisan, 5703):Itamar Ben-Avi the son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who revived Hebrew as a modern language, passed away while working as journalist in New York City. (For more see Itamar Ben-Avi by Frederick P. Miller)


1943(3rd of Nisan, 5703): The Nazis began executing Jews near Ternopol in the Ukraine.  By the time they finish on the following day, one thousand Jews will have been murdered. One thousand Jews are executed near Ternopol, Ukraine.


1943: In Buffalo, NY, Helen Ternoff who was Jewish and her husband Salvatore DiFiglia who was not gave birth to Michael Bennett DiFiglia who gained fame as seven-time Tony Award winning choreographer Michael Bennett.

1944(15th of Nisan, 5704): Pesach


1944: The Jewish Agency telegraphed from Istanbul to Jerusalem that the steamship Maritza carrying 244 Jewish refugees from Romania had arrived that day in the Turkish port and that the passenger would be leaving in two days’ time by train for Palestine.


1945: Hans von Dohnányi, who would be recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, was executed today at Sachsenhausen concentration camp for his role in resistance to Hitler.  This included smuggling Jews out of Germany, seeing to it that their funds were transferred to where they could access them and for his role in the plot to kill Hitler.


1946: Golda Meir, a leader of the Jewish Agency received the following telegram.  “We are 1100 Jewish refugees.  We sailed from Spezia for Palestine-our last hope.  Police arrested us on board.   We won’t leave the ship!  We demand permission to continue to Eretz-Israel  Be warned:  we will sink with the ship if we are not allowed to continue to Palestine, because we cannot be more desperate.”


1946: Margaret and Hans Rey (the creator of Curious George) became United States Citizens. [Louise Borden has written a cute, fascinating tale about the Rey’s entitled “The Journey That Saved Curious George”.


1947:  Henry Ford, the creator of the Model-T passed away.  Ford may have had his moments as an industrialist, but he proved to be a notorious anti-Semite.  Among other things, he published and disseminated untold numbers of copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Ford actually believed this notorious fabrication.  His later apology was treated with various degrees of belief and disbelief.  For several decades, there were many Jews who would not by a Ford product.  


1949: “Again” a popular song with music by Lionel Newman which had been recorded by Mel Tormé reached the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart today and lasted 15 weeks on the chart, peaking at #11


1949: Mel Tormé recording of “Blue Moon” by Rogers and Hart reached the Best Seller chart today where it lasted for five weeks.


1950: In Tel Aviv, Australian Jack Harper won the singles title of Israel’s International Open Tennis Tournament.


1950: As the condition of the Jews in Iraq worsened, today, "the Zionist organization in Iraq call on all Iraqi Jews who wished to do so to register for emigration"  to Israel. The plight of the Jews of this ancient community had become so desperate that within three weeks "47,000 Jews" would present "themselves at registration centers in the main synagogues.  They did so despite the fact that they had to sign a declaration renouncing their Iraqi citizenship forever and effectively surrendering most of their property and goods.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from The Hague that reparations talks were suspended after Germany found only a $750m.justification for the joint Jewish-Israeli claim for $1,000m. Later Germany expressed surprise at the Israeli claim that the talks were suspended. The Israeli delegation reported that it had found the German statement completely unsatisfactory and that it would report fully to the Israeli government for consideration, review and decision.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that The IDF graduated 600 cadets of all services, the largest number ever trained to become officers.


1953: Sixteen year old J. David Bleich walks outside of his father’s synagogue in Lewiston, PA where he joins congregants in Birkat Hachmah, Blessing the Sun


1959: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward gave birth to Elinor Teresa “Nell” Newman who run’s “Newman’s Own Organics.”


1961: In Sheffield, UK, South African-born psychiatrist Professor Issy Pilowsky and his wife Marl gave birth to Lyn Sara Pilowsky who followed in her father’s footsteps and became a doctor of psychiatry.

1968: In the aftermath of the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Larry Rosen, the owner of Smith’s Pharmacy in Washington, D.C. returned to find his family owned business gutted by looters.
 

1970: “Cry for Us All” directed by Albert Marre with music by Mitch Leigh opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre.


1971(12thof Nisan, 5731): Eighty-eight year old Norman Bentwich “a British barrister,” committed Zionist, who “was the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine” passed away today.



1971: San Francisco Giants pitcher Steve Stone appeared in his first major league baseball game.


1975(27thof Nisan, 5735): Yom HaShoah


 1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had resigned from his post and said that he would not lead the Labor Party into the May elections. Rabin took this decision in the wake of new revelations concerning the illegal bank account he and his wife Leah held in a US bank. Defense Minister Shimon Peres was expected to be nominated as the Labor Party's candidate for premiership. (.Author’s note:  During the promising days of the Oslo Accords, many forgot that Rabin had been Prime Minister once before.  He was forced out of office over a financial scandal stemming from his days as Ambassador to the United States.  This seemingly minor matter not only sidetracked his career, it opened the way for the first victory of the Likud Party.)


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Tel Aviv Maccabi won the European basketball championship in a thrilling victory, 78-77, over Mobilgirgi of Varese, Italy.


1981: Rabbi J. David Bleich, a professor at Yeshiva University, climbs to the roof a converted brownstone that doubled as a small synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to lead the service Birkat Hachamah.


1982(15thof Nisan, 5742): Pesach


1982: According to his notebook, Daniel Shechtman, made his break through discovery while studying a metal mix of aluminum and manganese. Shechtman, a professor of materials science at Technion went on to win the Noble Prize for Chemistry.


1985: “Leader of the Pack,” a musical with lyrics and music by Ellie Greenwich opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre.


1991: Michael Landon announced he has inoperable cancer of the pancreas


1993: Eli Ben-Menachem became Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction.


1994:Pope John Paul II welcomed the Chief Rabbi of Rome to the Vatican today as guest of honor at a concert to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. "Many at that time mourned, and their lament resounds still," the Pope told 5,000 invited guests in the immense audience hall next to St. Peter's Basilica. "We hear them here, too. Their lament did not perish with them, but lifts up strong, struggling, heart-rending, and it says, 'Do not forget us.'“It was the first time that Pope John Paul, who has sought to heal the strife between Catholics and Jews, has officially honored the memory of the millions of European Jews killed by the Nazis on the day Jews have set aside for this. And it was the first time Rome's Chief Rabbi, Elio Toaff, had been received as the honored guest at a Vatican ceremony. Just before the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and cellist Lynn Harrell began Max Bruch's variations on "Kol Nidre," an 1881 composition for cello and orchestra by the German composer that evokes the prayer spoken on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the Pope made his way down the red-carpeted main aisle accompanied by Chief Rabbi Toaff, and the President of Italy, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. In a gesture to emphasize the equal dignity of the two faiths, the two men sat on identical gilt and brocade thrones next to President Scalfaro. Earlier, six survivors of concentration camps, one raising a granddaughter aloft, lit six candles on a large menorah, the ceremonial candelabrum, one representing each of the estimated six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. "The candles lit by some of the survivors," the Pope said, speaking in Italian, and briefly in English, after the music, "seek to demonstrate symbolically that this hall has no narrow limits, but that it contains all the victims: fathers, mothers, sons, brothers, friends."


"In our memory they are all present," he said. "They are with you; they are with us."


The menorah has a peculiar resonance for Rome's ancient Jewish community. The original candelabrum from the Second Temple was brought to Rome by the conquering soldiers of the Flavian emperors after they destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and it is depicted on the triumphal arch erected for the Emperor Titus, who also settled thousands of Jewish slaves in his capital.


Rabbi Toaff did not speak at the concert, but in a statement he said the Pope's effort to commemorate the Holocaust "was much appreciated by the Jews." He said the concert "assumes a significance that goes beyond that of a simple artistic event." The Pope was most visibly moved, and many in the hall wept openly, as the actor Richard Dreyfuss read Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, to Leonard Bernstein's music. A high point came as Howard Nevison, the cantor of Temple Emanu-El in New York intoned, in Hebrew, the 92nd Psalm, "O Lord, it is good to give thanks," to a composition written by Schubert in 1826 for the dedication of a synagogue in Vienna. The Pope's acquiescence in allowing a service of largely Jewish inspiration within the confines of the Vatican was seen by most Jews attending as a measure of his efforts to embrace the world's Jews as the "elder brothers" of Christians. Concert Follows Recognition


The concert, which was largely organized by Gilbert Levine, an American conductor who is a Jew and a close acquaintance of the Pope, came little over three months after the Pope, buoyed by the progress made in talks between Israel and the Palestinians, finally agreed to formal recognition by the Vatican of Israel. Some Jews said the Pope had revived the revolution in Catholic-Jewish relations set in motion by Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, which rejected the longstanding teaching among Catholics that Jews were collectively responsible for Christ's death. "Vatican and Holocaust, this is not an oxymoron anymore," said Mr. Levine, who first met the Pope during his tenure as music director of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Cracow, Poland, where the Pope served as Archbishop. Indeed, some among the roughly 100 Holocaust survivors, with children and grandchildren in tow, felt they were somehow experiencing the impossible. At an audience earlier in the day, Jack Eisner, a survivor of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising who lives in New York, told the Pope: "My Grandma Hannah had 11 grandchildren. My Grandmother Masha had 20 grandchildren. Only I alone survived. "As a young boy growing up in prewar Warsaw, I feared crossing the sidewalk next to a church," he said. "Now, some 50 years later, the unthinkable is happening." Erwin Herling, 74, who survived the camps at Auschwitz and Matthausen, added, "When the Pope shook my hand, I had the feeling 2,000 years of Jewish suffering had come to some kind of turning point." The Pope, he said, demonstrated, "that there is a way to live together in harmony and peace."


1996(19th of Nisan, 5756):Argentine film director León Klimovsky passed away. “A trained dentist, born in Buenos Aires on October 16, 1906, his real passion was always the cinema. He pioneered Argentine cultural movement known as cineclub and financed the first movie theater to show art movies. He also founded Argentina's first film club in 1929. After participating as scriptwriter and assistant director of 1944's Se abre el abismo he filmed his first movie, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Player. From this first phase, it can be also highlighted the adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel. On the 1950s Klimovsky settled in Spain, where he becomes a "professional" director. He went into spaghetti westerns and so-called exploitation films, filming in Mexico, Italy and Egypt. Perhaps he is best remembered for his contribution to Spain's horror film genre, beginning with La noche de Walpurgis. León Klimovsky confessed to have always dreamt of doing great vanguard movies but ended on filming commercial ones, but without remorse, as doing cinema was a vocational mandate for him. On 1995 he won the "Honor Award" of the Spanish Film Director Association. He died in Madrid of a heart attack. He was brother to the Argentine mathematician and philosopher Gregorio Klimovsky.”


2001(15thof Nisan, 5761): American Jews observe the first Pesach under President George Bush.


2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996” by Allen Ginsberg; edited by David Carter, “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland” by Jan T. Gross and “After Progress: American Social Reform and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century” by Norman Birnbaum.


2002: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon conveyed the goals to the Knesset as being "to catch and arrest terrorists and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations.


2002(26thof Nisan, 5762): During Operation Defensive  Shield “St.-Sgt. Matanya Robinson, 21, of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, and Sgt. Shmuel Weiss, 19, of Kiryat Arba were killed by terrorist in Jenin


2002:Efraim "Effi” Eitamwas appointed Minister without Portfolio


2002:“Just after the conclusion of Passover, United Jewish Communities, a national group of 160 Jewish federations, announced a special Israel emergency fund. The organization has already collected $100 million.


2005: “Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel should consider not demolishing the evacuated buildings in the Gaza Strip, with the exception of synagogues (due to fears of their potential desecration, which eventually did occur), since it would be more costly and time consuming. This contrasted with the original plan by the Prime Minister to demolish all vacated buildings.”


