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This Day, October 6, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 6


877: Charles the Bald, King of France, passed away.Regardless of whatever others may think of him, Charles the Bald, who was King of France, comes up on the plus side in Jewish history when compared to other monarchs since he resisted enforcing the anti-Semitic edicts of the Archbishop of Lyon. Charles motives were political and economic, not religious.


1014: Samuil of Bulgaria passed away. He was the Emperor of the First Bulgarian Empire from 986 until his death in battle while fighting the Byzantines. Jews fleeing from the persecution of the Byzantine Empire had found refuge among the Bulgarians. Samuil was a member of the Comitopuli dynasty whose leaders had names like Samuel (Samuil), Moses and David,which “could indicate partial Jewish origin, most likely maternal, though this is disputed.”


1254: Innocent IV who expelled the Jews from Venice in 1253 issued “Querentes In Agro” a papal bull recognizing the University Oxford which today is the home to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies which “was founded in 1972 by Dr. David Patterson.”


1536: William Tyndale, whose “English translation for Pentateuch in 1530 which was the first-ever English translation from the Hebrew would provide the fabric for the King James Bible and inject a Hebraic quality into the syntax and phraseology of English literary and religious usage without parallel in any European culture” was strangled and then burned at the stake today in Belgium.


1552: Birthdate of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary to China whose manuscripts indicate there were only approximately ten or twelve Jewish families in Kaifeng in the late 16th and early 17th century, that they had reportedly resided there for five or six hundred years, that there was a greater number of Jews in Hangzhou which could be taken to suggest that loyal Jews fled south along with the soon-to-be crowned Emperor Gaozong to Hangzhou.”


1755(1st of Cheshvan, 5516): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1755(1st of Cheshvan, 5516): A.M. Rothschild’s father died of small pox.


1759(15th of Tishrei, 5520): Sukkoth


1776(23rd of 5537): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.


1780: Thomas Dobson the printer who was “the first in the United States to publish a complete Hebrew Bible and his way gave birth to their second child Alison.


1783(10th of Tishrei, 5544): As the American Revolution reaches its final conclusion with a treaty between Great Britain and her former colonies Jews on both sides of the Atlantic observe Yom Kippur in peace.


1795(23rd of Tishrei, 5556): Simchat Torah


1795: Rachel Sapnier, “the daughter of Nathan Spanier, the head of the Ravensberg Jewish community” and her husband author and bookseller Saul Ascher gave birth to their “only child, a daughter named Wihelmine.”


1805(13th of Tishrei, 5566): Twenty-four year old Rachel Aasron passed away today in London.


1806: The Assembly of Jewish notables is required to answer 12 questions intended to inform the authorities about the nature of Judaism and to test the knowledge of French among the Jews.


1808(15th of Tishrei, 5569): Sukkoth


1817: Birthdate of “Dutch physician and medical author Levi Ali Cohen” “who was one of the organizers of the new medical laws for the Netherlands” and who was “a member of the committee on Jewish affairs in Holland for twenty years.”


1820: “At Charles-Valentin's piano audition which was held oday when he was nearly seven (and where he is named as "Alkan (Morhange) Valentin"), the examiners comment "This child has amazing abilities."


1821(10th of Tishrei, 5582): Yom Kippur


1824(14th of Tishrei, 5585) Erev Sukkoth


1824: In Alsace, Alexandre Aron and Charlotte Aron, the daughter of Asser Lion and Gitlé Loëw gave birth to Rose Rosalie Bloch the wife of Marx dit Marc Bloch


1837(7th of Tishrei, 5598): Twenty-nine year old Moses Loeb Mack the “son of Löb Moses Mack and Henriette Samuel Mack” passed away today in his native Bavaria.


1843: In Courland, Russia, Mortiz Rosenthal and Pauline Birkhann gave birth to Herman Rosenthal the husband of Anna Rosenthal who, after arriving in the United States in 1881, “organized agricultural for Russian Jews in Louisiana, South Dakota and New Jersey, “started the Russian daily Zarya in 1890, published and edited the Hebrew Monthly Intelligencer in New York” and served as the secretary of the German American Reform Union.


1844(23rd of Tishrei, 5605): Simchat Torah


1846: In India, Jessie Sarah and Henry Edward Goldsmid gave birth to Albert Edward Goldsmid.  A graduate of Sandhurst, the famed military school, he held a series of progressively more important positions in the British army until he was “selected by Baron de Hirsch to supervise” the colonies being established in Argentina for Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.  He went to serve with distinction during the Boer War.


1847: Michael Isaacs married Elizabeth Cohen at the Great Synagogue today.


1849: The victorious Austrian general orders the execution of 13 rebel Hungarian generals in Arad.  These men are known as the 13 Martyrs of Arad.  Their execution marked an end to the revolt by Kossuth against the repressive Austrian regime.  Kossuth had supported emancipation for the Jews of Hungary and the Jews had supported the revolt.  The Jews of Hungary suffered cruelly at the hands of the victorious Austrians as well as the local Slavic population that had viewed the uprising as a Magyar dominated event.  The defeat of the liberal forces in Hungary led to immigration of Hungarians – Jews as well as non-Jews – to the United States just as a similar defeat for German liberals led to their migration to the United States


1850: In Baltimore, MD, Moses Keyser and Betty Preiss gave birth to sculptor Ephraim Keyser whose works included “busts of Sidney Lanier, Cardinal Gibbons, Dr. Daniel Gilman, and Henry Harland” and a “statute of Major-General Baron De Kalb” for the United States Government which was “erected at Annapolis, MD.



1851: “The Hungarians,” published today reported that the U.S.S. Mississippi, “commanded by Captain Levy” had arrived in Constantinople for the purpose of providing Louis Kossuth, the exiled Hungarian political leader, with safe passage to France.  The Mississippi was one of the first ocean-going steam vessels belonging to the U.S. Navy and would be part of the fleet that entered Tokyo Bay with Commodore Perry.  Captain Levy would not be part of that voyage.


1851(10th of Tishrei, 5612): Yom Kippur


1851: The first recorded Jewish religious observance in Southern California was held at the home of Lewis Abraham Franklin in San Diego on Yom Kippur. Franklin had held what may have been the first High Holiday Services in the history of the state.  In 1849, he held Rosh Hashanah services in his "store" (a tent) in San Francisco. He later moved to San Diego. The first synagogue, Adath Jeshurun, was founded 10 years later by Louis Rose.  Rose was a less than successful land speculator in San Diego.


1852(23rd of Tishrei, 5613): Simchat Torah


1853:The Foreign Items column published today reported that Alexander Weill, a Jew who converted to Catholicism attributes the diseases attacking crops in parts of Europe "to the non-observance to the precepts of Moses who ordained that the soil should be left fallow during every seventh year, as God rested on the seventh day.


1854:In recognition of Abraham Alexander Wolff’s “services in the organization of the Royal Library of Copenhagen he was created a knight of the Order of Dannebrog today and was also awarded the title of professor.”


1856:An article entitled Pleasant Prospect for Foreign Voters reported that, “Some ‘Jew’ having interrupted Governor Floyd, when he was avowing his readiness to vote for Fillmore, with the pertinent inquiry, ‘how about the foreign vote?’ the Governor replied, that they should be treated as the Greeks proposed to do with Hector, feed him on one day and disembowel him the next. Fillmore is Millard Fillmore former President of the United States who had been a member of the Whig Party. When the Whigs collapsed, Fillmore joined the American Party, the political party of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Movement. John Floyd was a prominent member of the Democrat Party who had served as Governor of Virginia. Considering the surge in Jewish immigration to the United States during the 1850’s Fillmore and the Know-Nothings were a great concern to all Jews. 


1857: Birthdate of physiologist Joseph Paneth, the native of Vienna who was the father of chemist Friedrich Paneth and “a good friend of Sigmund Freud.”


1858: Emanuel Vandervelde married Caroline Van Goor at the Great Synagogue today.


1863(10th of Tishrei, 5764): Yom Kippur


1863: During the U.S. Civil War, Union authorities began the process of mustering the 15th Kentucky Cavalry (a unit formed by Lt. Col. Gabriel Netter) out of active service.  There is a note of irony that this process affecting a unit formed by a Jewish soldier, should begin on the Day of Atonement.


1864: In Náchod, Czech Republic, Isaac and Julie Judith Josephine Mautner gave birth to Adelheid Mauter who became Adelhied Goldschmid when she married Otto Goldschmid.


1865: In Frankfurt Selig Meier Goldschmidt, and his wife Clementine Fuld gave birth to Meier Selig Goldschmidt the husband of Selma Cramer and the son-in-law of Salomon Cramer and Therese (Röschen) Oppenheimer


1870: “Loss of Life in War” published today described what is considered to be “the shocking slaughter” taking place on 19thcentury battlefields.  In making comparison, the article reports that when Titus took Jerusalem, “more than a million Jews are believed to have perished.”



1871(21st of Tishrei, 5632): Hoshanah Rabah


1872(4th of Tishrei, 5633): Fast of Gedaliah is observed since the 3rd of Tishrei fell on Shabbat


1873(15th of Tishrei, 5634): Sukkoth


1873: According to published reports today’s “Jewish festival of ‘Succoth’ or the Feast of Tabernacles…is the harvest feast of the Jews and is a season for rejoicing and thanksgiving…The observance of this festival is not general, being confined almost entirely to the orthodox portion of the Jewish community.


1873: At meeting of leading Christians held at Steinway Hall in New York City a person from Cincinnati claimed “the Jews in that section of the country asserted that America was their promised land, and they no longer believed the ideas taught by their forefathers.” [Cincinnati was the stronghold of the Reform Movement.]


1874: Jacques Lang married There Cowvan today.


1877: In New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association sponsored a program at the Lyric Hall that was attended by “the elite of Jewish society.  Mr. I.S. Isaacs presided over the event. He was joined on the platform by Dr. De Sola Mendez and Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs. General Stewart L. Woodford, who had served with distinction in the Civil War and was active in the New York State Republican Party delivered an address entitled “Toleration.”  Professor J.L. Rice played a piano solo and Miss Gertrude Emanuel sang a ballad.  The evening ended with a recitation of “Phil Blood’s Leap by Joseph Michaels.


1878(9th of Tishrei, 5639): Erev Yom Kippur


1878: Seventy-eight year old Maria Michael who passed away yesterday was interred at the Bath Jewish Burial Ground today.


1878: “The Hebraic Day of Atonement” published today reported that “the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, commences at sundown this evening.  This fast is more generally observed than any other o the numerous fasts and feasts in the Hebraic calendar…This is particularly the case among the orthodox Jews who keep a strict fast for 24 hours…The Reformed Jews, while they have discarded the fast, still regard the day as one of solemn import…”


1879: On the Gregorian calendar, birthdate of Russian born Yiddish author Nohum Shtif who wrote under the pseudonym of Baal Dimon (Master of Imagination)


1880: In Los Angeles, founding of the University of Southern California whose original benefactors were a “Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs, an Irish Catholic former-Governor, John Gately Downey, and a German Jewish banker, Isaias W. Hellman”


1880: Just 3 weeks before his 49th birthday, Philadelphia born Colonel Myer Asch was “transferred to the Commandery of New York of the Loyal Legion of the United States.


1880: Godfrey Isaacs married Amelia Aarons at the Hambro Synagogue.


1882(23rd of Tishrei, 5643): Simchat Torah


1883: In New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association hosted a meeting of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Russia at the Five Points House of Industry.  The YMHA shared its plans to start classes in English and American social customs.


1884: Gabriel Richter, a Hebrew teacher, who had been arrested on charges of setting fire to his apartment at 219 Division Street was released today following a hearing at the Tombs Police court during which he said he was innocent because he was not at home and the police officer “could not swear” that the defendant “was the man whom had seen descending the stoop after the alarm was given.


1884: It was reported today that three alleged accomplices of Gabriel Richter who have conspired to set the three fires in the last 15 months set one at 203 East Broadway, “a three story tenement, occupied by” three Jewish families from Poland.


1884: Birthdate of Felix Weltsch, a German-speaking Jewish librarian, philosopher, author, editor, publisher and journalist who was a close friend of Max Brod and Franz Kafka, he was one of the most important Zionists in Bohemia.


1887: In Chicago, Samuel and Sarah (Fernberg) Ehrlich gave birth to Elma Ehrlich who became Elma Ehrlich Levinger, when she married Rabbi Lee J. Leving, the name she used as the author of over thirty children’s books. (As reported by Joan Moelis Rappaport)



1887: “Dr.M’Glynn and the Jews” published today briefly described the views of Edward McGlynn about religious doctrine stating that the difference between Judaism and Christianity was that the former placed a premium on universal justice while the latter placed a premium on “blind faith.”  (McGlynn was a Roman Catholic priest who had been excommunicated earlier in the year because of his political positions including the support of Henry George.)


1889: Attorney Alexander Rosenthal, representing Joseph Linkowitz, the President of the synagogue at 91 Delaney has charged Officer Gebhard of entering the institution as the second day of Rosh Hashanah was ending and Shabbat was beginning and turning out the lights thus forcing the worshippers out into the street.


1889: Birthdate of Miguel Mariano Gómez, the President of Cuba who Representative William I. Sirovich met with in July of 1936 in an attempt to get “Cuba to open her doors for at least 100,000 persecuted German Jews.”


1889: “Talk of the Day Abroad” published today described the latest act of anti-Semitism in Leipzig as transcending “the ordinary in sheer stupidity.”  In response to the thousands who visit the home of Mendelssohn, the citizenry raised money for a stained-glass window at the church of St. Thomas, to honor the composer of “Elijah.”  However, the project came to a grinding halt when “somebody started an outcry that the Mendelssohns were Jews.


1890(22nd of Tishrei, 5651): Shmini Atzeret


1890: During today’s meeting of the Trustees of Columbia University, it was a reported that Jesse Seligman had donated another $1,000 for the Seligman Fellowships.


1892(15th of Tishrei, 5653): Sukkoth


1892: Birthdate of U.S. diplomat Laurence Steinhardt





1893: Birthdate of Milton Ager the Chicago native and song writer who served in the US Army’s Morale Division in Fort Greenleaf, Georgia and cranked out a slew of hits, including the “anthem of the Democratic Party, “Happy Days are Here Again.



1894: Mrs. Elke Rubenstein, the widow of convicted murderer Pesach N. Rubenstein and her sister Basche Ragleski were sent back to Jerusalem today after having been denied entrance to the United States because they “had only $50 and government authorities are not permitted to land anyone who may become a public charge.


1894: Those in charge of the Bureau of Elections are concerned that they will have completed their list of polling places in time for the first day of voter registration which begins on October 9 and continues on October 10.  Several the locations used in the past are owned by Jews and they do not want to sign a lease that will have their property being used Erev Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur.


1894(6th of Tishrei, 5655): Shabbat Shuvah


1894(6th of Tishrei, 5655): Seventy year old German botanist Nathanael Pringsheim who ranks as the founder of our scientific knowledge of the algae” passed away today.


1895: “Prof. Haupt’s Literary Treasures” published today described the return of “Professor Paul Haput of the Oriental department of Johns Hopkins University” to Baltimore from Europe, where among other things he met with Professor Howard Furness who is working on a the new translation of “The Hebrew Bible” of which Professor Haupt is the editor in Chief.


1895: Professor Cyrus Adler explained how the United States National Museum acquired two Persepolitan cast one of which he says resembles “a frieze of enameled bricks found at Susa which is now in the Louvre.


1896: The list of gifts received by Columbia University published today provided by the Secretary of the Board included $5,000 from Jacob F. Schiff to aid needy students get through college.”


1896(28th of Tishrei, 5657): Dr. Moriz Schiff, the native of Frankfort-on-the-Main whose services as a surgeon in the rebel army during the Baden Revolution of 1849 led to him being labeled a “dangerous student” which forced him to pursue his medical career in Switzerland where he passed away today at Geneva.


1897(10th of Tishrei, 5658): Yom Kippur


1897: In Camden, NJ, Yom Kippur services “were held in Newton and Furey Halls.


1897: “Jew’s Greatest Fast Day” published today included a description of the preparation for Yom Kippur by “the orthodox Jew” who has for the past nine days been preparing himself for this day by doing “penance” which has entailed rising early “every morning since the New Year’s festival and repairing to the Beth Hamiderash (house of learning)” where he recited psalms and prayers for forgiveness and seeking “out his enemies” and making “peace with them” while discharging “all his worldly obligations.


1897: Dr. Gustav Gottheil led the services at Temple Emanu-El


1897: “There was a general suspension of business among the” Jewish merchants in Camden, NJ, because they were attending Yom Kippur Services.


1897: At Temple Elohim in Brooklyn Rabbi Taubernhaus delivered a sermon based on the Sayings of the Father that begin “Bear in mind three things and thou shalt escape sinning.


1897: At Temple B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise delivered a sermon entitled “Moses and Aaron.


1897: At Temple Rodoph Sholom, Dr. Rudolph Grossman delivered a sermon entitled “Home, Religion and Reconciliation.”


1897: At Temple Beth-El, Dr. Kauffman Kohler delivered a sermon on the “Dove of Peace.”


1897(10th of Tishrei, 5658): Fifty-three year old Lewis Stark, successful clothing merchant, passed away today at the home of his sister today from the effects of Bright’s disease.


1898: In London, Sime Zamremba and Avroam Kohen, a tailor from Lodz gave birth to Jacob Edward Kohen who gained fame as Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco Supermarket Chain – an accomplishment that led to him being Sir John Edward Cohen.


1898:Herzl arrives in Berlin for another conversation with Graf Eulenberg.


1901(23rd of Tishrei, 5662): Simchat Torah


1902(5th of Tishrei, 5663): Eighty-three year old Austrian Rabbi Jacob Jacques Heinrich Hirschfeld, the son “Marie and Emanuel Isak Hirschfeld” and the husband of Pauline Hirschfeld passed away today in Vienna.


1903(15th of Tishrei, 5664): Sukkoth


1903: In Wiesbaden, Dr. Georg Honigmann and his wife gave birth to journalist Georg Honigmann.


1903: The High Court of Australia sits for the first time.  In the early 1930’s Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs would be the first Jew to serve as Chief Justice of Australia. 


1904: In New York, Felix Mortiz Warburg and Frieda Fanny Warburg, the daughter of Jacob and Theres Schiff, gave birth to Paul Felix Solomon Warburg.


1907: Birthdate of Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch, a German-born geneticist and co-founder of developmental genetics who fled Hitler’s German to pursue her career in the United States. Winner of the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal in 1993 and the National Medal of Science in 1996, she passed away in November of 2007, a month after celebrating her 100th birthday.


1909(21st of Tishrei, 5670): Hoshanah Rabah


1909: In Philadelphia, Irving Kohn and Rebekah Kohn, the daughter of Simon and Florence Liveright gave birth to Florence Kohn who became Florence Abrahams after she married Robert David Abrahams.


1909: The funeral for Rabbi Falk Vidaver who passed away yesterday at the age of 65, is scheduled to be held today at his home in New York City. Burial will take place in the cemetery belonging to the Temple at 72ndand Lexington Avenue where Falk served as rabbi for twelve years.


1909:Miss Clara L. Clemens, daughter of Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain,) was married at noon to-day to Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Russian pianist. The wedding took place in the drawing room at Stormfield, Mr. Clemens's country home, with the Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Twitchell of Hartford, a close friend of Mr. Clemens, as officiating clergyman. The groom was Jewish.  The bride was not.


1910(3rd of Tishrei, 5671): Tzom Gedaliah


1912(25th of Tishrei, 5673): Sixty-six year old philanthropist Simon Newman passed away today in San Francisco.


1914(16th of Tishrei, 5675): Second Day of Sukkoth


1914: The battleship U.S.S. North Carolina brought $50,000 from the Jews of the United States to the Jewish community in Palestine. 


1914: It was reported today that U.S. government officials in the United States have not decided how to deal with reports of that a large part of the population of Jerusalem is facing starvation.


1914: Gilbert Frankau, the London born Jew who was baptized at the age of 13 and whose father Arthur converted to Roman Catholicism “a few months before his death” “was first commissioned in the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment” today.


1914: It was reported today that Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador at Constantinople “has appealed to the State Department for additional funds for the relief of American in the Ottoman Empire.”


 


1915: In Woodmere, NY, attorney Edward Drucker and his wife gave birth to Carolyn Elizabeth Drucker who became Carolyn Goodman after marrying civil engineer Robert W. Goodman which was the name she was known as when she gained gamed fame as the Manhattan clinical psychologist and mother of murdered civil rights worker Andrew Goodman. (As reported by Margalit Fox)




1916(9th of Tishrei, 5677): Erev Yom Kippur and Erev Shabbat


1916: Appeals for funds are being made this evening in all Jewish houses of worship on “behalf of the Russian and Polish Jews in the war zones of Europe.”


1916: At Congregation Pincus Eliza on 95th Street General Sessions Judge Rosalsky “made an appeal for contributions to the fund for the aid of Jewish men, women and children affected by the war” which produced pledges of approximately $10,000.


1916: “Simon Samuel Frug, Yiddish Poet” published today reported the recent death of the Jewish poet from the Ukraine who following pogroms “circulated a poetic appeal asking for bread for the living and shrouds for the dead.”


1917(20th of Tishrei, 5678) Sixth day of Sukkoth and Shabbat


1917: As politicians sought to appeal to the Jewish vote on the Lower East Side William Hard, a supporter of New York Mayor John Mitchell wrote in today’s New Republic that Socialist Morris Hillquist who was Jewish had “a very considerable skill in the management of practical negotiations and an excellent command of quotations from standard authorities of his intellectual club and a manifest dislike for new and painful ideas.


1917: Today, during World War I, the 65th U.S. Congress passed an act that allowed for the creation of an additional twenty chaplains to serve in the United States Army.  These positions were for representatives of "religious sects" not usually represented in these positions.  The language of the act was convoluted but what Congress was really doing was creating positions to be filled by Jewish and Unitarian chaplains - religious sects that had hitherto been under-represented or unrepresented in chaplaincy.


1918: In Philadelphia, Manuel and Blanche (née Bergman) Korn gave birth to the Reform Rabbi Bertram Wallace Korn whose service as a chaplain began with the U.S. Navy in WW II and led to him reaching the rank of Rear Admiral in 1975.



1918: Birthdate of Abraham Robinson the German born, Israeli trained mathematician who earned his first degree from Hebrew University after he made Aliyah in 1933.



1918: While serving “on liaison duty with a battalion of the 308thInfantry which was surrounded by the enemy north of the Forest de la Buironne in the Argonne forest” and “after patrols had been repeatedly shot down while attempting to carry back word of the battalion’s position and condition” Abraham Krotoshinsky “volunteered for the mission and successfully accomplished it” in such a manner that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.


1918: On the Lower East Side of Manhattan the former Jennifer Garlick and her first husband gave birth to Joseph Nathaniel Glassman who gained fame as Joseph Frank author of the five volume life of Fydor Dostoevsky which is viewed as one of the greatest literary biographies of the 20thcentury. (As reported by Bruce Weber)


1920: Theresa Bruckner, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Max Bruckner is scheduled to marry Stanley Lee Weil this evening at the St. Regis in New York City.


1920: The High Commissioner for South Africa and Mrs. Blankenberg  are scheduled to attend a dinner for Dr. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of England and Albert M. Woolf today.


1921: In Tel Aviv, Samuel Lewin-Epstein, the “son of Judith and Eliyahu Ze’ev Lewin Epstein” and his wife “Madeline Lewin-Epstein” gave birth to “Noah Lewin-Epstein”


1921: Great Britain, the mandatory power governing Palestine, announced that Haifa will become a free port and that a new harbor will be constructed by a British company with a loan from the Palestine Mandatory Government of 10,000,000 English pounds. As part of a tariff agreement reached with the French, the mandatory power governing Syria, goods entering Haifa bound for Syria will be treated as duty free.  This should be a boon to trade with those living in Mesopotamia as well.


1921: Birthdate of Soviet mathematician Yvgeny Landis who is known for his work on partial differential equations.  (I do not have clue as to what that means)


1923: In Oshkosh, Wisconsin,  scrap metal dealer Isadore Block and his wife gave birth to Allan Forrest Block  “a leather craftsman and fiddler who made sandals and music in his Greenwich Village shop — which became a bubbling hub of folk music during the 1950s and ’60s.”  (As reported by Bruce Weber)


1925(17th of Tishrei, 5686): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1925(17th of Tishrei, 5686): “The noted Jewish scholar, Dr. Israel Abrahams, reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic literature at Cambridge University passed away today in Cambridge” (UK) at the age of 66. Dr. Abrahams came from a family of scholars.  “His father, Barnett Abrahams, was the Dayan of the Spanish & Portuguese Congregation in London.”  Two of his brothers are rabbis including Dr. Joseph Abrahams, the Chief Rabbi of Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Abrahams has been at Cambridge for the last twenty three years.  He was the first President of the Union of Jewish Literary Societies and held several leadership positions with the Jewish Historical Society of England. Dr. Abrahams was a prolific author whose best known work maybe “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages” which was published in 1896.  In his later years he identified with the more liberal wing of Judaism.  Abrahams’ first speaking tour in the United States was in 1912. He returned again in 1924. [Abrahams comment that anti-Semitism is on the wane in Germany made in 1912 stands in stark contrast to the reality of the post war years.]


1925: In Manhattan, on his 32ndbirthday, “Milton Ager, a successful composer whose tunes included ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’” and his wife “Cecilia, a film critic gave birth to Shana Ager who gained famed as journalist Shana Alexander between known as the liberal part of the Point/Counterpoint segment on “Sixty Minutes” with conservative columnist James Kirkpatrick. (As reported by Margalit Fox)


1926(28th of Tishrei, 5687): Fifty-four year old Horki native Israel Joseph Zevin who gained fame as “a humorist and pioneer of the Yiddish press in America” using the pseudonym “Tashrak” passed away today.




1926(28th of Tishrei, 5687): Eighty year old Simon Bamberger the fourth governor of Utah who was the first non-Mormon to hold the post and the third Jew to be elected to a state chief executive position passed away today



 1927(10thof Tishrei, 5688): Yom Kippur


1927: The era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of ''The Jazz Singer,'' starring Al Jolson.


1927: Jewish editor Herman Bernstein post a $15,000 bond so that Mordechai Golinkin, conductor of the Palestine Opera and former director of the Petrograd Opera, his wife Lea and a fellow traveler can be released from their three day detention on Ellis Island.  Authorities detained the party because Golinkin had no contracts to perform in the United States which meant he did not meet the legal requirement of being able to demonstrate that he had a means of support.


1928: In the aftermath of the Massena (NY) Blood Libel that Assemblyman Julius Berg said that the apology by Mayor Gilbert Hawes “showed conclusively that he had been guility of a serious injustice against the Jews of Messina. Berg said no apology could make up for the wrong done and that unless the mayor resigned he would go to court to have him removed from office. When a four year child had been reported missing on the eve of Yom Kippur, the mayor had suggested that the disappearance might be due to a ritual murder.  This resulted in Rabbi Brennglass being summoned to the police station for questioning.


1928:The Wedding March” an “American silent romantic drama film written and directed by and starring Erich von Stroheim which was produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Laskey  and edited by Josef von Sternberg was released in the United States today by Paramount Pictures.


1933: Birthdate of Ludwik Begleiter, the native of Stryj, Poland who survived the Holocaust ,graduated from Harvard Law School and who as Louis Begley became a successfully and author whose first book Wartime Lies was published in 1991.


1934: Birthdate of Philadelphia born, Ivy League educated philosopher and author Jacob Needelman.



1934(27th of Tishrei, 5695): Parashat Bereshit – The Cycle beings again


1934(27th of Tishrei, 5695): Max Yuditzky, who joined the Jewish Legion in 1918 and served in Palestine with the 38thRoyal Fusiliers passed away today in Winnipeg, Canada, where his passing is mourned by “his wife Katee and four son” Dave, Harold, Joseph and Bernard.”


1935(9th of Tishrei, 5696): Erev Yom Kippur


1935(9th of Tishrei, 5696): Eighty-three year old composer and conductor Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen passed away.



1935:Daniel Persky, editor of the Hebrew-language newspaper Hadoar and its sister publication for youth, Doar L’Noar wrote to Aliza Dworkin that ““In my opinion, Sara Kucikowicz’s future will be that of a great Hebrew poet,” who wrote “The Cruel Winter” and “The Vicious Spring.”



1936(20thof Tishrei, 5697): Sixth Day of Sukkoth


1936: Birthdate of Budapest native John Bienenstock, “one of the fathers of mucosal immunology” whose parents escaped to England where he received his medical education before eventually settling in Canada




1936:Sir Oswald Mosley planned a provocative meeting of his British Union of Fascists in the East End for today. The inhabitants of the area determined that ''They shall not pass!'' and congregated at Gardner's Corner. When in response Mosley and his Black Shirts, with a fair degree of police support, changed direction, the protesters dashed along the Commercial Road, surged down Christian Street and turned right into Cable Street. At the junction with Royal Mint Street, now marked by a plaque, the Fascists indeed ''did not pass.'' They were later ordered to disperse, and Mosley thundered: ''The government surrenders to Red violence and Jewish corruption. We never surrender.'' In fact, Fascism in Britain, at least as an organized political movement, was soon a dead letter.


1936: Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson led the funeral services for Jesse Isidor Straus this morning at Temple Emanuel which were attended by an array of dignitaries from several walks of life including Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt who represented the President, Governor and Mrs. Lehman, Mayor La Guardia and Andre de Laboulaye, the French Ambassador which served as a reminder of the close links that Straus had forged with that country while serving as the U.S. Ambassador in Paris.


1936: The New York City Public School system announced today that it is beginning a series of radio broadcasts as part of its educational efforts. Among the broadcasts will be a series aimed at language students including those studying Hebrew who will hear programs about Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the Waves of Galilee.


1936: In Geneva, at a meeting of the League of Nations, the Polish representative said that it was becoming increasingly necessary to find outlets other than Palestine for the “immense reservoir of the Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe” and that includes Poland where “overpopulation creates a need for new immigration outlets for the Jewish masses whose economic structure makes it difficult to integrate them in Poland’s contemporary social evolution.”


1936: It was reported that Judge Bleakly, the Republican running against Herbert Lehmann for Governor of New York and who had “described David Dubinsky” the Jewish labor leader “as a renegade Socialist who sent money to the Reds in Spain” was making an erroneous charges since “the funds raised by the president of the of International Ladies Garment Workers went not to the Reds but to the Red Cross


1937:  The Palestine Post reported from Berlin that German Jews might soon be ordered to wear yellow badges. Jews were ordered to report to local police stations where they were forced to stand for hours, facing the wall, until they collapsed and were ready to give up their property for nothing.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that he Arab Defense Party, which had broken away from the Husseini-run Arab Higher Committee, was allowed to meet in Jerusalem, under the chairmanship of Ragheb Bey Nashashibi.


1938: “Fast and Furious, a mystery comedy” written by Harry Kurnitz was released in the United States today by MGMm


1938: The last casualty of the International Brigades, Haskel Honigstern, was given a state funeral in Barcelona. The Spanish poet Jose Herrera wrote of him: "Haskel Honigstern, Polish worker of the Jewish race, son of an obscure land, killed in the light of my homeland." Coincidentally, the first casualty of the International Brigades was Leon Baum, a Jew from Paris


1939: In an address to the Reichstag,Hitler offers peace to England and France, but only if Germany's former colonies are returned, Germany is allowed to join world trade, and Britain and France allow Germany to solve the "Jewish problem."


1939: In Bucharest, “the Zionist organization announced today that Jewish refugees from Poland between the ages of 14 and 17 are being allowed to enter Palestine and that negotiations to obtain entrance permits for the remained of the Polish Jewish refugees hare are proceeding.”


 


1939: “Ninotchoka” a romantic comedy that was thinly veiled satire of the Soviet Union “based on a screen story by Melichor Lengyel, produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch with a script by Billy Wilder, co-starring Melvyn Douglas and featuring Alexander Granach was released in the United States by MGM.


1940(4th of Tishrei, 5701): Tzom Gedaliah


1940: Birthdate of music manager Gerald Eugene “Jerry” Heller, the Cleveland, Ohio native who was a driving force behind rap and “gangsta rap.”



1940: “The United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs” is scheduled to “present a high holiday broadcast” today “at 2:35 p.m. over the WABC-Columbia network.


1940(4th of Tishrei, 5701): Illinois Governor Henry Horner passed away today at the age of 62.  Horner was a distinguished jurist before entering state politics as a reformer. Henry Levy was the son of Solomon Levy and Dilah Horner.  When his parents divorced, his mother resumed using her maiden name and young Levy became Horner.


1941(15th of Tishrei, 5702): First Day of Sukkoth



1941(15th of Tishrei, 5702): Over the next 48 hours, the majority of Jews in Dvinsk, Latvia, are murdered.


1941(15th of Tishrei, 5702): Phillip Manson, a one-time Rochester newspaper boy and advisor to Presidents Wilson and Harding, who “started the first regular steamship service between New York and Bermuda and who was the husband of Isabelle Manson passed away today.



1941(15th of Tishrei, 5702): In Kovno, 1,500 Jews without work passes were taken away to be shot. The Kovno hospital was sealed shut and burned to the ground with everyone still in it.


1941: It was reported today that Dr. Benjamin Harrow, author of “Jews who Have Received the Nobel Prize” and Chemistry Professor Dr. Harry Wagreich have received a grant from the medical fund of the Ella Sachs Plotz Foundation.


1943: Helen Manaster a Jew posing as a Catholic, was called out of the delivery room in the Kraków, Poland, hospital while in the throes  labor pains to face two Gestapo agents. She keeps her calm and the Gestapo agents tell her to go back to bed.


1943: “In the Posen town hall” Heinrich Himmler delivers a speech in which he openly admits to the extermination of the Jews assuring this listeners that “The Jewish question in the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews that managed to find hiding places will be left over."


1943: This is “The Day the Rabbis Marched on Washington.” Dr. Rafael Medoff‘s article describes one attempt to save the Jews of Europe.  That they did not succeed is beside the point in terms of the historic record; they made the attempt.  Each time we read of these “small” efforts, we cannot help but wonder what a concerted effort might have brought.  The Jews of Europe Save or the Jews of America condemned as putting their own parochial interests ahead of the war effort?


1944(19th of Tishrei, 5705): During Sukkoth Chol Hamoed, a two day uprising begins at Auschwitz. SonderkommandoJews from Poland, Hungary, and Greece, who are forced to transport gassed corpses to crematoria at Auschwitz, attack SS guards with hammers, stones, picks, crowbars, and axes. They also blow up one of the four crematoria with explosives smuggled into the camp from a nearby munitions factory. Russian POWs throw an SS man alive into a crematorium furnace. The SS fights back with machine guns, hand grenades, and dogs. 250 Jews are shot outside the camp wire. An additional 12 who escape will later be found and executed.


1946: Eleven kibbutz settlements were established in a single night.


1946: Urim, a kibbutz located in the Negev, was established today.


1946: Kibbutz Beeri which “which was named after Berl Katznelson” was established today “near Wadi Nahabir, a few kilometers south of Be’erot Yitzhak” by “members of the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed movement.”


1946: Kibbutz Kedma, in south-central Israel, was founded today.


1946: Dan Zur was amont those who founded Kibbutz Nirim, “which named after the Nir brigade of the Hashomer Hatzair” today in the Negev.


1946: Kibbutz Neavtim, which would hold out against the Egyptian Army despite being completely surrounded during the War of Independence, was founded today “by immigrants from Hungary in the northern Negev.


1946: Kibbutz “Hatzerim” which is “located 8 kilometers west of Beersheba in the Negev desert in Israel” was founded today.


1946:Mishmar HaNegev was established today by members of Borochovi Youth, a youth group affiliated with Poalei Zion,


1946: Establishment of Kfar Darom, not far from Gaza. Two years later, attacking Egyptian forces would capture the Kibbutz after a prolonged siege.


1946: Tkuma, a moshav located in the Negev whose original settlers were Holocaust surviors, was established today.


1946: Kibbutz Gal-On (Monument of Strength)  “which stands on a hill approximately twenty kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea” was founded today by members from Poland some of whom had survived the wartime ghettos or had fought as partisans against the Germans.  The name was a memorial to those who had died in the Ghetto revolts.


1946: Shoval, named for a nearby ancient biblical town, was established by South African Jews sixteen miles north of Beersheba.  To deal with the harsh climate the kibbutzim used contour plowing and built a modern reservoir.  While cultivating the land, they also cultivated good relations with the Bedouin who passed through the area.


1946: “Bill Steiner, representing the Maccabiah club of New York, captured the U.S. national title in the 30 kilometer run today” with a time of 1 hour, 38 minutes and 2 seconds. Steiner’s win was no fluke.  He had won the AAU 20 mile run in Philadelphia in 1932 and won the Maccabiah marathon championship in Tel Aviv in 1935.


1947(22nd of Tishrei, 5708): Shmini Atzeret


1947(22nd of Tishrei, 5708): Just two days before his 57th birthday composer and screenwriter Samuel “Sam” Hoffenstein whose most famous work was “The Wizard of Oz” passed away today.



1947: After having opened at the National Theatre in 1946 and moved to the Majestic Theatre in July of 1947, Call Me Mister,” a revue with words and music by Harold Rome and a cast that included Jules Munshin continued its Broadway run at the Plymouth Theatre.


1948: Frederick Sylvester, a former employee of the Jerusalem Electric Corporation was found guilty of espionage in connection the Ben Yehuda Street Bombing and was sentenced to seven years in prison.


1949(13th of Tishrei, 5710): Sixty-two year old major league outfielder Guy Zinn who played from 1911 through 1915 and who scored the first run at Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, passed away today.


1949: “The Heiress,” the film version of the 1947 play, directed and produced by William Wyler was released today in the United States.


1949: In New York City, “Josephine (Schleifer) Moonves, a nurse, and Herman Moonves gave birth to Leslie Roy “Les Moonves who in 2018 “stepped down as President and CEO of CBS after being named in multiple, credible claims of sexual harassment.


1950: Birthdate of science fiction author David Brin.


1951(6th of Tishrei, 5712): Shabbat Shuva


1951(6th of Tishrei, 5712):Otto Fritz Meyerhof, German born American physician and biochemist passed away.  Mayerhof shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Archibald Vivian Hill.  Meyerhof left Germany in 1938, settling in Philadelphia in 1941 where he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania.


1952:  The Jerusalem Post reported that Prof. Nelson Glueck was invited by the Israel Exploration Society to head a projected 10-year archeological survey of Israel. Nelson Glueck was one of the great names among the archeologists working in Israel.  Born in 1900, Glueck graduated from the University of Cincinnati and earned his PhD from the University of Jena (Germany) in 1926.  During his career he uncovered over 1,000 sites in the Middle East including the copper mines of King Solomon and the Red Sea port of Ezion Geber.  Glueck's discoveries provided archeological verification for information found in the Bible.  In 1947, Glueck was named President of Hebrew Union College.  One of his most famous and popular books was Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev, published in 1959. Glueck's fame was such that he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in December, 1963, under the title "The Search for Man's Past."  Glueck passed away in 1971.


1953(27th of Tishrei, 5714): Seventy-nine year old Moshe Smilansky, the Ukrainian native who became part of the first Aliyah when he moved to Palestine in 1890, who served with the Jewish Legion during WW I and “who considered himself a disciple of Ahad Ha’aim passed ways today.



1953(27th of Tishrei, 5714):Doctor Rahel Hirsch the German born doctor who became the first woman in the Kingdom of Prussia to be appointed as a professor in medicine passed away. Born in 1870 in Frankfurt am Main, she was one of eleven children of Mendel Hirsch, the director of the girls’ school of the Jewish religious community in Frankfurt am Main. From 1885 to 1889, she took a degree in education in Wiesbaden. She then worked until 1898 as a teacher. After her doctorate she was assistant to Friedrich Kraus at Charité. Since she was Jewish, the takeover by the Nazis meant she could not practice medicine. In October of 1938 she moved to London, where one of her sisters lived. Since her degree was not recognized by the British, she worked as a laboratory assistant and later as a translator. The last years she spent plagued by depression, delusions and persecutory fears. She was in a mental hospital on the outskirts of London, where she died on October 6, 1953 at 83 years old.


1955(20th of Tishrei, 5714): Chol HaMoed Sukkoth


1955(20th of Tishrei, 5714): Sixty year old English poet John Rodker, one of the “Whitechapel Boys” passed away today.


1956: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion rejects Moshe Dayan’s demand for a reprisal raid, assuring his chief of staff that plans were in the works for a major operation against the Egyptians.


1957: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today at Malinow & Silverman Mortuary on Venice Blvd. for Arthur (Artie) Auerbach best known for his comedic role of “Mr. Kitzel who was survived by his widow Mrs. Doris Auerbach.


1959: NBC broadcast “The Wonderful World of Entertainment” the first episode of “Startime” with a script by Larry Gelbart and starring Polly Bergin.


1960(15th of Tishrei, 5721): Sukkoth


1961: Vic Morrow “appeared in an episode of the ABC drama series “Target: The Corruputers.


1962: After 677 performances at the Brooks Atkinson the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s first play “Come Blow Your Horn.”


1963:Barbra Streisand appears on "The Judy Garland Show"


1963:  Sandy Koufax leads the LA Dodgers to a four game sweep of the Yanks in the 60th World Series.  Koufax pitched victories against Yankee ace Whitey Ford in games one and four.


1964(30th of Tishrei, 5725): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1964(30th of Tishrei, 5725): Fifty-six year old who reached the rank of staff sergeant in WW II where his work of preparing paratroopers’ equipment included using his tailor skills to work on parachutes died of a heart attack today which led to his family memorializing his life fifty years later by donating a Torah written in his honor the USS Gerald R. Ford, “the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier.” (As reported by Rich Tenorio)


1965(10th of Tishrei, 5726): Yom Kippur


1965: It was reported today from “Jerusalem, Israeli Sector” that “that the 25 hours of fasting and worship will last until this evening.” (Editor’s Note – The use of the term “Israeli Sector” when used in terms of Jerusalem may sound strange to some. But this report was filed during those 19 years when Jordan illegally occupied the Old City in violation of UN resolutions passed in 1947 – violations which brought no condemnation from the World Community nor any accompanying demand to turn the city over to the local Arab population.)


1965: Sandy Koufax refuses to pitch in the first game of the World Series because it is Yom Kippur. “In October 1965, the Los Angeles Dodgers were playing the Minnesota Twins in the World Series. The opening game was on Yom Kippur and Sandy Koufax, who had won 26 games that season and struck out 382 batters to set a major league record, did not pitch for his team. Koufax was not treated with respect by the local press in St. Paul. He did pitch the second game and lost, but won the fifth and seventh games (both complete game shutouts), and the Dodgers won the World Series. Koufax won the Cy Young Award three times, as well as being voted the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1963. In 1965 he pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs, the fourth no-hitter of his career. Koufax is considered by many to be one of the greatest pitchers of all time.”


1968: Eighty-nine year old Maurice Arnold de Forest passed. He was the adopted son of the millionaire Baroness Clara de Hirsch, née Bischoffsheim, wife of Jewish banker and philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch de Gereuth and/or the illegitimate son of Juliette Arnold de Forest fathered by the Baron.  Regardless, the motor car race, aviator and British politician converted to Catholicism


1969: NBC broadcast episode for of “My World…and Welcome to it” created by Melville Shavelson, co-starring Harold J. Stone.


1969: Israeli officials reported today that three Egyptian MIGs (Soviet built warplane) had been shot down in a battle over the Suez Canal.


1973(10th of Tishrei, 5734):  Normal life grinds to a halt in Israel on Yom Kippur which also happens to fall on Shabbat.


1973: At in the morning, Israeli intelligence had hard proof that war would break out before sundown on October 6.  The information had come from the head of Mossad.  Moshe Dyan, the Defense Minister, refused the request of the IFD Chief of Staff General Elazar to mobilize and launch a pre-emptive strike against Syria.  The Nixon Administration had warned the Israelis not to strike first or to take any action which the Arabs could claim was provocative. Elazar appealed to Prime Minister Golda Meir.  Meir strikes a compromise.  She will allow a mobilization, but it is only to be partial one. 


1973: Prime Minister Golda Meir convened an emergency meeting in Tel Aviv with senior defense officials at 8:05 this morning.  Six hours before the outbreak of the war, Israeli preparations for a general offensive by Arab armies finally began. The warnings of the intelligence source were being taken seriously, as was the fact that the Russians were pulling families out of Egypt and Syria, a sign of approaching war. But U.S. intelligence was not predicting war. Minister Yisrael Galili said a source had suggested the war could be prevented by leaking information that would reach the Egyptians and Syrians, so they would knew their plans for attack had been discovered. The Israeli officials at the meeting were concerned about Jordan because it wasn't clear if the kingdom would join in the assault on Israel. Initially, Mrs. Meir deliberated between Chief of Staff Elazar's call for a full mobilization of the reserves and Moshe Dayan's request for a limited call-up. "If you approve a major mobilization of the reserves, I won't resign," Dayan said. But with an eye to international reaction, he added, "A full mobilization before even one shot is fired - they will say right away that we are the aggressors." At 9:20 A.M., a full mobilization was approved.


1973: War erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday. The two Arab states attacked with hundreds of planes and more than a thousand tanks. By the end of the day, the Egyptians have established three bridgeheads across the Suez, Syrian artillery is shelling Israeli settlements and Israelis were being told to black out their windows in case of an air raid.  By the end of the day 200,000 Israeli soldiers, most of whom were mobilizing reservists faced 300,000 Syrians and 850,000 Egyptians.


1973: According to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak he personally started the Yom Kippur War today “by attacking an Israeli communications base in his fighter jet six minutes before the rest of the Arab Armies’ surprise attack on the Jewish state began.” (As reported by Naama Barak)


1973:On the first night of the Yom Kippur War  five boats led by flotilla commander Michael Barkai sailed north to engage in the first-ever missile battle at sea off the main Syrian port of Latakia. The feisty Barkai told his captains that their objective was to draw the Syrian missile boats out of harbor. "If they don't come out, I mean to sail in and get them with guns." Two Syrian picket boats were encountered well off the Syrian coast. The first, a torpedo boat, was sunk with gunfire. The second, a minesweeper, was hit with missiles, the Gabriel's first blood. Three Syrian missile boats already at sea turned to meet the intruders. With their 25-kilometer advantage, the Syrians got in the first salvo. The Israeli boats raised their electronic umbrella and charged. In naval headquarters, officers monitoring Barkai's radio net heard him report the Syrian launch. His voice was level but taut. Herut Tzemah braced. The lives of 200 men as well as the fate of the missile boat program hung now on whether he had assessed the Styx's parameters correctly. The radio remained silent for the two minutes it took for the Syrian missiles to complete their flight. Then Barkai's voice. "They missed." The three Syrian boats ran for harbor, but one, the only one with missiles remaining, turned on the closest Israeli pursuer. As the two boats raced at each other, the Syrian fired first. The Israeli vessel again put up its electronic and chaff umbrella and at maximum Gabriel range launched two missiles. The Styx and Gabriel missiles passed each other, the former hitting the sea, the latter exploding on the deck of the Syrian vessel. A second Syrian boat was sunk a few moments later. The Soviet-built vessels had no countermeasures and were doomed once the Israelis reached Gabriel range. The captain of the third Syrian boat, realizing the situation, ran his vessel onto the shore to escape.


1973: Shmuel Gonen who had “inherited the IDF Southern Command from Arik Sharon” on July 15, faced an Egyptian force of five infantry divisions, three mechanized divisions and two armored divisions that included 1,400 tanks with one division at the front that included 294 tanks.(As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)


1973: The 162ndDivision under the command of Major General Avraham Adan began the first three days of desperate attempts to drive the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.


1973(10th of Tishrei, 5734):  Yadin Tannenbaum, a young flautist was killed in 1973 while fighting in the Yom Kippur war. The 1981 Halil, Leonard Bernstein’s nocturne for flute, percussion, and strings, it is dedicated “to the spirit of Yadin and to His Fallen Brothers.”


 


1973: For action today simply described as delaying enemy armor, Captain Zvika Greengold earned Israel’s Medal of Valor. The events that earned him Israel’s highest commendation are as follows.


Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Greengold was home on leave when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on two fronts. He was not attached to any unit as he was about to take a course for company commanders. Once he realized war had broken out, he hitchhiked to Nafekh, a command center and important crossroads in the Golan Heights, where he initially helped with the wounded, as no tanks were available. When two damaged Centurion tanks were repaired, Greengold was put in charge of them and sent with hastily-assembled scratch crews down the Tapline Road.


Greengold's "Koah Zvika" (Zvika Force) spotted Syrian tanks belonging to the 51st Independent Tank Brigade of the Syrian Army which had broken through the line and were advancing unopposed northwest along the road to Nafekh. Greengold's two tanks engaged the opposing T-55s at 2100 hours, with Greengold destroying six. Later, he had lost contact with his other tank when he spotted the advancing 452nd Tank Battalion. He engaged the enemy, taking advantage of the darkness and moving constantly to fool the Syrians into thinking the opposition was stronger than it was. Greengold destroyed or damaged ten enemy armored vehicles before the confused Syrians withdrew, believing they were facing a sizable force. Even Greengold's superiors were deceived; as the fighting wore on, he did not dare report how weak he actually was over the radio for fear it would be intercepted; at best he could only hint "the situation isn't good". At a time when Force Zvika was only one tank, Colonel Yitzhak Ben-Shoham, the brigade commander, assumed it to be "of at least company strength". For the next 20 hours, he fought, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with other tanks, displaying an uncanny knack for showing up again and again at the critical moment to tip the scales of a skirmish. He had to change vehicles "half a dozen times" as his tanks were knocked out. He soldiered on, even after he was wounded and burned. When Nafekh itself came under attack from a fresh force of T-62s, he rushed over to bolster the defense. In a lull in the fighting, an exhausted Greengold got out of his latest tank and dropped to the ground, murmuring, "I can't anymore." Afterward, he claimed 20 enemy tanks destroyed; other estimates place his tally at 40 or more.


1973:“The Syrian 7th Infantry Division attacked the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade in the area between Mount Hermon and a southern ridge known as "Booster" in Israel” in what was the first day of the Battle for the Valley of Tears.


1973: “Rabbis throughout” New York City interrupted…Yom Kippur service…to tell their congregations about the outbreak of war in the Middle East and to offer special prayers for Israel.


1974: Rose Kushner’s “first major article on the topic of breast cancer was published in The Washington Post” today.


1974: Soviet authorities allowed 90 Jews “to hold picnic in the woods outside Moscow in celebration of the festival of Succoth”


1978: “Goin’ Coconuts” “a musical comedy directed by Howard “Howie” Morris was released in Hawaii today.


1979(15th of Tishrei, 5740): Sukkoth and Shabbat.


1980: “Refuseniks Yacov Ariev and Haim Solovey from Riga, and Isai Minkin from Moscow, began a hunger in protest against the authorities’ refusal to grant them exit visas.”


1981: Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Moslem fanatics angered by the peace treaty with Israel. Sadat was murdered on the 14th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.


1981:Israel, using the United States as a go between to gain Saudi cooperation, rescued a grounded Israeli missile ship from a sandbar off the coast of Saudi Arabia, Israeli military sources said today.


1983: During the Israel bank stock crisis, “Black Thursday.”


1984(10th of Tishrei, 5745): Yom Kippur


1985(21st of Tishrei, 5746): Hoshanah Rabah


1985(21st of Tishrei, 5746): Seventy-nine year old Czech engineer Vilém Klíma passed away today.



1986: CBS broadcast the first episode of “My Sister Sam” co-starring Rebecca Schaeffer


1986: NBC broadcasts the first episode of the 6thSeason of the “Cosby Show,” a sit-com created by Ed Weinberger.


1990: “American Dream” a documentary directed by Barbara Kopple who produced the film along with Arthur Cohn premiered today at the New York Film Festival.


1991: Elizabeth Taylor who had converted to Judaism in 1959 a year after her husband Michael Todd had died in a plane wreck, married her seventh husband today.


1991: During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Nominee Clarence Thomas, Nina Totenberg filed a report on NPR outlining claims by Anita Hill that she had been the victim of sexual harassment by the nominee.  (Totenberg was Jewish; the other two were note)


1993: “Marilyn” an opera by Ezra Laderman premiered at City Opera.


1994: Tova Blitz wrote a letter today historian Martin Gilbert today in which she described “a whimsical moment in the maternity ward of a Toronto hospital” on VE Day when she “Tova Blitz gave birth to her son while a Mrs. Berlin gave birth to her son


1995: Two days after premiering at the New York Film Festival, “Kicking and Screaming” directed by Noah Baumbach and co-starring Eliot Gould was released in the United States today.


1995: “Assassins” produced and directed by Richard Donner was released in the United States today.


1995: Melissa Gilbert gave birth to a son whom she named Michael, in honor of Michael Landon, her “father” Little House on the Prairie a slice of Americana in which Jews played a key creative role.


1996(23rd of Tishrei, 5757): Simchat Torah


1996: The New York Times features Meyer Levin’s review of The Diaryof a Young Girl by Anne Frank


1997(5th of Tishrei, 5758): Eighty year old Yevgeny Khaldei the Soviet combat photographer best known for the iconic picture of a Russian soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag at the end of the Battle of Berlin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstag_flag_original.jpg


(This means that three of the iconic photos of WWII were taken by Jews, the others being Joe Rosenthal and Robert Capa)


1998(16th of Tishrei, 5759): Second Day of Sukkoth


1998(16th of Tishrei, 5759): Eighty-five year old Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and author Jerome Weidman passed away today. (As reported by Mel Gussow)




1999:A 75-year-old American woman sued the Hungarian Government today for the return of art masterpieces looted by Nazis from the Jews and now held by Budapest museums, lawyers said. Martha Nierenberg, granddaughter of Baron Maurice Herzog, who once owned a Budapest mansion filled with art valued today at $10 million to $20 million, filed the suit in Budapest City Court, the lawyers said. She lives in Armonk, N.Y. The suit seeks the return of parts of the 2,500-piece collection, which the suit says was looted by Adolf Eichmann as he oversaw the deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1944. The collection includes works by El Greco, Cranach and van Dyck, some of which have wound up in the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery, both in Budapest. Eichmann, whose SS killed or deported some 600,000 of Hungary's prewar Jewish population of 800,000, shipped the best pieces of the Herzog collection to Germany. Many works recovered by the Americans after the war were shipped back to Hungary in the late 1940's but were placed in museums instead of being returned to their owners. Efforts to recover them revived only after Communism collapsed in 1989, the lawyers said. Peter Szakonyi, a public relations agent in Budapest working with the lawyers and the American public relations firm representing Mrs. Nierenberg, said negotiations between Mrs. Nierenberg and the Hungarian Government to reach an amicable settlement had been going on for four years, without result. A spokesman for the Hungarian Prime Minister said the Government had not yet gotten official notice of the suit and therefore could not comment.


2000: CBS broadcast the first episode of the original CSI  (later known as CSI Las Vegas) a long-running cerebral crime series created by Antony E. Zuker and brought to the small screen by executive producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Carol Mendelsohn


2000: U.S. premiere of “Meet the Parents” directed by Jay Roach with a score by Randy Newman and a script co-authored by Jim Hamburg.


2000(7th of Tishrei, 5761): Fifty-four year old Bachor Jann was killed by stone-throwing Palestinians on the Coastal Highway near Jisr az-Zarqa


2002: Today, Ruth Gruber, who had worked to bring European Jews to a safe haven in Oswego, NY, helped to “dedicate the Safe Haven Museum” which houses of library named in her honor.


2002: The New York Timesfeatured a review of Mr. Strangelove, Ed Sikov’s biography of Peter Sellers the son of a Jewish motherand a descendant of famed Anglo-Jewish prize fighter Daniel Mendoza.


2003(10th of Tishrei, 5674): Yom Kippur


2003: Aviel Barclay has become the first certified Soferet, or female Torah scribe. She is currently writing a Sefer Torah, the first ever known to be written completely by a woman's hand. The Women's Torah project of Seattle's Kadima Congregation has hired Barclay to write the Sefer Torah and has sponsored her studies to become a certified Soferet. Writing a Sefer Torah is a full-time project that will take Barclay at least 12 months to complete. Once the Sefer is completed in the Spring of 2005 and is dedicated in Seattle, it will travel to Jewish communities around the world. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archive)


2004(21stof Tishrei, 5765): Hoshana Raba


2005: The High Court of Justice established the absolute illegality of using Palestinian civilians in a military operation, whether in the "neighbor procedure" or the related "early warning procedure."


2005:  The Jerusalem Post reported that two Israelis have undergone successful transplants over Rosh Hashana, in Israel and in Europe. Efrat Rinot-Koren, the 30-year-old mother whose liver failed from acute hepatitis a month after having a baby, had undergone a liver transplant in Belgium. Meanwhile, a 20-year-old man was the first Israeli to undergo a heart and kidney transplant at the same time. The patient, operated on successfully at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus, was in critical condition and with only a few days to live when the organs became available. He was in stable condition on Wednesday night. So far, only a handful of such double transplants have been performed around the world.


2005: In the Jewish Journal, Jonathan Kellerman who along with his wife Faye, are writers of murder mysteries, publishes “Boy Do We Need Teshuvah Now!”



2006(14th of Tishrei, 5767): Erev Sukkoth and Erev Shabbat


2006: “Little Children” co-starring Gregg Edelman and featuring Rebeca Schull was released in the United States today by New Line Cinema.


2006: Robert Adler's latest patent application was filed on today for his work on touch-screen technology


2007(24th of Tishrei, 5768): Parshat Bereshit – the cycle begins again.


2007: In an article entitled “D.M. synagogue’s all-female leaders a rare feat,” the AP reports that Tifereth Israel Synagogue in Des Moines is unique among Conservative Congregations because it boasts  both a female rabbi and a female cantor.  Rabbi Beryl Pador and Cantor Deborah Bletstein make up this dynamic duo.  Rabbi Pador had been leading the congregation for several years when the decision was made to hire Cantor Bletstein in time for the 2007 High Holiday season.  In the Mid-Continent Region of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism which is composed of 48 congregations only one other has a female lead rabbi and only two others have female cantors.


2007: “A Priest Methodically Reveals Ukrainian Jews’ Fate” published today, Elaine Sciolino describes the efforts of a French Roman Catholic Priest named Patrick Desbois to discover and document the fate of the Ukrainian Jews.



2007: The New York Times featured a review of Francisco Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?


2008(7th of Tishrei, 5769): Ninety-four year old anti-Zionist Alfred Lilienthal passed away today.




2008:  At Rutgers University in New Jersey, Arie Nesher, architect, city planner and professor at Tel Aviv University delivers an address entitled “Politics of the Environment in Israel and the Regionas part of the Ruth Ellen Steinman Bloustein and Edward J. Bloustein Memorial Lecture series.


2008: Sports Illustrated Magazine includes a review of Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman and an article about Joe Maddon, “Tampa Bay’s progressive contrarian skipper” who “was hired by” Matt Silverman, the Jewish President of the team whose primary owner is Jewish financier Stuart Sternberg.”


2009(18th of Tishrei, 5770):Raymond Federman, the French born American author who wrote Double or Nothing, passed away today.


2009: Mark A. Grey, Michele Devlin and Aaron Goldsmith are scheduled to discuss their new book “Postville, U.S.A.” at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, IA.


2009:MK Yossi Beilin, former head of the Meretz Party, announced tonight that he is quitting politics to enter business.


2009(18th of Tishrei, 5770:Ruth L. Kirschstein, a National Institutes of Health pathologist, passed away today.





 


 


2010: A program styled Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín, “We Will Sing to the Nazis What We Cannot Say to Them” is scheduled to be performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín tells the story of courageous Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp during World War II who learned Verdi’s Requiem Mass by rote and then performed this compelling work 16 times as a statement of defiance and resistance, answering the worst of mankind with the best of mankind. The concert/drama will feature a full performance of The Requiem with actors, video testimony with surviving members of the choir, and original Nazi propaganda film footage


2010:The New York Public Library (NYPL) has named Anthony W. Marx as the new president. Marx calls New York City his native hometown, and currently serves as president of Amherst College


2011: Publication of “My Favorite Things: Calvin Trillin.”



 2011: Sage “Rosenfels signed a one-year deal for $970,000 with the Miami Dolphins


2011: The Jewish Museum is scheduled to offer the last of its High Holiday Themed docent tours of the permanent exhibition, “Culture and Continuity.”


2011: Timothy Shriver is scheduled to moderate a program based on “War of the Worldviews” by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Llodinow, whose father led the Jewish resistance against the Nazis in Częstochowa, Poland and survived imprisonment at Buchenwald.


2011:Police arrested a suspect from northern Israel several days ago in connection with the torching of a mosque in the village of Tuba Zanghariya overnight Sunday in an apparent "Price Tag" attack.


2011:Thirty-eight years after the Yom Kippur War broke out, the IDF held a surprise drill today for two reservist divisions in an effort to prepare the Reserve Corps for possible emergency call-up orders.


2012: Arnon Goldfinger’s “The Flat” is scheduled for a second and final screening at the Hampltons International Film Festival.


2012: Director Erez Laufer’s “One Day After Peace” is scheduled for a second and final screening at the Hampltons International Film Festival.


2012: In Washington, DC the annual Cleveland Park Sukkah walk is scheduled to take place after Kiddush.


2012: The Alexandria Kleztet is scheduled to perform at the “Art on the Avenue” festival in Alexandria, VA.


2012: In Grand Forks, ND, Cantor Alane Katzew is scheduled to lead services at B’nai Israel Synagogue that will encompass the themes of Sukkoth, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.


2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the traditional Saturday morning includes a special memorial to mark 39thanniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur which began on October 6, 1973.


2012:Police carried out raids across France today after DNA on a grenade that exploded last month at a kosher grocery store led them to a suspected jihadist cell of young Frenchmen recently converted to Islam.


2012: The IDF shot down a foreign drone that had penetrated deep into Israeli airspace this afternoon, flying for half an hour before it was intercepted.


2012: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak seemed to turn the page on their recent public bickering during a one-and-a-half-hour meeting tonight, saying that they had agreed to continue working together to overcome Israel's security threats.


2013: In New York the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Hidden from History: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771-1789,” “a conference that explores French and German rabbinic courts of the late 1700s.”


2013: Threshold to the Sacred: The Ark Door of Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue” is scheduled to open at Yeshiva University Museum.

2013: The Tulane University Jewish Studies Department is scheduled to sponsor a lecture by Jack Kulgelmas of the University of Florida, "Sifting the Ruins: Jewish Journalists Return to Poland, 1945-1947"


2013: E.L. Doctorow is scheduled to give an exclusive preview of his newest book, Andrew's Brain: A Novel at the opening of The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.


2013: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Hotel Francforts by David Leavitt and “Unzipped,” an essay by Erica Jong “about storytelling – why certain stories stick with us and others don’t.”


2013: The formal ceremony installing Rabbi Asher Lopatin as the new president of Yeshivat Chovevi Torah is scheduled to take place today.


2013: The Jewish Endowment Foundation (JEF) of Louisiana is scheduled to honor several Jewish community leaders “who have exemplified giving and charity.”


2013: “Israel Prize winner David Kazhdan, 67, was severely injured when he was hit by a truck while riding his bike in Jerusalem.” (As reported by Spencer Ho)


2013: Eli Zeira and Zvi Zamir, former heads of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate and the Mossad respectively, bitter rivals who stood at the center of the drama leading up to the surprise Arab attack on Israel that launched the 1973 Yom Kippur War, shared their sharply divergent narratives about the outbreak of the fighting today. (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)


2013: “Hundreds of Labor party activists, volunteers and supporters gathered in Tel Aviv tonight for the formal launch of MK Shelly Yachimovich’s campaign for reelection as party leader.” (As reported by Haviv Rettig Gur)


2013: Rabbi March Schneier, the graduate of Yeshiva University and founder of the Hampton Synagogue and The Foundation of Ethnic Understanding married his fifth wife who would later be replaced by his sixth wife “Simi Teitelbaum.”


2013: Two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine winners were Jews – James Rothaman of Yale and Randy Schekman of the University of California. Two of the candidates who did not win were Israelis – Professors Howard Cedar and Aharon Razin from Hebrew University.


2013(3rd of Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety three year old Rabbi Ovad Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Sephardi community passed away today.




2014: Roman Rabinoivich who “made his Israel Philharmonic debut…before his 11th birthday is scheduled to perform with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.


2014: “A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons was unable Monday to explain the change on the bureau’s “inmate locator,” which changed Jonathan Pollard’s release date on its website from “Nov. 15 2015” to “Life.” (As reported by JTA)


2014(12th of Tishrei, 5775): Eighty-six year old actress Marian Seldes the niece of journalist Gilbert Seldes passed away today.



2014: In Washington, DC, the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a panel discussion “From Church to Condo: D.C.'s Urban Evolution.”


2014: Sweden’s Ambassador is scheduled to come to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem “for a reprimand meeting” following that country’s announcement that it intends to recognize Palestine. (As reported by Itamar Eichner)


2014: “The White House hit back today at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's accusation that US criticism of Israeli settlement construction was "against American values."


2014: “Welfare and Social Services Minister Meir Cohen announced today a budget increase of NIS 1.7 billion was approved for the implementation of the recommendations of the Elalouf Committee to Reduce Poverty in Israel.” (As reported by Omri Efraim)


2015(23rd of Tishrei, 5776): Simchat Torah


2015: “Vera Rubin, a US astronomer who has described herself as a religious Jew,” and who had “emerged as the pundits’ choice for the Nobel Prize Physics…failed to win the prestigious award” today. (As reported by Stuart Winer)


2015: After Simchat Torah Services the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Pita Luncheon!


2016: In London, the UKJF is scheduled to host a screening of “Little Men.”


2016: “AKA Nadia” is scheduled to be shown at SERET DC, “a celebration of contemporary Israeli cinema.


2016: Shimon Dotan’s “The Settlers” is scheduled to be shown at the 54th New York Film Festival.


2016: “A mortar shell fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an open area in southern Israel today” making this “the second such attack in as many days.”


2016: The Israeli Supreme Court Project at Cardozo Law School in collaboration with Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to a panel discussion on “Women at the Wall on the Bus, and in Front of the Court: Religious Women as Agents of Change through the Israeli Supreme Court."
2017(16th of Tishrei, 5778): Second Day of Sukkoth;
2017: On the secular calendar, 44thanniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur when a handful of brave men held the line on the Suez Canal and the Golan fighting desperately to avoid what could have been a Holocaust in the truest sense of the word – a Holocaust that was brought on in part by the hubris of leaders who refused to believe the intelligence reports they received warning of the attacks.  Of these men we can repeat the words of Churchill – never have so many owed so much to so few.



2017: The Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem is scheduled to host special Chol Hamo’ed “special activities all about sugar…sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.”


2017: The evening, the University of Iowa Hillel is scheduled to host “Sushi Shabbat.”


2017: Two days “after his body was found covered in stab wounds” and one day after he was supposed to have celebrated his 70th birthday, Reuven Schmerling was laid to rest at a funeral attended by “over a thousand people” (As reported by Jacob Magid)


2018: On the secular calendar, 45th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War.  (Editor’s Note: Adjusting Sights a novel by IDF veteran Sabato, does an amazing job of capturing the desperation and bravery of the fighting on the Golan)






2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to a host a luncheon after Shabbat services and Seudah Shlishit following Mincah.


2018: In another example of the vitality of “small community Judaism,” Ari Collins is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah at Agudas Achim in Coralville, IA.


2018(27thof Tishrei, 5779):  Parashat Bereshit; the cycle begins again.  For more see



 


 


This Day, October 7, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 7


3761 BCE: According to some Jewish traditionalists, this corresponds to the date on which God created the World.  This marks the start of the epoch of the Modern Hebrew calendar.  The attached article should provide an explanation of this entry.  For those who have been studying in Cedar Rapids, please note the role of the Babylonian exile in the development of the calendar, which, as we have seen has been one of the most important vehicles for Jewish survival. I have included this rather lengthy article since so many people ask about the Jewish calendar and I know so little about. 


"The Hebrew calendar, also known as the Jewish calendar, is the annual calendar used in Judaism. It is based upon both lunar months and a solar cycle (which defines its years) and so is a lunisolar calendar. This is in contrast to the Gregorian calendar, which is based solely upon a solar cycle, or the Islamic calendar, which is purely lunar. Jews use this calendar to determine when the new Hebrew months start; this calendar determines the Jewish holidays, which Torah portions to read, and which set of Psalms should be read each day. Jews have been using a lunisolar calendar since Biblical times, but originally referred to the months by number rather than name. During the Babylonian exile, they adopted Babylonian names for the months. Some sects, such as the Essenes, used a solar calendar. The epoch of the modern Hebrew calendar is Monday, October 7, 3761 BCE, being the tabular date (same daylight period) in the proleptic Julian calendar corresponding to 1 Tishri AM 1 (AM = Anno Mundi = in the year of the world). This date is about one year before the traditional Jewish date of Creation on 25 Elul AM 1! A minority place Creation on 25 Adar AM 1, about six months after the modern epoch. Thus adding 3761 to a Gregorian year number will yield the Hebrew year number beginning in autumn (add 3760 for that ending in autumn). This holds until the Gregorian year 1 BCE. After that (due to the lack of year 0), adding 3760 to the Gregorian year yields the Hebrew year beginning in autumn (3759 for that ending in autumn). Because the Hebrew year drifts relative to the Gregorian year, this actually only works until the year 22,203, but it's a fairly good rule of thumb. The Hebrew month is tied to an estimate of the average time taken by the Moon to cycle from lunar conjunction to lunar conjunction. Twelve lunar months are about 354 days while the solar year is about 365 days so an extra lunar month is added every two or three years in accordance with a 19-year cycle of 235 lunar months (12 regular months every year plus 7 extra or embolismic months every 19 years). The average Hebrew year length is about 365.2468 days, about 7 minutes longer than the average tropical solar year which is about 365.2422 days. Approximately every 216 years, those minutes add up so that the Hebrew year is "slower" than the average solar year by a full day. Because the average Gregorian year is 365.2425 days, the average Hebrew year is slower by a day every 231 Gregorian years. There are exactly 14 different patterns that Hebrew calendar years may take. Each of these patterns is called a "keviyah" (Hebrew for "species"), and is distinguished by the day of the week for Rosh Hashanah of that particular year and by that particular year's length.