2005:The alphabetic ordering of leaders during the funeral of Pope John Paul II resulted in Moshe Katsav sitting near Iranian President Mohammad Khatami who, like Katsav, was born in the Iranian city of Yazd


2006: Observance of Shabbat Hagadol.


2006: Haaretz reported that Algeria, Israel and Morocco have agreed to join NATO counter-terrorism naval patrols in the Mediterranean, the organization. The announcement was made in Rabat after the NATO group’s first meeting in an Arab country.


2007: At The Jewish Museum of Maryland an exhibition styled “The Other Promised Land: Vacationing, Identity, and the Jewish - American Dream” closes.  This exhibition, the first of its kind in the U.S., evokes the experiences and meanings in Jewish vacationing from the 1880s to the present. The Other Promised Land highlights legendary "Jewish" vacation destinations including Miami Beach, Atlantic City, and the Catskills -- showing how vacations represented the excitement and promise of America while shaping notions of Jewish and American identities. A full-color, book-length catalog accompanies the exhibition.


 2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured a review of The Grand Surprise:
The Journals of Leo Lerman
written by Leo Lerman and edited by Stephen Pascal and My Holocaust by  Tova Reich, “a shocking novel rips those who trivialize the Holocaust.”


2007: The New York Times reviewed books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Polish Woman” by Eva Meker “a meticulous, raw study of the uneasy relationship between Catholic and Jewish Poles. In New York in 1967, Karolina Staszek, a Polish immigrant, becomes consumed with the suspicion that she is a Jew who had been placed with a Catholic family during World War II. The Jewish family in question, the Landaus, find the story seductive but improbable — until Karolina reveals a battery of memories unlikely to be the invention of even the canniest con artist. Told without artifice or irony, Mekler’s story of multigenerational immigration owes more to coolly composed novels like Lore Segal’s “Her First American” than to impressive acts of literary contortion like Nicole Krauss’s “History of Love.” Despite its literary trappings, “The Polish Woman” is also a straightforward mystery, littered with clues, red herrings and narrators who always know less than the reader. When Karolina first confides in Philip Landau, he suddenly recalls the warning of his parents, who escaped Poland: “The Poles were the worst, they’d declared over and over, with the pain and bitterness of personal betrayal, the worst.” When the two eventually travel to Poland to prove Karolina’s claim, they are also chasing these brief flashes of recognition, which tell the story of their shared past better than a tattered birth certificate — and explain why they have both become phantoms in their own lives. By the time the ending veers into John Grisham territory, Mekler has already transcended plot in favor of uncompromising examination.”


2008(3rdof Nisan, 5768): Thirty­-two year old Major Mark Rosenberg was today, in Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by a makeshift bomb. (As reported by Maia Efrem)



2008: The Foreign Affairs Symposium at Johns Hopkins University hosts a lecture by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz co-author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict”, at the university's Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Md.


2008: Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times by Amy and David Goodman was published today.


2008: Today, schools from kindergarten through 12th grade participate in a nationwide Home Front drill simulating a surprise missile attack during which a warning siren will sound for a minute and a half.


2008:  Rothko Kin Sue to Transfer His Remains” published today describes the dispute over attempts to move the body of Mark Rothko, the Jewish abstract expressionist.



2009: In “A Bread Line (Unleavened, Please) for Passover” published today, Alison Cowan described the baking of matzo in 19thcentury New York as well as the distribution of this Pesach necessity to the city’s Poor.



2009: Birkat Hachamah – Blessing The Sun (once every 28 years)


 


2009: At 6:22 a.m. this morning the sun will peak over the imposing 800-million-year-old mountains of Edom, bathing the Arava Valley below in light, and triggering one of the rarest and least-known Jewish rituals: Birkat Hahama, the Blessing of the Sun, is celebrated every 28 years in Jewish communities around the world, across the spectrum of Jewish observance. This year, the blessing dawns as we burn our hametz and prepare for that evening's Seder. The next magic moment in history when the blessing falls on Erev Pessah will be 532 years from now. Sixteen hundred years ago in Babylonia, the rabbis codified the Talmud, and with it, the Birkat Hahama ritual: "Our Rabbis taught: One who sees the sun in its season, the moon in its power, the stars in their paths, and the planets in their order, says, 'Blessed is the Maker of Creation.'" (Masechet Brachot 59b). "And when is the Sun in its season? Abaye says: Every 28 years, when the cycle resets and the Spring equinox falls in Saturn on Tuesday evening, the eve of Wednesday." According to the Book of Genesis, the Sun, Moon, and stars were created on the fourth day (Genesis 1:14), and so the celebration of Birkat Hahama always occurs on a Wednesday morning. The Sun is traditionally greeted with a blessing and Psalms: "Blessed are You, Ruler of the Universe, who makes Creation." It is believed that every 28 years at this moment, the celestial bodies orbit back to the exact place in the heavens where they stood at the Creation.


The simple ritual bursts with cosmic significance. At the heart of Judaism is a recognition and celebration that God is the Creator, and that the universal God Jews pray to, argue with, love, and occasionally ignore or fear, is - like the mysteries of the universe itself - never-ending. The Jewish revolution, baked in the deserts, not only rejects a physical God, but actually dilutes the power of any physical manifestation of God as simply yet another creation of the Ultimate Creator. A common belief among the ancients - from the Aztecs in Mexico to the Inca of South America to our first theological antagonists, the Egyptians - all quite understandably considered the sun to be God. We Jews, as idol-smashers, have something to say about this. Today's scientists understand the sun to be not everlasting and omnipotent, but 4.75 billion years old, which puts it about halfway through its life cycle. The actual photons that will blaze onto us Wednesday morning will be generated by nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium at the sub-atomic level. That set of explosions will zap light from the sun at 6:13 a.m. local time, and travel 149,600,000 kilometers through space in about the time it takes to prepare matza, landing at 6:22 a.m. The sheer vastness of the space between the sun and humanity is startling and humbling, yet dwarfed by the position of the sun - the center of our solar system - in relation to the Milky Way galaxy. The specific sun we bless - only one of a trillion trillion suns in the universe - orbits the center of our galaxy every 225 million years, which is considered one galactic year (what's the blessing for that?). Since the impressive astronomical comprehension on the part of the Talmudic rabbis of 400 CE, our sense of scale of the universe has grown exponentially, especially in recent years as new discoveries are made. Yet our ethical sense of purpose has not kept pace with our increased scientific understanding of the expanding Heavens. Given the increased human-caused tragedies that have befallen our planet since the last time we blessed the sun in 1981 - i.e., global warming, genocides, billions living in poverty, unprecedented greed - it could be argued that our sense of ethical purpose has actually diminished. The commentators are surprisingly silent on the spiritual, revolutionary, idol-smashing linkage between Birkat Hahama and Pessah. Since Birkat Hahama falls this year on the Fast of the Firstborn - only the sixth time it does so in the past 2,000 years - the occasion can take on additional meaning and help restore a sense of purpose to the Jewish People in our era. Twenty-eight years is essentially a generation. And in each of the 250 or so generations since the Exodus, we are commanded to retell our story of slavery unto freedom. Preceding the Seder with a rarely occurring blessing over the sun and to the sun's Creator is to openly challenge Pharaoh and all cults of death. A cult of death defined ancient Egypt's empire, culture, and religion. The City of the Dead in Luxor and the entire mummification belief system wrapped death-worship in glory. Pharaoh's religious and political hierarchy reinforced the cult of death, the same cult that enslaved our people and drowned our infant males. While the first eight plagues beleaguered the Egyptians, it was the final two that illuminated who was boss: Pharaoh and his Sun God, Ra, were rendered powerless in matters of light and darkness, life and death. The invisible God of the lunar-oriented Hebrews essentially extinguished the bright light of Ra. We knew and know that it wasn't Ra who proclaimed "Let there be light" on the first day of Creation, nor was it Ra who established the celestial bodies on the fourth day. Every year, we are freed anew from Egyptian bondage in order to affirm that we are, in partnership with the Creator, the perpetual cult of life, in contradistinction to ancient Egypt or any other system that glorifies death or authoritarian rule. Consider the role of priests. In Egypt, the priests were facilitators of the cult of death. When we escaped to these deserts, God made it clear that our priests must avoid the dead. Much in Jewish life and belief developed so that through the annual telling of the Pessah story (and a generational sun blessing), the Jewish people would perpetually be the ultimate anti-Egypt. Absolute truths are often associated with death cults, for the penalty of challenging these so-called truths was often the sword and more recently, the gas chamber or the suicide bomber. Judaism, for all its biblical violence and absolutes, has been tempered over time with rabbinic wisdom. While Birkat Hahama may affirm that there is only one Creator - and on this we are fanatical - it also demonstrates a model of straying from absolutes without losing authenticity. For when Birkat Hahama was codified, the rabbis mandated that it be celebrated when "the Spring equinox falls in Saturn on Tuesday evening, the eve of Wednesday." Since the marking of time, the Spring equinox has fallen on March 20. Why, then, do we recite Birkat Hahama over two weeks later? Because our commitment as a people to moral truths we can learn, teach, and adapt is greater than our commitment to absolute truths we can measure. Without benefit of telescopes or satellites or computer modeling, our rabbis calculated that it takes the earth 365.25 days to circle the sun. They were off by only approximately six minutes and 40 seconds. After many years, these precious minutes add up to days and weeks; therefore, our celebration misses its scientific mark. And so today, we knowingly celebrate an ancient Jewish sun ritual on a day we know not to be the Spring equinox, precisely because we are not slaves to the ancient text, but free people who are partners in its interpretation. "It is not in Heaven," the rabbis famously cite to bolster their authority to interpret tradition: Earthly matters are up to us. What matters most is that the moral message - to resist tyranny, affirm life, and be humble in the face of Creation - has eclipsed mere science or rote. The convergence of science and morality can, for our generation and our people, be transformative. My friend Nigel Savage advocates that the Jewish people should become the first carbon-neutral people on the planet. With the right government policies to reduce energy consumption, end the slavish addiction to carbon fuels, and promote massive efforts to build solar fields, Israel could become the world's first solar superpower. Building the world's first solar economy will ultimately stand mightier and serve humanity more greatly than do the ancient pyramids and their Sun god. A simple prayer, recited once a generation and by the full spectrum of Jews, can remind us of the specks of living dust we truly are in the face of an astronomically majestic universe still in need of a moral voice. By celebrating Birkat Hahama - here in the Southern Arava where Israel's first solar fields will rise, and throughout the Jewish world - we can embrace a life and a generation of purpose, to be, finally, a renewable light unto the nations.


2009 (14thof Nissan 5769):  Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising


2009: Fast of the First Born


2009: In the evening, first Seder


2010: David Remnick appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he promoted “The Bridge,” his biography of Barak Obama.


2010: An exhibition entitled “Painting to Remember: The Destroyed Synagogues of Germany by Alexander Dettmar” sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to open tonight.


2010:A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists today hit an open area along the coast of Ashkelon.


2010: Paul Goldberger delivered the keynote address “Preservation: Where Do We Go From Here?” at the Indiana State Preservation Conference.


2011: “The biggest sports event in Israel” is scheduled to take place today with the running of the Tel Aviv Marathon.


2011:Esterika Gourmet Cuisine and Larry & Mindy are scheduled to celebrate the end of winter and coming of spring with a culinary and musical Kabbalat Shabbat in Jerusalem.


2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Fast of the First Born


2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Hedda Sterne, “an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights” passed away today at the age of 100.  (As reported by William Grimes)



2011(14th of Nisan, 2011): Sixty-six year oldEddie Phillips, a successful liquor industry entrepreneur and the son of classic advice columnist Dear Abby, (aka Pauline Phillips), died at home in Minneapolis today. Phillips was active as a philanthropist, expanding the Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota started by his grandfather and pouring money into community needs, African-American heritage and medical research, including engineering a $10 million donation for research into Alzheimer’s at the Mayo Clinic after his mother contracted the ailment.