  • A chaserah year (Hebrew for "deficient" or "incomplete") is 353 or 383 days long because a day is taken away from the month of Kislev. The Hebrew letter ח"het", and the letter for the weekday denotes this pattern.

  • A kesidrah year ("regular" or "in-order") is 354 or 384 days long. The Hebrew letter כ"kaf", and the letter for the week-day denotes this pattern.

  • A shlemah year ("abundant" or "complete") is 355 or 385 days long because a day is added to the month of Heshvan. The Hebrew letter ש"shin", and the letter for the week-day denotes this pattern.


A variant of this pattern naming includes another letter which specifies the day of the week for the first day of Pesach (Passover) in the year. Every hour is divided into 1080 parts. A part (31/3seconds or 1/18 minute) equals a small Babylonian time period called a barleycorn, itself equal to 1/72of a Babylonian time degree (1° of celestial rotation). The weekdays start with Sunday (day 1) and proceed to Saturday (day 7). Since some calculations use division, a remainder of 0 signifies Saturday. The calendar is based on mean lunar conjunctions called "molads" spaced precisely 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 parts apart. Actual conjunctions vary from the molads by up to 13 hours in each direction due to the nonuniform velocity of the moon. This value for the interval between molads (the mean synodic month) was known to the Babylonians by about 250 BCE and was later used by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus and the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy. Its remarkable accuracy was achieved using records of lunar eclipses over several centuries. Measured using an absolute scale, such as an atomic clock, the mean synodic month is becoming gradually longer, but since the rotation of the earth is slowing even more the mean synodic month is becoming gradually shorter in terms of the day-night cycle. The value 29-12-793 was almost exactly correct in 1 CE and is now about 0.6 s per month too great. The 19 year cycle has 12 non-leap and 7 leap years. There are 235 lunar months in each cycle. This gives a total of 6939 days, 16 hours and 595 parts for each cycle. Due to the vagaries of the Hebrew calendar, 19 Hebrew years can be either 6939, 6940, 6941, or 6942 days each. To start on the same day of the week, the days in the cycle must be divisible by 7, but none of these values can be so divided. This keeps the Hebrew calendar from repeating itself too often. The calendar almost repeats every 247 years, except for an excess of 50 minutes (905 parts). So the calendar actually repeats every 36,288 cycles (every 689,472 Hebrew years). The leap years of 13 months are the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and the 19th years. Dividing the Hebrew year number by 19, and looking at the remainder will tell you if the year is a leap year (for the 19th year, the remainder is zero). A Hebrew leap year is one that has 13 months in it, a non-leap year has 12 months. A mnemonic word in Hebrew is GUCHADZaT (the Hebrew letters gimel-vav-het aleph-dalet-zayin-tet, i.e. 3, 6, 8, 1, 4, 7, 9. See Hebrew numerals). Another mnemonic is that the intervals of the major scale follow the same pattern as do Hebrew leap years: a whole step in the scale corresponds to two non-leap years between consecutive leap years, and a half step to one non-leap between two leap years. A Hebrew non leap-year will only have 353, 354, or 355 days. A leap year will have 383, 384, or 385 days. Although simple math would calculate 21 patterns for the calendar years, there are other limitations which means that Rosh Hashanah may only occur on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, according to the following table:


 


Day of Week

Number of Days

Monday

353

355

383

385

Tuesday

354

 

 

384

Thursday

354

355

383

385

Saturday

353

355

383

385



Basically, the Hebrew months alternate between a short month and a long month, for example: Tishri (30 days), Cheshvan (also spelled Heshvan) (29 or 30 days), Kislev (30 or 29 days), Tevet (29 days), Shevat (30 days), Adar (29 days), Nisan (30 days), Iyar (29 days), Sivan (30 days), Tammuz (29 days), Av (30 days), Elul (29 days). For leap years, a 30 day month of Adar 1 is added immediately after the month of Shevat, and the 29 day Adar is called Adar 2. This is to ensure that the months remain at the same season rather than continuing to drift earlier by about 11 days per year. The 265 days from the first day of the 29 day month of Adar (the last one of the year) and ending with the 29th day of Heshvan forms a fixed length period that has all of the festivals specified in the Bible, such as Pesach (Nisan 15), Shavuot (Sivan 6), Rosh Hashannah (Tishri 1), Yom Kippur (Tishri 10), Sukkot (Tishri 15), and Shemini Atzeret (Tishri 22). The festival period from Pesach up to and including Shemini Atzeret is exactly 185 days long. The time from the traditional day of the vernal equinox up to and including the traditional day of the autumnal equinox is also exactly 185 days long. This has caused some unfounded speculation that Pesach should be March 21st, and Shemini Atzeret should be September 21, which are the traditional days for the equinoxes. Just as the Hebrew day starts at sunset, the Hebrew year starts in the Autumn (Rosh Hashanah), although the mismatch of solar and lunar years will eventually move it to another season (but not in your lifetime). Karaites use the lunar month and the solar year, but determine when to add a leap month by observing barley, rather than a fixed calendar. This occasionally puts them a month out of sync with the rest of the Jews"


1272: Pope Gregory X condemned the ritual murder libels aimed at the Jewish people. In addition, since Jews could not bear witness against Christians, he refused to accept testimony by a Christian against a Jew unless it was confirmed by another Jew.


1349: The Jewish population of Krems, Germany, was massacred in the Black Death riots.(As reported by Aish)



1555: Hundreds of Jews in Cracow were killed during the Hakafot, the ritual trouping of the Torah connected with Simchat Torah.


1571: The Holy League (Spain and Italy) destroyed the Turkish fleet at The Battle of Lepanto. This was part of a centuries-long battle before European Christians and the forces of Islam, in this case the Ottoman Empire.  Often the fighting was more about commercial gain than it was about religion.  The battle was significant because it was the first naval defeat the Ottomans had suffered in more than a century. While the Jews were not directly involved, the fighting had an impact on them.  At the time of the defeat, Selim II was the Sultan.  He opened his kingdom to the Jews settling a colony of them on the Island of Cyprus. The Ottomans accepted the defeat as the will of God, and unlike some Europeans, did not use the Jews as scapegoats for their loss.


1665(28th of Tishrei, 5426): Chaim Auberach who served as the “assessor of the rabbinate” in Vienna and who was the brother of Menachem Mendel Auerbach and Benjamin Wolf Auerbach passed away today


1716(21st of Tishrei, 5477): Moses Mayer Schiff, the son of Meir and Chava Schiff passed away today.


1753(9th of Tishrei, 5514): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre


1763: George III of Great Britain issues British Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlements. This attempt to control the growth of Colonial America was one of the causes of the American Revolution, with all that that would mean for the Jewish people. More immediately, the closure had a negative impact on the fortunes of Moses Franks, Jacob Franks, Barnard Gratz, Michael Gratz, David Franks, Moses Franks, Jr., Joseph Simon, and Levy Andrew Levy each of whom dabbled in “western” land speculation.


1772(10th of Tishrei, 5533): Yom Kippur


1777:Under the date of John Adams wrote his wife that he was in York, PA, where "I am lodged in the house of General Roberdeau, an Israelite, indeed, I believe, who with his sisters and children and servants does everything to make us happy. We are highly favored. No other delegates are so well off."  Fearing capture by the British, the Continental Congress had moved to York where it could meet in comparative safety. [Editor’s Note – Adams may have been in error since according there was a General Roberdeau whose father’s name is Isaac Roberdeau and they were Huegenots.]


1777: During the Revolutionary War, The Americans defeated the British in the Second Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights. This defeat led France to recognize the new United States of America and, more importantly, sign a treaty which brought the Americans much needed supplies, money and the support of the French fleet.  It was the turning point in the war that would create the home of the most significant Jewish community outside of Eretz Israel. Col. David Salisbury Franks, the highest ranking Jewish officer serving with the Continental Army served with valor during the Battle.  Franks would later be serving as an aide to Benedict Arnold when the general turned traitor.  He was cleared of all charges and continued to serve with during the war. He is not to be confused with his uncle David Franks who was a Loyalist.


1786(15th of Tishrei, 5547): Sukkoth


1791(9th of Tishrei, 5552): Erev Yom Kippur


1803(2st of Tishrei, 5564): Hoshana Raba


1803(21st of Tishrei, 5564): Dob Bär ben Judah Treves the Hungarian rabbi who served as rabbinical judge in Wilvan from 1760 to 1790 who wrote “a commentary on the Pentateuch, in which, through cabalistic explanations, he endeavored to establish a connection between the written and the oral law” passed away today.  (Some sources show the day of his death on the secular calendar as October 17 but then he could not have passed away on the 21st of Tishrei)


1805(14th of Tishrei, 5566): Erev Shavuot


1805(14th of Tishrei, 5566): Twenty-four year old Rachel Aaron was buried today at the Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.


1812: In Charleston, SC, Jacob Lazarus married Mary Hart, the daughter of the late Daniel Hart.


1814(23rd of Tishrei, 5575): Simchat Torah


1814: Yaakov Yitzchak of Lublin fell from a window today and suffered injuries that would lead to his death on Tisha B'Av, 5575 (August 15, 1815)


1824(15th of Tishrei, 5585): Sukkoth


1840: Willem II became the King of the Netherlands. He was the son of Willem I the first Dutch monarch who ruled after the defeat of the French. Unlike his Germanic counterparts, Willem did not rescind the rights the Jews had enjoyed and this policy of acceptance was followed by his son who did nothing to abrogate the rights of the Jews.


1842: Birthdate of Sir Phillip Magnus, the Reform Rabbi turned educational reformer and political leader who was the husband of Katie Magnus and the father of publisher Laurie Magnus.



1848(10th of Tishrei, 5609): As revolutions erupt throughout Europe, the Jews observe Yom Kippur


1845(6th of Tishrei, 5606): Author and linguist Samson Bloch who was an ardent supporter of the Haskalah movement passed away today.


1851:  In New York, a Hungarian Jew named Nathan Levins who has been in the United States for only two weeks filed a complaint at the Sixth Precinct claiming that Israel Steinhardt, another Hungarian Jew had robbed him of 940 pounds in Bank of England notes.  The police went to the house on Pell Street where Steinhardt was living, placed him under arrest and took him back to the precinct house where he was to be held until he could be brought before a magistrate. 


1852: In Nachod, Bohemia, Nathan and Julie Judith Josephine Mautner gave birth to Isidor Mautner.


1853: The ceremony of laying the corner-stone of a Jewish Educational Institute, in Greene-street, adjoining the Synagogue Bnai Jesharun, took place today. The Institute is intended as the beginning of a Hebrew College to be hereafter erected in this City. The religious services on the laying of the Corner-Stone were conducted by Rabbi Raphall.


1854(15thof Tishrei, 5615): Sukkoth


1854: William Wilkins gave a speech to a large gathering of Democrats in Pittsburgh, PA where he denounced the Know Nothing Party which is known for its opposition to foreigners and Catholics.  “He argued that if the Know Nothings succeeded, no religious sect would safe – that next after the Catholic the Hebrew would be proscribed.”  Jews feared the Know Nothings because of its views on non-Protestant religions and its animosity towards immigrants since many of the Jews were recent immigrants.


1858: In Bielitz, Austria, Anna and Isaac Leonard Zeisler gave birth to Dr. Joseph Zeisler and husband of “Theresa Feuchtman” who was recognized an expert in the fields “of skin and venereal diseases.”


1860: According to a letter written by the President, Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco has had a net gain of 49 members in the past year raising its numbers to a total of 227.  In the past year one adult and eighteen Jewish children passed away in the last year. Monthly expenses have risen from $750 to $800.  The sale of seats has grown by $2,000 and total over $5,000 this year. Dr. Elkan Cohn continues to serve as the Rabbi of the congregation that is growing so fast it will need a new sanctuary.  In addition to which, the congregation needs to appropriate money for a school for the youngsters, including salaries for the teachers. 


1863: A newspaper published in Petersberg, VA, reported that our readers have already been apprised of the recent extensive sales of gold, paid for in drafts as valueless as the paper on which they were written. The premium "paid" for this gold was $12. Since the withdrawal of this heavy customer the demand for the precious metals has measurably subsided, and, as the Jews are now keeping one of their protracted annual holidays, the transactions for several days past have been very light. The commission brokers are now asking $11 50 for gold. No silver in the market.” The “protracted annual holidays” referred to the Sukkoth cycle with Simchat Torah having ended the day before the article was written. 


1864: Birthdate of Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk, the son of a Missouri governor who gained fame as a conductor and composer for musicals and movies.



1864: Joshua Pickering a member of the Cameron Dragoons, “a largely Jewish regiment” commanded by Colonel Max Friednman was killed today at Darbytown Road, Virginia during the Civil War.


1867: In Prescott, AZ, the 4th Territorial Legislature, which was attended by Phillip Drachman who had traveled 200 miles “by buckboard, stage and horseback” from Tucson adjourned today after it had voted to move “the capital from Prescott to Tucson” in 1868.


1868: Founding of Cornell University at Ithaca, New York. Today at Cornell, there are approximately 3,500 Jewish undergrads among the 13,500 undergraduate population and another 500 Jewish students among its 5,000 Jewish graduate students. In other words, Jews account for about 25% of the school’s population. The school offers a major and minor in Jewish Studies as well as a full panoply of social and cultural on campus designed to meet the needs of Jewish students.


1870: During the Franco-Prussian War, Leon Gambetta escaped from Paris by balloon. This was the only way that Gambetta could reach Tours where he was active in organizing further military opposition to the Prussians.  Gambetta was instrumental in the formation of the French Third Republic.  His father was Jewish.  His mother was not.


1871(22nd of Tishrei, 5632): Shemini Atzeret


1871: Congregation Bethel was organized today shortly after the Great Chicago Fire.


1871: In Germany, Nathan Baruch Rothschild, the son of Baruch and Esther Rothschild and his wife Sophie Rothschild, both of whom settled in Columbus, GA  gave birth to Gerson Rothschild


1871: It was reported today that “the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles closes this morning…Offerings of branches of the palm tree, the myrtle, willow and the citron were made” yesterday during services held in the synagogues of New York.


1874: Moses Phillips married Julia Defries tdaoy.


1874: It was reported today the government of Romania is upset by an article published in a Jewish paper that portrays Benjamin Peixoto, the U.S. Consul in Bucharest as “the only protector of the persecuted Jews” of that country.  The Romanians claim they have done everything possible to protect the Jews.  The government claims that the increase in the number of Jews entering the country from Russia and Austria and the cessation of the exodus of Jews from Romania serves as proof of their contention.


1878(10th of Tishrei, 5639): Yom Kippur


1878: According to reports published today, a new group of people has been discovered in India who are supposed to be descendants of Jews sent there by King Solomon to capture elephants and work in the gold mines.  Instead of calling themselves Jews, they refer to themselves as Sons Of Israel. They have prayer-books and Bibles written in Hebrew.  They observe Shabbat but show no knowledge of Yom Kippur or Pesach. [Editor’s Note – While the connection with Solomon might be hard to prove, referring to themselves as Sons of Israel and not Jews would argue for their antiquity considering how much later the latter term came to be used to describe The Chosen People.]


1878: With the end of Yom Kippur this evening Morris Bloom a peddler living on Orchard Street and Sarah Greenberg of Hester Street can be married in a synagogue. The families of the couple had opposed the marriage and the youngsters had a Judge of the Court of General Sessions perform a civil ceremony.  Once the families saw that the two were committed to each other, they relented which is the reason for the religious ceremony.


1879: Germany and Austria-Hungary sign the "Twofold Covenant" and create the Dual Alliance. This alliance had amazing durability.  It was this alliance which helped trigger World War I and all the suffering for Jews and non-Jews that has flowed from this seminal event.


1879: Birthdate of Leon Trotsky.  Born Lev Davidovich Bronstein to wealthy Jewish farmers in the Ukraine, Bronstein became a revolutionary committed to the overthrown of the Czar.  After spending time in Siberia, he joined forces with Lenin.  After the Bolshevik Revolution created the Red Army which defeated both the foreign armies that invaded the Soviet Union and the White Forces during the bloody civil war that followed.  Trotsky would lose out to Stalin in the power struggle that followed Lenin’s death.  Trotsky would be hacked to death by one of Stalin’s agents in 1940 while living in Mexico.  Anti-Semites would use Trotsky’s Jewish origins as one source of proof that Communism was part of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. The joke among Jews was the Trostkys make the revolutions and the Bronsteins suffer the consequences.


1880: In Chicago, Julia and Bernhard Daniels gave birth to Julius Daniels, the brother of Max, Minnie, Samuel and Hattie Daniels


 1881(14th of Tishrei, 5642): Erev Sukkoth


1881(14th of Tishrei, 5642): Seventy-one year old Lewis Jacob Marcus lawyer and political activist who moved to England after his retirement passed away in Manchester, UK.


1881: “Current Foreign Topics” published today described the trial of the chief editors and a reporter for two of Germany’s leading newspapers who had been charged with “insulting a police commissioner” by reporting on his attendance at an “anti-Jewish meeting” last year. The journalists accused him of “neglecting his duty” for not intervening when “a section of the audience attacked the Jews.” The reporter was acquitted but the editors were fined 50 marks.


1883: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association plans to offer a series of lectures every Saturday between now and November that will help with the Americanization of immigrants who have come from Germany, Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe.  Starting in November, the YMHA will offer classes four nights a week in reading, writing and spelling. Among those leading the effort are M.A. Kuresheedt, M.W. Platzek and Rabbi Aaron Wise.


1884: In Bavaria,”the famous mathematician Max Noether and his wife Ida Amalia Kaufmann” gave birth mathematician Fritz Noether, the third of their four children who moved to the Soviet Union because the Nazis would not him pursue his career but ended up being executed in 1941 after the Russians decided the Jew was really a spy.


1884: “City and Suburban News” published today included a note that Hebrew teacher Gadalic Richter has been released from the Tombs after charges of arson against could not be proven.


1885: In Copenhagen,Christian Bohr,a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and Ellen Adler Bohr, who came from a wealthy Danish Jewish family prominent in banking and parliamentary circles” gave birth to Neils Bohr the physicist who is the Father of Quantum Theory and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.


1886(8th of Tishrei, 5647):Solomon Goldberg, a 34 year Jew from Poland who had been confined to The Tombs on charges of not supporting his wife, took his own life this afternoon.


1886: Joseph Rosenberg, who had passed away at the age of 102, was buried today in New Orleans, LA.


            1888: “New Settlers Destitute” published today while many of the homesteaders living in the Dakota territories are suffering due to crop failure, the greatest suffering is found among the 300 Russian Jews who settled there two years ago.  Some of the families are without food and the rest will need outside financial assistance if they are to survive. (My grandfather and his brother homesteaded in the Dakotas in the 1890’s and experienced hardship.  After a winter of living on crackers, as soon as the roads were passable, my grandfather went back to Chicago to seek “fame and fortune.”)


1888: “Old World News By Cable” published today described the many contradictory stories going around Europe about the German scheme to rescue Emin Pasha.  Those opposed to the plans point out that he really is a Jew named Isaac Schnitzler. (Emin Pasha had in fact been born a Jew but he converted and became a romantic Muslim leader).


1888: Birthdate of movie director Robert Z. Leonard.



1889: Driven by the effective and fervent lobbying efforts of activist Annie Nathan Meyer, Barnard College opened its doors. Although a number of northern elite women's colleges had opened during the 1870s, numerous cities, including New York, had little to offer young women of scholarly inclinations. At age 18, Meyer, who was largely self-educated, organized a reading circle and enrolled in the newly established extension program for women at Columbia College. Meyer married shortly before her 20th birthday in 1887 and soon began working to establish an affiliate women's college to Columbia. Meyer published a powerful letter to the Nation magazine and circulated a petition throughout the city to win the college's trustees over to her effort. Meyer achieved funding and support from the trustees on April 1 1889, leased quarters for the school, and began accepting applicants. Barnard became the first women's college in New York to offer the rigorous course work equivalent to that of male liberal arts colleges. Annie Nathan Meyer continued her work with Barnard throughout her life, becoming a member of the first board of trustees and remaining active in trustee affairs for the ensuing six decades. (Jewish Women’s Archives)


1889: In Berlin, the former Martha Behrendt and her husband, bank director and newspaper published Richard Jacob gave birth to author and journalist Heinrich Eduard Jacob “who also wrote under the pen names Henry E. Jacob and Eric Jens Petersen.”


1890(23rd of Tishrei, 5651): Simchat Torah.


1890: “A Great City University” published today described the meeting of the Trustees of Columbia University where a list of gifts to the school was presented including $1,000 from Jesse Seligman which is to be allocated to the Seligman Fellowships.


1891: In Berlin, “historian and socialist Ignaz Jastrow” gave birth to archeologist Elisabeth Jastrow who settled in the United States in the 1930’s who along with her sister “Lotte Beate Jastrow Hahn” successful rescued her mother Anna Seligman Jastrow from Nazi Germany



 


1891: A brief summary of the annual report of the United Hebrew Charities showed that the organization had spent $167,811.85 in the last year, $62,121.60 of which came from the Baron de Hirsch Committee.


1891: “Jews  And The Russian Loan” published today described the concern among American Jews that two “Jewish” banking houses – Mendelssohn & Co. and Warschauer & Co. --- are willing to extend credit to a government that treats its Jewish subjects so poorly.


1891(5thof Tishrei, 5652): Seventy-two year old Jakob Eduard Poak, the Austrian trained physician who played a key role in bringing modern medical practices to Iran and served as the personal doctor to the Shah from 1855 to 1860 passed away today in Vienna.


1894: Rabbi Wintner officiated at the wedding ceremony of Ida E. Korne and John Bernstein, the son Nathan Bernstein, the wealthy Brooklyn merchant who is near death and insisted that he marriage take place so he could witness it before he passed away.


1896: Birthdate of Minsk native Shmuel-Ber Leykin.



1897: “Over In Camden” published today included a description of the observance of Yom Kippur in that New Jersey city just outside of Philadelphia, PA.


1897: The Bund (Jewish Workers Party) held its first conference in Russia. It was the first Jewish Socialist party in Eastern Europe. At first decidedly anti-Zionist and pro-Yiddishist, it was organized as a union of Russian Jewish socialist groups. The bund exerted a great influence on Jews in Europe and America. Interestingly enough, the Bund held its first meeting during the same year in which the Zionists held their first Congress.


1897: Professor Francis William Newman, the author of A History of the Hebrew Monarchy (1847) and Hebrew Theism (1874) who was the brother of the late Cardinal Newman passed away.


1897: It was reported today that the late Lewis Stark, a New York businessman who “was a member of a number Hebrew charitable organizations” will be buried in Baltimore, MD


1898(21st of Tishrei, 5659): Hoshanah Rabah


1898:  Birthdate of Alfred Wallenstein, principle cellist for the Chicago Symphony from 1922 to 1929.


1899: It was reported today the Jewish poet and author Salomon Mandelkern has come from his home in Leipzig to visit his son Israel who is living on East Broadway in Manhattan.


1899: Abraham Cahan was described today as “the ‘Yiddish’ author” who “lives near the up-town ‘Ghetto’ and edits a Hebrew scientific periodical, besides teaching and writing interesting newspaper articles about the east side and its peculiar peoples.”


1900: Birthdate of Russian-born American muralist and painter Louis Goodman who came to the United States in 1910, studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and who did everything from creating “a comic strip called ‘The Kids on Our Block’” to painted “murals at the RCA Building” at the time of the 1939 World’s Fair.




1901: Birthdate of Ralph Reichenthal who gained fame as composer and pianist Ralph Rainger.


1903(16th of Tishrei, 5664): Second Day of Sukkoth


1903(16th of Tishrei, 5664): German Born mathematician Rudolph Otto Sigismund Lispchitz passed away.  Born in 1832, Lispschitz was a professor at the University of Bonn for almost forty years and the man who developed the mathematical paradigm known as the Lipschitz Continuity.


1903: In San Francisco, a contract was entered into to begin building the new sanctuary for Congregation Sherith Israel


1906:The Sinai Temple congregation resolved to have Dr. Leon Messing, a native of Alabama, who was serving a congregation in Bloomington, commute to Champagne-Urbana every Sunday and on the high holidays.


1906: During his quest to get Cuban approval for the creation of a Jewish cemetery Manuel Hadida, Chairman of the United Hebrew Congregation (UHC) of Cuba, met with Rabbi Haim (Henry) Pereira Méndez, the spiritual leader of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue, Shearith Israel, in New York.  Hadida was looking to the United States to use its influence with the newly independent Cuba to move this project forward.


1909(22nd of Tishrei, 5670): Shemini Atzeret


1910: Louis-Norbert Carrière “the government commissioner who successfully pled at Rennes for Dreyfus's second conviction” returned to civilian life ending a career that had begun when joined the 38thInfantry Regiment in 1855 after graduating from St. Cyr.


1911(15th of Tishrei, 5672): Sukkoth


1911(15th of Tishrei, 5672): Nineteen year old Jankel Nissen Schattenstein, the son of Dov Schattenstein passed away today.


1912(26th of Tishrei, 5673): Thirty four year old Dobe Chatzkelsohn, the daughter of Josef Chatzkelsohn passed away today.


1912: Lionel de Rothschild M.P. married Mlle. Marie Louise Beer in Paris this afternoon.  Mlle. Beer is the daughter of French banker Edmond Beer and her sister married Baron Robert de Rothschild.


1912: Opening day of the “Becker-Rosenthal Murder Trial.”  Herman Rosenthal was a Jewish gambler in New York who was allegedly gunned down by Harry Horowitz’s Lenox Avenue Gang. Becker was Charles Becker, a crooked cop, whom the District Attorney believed had ordered the murder.


1913: On New York’s Lower East side a Russian immigrant tailor and his wife gave birth to Arthur “Archie” Kameros “a four year starting center for LIU-Brooklyn in the mid-1930s, graduate of Columbia University of Dentistry and Bronze Star winning WW II veteran.


1914(17th of Tishrei, 5675): Third day of Sukkoth


1914: Today “a morning journal reported the discovery of a shekel of gold, bronze and platinum, struck by the Jews of 3400 B.C., marked with Hebrew character signifying things that were never marked on shekels and with a representation of ‘the Start of Bethlehem’” and the article continues “there is a duplicate of the coin in the British Museum.”


1914: “Rabbi Levi Answers Ross” published today described the response of Rabbi Charles S Levi to an article written by Professor Edward A. Ross of the University in which attacks Jews, especially  those from eastern Europe. (This is not is not Ross’s first brush with ethnic slurs. He was fired from Stanford for his attacks on Chinese and Japanese immigrants).


1914: Birthdate of Bernard Phillips, one of the UK’s leading insolvency practitioners whose expertise led to him being elected chairman and then president of the Insolvency Practitioners Association.



1915: In New York City, Harry Scherman and Bernardine Kielty Scherman gave birth to Swarthmore graduate Katharine Scherman an editor at “Book-of-the-Month Club and author  who became Katherine Scherman Rosin when she married Axel Rosin  with who she had two daughters.


1915: A letter written to the New York Times today notes that “the accounts that come to us and to the million or more Russian Jews in this country from their fathers, mothers and sisters in Russian Poland and Galicia unfold a chapter of horrors in the lurid light of which the past tragedies of that martyred race pale in their intensity and in their extent, affect no less than three million souls.”


1916(10th of Tishrei, 5677): Yom Kippur


1916: In “Rosalsky Pleads for Jews” Otto A. Rosalsky, a judge of the court of General Sessions in New York said that while Jews in American “are enjoying civil, religious and political freedom in the largest measure ever accorded to those who live in a land of liberty” “calamity has befallen our Jewish brethren” in Europe, where “over a million Jewish soldiers are on the battlefields fighting for the cause of countries that not only denied them civil, religious and political freedom but have subjected them to every form of brutal oppression.”


1916: At the Kessler Theatre, where Rabbi Herman Kiminester was conducting services, 2,500 people found their prayers interrupted when fire engines arrived in response to what turned out to be a false alarm.


1916: At Temple Israel, in Harlem, Rabbi M.H. Harris spoke on the origins of the term scapegoat, telling of how the Jews had filled that role in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in the actions of the “unspeakable Tom Watson of Georgia, and to Germany where “the anti-Semitic movement was ‘a cunning political move to diver the attention of the public from the autocratic powers and abuses of the Government by persuading the people that all of their social troubles were due to the Jews.’”


1916: At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon on “The New Judasim” which included an appeal to his congregants “to do all in their power to aid Jewish sufferers in the war zone abroad.”


1916: Birthdate of economist Walt Whitman Rostow who along with his brother Gene was an architect of American foreign policy under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.


1917(21st of Tishrei, 5678): Hoshanah Rabah


1917: It was announced today that the Executive Committee for the American Jewish Congress whose members include Nathan Straus, Adolph Lewisohn, Colonel Harry Cutler, Louis Marshall, Louis Kirstein and Dr. Stephen S. Wise would meet in special session” next week to select a date when the full Congress will meet.


1917: “In making public plans for an anti-pacifist campaign in New York this week, the American Alliance for Labor announced” today “that the Jewish Socialist League would lead the fight on the East Side.”


1917: Birthdate of Jerome Pitkow, the native of Philadelphia and 1941 graduate of NYU Law School who became an executive with Supermarkets General Corporation and a leading New York Jewish philanthropist.


1917: In Vienna, Alfred Guttman and his wife gave birth to actor Helmut Dantine who was arrested after the Anschluss because of his anti-Nazi activities. 


1917: Rabbi Abraham Cronbach, the Indiana born son of Marcus and Hannah (Itzig) Cronbach married “Rose Hentel, a teacher at the Free Synagogue in New York” who would adopt a daughter Marion, the future wife of Rabbi Maurice Davis.


1918:“A call for a final military effort on the battle field was published in the Vossiche Zeitung.  Written by the Jewish industrialist Walther Rathenau, its aim was to give Germany the strongest possible position from which to negotiate a peace of equality rather than of defeat. ‘It is peace we want, not war --- but not a peace of surrender.’”


1918: In New York City. Arthur and Frances Landau Jaffa gave birth to Harry Victor Jaffa one of Leo Strauss’ first graduate students.



1918: Birthdate of Marcus Klingberg the native of Poland who took refuge from the Nazis in the Soviet Union where he graduated from Medical School.  After serving doctor with the Red Army during World War II, he moved to Israel in 1948.  Eventually he would rise to a ranking position at the Israel Institute for Biological Research.  In 1983 he was unmasked as leading agent for the Soviet Union.


1919: Birthdate of Sir Zelman Cowen 19thGovernor-General of Australia and active leader of the Melbourne Jewish Community.


1919: It was announced today that Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, had been awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his service during World War I.


1920: Mrs. Eva Epstein and her son Edward who have spent the summer in Paris, London and Scotland are scheduled to return to New York today aboard the S.S. Olympic


1920: “Jewish representatives from all parts of Palestine” are scheduled to gather today for the first Jewish Assembly where they will elect “an independent executive composed of Palestine Jews to replace the present Zionist Commission.”


1922(15th of Tishrei, 5683): Sukkoth is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Warren G. Harding.


1923: In a major league career that lasted one week, Outfielder Mose Solomon played his last game for the New York Giants.


1923: Arnold and Ralph Horween “both scored in the same game as” Arnold “kicked two extra points and” Ralaph “ran for a touchdown as the Chicago Cardinals beat the Rochester Jefferson.”


1924(9th of Tishrei, 5685): Erev Yom Kippur


1925: First game of the 1925 World Series which saw Buddy Myer playing 2nd base for the Washington Senators.


1926: In Germany, Aaron and Rose Lubrani gave birth to Israeli diplomat and government official Uri Lubrani who began his career serving as the political secretary to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and who has held several other positions the most rewarding of which may have been as the coordinator for Operation Solomon in 1990.


1932: Thirty-six year old Benny Leonard’s “career ended today when he was TKO’ed in 6 rounds.


1934(28th of Tishrei, 5695): Dutch painter Isaac Lazarus Israëls passed away.  Painting must have been in his blood since he was the son of Jozef Israëls.  For examples of his work see



1935:  A memorial service for Jacob H. Schiff, Jewish philanthropist, was held today in the original building of Congregation Ohab Zedek at 18 West 116th Street in Manhattan. In 1906, Mr. Schiff had laid the cornerstone for this structure. A tribute by Morris Engelman, chairman of the congregation, included a plea for the establishment of a Schiff Memorial Fund that would aid Jewish social, educational and religious institutions throughout the world.


1936(21stof Tishrei, 5697): Hoshanah Rabah


1936: At Geneva, “Christian Lange of Norway expressed ‘great astonishment’ that Britain had not yet ended the Palestine disorders” and “criticized Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden for refusing the mandates commission’s request that Britain report to it on Palestine in November.”


1936: In London, the Home Secretary “invited his critics to pass a new law against ‘provocative’ demonstrations if they wished to prevent a repetition of the recent riots caused by the Fascists under Oswald Mosely taking to the streets in the Jewish section of the East End.


1937:The Jerusalem Post reported that Bronislaw Huberman, the famous Jewish violinist and the founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, was passenger on the Royal Dutch (KLM) plane which crashed in Sumatra. He escaped without serious injury.


1937: The Jerusalem Postreported that French troops stopped clashes between Arabs and Turks at Antioch.


1938: In London, UK, premiere of “The Lady Vanishes” co-starring Paul Lukas with music by Louis Levy.


1938: The Fascist Grand Council in Rome issues a set of new antisemitic laws designed for the "defense of the Italian race" and to suppress "world Hebrewism." Most of the laws target Jews,


1938: Germany decreed that passports of Jews were to be marked with a J.


1938: Judy Garland (who was not Jewish) made her first recording of "Over the Rainbow" is a ballad, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg, a ballad written for “The Wizard of Oz.”


1939: Hitler appointed Himmler head of the R.K.F.D.V., an organization responsible for the deportation of Poles and Jews from Polish provinces.


1939: “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, a comedy radio series hosted by Milton Berle aired for the first time tonight.


1939: As of today, it was reported that Rumania has a population of 20,000,000, a fourth of which are “classified as minorities” which include 770,000 Jews.


1939: “Speaking at the first Fall luncheon meeting of the Foreign Policy Association at the Hotel Astor” “Anne O’Hare McCormick of the editorial staff of the New York Times declared that “Hitler’s peace proposals as advanced in his Reichstag speech, constitute an ‘imperious demand’ that Great Britain and France accept the ‘new order he and Stalin intend to set up in Eastern Europe’ and leave the Allies with no alternative but to reject them flatly.”


1939: In England Edith and Heinz Krotoschiner gave birth to Harold Krotoschiner who gained fame as chemist Sir Harold Kroto, who co-discovered fullerene and shared in the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.



1939: Today’s occupation of Zamosc, Poland by the Nazis is preceded by Polish mobs attacking the town’s Jews.