2011(4thof Nisan):  On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of the 77 civilian doctors, nurses and other medical workers who were murdered by Arab attackers as they drove to Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem.


2011:Four additional rockets were fired at Ashkelon today and three were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system, the IDF announced, adding that it had bombed the terror cell that had fired the rockets, identifying a direct hit.


2011:Today marks the 100th birthday of French-language aphorist Emil Cioran, and the celebrations in Paris include the publication of “Cioran: Mystical Short Prayers,” a philosophical appreciation by Stéphane Barsacq from Les Éditions du Seuil. A colloquium, “Cioran: Jubilatory Pessimism,” was held at this year’s Paris Book Fair.


2011: In an air strike that was executed this afternoon, IAF jets bombed smuggling tunnels in Rafah. Palestinian sources reported that a fire broke out in the area, and postulate that the bomb hit a pipeline through which fuel was being smuggled.  


2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including ‘No Time Like the Present’ by Nadine Gordimer.


2012(16thof Nisan): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer


2013(28thof Nisan, 5773): Yom Hashoah


2013(28thof Nisan, 5773): Fifty-one year old Greg Kramer passed away.



2013: The Yiddishspiel Theater is scheduled to hold a ceremony to mark 70 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the morning of Yom Hashoah, with actors reading and telling about the days prior to the rebellion


2013: The Mediatheque Theater in Holon is scheduled toperform Gila Almagor’s autobiographical play, “Summer of Aviya,” about a summer in the life of child of survivors, during the early days of statehood.


2013: “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus,” is scheduled to be aired this evening on HBO.



2013: Much of Israel stood still for two minutes this morning in memory of the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust.


2013: IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz led today’s March of the Living ceremonies at Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with Tel Aviv’s Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, himself a child survivor of the camp.


2014: “Israeli superstar” is scheduled to deliver “an intimate piano performance at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.


2014: “Zaytoun” is scheduled to be shown at the JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival.


2014: “Ida” and “Eagles” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2014:Holocaust Survivor, Cesare Frustaci whose appearance is sponsored by the Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund is scheduled to speak at Kirkwood Community College and Mt. Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


2015: Holocaust survivor Henry Greenbaum is scheduled to speak about his experiences at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to open at the Jacob Burns Film Center.


 

This Day, April 9, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 9


193: Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum.  Severus is the first emperor to ban proselytizing by Jews.


423: Emperor Theodosius II reaffirms the Roman law according to which "No Jew may purchase Christian slaves because it is abominable that religious slaves would be defiled by the ownership of impious Jews. If anyone does this, they will be subject to the statutory punishment without any delay."


423: Theodosius II and Honorious reaffirm the Roman law which ban the seizure or burning of Synagogues but which also allows the Jews to “be punished by confiscation and exile for life if it is discovered that they have circumcised a” Christian.


1141(30th of Nisan): Rabbi Joseph ben Meir Ha-Levi Ibn Migas “disciple and successor to Rabbi Isaac Alfasi” passed away today


1362: The Crown of Aragon (the name of the realm ruled by the King of Aragon) examined a court case involving the murder of a Jew by two Muslims. The widow of the man took the matter to the court after unsuccessfully seeking justice in the town where the murder occurred.


1582(7th of Nisan): In Lemberg Rabbi Naphtali Herz ben Meir passed away today.


1723(4thof Nisan): Judah Loeb ben David Neumark, author of Shoresh Yehuda which had been published at Frankfort on the Main in 1692 and who had been the manager of  the printing house owned by Daniel Ernest Jablonski  passed away today.


1782: Rabbi Isaac Hess Kugelmann and his wife gave birth to German educator and author Michael Hess whose students included “the young baron James von Rothschild.”


1806(21st of Nisan): Rabbi Daniel of Horodno, author of “Hamudei Daniel” passed away today.


1811: “The New York State Legislature granted financial adi to the parochial school of Congregation Shearith Israel.”


1816(11th of Nisan): Rabbi Simchah Bunim Rapaport of Wuerzburg, author of Hiddushei Rashbaz passed away


1838(14th of Nisan, 5598):Ta'anit Bechorot / Erev Pesach


1838(14th of Nisan, 5598):Leopold Bettelheim passed away. Born in 1777, this Hungarian physician was also “a Hebraist of some importance.” “In 1830 Bettelheim was the recipient of a gold medal of honor from the emperor Franz I. for distinguished services to the royal family and to the nobility.”


1855: In London Cecilia and David Woolf Marks gave birth to Harry Hananel Marks, who founded the Financial News in 1884.


1857(15thof Nisan, 5617): Pesach


1865: Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant met at Appomattox Court House and concluded the agreement the marked the end of Civil War. While Jews fought on both sides of the conflict, the majority of Jews supported the Union and fought for the North.  At the same time, a description of the Siege of Petersburg includes a notation that the Confederate lines were so thin that the Jewish soldiers could not be allowed to be absent to observe their Day of Atonement as they had been in past years.  Simon Wolf, a Jewish activist of the 19th Century, collected the names of over 7000 Jewish-Americans who fought on both sides during the Civil War. In 1895, he published the list in a directory entitled The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier, and Citizen.


1865: Andrew Jackson “Jack” Moses was among the Confederate soldiers who fought against the Union Army at Sumter, SC. 


1865(13thof Nisan, 5625): Lt. Joshua Lazarus Moses was killed today as Confederate forces fought at Mobile, Alabama. Moses had been with the army since the start of the war having fought at the First Battle of Bull Run.


 1865:  Birthdate of Charles Proteus Steinmetz the native of Breslau Germany, who came to the United States in 1889.  Viewed by some as brilliant theorist and mathematical genius, Steinmetz held more than 200 patents when he passed away in 1923.  He experimented with AC electricity. His work was primarily in the field of improving practical electrical devices and the transmission of energy.  The following comments provide some sense of his importance as a Jew and as an America. "Where does our future lie! It lies in developing and making use of men like the great Jews, Abram Jacobi, Charles Proteus Steinmetz and Louis Brandeis, who are true to their own nature, and who respond to the American environment. These men are not amateur Gentiles. They are Jews and they are Americans."


1867: The United States Senate ratified a treaty with Russia that enabled the United States to purchase Alaska. “Jews have been a prominent part of Alaska's history even before its acquisition by the U.S. in 1867. San Francisco Jewish pioneering merchants Louis Sloss and Lewis Gerstle (for whom Northeast Alaska's Gerstle River is named) are credited with opening the Alaska Territory to settlers and commercial enterprises when establishing the Alaska Commercial Company in 1868. Originally a fur-transporting firm, ACC expanded to become a salmon cannery and fishing fleet, operated a chain of trading posts providing general merchandise to natives, trappers, miners, and explorers, and supplied Alaska's first fleet of ships during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1901”.


1871:The annual meeting of the "Hebrew Benevolent Fuel Association" was held at Masonic Hall this morning. This organization now has over 1,000 members, and is now entirely supported by an annual subscription of $3 per capita. The association will no long have to resort to fairs, concerts, and other soliciting entertainments” for funding. “Last year” the Association “distributed 1,000 half tons of coal” valued at $3,375 to needy New York Jews.


1872: In New York, Nathan Goldberg’s home on Division Street suffered $300 dollars’ worth of damage in a fire tonight.


1872: Birthdate of Léon Blum the first Jew to serve as French Premier. Imprisoned by the French and the Germans during World War II, he returned to politics briefly after the war before passing away in 1950.

1872(1st of Nisan, 5632): Rosh Chodesh Nisan


1876(15th of Nisan, 5636): First Day of Pesach


1876: According to a report published in the Salt Lake Tribune, the forty Jewish families of Utah’s largest city celebrated Pesach


1877(26th of Nisan, 5637): Henry Grass, a New York clothier passed away today.  He is survived by his wife Rebecca, six children, his brothers Abraham and Jacob and their daughters.


1877(26th of Nisan): Rabbi Jacob Simchah of Kempna, author of “Sha’arei Simchah” passed away


1879(16thof Nisan, 5639): Second Day of Pesach


1879(16thof Nisan, 5639): Sixty-one year old Viennese poet Karl Isidor Beck passed away.

1883: Businessman Nathan Barnet who helped to found the Miriam Barnert Hebrew Free School and the Barnert Memorial Hospital and the Barnert Memorial Temple was elected Mayor of Paterson New Jersey.


1884(14th of Nisan, 5644): Fast of the First Born


1884(14th of Nisan, 5644): An article entitled “The Festival Of Pesach” published in the New York Times today states that “the Jewish festival of Pesach, or the Passover will begin at sunset this evening and continue for seven days…It is also known as the Feast of Matzoth on account of the eating of the matzoth or cakes of unleavened bread during its continuance.”


1887(15thof Nisan, 5647): Pesach


1887(15th of Nisan, 5647): Dr. Gustav Gottheil preached a sermon at New York’s Temple Emanu-el.


 1888: Birthdate of Sol Hurok. Born Solomon Gurkov in a small Ukrainians village, Hurok learned the meaning of anti-Semitism at an early age.  When he was 18, Hurok's father gave him one thousand rubles to go to Kiev.  Hurok took the money but went to Philadelphia instead.  Once in the States, Hurok began a career as an impresario promoting everything from violinists, to opera, to Anna Pavlova, to an Israel-Yemenite Singing and Dancing Troup that preserved the Jewish-Yemenite Heritage.  He passed away in 1974. Ironically, one of the first performers whom Hurok promoted was the violinist Efrem Zimablist who was also born on April 9 in another part of the Russian Empire.


1889:  Birthdate of Efrem Zimbalist in Rostov-on-Don Russia.  Zimbalist studied with his father who was conductor of note before coming to the United States in 1914.  He made his major musical debut in 1922.  He was one of a long list Jewish violinist to populate the musical cosmos in the last two centuries.  He passed away in 1985.


1890: The will of the late Louis Lippman was filed for probate today.


1890: An inquest was convened to determine the culpability of Abraham Marks in the death of Henry Heppner.  Marks claimed he shot Heppner when he was trying to break into his tailor’s shop through a rear window.


1891: Adolph Saphir, who had been born into a Hungarian Jewish family in 1831 and converted in 1843 after which he “served as “Missionary to the Jews” passed away today.


1892: “Three City Hospitals” published today described the efforts of New York City to provide treatment for those suffering from contagious diseases including the construction of a new pavilion at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island for the benefit of Jewish immigrants from Russia who are suffering from typhus.


1893: On the day after Passover, Rabbi. Gustav G. Gottheil delivered a lecture entitled "The Christian Mission to the Jews; or, Who Needs Conversion!" at Temple Emanu-El in New York City.


1893: It was reported today that the anti-Semites in Vienna claim that the man who attacked  Karl Lueger with a knife was an agent of the Israelite Alliance.


1895: “Russian Anti-Jew Edict Enforced” published today described the latest step in the Czar’s anti-Semitic policy in which the government has “instructed local military officials…to enforce most strictly the ant-Jew edict of 1893” that “excluded Jews from the health resorts in the Caucasus.”


1895(15th of Nisan, 5655): Pesach


1895: Dr. Solomon H. Sonnenschein who is the rabbi at Congregation Temple Israel in St. Louis will deliver a Passover Sermon entitled “The Root and Fruit of Freedom” in German at the Fifteen Street Temple in New York City. (Sermons in German were still the norm in many Reform congregations and the switch to English caused a schism in many congregations.  So much for equating Reform with being accepting of change)


1895: In Hungary, Joseph Lichtman and Pepe (aka Josephine) Zuckermandel gave birth to Alexander "Al" Lichtman a pioneering cinema businessman and movie producer whose most famous work may have been “The Young Lions.”


1902: Herzl wrote to Lord Rothschild in London asking for a meeting in the British capital.


1903: Birthdate of Dr. Gregory Pincus.  Born in New Jersey, Dr. Pincus' parents where Jewish immigrants from Russia.  Dr. Pincus' father was an agronomist who hoped to train Russian Jews to become farmers in the United States. A graduate of Cornell with a Ph.D. from Harvard,


Dr. Pincus is known as the "Father of the Pill."  Dr. Pincus and Dr. Chiang developed the first birth control pill; a discovery that altered American and the world's sexual behavior forever.  Pincus continued his work until his untimely death in 1967.


1905:  Birthdate of J. William Fulbright, former Senator from Arkansas.  Fulbright gained fame as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Fulbright denied being pro-Arab or anti-Israel.  However, after he left the Senate he became a highly paid lobbyist for the Arab oil states.


1906(14thof Nisan, 5666): Fast of the First Born – Erev Pesach


1906(14thof Nisan, 5666): Morris Goldstein passed away.


1906: Louis J. Goldman was elected President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.


1906: “When Gold Boils” published reported today that Professor “Henri Moissan has been trying some interesting experiments in vaporizing gold in the electric furnace.”  A French born Jew, Moissan won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1906.


1906(14th of Nisan, 5666): Mrs. Sarah Orenstein and two of her children were almost asphyxiated this evening.  While cleaning her house in preparation for Pesach, Mrs. Orsenstein apparently failed to replace a piece tubing that she had taken from the stove causing a gas leak.  Fortunately her husband figured out what had happened and called an ambulance before the family was overcome by the fumes.


1906(14th of Nisan, 5666): Today in a Harlem Police Court the needs of two religions clashed and the Jews lost twice.  The magistrate fined eight Orthodox Jews who had worked on done construction work on new building yesterday.  They were fined because they worked on the Christian Sabbath even though they explained to the Judge that they had only been working on Sunday so they could finish the job before the Passover.  The same magistrate fined Michael Garlick for killing chickens yesterday, Sunday, which was the Christian Sabbath.  In his defense Garlick said that his boss had told him that the Deputy Police Commissioner said it would be alright to slaughter the chickens on a Sunday because of the approaching Passover holiday.  The magistrate did not dispute the fact that the Commissioner had made the statement.  He said Garlick was guilty because the Commissioner did nave “the right to interpret the law.”


1908:Hundreds of poor Jews received free tickets at the offices of the United Hebrew Communities Charity which can be exchanged for Matzoth, meat and other groceries. Most of the recipients are women, many of whom who have brought their young children with them.  The distribution is an annual event intended to make it possible for even the poorest Jew to be able to celebrate Passover.  Tickets will be distributed as long as there funds are available to fund the purchase of the necessary food items.


1910: Birthdate of Yosef Shalom “a Haredi rabbi and posek who lives in Jerusalem, Israel.”


1910: Birthdate of Abraham A. Ribbicoff.  Born in New Britain, Connecticut, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland, Ribbicoff attended New York University and was awarded a law degree cum laude from the University of Chicago in 1933. Starting in 1938, Ribbicoff worked his way up the Connecticut political ladder.  During the late 1950's was a popular two term governor who became an early supporter of John F. Kennedy.  Ribbicoff served two years as Secretary of H.E.W. before resigning to begin a two decade long career in the U.S. Senate.  Ribbicoff was a champion of civil rights, Medicare and the American workers.  He passed away in 1998.  Today we take the involvement of Jews at all levels of the political process for granted.  Such was not the case when Ribbicoff began his career.  An observant Jew, Ribbicoff was a trail-blazer for the dozens of Jewish Representatives and Senators who are in Washington today.


1911:Reverand Madison C. Peters, the Pastor Bloomingdale Church, gave a lecture today at Temple Beth El on Haym Salomon, “the financier of the American Revolution.”  During his talk, Rev Peters stated that “Haym Solomon…did for the Nation’s credit what Washington did on the field for freedom.”


1912: Birthdate of Lew Kopelew, Russian author and political dissident.  Like many of his generation, Kopelew career was a checkered one with his acceptance or rejection depending upon the prevailing political winds.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kopelew survived the Soviet Union, dying peacefully in 1997.


1916: Birthdate of Elliot Handler, who co-founded the Mattel toy company.


1917: During World War I, “Mark Sykes wrote to Lord Balfour that ‘The situation now is therefore that Zionist aspirationsare recognized as legitimate by the French.’” Sykes was one of the leading British diplomats in the Middle East.  This correspondence with Lord Balfour was part of the jockeying for Jewish support during World War I and possession of parts of the Ottoman Empire after the war ended.


1920(21stof Nisan, 5680): Seventh day of Pesach


1920(21stof Nisan, 5680): Seventy year old Isaias Wolf Hellman the native of Bavaria who came to the United States in 1859 where he became such a success as a banker and philanthropist that he became one of the founders of the University of Southern California passed away today.


1921: Birthdate of George David Weiss the New York native who “was an American songwriter and former President of the Songwriters Guild of America.”


1921: Birthdate of Eugen Merzbacher, the Berlin born American physicist.

1922: In Brooklyn, Samuel and Shirley Mandel, gave birth to Doctor Irwin D. Mandel, an expert on Dental Chemistry.


1922: Birthdate of Eleanor Chana Gordon — known as Chana – who as Chana Mlotek the “music archivist at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and a columnist for the Forward

1925(15thof Nisan, 5685): As the Roaring Twenties hit their mid-point, Pesach


1926: In Vilna, Max and Sonia Silverstein gave birth to “Mike Silverstein, a founder of Nina Footwear, a women’s shoe company that grew from a SoHo loft to an international concern selling around 10 million pairs of shoes a year.”


1927: “Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, and the two were sentenced to death. Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, was considered to be the most prominent and respectable critic of the trial. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939.” (The Atlantic)


 1928: Birthdate of Tom Lehrer, folk singer and famed creator of political and social musical parodies


 1929: Birthdate of Harvey Lichtenstein, long-time President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music


1929:Betty and Walter Bridgland were married at a synagoguein Adelaid, Australia


1930: Birthdate of Nathan Blumenthal, the native of Ontario who gained fame as psychotherapist Nathan Branden, “the romantic partner of Ayn Rand.”

1932: Birthdate of the multi-talented Paul Krassner

1933: As negotiations for a Concordat between Hitler and the Vatican began Ludwig Kass met with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future pope.


1934: Israel B. Brodie announced that “more than a score of industrial nations will be represented at the third biennial Levant Fair to be held in Palestine.”  Participating countries include Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Czechoslovakia.


1935: Birthdate of comedian Avery Schreiber


1935: Americans took two first place finishes in the swimming events at the 2nd Maccabiah.  George Sheinberg won the 100-meter back-stroke and Janice Lifson won the 100-meter free style competition.


1937: “Striptease Held Indecent by Court” published today described the legal outcome of a raid on Minsky’s Burlesque, precipitated in part, by the performance of Roxana Sand.  Sand was born Golda Glickman and for five weeks in 1934 she had been the wife of the Jewish boxer King Levinsky.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that over 10 million boxes of citrus were shipped out from Palestine from the beginning of the citrus season ­ 8,951,597 boxes of oranges and 1,218,896 of grapefruit.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that after Poland inaugurated a thrice-weekly air service to Palestine, the Italian airline Ala Littoria started a regular weekly hydroplane service to Haifa.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that the largest-ever single pilgrimage from England since 1888 including 1,050 English and Welsh tourists arrived in Haifa aboard the S.S. Duchess of Richmond. The pilgrims proceeded to Jerusalem by two special trains, 70 cars and 15 buses, accompanied by 70 guides. They took over, for three days, all available Jerusalem hostels and hotels.


1938: “Arturo Toscanini, who came to Palestine to conduct a series of concerts with the Palestine Orchestra, arrived in Haifa by plane this afternoon accompanied by his wife.”  Among those greeting Toscanini was H.W. Steinberg, the conductor who has been rehearsing the orchestra and who will leave Palestine to become conductor of the N.B.C. Symphony Orchestra which Toscanini had been conducting.


1940: “Denmark and Norway were invaded by Nazi Germany. Realizing that successful armed resistance was impossible and wishing to avoid civilian casualties, the Danish government surrendered after a few token skirmishes on the morning of the invasion.”


1940: As the Germans invade Norway, Sigrid Helliesen Lund burnt the entire list of Czech Jews who had taken refuge in the country.


1940: The Danish cabinet decided “to accept cooperation with German authorities” today leading to the Danish police cooperating with the German occupation forces.


1940: As a result of Operation Weserübung, Germans take control of Denmark.  Three years later, the Danes will save their Jewish population from extermination by the Nazis in one of the most famous and daring rescue operations of the war.


1942: When the outnumbered U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered at Bataan today, Sergeant Louis Sachwald was among those who escaped capture as he was moved to Corregidor. Eventually he would be taken prisoner and would survive the infamous Bataan Death March and years of Japanese imprisonment.


1944: “the military authorities, with headquarters at Munkacs, began the rounding up of 320,000 Jews into Ghettoes within the operational area. In order to prevent any armed resistance by the Jews, they were concentrated in brick factories (as at Kassa, Ungvar, Kolozsvar) or under the open skies (as at Nagybanyam, Marosvasarchely, and Des).”


1945: Forty-eight year old “German jurist” Karl who took part in the July 20 plot to kill Hitler was executed in Flossenbürg concentration


1945: Formation of The United States Atomic Energy.  Two of the first three Chairman of the Commission are Jewish.  President Truman appointed David Lilienthal and President Eisenhower appointed Lewis Strauss. Neither of them were atomic scientists.


1946: Eleven hundred Jewish refugees who had been sailing from Spezia to Palestine and who were now being detained in Italy went on a hunger.  The leaders of the Jewish agency them not continue the fast for their own safety.  They promised the refugees that the Jews of Eretz-Israel would fast in their place until they were allowed to continue to the Jewish homeland.


1948(29th of Adar II, 5708): During the fighting that preceded the actual creation of the state of Israel, the Jewish defenders of Kastel had exhausted their supplies and were forced to withdraw.  Kastel was a village that dominated the eastern end of the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem highway.  The Haganah had taken at the start of Operation Nachshon and the Arabs were determined to retake the village.  The last order given to the Jewish soldiers “by their platoon commander Shimon Alfasi, ‘All privates will retreat – all commanders will cover their withdrawal.’ Alfasi was killed in the battle, covering the retreat.  His order became a watchword during many future actions.  Abdel Kader, the commander of the Arab forces was killed in the closing moments of the battle.  Without his leadership the Arabs gave up the village a couple of days later. The Jewish forces who were preparing to re-take the village were surprised to find that the village was there without any further loss of life.  


1948: During the battle for Mishmar HaEmek, Israeli forces captured and destroyed Ghubayya al-Tahta


1949: U.S. premiere of “Champion,” directed by Mark Robson, produced by Stanley Kramer, starring Kirk Douglas with a screenplay by Carl Foreman and music by Dimitri Tomkin.


1952(14th of Nisan, 5712): Fast of the First Born


1952:The Jerusalem Postreported the Israeli official announcement that the reparation talks at The Hague had only been suspended.


1952:The Jerusalem Postreported that Israel observed the Pesach festival with all traditional holiday foods severely rationed and in a very short supply. Wine shops were well-stocked, but only the more expensive brands were available. Pesach chocolates, sweets and biscuits were completely absent. The sole bright spot was an ample supply of vegetables. Citrus fruit was either very hard to get or completely unavailable.


1952:The Jerusalem Postreported that the rubber industry, which employs over 1,000 workers, faced a complete shut-down owing to the shortage of raw materials.