1939: George and Isabel Schwartz Shenker gave birth to Joseph Shenker, who at the age of 29,  became the youngest president of a college in the City University of New York system and one of the youngest in the nation, when he was appointed interim president of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn in 1969.


1939: “U-Boat 29” produced by Alexander Korda , with a script by Emeric Pressburger, which had been related as “The Spy in Black” was released in the United States today, two days after its New York premiere.


1939: Penn St. led by its captain Sidney “Spike Alter defeated Bucknell in its season opening football game.


 1940: German troops move into Romania bringing with them the horrors of the Holocaust.  As can be seen from negotiations surrounding the 19th century Treaty of Berlin, anti-Semitism was an established part of the Romanian landscape. The Romanians, led by the infamous Iron Cross killed tens of thousands of their Jewish neighbors.  Estimates as to the actual number killed range from 280,000 to 380,000.


1940: The Vichy Government “swept away the Cremieux Decree of 1870; a law that granted French citizenship to the Jews of Algeria.  This act of anti-Semitism would echo in the world of 21st American politics when Virginia Republican Senator George Allen found out for the first time that his was an Algerian Jew; a refugee from the Holocaust who had never told her son of his Jewish ancestry for fear that someday the United States would turn on its Jewish citizens in the same that France had during World War II.


1941: At Rowne, Volhunia, the SS and local militia took over 17,000 Jews taken from their homes, marched them to open pits, and slaughtered them.


1943(7th of Tishrei, 5704): Sixty-four year old Lithuanian native Ephraim Caplan, the “religious editor of the Jewish Morning Journal,” long-time director of the Jewish National Fund of America and President of the Council for Orthodox Jewish Education who was the husband of Eva Caplan with whom he had one daughter, Martha and “three sons, Dr. Leon Caplan, Dr. Joseph Caplan” and Saul Caplan who served with the U.S. Army in WW II, passed away today in Brooklyn.”


1943: German convoys deported Jews from Morocco to the concentration camps of Europe.


1943: “Lassie Come Home,” produced by Samuel Marx and Dore Schary was released today in the United States.


1943: Jewish partisans fighting in Lithuania destroyed fifty telegraph poles.


1943: Paul Steinberg, Phillipe Hagenauer and “former world boxing champion Victor ‘Young’ Perez were deported from Drancy to Auschwitz together.


1943: One thousand Jews are deported from Paris to their deaths at Auschwitz.


1943: In an official report, the German chief of police in Poland recommends that Poles who aid Jews should be dealt with without benefit of trial.


1943: In a Yom Kippur radio message to Jewish service men, Vice President Henry A. Wallace said that "the names of those who have served in this war will be honored whether they belong to the so-called blue-bloods from Boston or Negroes from South Carolina…' We are not Jews or Gentiles, Whites or Blacks,' but people of the United States.”


1944(20thof Tishrei, 5705): Dutch banker Jacobus Henricus Kann who was a partner in Lissa & Kann and a co-founder of the Jewish Colonial Trust died today at Theresienstadt


1944: While the furnaces belched forth Jewish ashes, a group of Jewish members of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolted. They killed a number of their masters, destroyed one gas chamber/crematorium complex, damaged another, and - more than any other nation - stopped the slaughter of innocent Jews. One of the key participants in this little-known revolt was Rosa Robota, a young Jewish prisoner, who arranged to obtain the explosives, stored them, and turned them over to the Underground. Young Rosa and three other women prisoners were hanged for their complicity in this revolt a few days before the Germans abandoned the camp. She received the highest award from the Polish government, and is honored with a sculpture in Yad VaShem.


1944(20th of Tishrei, 5705): Today, the Sonderkommandos at Birkenau chose to revolt instead of being selected to be "sent away." Chaim Neuhof was the first to strike an SS guard. Then the rest of the Crematorium IV men surged forward with pick and axes against their guards despite the arrival of multiple machine gun units. After setting fire to the Crematorium, the SS machine-gunned all the men. Despite this Crematorium II Sonderkommandos and Russian prisoners followed their lead and joined in the fight.  Many men from Crematorium III and V broke out through the fences. Almost all were caught and executed. [Editor’s note- this took place on the 6th of Sukkoth.  You have to wonder why this event has not been memorialized in the festival liturgy.]


1945: During a press conference in Rome two Republican Senators, Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota and Frances P. Bolton of Ohio expressed their opposition to a reported request from President Truman to the British government 100,000 Jews into Palestine be allowed to move to Palestine immediately.


1946: Ben Hecht’s “A Flag Is Born” opened at the Adelphi Theatre.


1946: In the UK, “social worker and former communist Miriam Abramsky and Professor Chimen Abramsky the son of Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky gave birth to Dame Jennifer Gita "Jenny" Abramsky, DBE the chairman of the UK's National Heritage Memorial Fund


1946: “The Jewish National Fund made a world-wide appeal today to Jews to contribute $20,000,000” during the upcoming Jewish year.  Dr. Abraham Granowsky, chairman of the Board of Directors of the JNF said that funds contributed during the past year had made it possible for new settlements to be built in areas that extended the reach of the Yishuv.


1947(23rd of Tishrei, 5708): Simchat Torah


1947: British trade unionist Manny Shinwell begins serving as Secretary of State for War under Prime Minister Clement Attlee making him part of the civilian leadership controlling the British Army that was battling with the Jews of pre-state Israel.


1948:Just months after the state of Israel triumphantly declared its independence the town of Waltham, Mass. welcomed the nation's first non-sectarian, Jewish-sponsored University. Spanning a total of 100 acres, the original campus replaced the former Middlesex College. Prominent members of the American Jewish community, including Albert Einstein, founded the University in tribute to Louis D. Brandeis, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. The University initially comprised the School of General Studies, the School of Social Studies, the School of Humanities and the School of Science. First-years were to enroll in the School of General Studies and then choose a field of specialty. Heralded by its first president, Abram Sachar, the school’s first president said that the institution would follow those ideals of "academic integrity" and service, exemplified by its namesake.


1948: The Neutral Zone around Government House in Jerusalem was transferred to United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) protection.


1948: “Love Life” “a musical written by Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner who provided the books and lyrics opened on Broadway at the 46thStreet Theatre.


1949: In response to the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany which was made up of the French, British and U.S. occupation zones, the Soviet Union for the German Democratic Republic known as Eastern Germany – the one part of Nazi Germany that never underwent de-Nazification or paid reparations to the Jewish victims of the Holoaust.


1951: In Baltimore, MD, Morton and Bettie Brenner gave birth to Barbara Ann Breener, who “became Breast Cancer Action’s first executive director in 1995, two years after undergoing treatment for the disease and a year before it recurred.” (As reported by Denise Grady)


1951: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presented his new government to the Knesset.  The long drawn out process convinces Ben-Gurion that Israel needs to move from the multi-party system to a two-party system like the British use.  But even Ben-Gurion cannot bring about this change.  To this day, Israeli politics continue to chaotic due to its multiplicity of parties and shifting political alliances.


1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that Dov Shilansky tried to sabotage the reparations agreement with Germany by an attempt to bomb one of the Foreign Ministry buildings in Jerusalem's Hakirya. Emotions on this topic ran high on this topic.  Many Jews felt that accepting money would somehow be a sign of forgiving the Germans.  Others felt that it was “blood money” and it was tainted.  Ultimately, a realistic view would prevail and Israel would use the money in a variety of ways designed to help the infant state survive.


1953(28th of Tishrei, 5714): Forty-five year old Dr. Elias “Ely” Abrahams, the son “Max and Fannie Abrahams,” “the husband of the former Violet Dreishpoon” with whom he had one child Paul and dentist who practiced in New York but lived in Brooklyn passed away today after which he was buried at Baron Hirsch Cemetery.


1954(10th of Tishrei, 5715): Yom Kippur


1955: Beat poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco


1956: The Israeli Cabinet expresses support for Ben Gurion’s decision to exercise restraint and not mount reprisal raids against Arab terrorists.


1956: “The Bespoke Overcoats” the Oscar winning British film “based on a 1953 play of the same name by Wolf Mankowitz” which co-stars Alfie Bass and David Kosoff was released in the United Kingdom today by Warner Brothers.


1957(12th of Tishrei, 5718): Sixty-eight year old Jekuthiel Ginsburg, the native of Poland and husband of the former Anna Bodsky, who came to the United States in 1912, earned his degrees in Mathematics at Columbia and founded the Institute of Mathematics at Yeshiva University passed away today.




1958:”The Old Man and the Sea,” a movie version of the novel with a screenplay by Peter Viertel and music by Dimitri Tiomkin premiered in the United States today.


1959: U.S. premiere of “Pillow Talk,” a comedy co-produced by Martin Melcher, with a script co-authored by Stanley Shapiro and co-starring Tony Randall.


1959: In the United Kingdom, Eric Selig Phillip Cowell a music executive who came from a family of Polish Jews and his non-Jewish wife Julie gave birth to American Idol Judge Simon Cowell.


1960: ABC broadcast the first episode of “The Law and Mr. Jones” created and produced by Sy Gomberg which had included guest star appearances by Sam Jaffe and Martin Landau


1961: After 607 performances the curtain came down on the original Broadway production of “Bye Bye Birdie” with music by Charles Strouse


1964: “Fail Safe” a film version of the novel by the same name directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Sidney Lumet and Max Youngstein, with a script co-authored by Walter Bernstein and co-starring Walter Matthau was released in the United States today.


1964(1st of Cheshvan, 5725): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1964(1st of Cheshvan, 5725): Seventy-six year old Abraham Joseph Alper, the son of Isaac and Lotta Alper and the husband of Lena Zion Alper, passed away today after which he was buried at B’Nai Zion Cemetery in Chattanooga, TN.


1964: “See How They Run” “the first made for television movie” with music by Lalo Schifrin was aired today by NBC.


1966(23rd of Tishrei, 5727): Simchat Torah


1969: “Battle of Neretva” a film based on the Axis attempt to wipe out the Yugoslav partisans in 1943 produced by Harry Weinstein and Steven Previn with music by Bernard Hermann was released today.


1968(15th of Tishrei, 5729): Sukkoth


1971: “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” a Disney musical with songs by Richard and Robert Sherman and a score by Irwin Kostal was released in the United Kingdom today.


1972: Birthdate of American screenwriter and film director Ben Younger who is responsible for a marvelous little film called “Boiler Room.”


1973: Today “Israel’s defense minister Moshe Dayan told prime minister Golda Meir to consider making preparations for the use of nuclear weapons, according to an interview with a ministerial aide now being published for the first time.” (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)


1973: On the second day of the Yom Kippur War, 100 tanks arrived on Israel’s border with Syria.  General Hofi, the Israeli commander on the Northern Front had requested the tanks before the fighting started. This meant that General Hofi had 170 tanks to use against 1,400 Syrian tanks.  To understand the immensity of the threat faced by the Israelis, consider the following, in World War II the Nazis used 1400 tanks to invade the Soviet Union along a 1,000 mile front.  The Syrians had 1,400 tanks to use along a forty mile front.


1973: On the second day of the war the IAF lost six F-4 Phantoms over Syria during Model 5 a mission designed to knock the Syrian SAM batteries on the Gloan front – a mission that failed miserably.


1973: Caught by surprise and badly outnumbered, Israeli troops cling to front in the Sinai.  In twenty four hours the Israeli force of 290 tanks had been reduced by two thirds.  Dayan visited the Sinai front and called for a withdrawal to the Sinai passes, which he thought would be a better line of defense.  General Sharon arrived with a reinforcing division and wanted to advance to the east bank of the Canal.  As the generals debated, the soldiers on the ground were fighting a series of bloody holding actions.  Egyptian hand held missiles were negating the edge that the Air Force and armored units had previously given the IDF.  


1973: A discussion took place at the Prime Minister's Office that centered on how to enlist American support at the United Nations and head off a cease-fire that would hurt Israel. Mrs. Meir suggested putting together a list of requests.  Mrs. Meir rejected a suggesting that the Israelis should present U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger with a partial, distorted picture exaggerating Israel's poor situation to win the Nixon administration's support. Meir rejected the suggestion out of hand. "We should telegraph him the details; he should get the real picture," she said. "We can't play hide and seek with him." Minister Yisrael Galili asked in response, "Do we sell him the fact that we've moved out of the populated areas?"  Mrs. Meir replied, "I don't object to us saying, there's also risk to populated areas ... I want to give him the real picture. I'm not under the impression the situation is doomed ... We should tell it to him convincingly. Tonight was a bad night."


1973:Word of the stunning success of the Israeli missile boats brought crowds down to the Haifa breakwater this morning to welcome the returning squadron. Barkai, the commanding officer, had decided that there would be no brooms tied to masts, the traditional symbol of a naval victory. Any flaunting of the victory over the Syrians, he said, "wouldn't be respectful to them or to ourselves."


1973: Gad Smooch landed safely after the Syrians had fired a SAM at his F-4E


1973: Despite suffering “severe losses” the 162ndDivision under the command of Avraham Adan continued to attempt to throw the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.


1973: “On the second day of the war, Maj. Gen. Shmuel “Gorodish” Gonen, a learned disciplinarian shouted at a recalcitrant General Sharon ‘I will dismiss you right now!’ when Sharon told him his attack orders were mistaken and would be ‘a disastrous mistake.’” (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)


1973: Avikam Lif, Ami Elkelei, Shuki Wolfson, Avi Barber, and Zvi Afik were all taken prisoner when the F-4E Phantom Jets they were flying were shot down by Syrian Surface to Air Missiles (SAM)


1973: On the second day of the Battle for the Valley of Tears, “Syrians forces suffered heavy losses as the outnumbered Israeli tanks and infantry fought desperately to buy time for reserves forces to reach the front lines.”


1975: The “USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium” ratified an agreement providing for economic and technical cooperation with Syria that could only be seen as threatening to Israeli planners.


1977: “Black Martin Baby” a movie version of the novel produced by Milton Sperling and featuring Tom Bosley was released today.


1979(16th of Tishrei, 5740): Sukkoth II


1979(16th of Tishrei, 5740): Eight-four year old “Irving Maidman, a major owner of properties around Times Square, the dean of West Side Development,” “a founder of the Albert Einstein Medical School” and husband of “the former Edith Shvitiz with whom he had four children – Robert, Mathew, Rebecca and Ellen – passed away today in Upper Nyack where he was “a direct of Congregation Sons of Israel Temple.



1980(27th of Tishrei, 5741): Seventy-eight year hold hotel owner Hyman B. Cantor, the husband of the “former Gertrude Levinson” and philanthropist passed away today.



1981(9th of Tishrei, 5742): Erev Yom Kippur


1981: As the Jews of Cedar Rapids chant Kol Nidre, Abbie Silber, daughter of Laurie and Dr. Robert Silber arrives in the world.  It is an appropriate and auspicious choice of birthdates for a young woman who has gone to become a “Sweet Singer in Israel” and whose parents are pillars of the Jewish Community.


1981(9th of Tishrei, 5742): Novelist Albert Cohen passed away.  Cohen is a study in the multi-nationalism of Jewish identity.  Born in Greece in 1895, Cohen wrote his novels in French, and became a Swiss Citizen in 1919.


1981: Egypt's parliament named Vice President Hosni Mubarak to succeed the assassinated Anwar Sadat.  Much to the consternation of those who plotted Sadat’s murder, Mubarak continued to honor the peace agreement with Israel.


1983: “Never Say Never,” one of the films in the James Bond series, directed by Irvin Kershner and produced by Jack Schwartzman was released in the United States by Warner Brothers.


1985(22nd of Tishrei, 5746): Shemini Atzeret


1985: Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean with more than 400 people aboard. “Four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) took control of the liner off Egypt while she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said within Egypt. The hijackers had been surprised by a crew member and acted prematurely. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, they directed the vessel to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then in Israeli prisons. When refused permission to dock at Tartus, the hijackers shot one wheelchair-bound passenger – an American named Leon Klinghoffer – because he was Jewish, and threw his body overboard. The ship headed back towards Port Said, and after two days of negotiations the hijackers agreed to abandon the liner for safe conduct and were flown towards Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner.


1987: “Baby Boom” a comedy produced by Nancy Meyers and co-starring Harold Ramis was released in the United States by United Artists.


1988:Health Ministry officials began vaccinating all people under the age of 40 in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The vaccination was in response to concerns about a possible outbreak of polio.


1989: “Forever Your Girl,” the debut album from singer Paula Abdul “hit number for the first time” today.


1990: Israel begins handing out gas masks to its citizens as Sadam Hussein threatens to fire Scuds armed with chemical weapons on the Jewish state.  In the Gulf War, Hussein will fire Scuds, but none of them will contain chemical weapons.  At the request of the Bush Administration, the Israelis refrained from retaliating against the Iraqis.  This is the first time that an Israeli government has entrusted security to another nation.


1990:By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, “a nonfiction book by a former katsa (case officer) in the Israeli Mossad, Victor Ostrovsky and Canadian journalist and author Claire Hoy” reached number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list.


1991(29th of Tishrei, 5752): Eighty-three year old Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, the daughter of histologist Giuseppe Levi, the wife of Leone Ginzburg and the mother of historian Carlo Ginzburg passed away today.



1992(10th of Tishrei, 5753): As Bill Clinton seeks to unseat George Bush, Jews observe Yom Kippur


1992(10th of Tishrei, 5753): Sixty-two year old Allan Bloom passed away today. (As reported by Keith Botsford)



1996: In a speech in the Knesset, Shimon Peres appealed to Benjamin Netanyahu to sign the Hebron agreement.


1999: In “Hanging In” published today Yehuda Lev described what it is like to be a 72 year old in a classroom full of Gen Xer’s at Brandies



2000(8th of Tishrei, 5761): Shabbat Shuva


2000: PBS broadcast a revival production of “The Man Who Came To Dinner,” a three-act comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.


2001: Hamas claimed credit for today’s attack at the Erez Crossing.


2001(20th of Tishrei, 5672): Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for today’s bombing at Shluhot, a kibbutz located “in the Beit She'an Valley in northern Israel.”



2001(20th of Tishrei, 5762): Famed cartoonist Herblock passed away. [Words do not justice to this brilliant political artist and satirist. The following is just one of the many websites where you can see his work http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/herblock/


2001: The New York TimesreviewedMisconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf.


2003(11th of Tishrei, 5764):Seventy-one year old Israel Harold "Izzy" Asper, Canadian tax-lawyer, media magnate and leader of the Canadian Jewish community passed away.


2003: In “Keeping His Foot In a Creaking Door; Radio Pioneer Clings to Imagination,” Joseph Berger chronicles the professional life of Himan Brown, the creator and producer of “such popular radio programs as ‘The Adventures of the Thin Man,’ ‘Dick Tracy,’ ‘Grand Central Station’ and ‘Inner Sanctum’.”



2003(11th of Tishrei, 5764): Ninety- one year old composer Arthur Berger passed away. (As reported by Alan Kozinin)



2005: U.S. premiere of “good night, and good luck,” a must see movie produced by Grant Heslov with a script co-authored by Grant Heslov.


2005(4thof Tishrei, 5766): Ninety-two scriptwriter Devery Freeman passed away today.



2005: Sarah Levy-Tanai, founder of the Inbal dance troupe and one of the country's most important choreographers was laid to rest.  She had passed away at the age of 95.


2005: The legendary Israeli basketball guard Doron Sheffer announced his retirement.  The Israeli native had played on championship teams at the University of Connecticut. He was the first Israeli to be chosen in the N.B.A. draft.  Sheffer passed up a chance to play with the Los Angeles Clippers and returned to Israel where he played for Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Jerusalem.  He led Hapoel Jerusalem to its first European title when it defeated Real Madrid in the ULEB Cup final. 


2006: Opening of the International Haifa Film Festival


2007(25th of Tishrei, 5768): Ninety-eight year old General Paul Alfred Cullen the WW II Australian war hero who served in several theatres most notably in New Guinea where he played a key role in the nasty fighting aimed at re-capturing Kokoda. (For more on the military of Jews in the “land down under,” see the newly published Jewish Anzacs by Mark Dapin.)


2007: The Jewish Museum of Florida presents an exhibition styled “The Art Of Rabbi Shoni Labowitz.” The artworks are inspired by the beauty and details of life, nature, women, spirituality and ritual.  After a distinguished career as a rabbi, publisher and author, Shoni Labowitz is return to her lifelong dream of being an artist.  The exhibit is an extension of her spirituality, evident in her style and subject matter.  She says: “Whether it is feeling the bristles of the brush against the canvas, stroking color into shapes or feeling the clay beneath her hands, it is all a form of connecting with the spirituality in all things.


2007: Leonard “Slatkin announced he had reached agreement on a three-year contract, followed by a two-year option, to become the new music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, beginning with the 2008-2009 subscription season.”


2007:The Sunday Washington Post book section included reviews of The Israel Lobby And U.S.Foreign Policyby John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt and The Deadliest Lies The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish ControlbyAbraham H. Foxman.


2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Judaism including  Exit Ghost by Phillip Roth, The Immortalists: Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever  in which David M. Friedman examines the Lone Eagle’s love affair with eugenics that help explain some of his views about Hitler, the Jews and World II, You Can Lead a Politician to Water but You Can’t Make Him Think:Ten Commandments for Texas Politics by Kinky Friedman and The Journal Of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982, Edited by Greg Johnson.Oates “discovered late in life her own family's Jewish history: Her grandmother, who immigrated to the United States in the 1890s, kept her religion hidden for fear of persecution. So the question arises: Is Oates Jewish and can Oates' writing be characterized as distinctively Jewish?”


2008:Israeli Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger has issued a prayer for the safe return of captive soldier Gilad Schalit which he plans to distribute today, to be read in synagogues throughout Israel on Yom Kippur and weekly on Shabbat after the Torah reading.


2008(8th of Tishrei, 5769): Ninety-five year old Rabbi Leslie Hardman, “the first Jewish British Army Chaplain to enter Bergen-Belsen” when it was liberated in April of 1945 passed away today.




2008:A woman who admitted fabricating a best-selling memoir about surviving the Holocaust as a child by living with wolves has won a court battle with her former publisher. Misha Defonseca's 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years was translated into 18 languages, made into a feature film in France, and drew interest from the Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey. After Defonseca admitted earlier this year that she had made up the story, her former publisher, Jane Daniel, sued to try to overturn a $32.4 million court judgment Defonseca and her ghost writer, Vera Lee, won against her in an earlier fight over profits. Daniel argued that because the story was false, Defonseca perpetrated a hoax on the trial judge and the jury. But this week, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley threw out Daniel's lawsuit because she did not file it within a one-year statute of limitations. The judge said that the truth of the memoire was not an issue in the earlier court battle between Defonseca and Daniel. Instead, the case was about claims of violations of the contract between the authors and the publisher, Feeley said. Defonseca's fraud, misrepresentations, and misconduct did not go to the heart of the case, he said in his written ruling, filed today. Daniel said the jury at the 2001 trial would not have issued a verdict against her if they had known that Defonseca made up the story.


2009(19th of Tishrei, 5770): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2009(19th of Tishrei, 5770): Photographer Irving Penn passed away at the age of 92. (As reported by Andy Grundberg)




 


 2009: In the nation’s capital, The DCJCC presents “An Evening With Betty Buckley.”


2009:At Yale University in New Haven, a screening of "The Case for Israel: Democracy's Outpost," a feature-length documentary film followed by a discussion led by Professor Dershowitz.


2010: An exhibition of the paintings of Tel Aviv artist Tamar Rosen is scheduled to open at the Agora Gallery in New York.


2010:Former State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, once considered a leading voice on corporate governance and ethics, stood before a judge today and calmly explained how he took part in a sprawling corruption scheme involving New York State’s $125 billion pension fund while serving as its sole trustee. 


 2011(9th of Tishrei, 5772): Erev Yom Kippur


2011: In University City, MO, the family of the late Edward Stix, Jr. whose family owned the Rice-Stix, Inc. received friends today at The Gatesworth.



2011(9th of Tishrei): Abbie Silber celebrates her first birthday as the wife of Rabbi Feival Strauss.  This birthday is unique because it falls on the same dates on both the religious and secular calendars as it did the year when Mrs. Strauss was born.  Abbie is the daughter of Laurie and Dr. Robert Silber, pillars of the Jewish community and two of the finest people you would ever want to meet. 


 2011(9th of Tishrei, 5772): Seventieth Anniversary of the end of the two day Nazi massacre of over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar, at a ravine outside of Kiev, the Ukrainian city that was part of the Soviet Union.


2011: The European Union said today that the Middle East Quartet will meet on October 9 in Brussels as part of a wider effort to restart the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. EU spokesman Michael Mann said today the focus would be to maintain momentum in encouraging the parties to return to negotiations.


2011: The IDF announced that the security presence in Jerusalem were beefed up today in preparation for Yom Kippur


2011:Silence fell over Israel at around 5 P.M. today, as the Yom Kippur fast began. Air traffic to and from Israel halted from 1 P.M. and is not scheduled to begin again until 9:30 P.M. tomorrw, while the border crossings to Jordan and Gaza have been closed down. The weather forecast bodes well for fasters, with comfortable temperatures. Tomorrow will be slightly warmer than today but not more humid, so the heat stress will not rise - good news for fasters.


2011:Over 1000 people attended a Kol Nidre Yom Kippur service organized by Daniel Sieradski at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration that had begun in September.


2012(21st of Tishrei, 5773): Hoshana Rabbah


2012: “A vandal scrawled graffiti on a mural by modern Jewish American master Mark Rothko at London’s Tate Modern today.”



2012(21st of Tishrei, 5773): In keeping with the minchag of Reform Judaism, Temple Judah is scheduled to host a Pizza Simchat Torah celebration in Cedar Rapids.


2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Revenge of Geography:What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan, Subversives:The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld and All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen 


2012: In Iowa City, Agudas Achim is scheduled to sponsor its second annual Sukkah Crawl


2012:Lorraine Lotzof Abramson, author, "My Race: A Jewish Girl Growing Up under Apartheid in South Africa is scheduled to appear on Channel 75


2012: In Venezuela, voters are scheduled to go to the polls and vote for either Hugo Chavez or Henrique Capriles, the grandson of Holocaust survivors as the next president of this major South American nation.


2012: French President Francois Hollande today promised the Jewish community a major increase in security after blank bullets were fired near a Parisian synagogue in the most recent incident in a wave of anti-Semitic attacks in France.


2012: After a month, curtain came down on The Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s revival production of Stephen Schwartz’s Tony Award-winning musical “Pippin.”


2013: Ben “Shapiro co-founded TruthRevolt, a U.S. media watchdog and activism website, in association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center”


2013: In Washington, DC, the Hyman S and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is schedule to present an evening with mystery writer Walter Mosely.


2013: “In association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Ben Shapiro launched the website for media watchdog group TruthRevolt in response to the left-leaning Media Matters for America


2013: Jason Isaacs was chosen to play one of the “tankers” in the WW II movie “Fury.”


2013: Rabbi Moshe Arye Bamberger, the Head of the Bet Din of the Jewish community of Metz, France is scheduled to present a seminar on a new publication, Torat Chachmei Metz, or The Torah of the Scholars of Metz, which is based on an original manuscript in the YIVO Archives.


2013: From Cedar Rapids to Columbus, Ohio and points beyond friends and family of Abbie Strauss, the daughter of Dr. Bob and Laurie Silber and the wife of Rabbi Feivel Strauss celebrate the birthday of this accomplished musician,  supportive helpmate and mother par excellence.


2013: Five more people are scheduled to on trial in federal court in New York in connection with Bernie Madoff’s massive stock fraud and con.



2014: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host two seminars on “Iranian-Jewish Culture and History” presented by Isaac Yomtovian author of My Iran: Memories, Mysteries and Myths.


2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a lecture by Gennady Estraikh entitled “Farewell to Communism: Howard Fast and Soviet Yiddish Writers.”


2014(24th of Tishrei, 5776): One hundred year old Ralph Goldman who played a key role in the creation of the state of Israel passed away today.




2014: “Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosion next to a tank near the border with Lebanon this afternoon, setting off the second border clash in the area in three days.”  Hezbollah took credit for the explosion.


2014: “The Israeli Arab Knesset member Hanin Zoabi petitioned the High Court of Justice on Tuesday against a Knesset Ethics Committee decision to ban her for six months from parliament debates because she declared that the Palestinian kidnappers of three Israeli teenagers were not terrorists.” (As reported by Stuart Winer)


2014: In Dallas, TX, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host Do Words Kill? Hate Speech, Propaganda, and Incitement to Genocide.


2015: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center and the ADL presented a program marking the 50th commemoration of The Second Vatican Council of 1965.


2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host a “book talk” featuring Sasha Abramsky, the author of The House of Twenty Thousand Books.


2015: JCC Manhattan is scheduled to “Home Alone,” “Renewal,” “Glove Story” and “Reflections” – “short films relating to Israel’s celebrated modern dance scene.”


2015: A the latest wave of terrorist attacks continues that have left for Israelis dead from stabbings in Jerusalem, “an 18 year old Palestinian woman” “was shot and wounded by police” after she stabbed an Israeli man “in an alleyway near the Western Wall.”


2015: “A team of engineers from the Israeli nonprofit Group SpaceIL is the first to advance in an international competition sponsored by Google to send a privately-funded space craft to the moon, contests organizers announced” today.


2016(5th of Tishrei, 5777): One hundred four year old Austrian-born photographer and cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky passed away today.




2016: Amiram Levin, “a former senior IDF officer who played a role in Israel’s daring 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe airport slammed former president Shimon Peres, who passed away last week, as a “crook” and “liar” who inflated his role in the operation.”



 


2016: Shimon Dotan’s “The Settlers” is scheduled to be shown at the 54th New York Film Festival.


2016: In the UK, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Things to Come.”


2016: “Latin American Jews living in Israel added their voices to the chorus of congratulations sent to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on winning the Nobel Peace Prize” today.


2016: In Weimar, the Onion Festival, which will featuring a new offering – “Kosher Thurngian bratwurst” – is scheduled to open today giving observant Jews their first chance to sample what has been a “traif delicacy.”


2017(17th of Tishrei, 5778): Shabbat and Sukkoth Chol Ha’moed; for more see


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Shabbat morning services followed by lunch


2017: The Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem is scheduled to host special Sukkoth family activities during Sukkoth Chol Hamoed.


2017: This evening, the University of Iowa Hillel is scheduled to host Havdalah and cookies in the Sukkah.


2018: Friends and family prepare to celebrate the birthday of Abbie Strauss, the sweet singer of song at Temple Israel in Memphis, TN, who along with her husband Rabbi Feivel Strauss provides one-two punch of Yiddishkite


2018: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including a graphic novel for children, The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler and the recently released paperback editions of The Ruined House by Ruby Namader and Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos.


2018: “Blue Badge Guide Rachel Kolsky is scheduled to lead a walking tour that “commerates the centenary of the end of WW I” “that highlights the Jewish East End associations with the Great War including a remembrance of “poet and artist Isaac Rosenberg,


2018: Due to flooding at “The Center for Jewish History, the 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Strauss Historical Society” scheduled for today has been cancelled.


2018: “The internationally-renowned National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene is scheduled perform Mama’s Loshn Kugel” at an “event that will honor Atlanta’s Holocaust survivors” with proceeds going “to support restoration and preservation of the Memorial to the Six Million at Greenwood Cemetery, scholarships for Holocaust education to teachers and students, and programs to pass on survivors' collective experiences to succeeding generations


2018: Adam Maalouf and Lara Bello are scheduled to perform at the American Sephardi Music Festival.


 


 


 

This Day, October 8, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 8

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


705: “The reign of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik” during Abi Isa “a self-proclaimed Jewish prophet” preached his message in Persia, came to an end today.


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


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


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


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


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


1713: Birthdate of Yechezkel ben Yehuda Landau who would gain fame as an expert on Halachah, Jewish ritual law and who was the father of Samuel Landau, the “chief dayyan of Prague.”


1753(10th of Tishrei, 5514): Yom Kippur


1762: Mordecai Sheftal married Frances Hart in Charleston, SC today.


1763: Birthdate of Michael Josephs (Myer Königsberg) the native of Konigsberg who met Moses Mendelssohn which studying Talmud in Berlin after which he moved to London where he pursued a business career while writing articles for "Hebrew Review," the "Voice of Jacob," and the "Jewish Chronicle."


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


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


1784(23rd of Tishrei, 5545): Simchat Torah


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


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


1803(22nd of Tishrei, 5564): Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret


1805(15th of Tishrei, 5566): Sukkoth


1810(10th of Tishrei, 5571): Yom Kippur


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


1821: Abraham Isaacs married Elizabeth Benjamin at the Great Synagogue today.


1826: At “Klingen, near Landua, Rhenish Palatine, Samuel Weis and Agatha Levy gave birth to Julius Weis the husband of Carrie Mayer who moved to New Orleans where he was “director of the Jewish Widows’ and Orphans’ Home” and “president of the Hebrew Educational Society, Touro Infirmary and Benevolent Association and Temple Sinai.


1828: George Solomons married Rosetta Solomon at the Hambro Synagogue today.


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


1836: Birthdate of John Phillips, the native of Birmingham, England, the husband of Leah Mosely and son-in-law of Lewin Mosley, who represented Ladywood Ward in the City Council and served as President of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation.


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


1838: In Great Britain, Frederick Goldsmid and his wife Caroline Samuel gave birth to barrister Sir Julian Goldsmid, MP, Vice-Chancellor of London University and husband of Virginia Philipson with whom he had five children – Violet, Edith, Margherita, Beatrice and Mau.


1841(23rd of Tishrei, 5602): Simchat Torah


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


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


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


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


1861: Louis Bach completed his service with Company D of the 27th Regiment.


1862(14th of Tishrei, 5623): Erev Sukkoth


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


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


1865(18th of Tishrei, 5626): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth


1865(18th of Tishrei, 5626): Fifty-three year old Moravian born violinist and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst passed away in Nice.


1867(9th of Tishrei, 5628): Erev Yom Kippur


1868: Oswald Hönigsmann who “represented the city of Brody in the Galician Diet delivered a speech today in behalf of the emancipation of the Jews” which helped bring a victory for Franz Smolka’s effort to gain full civil rights for the Jews.


1869:  President Franklin Pierce passed away.  Pierce was one of those forgettable mediocrities who served in the White House in the decade before the Civil War. His record of dealing with Jews is limited and mixed.  Franklin Pierce was the first and maybe the only President whose name appears on the charter of a synagogue. Pierce signed the Act of Congress in 1857 that amended the laws of the District of Columbia to enable the incorporation of the city's first synagogue, the Washington Hebrew Congregation.  Washington Hebrew Congregation is one of the oldest and largest Reform Congregations in the Washington Metropolitan Area.  But two years before, in November of 1855, Pierce signed a treaty with Switzerland that had been ratified by the Senate.  The treaty allowed the Swiss government to discriminated again American citizens who were Jews so that the treatment of American Jews would be consistent with the treatment of Swiss Jews by their government.


1871(23rd of Tishrei, 5632): Simchat Torah


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


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


1875(9th of Tishrei 5636): Erev Yom Kippur


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


1878: In Philadelphia, Morris Moses Pflazer, the German born son of “Karoline and Marx Mordechai Pfaelzer and his wife “Sophie Pfalzer” gave birth to “Henrietta (Hettie) Pfaelzer” who became Henrietta Stern when she married Horace Stern, the University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsyvania.