1952:The Jerusalem Postreported The Palestine Conciliation Commission decided to consider an Israeli request that the Jewish property confiscated in Iraq would be charged against the abandoned Arab property in Israel.


1953: Warner Brothers premieres the first 3-D film, entitled House of Wax.


1954: President Eisenhower appointed Edward B. Lawson to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.


 1957:  The Suez Canal was cleared for all shipping.  This marked one of the final acts of the Suez Crisis that began in October of 1956 and resulted in a swift victory of the Israelis over the Egyptians.  The Egyptians blocked the Suez Canal in attempt to get support from the world.  In the end the Israelis left the Canal and the Sinai.  The Egyptians would fail to honor their promises of peace and when they tried to destroy Israel again in 1967, the result was an even more devastating defeat for the Arabs.


1957: Release date for “The Bachelor Party” Paddy Chayefsky’s screen adaptation of his 1953 teleplay of the same name.


 1958(19th of Nisan, 5718): Sixty-seven year movie producer Solomon Max "Sol" Wurtzel passed away today.  Such was his importance that none other than renowned director John Ford delivered his eulogy.


1958(19thof Nisan, 5718): Sixty-nine year old Clarence Palitz, the native of Latvia, who earned an LLB from NYU, served as an Alderman in New York City and was active in numerous Jewish organizations including the Jewish Social Service Association, passed away today.


1963(15thof Nisan, 5723): Pesach


1963: Birthdate ofMarc Jacobs, American fashion designer


1964: U.S. premiere of “The Carpetbaggers” the move version of Harold Robbins novel produced by Joseph E. Levine with music by Elmer Bernstein.


1965:  Birthdate of television executive Jeff Zucker.


1968: The Jewish Orthodox Home for the Aged moved from Cleveland  to a 37 acre site in Beachwood Village “and adopted the name Menorah Park Jewish Home for the Aged.”


1969: The "Chicago Eight" plead not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Three of the “Eight” - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Lee Weiner – were Jewish.  The two lead defense attorneys were Jewish and the Judge hearing the case was also Jewish.


1973: Israel Defense Forces Special Forces units attacked several Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) targets in Beirut and Sidon, Lebanon in an action thought “to be part of the retaliation for the Munich massacre at the Summer Olympics in 1972.”


1976: In Israel, a car bomb was dismantled on Ben Yehudah Street shortly before it was to have exploded.


1976: Release date for “All The President’s Men” co-starring Dustin Hoffman with a screenplay by William Goldman and music by David Shire.


1978: U.S. premiere of “Rabbit Test,” directed and written by Joan Rivers, produced by Edgar Rosenberg, starring Billy Crystal and featuring Norman Fell.


1982: Birthdate of Canadian Jay Burchel who numbers a Sephardic Jewish grandfather among his ancestors.


1984(7th of Nisan, 5744): Joseph G. Weisberg, editor and publisher of The Jewish Advocate, passed away Massachusetts General Hospital after becoming ill at his desk in Boston, where The Advocate is published. He was 73 years old. Mr. Weisberg, a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, was head of The Advocate, an English- language weekly, for more than four decades. He was a founder and past president of the American Jewish Press Association and a director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a worldwide news service.


1984(7th of Nisan, 5744): In Portland, OR, 76 year old Sheindel Reznick, the wife of Hyman Reznik and the mother of Naomi Blumberg passed away.


1985: In an example of Jew slamming a Jew, Frank Rich panned “Leader of the Pack” the musical with music and lyrics by Ellie Greenwich.

1988: Pitcher Jose Bautista, a native of the Dominican Republic, played his first major league game with the Baltimore Orioles.


1989(4th of Nisan, 5749): Eighty-six year old Moshe Ziffer, a native of Przemyśl, who came to Palestine in 1919 where he became an artist and sculptor whose works included busts of Einstein, Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weismann passed away today.

1989:In “Unearthing a Roman City in Israel,”published today Matthew J. Reisz described the history of Beit Shean including the latest archeological discoveries at this ancient city whose ties to the Jewish people date back to the days of Saul and David.

1990: “Telling the Seder's Story In the Voice of a Woman” published today provides Nadine Brozan’s description of the celebration of Pesach with a unique, feminist twist.



1990(14th of Nisan, 5750):Louis Rappaport, called Calev Ben-David and asked him to join him in interviewing Barbara Walters just hours before the start of the first Seder.


1991: Statements made in an interview with James Randi published in the International Herald Tribune resulted in a suit being filed by illusionists Uri Geller.


1992: Nigel Lawson retired as Member of Parliament for Blaby.


1992: Peter Benjamin Mandelson began serving as an MP for Hartlepool.


1995(9th of Nisan, 5755): Alisa Flatow, 20, was riding a public (Jewish) bus near the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom when an Arab suicide bomber plowed his car into that bus.  Alisa and seven Israeli soldiers, all under the age of 21, were killed.  Alisa was one of 20 American victims of the so-called "Peace" process! 


1997(2ndof Nisan, 5757): Eighty year old screenwriter and author Helene Hanff best known for 84, Charing Cross Road passed away in New York City.



1998(13th of Nisan, 5758): Fast of the First Born takes place today because the 14thof Nisan falls on a Friday.


2000: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges” by Nathan Englander in which the author “combines a compassionate grasp of the Orthodox Jewish world with the skeptical irreverence of one estranged from yet still oddly defined by it,''“The Last of the Just” by Andre Schwarz-Bart a French novel that chronicles the agonies of a Jewish family from 12th-century England to Nazi Germany,” and “Picture This” by Joseph Heller.


2002(27th of Nisan, 5762):  Yom Ha Shoah


2002: During Operation Defensive Shield a battalion commanded by Major Oded Golomb was ambushed by terrorists in Jenin


2002(27thof Nisan, 5762): Maj.(res.) Oded Golomb, 22, of Kibbutz Nir David; Capt.(res.) Ya'akov Azoulai, 30, of Migdal Ha'emek; Lt.(res.) Dror Bar, 28, of Kibbutz Einat; Lt.(res.) Eyal Yoel, 28, of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel; 1st Sgt.(res.) Tiran Arazi, 33, of Hadera; 1st Sgt.(res.) Yoram Levy, 33, of Elad; 1st Sgt.(res.) Avner Yaskov, 34, of Be'er Sheva; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Ronen Alshochat, 27, of Ramle; gt. 1st Class (res.) Eyal Eliyahu Azouri, 27, of Ramat Gan; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Amit Busidan, 22, of Bat Yam; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Menashe Hava, 23, of Kfar Sava; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Shmuel Danny Meizlish, 27, of Moshav Hemed; Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Eyal Zimmerman, 22, of Ra'anana were killed today while fighting at Jenin. (Jewish Virtual Library)


2002(27thof Nisan, 5762): Thirty year old Major Assaf Assoulin of Tel Aviv was killed during fighting at Nablus.


2002(27thof Nisan, 5762): Twenty-one year old Staff Sergeant Malik was killed today.


2002: A pro-Israel drew 4,000 supporters today in Miami Beach, FL.


2004: U.S. premiere of “The Girl Next Door” with a screenplay co-authored by Stuart Blumberg.


2005(29th of Adar II, 5765): Author Andrea Dworkin passed away. Born in 1946, she was variously an anarchist, anti-war activist, radical feminists and an outspoken critic of pornography which viewed as being a cause of the violent attacks suffered by women.


2006:  The Washington Post featured a review of Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City and the Conflict that Divided America by Eyal Press.  The book is an account of the battle over abortion in the United States.  The book is written by the son of Dr. Shalom Press, one of two doctors who performed abortions in Buffalo, New York.  The other was Dr. Barnett Slepian who was murdered in his kitchen when he came home from Friday night Shabbat services. Interestingly enough, the local leaders of the anti-abortion movement are twin brother who had grown up in a Jewish home and had converted to Christianity before becoming “pro-life.”


2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky; translated by Sandra Smith


2006: Concentration camp survivor Emil Alperin of the Ukraine is pictured in an AP photo laying down flowers at Buchenwald near Weimar in eastern Germany as part of the commemoration ceremonies for the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi concentration camp.


2007: Haaretzreported that archeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found. The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C.E., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Associated Press. He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.


2007(21st of Nisan, 5767: Seventh Day of Pesach: Reform Jews recite Yizkor on what is for them, is the last day of the holiday.


2007: In “Girls: Israel’s Racy New PR Strategy Israel” published today Kevin Peraino describes Israel’s flirtation with a new public-relations strategy”



2008: Madeleine M. Kunin, the former governor of Vermont, the first Jewish woman governor and an ambassador under the Clinton administration, discusses and signs her new book, “Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead,” at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.


2008(4th of Nisan, 5768):21-year-old Staff Sgt. Bisan Sayef from the village of Jatt was killed during clashes with Palestinian gunmen.


2008:April will be known as Jewish Heritage Month in New Jersey, thanks to legislation Gov. Jon Corzine signed at Passaic’s Ahavas Israel in front of a multi-ethnic group.


2009: In “You Think Know Matzo?” published today in Time magazine, Claire Suddath provides a brief history of this famous unleavened bread.



2009(15 Nisan 5769): First Day of Pesach


2009(15th of Nisan, 5769): US President Barack Obama will celebrate Passover tonight with staff and friends in what is believed to be the first White House Seder attended by an American president. President Obama is not the first US President to attend a Seder.  That honor belongs to William Howard Taft who was the first president to attend a Seder while in office. In 1912, when he visited Providence, RI, he participated in the family Seder of Colonel Harry Cutler, first president of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Why did Taft go?  Was it an act of brotherhood and good will or was it an act of political fence mending brought on by Taft’s support of measures that were harmful to Jewish immigration.  Since 1912 was an election year and Taft was faced with a stiff challenge from Theodore Roosevelt, he needed all of the support he get from Jewish voters who had supported the Republican Party.  


2010: The Westchester Film Festival is scheduled to show “Hello Goodbye” a romantic comedy about a Jewish couple from Paris who go through a midlife crisis and move to Tel Aviv staring Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant.


2010: Rich Recht is scheduled to lead a musical and interactive Shabbat evening at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C.


2011:Vadim Gluzman is scheduled to perform with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.


2011: Machaya Klezmer, “the premier klezmer band,” is scheduled to perform at The Jewish Study Center Spring Fund Raiser at Tifereth Israel Congregation in Washington, DC.


2011: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Jewish community gathered for shiva minyan at the home of Kate and Gary Goldstein in memory of Gary’s father, Harold Goldstein of blessed memory.


2011:Hamas said today that it “did not intend to target Israeli schoolchildren when they fired a rocket at a bus two days ago, critically wounding a teenager and moderately wounding the bus driver, in an attack that sparked the latest round of border fighting. Israel has maintained that the bus, because it was yellow, should have been easy to identify by whoever fired the anti-tank rocket.


2011:Today the Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office confirmed that IAF jets attacked three top Hamas officials in the Gaza strip, as well as a smuggling tunnel and a truck carrying ammunition, after southern Israel suffered a barrage of rockets overnight.


2011: This morning two additional Grad rockets were fired at Ofakim and 25 mortar shells were fired into the Eshkol Regional Council.


2011(5thof Nisan, 5771): Eight-six year old move director Sidney Lumet passed away today.



2012: In the third and final event in Adam Gopnik’s “Table Comes First” series, Padma Lakshmi and Amanda Hesser are scheduled to discuss the unique strengths and differences of our culinary masters and mavens at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.


2012: At least 70,000 people from Israel and abroad gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City today for the traditional priestly blessing.


2013: “The Last Flight of Petr Ginz” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival


2013:An exhibit of letters, manuscripts, images, and objects about the life and literary career of Hyam Plutzik opened at Connecticut’s Trinity College of which he was one of the first Jewish alums.