1879(21st of Tishrei, 5640): Hoshana Raba


1881(15th of Tishrei, 5642): Sukkoth


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


 1889: In Cortland, NY, Abraham H. Jachles of Binghamton, NY marred Emily J. Klein of Walterboro, SC.


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


1890: Birthdate of Lithuanian native Samuel Goodman “Sam” Hoffenstein, an American newspaperman and husband of Edith Morgan who moved to Los Angeles where pursued a successful career as a screenwriter.



1890: At today’s annual meeting of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society Orphan Asylum Mrs. Philip J. Joachimsen was elected President.


1891: August Belmont received a telegram today in Louisville, KY telling him that the home he and his family were renting in New York had burned down to which he replied “that he would come to New York at once.”


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


1891: At Rochester (NY) University, President Hill addressed the Query Club, “a literary club composed largely of young people from Temple Bortih Kodesh” on the subject of “Higher Education.”


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



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


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


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


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


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


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


1894: “Dental surgeon and businessman Dr. Hugo Ascher and Minna Luise Ascher gave birth to Charlotte Hedwig the younger sister of painter Fritz Ascher a protégé of Max Liebermann


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


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


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


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


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


1897: Birthdate of Kovno native Oscar Straus Caplan, a “Judge in Chicago’s Municipal Courts for more than a quarter of century and after retirement “a part-time instructor at the University of Miami Law School who was the husband of Sarah Caplan and the father of Mitchell Caplan.


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


1898(22ndof Tishrei, 5669): Shemini Atzeret


1898: Forty-seven year old German born, Portland, Oregon attorney Joseph Simon began serving as the United States Senator from Oregon today.


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


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


1900(15thof Tishrei, 5661): Sukkoth


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


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


1902: Two days after he had passed away, eighty-three year old Austrian Rabbi Jacob Jacques Heinrich Hirschfeld, the son “Marie and Emanuel Isak Hirschfeld” and the husband of Pauline Hirschfeld was buried today in Vienna.


1903(17thof Tishrei, 5664): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1903: In San Francisco, having gained approval for the building of a new sanctuary the rabbi and officers of Congregation Sherith Israel gathered this morning for a groundbreaking ceremony.


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


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


1902: Birthdate of Arthur Harold Babitsky, the native of Omaha, Nebraska who gained fame as award winning Disney animator Art Babbit who worked on such classics as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarts” and “Fantasia.



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


1907: The Tennessee Volunteers coached by Izzy Levene defeated the football team from the Tennessee Military Institute in the school’s first game of the season


1907: Today King Edward VII’s private secretary wrote to Nathaniel Mayer, known as “Natty” the first Lord Rothschild who was an Executor of Benjamin Disraeli’s estate concerning “letters of a very confidential and family nature that may been written by the late Queen Victoria to Lord Beaconsfield between 1874 and 1880.”


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


1909(23rdof Tishrei, 5670): Simchat Torah


1909: After having been taken to the hospital two weeks, fifty-two year Galicia born poet, author  and Zionist Naphtali Herz Imber  who had first visited Palestine at the age of 16 and is best known “as the author ‘Hatikvah,’ the Zionist National hymn” passed away today in New York.



1911: Birthdate of Czech jazz musician Karel Vlach who had “a day job as a traveling salesman for Jewish notions firm until the German occupation made it untenable” and who played with several Jewish musicians including Fritz Weiss before the war when Weiss was ultimately shipped to his death at Auschwitz.


1912(27th of Tishrei, 5673): Dr. Morris Loeb, Professor of Chemistry and Columbia, a noted scientist and philanthropist and the husband of Eda K. Loeb passed away today in New York City.


1912: In Elmira, NY, founding of the Hebrew Institute.


1912: The First Balkan War began today which when it ended find the 60,000 Jews living in Salonika going from Ottoman rule to Greek rule – a reality that caused concern among the Jews which would lead to the Greek government, in 1917 becoming one of the first supporters of the Balfour Declaration.


1913(7th of Tishrei, 5674): Seventeen year old Schore Feitelsohn passed away today.


1915: It was announced today that “Catholics, Protestants and Jews have joined at Columbia University’s Teacher College in a co-operative union to be known as the Students’ Religious Organization.”


1915: It was reported today that “Djemal Pasha is especially annoyed because of the Zion Mule Corps which consists of volunteers from among the Jewish refugees from Palestine who are engaged in transport work at Gallipoli.


1915: It was reported today that “Djemal Pasha has announced he will extirpate Zionism root and branch and that not a single Jew will be allowed to re-enter Palestine.”


1915: It was reported today “about five hundred Jewish women are confined at the Bella Vista Hotel at Jaffa” where they are suffering “much privation.”


1916(11th of Tishrei, 5677): In New York, retired realtor Samuel Hirsch, the husband of Eugenia Hirsch, whose estate was appraised at $774, 928 passed away today.


1916: It was reported today that an exhaustive report “purports to show that the (Russian) military censor was in definite alliance with the anti-Semitic press and took every” opportunity “to fan the flames of racial antagonism and hatred by having the Jew proclaimed as an enemy of Russia, more to be feared even than the German invader…so that every attempt to reveal the truth about the Jewish solider, his bravery, his fortitude, his unselfishness, the suffering of his helpless wife and children was systematically suppressed.”


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


1917: In Frankfurt an der Oder, Siegfried and Frieda Nuemann gave birth to Gerhard Neumann, who served with the fabled “Flying Tigers” during WW II, became a leading aviation designer and General Electric executive and earned the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1979


1917: It was reported today that there are more than 50,000 Jewish soldiers serving in the U.S. Army, “a percentage far in excess of the ratio of Jews to the general population.


1918: Birthdate of Arthur Mendelowitz, the native of Sighetu Marmației who survived Auschwitz, joined Mosad and gained fame as Amos Manor the Director of Shin Bet.




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


1920: Today’s Issue of the American Hebrew is scheduled to be devoted to the “various phases of” the late Jacob “Schiff’s life and activities.”


1920: Harry H. Schlact was “appointed special assistant commissioner of immigration” today.


1920: Rabbi Wise and Judge Elkus are scheduled to speak at the exercises marking the installation of Hebrew Union College graduate Maxwell Silver as the Rabbi of the Flushing Division of the Free Synagogue.


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


1924: While speaking in the lower house of the Hungarian Parliament, Dr. Bela Fabian, a Jewish deputy described the power of the anti-Semitic Association of Awakening Magyars, some of whose members had just been acquitted in case where they had been charged “in the bombing a charity of a charity ball organized by the Jewish Women of Csongrad in which several people were killed.”


1925: At Forbes Field, The Washington Senators, with Buddy Myer at 2nd base lost the second game of the World Series to the Pirates.


1925: Birthdate of NYU basketball star Sidney Tanenbaum who “won the 1947 Bar Kochba Award, which honored him as the best Jewish American athlete.”



1926: It was reported today that Jews in Palestine have called upon the British government not to let Arabs be the ones to repair Rachel’s Tomb.


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


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



1927: In Bahía Blanca, Argentina, were Máxima (Vapniarsky) and Lázaro Milstein, a Jewish Ukrainian immigrant gave birth to biochemist César Milstein who “shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984”



1927: In Omaha, Nebraska, Jacob Lipsey, a Jewish immigrant from Russia who “own a wholesaled poultry and meat market” and “the former Molly Brick” gave birth to Stanford Lipsey, thePulitzer Prize winning publisher and friend of Warren Buffet.



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


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


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


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


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


1929 Birthdate of Bronx High School of Science, Arthur Bernard Bisguier who became an International Grandmaster in 1957, the same year in which he played Bobby Fischer at the U.S. Open in Cleveland



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


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


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



1932(8thof Tishrei, 5693): Shabbat Shuva


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


1935(22ndof Tishrei, 5697): Shemini Atzeret


1936: Birthdate of Rona Burstein, who gained fame as Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett


1936: Abraham Kaiser, a Jew living in Duisburg, Germany was sentenced by a National Socialist tribunal to one and a half years imprisonment “for writing to a friend in America a letter that contained uncomplimentary remarks about Chancellor Hitler and the National Socialist party.”


1936: It was reported today that “a nationwide unofficial army was being formed by a WPA group to ‘fight reds’ and quoted” “Wilbert Eldred, a middle-aged employee in the Procurement Division of the Unite States Treasury Department” “as saying that the ‘growing influence of Reds and Jews was menacing the country.’”


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


1937: “Lance Spy” directed by Gregory Ratoff, co-starring Peter Lorre and featuring Luther Adler, Fritz Feld, Joseph Schildkraut and Maurice Moscovith was released in the United States today.


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


1938:Jewish composer David Rose marries Martha Raye


1939: A new Nazi–Soviet agreement was reached by an exchange of letters between Vyacheslav Molotov and the German Ambassador


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


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


1939: “The reported plan of Chancellor Hitler to establish a Jewish State in Polish territory was condemned” today “by the annual conference of the Order of the Sons of Zion.”


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


1939: “Writer Sees Nazis Leaving No Choice” provided a summary of the views of Anne O’Hare McCormick of the editorial staff of The New York Times on Hitler’s peace proposals most of which she dismissed except for his proposal of “setting up some sort of a Jewish state in Poland – a Hitler homeland for the Jews” which she said “is at least interesting.


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


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


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


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


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


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


1941(17thof Tishrei, 5702): Fifty-four year old Koblenz born, Chicago raised Gustav Gerson Kahn, known as “Gus Kahn” the lyricist for such “standards” as “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” “It Had to Be You” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me” who went on to create musicals in Hollywood while being married to Grace Kahn with whom he had one son, Donald, passed away today.



1941: “The Auschwitz II extermination camp, better known as Auschwitz-Birkenau” was founded today.


1941(17thof Tishrei, 5702): Fifty-four year old lyricist Gus Kahn who wrote an untold number of hit songs during the 1920’s and 1930’s and was the father of songwriter Donald Kahn passed away today.


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


1941: “The prosecutor, Gaston Cassagneau, handed Leon Blum an “additional indictment” that included a lengthy critique of the Popular Front and ended with these words: “Because the unjustifiable weakness of M. Léon Blum’s government compromised both production in the short run and the moral state of the producers, he betrayed the duties of his office.”


1941: “49th Parallel,” a British war movie based on an original story by Emeric Pressburger who wrote the screenplay and starring Leslie Howard premiered in London today.


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


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


1943: This morning, one day after he had passed funeral services are scheduled to be held for sixty-four year old Lithuanian native Ephraim Caplan, the “religious editor of the Jewish Morning Journal,” long-time director of the Jewish National Fund of America and President of the Council for Orthodox Jewish Education who was the husband of Eva Caplan with whom he had one daughter, Martha and “three sons, Dr. Leon Caplan, Dr. Joseph Caplan” and Saul Caplan who served with the U.S. Army in WW II, followed by burial in Mount Judah Cemetery.


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


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


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


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


1944: The Gestapo began arresting members of the anti-Nazi Ehrenfeld Group.


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


1945(1st of Cheshvan, 5706): Seventy-six year old author, Felix Salten, born Siegmund Salzmann at Pest (what would be Budapest), best known as the creator of Bambi  who fled the Nazis which meant spent the last years of his life in Switzerland and who in 1901 married  Ottilie Metzl with whom he had two children – Paul and Anna -- passed away today.



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


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


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


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


1945: “The Seventh Veil” a melodrama with a score by Benjamin Frankel was released today in the UK.


1946(15th of Tishrei, 5710): Shabbat and Sukkoth


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


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


1949: The curtain came down temporarily on “Lend an Ear” a musical revue featuring sketches by Joseph Stein ending its run at the Broadhurst Theatre so it could move to the Schubert Theatre.


1950: The Third Maccabiah, the first one to be held in the state of Israel, came to an end today.


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


1952(19th of Tishrei, 5713): Fifth Day of Sukkoth


1952: “The Four Poster” the film version of the play produced by Stanley Kramer, directed by Irving Reis with music by Dimitri Tiomkin and co-starring Lili Palmer was released today in the United States.


1952: In Chicago, Ruth Ellen (née Reich) and Allen Zwick gave birth to Harvard graduate and director/screenwriter/producer Edward Zwick who directed such gems as Glory and Legends of the Fall but shared in the Oscar for the fluffy “Shakespeare in Love.”


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


1953: ABC broadcast the first episode of “Where’s Raymond” a sitcom produced by Stanley Shapiro.


1956: Today sports broadcaster Bob Wolff provided the radio play by play of Game 5 of the 1956 World Series in which Yankee Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers.


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


1961: “Actors Joyce and Byrne Piven gave birth to movie director Shira Piven, the sister of actor Jeremey Piven.


1962(10thof Tishrei, 5723): Yom Kippur


1964(2ndof Cheshvan, 5725): Seventy-one year old Viennese born film producer Isadore Goldsmith who continued his career in Great Britain after the Nazis came to power and was the husband of novelist Vera Caspary passed away today in Putney, VT.


1964: “Outrage,” a western film directed by Martin Ritt, with a script by Michael Kanin and starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Edward G. Robinson, William Shatner and Howard Da Silva (so many Jews) was released today in the United States by MGM.


1966: Birthdate of Memphis native David Frank Kustoff, the University of Memphis alum and Republican political leader who served as a United States Attorney before taking office as “the member of the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee’s 8th congressional district” in 2017 and is the husband of fellow attorney Roberta Kustoff with whom he “has two children.


1966(24thof Tishrei, 5727): One day after Simchat Torah, the cycle begins again – Parashat Bereshit


1966(24thof Tishrei, 5727): Seventy-eight year old Ukrainian born cellist and composer Gdal Saleski passed away today in Los Angeles.


1967: Joseph Brodsky, a victim of anti-Semitism who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and won the Nobel Prize for leadership and painter Marina Basmanova gave birth to their son Andrei whom Brodsky registered under Marina’s name to spare him attacks by the authorities.


1969: “The Monitors” a sci-fi comedy starring Avery Schreiber and Larry Storch and featuring Adam Arkin, Alan Arkin and Stubby Kaye was released in the United States today.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


1974: NBC broadcast “Where Have All the People Gone?”  a sci-fi thriller written by Sandor Stern and co-starring Verna Bloom.


1975: “Hearts of the West” a comedy directed by Howard Zieff and co-starring Alan Arkin was released in the United States today.


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


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


1978(7thof Tishrei, 5739): Seventy-six year old Eliyahu Sasson, the native of Damascus who made Aliyah in 1927 who filled several ambassadorial positions, served as an MK and cabinet minister passed away today.


1979: In a case of “poetic justice” “two Palestinian terrorists were injured attempting to plant a bomb near the Tomb of the Patriarchs.”


1980(28thof Tishrei, 5741): Seventy-three year old David I. Arkin, an innocent victim of the McCarthy Red witch hunt and the father of actor Alan Arkin whose most famous musical effort was the song “Black and White” which celebrated the 1954 Supreme Court Decision that put an end to the legal prop for racially segregated schools passed away today.


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


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


1981 ABC broadcast the first episode of Taxi’s Fourth Season directed by James Burrows.


1983: “My Favorite Year,” a comedy directed by Richard Benjamin, produced by Michael Gruskoff and featuring Bill Macy, Lainie Kazan, Selma Diamond, Adolph Green and Lou Jacobi was released in the United States today.


1985(23rd of Tishrei, 5746): Simchat Torah


1985: “An English-language production of Les Misérables” which was a product of a collaboration of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg premiered in London at The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Barbican Theatre.


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


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


1987(15th of Tishrei, 5748): Sukkoth


1988: “Jamie Sue Gangel, a network television correspondent for NBC News, and Daniel Silva, a writer and producer for CNN, both in Washington, were married today at the Mayflower Hotel.”


1988: NBC broadcast the first episode of season four of Golden Girls, a sitcom starring Beatrice Arthur and Estelle Getty with theme music by Andrew Gold.


1988: NBC broadcast the first episode of the sitcom created by “Empty Nest” created by Susan Harris (née Spivak).


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



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


1993: Edward Rothstein gives a less than an enthusiastic review of Ezra Laderman’s “Marilyn” which was “a City Opera commission” that “opened a world-premiere festival in honor of the company’s 50th anniversary.”


1993: Seventy-five year old Robert Constant Moses, a native of Phillip, SD, a graduate of Beloit High School who was a WW II veteran, a draftsman at Barber Coleman and the father of Nancy Margulis, who became a pillar of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community, was laid to rest today at the Mt. Tabor Cemetery.


1993: “Mr. Jones,” a romantic drama written by Eric Roth was released in the United States today by TriStar Pictures.


1993: “Gettysburg” a massive Civil War epic co-produced by Robert Katz, featuring John Rothman and with a memorable score by Randy Edelman was released today in the United States.


1994: In a letter written today to Sir Martin Gilbert, fourteen and half year old Hirsch Dorbian wrote that he had been “among the thousands of prisoners liberated by the British in the camp at Neustadt earlier that month and that on VE Day, May 8, 1945, “was spent by him in a clean and white bed for the first time three years.


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


1999: “The Last Day” an Oscar winning documentary that ‘tell the story of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust” was released today in the United Kingdom.


2000(9th of Tishrei, 5671): Erev Yom Kippur


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


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


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


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


2004:  Haaretz reported that at least thirty-five people were killed and over 100 injured in three separate attacks on holiday resorts in the Sinai Desert that were packed with Israelis celebrating the holiday of Sukkoth. 


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


2004: “Friday Night Lights” the movie version of  Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger, ,directed by Peter Berg who wrote the screenplay along with David Aaron Cohen and produced by Brian Grazer was released in the United States today.


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


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


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


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



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


2006(16thof Tishrei, 5767): Second Day of Sukkoth


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


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


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


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


2006: Services will be held today at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism to honor the memory of Selma Judith Levy Toback.


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


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


2008(9th of Tishrei, 5769: Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre is chanted.


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



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



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



2009:As tensions flare once again over a Jerusalem holy site claimed by Israel and Palestinians as their own, one of the most influential leaders of Israel's religious community told the president today that Jews should not make pilgrimages to the Temple Mount so as not to evoke global outrage.



2009:Romania unveiled a monument in memory of 300,000 Jews and Gypsies killed during the Holocaust in the country, which at times in the past had denied that the extermination even occurred. 2009: In San Francisco, “Torah scribe Julie Seltzer began work on a Sefer Torah.”



2010(30th of Tishrei, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan



2010(30th of Tishrei, 5771): Eighty-two Chicago born, Yale educated James Emanuel “Jim” Fuchs the winner of bronze medals in shot put at the 1948 and 1952 Summer Olympics passed away today in New York.



https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/sports/18fuchs.html



 



2010:The 92Y Resource Center for Jewish Diversity and the Ethiopian Jewish community in New York are scheduled to co-host a festive and authentic Ethiopian Shabbat dinner. The scheduled feast will include traditional Ethiopian dishes such as Doro Wat (chicken stew), Injera (pancake bread) and much more.



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



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



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



2011: Kenny G. (Kenneth Bruce Gorelick) appeared tonight on “Saturday Night Live with his soprano sax.”



2011(10th of Tishrei, 5772): Eighty-two year old Allen “Al” Davis who played a major role in re-shaping the National Football League as the owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders and as the commissioner of the AFL passed away today.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sports/football/al-davis-was-a-maverick-until-his-death.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=Amy%20Trask&st=cse



http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-al-davis-20111009-story.html



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



2013: Under the leadership of Ed Miliband, Labor MP Luciana Berger began serving as “Shadow Minister for Public Health” today.



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



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



2013: Howard Epstein completed his service as a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly “representing the provincial riding of Halifax Chedbucto.”



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



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



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



2014(14th of Tishrei, 5775): Erev Sukkoth


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


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


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


2014: The Lunar Eclipse featuring a Blood Moon will be visible throughout much of the United States today. (As reported by Edmond J. Rodman)



2014:Argentinian anti-terror police today arrested a man suspected of planning to attack a Jewish community center.


2015: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host “Books at Lunchtime” where a Waterstones Camden bookseller “will share what's new, what's hot, and read extracts from recommended books and bestsellers.


2015: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “Fresh Jews and Fresh Juice.”


2015: JCC Manhattan is scheduled to host an evening with “Vertigo, Israel’s top dance company” where “choreographer Noa Wertheim will talk about her artistic process, including the creation of the group's eco art village outside of Jerusalem.”


2015:  Eva Moskowitz will not be running for Mayor of New York saying today “that she wanted to redouble her focus on her charter school network…and the task of creating ‘transformation change’ in education.”


2015: During an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, “Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson…said fewer people would have been killed by the Nazis had been armed” in an apparent attempt to blame “gun control for the extent of the Holocaust.”


2015: “Junun” a film that “dcouments the making of the album of the same name by the Israeli composer Shye Ben” was released today at the New York Film Festival


2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “A Special Evening Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Murder of Leon Klinghoffer Aboard the Achille Lauro.” 


2015(25thof Tishrei, 5776): Ninety year old Henry Krystal who survived the Holocaust to become a Professor of Psychiatry at Michigan State University passed away today.



2016(6thof Tishrei, 5777): Shabbat Shuva


2016(6thof Tishrei, 5777): Eighty-six year old “Emmy Award-winning documentarian” Morton Silverstein passed away today.



2016(6thof Tishrei, 5777): Ninety-six year old Peter Allen, who introduced the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Met passed away today.



2016(6thof Tishrei, 5777): Eight-four year old Professor Jacob Neusner, the prolific and ground-breaking Biblical scholar passed away today in Rhinebeck, NY.




2016:  SERET DC. “a celebration of contemporary Israeli cinema is scheduled to host a screening of


“Abulele.”


2016: Today’s session of “German Iowa and the Global Midwest” is scheduled to present: Tobias Brinkmann speaking on "Small Town Stopover: Jewish Immigrants from Central Europe in the Rural Midwest 1850-80"; Kit Belgum: speaking on “German and Jewish: Civic Connections in Nineteenth-Century Iowa" and Jeannette Gabriel speaking on "We Were German Too: Finding Jewish Women's Voices in Iowa's German Past"


2016: “Exposed” a “six week contemporary dance and physical theatre featuring Israeli and local artists” is scheduled to open in the Metro Atlanta, GA Area today.


2016: “Keeping Up with the Jones,” a spy-spoof featuring Gal Gadot premiered in Los Angeles today.


2016: The 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, named in honor of Lublin born violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski is scheduled to begin today.


2016: As those living on the southeast coast of the United States deal with Hurricane Mathew “many synagogues are shuttering for Shabbat” including “Temple Emanuel located on the barrier islands of Palm Beach which has cancelled Shabbat morning services.”


2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt and the recently published paperback edition of The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain.


2017(18th of Tishrei, 5778): Sukkoth Chol Ha’moed


2017: Edith Schumer, a native of Stockstadt, Germany, who “was one of the “1,000 children,” a group of approximately 1,400 German Jewish children who were allowed to come unaccompanied to the United States via an organized rescue effort that occurred nine months prior to the start of World War II” is scheduled to speak at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.


2017: Author and architectural historian Clare Lise Kelly is scheduled conduct a tour that will explore the Montgomery County work of Cohen, Haft & Associates, a leading modernist architecture firm in the D.C. area whose projects have included several Jewish-owned buildings, such as B'nai Israel Congregation and the Charles E. Smith Life Communities campus


2018: Yemen Blues and Lara Bello are scheduled to perform this evening at the American Sephardi Music Festival at the Center for Jewish History.


2018: In Jerusalem, Mercaz Hatarbuyot is scheduled to host an evening Klezmer, Jazz and Classical Music featuring “virtuoso clarinetist Ira Goyfeld” and “concert pianist Eliah Zabaly,” the winner of the “1st Prize of the Paris National Conservatory of Music.”


2018: Today is the deadline for submitting applications for a fellowship “at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.”



 

This Day, October 9, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 9


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


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


1192: After having negotiated a treaty with Saladin following the Battle of Jaffa, that created a three year truce, Richard III left Acre for a planned return to England.


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


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


1261: Birthdate of Denis I who as King of Portugal resisted pressure by the clergy to “invoke the restrictions placed on the Jews by the Fourth Lateran Council.
1264: The army of King Alfonso the Wise of Castile conquered the Spanish city of Jerez that had been held by the Moors since 711. The Jewish community of Jerez, complete with a separate Juderia or Jewish quarter had existed since the time of the Moors. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the city had two synagogues with Don Yucaff and his son Don Todros each living in one of the “houses of the rabbis” Among those Jews to whom the king gave houses and/or lands were “Don Yehuda Mosca who made translations from Arabic into Spanish for the king; the "almoxarife" Don Mayr, or rather Mür de Malhea, and his son Çag (Isaac); Çimha (Simḥah) Xtaruçi, whose father lost his life and the whole of his large fortune during the rebellion of the city; Don Vellocid (Vellecid), "ballestero del rey a caballo"; Solomon Ballestero; and Axucuri Ballestero—the last three being in the king's army.” [Editor’s Note – As can be seen from this entry, the image of the Spanish Jews flourishing under the Moors and suffering under the Christians is not an accurate one.]


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


1390: Henry III who appointed the Jewish convert to Christianity Paul of Burgos keeper of the royal seal and Lord Chancellor began his reign as King of Castile and Leon


1526: Today, the Queen regent Maria, the widow of Louis II, continued her anti-Jewish policies first displayed when by expelling the Jews of Sopron by allowing the city of Pressburg, to expel its Jewish citizens.
1547: Christening of the Don Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. According to some sources, Cervantes mother, Lenor de Cortinas was a descendant of Conversos, Jews who chose Christianity over death or despoliation of their wealth.


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


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


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


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


1691: English merchant Erasmus Smith whose philanthropy was recognized by Trinity College when it created the Erasmus Smith Chair of Hebrew in 1724 passed away today.


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


1766: Uriah and Eva Esther Hendricks gave birth to Jochabed Sarah Hendricks


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


1775(15thof Tishrei, 5536): Sukkoth


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


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


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


1794(15thof Tishrei, 5555): Sukkoth


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


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


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


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


1803(23rdof Tishrei, 5564): Simchat Torah


1803: Rabbi Meanchem Mendel Rubin of Linsk, “the first rebbe of the Rosphitz dynasty and the son-in-law of Rabbi Yizchak Halevi Horowitz passed away today.


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


1813(15thof Tishrei, 5574): Sukkoth


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


1817: Daniel Rees married Priscilla Davis at the Western Synagogue today.


1818: Birthdate of Benedict Zuckerman, the native of Breslau who was a leading German mathematician who served on the faculty of the Breslau Seminary under the leadership of Zacharias Frankel.


1823(4thof Cheshvan, 5584): Jacob I. Cohen, a native of Bavaria and the son of Joshua and Peslah Cohen, who fought in the Battle of Beaufort while serving under Captain Lushington and who in 1789 “took the lead in organizing the first synagogue in Virginia, passed away today in Philadelphia


1823: Leon Benjamin, the son of Joel Benjamin and Frances Cohen was circumcised today in the United Kingdom


1832(15thof Tishrei, 5593): Sukkoth


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


1835: In Wurttemberg, Germany, Bernhard Frankfurter, the son of Mirjam and Moses Levi Frankfurter, and his wife Esther gave birth to “Mirjam Frankfureter.”


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


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


1843(15thof Tishrei, 5604): Sukkoth


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


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


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


1850(3rdof Cheshvan, 5611): Fifty-four year old Israel Friedman of Ruzhyn the Chasidic rebbe known as Der Heiliger Ruzhiner("The holy one from Ruzhyn"), passed away today.




1856: “A God-Send For The Express” published today reported that “the German organ of the Buchanneers in Philadelphia accuses Fremont of being a Hebrew by birth and having been educated in the Mosaic faith besides being born in Alsace. As the Express must by this time be tired of calling Col Freemont a Jesuit, it will be delighted of an opportunity to accuse him of being a descendant of Abraham.” Fremont is John C. Fremont, a native of Virginia, an Episcopalian, military hero and explorer known as the Great Pathfinder. He was also the Republican Party’s first Presidential nominee.
1857: In New York, the Recorder heard a second day of testimony in the case where Nathan Levin, a recently arrived Jewish immigrant from Hungary, had accused Israel Steinhardt, a fellow Hungarian co-religionist of stealing 940 pounds in Bank of England notes. A witness named Francois Guilland testified that he and Steinhardt had sailed on the same ship in September and that he had seen Steinhardt holding several of the bank notes that Levins claim Steinhardt had stolen from him just two days ago in New York. Two other witnesses testified that Levins had not the bank notes in his possession when they met with him just before the theft. It would appear Levins’ accusation that his fellow Jew had violated the 7th commandment was false and that Levins was attempting a swindle. The Recorder is holding the case over until tomorrow at which time a decision will be made as to which Jew is trying to cheat which Jew.
1858: An article entitled "Chronology of Comets" published today reported that "Josephus the historian includes the appearance of a comet among the miracles which announced the destruction of Jerusalem and the ruin of its temple." In 1208, "the Jews of the West" thought that a very bright comet that appeared for two weeks foretold the coming of the coming of the Messiah.


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


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


1862(15thof Tishrei, 5623): Sukkoth


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


1864(9thof Tishrei, 5625): Yom Kippur


1864: In New York City, “Raphael Levy Maduro Peixotto , a prosperous Ohioan involved in trade with the South, and Myrtillie Jessica Davis gave birth educator and writer Jessica Blanche Peixotto, the second woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkley, the “first women to become a full professor at Cal, Berkley and the university’s first woman department chair.


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


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


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


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


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


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


1875: In New York City, “Josephine (née Solomon) and Selmar Hess” gave birth to Columbia trained physician Alfred Fabian Hess, the husband of the former Sara Strauss, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Strauss with whom he had four children and the developer of the Hess Test which came about while studying “the role of nutrition in scurvy and rickets.”


1876(21stof Tishrei, 5637): Hoshana Rabah


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


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


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



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


1879(22ndof Tishrei, 5640): Shemini Atzeret


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


1882: Three days after he had passed away, sixty year old “Samuel Gettenstein Salaman,” the husband of Rosa Salaman with whom he had two children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


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


1886(10thof Tishrei, 5647): Yom Kippur


1886: In “Yom Kippur” published today J.S. Moore, a non-Jew, provides a complete description of the observance of the holiday including the observations that “no other religion…has a similar festival” “ and that “ it may be safely predicted that nations, empires and peoples may and will pass and be only remembered in history while the ‘Yom Kippur’ will retain its hold upon a race which has already during the vicissitudes of thousands of years withstood annihilation and bids fair to hold fast to its religion as long as this globe is populated.”
1886: The Uptown Gossip column published today attributed the low attendance rate at theatres in New York yesterday to the fact that the Jews were observing the “fast of Yom Kippur.”  “Jewish people are the most liberal patrons of the theaters, and any fast day which they observe makes a very marked difference in the receipts of theatre’s treasury.”


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


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


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


1887: The day after he had passed away, Nathan Samuel Raphael, the son of “Samuel Raphael and the former Charlotte Levy” who had left his native London for Austrailia in 1849 was buried today in “Orange, NSW, Australia.”


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


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


1889(14thof Tishrei, 5650): Erev Sukkoth


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


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


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


1891: Mrs. August Belmont and her children awoke at the old Belmont mansion at 109 Fifth Avenue where they had spent the night after their new home at 101 Fifth Avenue had been destroyed by fire.


1891: In Wilkes-Barre, PA, Mendel S. and Rachel Naomi Salsburg gave birth to Philip Salsburg who was the Treasurer of Il Minatore Publishing Company in Scranton, PA.


1891: Gustave S. Drachman of the law firm of Drachman & Nelson who has been retained by Charles Horwitz, a 23 year old Russian Jewish peddler “to look after his interest in an alleged estate in San Francisco valued at $30,000,000” said today that he has not been able to learn about “any man by the name of Horwitz” who “ever died in San Francisco leaving a large fortune.”


1891: According to today’s American Hebrew, “the letter of Mr. Harold Frederic…continue to present the case of the Jews in Russia in vivid colors and convincing tones.”


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


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


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



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


1892: In Boston, MA, “Jewish Lithuanian immigrants Joseph Weit and Sarah Magilewski gave birth to economist Harry Dexter White.



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


1896: As David Schwarz worked to develop a successful airship, a test failed today because the hydrogen used “was not of required purity” and was unable to provide the required life.


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


1897(13thof Tishrei, 5658): Kate Lintine, the sister of Mrs. Harry Stone of Johannesburg, SA, passed away today in Birmingham, UK.
1898(23rd of Tishrei, 5659):Simchat Torah


1898: Birthdate of Aaron Nissenson, who came to United States from his native Russia in 1911, earned “a degree in pharmacy from Fordham” which he did not use turning instead to a life as “a poet, essayist, novelist and journalist working for The Jewish Morning Journal while being married “the former Kate Heller” with whom he had “a son, Herschel.”



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


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


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


1901(26thof Tishrei, 5662): Seventy-five year old Kate(nee Reuben)Aaron the wife of Samuel Aaron  and the mother of Louisa, Rachel and Simeon Aaron passed away today after which she was interred at the Bath Jewish Burial Grounds.


1901: Simon Lipkie married Emily Somers today.


1904: “In the city of Kamenyets, Platon Artemovych Bazhan and his wife gave birth to Ukrainian poet Mykola Bazhan whose 1943 poem “Babi Yar” “explicitly depicted the infamous massacre in the ravine” but does not mention the fact that the victims were Jews.



1905(10thof Tishrei, 5666): Yom Kippur


1905(10thof Tishrei, 5666): Forty-two year old Isaac Levy, the husband of Lena Levy, passed away today after which he would be interred at the Jewish Cemetery in Natchitoches, LA.


1907: Three days after he had passed away, Posen native Louis Braun, the husband of the former “Julia Joseph” with whom he had eight children was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1909: The Sick Benevolent Society of Zialkamian, the hometown of Naphtali Herz Imber who passed away yesterday, asserted its right to take care of the burial of the poet superseding the claim of those who wanted to bury him “in a Rumanian Jewish cemetery at Bayside” where he reportedly owned a plot.


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


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


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


1915: It was announced today that Catholics, Protestants and Jews at the Columbia University’s Teacher College have joined together to create “a co-operative union to be known as the Students’ Religious Organization.”


1916: Among the newly released books available to the public is Charles Frohman: Manager and Man, the “authorized biography of the great manager written by those who had access to all the papers, correspondence and records of Charles Frohman and the Empire Theater.”


1917(23rdof Tishrei, 5678); Simchat Torah


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



1918: Today, ten months after the Parliament of Finland had promulgated an act making it possible “for Jews to become Finnish nationals” “Frederick Charles was elected King of Finland by that same Finnish Parliament.


1919(15thof Tishrei, 5680): Sukkoth


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


1920: Dr. Enlow is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Lessons from the Life of Jacob H. Schiff” during Shabbat Services at Temple Emanu-El in New York.


1920: Birthdate of Jason Wingreen, the native of Brooklyn and graduate of Brooklyn College whose decade’s long acting career known to many as the bartender on “All in the Family.”



1921: Dr. Morris Murray Peshkin married Lillian Rapaport today.


1921: In Berlin “historian George Herlitz, the founder of the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem” and his wife gave birth to MK and diplomat Esther Herlitz who became Israel’s first female ambassador when she served represented Israel in Denmark in 1966.



1922: In Brownsville immigrant tailor Harry Finkel and his Mary gave birth to Philip “Fyvush” Finkel, the


Veteran of the Yiddish Theatre, who won an Emmy for his role as a lawyer in the television hit “Picket Fences.”



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


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




1924: Dutch diamond polisher and baseball player Hartog Hamburger, the father of psychiatrist and “Jewish resistance fighter Max Hamburger, “was hit in the head by a line drive” today in a freak accident that would lead to his death on the following day.


1924: In Manhattan, “Dr. Sebastian Smigel and the former Bella Soloway” gave birth to Irwin Elliot Smigel, the dentist whose clients included numerous stars.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)



1925(21stof Tishrei, 5686): Hoshana Rabah


1925: In Sosnowiec, Poland, ‘chocolate salesman Issachar Feiner and Rivka Herzberg gave birth to Haim Feiner who immigrated to Palestine in 1936 and gained fame as songwriter, poet and author Chaim Hefer.



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


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


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


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


1932(9thof Tishrei, 5693): Kol Nidre was chanted for the last time during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover.


1933: “Wedding at Lake Wolfgang” a musical directed by Hans Behrendt who died at Auschwitz was released today in Germany.


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



1934: In New York, Minnie and David Alper gave birth to long term IBM employee Ralph Abraham Alper, the husband of the former “Linda Ann Propp.”


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


1936(23rdof Tishrei, 5697): Simchat Torah


1936: In Chicago, at a rally featuring Al Landon, the Republican candidate for President, Anna Smith told the throng that “It is necessary for Christians, Jews and Gentiles to join together to resist this sinister movement, communism” which ironically was part of what would become a decades long campaign to equate Democrats, liberals and Jews with the Communists and a conspiracy to take over the United States.


1936: It was reported today that “the version of the story” surrounding the arrest and conviction of a Jew named Abraham Kaiser for writing a letter to a friend in America that was critical of Hitler and the Nazis “stated that the police discovered the letter in his flat” while at the same time claiming that Kaiser who lived in Duisburg had mailed the letter from Dusseldorf in order to conceal his identity. (Editor’s Note – accuracy is not necessary in the world of anti-Semitism)


1936: “Libeled Lady” a comedy produced by Lawrence Weingarten was released in the United States today by MGM.


1937: The Los Angeles Examiner reported today that when Vittorio Mussolini, the son of the Il Duce, came to Hollywood, the Hollywood Ant-Nazi League (HANL) “denounced the visit on behalf of all ‘artists and writers’ declaring that ‘Fascism means the suppression of all freedom of expression.’”


1938: Thirteen year old future “Monuments Man” Harry Ettlinger, and his family arrived in New York having “escaped” from Germany in September.


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



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


1939: “Hitler’s Plan for Jews Scored” published today described the decision of the delegates attending the Order of the Sons of Zion Conference at the Hotel Astor to adopt a resolution condemning the Nazi plan “establish a Jewish State in Polish Territory” as “a hypocritical scheme, fraught with the gravest of dangers to European Jewry.”


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


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


1941(18thof Tishrei, 5702): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1941(18thof Tishrei, 5702): Forty-seven year old Dallas resident Herbert Mallinson, “the chairman of the Southwest region of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the son of Samuel and Rose Mallinson and husband of Beatrice Mallinson, passed away today “while attending a meeting of the Dallas Jewish Federation for Social Service.”



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


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


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


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


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


1941: J.D. Salinger who had been corresponding with Marjorie Sheard, “a Toronto woman about his age” wrote to her today asking that she send him a picture of herself.


1941: Governor Lehman will not be attending “the dinner forum on ‘Europe Today’ scheduled to be held this evening which is co-chaired by Lillian Hellman and Ernest Hemingway because a number of the committees sponsoring the event “have long been connected with Communist activities.”  (Editor’s note – Hemingway was not Jewish.  The dinner demonstrated the problem that was to plague America for years: how to oppose fascism without ending up “in bed” with the Communists.)


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


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


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


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


1942: The USS Drum, the submarine on which Maurice Rindskopf served throughout WW II survived a heavy depth charge attack from the vessels escorting the cargo ships she had sunk the day before.
1942: Thousands of Jews from Miedzyrzec, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.


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


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


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


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


1944(22ndof Tishrei, 5705): Shemini Atzeret


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


1944: Mordechai Adler (who became Mordechai Eldar) “celebrated his 15thbirthday at Auschwitz-Birkenau


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


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


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



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


1945: Loy Henderson, the head of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs at the United States State Department who was an Arabist opposed to the creation of Jewish state in Palestine sent Secretary of State James Byrnes “a memo regarding what he called ‘urgent problems relating to the Palestine.’”
1946(16th of Tishrei, 5710): Second Day of Sukkoth


1946(16thof Tishrei, 57100” Ninety year old Lottie Miriam Jaffe, the mother of Louis Isaac Jaffe, the “Pulitzer Prize winning edtor of the Norfolk Virginian Pilot. 


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


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


1947: “High Button Shoes, a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn opened on Broadway at the New Century Theatre.


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


1947: President Truman learned that the Arab League Executive had requested its member nations to dispatch troops to the Palestine border as part of a plan to invade the Mandate Territory. Truman responded by instructing Secretary of State Marshall to support the planned partition of Palestine.
1948: During the War for Independence, Egypt launched a major attack in the Negev. This
attack constitutes a major violation of the UN brokered truce. This Egyptian offensive along with other violations will lead to a major Israeli military effort later in the month of October.


1951(9thof Tishrei, 5712) Erev Yom Kippur


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


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


1955(23 of Tishrei, 5716): Simchat Torah


1955: A Double Simcha for Sid Gillman as his Los Angeles win their third straight of the season defeating the Detroit Lions 17 to 10.


1956(4thof Cheshvan, 5717): Arab terrorists killed two workers in an orchard of the youth village, Neve Hadassah, in the Sharon region.


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


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


1960:  Birthdate of actress and “voice” Madeleine Blaustein,



1961: In Los Angeles Boris Sagal and his wife Sara Zwilling of blessed memory gave birth to twin daughters Jean and Liz Sagal who made it possible for them to star in the television series “Double Trouble.”


1962: The film adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey into Night” “directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Ely Landau with Joseph E. Levine and Jack J. Dreyfus, Jr. as executive producers with a score by Andre Previn and cinematography by Boris Kaufman” was released in the United States today by Embassy Pictures.


1963: Birthdate of journalist Daniel Pearl who was brutally murdered by Moslem terrorists on February 21, 2002.
1967(5th of Tishrei, 5728): French author Andre Maurois, born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog, passed away at the age of 82.


1968: Hugo Weisgall’s ‘Nine Rivers from Jordan” premiered today at the New York City Opera


1968: Forty-seven Jews praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs were wounded in a grenade attack by Arabs.


1969: In Boston, a funeral service is scheduled to be held at Temple Israel for sixty-nine year old Russian born, Harvard educated Dr. William Dameshek, “a pioneer in the study of blood” and leader in the movement to “establish hematology as a specialty” who was married to Rose Dameshek with whom he had one child.


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


1972: Birthdate of Etan Kalil Patz



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


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


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


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


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


1973: “Against orders, reserve Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon launches a counterattack against Egyptian forces in the canal area which led to the loss of 20 tanks, most of which were left in enemy territory. Sharon’s actions lead to moves for his dismissal.”(As reported by JTA)


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


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


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


1974: Birthdate of Dina Aviv, the daughter of Aliza Avi, who gained fame as Israeli pop singer Din Din Aviv.


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




1974: “Shanks” an “American horror film” starring Marcel Marceau was released in the United States today by Paramount Pictures.


1975: It was announced today that Andrei Sakharov, a leading Soviet dissident and champion of human rights whose wife’s mother was Jewish, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.


1975: In a move designed to strengthen their influence in the Arab world, the Soviets greeted President Assad of Syria on the first day of his visit to the Soviet Union.


1976(15thof Tishrei, 5737): Sukkoth is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Gerald Ford.


1977: In New Orleans, Arlene S. Wieder was married at the New Orleans Hilton in that hotels first such event.


1979(18thof Tishrei, 5740): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1979: Two days after he had passed away funeral services are scheduled to be held “at the Congregational Son of Israel Temple in Upper Nyack, NY for eighty-four year old “Irving Maidman, a major owner of properties around Times Square, the dean of West Side Development,” “a founder of the Albert Einstein Medical School” and husband of “the former Edith Shvitiz with whom he had four children – Robert, Mathew, Rebecca and Ellen – followed by burial “at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens.”



1980(29thof Tishrei, 5741): A bomb planted in a motorcycle saddlebag outside the Copernic Street synagogue in a wealthy eastern Paris neighborhood exploded on a Friday night, killing three Frenchmen and Aliza Shagrir, 42, and wounding 22 others. Shagrir, an Israeli cinematographer, was walking past the synagogue with her 15-year-old son, Haggai, who would eventual go to work at the Foreign Ministry. Aliza Shagrir was the wife of Micha Shagrir a well-known television, film and documentary producer who lives in Jerusalem and who established the Aliza Shagrir Fund prize for outstanding documentaries in her name. Eventually, Hassan Diab a Lebanese native living in Canada would be charged with crime.


1980: The funeral for seventy-eight year old hotel owner and philanthropist Hyman B. Cantor who was survived by his wife Gertrude, his son David and his daughters Marcia Wasserman and Nancy Lynn, is scheduled to be held today at Temple Isaiah in Forest Hills, Queens


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


1981: “Tatoo, a thriller” produced by Richard P. Levine and Joseph E. Levine was released in the United States today by 20th Century Fox.


1981: “Body and Soul” a remake of the 1947 classic produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan was released today in the United States


1982(22ndof Tishrei, 5743): Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret


1982(22ndof Tishrei, 5743): “Stefano Gaj Tache, a 2-year-old Jewish boy was killed and another 37 were injured in an attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome carried out by Palestinian terrorists.” (As reported by Forward)


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


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


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


1988(28thof Tishrei, 5749): Eighty-four year old playwright Edward Chodorov, a friend of Moss Hart and S.J. Pereleman passed away today.



1988: Today CBS released “Liberace: Behind the Music” a biopic “co-starring Victor Garber and Saul Rubinek” and featuring Shawn
1988: Active polio viruses have been discovered in sewage and a water purification plant in four more Israeli cities, bringing the total number of infected areas to nine, Israel Radio said today. 1989(10th of Tishrei, 5750): Yom Kippur


1980(10thof Tishrei, 5750): Nine-one year old Richard F. Ulhmann, the former head of Ulhmann Grain Company and former “president of the Chicago Board of Trade” who was the husband of Catherine Ulhmann with whom he had three children – Frederick, Janis and Audrey – passed away today in Highland Park, Il.



1989: Penthouse Magazine'sHebrew edition hits the newsstands


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


1991: “Homicide” a crime film “written and directed by David Mamet” and featuring Robin Spielberg was released in the United States today


1992: Janet Rosenberg Jagan became the “First Lady of Guyana” today.



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


1994: “Nowhere to Hide” a made for television film co-starring Max Pomeranc was broadcast for the first time on ABC.


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



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


1994: Alfred Doulton wrote to Sir Martin Gilbert describing the heavy casualties suffered by the 49th Infantry Division, including the murder of their brigadier on October 25, 1945, as the British sought to quell the uprising by the Indonesians who had declared their independence from the Netherlands.


1995(15thof Tishrei, 5756): Sukkoth


1996(26th of Tishrei, 5757): Ninety-year old Julius Raskin, the captain of CCNY basketball team known as “Little Tubby” because his older brother Morris was called “Big Tubby” who went on to career in education passed away today.



2000(10thof Tishrei, 5761): Yom Kippur is observed for the first time in the 21stcentury.


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


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


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


2004: While play Georgia Tech today, University of Maryland punter Adam “Podlesh had a then-career high nine punts for a then-career high 448 net yards.


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


2004(24thof Tishrei, 5765): Sixty-five year old economics professor Herschel Grossman passed away unexpectedly today.



2004(24th of Tishrei, 5765: Philosopher Jacques Derrida passes away at the age of 74. (As reported by Jonathan Kandell)



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


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


2005: Despite threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists, Israelis work to develop a fruitful society and create an air of normalcy. For example, Haaretz reported that Israel’s 2 – 1 victory over Faroe Islands in a World Cup soccer qualifier in the Ramat Gan stadium means Israel still has a chance of qualifying for the World Cup in Germany 2006. Israel will not know if it will qualify for the automatic birth or if it has to play a European team to get to the match in Germany until later in the week. The Israeli coach had said earlier that if the announcement if made on Thursday which is Yom Kippur, he will have to wait until Thursday night to find out the fate of his team.


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


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



2005: The New York Timesreviewed The Pagoda in the Garden: a Novel in Three Parts by Wendy Lesser.
2005: The Times of Londonreviewed We Are at War: The Remarkable Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times by Simon Garfield


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


2006: Haaretz reported that Holocaust survivor groups here have joined the recommendation of the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, to award the Nobel Peace Prize to 96-year-old Irena Sandler who was a member of the Polish underground group Zegota that was dedicated to saving Jews and was recognized by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in 1965 for smuggling numerous Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto..
2007: A special preview screening of The Counterfeiters takes place as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival. “The Counterfeiters is based on the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936.


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


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


2008: In Acre, both Jews and Arabs clashed with police in various parts of the ethnically divided city, leading to 10 arrests. In total, at least eight people were slightly injured in the successive nights of violence


2008: CBS broadcast the first episode of season nine of the original CSI  (later known as CSI Las Vegas) a long-running cerebral crime series created by Antony E. Zuker and brought to the small screen by executive producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Carol Mendelsohn


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


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


2009: Kol Shira will be performing at Java House in downtown Iowa City Kol Shira is an all women sextet known for its eclectic fusion performances of International Jewish music, including songs from Russia, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Iraq, Yemen, France, Spain, Middle East, Italy, Romania, Algeria and more. The group features vocals, flute, guitar, piano, bass, cello and hand-held percussion. Jim Musser, music reviewer for the Iowa City Press Citizen, described Kol Shira as “remarkable” and “exquisite.” At the end of 2004, Musser ranked their CD as one of the top six independent releases from the Eastern Iowa area.
2009 (21 Tishrei, 5770): Hoshanah Rabbah
2009: While Friday prayers ended without incident at the al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount, Palestinian rioters clashed with police in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Issawiya, Ras el-Amud and Sur Baher


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



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



2009: Even on Hoshanah Rabah there is no rest from reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose (Los Angeles Times) and Michael Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics by Joyce Purnick (NY Times)
2010: A special Ethiopian Shabbat luncheon is scheduled to take place at the 92nd St Y in Manhattan. This scheduled event is intended to provide “special opportunity for Ethiopian Jews and any interested Amharic speakers based in New York to get together as a community to celebrate Shabbat in their native tongue and to be in the presence of their revered Kessotch on a rare visit from Israel.”


2010(1 Cheshvan, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


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


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


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


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


 


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


2011:The Yom Kippur War ceremony in Tel Aviv was almost canceled today after not a single government minister attended, causing uproar among the bereaved families.


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


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


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


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


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


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




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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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



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



2014(15thof Tishrei, 5775): Sukkoth


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


2014: “Hamas continued to signal its willingness today to engage in negotiations with Israel to exchange the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed in Gaza for the release of Palestinian security detainees.” (As reported Eilor Levy)


2014: “Patrick Modiano of France, who has made a lifelong study of the Nazi occupation and its effects on his country, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature today for what one academic called “crystal clear and resonant” prose. (As reported by Karl Ritter and Malin Rising)




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


2015(26thof Tishrei. 5776): Seventy-five year old Larry Rosen, “a founder of the pop- jazz record label GRP” passed away today. (As reported by Ben Ratfliff)



2015: A year after premiering at the Vienna International Film Festival, “99 Homes” starring Andrew Garfield was released in the United States today.


2015: The Eden-Tamar Music Center is scheduled to host “Loving Bach” part of The Three Piano Series.


2015: “Allied in the Fight: Jews, Blacks and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” “ a new exhibit” recounting “the efforts made by American Jews and African-Americans to fight for the fundamental American promise of equality before and during the Civil Rights era” is scheduled to go on display today at the Center for Jewish History.


2016: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Richard Posner by William Domnarski and the recently paperback edition of Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman


2016: Today “Jewish actress Arianne Zucker, the subject of Donald Trump’s comments about women from a decade-old tape” in which he discussed “sexually assaulting women and trying to have sex with married  while he was married to his current wife” commented on the subject declaring that she is “a strong, independent, hard working mother, business woman and partner to a great man” and announcing her “to stand tall with self-respect” while decrying the facts that “there are too many people in power who abuse their position…and rewarded for it.”


2016: “The first group of Ethiopian Jews to move to Israel after waiting for three years is scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport this evening, almost a year after the government approved the immigration of 9,000 Jews still left in Ethiopia.” (As reported by Melanie Lidman


2016: This afternoon, Temple Israel is scheduled to host a tour which will tell the story of the Memphis Jewish community “as it migrated from Main Street where the state’s first synagogue was established in in 1857 to present-day East Memphis.”


2016: In Coralville, IA, Odeh Bisharat and Galit Dahan Carlibach are scheduled to speak at the “Morning with the International Writers Prgoram.”


2016: Jews all over the world are scheduled to take part in the annual custom of “Kever Avot” – visiting the graves of our ancestors.


2016: “A Palestinian gunman, known to Israeli police for violence and incitement on social media, killed two Israelis and wounded several others while shooting a rifle from his car in Jerusalem” today.


2016: “A public concert schedule to be held in Tel Aviv’s Rabin square today” will not take place “because World Zionist Organization and Radio Lev Hamedina, two of the chief backers of the show, pulled out following a report, which revealed the event did not include any women among its lineup of seven performers because one of the financiers is opposed to women singing before a mixed audience on religious grounds.”


2016: Rabbi Mendel Deitsch  “a Chabad rabbi who was severely beaten in a train station in the western Ukrainian city of Zhitomir was airlifted to Israel by emergency medical transport.”


2016: On its closing night, SERET, DC, a celebration of contemporary Israeli cinema is scheduled to show “Sandstorm”


2016: Today, on the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Dreyfus, “one of his grandsons unveiled a stute of him at a local park’ in his home town “Mulhouse.”


2016: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Center for Jewish History are scheduled to present a conference on “The Blood Libel Then and Now: The Enduring Impact of an Imaginary Event” featuring Elissa Bemporad, Raphael Israeli, David Kertzer, Hillel Kieval, E.M. Rose, Magda Teter, and Barbara Weissberger.


2016: A memorial service is scheduled to be held today for Miky Gershenson of blessed memory


2017: In the United States; Columbus Day observed


2017(19th of Tishrei, 5778): Sukkoth Chol Ha’moed;


2017: Beit Avi Chai is scheduled to host a series of Sukkoth activities aimed children including a play about Saul including “struggles over kingship, desert chases and the magic of music.


2017: “The second annual NoshFest,, Toronto’s Jewish food festival” organized by Andrea Segal and Michelle Gordon is scheduled to take place to at Artscape Wychwood Barnes featuring “Jewish delicacies, cooking demonstrations, cookbook signings and the Klezmer band, Jonno LIghtstone and the Rock the Shtetl.


2017: Seventy-two year old Professor Richard Thaler “was award the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics today.”



2018: This evening the Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a dinner during which attendees will discuss “New Beginnings in Jewish Thought: A Start-up Practice.”


2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host the book launch of Historical Atlas of Hasidism by “Marcin Wodziński, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Wrocław in Poland and David Biale, the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis.”



2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “An Evening with Simon Schama” the author of two weighty tomes entitled The Story of the Jews.


2018(30th of Tishrei, 5779): First Day Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/


 


 

This Day, October 10, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 10


614: Today the fifth Council of Paris “prohibited the Jews from asking or from exercising civic or administrative rights.”



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



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



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



1619(2nd Cheshvan, 5380): Rabbi Joseph Pardo passed away today in Amsterdam.



http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0015_0_15416.html



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



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



1740(19thof Tishrei, 5501): Joseph Moses Schiff, the husband of Brendle Schiff, passed away after which he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Frankfurt Am Main today.



1744: Sampson Gideon, “a banker in the city of London” and his wife Jane gave birth to Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley



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



1777(9thof Tishrei, 5538): The sounds of Kol Nire might have clashed with the feelings of joy and relief over the recent American victory at Saratoga.



1792: One day after she had passed away, “Breindla bat Joseph” was buried at the “Alderney Road (Globe Road) Jewish Cemetery” today.



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



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



1810: Benjamin Gompertz married Abigail Montefiore at the Hambro Synagogue today.



1818(10thof Tishrei, 5579): Yom Kippur



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



1830(23rdof Tishrei, 5591): Simchat Torah



1831: One day he had passed away, “Samuel Solomo” was buried at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”



1837:Löbl Strakosch and Julia Schwarz gave birth to their son Ferdinand, the younger brother of Maurice and Max Strakosch.



1839: Francis Henry Goldsmid married Louisa Sophia Goldsmid at the Great Synagogue today.



1842: Three days after she had passed away, “Golda Isaacs, the wife Isaac Isaacs” was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery”



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



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



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



1848: Two days after he had passed away, 24 year old Benjamin Nathan, the son of Barnett Nathan and the former Julia Solomons was buried today at the “Canterbury Jewish Cemetery.



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



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



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



1855: Isaac Hart married Louisa Levy at the Great Synagogue today.



1856: Members of the “Philadelphia Battery,” a unit Max Einstein formed as the Philadelphia Flying Artillery Company, presented him with “a magnificent silver sword, encased in a scabbard of gold.”



1860: In London, Mr. Joseph Isaacs and his wife gave birth to Rufus D. Isaacs the nephew of Sir Henry Isaacs and the husband of Alice Edith Cohen, the third daughter of Albert Cohen who “entered Middle Temple in 1887” and began serving as the Liberal MP from Reading in 1904



1860: Joseph M. Montefiore, the President of the Board of Deputies and his wife gave birth to Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore “who became high sheriff of the country of Kent in 1894 and Sussex in 1895” while serving as “chairman of the executive committee of the English Zionist Federation” and “chairman of the Elders of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation.



1860: Birthdate of “Schklov, Russia,” native Solomon Baroway who came to the United States in 1883 and went to Kansas with “25 other Jewish young men” to start an agricultural community at Lasker in Clark County before moving on eventually settling in Baltimore where he “was the Superintendent of the Hebrew Benevolent Society for twenty-five years.



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solomon-Baroway-1860-1918-Pioneer-Baltimore/dp/B0006WLT98



1862: In Crawley, West Sussex, England Joseph Montefiore, the president of the Board of Deputies and his wife gave birth to Sir Francis Abraham Montefiore who served as the high sheriff of Kent and Sussex as well as the “chairman of the executive committee of the English Zionist Federation.” (The Jewish Encyclopedia and The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo –Jewish History show the date as October 10, 1860)



1862: Philadelphian William Moss, the son of Joseph L. and Julia Moss completed his one year of service as the Surgeon for the 70th Regiment “which he helped to raise) today after  which “he became Surgeon of United States Volunteers.”



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



https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/leverson-ada



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



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



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



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



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



1866: One day he had passed away, 65 year old Moses Emanuel, the husband of Elizabeth Moses, with whom he had five children – “Joshua, Joseph, Simeon, Abraham and Henry” – was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”



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



1870: In Vienna, “Anna Sara Hinda Halban and Philipp Halban gave Josef von Halban the pioneer obstetrician and gynecologist who was marred to “Austrian operatic soprano” Selma Kurz.



1870: “Rabbi Gabriel of Shereshev and his wife Haya” gave birth to the first of their eleven children, Rabbi David Almond, the Polish trained Talmudist and graduate of London University and Jew’s College where he was ordained who was admitted to the bar after earning an LLD from John Marshal Law School in Chicago where “he served the North Shore Congregation B’nai Israel until its consolidation with the First Hungarian Congregation Agudas Achim in 1923, after which he led several congregations on Chicago’s South Side.”



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



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



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



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



1872: Birthdate of Harold Phillips who would be buried in the Jewish cemetery at Natchitoches, LA when he passed away at the age of 13.



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



1875: Today, the officials of the Kane Street Synagogue, or Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes,in Brooklyn “set forth the rules for the congregation’s Sunday school” including “from the opening to closing of school children are not allowed to speak unless permission be given by the teacher,” to “scholars absenting themselves for four consecutive Sundays shall be discharge, unless good excuse be given” to a requesting that “scholars bring two cents each and every Sunday” which the teachers of the “different class are to collect.”



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



1875: In Grodno, Belarus, Aaron Bublic and his wife gave birth to Gedaliah Bublick who the writer and Zionist who drifted from Paris to Argentina to New York where he became editor-in-chief of the Yiddishe Tageblatt.



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



1885: Birthdate of Dr. Ernst Eylenburg who was transported from Berlin to Terezin in 1943 and from Terezin  to Auschwitz in 1944 where he was murdered.



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



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



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



1886: Birthdate of Kamila Adelová who was transported from Prague to Terezin in 1942 and from Terezin to Maly Trostine where she was murdered.



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



http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D04E5D81E3EEF33A25753C1A9669D94679FD7CF



1887: Birthdate of Schenectady, NY, native Lester Louis Bauer, the Northwestern University Law School graduate, “publisher of the Jewish Standard” and the “President of the Federation of the Reformed and Conservative Temples.”



1889(15thof Tishrei, 5650): Sukkoth



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



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



1890: It was reported today that “Mr. Charles Frohman’s newly-organized company will soon be appearing in a new play called ‘Men and Women’” featuring among its characters “a rich Hebrew, President of a national bank.”



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



1891(8thof Tishrei, 5652): Shabbat Shuva



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



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



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



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



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



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



1894(10thof Tishrei, 5655): Yom Kippur



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



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



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



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



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



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



1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC defeated Lake Forest today in the season opening game.



1897(14thof Tishrei, 5658): Erev Sukkoth



1897: In Manchester Israel Cohen and the former Annie Eugenie Seligmann gave birth a baby girl.



1897: Six days after he had passed away, 20 year old “Ernest Vivian Eskell Kennard, the second son of Eva and Alfred Kennard” was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”



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



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



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



1898(24thof Tishrei, 5659): Seventy-three year old author and philosopher Fabius Mieses passed away today.



http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Mieses_Fabius



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



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



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



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



1903: The Young Men’s Zionist Society of Newark, NJ, is scheduled to host a ball tonight.



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



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



1908(15thof Tishrei, 5669): Sukkoth



1908: Movie mogul Harry Warner and his wife, Rea Levinson gave birth to their first child, Lewis Warner.



1909: The coffin “covered with the blue and white flag of Zion” carrying the body of Naphtali Herz Imber “the east side poet and author of ‘Hatikvah,’ the Zionist national hymn” who had died erev Shabbat “was followed from the Educational Alliance Building on East Broadway to the Mount Zion Cemetery by 10,000 sincere mourners including Rabbi J.L. Magnes.



1910(7thof Tishrei, 5671): Mrs. Chawe Wolpe passed away today.



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



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



1911(18thof Tishrei, 5671): Fourth Day of Sukkoth



1911(18thof Tishrei 5671): Fifteen year old Miss Schlowe Stein passed away today.



1912(29thof Tishrei, 5673): “Communal worker” Henry Jonas passed away in Butte, Montana/



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



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



1913: Based on Judge Roan’s ruling on August 26, today was to be the day when Leo Frank was to be hung.



1915(2ndof Cheshvan, 5676): Alfred Hyman Louis, the native of Birmingham and son of Hyman T. Louis, “a well-to-do merchant and his wife Maria” who “was called to the Bar in 1855 and who claimed to have been the inspiration “for the consumptive mystic Mordecai” in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda passed away today after which he “was buried as a Jew” having renounced his previous conversion to Christianity.



1915: Today, 29 year old Louis Lefkowitz, the brother of Aaron Lefkowitz and founder of “Louis Lefkowitz and Brother, manufacturers of leather belts” and other such items, “married Miss Sadie Leah Weiss” with whom he had one child, a daughter named Doris.



1915: Today was designated as the deadline for various Jewish organizations to name those who will be attending the “general congress of American Jews” to be held next month under the auspices of the American-Jewish Committee.



1915: It was reported today that “the Jews of Russian Poland, now in the hands of the Austrians and Germans, appear to have suffered, prior to the Russian retreat more than the normal amount of hardship imposed by war” which included “a rather promiscuous execution by the Russians of the Jews accused of espionage…and the plundering of Jewish shops and houses by the Russian soldiery.



1915: The list of “Five Hundred Leading Books This Fall” published today included Forest Izard’s Sarah Bernhardt which provides “a brief sketch of her career and an appreciative criticism of her work and her genius, Israel Friedlander’s The History of the Jews In Russia And Poland in which “the author traces the restrictions placed, the oppressions exercised against and the accusation made respecting the Jews in Poland up to the time of the partition of that country in 1772 and thereafter the treatment of the Jews under Russian Role” and Morris Jastrow’s The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria



1915: “The Neighborhood’s Year” published today provided a preview of the attractions that will be offered this season by the little Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street which will include performances by the Yiddish Folksong Singers of Boston.



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



1915: It was reported today that “there are 1,846 student in the Teacher’s College” at Columbia University “this year and since many of them are interested in settlement and church work” the school has proposed that Catholics, Jews and Protestants work together “in devising means for making religious instruction more efficient.”



1915: The chairman of the Interchurch Committee on Religious Education which includes Jewish members said that its members are ready to help implement William Wirt’s “Gary Plan” for the schools in New York City.



1917: “After traveling for six months by sea and leaving and encountering many hardships ninety-one Jewish refugees” including “ten old men, forty women and forty-one children” arrived today “at an Atlantic port from Palestine to join their relatives in his country



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



1918: During the final Allied offensive on the Western Front, the 165th Regiment, including Sergeant Abraham Blaustein hiked to Excamont where they found the Prussian Guards holding their strong points just beyond the town.



1920: The Goldman Concert Band, “which recently concluded its most successful series of Summer concerts at Columbia University” is scheduled to “give its one and only concert at Carnegie Hall” this evening.



1920: In Chicago, Illinois, Hugo M. Friend, the Judge who presided over trial of the so-called Chicago Black Sox (the players who threw the World Series)  was appointed judge of the Circuit Court today.



1921: In Jersey City, David Gross, a haberdasher and his wife, the former Fay Kushner gave birth to Gerald Jeremiah Gross, a Jewish World War II veteran who was responsible for the publishing of Albert Speer’s memoirs. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/books/gerald-gross-who-published-memoirs-of-a-hitler-associate-is-dead-at-94.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0



1923: Birthdate of major league pitcher, Saul Rogovin.



1924(12thof Tishrei, 5685): After being “hit on the head by a line drive” yesterday, thirty-seven year old “Dutch diamond polisher and baseball player” Hartog Hamburger, an infielder for OVVO in Amsterdam and the father of psychiatrist and future resistance fighter Max Hambruger, died today making him the one of the few, if not the only European to die from an injury sustained while playing the American national pastime.



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



1925: Birthdate of Mark Shulman the husband of Margaret A. Shulman



1926: In the Bronx, Edward Marshall and “the former Ethel Tilzer” gave birth to Joan Evelyn Marshall who gained famed as “Joan Helpern, the creative half of the husband-and-wife team that combined comfort and class as the eponymous owners of the Joan & David line of shoes.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/business/joan-helpern-joan-david-shoes-co-founder-dies-at-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0



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



1927: “A Harp in Rock,” a melodrama starring Rudolph Schildkraut as “Isaac Abrams” was released in the United States today.



1927: “Did You Mean It?” a revue with music by Jean Schwartz and lyrics by Sid Silvers transferred from the 44th Street Theatre to the Winter Garden Theatre today.



1927: The original Broadway production of “The Five O’Clock Girl” with music by Harry Ruby and lyrics by Bert Kalmar opened at the 44th Street Theatre today.



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



1930: In Hackney, east London "Jack" Pinter ,a ladies' tailor and his wife, Frances (née Moskowitz) gave birth to English playwright and Nobel Prize Winner, Harold Pinter.



1931: Sid Gillman was among the Buckeyes who were miserable following Vanderbilt’s victory over Ohio State in the second game of the college football season.



1932: The Supreme Court, whose members included Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo heard arguments in Powell v. Alabama, a case in which Walter H. Pollack represented the petitioners who were known as “the Scottsboro Boys.”



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



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



1934: Ella Driori  and Amnon Drori  gave birth to Alexander (Alex) Drori



1935: In New York, Norman and Betty Hirschfield gave birth to studio executive Alan James Hirschfield.



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/business/media/alan-j-hirschfield-79-hollywood-executive-is-dead.html



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



1936(24thof Tishrei, 5697): Parashat Bereshit – on Shabbat begin the Torah reading cycle again



1936: At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Nathan Perlman is scheduled to deliver a sermon entitled “Ways of Pleasantness and Paths of Peace.”



1936: At the West End Synagogue, Rabbi Nathan Stern is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Driven From Paris.”



1936: In New York, many rabbis are scheduled to deliver sermons describing “the work of the New York section of the National Council of Jewish Women” including “the religious work done on Welfare Island under the chairmanship of Mrs. A. H. Goodman” and “the very important classes for deaf children.”



1936: In the Bronx, religious classes and services are being held at the Council House under the chairmanship of Mrs. Julius Wolff.



1936: At Temple Rodeph Sholom, Rabbi Louis Newman is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Where Do We Stand Together?”



1936: In Philadelphia, a tailor named Joseph Cohen and his wife the former Gertrude Schwab gave birth to David Pesach Cohen whose work “in the public interest” included serving as President of Common Cause. (As reported by Sam Roberts)



http://www.594.com/tributes/binder/aw.html



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



1939: A one-hour adaption of “Lilom” which had been translated into English by Benjamin Glazer for a production starring Joseph Schildkraut, was broadcast by the CBS Campbell Playhouse Program.



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



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



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



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



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



1941: “Great Guns” a comedy produced by Sol M. Wurtzel and featuring Ludwig Stössel, one of the many Jewish artists forced to flee Europe after the Nazis came to power, was released today by 20th Century Fox.



1941: The Philip Morris Playhouse broadcast an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes.”



1942: “Eva-Marie Buch, a book seller who was part of the Schutze-Boysen-Harnack Resistance Group, also known as  The Red Orchestra was arrested today for passing messages to French slave laborers working in factories.”



1942: Dr. Tamarath Knigin Yolles, the 1939 NYU Medical School graduate and “daughter of Max H. and Bessie (Krokoff) Knigin” married Stanley Fausst Yolles with whom she had two children – Jennifer and Melanie.



1942: The SS issued a decree to “cleanse all concentration camps of Jews.”



1943(11thof Tishrei, 5704): Twenty-six year old German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon died today at Auschwitz.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Salomon#mediaviewer/File:Charlotte_Salomon_-_JHM_4762_-Kristallnacht.jpg



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



1945: Birthdate of Chicago native Bruce Karatz, the Boston University undergrad and USC Law School grad turned businessman – Chairman and CEO of KB Home – and philanthropist who contributed funds to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.