2013: “Melting Away” an Israeli film with English subtitles is scheduled to be shown at the 17th Mandell JCC Hartford Jewish Film Fest.


2013: In Mandeville, LA, the Northshore Jewish Congregation is scheduled to host its Yom HaShaoah Holocaust Remembrance Program. 


2013: Jack Tytell, an American-born Israeli Jew who was convicted in January of murdering two Palestinians and wounding two Israelis, was sentenced today by the Jerusalem District Court to two consecutive life sentences plus 30 years jail time, and was ordered to pay NIS 680,000 ($190,000) compensation to the victims’ families.


2013: Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky was in the United States today to present to American Jewish leaders part of his proposal to resolve the issue of nontraditional prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which will reportedly include a greatly enlarged section for egalitarian services.


2014: “Holy Ground: Woody Guthrie's Yiddish Connection” is scheduled to best shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2014: “Women Unchained” is scheduled to be shown at The JCC Rockland International Jewish Film Festival.


2014(9th of Nisan, 5774): Eighty-seven year old Jacob Birnbaum passed away today.

2014: The Thaler Holocaust Memorial Fund chaired by Dr. Bob Silber is scheduled to co-host a speech by Holocaust survivor Cesare Frustaci at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


2015: In Orono, ME, Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Collins Center for Arts at the Univeristy of Main.


2015: Shoah survivor Margit Meissner is scheduled to speak today at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.


2015: “Blumenthal,” “A Place in Heaven” and “Famous Nathan” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2015: Funeral series are scheduled to take place for Bernice Tannenbaum, the past National President of Hadassah who passed away at the age of 101 at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City.


 

This Day, April 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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April 10


 


401: Birthdate of Theodosius II. As Emperor he adopted many of the anti-Semitic views of his sister which led to the destruction of innumerable synagogues and the murder of the Nasi, Gamliel IV who had authorized the building of new synagogues.  Theodosius abolished of the position of Nasi in 425.  The term Nasi means Prince and starting with the last decade of the second century was the title given to the head of the Sanhedrin. The Romans had recognized the importance of the position and Jews were allowed to pay a tax for the upkeep of the Nasi.  When Theodosius killed Gamliel and abolished the position Nasi, he did not end the tax.  He diverted the money to the Roman government. 


847: Papacy of Leo IV begins.


879: Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks (also known as France).  Louis was part of the Carolingian Dynasty which was comparatively sympathetic and supportive of the Jews living in the realm as can be seen by the decrees of some of Louis III’s predecessors including Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.


1096: During the Crusades Bishop Egelbert offered to save all the Jews of Trier, Germany who are willing to be baptized.  The Jews were seeking refuge from a mob that was threatening them with death.  Most of the Jews chose to drown themselves rather than accept Christianity.


1191: In the enfolding saga of King Richard’s crusade to the Holy Land that was so costly to the Jews from the time of his departure until the payment of his ransom, the English monarch set sail from Sicily for Palestine.


1201:  King John of England confirms Charter of the Jews. King John charged the Jews four thousand marks to re-confirm the rights that had first been guaranteed by his great grandfather, King Henry


1439(25th of Nisan): Poet and kabbalist Avigdor ben Isaac Kara of Prague passed away today.1516:  The first ghetto was established in Venice. There are various explanations of the origin of the term ghetto.  "The mostly likely explanation for the word ghetto, as applied to a special place assigned to the Jews is that one such district, set up in the city of Venice, was located near an iron-foundry which was called ‘get’ in the dialect of Venice."  While Jews had often sought to live in their own communities, the ghetto was different because it was compulsory.  Under the ghetto system, Jews were restricted by law as to where they could live while Christians were free to live everywhere.1560(14th of Nisan): The Pentateuch with a Yiddish translation was published in Cremona, Italy


1570:  The Chumash with Yiddish translation was published in Cremona, Italy.  There were less than a thousand Jews living in Cremona at this time.  In 1559, under pressure from the Dominicans, copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books had been publicly burned in Cremona.  A quarter of a century after the printing of the above mentioned Chumash, the Jews were expelled from Cremona.


1637: Venetian Rabbi, Judah di Modena “received word that his Italian manuscript entitled ‘History of Hebrew’ customs had been published in Paris.” A gentile Parisian publisher thought that “a book extolling Judaism, written by a Jew in Italian” would be of interest toChristian readers which was the authors “target audience.”  (As reported by Abraham Bloch)


1625(3rdof Nisan, 5385): Joshua Cohen Peixotto passed away.


1699: Rabbi Samuel Orgels, a friend of Baer Cohen for whom he had arranged both of his marriages, passed away.  According to the diary of Glückel of Hameln he “fell into a faint and died on the spot” on a Friday evening while in the Synagogue.


1719: Fired destroyed the Ghetto of Nikolsburg, Moravia


1728(1stof Iyar, 5488): Rosh Chodesh


1728(1stof Iyar, 5488): Solomon Ayllon,  the “Hacham” of Sephardic congregations in London and Amsterdam and who was alleged to a supporter of Sabbatai Zevi, passed away today.


1738: John Da Costa swears in writing that he has translated the will of Abraham Mendes Seixas, also known as Migule Pnacheo Da Silva from Portugese into English to the best of his ability.


1794: Birthdate of Edward Robinson an American biblical scholar, known as the “Father of Biblical Geography.” Robinson led an mission of exploration to Palestine in 1838.  Among his many finds was “the tunnel dug by Hezekiah shortly before the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701/02 BCE.”  He is the Robinson of “Robinson’s Arch,” a structure found on the south-western side of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.


1800(15thof Nisan, 5560): First Pesach of the 19th Century


1816(12th of Nisan, 5576): M.H. Bock, the native of Magedburg founded a well-regarded private school “in 1807 at Berlin, and to which Christian as well as Jewish pupils were admitted” passed away today.



1825(22ndof Nisan, 5585): 8th day of Pesach



1828: Birthdate of Isaac Honig, brother of Henry Honig, the native of Mayence who came to the United States in 1850 where his mercantile prospered to the extent that he could retire in 1865.



1835: Birthdate of Johann Schnitzler “a Hungarian-Austrian Jewish laryngologist.”



1847:  Birthdate of Joseph Pulitzer.  Born in Hungary, Pulitzer came to the United States during the Civil War where he served in the Union Army.  After the war he learned English, became rich as publisher of the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World.  He died in 1911.  The Pulitzer Prizes were created by his will and were first awarded in 1917.  Pulitzer's father was Jewish, but his mother was a Roman Catholic.  Although he was not Jewish, Pulitzer's enemies attacked him as one even condemning him for hiding the "fact" that he was one.


1849(17thof Nisan, 5609): Third day of Pesach


1849(17thof Nisan, 5609): In Amsterdam, David Proops, the last member of a family of printers that date back to the 18th century passed away today.


1858: Jewish veterans of the Russian Army were given permission to settle in Finland which was a province in the Russian Empire.  The Jewish soldiers would have had to complete 25 years of service to gain this right


1861(30th of Nisan, 5621): As Confederate forces prepare to begin for the attack on Fort Sumter, the Jews of Charleston joined their co-religionist throughout the world in observing the first day of   Rosh Chodesh Iyar.


1863: Jacob C. Cohen of the 27th Ohio Infantry writes from Corinth, Mississippi about life in the Union Army which is resting in preparation for what will be the climatic campaign to take Vicksburg, the “Confederate Gibraltar” on the Mississippi River.


1863: Today Ferdinand Leopold Samer was the first rabbi to be commissioned as a chaplain in the Union Army. Born in Germany, Samar was elected by the 54th New York Volunteer Regiment made up of mostly German speaking soldiers.  Samer was the first Jewish chaplain to be wounded in combat during the Civil War.


1866(25th of Nisan, 5626): Fifty-nine year old Adolph Meyer, the scion of multi-generational Hanover, Germany, banking family who with his wife Fanny had eight children, passed away today.


1871: Anti-Semitic riots break out in Odessa Russia


1873: In article entitled “Passover: The Jewish Festival and Feast of the Year,” The New York Times reports that “to-morrow evening, the 11th of April the Jewish part of the inhabitants of this City will begin the celebration of the Feast of the Passover, an ancient Hebrew festival which Moses instituted to commemorate perpetually the passing over the houses of the Israelites, and the slaying of the first-born of the Egyptians, just previous to the exodus of the children of Israel.” The article is remarkable for its detailed description of the holiday including the insightful statement that “Passover is one of the three important of the festival calendar and although observed by the Jews everywhere yet the laws laid down in relation to its celebration are not followed by all classes of Jews with equal strictness”


1876(16th of Nisan, 5636): Second day of Pesach; 1st day of the Omer.


1876: In New York City, Bertha and Levi Spiegelberg gave birth to Eugene E. Spiegelberg


1879(16th of Nisan, 5639): Second day of Pesach


1879(16thof Nisan, 5639):


1882:  A pogrom in Podalia, Russia left 40 dead, 170 wounded and 1,250 dwellings destroyed. Fifteen thousand Jews were reduced to total poverty.  It was events like these that spurred the First Aliyah in the Zionist movement. 


1884(15th of Nisan, 5644): 1st day of Pesach


1887: Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America. Among its most distinguished alums is David R. Levin a graduate of university’s Columbus College of Law.


 


1890: Sixty-one year old Hungarian born Austrian poet Karl Isidor Beck who edited the Lloyd, passed away today in Vienna.


 


1890: The late Louis Lippman has left a bequest of $500 to each of the following: Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids and the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews.


1892: In an article entitled “One of the Important Hebrew Festivals Begins To-Morrow Night,” the New York Times reports that “at sunset to-morrow evening, which corresponds with the evening of the fourteenth day of the month of Nissan in the Hebraic calendar the Jewish community through the world will commence the celebration of the feast of Pesach or Passover.”



1895: In Albany, NY, the State Board of Charities approved the certificate of incorporation of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of the City of New York.



1896: A Jew named Benjamin Dreyer who had been masquerading as Turk named Ben Ouni was arraigned in Brooklyn on charges of having stolen a tray of rings.



1896: The Young Folks’ League of the Hebrew Infant Asylum performed a two act play at the Lexington Opera house as a fundraiser.



1897: “Books and Periodicals” published today described plans to simultaneously release Ancient Hebrew Tradition by Dr. Firtz Hommel in May. In this work, the noted Semitic language expert “controverts the method employed by the higher critics of the Old Testament and attacks the Graf Wellhausen hypothesis, also known as the documentary hypothesis.



1898: In Los Angeles, Mamie and Henry Klein gave birth to their only son, Arthur Louis Klein who earned a Ph.D. in physics at Cal Tech where he eventually became a full Professor of Aeronautical Engineering – a position he held when in 1946 he went to Bikini to help evaluate the effect of the atomic tests.



1900: Herzl meets Arminius Vámbéry in Budapest in attempts to enlist Turkish support for the creation of the Jewish homeland in Palestine.



1905: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Simenhoff officiated at the wedding of Jacob Lichmon and Rosa Dautschman.



1906: Birthdate of Wilhelm Kauders who gained fame as Czech electrical engineer Vilém Klíma who survived Terezin and the death march to Auschwitz.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/18/books/ivan-klimas-my-crazy-century-spans-decades-of-czech-life.html?ref=books&_r=0



1910: Rabbi Avraham Elyashiv (Erener) of Gomel, Belarus, and Chaya Musha, daughter of the kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv gave birth to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv



1910: More than seven hundred members of the Hebrew Retail Kosher Butchers' Protective Association met today at 763 First Avenue and resolved not to buy a pound of meat for twenty-four hours.



1910: Birthdate of New York businessman Samuel “Sam” Schulman who was best known as the owner of the NBA SuperSonics and a minority owner of NFL San Diego Chargers.