1946: Release of “The Jolson Story,” a biopic that gives the Hollywood treatment to the life of Al Jolson.



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



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



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



1949: Two days after closing at the Schubert Theatre, “Lend An Ear”  a musical revue with sketches by Joseph Stein opened at the Schubert Theatre.



1951(10thof Tishrei, 5712): Yom Kippur



1951: Birthdate of Avichai Rontzki “the former Chief Military Rabbi of the IDF” who “served in the position from 2006 to 2010 with a rank of Brigadier General” – a service marked by several controversies.



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



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



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



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



1956: In response to a terrorist attack launched from Jordan on October 4 that claimed the lives of four civilians,“the Israeli military conducted a counter attack codenamed Operation Samaria in which the IDF attacked the Qalqilya police station at the Tegart fort. After a fierce battle the fort was blown up. 18 IDF soldiers died in the operation and 68 were injured. About 88 Jordanians were killed and 15 were wounded.”



1957(15thof Tishrei, 5718): Sukkoth



1961: Seven months after having premiered in Germany “Town Without Pity” starring Kirk Douglas and with music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released in the United States today.



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



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



1962: “Charmaine” a song written by Lew Pollack for “What Price Glory?” was recorded today.



1963(22ndof Tishrei, 5724): Shmini Atzeret



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



http://www.danielpearl.org/



https://www.washingtonian.com/projects/KSM/



1964: The Summer Olympics in which Volleyball player Georgy Mondzolevski represented the Soviet Union opened today.



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



http://www.eddiecantor.com/bio.html



1965: In Cambridge, MA, Carl R. Pidgeon, a visiting professor at MIT and his wife Elaine, a yoga teacher gave birth to singer-songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon the wife of David Mamet.



1966: Seventy-one year old Abraham Wolf Binder who served as music director of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue for forty years and was a lead in the Reform Movement passed away today.



http://www.594.com/tributes/binder/aw.html



1968: “Barbarella” a science fiction film co-starring Marcel Marceau was released today.



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



1971(21stof Tishrei, 5732): Hoshana Raba



1971: Birthdate of child piano prodigy Evgeny Kissin



http://www.kissin.dk/biography.html



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



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



http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=25164836



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



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



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



1973: “Aminister in government and former chief of the IDF General Staff, Chaim Bar-Lev, was effectively put in control of the southern front instead of Shmuel Gonen.” (As reported by Mitch Ginsburg)



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



1974(24thof Tishrei, 5735): Just two months shy of his 64th birthday, historian and Holocaust survivor Joseph Wulf passed away.



http://stevenlehrer.com/joseph_wulf.htm



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



1975: Parliamentarians from 12 Western European countries formed a committee in support of Soviet Jewish emigration.



1975: As the Soviets sought to strengthen their position in the Middle East and the Syrians look for aid in destroying Israel, President Assad completed his visit to the USSR.



1975: “Shivers” a science fiction produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by David Cronenberg who also wrote the script was released today in Canada.



1975: “Lisztomania” a biopic about Franz Liszt co-starring Sara Kestelman and filmed by cinematographer Peter Suschitzky was released in the United Kingdom today.



1976(16thof Tishrei, 5737): As Carter and Ford face off in the last month of the Presidential campaign, observance of the second day of Sukkoth



1978(9thof Tishrei, 5739): Erev Yom Kippur



1979(19thof Tishrei, 5740): Fifth Day of Sukkoth



1979(19thof Tishrei, 5740): Seventy-nine year old composer and Cantor David Josef Puttennan passed away today.



1980: Private Benjamin, a comedy directed by Howard Zeiff and produced by Nancy Meyers who helped to write the script and produced by Goldie Hawn who also starred in the title role was released in theaters across the United States.



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



1983: Ruby Myers, who was the Indian actress known as Sulochana passed away today.



http://www.oldindianphotos.in/2011/09/actress-sulochana-real-name-ruby-myers.html



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



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



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



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



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



1984: Birthdate of New York City native Matthew “Matt” Shear the St. John’s College graduate and actor best known for his role as “Detective Lucius Isaacson” on TNT’s hit series “The Alienist.”



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



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



1986: Jumpin' Jack Flash, a comedy featuring Jon Lovitz was released in the United States today by 20th Century Fox.



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



1990(21stof Tishrei, 5751): Hoshana Rabah



1990(21stof Tishrei, 5751): Eighty-three year old Broadway producer Irene Mayer Selznick passed at today at the Pierre Hotel in NYC.  (As reported by Eric Pace)



http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/11/obituaries/irene-mayer-selznick-dies-at-83-producer-of-broadway-streetcar.html



1993: “Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway” a horror film starring Laraine Newman and featuring Marvin Kaplan was released today by Blue Rider Pictures.



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



1995(16thof Tishrei, 5756): Second day of Sukkoth



1995(16thof Tishrei, 5756): Ninety year old Sigmund Jeselsohn, the German born son of Samuel and Malchen Jeselsohn and husband of Karolina Jeselsohn passed away today in New York.



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



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



1996: Yad Vashem decided to recognize Baron Friedrich von Oppenheim as Righteous Among the Nations



http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/oppenheim.asp



1996(27thof Tishrei, 5757): Ninety-two year Harry Rosen the founder of Junior’s Restaurant, home to what some claim is the best cheesecake in the world passed away today. (As reported by Eric Asimov)



http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/11/nyregion/harry-rosen-is-dead-at-92-junior-s-restaurant-founder.html



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



1999: Bruce Fleischer won The Transamerica golf tournament.



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



2001(23rdof Tishrei, 5762): Simchat Torah



2001: “Jon Lovitz sang a duet of the song “Well, Did You Evah” at the Royal Albert Hall.



2001: First broadcast of season four of “Felicity” a drama star created by J.J. Abrams and co-starring Greg Grunberg.



2001: “A Man of Good Fortune” published today tells the story of the Moussaieff family.



http://www.haaretz.com/a-man-of-good-fortune-1.71559



2002: Hamas took credit for today bombing at the Bar-Illan interchange on the Geha Road.



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



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



2003(14thof Tishrei, 5764): Erev Sukkoth



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



2003(14thof Tishrei 5764): Eighty-five year old Max Rayne the British businessman and philanthropist who was knighted and later made a life peer so that he was known as Baron Rayne passed away.



http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/oct/14/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries



http://www.raynefoundation.org.uk/



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



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



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



2005: With a sigh of great relief the feared Lulav Shortage has been avoided. Thanks to aggressive action by the Ministry of Agriculture, the sound of shaking frond will be heard at Sukkah time after all. As part of a long range solution, the Agriculture ministry will work to encourage domestic production of this religious necessity. Hopefully, the Israeli will develop a lulav that will not lose its leaves and an etrog with a stem that UPS cannot break



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



2006(18thof Tishrei, 5767): Sixty-eight year old “writer, director and producer” Jerry Belson passed away today.



http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2006/10/jerry-belson-1938-2006.html



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



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



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



2007: Nearly 200 Israeli sailors who served in the British Royal Navy during World War II gathered at the home of the British ambassador to Israel who, together with Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, awarded them the Veterans Badge to commemorate the victory over the Nazis. The ceremony was held at the Ramat Gan home of Ambassador Tom Phillips. As the former sailors trickled into the house, they were greeted by the embassy's naval and air attache, Wing Commander Mike Rafferty, and Zvi Avidror, himself a former Royal Navy pilot and the main force behind the reunion. For Rafferty, who this weekend returns to London to prepare for his next assignment in Kabul, the event was a kind of ending. "It's very exciting to see the looks on the faces of the veterans getting the medals," Rafferty said. "It was worth having the event just for that." The gathering began with a small advertisement placed by Avidror and a few friends in Yedioth Ahronoth in May that called on Royal Navy veterans to contact him. There were a few responses, but after Haaretz took up the story nearly 170 veterans heeded the call to action. Popular tunes from the 1940s played in the ambassador's yard as old comrades reconnected. Alfred Wasch, 93, was a maintenance officer at the Royal Navy base in Bat Galim, which was one of the largest in the Mediterranean. Much of his service was spent taking care of seven intelligence ships kept by the Royal Navy in the region. "How're you doing, do you remember me?" fellow veteran Israel Gruber asked him. "You were my commanding officer. You look great." If there is one song that is identified more than all others with the Royal Navy, it is "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." When the pianist began to play it, the veterans joined in enthusiastically. On the other side of the yard sat Tova Goldin, holding a black-and-white photograph of what looks like dozens of sailors, including her husband, Yosef. Next to her sat David Rosenberg, who is also in the photo. When Phillips approached to shake their hands, they explained that their respective children married each other, unaware that their fathers had served in the same unit during World War II. "My father stopped sleeping, he was so excited about this gathering," Rosenberg's daughter, Idit, said. "Me, excited?" Rosenberg said in response. "I didn't even think about it." Annie Geddes-Riks, another veteran, was born in England and immigrated to Israel in 1948, unlike most of her fellow sailors. She served in various positions in the navy. "I insisted on doing non-office work. I remember fixing aircraft engines to ready them for D-Day," she said.



2007: Attendees at a conference in Jerusalem hope to revive Ladino.



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



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



2008: USA network broadcast the first episode of “The Starter Wife” starring Debra Messing



2009 (22 Tishrei, 5770): Shemini Atzertz



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



2010(2ndof Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety two year old Shlomo Eidelberg, the Polish born son of Rabbi Mordechai Dov Eidelberg , WW II resistance fighter and at the time of his death Professor Emertius of Jewish History at Yeshiva University in New York passed away today.



https://biblio.co.uk/the-jews-and-the-crusaders-by-eidelberg-shlomo/work/2165583



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



2012:Robert Lefkowitz, a Jewish physician and biochemist, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Brian Kobilka, a Stanford University researcher. Lefkowitz, 61, and Kobilka, 57, won for “groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family ... of receptors: G-protein-coupled receptors,” a posting on the website of the Nobel Prize stated.today. Understanding how these receptors function helped further explain how cells could sense their environment, according to the text. They will share a $1.2 million grant from the Nobel Prize Committee.



http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/10/10/3108891/new-york-born-jewish-doctor-co-recipient-of-nobel-prize-in-chemistry



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



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



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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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



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


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


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


2014: “A Jewish girl is among some 100 girls and young women from France who have left to join jihad fighters in Syria in recent months, a French intelligence official said today.”


2014: “Israel beat Cyprus in Nicosia 2-1 to successfully open its UEFA European Championship qualifying campaign today.”


2014: In Israel, Channel 2 reported today “the United Nations last month secured the release of 45 Fijian peacekeeping soldiers, kidnapped on the Syrian side of Golan Heights by the Nusra Front, through the payment of a $25 million ransom by Qatar.”  (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)


2015: Today, shortly before 11 a.m., a 16-yearold Arab stabbed two Jewish men in their 60s some 150 meters from Damascus Gate, leaving them moderately and lightly wounded followed by a second attack at approximately 3 p.m when a 19-year-old Palestinian stabbed two officers from the police’s Special Patrol Unit near Damascus Gate.


2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “The Best of Chamber Music” featuring the Elysee String Quartet from France.


2015: The Jewish Museum of Maryland is scheduled to host a “members only” opening of “Paul Simon, Words & Music, featuring The Guthrie Brothers.”


2015: The Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans is scheduled to sponsor a screening of “Rosenwald”


2015: The Vertigo Dance Company is scheduled to appear at The Performing Arts Center in NYC.



2016: In London, JWE and UKJF are scheduled to host a screening of “Anthropoid” a cinema version about the mission to assassinate Nazi General Reynhard Heydrich. 


2016: ‘In the predawn hours, Israeli troops conduct a raid at Azzun as part of their campaign to “rid the West Bank of arms used by terrorists including “the Carlo” a crude but effective “handmade submachine gun.”


2016: At the London Jewish Cultural CentreSir Ralph Kohn is scheduled to “discuss his new book, Recital of a Lifetime with Jewish historian Trudy Gold.


2016: “The Accountant” a crime thriller with a twist co-starring Jeffrey Tambor premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.


2016(8th of Tishrei, 5777):  Oliver Hart, a member of the distinguished Montagu family, was one of two economist awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science today for “insights into how best to write contracts, the deal deals that bind together employers and their workers, or companies and their customers.”


2017(20th of Tishrei, 5778): Sukkoth Chol Ha’moed;


2017: Today, “The State Department announced a $7 million reward for information about Talal Hamiyah, who runs Hezbollah's External Security Organization, and $5 million for information about Fu'ad Shukr, a senior operative who helped plan the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.” (As reported by Jeff Seldin)


2017:.The three Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem which were built by Herod that “provided water to Jerusalem and the Second Temple” are to be restored in a $750,000 project funded by the United States, officials said today.”


2017:Today, “Ehud Barak, the former Israeli leader known for his hawkish views on Iran, said it would be a “mistake” for President Trump to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, both because it would play to Iran’s advantage and because it would scuttle any hope of a negotiation with North Korea.” (As reported by Mark Landler.


2017: Today Tens of thousands of participants from 80 different countries took part in the annual march in Jerusalem marking the 50th anniversary of the city's unification.


2017: The Chaplains at Oxford are scheduled to host “Pizza in the Hut” for Sukkoth


2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “In Between” a film about “three young Arab-Israeli women” sharing “a flat in Tel Aviv.


2017: “Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews and Medicine in America” which “was created by the Jewish usuem of Maryland in Baltimore and includes more than 200 artifacts and phots and documents” opened at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio.


2018(15th of Tishrei): On the secular calendar, Yarhrzeit of William “Bill” Schueller, beloved husband of Eleanor Schueller, father of Deb Levin, father-in-law of Mitchell Levin and dairy farmer “par excellence.” 2018: As part of the “Who We Are” film series, the Streicker Center is scheduled to host a screening of a film about “the private side of playwright Arthur Miller” followed by a discussion with is daughter Rebeca Miller and the film’s producers.


2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “On Radical Jewish Female Voices In Eastern Europe, a lecture by Professor Elissa Bemporad and Professor Natalia Aleksium that “will examine the dynamics of Jewish women’s entry into politics in modern Eastern Europe.”


2018(1st of Cheshan, 5779):  Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/


 


 


 

This Day, October 11, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 11

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


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


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


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


1531: Forty-seven year old Huldrych Zwingli, the leader of the Reformation in Switzerland who at a minimum “studied and admired the Hebrew language, used it to some advantage” in his work and “took over some Hebraic teachings while evincing little concern for contemporary Jews” passed away today.


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


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


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


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


1783(15thof Tishrei, 5544): Sukkoth


1787: In Georgia Philip Mosses Russell and Esther Mordecai Russell gave birth to Isaac Russell, their first son and third child who would have two younger siblings.


1789(21stof Tishrei, 5550): Hoshanah Rabah


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


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


1796: While sailing to the United States aboard the sloop Simionhoff, Israel Baer Kursheedt used the English bible of the ship’s captain to explain to him the significance of Yom Kippur which he was about to begin observing.


1797(21stif Tishrei, 5558): Hoshanah Rabah


1821(15thof Tishrei, 5582): Sukkoth


1826(10thof Tishrei, 5587): Yom Kippur


1838(22ndof Tishrei, 5599): Shmini Atzeret


1838(22ndof Tishrei, 5599): Sixty-nine year old Silesia native Adolf Martin Schlesinger, the Berlin music publisher whose “ongoing lobbying on the issue of musical copyright (prompted by copyright infringement of his publication of Weber's Der Freischütz), was a major factor in the introduction of the influential Prussian copyright law of 1830” passed away leaving a business that was so successful that his widow had no financial problems and his sons were able to expand the business to include a Paris branch.


1842: In New York City Moses and Esther Lazarus gave birth to Sarah Lazarus, a sister of Emma Lazarus.


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


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


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


1850: In Albany, NY founding of Congregation Anshe Emeth which would consolidate a year later with Congregation Beth Emeth to for Congregation Beth Emeth.


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


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


 


1851(15th of Tishrei, 5612): Sukkoth


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


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


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


1860: In London, Isaac Mozes Pereira Mendoza and Sara Isaac Monis gave birth to Esther Mendoza today.


1862: During the Civil War Joseph Bear who would be wounded on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg and who would reach the rank of Sergeant began his service with Company of the 153rd Regiment.


1863(15thof Tishrei, 5764): Sukkoth


1863: Sixty-eight year old Jane (Raphael) Salaman, the wife of Isaac S. Salaman was buried today at the Brompton Jewish Cemetery.


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


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


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


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


1867: Birthdate of Abraham L. Saltzstein, who in 1884 came from his native Poland to the United States, finally settling in Milwaukee where he became a “general agent for the New Mutual Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin.”


1872(9th of Tishrei, 5633): Erev Yom Kippur


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


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


1876(23rd of Tishrei, 5637): Simchat Torah


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


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


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


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


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


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



1881(18th of Tishrei, 5642): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth


1881(18th of Tishrei, 5642: Sixteen year old Bath Hyman, a native of Prussia, passed away today in Louisiana.


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


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


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


1884: It was reported today that the funeral of Dr. Adolphus Huebsch, the rabbi who has led Ahavet Chesed since 1866 and passed away suddenly last night will be held on the day after Simchat Torah. 1884: Birthdate of Eleanor Roosevelt.  Contrary to what the anti-Semites said, neither FDR nor his wife was Jewish.  However, Mrs. Roosevelt certainly had numerous Jewish friends.  As a champion of the downtrodden including Jews seeking to escape Hitler’s Europe and those seeking to create a Jewish homeland, she certainly enjoyed a certain kind of celebrity and popularity with Jews living during the middle of the twentieth century.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


1892(20th of Tishrei, 5653): Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth


1892(20th of Tishrei, 5653): Four year old Willie Lewis Kranson passed away today after which he was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Natchitoches, LA.


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


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


1893: Robert Stone, A. Druger, Issac Schachat, Arbram Levin and Harris Baskin are the five pupils of the Bardon de Hirsh Trade School on East Ninth Street who have “been turned out of their boarding house” by order of Colonel J.E. Bloom who had expelled them from the school because “they refused to obey the rules necessary for discipline in the workshops.”


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


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


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


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


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


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


1896(4th of Cheshvan, 5657: Eleven month old Julius Kranson passed away today after which he was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Natchitoches, LA.


1896: The Syracuse Section of the National Council of Women was organized with thirty members being enrolled at that time.


1897(15th of Tishrei, 5658): Sukkoth


1897: Birthdate of Boston native, violinist and bandleader Leo F. Reisman who gave pianist and bandleader Eddie Duchin “his big break.”



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


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


1898: Colonel Theodore Roosevelt delivered his first stump speech tonight during which he talked about the Rough Riders where all members were treated on their “merits as a man” whether Protestant, Catholic or Jew.” (Yes the famous regiment had Jewish members)


1899: The Second Boer War in which approximately 2,800 Jews fought on the British side and 300 Jews fought with the Boers, began today.


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


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


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


1911: “The first meeting of Study Circle No. 1 of the Council of Jewish Juniors is scheduled to meet this evening where Charles Strauss will lead a class examining “the Jewish characters in literature from the fifteenth century to the present day” starting with “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Jew of Malta.”


1912(30th of Tishrei, 5673): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1912(30th of Tishrei, 5673): Seventy-one year old Civil War veteran Moses Shelt passed away in Covington, KY.


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


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


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


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


1914: The Jewish Consumptives Relief Society which had found in 1904 held its “tenth annual meeting today in Denver, CO.”


1914(21st of Tishrei, 5675): As combined British and French Armies fought the Battle of La Bassee which was part of their respective “races to the sea” Jews on both sides of the front observed Hoshanah Rabah


1915: In “Call Jewish Congress American” published today it was reported that “in accepting his election as an advisory member of the Jewish Congress Organization Committee Dr. Henry Moskowitz has written the Secretary of the committee defending as strictly American in spirit the plan to form a congress of Jews which shall ‘assert the claims of Israel among the nations and seek fundamental civil and political rights’ for Jews in the countries at war.”


1915: “The interviews with Alexi Khvostfoff, the new Minster of the Interior published today” in Petrograd “do not announce his program but quote a number of interesting…statements” including his view that he “would remove most disabilities” that the Jews have had to endure.


1915: Louis D. Brandeis and Dr. Schmarja Levin address he first Fall meeting of the University Zionist Society which was held” tonight “at the home of L.A. Steinhard” on East 92nd Street.


1915: The Overseas News Agency distributed a statement “Fighting in Moscow’s Streets” that includes the belief of the “aristocracy and merchants of Moscow” that the current rioting is caused by “the disloyalty of the Jews.”


1915: F.H. Williams wrote from Bristol, CT, asking about the origins of “Pop Goes the Weasel” saying that his when he was at his grandfather’s house some time before 1855 he “distinctly heard” “three German Jews sing: ‘Queen Victoria’s very sick, Napoleon has the measles, Sebastopol’s not taken yet, Pop goes the Veasles.’”


1916(14thof Tishrei, 5677): Erev of Sukkoth


1916: “A novel turn to an ancient religious service will be given” this evening “when Methodist, Protestant and Presbyterian Army Chaplains”  take part in Sukkoth services “in the Young Men’s Hebrew Association Building in Douglas, AZ, under the auspices of the Army and Navy Committee of the Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Council


1916: Today Nathan Straus wrote to Felix Warburg that in accord with the promise he made last spring he was enclosing a check for $50,000 “for war relief” and that he hoped it would help to encourage “American Jewry to do their duty toward their unfortunate co-religionists abroad.”


1917: Screenwriter Sonya “Levien married her husband Carl Hovey” today.


1917: Jacob S. Davidson, his wife and his daughters who are among the refugees from Jaffa and Jerusalem that have arrived in New York are staying with Davidson brother “who lives at 120 Cannon Street.”


1918:”In the Jewish Maternity Hospital at 270 East Broadway on Manhattan’s Lower East Side” Lena (Rips) and Harry Rabinowitz gave birth to Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz who gained fame as choreographer, director, dancer, and theater producer Jerome Robbins possibly best known for directing Leonard Bernstein’s musical version of Romeo and Juliet called “West Side Story.”



1918(5th of Cheshvan, 5679): Corporal Nathan Solomon who was “cited for valor in the Battle of the Marne” was killed in action today while serving with the Sixth Machine Gun Battalion of the U.S. Marines Corps.


1918: In Brighton Raphael Lyons, a turf accountant who died in 1944 and his wife gave birth to Braham Jack Lyons who gained fame as :”journalist and public relations consultant” Dennis Lyons whom the Prime Minister gave a life peerage to in 1974 making Baron Lyons of Brighton.


1919: Major General Hans von Seeckt began serving as the first commander of The Truppenamt or 'Troop Office' which was in all but name, the German General Staff – an organization that was not supposed to exist under the Versailles Treaty and an organization whose existence proved that Germany never really had any intention of accepting the outcome of WW I, long before the Nazis came to power.


1920: More than 1,000 men and women are expected to attend this evening “gala festival” sponsored by the United Waist League of America” “on the Century Roof atop the Century Theatre.


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


1923: In Manhattan “Sam A. Lewisohn and the former Margaret Seligment gave birth to the third of their four daughters, Elizabeth Ann Lewisohn who gained fame as historian Elizabeth L. Eisentstein. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



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


1925(23rdof Tishrei, 5686): Simchat Torah


1925: In Washington, the Senators win game three of the World Series with Buddy Myer at second base.


1926(3rdof Cheshvan, 5687): Twenty-eight year old Hymie Weiss, the north side mobster who was a rival of Al Capone was gunned down today.



1926(3rdof Cheshvan, 5687): Sixty-three year old Maxim Vinaver, a Russian lawyer, Duma member and leader of the Jewish community who moved to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution passed away today.



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


1926: “Young April” a romantic comedy starring Joseph Schildkraut and Rudolph Schildkraut was released in the United States today


1927(15thof Tishrei, 5688): Sukkoth


1927: In a statement made public today, “Justice Jacob Panken of the Municipal Court flatly rejected an offer of Communist support for re-election.”


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


1930: Northwestern University led by Guard Hyman “Hy” Crizevsky defeated Ohio State in its second straight win of the season.


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


1933(21stof Tishrei, 5694): Hoshana Raba observed for the first time under FDR.


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


1936: At the Free Synagogue, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was one of the speakers at a memorial service honoring his lifelong friend Reverend S. Parkes Cadman.


1936: “Approximately 150 delegates representing 26 communities” heard Louis Lipsky, the former president of the Zionist Organization of America deliver a speech at the annual convention of the Long Island Region today at the Jamaica (Queens) Jewish Center in which “he described the British attitude toward Palestine as one of indifference and avoidance of the issues.”


1936: Dr. Stephen S. Wises presided at a dinner at the Hotel Plaza “at which the American Jewish Congress honored Louis Sturz, chairman of the finance committee and treasurer of the World Jewish Congress.


1936: “The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee reported” today “that a total of 7,750 Jews had been helped to migrate from their homes in Germany during the first six months of this by service agencies affiliated with the committee.”


1936: “While all available police were shepherding a march of 5,000 Communists through the East End tonight a group of Mosley’s gangsters shouting Fascist slogans raided Jewish shops in Mile End Road,” slashing bystanders with razors, hurling bricks through shop windows, overturning and setting on fire two cars and scattering the property of the Jews in the roadway,


1936: “An Arab Plot” published today provides a review of Talbot Mundy’s Jimgim And Allah’s Peace” an adventure novel whose hero is “Major Grim (Jimgrim) a British Military Intelligence officer on service in Jerusalem to thwart the plots of the belligerent Arab sheiks against their age-old enemies, the Jews…”


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


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


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


1939: Dr. Alexander Sachs, “a Russian born economist” read President Roosevelt “a report from Albert Einstein predicting that an atomic bomb carried by ship, could destroy an entire port complex and surrounding area” to which President Roosevelt responded “with characteristic vigor” brushing “aside the hesitations of American scientists and officials” and “set the atomic project on its irrevocable course and pressed it toward the historic climax that came at Hiroshima after his death.” (From the obituary of Alexander Sachs)


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


1940(9th of Tishrei, 5701): Erev Yom Kippur


1940: “In compliance with War Department circular No. 5, all soldiers of the Jewish faith will be granted furloughs” starting at noon today “so they may observed the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.”


1940: In New York, “at Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson” is scheduled to “preach tonight on “Believing In God.”


1940: In New York, “at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi David de Sola Pool” is scheduled to “preach tonight on ‘Hope for Mankind.’”


1940: In New York, at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Rabbi Israel Goldstein” is scheduled to “preach tonight on ‘Jewish Selfhood.’”


1940: In New York, “Rabbi William F. Rosenblum” is scheduled to “preach at Temple Israel tonight on ‘The Philosophy of Faith.’”


1940: In New York, “Rabbi Louis I. Newman” is scheduled to “preach at Temple Rodeph Sholom tonight on ‘The Secret of Kol Nidre’s Power.’”


1940: In New York, “at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise” is scheduled to “preach tonight on ‘How Can the Prophets Help Us Now?’”


1940: In New York, “at West End Synagogue, Rabbi Nathan Stern” is scheduled to “preach tonight on ‘Standing Before the Lord.’”


1940: In New York, “Rabbi Asher Block” is scheduled to “preach at Tempe Gates of Israel tonight on ‘The Art of Jewish Living.’”


1940: In New York, at Mount Neboh Congregation “Rabbi Samuel M. Segal” is scheduled “to preach tonight on ‘Hear, O Israel.’”


1940: In New York, “Rabbi Jonah B. Wise” is scheduled to “preach at Central Synagogue tonight on ‘Can Freedom Starve?’”


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



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



1940: The Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” “a romantic British popular song written in 1939 with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz”


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


1941: Sol J. Wallach read a congratulatory letter from President Roosevelt at tonight’s dinner celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding The Mendelssohn Benevolent Society which was attended by almost four hundred people in New York City.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


1943: Heinrich Himmler appeared on the cover of Time magazine.



 


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


1944: “Laura” produced and directed by Otto Preminger with music by David Raskin was released in the United States by 20th Century Fox.


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


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


1945(4thof Cheshvan, 5706): Social activist Alice Goldmark Brandeis, the widow of Justice Louis Brandeis passed away today.



 


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


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


1946: Seventy-eight year old Austrian diplomat Alfred Rappaport who had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1883 passed away today.



 


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


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


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


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


1947: The University of Michigan, led by Dan Dworsky who played “linebacker, fullback and center” defeated the University of Pittsburgh for their third straight win of the season


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


1948” “Where’s Charley?” a musical with lyrics and music by Frank Loesser opened on Broadway at the St. James Theatre where it “ran for 792 performances.


1948: After the completion of Operation Taskit – an aerial operation the mapped “the deployment of enemy forces west of the Jordan River that took five nights to complete – David Judah, the IAF’s Director of Operations “sent a letter of congratulations and appreciation to Eddy Kaplansky, who had piloted all five flights.”


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


1952(22ndof Tishrei, 5713): Shmini Atzeret and Shabbat


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


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


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


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


1956: The two act version of A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller “opened at the New Watergate Theatre Club in New York.”


1956: On CBS, “Playhouse 90” a live dramatic anthology show, broadcast the Peabody award winning “Requiem for a Heavyweight” with a cast that included Ed Wynn, Max Baer, Eddie Cantor, Ned Glass and Max Rosenbloom.


1958: Three days after its premiere, ”The Old Man and the Sea,” a movie version of the novel with a screenplay by Peter Viertel and music by Dimitri Tiomkin was released throughout the United States.


1959(9th of Tishrei, 5720): Erev Yom Kippur


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


1960: “The Siege of Sidney” a historic film with music by English composer Stanley Black (Solomon Schwartz) was released in the United Kingdom today. 


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


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



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


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


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


1063(23rd of Tishrei, 5724): Simchat Torah


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


1965(15th of Tishrei, 5726): Sukkoth


1971(22ndTishrei, 5732): Shmini Atzeret


1973(15thof Tishrei, 5734): Sukkoth


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


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


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


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


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


1974: Sylva Zalmanson, who had been freed on August 22nd after having served “4 years of a 10 yeaer sentence imposed at the end of the 1970 Leningrad Trial, arrived in Israel.


1974: Ten people participated in the first of two demonstrations took place in Moscow today during which demands were made for the granting of exit visas.


1974: “Child Under A Leaf” co-starring Al Waxman was released in Canada today.


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


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


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


1978(10thof Tishrei, 5739): Yom Kippur


1980(1stof Cheshvan, 5741): Parashat Noach and Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1980(1stof Cheshvan, 5741): Eighty-four year old Maxwell M. Geffen, the Brooklyn born graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism who made a career of developing a series of “specialty magazines” passed away today.



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


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


1984(15thof Tishrei, 5745): Sukkoth


1984: After premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, “Once Upon a Time America” a film that “chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime” based on The Hoods by Harry Grey was released today in the United States was released today into the United Kingdom


1985: Birthdate of actress Michelle Trachtenberg.


1986(8thof Tishrei, 5747): Shabbat Shuva


1987: “House of Games,” which marked the directorial debut of David Mamet who also wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Katz was released today in the United States by Orion Pictures


1987: “How An Orchestra Fell Silent” published today descried the demise of the White Plains Symphony which Siegfried Landau served as music director for a quarter of a century.



1988: ACT UP, an organization co-founded by Larry Krammer “had one of its most successful demonstrations (both in terms of size and in terms of national media coverage) when it successfully shut down the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for a day” today.


1989(12thof Tishrei, 5750): Just days before his 83rd birthday Pennsylvania native Theodore Lorber who “was a member of the United States Fencing Team at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics passed away today.


1989(12thof Tishrei, 5750): Eighty-five year architect Percival Goodman, known for the many synagogues he designed and for his willingness to challenge the visions and power of Robert Moses who was the husband of Naomi Goodman with whom he had two children – George and Joel – passed away today.



1989: Today, Albert J. Amateau provided a sworn statement “on the allegations that Armenians suffered ‘genocide’ by the government of the Ottoman Empire.”



 


1990(22ndof Tishrei, 5751): Shmini Atzeret


1991: “Drop Dead Fred” a “dark comedy” with music by Randy Edelman was released in the United Kingdom today.
1991: “City of Hope” featuring Gina Gershon as “Laurie Rinaldi” opened today in Boston and New York City.


1991: The first shows of season two of The Simpsons, a cartoon sitcom developed by James L. Brooks and Sam Simon was broadcast today.


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


1997(10thof Tishrei, 5758): Yom Kippur


1996: “The Chamber,” a film version of the novel by the same name with a screenplay by William Goldman was released in the United States today.


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


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


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


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


2001: “Knockaround Guys” a crime-comedy co-written, and co-directed by Brian Koppelman, co-produced by Lawrence bender featuring Josh Mostel and Dov Tiefenbach was released in the United States today.


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


2002: “Below,” a horror film written and produced by Darren Aaronofsky  was released in the United States.


2003(15thof Tishrei, 5764): Sukkoth


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


2005(8thof Tishrei, 5766): Brent Shapiro’s death today lead to the found of “The Brent Shapiro Foundation,” “a non-profit organization which aims to raise drug awareness” chaired attorney Robert Shapiro, Brent’s father.


2005: Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for their work in game theory, which explains the choices that competitors make in situations that require strategic thinking. Aumann was born in Frankfurt in 1930.  The family came to the United States where Aumann earned a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1955. He joined the faculty of HebrewUniversityin Jerusalem in 1957.Hebrew University Professor of Mathematics Robert J. Aumann, who on Monday won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on using game theory to understand conflict resolution, says he sees no end to the Middle Eastconflict that claimed the life of his eldest son 23 years ago. “This conflict has been going on for 80 years and to my sorrow I believe it will last for at least another 80,” Aumann said in a press conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Givat Ram campus, where he resides as a professor emeritus in the Institute of Mathematics and as a member of Center for Rationality. Aumann, who made aliya from the United States in 1956, shares the prize with Thomas C. Schelling of the University of Maryland. The two were rewarded for “establishing interactive decision [game] theory as the dominant approach to understanding conflict and cooperation between countries, individuals and organizations,” the RoyalSwedishAcademy of Sciences said in a statement. Aumann and Schelling will receive the prize on December 10 from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustav and will share the 10 million Swedish kronor prize money, which translates to nearly NIS 6m. Aumann is the fifth Nobel laureate connected to the HebrewUniversityand is the first active faculty member to receive the award. He has been working at the university for 49 years, since his arrival in the country. Aumann said the award was a tribute to the many achievements of Israeli science and economics and recognition of the importance of game theory as a field of study. “I feel great and am very glad I got the prize, but it’s not just a personal achievement,” he said. “My work is closely tied to those of others, both in Israeland abroad.” In this regard, Aumann added that he felt a third recipient, “the high priest of game theory” Lloyd Chapley, a Professor at UCLA with whom he worked very closely, should have been included in the award. Aumann’s daughter Miriam Aumann Baris told The Jerusalem Post that the family knew he had been a candidate for the award in the past but had not expected it to come this year. Hebrew University President Menachem Magidor, a former student of Aumann’s, said that Aumann’s work was deserving of the prize many years ago. The announcement marked the first time since 1994 that the RoyalAcademyhas awarded the prize to academics who were instrumental in developing game theory. In 1994, the academy passed over Aumann and Schelling in awarding the prize to John C. Harsanyi, Reinhard Selten and John F. Nash, Jr. for their game theory work. Nash’s life and his difficulties with schizophrenia were documented in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind. Aumann’s and Schelling’s work was “essential” in developing game theory further, the academy said Monday. The award recognized work the two men did in the 1960s and 1970s that had helped defense analysts use models to map out options available to an adversary and to predict what the other side might do in a confrontation. Their work also had economic applications in such areas as pricing and labor negotiations, the academy said. “Robert Aumann was the first to conduct a full-fledged formal analysis of so-called infinitely repeated games. His research identified exactly what outcomes can be upheld over time in longrun relations,” it said. Aumann stressed that, while he received the award for his work on repeated-game theory, this was just one aspect of the broader subjects of game theory in which he was involved. Aumann, 75, was born in Frankfurt, where he lived until his family fled Nazi Germany to the USin 1938. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, he and his brother made a firm commitment to settle here, a dream which he realized a year after receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1955 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Aumann has five children and lost his eldest son Shlomo in 1982 in Operation Peace for the Galilee. He is expecting his 19th grandchild to be born by the end of the week and has two great-grandchildren. In attendance at the press conference was Swedish Ambassador to Israel Robert Rydberg, who gave congratulations on behalf of the Swedish government and king. President Katzav phoned in his blessings to the professor and Science and Technology Minister Matan Vilna’i sent his congratulations. The minister described Aumann as “a world leader in game theory, one of the most gifted mathematicians in the world who developed new theories in basic science with practical applications.” He is “one of the most talented minds to emerge in Israeli science,” Vilna’i added. Aumann’s prize “proves that the State of Israel continues to stand at the forefront of science and that we must continue to preserve this status. Investment in scientific infrastructure is the basis for development and, from it, new discoveries will emerge. Alfred Nobel, the inventor dynamite, established the awards for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature in his will in 1896. The economics prize was set up by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. Aumann is the second Israeli to win the prize after Daniel Kahneman, who also has US and Israeli citizenship, was one of the winners in 2002.