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/16/sports/sam-schulman-93-team-owner-who-defied-nba-draft-rules.html



http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/14/local/me-schulman14



1910: An article published today entitled “Oppressed Jews in Morocco Seek From Powers” describes the desperate condition of these North African Jews and their attempts to get the Alliance Israelite of Paris and the Anglo-Jewish Association in London to enlist the aid of their respective governments ‘in forcing the Sultan to keep the promise of his grandfather, made to Sir Moses Montefiore in 1864, that his Jewish subjects should be dealt with justly, not cruelly”



1911: Today, The Edward Rosenstein Association distributed free matzoth to needy Jews living on the Lower East Side



1912: Archibald Grace IV, the man who would provide the account of Isidor Strauss’s last moments boarded the Titanic at Southampton today.



1912: Tonight marks the start of the Young Women's Hebrew Association’s campaign to raise $250,000 for a new building. Abram I. Elkus, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the campaign; Supreme Court Justice Samuel Greenbaum, Rabbi Schulman, and other speakers will address the workers at the kick-off function.



1913: Birthdate of Hellmuth Flieg, a German - Jewish writer, known by his pseudonym Stefan Heym. He lived in the United States (or served in its army abroad) between 1935 and 1952, before moving back to the part of his now-partitioned native Germany which was the German Democratic Republic (GDR, "East Germany"). He published works in English and German at home and abroad, and despite longstanding criticism of the GDR remained a committed socialist.



1914: Birthdate of Raphael Silverman, the native of Ithaca, NY who gained fame as “Raphael Hillyer, the founding violist of the Juilliard String Quartet and a soloist and teacher known for the warmth and expressivity of his tone.”



1914(14th of Nisan, 5674): Four hundred and fifty Jewish servicemen including sailors from the battleships Texas, North Dakota, Washington, Ohio, Wyoming and Louisiana are scheduled to take part in a Seder tonight specifically for military personnel at Tuxedo Hall in Manhattan.



1914(14th of Nisan, 5674): In a pre-Passover tragedy, George Rothstein discovered the bodies of his sister Bessie Diamond and three of her young children who were victims of an apparent murder-suicide.  According to Mrs. Diamond’s husband, Mrs. Diamond had been suffering from severe depression for which her doctor had recommended she be sent to a sanitarium.



1916: The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City. In 1942, Herman “Barron became the first Jewish golfer to win an official PGA Tour event by winning the Western Open by two strokes over Henry Picard at Phoenix Golf Club in Phoenix, Arizona.”



1918: Birthdate of Alfred Pl Slaner, the developer of Supp-Hose hosiery who also made Nixon’s Enemies’ List.



1918: Birthdate of Cornell Capa, a globe-trotting photojournalist who founded the International Center of Photography in New York and dedicated himself to preserving the legacy of his older brother, war photographer Robert Capa.  He died on May 23, 2008 at the age of 90 of Parkinson’s disease.



1920(22nd of Nisan, 5680): Moritz Benedikt Cantor, a German historian of mathematics, passed away.


1920(22nd of Nisan, 5680): 8TH Day of Pesach



1920: Birthdate of Alexander Livshiz, the son of Russian born parents living in Yokohama who gained fame as Dr. Alexander Leaf.



http://nutrition.med.harvard.edu/personnel/biosketch/Leaf_bio.pdf



1925: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Among the characters who populate this classic study of life in the Roaring Twenties is Meyer Wolfsheim a gambler with underworld connections who claims to have fixed the 1919 World Series.  The character is a thinly veiled fictional version of the Jewish gambler  Arnold Rothstein, whom according to some, fixed the 1919 World Series.  Rothstein has been portrayed as the evil Jew who corrupts America’s pristine pastime and its innocent Christian athletes.  Is Fitzgerald trying to imply that whatever shady deals Gatsby may have engaged in are the product of the corrupting influence of this Jewish gambler?



1926: Birthdate of “artist and political activist” Gustav Metzger who came to Great Britain from Germany as part of the Kindertransport  and created the concept of Auto-Destructive Art while being an active member of  the anti-nuclear peace movement.



1927: Birthdate of Marshall Warren Nirenberg “an American biochemist and geneticist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.”



1928(19thof Nisan, 5688): Fifth day of Pesach



1928: In Mount Vernon, NY “Chauncey Freedman and the former Dorothea Kornblum” gave birth to “Monroe H. Freedman, a dominant figure in legal ethics whose work helped chart the course of lawyers’ behavior in the late 20th century.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/nyregion/monroe-freedman-expert-on-legal-ethics-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0



1928(19thof Nisan, 5688): Seventy-one year old Amalia “Molly” Finkelstein Mogulesko who performed in Goldfaden's "Grandmother with Grandson" and was the widow of Yiddish actor Sigmund Mogulesko passed away today.



1928: Birthdate of Claude Newman Rosenberg, the Jewish philanthropist who authored, “Wealthy and Wise: How You and America Can Get the Most Out of Your Giving” 



1932: Birthdate of actor Omar Sharif.  The Egyptian born Sharif, who starred in such films as “Dr. Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” found his films banned in the Arab world because he played opposite Jewish singing star Barbra Streisand.



1933: German Vice-Chancellor Frtiz von Papen met with Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII and presented Hitler’s offer for a Concordant between the new Nazi government and the Vatican.



1934: In Englewood, NJ. Jacob and Florence Landau gave birth Jacob Charles “Jack” Landau the attorney who served as one of the founders of the Reported Committee for Freedom of the Press.



1934: U.S. premiere of “Viva Villa!” produced by David O. Selznick with a script by Ben Hecht and featuring Joseph Schildkraut as “Gen. Pascal.”



1934:  Birthdate of David Halbestram one of the many Jewish journalists that have dominated the American literary scene.  Halbestram won a Pulitzer in 1964 for his coverage in the New York Timesof the Viet Nam War.  He gained further fame as the author of the best-selling Best and the Brightest.  He has been a prolific author on a variety of topics. Ironically, he never wrote a book on a “Jewish” topic.



1938:  The Palestine Postreported that Itzhak Petrenko, 32, had been shot and killed and that two Arab terrorists were killed in their attack on the Nesher quarry, near Haifa. Two other Arab terrorists were killed after they attempted to attack a convoy escorting the mayor of Nablus, Suleiman Bey Toukan, on his official duties. A number of unexploded bombs were found in Jerusalem's Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall.



1938: The Palestine Post reported that Maestro Toscanini, who had turned down an offer to participate in the Salzburg Festival, arrived in Haifa for a series of concerts.



1938:  The Palestine Postreported that The Jerusalem Church of the Holy Sepulcher was closed to the public due to urgent repairs and restorations.



1938: Birthdate of Denny Zeitlin the son of Highland Park, Il physician who gained fame as a jazz pianist and composer.



1938: In Tel Aviv, Arturo Toscanini directed his first rehearsal with the Palestine Orchestra.



1938: In the revolving door of French politics during the Third Republic, the government led by Premiere Leon Blum fell and meaning the first Jewish Premier of France, who had been physically attacked by anti-Semites lost his position for the second and final time.



1939: Laurence Steinhardt completed his service as U.S. Ambassador to Peru.



1939: Birthdate of Alan Rothenberg, President of the U.S. Soccer Association.



1939:  The Dutch government opened camp Westerbork for German Jews. The impulse to start the construction of the camp came from the Dutch authorities themselves, who in the years preceding the Second World War, sought to provide housing and shelter for Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi-Germany. A camp was necessary because the authorities wanted to keep these refugees out of the cities, towns and villages. When the Nazi-armies invaded The Netherlands during the month of May 1940 the camp-infrastructure including inhabitants was an easy prey.”



1943: Twelve Jewish patients of Herren Loo-Lozenoord, a facility for the mentally disabled escaped from the Nazi's.



1944: “Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz and carry detailed information about the death camp to outside world.” (Virtual Jewish Library



1944: In Tel Aviv, the deputy superintendent of police “beat death” by surviving the attack of an unknown gunman who fired three shots at him in front of the police headquarters in the central part of the city.



1945:  U.S. Armed forces liberated the prison camp at Buchenwald, Germany. It was estimated that nearly 57,000 prisoners (mostly Jews) perished in the gas chambers of Buchenwald during its eight-year existence as a Nazi concentration camp.



1946: U.S. premiere of “Dragonwyck,” directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also wrote the script, co-produced by Ernst Lubitsch with music by Alfred Newman.



1946: At its annual spring luncheon at the Hotel Astor, the Women’s League for Palestine launched a building drive designed to raise $150,000 to upgrade the league’s Home for Immigrant Girls in Tel Aviv.  According to Mrs. David Isaacs, the League’s vice president, “Palestine will soon have an influx of thousands of young women from displaced camps abroad seeking shelter and rehabilitation.”  The luncheon was attended by 1,340 supporters.



1947: The Hapoel soccer team is scheduled to arrive in New York today, on the first stop on its good will tour of the United States. The team is scheduled to play all-star teams in several cities including Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco.



1948: “A group of Jewish immigrants from Egypt set up a camp in an area near Sderot which would be the future location of Bror Hayil.



1948: The Haganah repelled an Arab attack on Mishmar HaEmek.  Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-Emek (Guard of the Valley) was located on the western rim of the Jezreel Valley and had been founded by Polish chalutzim in 1926.  The fight for this strategic point lasted for eight days during which the Arab Liberation Army had the military advantage thanks to having the use of field artillery supplied by the Syrian Army.  Please note that this fight took place before the creation of the state of Israel in May, 1948.  It came during the unsuccessful attempt by the Arabs to cutoff Jerusalem from the rest of the Yishuv.  



1949: What Makes Sammy Run?, Budd Schulberg’s novel based on his father B.P. Schulberg that gave the world “Sammy Glick” was dramatized for the first time on Philco Television  Playhouse.



1950: Birthdate of Haim Ramon, a native of Jaffa who served in the IAF before pursuing a political career.



1952(15th of Nisan, 5712): 1st day of Pesach


 


1953: Ernest Gruening completed his term as 7th Territorial Governor of Alaska.


 


1953: Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as movie star Hedy Lamar, became a citizen of the United States.


1953:  The Jerusalem Postreported that the foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, had held "a brief interview" at the White House, with US president, Dwight Eisenhower.



1953:  The Jerusalem Postreported that Israel received as a gift, or purchased at lowered prices, America's food surplus: wheat, beans, potatoes, cheese, powdered milk, dried eggs and butter. Another important purchase was 100,000 tons of the strictly rationed American steel for local pipe factories.



1955: Dr Jonas Salk successfully tested his Polio vaccine.



1958: Birthdate of Yefim "Fima" Naumovich Bronfman a Russian born Israeli pianist.



http://www.yefimbronfman.com/



1962(9th of Nisan, 5722): Seventy five year old Michael Curitz passed away. Born Manó Kertész Kaminer on Christmas Eve in 1886, to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary), he ran away from home at age 17 to join a circus, then trained for an acting career at the Royal Academy for Theater and Art. His best known films include, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca and White Christmas.



1966(20thof Nisan, 5726): Sixth day of Pesach



1966(20thof Nisan, 5726): Eighty-six year old Joseph Newman, the husband of Tilly Cohen, of blessed memory and the father of Captain Isidore Newman who had served as “Beadle and Collector” for Hull Central Synagogue passed away today.



1971(15thof Nisan, 5731): Pesach



1973: Operation Spring of Youth came to an end.  This was an amphibious assault by the IDF on Beirut and Sidon aimed at those who had massacred Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.



1974: Yitzhak Rabin replaced Golda Meir as Prime Minister.  Mrs. Meir had resigned, a casualty of the Yom Kippur War.



1974: In St. Louis, MO, Becky and Robert Greitens gave to Eric Greitens the decorated war hero and Rhodes Scholar whose accomplishments are so varied that he can truly be called “Renaissance Man.”



http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-former-navy-seal-sets-his-sights-on-governorship/



http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-great-jewish-hope/



1975: The government of Israel recognized Falashas as Jews under the law.



1978(3rd of Nisan, 5738): Ninety-one year old Irma Levy Lindheim, the second president of Hadassah passed away today.



http://www.jta.org/1978/04/12/archive/irma-levy-lindheim-dead-at-91



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



1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the UNIFIL's acute lag in recruiting to beef up the projected 4,000-man force had decreased the prospects of an early, complete Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon.



1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that top US officials were reported to have been studying the possibility of an American treaty guarantee for a Middle Eastern settlement, "backed by a US air base in the Sinai and a naval base at Jaffa." The use of glass bottles was prohibited on Israeli beaches.



1980: Birthdate of Israeli tennis player, Andy Ram



1983:Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Abrams of Roslyn, L.I., have announced the engagement of their daughter, Lori Sue Abrams, to Alan Barry Greenfield, son of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Greenfield, also of Roslyn. The groom is attending the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, Israel



1987(11th of Nisan, 5747): Two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded in southern Lebanon, The attack occurred near Qantara, inside the ''security zone.'' Military sources said the attackers were Shiite Moslem guerrillas from the Party of God and Amal movements.



1989: Rite Aid, the drug store chain founded by Scranton businessman Alex Grass, acquired Peoples Drug’s 114 unit Lane Drug of Ohio.



1990(15thof Nisan, 5750): Pesach



1992: In the UK, Malcolm Rifkind completed his service as Secretary of State for Transport and began serving as Secretary of State for Defense.



1992: U.S. premiere of “Newsies” with music by Alan Menken, filmed by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo.



1998(14th of Nisan, 5758): In the evening, First Seder.



1998: U.S. premiere of “The Odd Couple II” written and produced by Neil Simon, directed by Howard Deutch and co-starring Walter Matthau in his second to last film.



1999(24th of Nisan, 5759): Heinz Ludwig Fraenkel-Conrat passed away.  Born in Germany in 1910, he fled Nazi Germany ultimately settling in the United States where he served on the faculty of the University of California for over 40 years.  He was a noted biochemist famous for his viral research.



2002(28thof Nisan, 5762): Ninety-two year old Israel political leader and jurist Haim Cohen passed away. The native of Lubeck is also the author of The Trial and Death of Jesus “in which he argued that it was the Romans, not the Sanhedrin, who tried and executed Jesus.



2002(28thof Nisan, 5762): “Eight were killed and 22 injured in a suicide bombing on Egged bus #960, en route from Haifa to Jerusalem, which exploded near Kibbutz Yagur, east of Haifa. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.  The victims: Avinoam Alfia, 26, of Kiryat Ata; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Shlomi Ben Haim, 27, of Kiryat Yam; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Nir Danieli, 24, of Kiryat Ata; Border Police Lance Cpl. Keren Franco, 18, of Kiryat Yam; Sgt.-Maj.(res.) Ze’ev Hanik, 24, of Karmiel; Border Police Lance Cpl. Noa Shlomo, 18, of Nahariya; Prison Warrant Officer Shimshon Stelkol, 33, of Kiryat Yam; and Sgt. Michael Weissman, 21, of Kiryat Yam.”



2003(8thof Nisan, 5763):St.-Sgt. Yigal Lifshitz, 20, of Rishon Lezion, and St.-Sgt. Ofer Sharabi, 21, of Givat Shmuel were killed and nine others wounded when Palestinian terrorists opened fire before dawn on their base near Bekaot in the northern Jordan Valley. (As reported by Jewish Virtual Library.



2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio by Jeffrey Kluger, Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky and the recently released paperback edition of Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner by Simon Sebag Montefiore



2005: In Stockholm, The Zionist Federation of Sweden presents "Herzl: Up Close and Personal," the traveling exhibit which was produced by the Department for Zionist Activities, World Zionist Organization, to celebrate the visionary of the Jewish state on the 100th anniversary of his passing.



2006: The Cedar Rapids Gazette featured a photo display entitled “preparing a Jewish Tradition,” featuring pictures of bakers at the Shmurah Matzoh Bakery in Brooklyn preparing “the unleavened bread traditionally eaten by Jews at Passover.”



2007(22nd of Nisan, 5767): Eighth Day of Pesach; Yizkor, for Orthodox and Conservative Jews



2007:Moshiach's Seudah marks the end of Pesach



2007: At the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the “Fourth Annual Stanley F. Chyet Literary Event” features Etgar Keret. “Israel's popular young writer Etgar Keret is at once court jester, literary crown prince, and national conscience. His painfully funny and honest books, including “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God”and “Jetlag,” have earned him international recognition. Also a respected filmmaker, Keret took home the Israeli Film Academy Award for Best Picture for his film Skin Deep.”



2008: In Washington, D.C., Madeleine M. Kunin, the former governor of Vermont, the first Jewish  woman governor and an ambassador under the Clinton administration, discusses and signs her new book, “Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead.”


 

2008(16th of Nisan, 5769): Barry H. Gottehrer, a journalist whose award-winning newspaper series “City in Crisis” helped elect John V. Lindsay mayor of New York in 1965 and who then joined the administration to help defuse the subsequent crises the city faced, died tonight near his home in Wilmington, N.C. at the age of 73.


2008: In New York, at the Jewish Museum presents a lecture “When Great Art Meets Great Evil” during whichchief New York Times music critic James Oestreich speaks with authors Henry Grinberg and Eugene Drucker about their respective novels “Variations on the Beast”and “The Savior.” Both books deal with the contradictions between the greatness of German musical cultureand the depths of depravity to which Germany sank while the Nazis were in power.



2008: The Jerusalem Post reported that while Jewish parents are well-known for wanting their children to work in certain professions with law and medicine have usually topping the list, a new challenger is climbing the ranks - hi-tech. The old standbys are still strong but hi-tech has edged out law for second place.



2009(16 Nisan 5769): Second Day of Pesach; first day of the Omer


 


2009: The French government appointed Rabbi Gilles Uriel Bernheim Knight [Chevalier] in the Légion d'honneur


 


2009: In an article entitled “Artwork from Hearst Castle returned to heirs of Jewish couple,” Michael Rothfeld describes how the grandchildren of a two German Jews who perished in the Holocaust received some their artistic legacy.



 


2009: In a column entitled “Next Year In Jerusalem,” Cecilia Hanley, the food editor for the Cedar Rapids Gazette described attending a home Seder noting that “the food Deborah [Levin] served was so delicious, I ate way more than was comfortable.” She noted that Deb made brisket with her adaptation of the Classic Brisket Recipe from “New York Times Passover Cookbook” which Hanley shared with her readers.


2010: The Westchester Jewish Film Festival is scheduled to show “Ahead of Time,” a documentary narrated by Ruth Gerber, the  Brooklyn born foreign correspondent, photojournalist, author, and humanitarian who  describes her remarkable 70-year career during which she escorted Holocaust refugees to America in 1944, covered the Nuremberg trials in 1946, and documented the voyage of the ship Exodus in 1947, emerging as the eyes and conscience of the world with her lifelong devotion to assisting Jewish refugees  


 2010: “A Tiny Piece of Land” is scheduled to have its first performance at the Pico Playhouse in Los Angeles, CA.


 


2011: The American Jewish Historical Society, Centro Primo Levi, Center for Jewish History, The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present: “Conversations on Conversion” moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer


 


2011: “Jewish veterans of the 1960s women’s liberation movement gathered at New York University for a conference on "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity."



 


2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor “Walking Tour: Downtown Jewish Washington” including the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum and the former sites of Ohev Sholom, Adas Israel, and Washington Hebrew Congregation.


 


2011: Tulane Professor Brian Horowitz is scheduled to attend a seminar on Hebrew literature at the University of Florida.


 


2011: The Los Angeles Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Panorama,” a novel in which “Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler depicts the world of German and Austrian Jews before the Nazis came to power.”


 


2011: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Say Her Name” by Francisco Goldman and  “The Eichmann Trial” by Deborah E. Lipstadt.


 


2011: Israel's government approved the famous personalities who will appear on a new series of shekel banknotes.. The personalities who will grace the new notes are Rachel the Poetess on the 20 shekel note, Shaul Tchernichovsky on the 50 shekel note, Leah Goldberg on the 100 shekel note and Natan Alterman on the 200 shekel note.  Rachel, who died in 1931, is a leading poet in modern Hebrew whose works have been set to music. Tchernichovsky was a two-time winner of the Bialik Prize for Literature. Goldberg, who died in 1970, was a poet, author, playwright, literary translator and researcher of Hebrew literature who translated "War and Peace" into Hebrew. Alterman, an author, playwright, poet and newspaper columnist who died in 1970, won the 1968 Israel Prize for Literature. "In order to maintain the public's trust in the State's currency, the governor decided to replace the currency series with a new series which will include some of the world's most advanced security and identification markings in a bid to make counterfeiting more difficult," the Bank of Israel said in a statement.   The current faces on Israeli currency are former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett on the 20 shekel note; S.Y. Agnon on the 50 shekel note; and former presidents Yitzhak Ben- Zvi and Zalman Shazar on the 100 shekel and 200 shekel notes.


 


2012: Grand Central published A Natural Woman: A Memoir the autobiography of Carole King.



 


 


2012: Heather Klein is scheduled to provide a program of Yiddish Passover Songs in Palo Alto, CA.


 


2012: Ayn Sof Arkestra & Bigger Band are scheduled to perform at The Sixth Street Community Synagogue in New York City.  


 


2012(18thof Nisan, 5772): Eighty five year old  Zvi Dinstein, the native of Tel Aviv who served as an MK for a decade passed away today.


2012(18thof Nisan, 5772): Ninety-seven year old French Resistance leader Raymond Aurbrac, born Raymond Samuel, passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



2013: On the secular calendar, 65th anniversary of the Haganah’s victory over the Arabs at Mishmar ha-Emek (On the Jewish calendar this event took place on the 1st of Nisan, 5708)


2013: As part its “Days of Remembrance” program, the University of Utah is scheduled to host “Holocaust Workshop” for which students can receive course credit.


2013: “Aliyah” is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival


2013:  In Skokie, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, is scheduled to “a special advance screening and reception for ‘No Place On Earth.’”


2013(30thof Nisan, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Iyar


2013: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be considering a proposal by Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky to establish an egalitarian prayer plaza along part of the Western Wall.



2014: Ed Millieband, the leader of the British Labor Party who has a good chance of becoming the next Prime Minister, is scheduled to arrive in Israel today for a three day visit that will have special meaning for this son of Jewish immigrants. (As reported by Raphael Ahren and Miriam Shaviv 


2014(10thof Nisan, 5774): If the legislation is by the Knesset today, the 10thof Nisan will be the “official day of national celebration in which Jewish immigration to Israel is honored and noteworthy immigrants are recognized for their contributions to the nation. (As reported by Debra Kamin)


2014: “The Sturgeon Queens’ is scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2014: “Golda’s Balcony” staring Tova Feldshuh is scheduled to be performed at DCJCC’s Theatre J.


2014: In Bethesda, MD, Congregation Beth El is scheduled to host Ambassador Gideon Meir who will speak on “International Media Coverage of Israel During Conflict.”


2014(10thof Nisan): According to the Book of Joshua today is the day “that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land on that date, ending their 40 years of wandering in the desert.” (As reported by Debra Kamin)


2015(21stof Nisan, 5775): Seventh Day of Pesach



2015: “The Decent One,” “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem” and “Anywhere Else” are scheduled to be shown at the Westchester Jewish Film Festival.


2015: “Woman in Gold” is scheduled to premiere in the United Kingdom.



 

2015: Temple Judah is scheduled to host another of its ever-popular “Musical Shabbats.”


 

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