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



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



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



http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/news/2226/RandyWeinsteinGAtechbias101106.htm



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



2007: In Washington, D.C. the DCJCC as part of the HymanS. and Freda Bernstein Jewish LiteraryFestival a time discussion ofJewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community, a fascinating and authoritative chronicle of the history and heritage of Washington's vibrant Jewish community.



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



2007: In “The Horrible History of the Holocaust” published today, Adam Tooze reviewed The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander.



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3668451/The-horrible-history-of-the-Holocaust.html



2007: Today David “Frum announced on his blog that he was joining Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser.”



2008: At the Jerusalem Cinematheque, a screening of the short film “So We Said Goodbye” ( “נפרדנו כך”) in which “65-year-old Yaakov is saying goodbye to his sons and grandchildren, who are leaving Israel and recalls the moment when as a child he bid farewell to his family in 1937 Poland. The film was the winner of the 1990 Aliza Shagrir Award.”



2009 (23 Tishrei, 5770): Simchat Torah


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


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



2009: “Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt,” an exhibition on view at New York’s New Museum is scheduled to come to an end today.



http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=10557



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



2010(3rd of Cheshvan, 5771): Seventy four year old Carla Cohen who Politics and Prose was a bookstore was more a cultural landmark than a commercial venture, passed away today. (As reported by Ashley Parker)



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/books/12cohen.html



2010(3rd of Cheshvan, 5771): Seventy-nine year old Claire Rayner passed away in London.



http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/12/claire-rayner-obituary



2010(3rd of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety four year old real estate developer Robert V. Tishman, whose work included the World Trade Center, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/business/13tishman.html



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



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



2011: After more than five years, Arthur Mitchell completed his service as Leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Yukon.



2011: ABC broadcast the first episode of “Last Man Standing” co-starring Molly Ephriam.



2011: Under the agreement, announced today, Israel is to free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for its soldier, Gilad Shalit, held captive in Gaza for the past five years. Kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit will be returned to Israel next week, Israeli authorities reported. Shalit is expected to be transferred to the Sinai Peninsula through Rafah crossing, then to Israel. According to reports, Israel Defense Forces intend to allow Shalit to be reunited with his family as soon as possible.



2011:Unknown vandals scrawled "Death to the Jews" on four synagogues and a vehicle in the northern city of Safed on tonight. Police have opened an investigation and are searching for the perpetrators. "This is an unusual phenomenon, which does not characterize the nature of the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Safed," said Safed Mayor Ilan Shohat. "Just as we condemn the desecration of Islamic holy sites, so we condemn despicable acts like this." Shohat called upon the public to exercise restraint and allow the police to investigate the incident.Last week, two cemeteries in Jaffa, one Muslim and the other Christian, were vandalized by graffiti that said “Death to the Arabs”, and “Price Tag”. Earlier last week, the mosque in the northern village of Tuba-Zanghariyya, a Bedouin town of some 5,500 people two kilometers east of Rosh Pina, was vandalized. The mosque's interior was seriously damaged, and many holy books were destroyed by the blaze. Police suspect that extreme right-wing Jews carried out the arson in Tuba-Zanghariyya as a "price tag" operation, referring to vandalism and revenge actions initiated by activists, usually against Palestinians, following terror attacks or state demolitions in settlements or outposts.


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


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


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


2012: Gina “Gershon's first book written for adults, In Search of Cleo: How I Found My Pussy and Lost My Mind, the true story of the hunt for her runaway cat was released today.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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



2014: Today “six Israelis claimed the world open water relay record after swimming 380 kilometers (236 miles) home from Cyprus in a challenge also meant to highlight ocean pollution.”


2014: “Two Israelis were arrested in the West Bank today after a group attacked a Palestinian family picking olives at the start of harvest season — a frequent source of tension.”


2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform this evening at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, WI.


2015: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Pastrami On Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli by Ted Merwin.


2015: In Ottumwa, IA, Congregation B’nai Jacob which was founded in 1915 is scheduled to celebrate its centennial with a Centennial Open House led by President Harvey Disenhouse.


2015: ‘From Jaffa to Agripas a special project initiated by the c.a.t.m.o.n dance group and its creative director Elad Schechter is scheduled to take placed for the second time in Jerusalem,


2015: Temple Judah is scheduled to host its communal Sukkah Breakdown, a sure sign that the holiday season is over


2015: The Jewish Museum of Maryland is scheduled to host Scott R. Benarde speaking on “Stars of David: Rock ‘n’ Roll Jewish Stories” a “program that provides a look into how Judaism influence the makers of popular music over the past fifty years.”


2015: In New York, filmmaker Paula Fouce, Anne Frank’s stepsister Eva Schloss Geiringer and Jonathan Brent are scheduled to discuss “No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank’s Story” after its screening this evening.


2015: “Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950 and exhibition that tells the fascinating story of immigration, acculturation, and innovation that influenced Hollywood film as an American cultural phenomenon” is scheduled to opened at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.


2015: In New Orleans, the JCRS is scheduled to host its annual Chanukah Gift Wrapathon.


2015:  Near Gan Shmuel, next to Hadera, a twenty year old terrorists “used his car to run over two soldiers waiting at the bus stop” and got and stabbed three more people ages 15, 19, and 45.


2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Courage, Hope, and Survival of the Holocaust by Eva and Les Aigner.”


2015: Natalee Birchansky, one of the next generation of leaders of the Cedar Rapids Jewish community is scheduled to host her first Art Show.



2016(9th of Tishrei, 5777):  Erev Yom Kippur


G'mar Hatima Tova”


2016: Atlantic Medi announced today in a memo to its employees” that “Jeffrey Goldberg, a longtime correspondent for The Atlantic who has written frequently about Middle East affairs is the 159 year old magazines’ new editor in chief.”


2016: “A 20-year-old Arab man who threw firebombs at border police during a riot in southeast Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood was shot dead shortly after Yom Kippur commenced tonight, as police responded to two other riots in Arab areas in the capital.”


2016: “Security arrested a Hamas operative who planned a number of terrorist attacks in the Jerusalem area, including a suicide bombing on a bus in the capital’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood, authorities announced this morning.”


2017(20th of Tishrei, 5778): Hoshana Raba;


2017: In the evening, the University of Iowa Hillel chapter is scheduled to host Shmini Atzeret services and a holiday dinner.


2017: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last screening of “In Between” starring Shaden Kanboura winner of the Ophir Award for Best Actress and Mouna Hasa the winner of the Ophir Award for Best Supporting Actress.


2017: “The head of a government bureau responsible for clearing background checks told lawmakers today he has "never seen that level of mistakes" when asked about numerous omissions in Jared Kushner's security clearance application.”


2017: Today, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center said it would remove Harvey Weinstein name from its “roster of honorees,” following a string of sexual harassment allegations against the film mogul.”


2017: In the evening, the chaplains at Oxford are scheduled to host a Shemini Atzeret dinner.


2018: The Atlanta Botanical Garden is scheduled to host a lecture by “Rabbi Ari Kaiman of Congregation Shearith Israel who will share a taste of the rich and beautiful history of this special fruit from biblical times until today. Join us for Pomegranate tasting and deseeding tips.”
2018: As part of the “Historic Jewish Atlanta Tour” series, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host a tour of the Oakland Cemetery.


2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to present a lecture by Christian Picciolini, author of White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement – and How I Got Out.


2018: “Learning Officer Shereen Hunte” is scheduled to lead “a tour revealing objects relating to Black History and Black Jewish History” in the collections belonging to the Jewish Museum in London.


2018: Dr. Steve Feller, B.D. Silliman Professor of Physics is scheduled to “lead the Coe Thursday Forum on three of Leon Uris’s historical and important novels – Mila 18, Exodus and Armageddon.”


 


 


 

This Day, October 12, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 12


539 BCE: The Persian armies of Cyrus the Great captured Babylon.  Within the year, Cyrus would make it possible for the Jews to return to their homeland.


1129: The tombstone of Elijah ben Simon dated October 12, 1129 is among the oldest evidence of the Jewish settlement in Nuremberg goes back to the 12thcentury.


1285: The Jews of Munich (Germany) were caught in a claim of blood libel which resulted in the death of most the Jewish community.  When 180 Jewish survivors refused baptism, they were burned alive in their synagogue.


1366:  In Sicily, Jews were forbidden to decorate the outside of their houses of worship.


1491: During the Blood Libel tied to the Holy Child of La Guardia, inquisitors arranged for a meeting between Yucef Franco and Benitor Garcia, the two Jews accused in this event.


1492: After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, which led him to believe he had reached East Asia. His expedition, including Hebrew speaker Luis de Torres (the translator) went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and Spice Islands of Asia. Louis de Torres, a Marrano, was the first member of Columbus’ expedition to set foot in the Western Hemisphere. He discovered and introduced tobacco into Europe. According to one legend he saw a bird he thought to be a peacock and called it a "tuki" (Hebrew for peacock - I Kings X22). Today that bird is known as a turkey. (There are those who say that the story of the Turkey is pure fiction.  All that I can say is “Of this I do not know.”)


1504: Thirty-one year old John Corvinus, the pretender to the Hungarian throne who expelled the Jews from Tata where they had lived since the second of the 11th century, passed away today.


1576:  Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor passed away. Maximilian reversed the decree that had banished the Jews from Prague. Furthermore, he allowed them to return to other towns in Bohemia and to settle in Austria.  The life of the Jews in these domains was far from tranquil thanks to pressure from the Catholic Church.  But under Maximilian II it was better than it had been under his predecessor Ferdinand.


1589(2nd of Cheshvan, 5350): Rabbi Samuel ben Moses Medina (RaShDaM) passed away in Salonica.  Born in 1505, his disciples included Abraham de Boton and Joseph ibn Ezra and his grandson was Samuel  Hayyun, author of “Bene Shemuel “


1711: Charles VI who sought to limit the number of Jews living in Austria and Hungary began his reign as Holy Roman Emperor. Among his subjects was Ḥayyim Judah Löb Ettinger, the Austian Rabbi who was the son of Eliezer ha-Levi Lichtenstein Ettinger and the brother-in-law of Chaim Cohen Rapport, who served as a rabbi in Lemberg.


1759(21st of Tishrei, 5520): Hoshanah Rabah


1772(15th of Tishrei, 5533): Sukkoth


1775: The Continental Congress creates the United States Navy. Some of the famous Jews to serve in the U.S. Navy include: Commodore Uriah P. Levy who played a key role in ending flogging as a punishment for seamen; Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the Nuclear Navy; Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations.


1778: In Denmark, Philip Hartvig Rée and Hanna Hartvig von Essen gave birth to Hartvig Philip Ree.


1781: Birthdate of Ludvig Mariboe, one of a small number of Jewish converts to Christianity who had settled in Norway in the first decade of the 19th century when Jews were not accepted as citizens.


1789(22nd of Tishrei, 5550): Shemini Atzeret is observed for the first time during the Presidency of George Washington.


1783: Rachel Pinto, a Loyalist who had taken the oath allegiance sought “to attempt to obtain indemnification from the British government” for having billeted the King’s troops in her home.


1793:  The cornerstone of Old East the oldest state university building in the United States is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  This is an important date in Jewish history because my sister, Judy Sharon (Levin) Rosenstein, of blessed memory was a Tar Heel Grad.  She met her husband, Larry Rosenstein of blessed memory, at Chapel Hill.  All three of their sons are also Carolina grads. Of such moments are real Jewish history made.


1796(10th of Tishrei, 5557): Yom Kippur is observed for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.


1796: Birthdate of “educator, poet and mathematician” Jacob Eichenbaum, the native of Galicia who was “one of the pioneers of modern education among the Russian Jews.”


1796: Israel Baer Kursheedt observed Yom Kippur as the only Jew aboard an American sloop sailing to the United States from Hamburg.


1797(22nd of Tishrei, 5558): Shemini Atzeret


1797: In Charleston, SC, Solomon and Rebecca Moses Harby gave birth to George Washington Harby, “a writer and teacher like his older brother Isaac,” the founder of “a boy’s school in New Orleans” and the husband of Mary Olivia Lucas and then the husband of New Orleanian  Marie Ulaine Pouillott.


1800(23rd of Tishrei, 5561): Jews celebrate Simchat Torah for the first time in the 19thcentury and for the last time during the Presidency of John Adams.


1810: Today’s marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Bavaria marked the start of the first Oktoberfest.



1814: Peter Simeon married Sarah Rees at the Great Synagogue today.


1819(23rd of Tishrei, 5580): Simchat Torah


1822: Birthdate of Seligman Solomon, the German born American businessman and philanthropist best known for his support of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City


1830: Birthdate of Antony Mayer de Worms, a London born descendant of Amschel Moses Rothschild and Schoenche Lechnich


1831: Joel Coleman Joel married Sophia Samuel at the Great Synagouge today.


1837(13th of Tishrei, 5598): Seventy-five year old Talmudist, interpreter of Halacha and moel Rabbi Akiva Eger passed away today in Poznan



1838(23rd of Tishrei, 5599): Simchat Torah


1842: In Reckendorf, Bavaria, Nathan and Rosa Walter gave birth to Moritz Walter the husband of Sophie Walter


1843: Abdallah Ben Cassan married Mary Ann Talbot in London today.


1845: Abraham Einstein and Helene Moos gave birth to Heinrich Einstein one of the six siblings of Albert Einstein.


1848(15th of Tishrei, 5609): Sukkoth


1852: In Minsk, Joseph Dubov and his wife gave birth to Marcus H. Dubov who served congregations in Grodno, Russia; Graudenz, Prussia; Sioux City, Iowa; and Canton, Ohio before becoming Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Moshe in Evansville, Indiana


1853(10th of Tishrei, 5614): Yom Kippur


1853: Rabbi Raphall led services today at the Greene Street Synagogue in New York.


1854: Birthdate of Ida Kuhn, the daughter of Clara Regina Kuhn who became Ida Cohen after marrying Eduard Cohen


1864:The General News column reported today, Wednesday, that Monday’s livestock market was fairly active despite “the absence of the Hebrews, who” were “observing the Day of the Atonement, one of their principal fasts.” Tuesday’s market was more active than usual, in part, because “on account of the numbers of Jews present.”


1864: In Iowa, “a dozen raiders disguised as Union soldiers terrorized Davis County, where they looted residences and kidnapped and murdered three Iowans near Bloomfield.”


1865: In a column styled “Our London Correspondence,” The New York Times reported that, “If you want a present proof that Mammon rules here, take the fact that yesterday Mr. PHILLIPS, a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion, was elected Lord Mayor of London. Not that a Jew has not teeth, hands, organs, dimensions, and all that, as well as any other man; but, in the face of English prejudice, money and money alone could make a man who is a Jew by birth and religion, member of Parliament or Lord Mayor.” “Mr. Phillips” referred to Benjamin Samuel Phillips, a prominent British citizen and leader of the Anglo-Jewish community who had been elected Lord Mayor in September of 1865.  He served with such distinction that Queen Victoria knighted him for his service. Phillips was the second the Jew to hold the post; the first being David Salomons.  His son, Sir George, would also serve as Lord Mayor. The level of anti-Semitism displayed in this items stands in stark contrast with the detailed and sympathetic description of Jewish holidays that this paper was publishing in the 19th century.


1865(22nd of Tishrei, 5626): Shmini Atzeret


1866: Birthdate of Morris Aaron who would  be buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Natchitoches, LA when he passed away in 1943.


1872(10th of Tishrei, 5633): Yom Kippur


1873(21st of Tishrei, 5634): Hoshanah Rabah


1873: “Curiosities of Superstition” published today traces the history of “host desecration” including a description of the 38 Jews who were burned to death in 1510 “because they had tortured the consecrated host until bled.”


1875: Birthdate of Yaakov Ben Zion Morein who gained famed as Rabbi Yaakov Ben Zion HaCohen Mendelsohn who served a congregation in Glasgow, Scotland before settling in the United States where he founded “his own shul, Congregation Beis Hamedrash Hagadol.”


1877: An application was made to Judge Barrett on behalf of the two children of the late Abraham Weisberg to order the Public Administrator to turn the two hundred dollars that constituted his estates to Rabbi Ash of the Ludlow-Street Synagogue so that he could send the money to the children living in Poland.  Weisberg was a Jewish peddler who had been murdered two years ago in New York’s Westchester Country.  The judge denied the application saying a guardian for the minor children would have to be appointed before going forward with the dispersal of funds.


1876: Two days after he had passed away, Augustus Davis, the son of Henry Davis and the former Ellen Lewis and the husband of “Ann (Annie) Davis” with whom he had two children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1878(15th of Tishrei, 5639): Sukkoth


1878(15th of Tishrei, 5639): S. S. Man.Maximilien, Baron von Königswarter, the Dutch born French banker who supported Napoleon III passed away today.


1878: The strict anti-Socialist legislation passed today outlawed, for all practical purposes, the German Socialist Democratic Party whose leaders included Eduard Bernstein


1879: “Fish in Morocco” published today which was devoted to describing the rich variety of shell-fish used by cooks in Morocco pointed out that these are “utterly tabooed” when it comes to the local Jewish population.


1881: At Beth Elohim, Rabbi David Levy officiated at the marriage of Herman Leidloff, of Berlin and Selna Davega of Charleston, SC.


1882: It was reported today that the Prime Minister told members of the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies, that the recent anti-Jewish riots in Pressburg “might …degenerate into” an event “of a socialistic character.” He declared that would he would not tolerate “such excesses.” 


1884(23rd of Tishrei, 5645): Simchat Torah


1884: As the effects of the sever economic recession, which has necessitated the closing of many major employers, including the Falls Cotton Mills, grip New England, it is reported that the Polish Jews living in Baltic, a city 8 miles north of Norwich, Conn, are reduced to begging from door to door.


1884: Roderick Waters, who is Christian and Michael Hauman, who is Jewish nearly came to blows today as they vied for the affections of a Jewish widow living in St. Mark’s Place.


1884: “News of the World” published today described the change in fortunes for Mahmoud Pasha, aka Jacob Freund   The Sultan has brought him back from the Island of Rhodes where he had been living in exile since 1876 and restored him to his former position of prominence.  Mahmoud Pasha was a Polish born Jew named Jacob Freund who had fled Hungary after the revolution there failed and, after converting, became “the ablest of Turkish Generals.


1885: David J. Seligman and Adelaide (Addie) Seligman gave birth to Gladys Seligman who, after she married Henri Wertheim became Gladys Wertheim.


1885: “The Only One In America” published today described the opening of the first and only “Hebrew-Christian Church” in the United States.  Located in New York, it is the only congregation that has been established by Jewish converts to Christianity. (Editor’s note – Jews for Jesus type movements are obviously note a creation of the late 20thcentury.)


1886: In Pittsburgh, PA, “Maria and Salomon Stossel” gave birth to Jeno Stossel who gained fame as Jacob Stacel, “one of four Jews named to sit as judges of the Cleveland Municipal Court…by Governor Cooper in December of 1930” who was the husband of Minnie W. Stacel.


1886: “The Anchroia’s Long Trip” described the perilous ocean crossing of a steamer that that had its propeller shaft brake causing havoc among the crew and passengers. Fortunately, only two passengers died in the chaos, one of whom was an unnamed Polish Jew who was buried at sea.


1888(7th of Cheshvan, 5649): Just two months before his 76th birthday, Joseph Moses Levy, the English newspaper editor and publisher whose properties included The Daily Telegraph passed away.


1887: In Munich, “Isidor Landauer and Josephine Pepi Guggenhimer” gave birth to “Dr. Karl Elias Landuer, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, who after seeking refuge from the Nazis in Sweden and the Netherlands ended up being murdered at Bergen-Belsen just months before the end of WW II



1888: “The Fifteenth Season” published today described the first event of 1888-1889 season sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.  Among those who addressed those attending the gala at Chickering Hall was Chauncey M. Depew. (Depew was not Jewish. He was an attorney who became President of the New York Central Railroad and U.S. Senator from New York. His willingness to speak at the YMHA gathering gives an indication of the importance of the organization.)  The speeches were followed by an evening of choral music with violin accompaniment.


1889: Max Maretzek, the Moravian born American opera conductor and composer, celebrated his Golden Jubilee


1890: “Russia’s Milling Industry” published today attributed the decline in the country’s grain milling industry and the decline in the price of corn to “the persecution of the Jews.”


1891(10th of Tishrei, 5652): Yom Kippur


1891:  Several “temporary places of worships have been established” in New York city “public halls” to accommodate the large number of people attending services, especially on the Lower East Side.


1891: In Columbus, GA, more than fifty Jewish owned stores closed because of the Day of Atonement.


1891: In Brooklyn, Sophie and Pincus Weinberg gave birth to Sidney James Weinberg



1891: An Indictment of Russia” published today described the view of the Jews that Nicholas I who reigned from 1825 to 1855 was “a Second Haman” whose 30 year reign “was filled with special hardship for” them. Much to their surprise, the reign of Alexander III has proved to be even worse.


1891:  Birthdate of Edith Stein.  Stein converted to Catholicism.  When she became a nun she took the name "Teresia Benedicta ac Cruce."  Sister Teresia left Germanyfor Hollandafter the Nazis came to power.  In 1942, the Nazis ordered the arrest of Catholics of Jewish origin living in Holland.  This included clergy like Sister Teresia.  Sister Teresia was once again Edith Stein.  She died in Auschwitzin August of 1942.  If people who converted to Catholicism are really Catholics it is hard to understand how the Pope gave up these members of his flock. Eventually, Edith Stein would be made Saint.  Cynics would say that in one respect the Church has remained consistent.  It loves Jews, as long as they are dead. The fate of Edith Stein gave those studying in Cedar Rapids something to discuss when they studied the Papal response to Hitler and the Holocaust.


1891: Today, Jews in Missouri are upset by the recent attack John T. Blake the manager for William Warner, the Republican candidate for governor has made on Mr. Isaac Isaacs, Secretary of the Republican clubs that included a “roast of the Jews.”


1892(21st of Tishrei, 5653): Hoshana Rabah


1892: In New York, a conference of Orthodox rabbis which has dealt with changes espoused by the Reform including doing away requiring circumcision as part of the conversion ceremony, is scheduled to come to an end


1892: Carlos Pellegrini, who has a German-Jewish brother-in-law, completed his term of office as President of Argentina during which he expressed his support for Baron Hirsch’s plan to settle a half a million Russian Jews in the Argentine Republic.


1892: A part of the 400thanniversary of Columbus’ voyage, a celebration which Jewish communities participated, “school children recite the original ‘Pledge of Allegiance” which did not contain the phrase “under God” – a phrase that was added in the 1950’s as a measure designed to “defeat” the Soviets during the Cold War.


1893: Julius Bien, the President of B’Nai B’rith is scheduled to address the opening session of a three day affair marking the Golden Anniversary of the Jewish fraternal organization.


1894: Alfred Gobert, “the handwriting expert from the Bank of France,” was summoned to the rue Saint-Dominique where he spent the day examining the treasonous documents supposedly written by Captain Dreyfus.(For more see The Dreyfus Affair by Piers Paul Read)


1894: Two days after she had passed away. Fanny Goldberg, the “wife of Abraham Goldberg” was buried at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.”


1894: This evening, General de Boisdeffre told Commandant du Paty de Calm that “he had been chosen to arrest Dreyfus.”  Du Paty tried to avoid the task but the general insisted.


1895(24th of Tishrei, 5656): Seventy-eight year old German politician and jurist Isaac Wolffson, the son of “businessman Meyer Wolffson” and the father Albert Wolffson who served in the Hamburg Parliament for thirty years, passed away today.


1895 The Louisiana Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, which has sent money to the St. Louis Shoe Fund and the Chicago Jewish Training School was formed today


1897: In Kansas City, clothing store owner Jacob Epstein and his wife gave birth to Jane Epstein, the future wife Goodman Ace who became half of the comedy team known as “Easy Aces.”


1897: Expenses estimates submitted at today’s meeting of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment included: Aguilar Free Library $41, 500; Maimonides Free Library $5,000; Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum $324,992; Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society $89,000; Sanitarium for Hebrew Children $5,500; Mt. Sinai Hospital $26,000


1899: One day after he had passed away, “Solomon Shock” was buried at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”


1903(21st of Tishrei, 5664): Hoshana Rabah


1903: Birthdate of Walter Jurmann the “Austrian born composer” who moved to France after the Nazis came to power and then to the United States where Louis B. Mayer employed him at MGM.


1904: Birthdate of Samuel Zimelman, who served as the “cantor of Hochshule Synagogue in his native Łomazy, Poland who in 1946 came to the United States where he served as the chazzan at Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh in Portland Maine and who is the father of Cantor Solomon “Sol” Zim.


1906(23rd of Tishrei, 5667): Simchat Torah


1906: In Australia, Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs began serving as Puisne Justice of the High Court of Australia.


1907: Birthdate of Chicago native Phil “Mickey” Weinbtraub the outfielder and first baseman who began his career with Loyola Univesity, went on to a record shattering season with the minor league Nashville Vols before playing in the majors with the Giants, Cards, Reds and Phillies.


1907: The Tennessee Volunteers coached by Izzy Levene defeated the football team from the University of Georgia for the second straight victory of the season.


1908(17th of Tishrei, 5669): Chol Hamoded Sukkoth


1908(17th of Tishrei, 5669): Fifty-seven year old Isaac Asher Isaacs, the “son of Asher and Esther Isaacs” and husband of “Hannah (Annie) Zyberlast Isaacs with whom he had six children and who had been presented with a “Testimonial from the Manchester Congregation of British Jews” in February of 1908 “in recognition of her service as secretary for twenty seven years” passed away today.



 1909: The Bible Class which had studied the Book of Genesis at Temple Beth Ahabah is scheduled to meet this afternoon to study the Book of Exodus


1909: Mrs. Sam Cohen, the President Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Association (LHBA) is scheduled to chair a fund raising meeting today.


1910(9th of Tishrei, 5671): Erev Yom Kippur


1910: Birthdate of Canadian screenwriter Ben Barzman who fell afoul of HUAC and ended up on one of its infamous blacklists.


1911: Multiple telegrams were received in Londonfrom Malta, Gabes and Djerba, appealing for help for the many thousands of Jewish refugees who had come from Tripoli


1912: Birthdate of Elizabeth H. Friedman, the wife of Sylvan N. Friedman, the Jewish political leader who served in both houses of the Louisiana state legislature.


1912: While playing Center for Georgia Tech led the Yellow Jackets to a 20-3 upset victory over Alabama despite the fact that he broke three fingers in the game which proved to be an inspiration to his underdog teammates.


1913(12th of Tishrei, 5674): Mrs. Beile Weinberg passed away today.


1914(22nd of Tishrei, 5675): Shemini Atzeret


1914: “Turkey Gathers Troops” published today reported that the Turks “are showing much energy” in several of its Middle Eastern territories including “Palestine where they are concentrating troops at a number of points and fortifying important places on the coast and on routes to the interior.”


1914: “The Committee on Foreign Relations this morning ordered a favorable report to the Senate of the peace treaty with Russia” even though “the committee has received no word from the Department of State indicating that any progress has been made toward negotiating a new treaty of commerce with Russia to take the place of the treaty of 1832 abrogated by the United States because of Russia’s treatment of American Jews.”


1914: Birthdate of Mauricio Leib Lasansky, “an Argentine-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism…” (As reported by Margalit Fox)


1915: Assistant Under-Secretary of State Bertam Cubitt wrote to General Sir John Maxwell “that to grant the ZMC (Zion Mule Corps) pensions that would be granted to enlisted British soldiers would be unduly liberal” as they were only “temporary employees” – a status he ascribed to men who wore the uniform of His Majesty’s forces and many of whom “permanently gave their lives” under fire at Gallipoli.


1915: Edith Louisa Caviell, the British nurse who in addition to providing medical aid to battlefield casualties regardless of their nationality, was executed today by the Germans today for helping Allied soldiers escape after a court martial in which she had been represented by Sadi Kirschen whose Jewish family would be forced to flee Belgium 25 years later when the Nazis came to power.


1915:  “More Rioting In Russia” published today described fighting in the streets of Moscow which has included civilians building barricades in the city and which the “aristocracy and merchants “attribute to the disloyalty of the Jews and the granting to them of the rights of suffrage” – a condition that they will cure by returning to “the customs of the ancient Muscovite Empire” making it “once more a land of orthodox Slavs.


1915: Birthdate of New York native Leonard “Len” Maidman the NYU all-star basketball player, 1940 graduate of NYU Med School “who served as a Captain in the Medical Corps” during WW II after which he practiced medicine in Connecticut for forty years.


1915: Alexei Khvostoff, the new Russian Minister of the Interior was reported to believe that “the step already taken to extend the rights of the Jews must be followed up” and that “the only restriction that should be maintained with regard to the Jews after the war is the prohibition of the purchase of real estate.”


1915: As of today, according to Professor R.J. H. Gottheil, the Temporary Chairman of the University Zionist Society, Eugene Meyer, Jr. is the society’s new president and E.L. Thurman is the society’s new Secretary.


1916(15th of Tishrei, 5677): Sukkoth


1916: During the Punitive Expedition into Mexico led by General Pershing “Rabbis sent to the Mexican border for the holidays by the Army and Navy Committee and by the Central Conference of American Rabbis” are scheduled to Sukkoth services in Texas “at McAllen, El Paso, San Antonio, Brownsville, Laredo and Eagle Pass” while “elsewhere along the…border Succoth will be observed out of doors or in tenets which will prove peculiarly appropriate in view of the fact that Succoth celebrations are held whenever possible in out-of-door booths in token of the harvest origin of the holiday.”


1916: Dr. J.L. Magnes, a Brooklyn born member of the American Jewish Relief Committee arrived in Warsaw where he will be distributing “funds collected in the United States” to “the poor Jews in Poland.”


1916: During tonight’s Columbus Day celebration at Carnegie Hall sponsored by the New York Chapter of the Knights of Columbus former Assemblyman Aaron J. Levy delivered a speech in which he said “When I was invited to take part in these exercise, I had some doubt of my right to be here but when I recalled that five members of Columbus’s crew were Jews and that another Jew prominent at the” Spanish Court “financed that famous expedition of discovery by contributing $250,000” leading me to “believe that I have the best right to be here.”


1917: “For the Tsar and Holy Russia,” “a new reactionary organization” conducted a “vigorous anti-Jewish campaign” and distributed millions of copies of circulars urging anti-Jewish uprisings.”


1917: In Tsaritsin, “Bankers and Trust Companies establish a company to sell insurance again casualties and losses resulting from pogroms.”


1917: In Lubashevka, “peasant women attack Jewish shops demanding food at lower prices” followed by looting of the shops with the goods being taken by force.


1917: Three hundred more Jewish refugees are expected to arrive shortly in New York from Palestine which can be added to the total of 91 saved souls who arrived yesterday after having been driven from their homes in Jaffa and Jerusalem.


1918: Dr. Madisen Clinton Peters, the former pastor of the Bloomingdale Church and author whose works included Justice to the Jew, The Jews as Patriot, The Wit Wisdom of the Talmud, The Jews in America and the Jews Who Stood by Washington, passed away after losing his week-long fight with Spanish Influenza.


1918:Upon hearing that the German government had accepted President Wilson’s condition for negotiation, “the German born Zionist Arthur Ruppin noted in his diary how he ‘went for a long walk and continuously repeated to myself the one word: Peace! How much it means.’” Ruppin’s joy was premature and it would be another month before Peace would become a reality.


1919: The New York Times includes a review of Past and Present: A Collection of Essays by Dr. Israel Friedlander, a noted member of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary and an author of several volumes on Jewish history.


1920: The Kane Street Temple, one of the oldest congregations in Brooklyn is scheduled to host the opening night of its Bazar and Fair at the 23rd Regiment Armory.


1921(10th of Tishrei, 5682): Yom Kippur


1921: In New York City, attorney Allen Blaustein and his wife the former Rose Brickman gave birth to law professor and “constitution drafter Albert P. Blaustein.



1921: According to New York City political leaders yesterday's drop in voter registration, as compared with both the first day's registration and that of last year was mainly due to the fact that the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur began yesterday evening.  “In many instances Jewish registration inspectors left their booths at sundown” which delayed registration for those waiting in line.  “The Jewish holiday kept the registration down on the East side of Harlem” and other East side locations because Jews did not come out to register on the eve of Yom Kippur.  The importance of observing Yom Kippur was a universal factor among Jews regardless of affiliation as can be sen by the fact that Jacob Schiff, who was serving as Chairman of one of the registration boards and a co-religionist serving on the board “quit work at sunset.”  When Schiff was challenged by waiting voters he replied, “We are sorry, but you observe your holidays and we must observe ours.”  The Board of Elections admitted that it had not even considered the disruption that would take place when voter registration coincided with the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar.


1923: In Brooklyn, David Slutsky, a cab driver and Mae Rodin Slutsky, a manicurist gave birth to Jean Evelyn Slutksy who gained fame as Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight Watchers. “The story of the establishment of Weight Watchers International begins with the personal story of a New York housewife who wanted to succeed at losing weight. In 1963, Mrs. Jean Nidetch , a Jewish woman in her forties, who had experienced many failed attempts at losing weight and gaining weight, decided to lose weight forever.”  So begins the saga as described by the Weight Watchers Program.  There are those who say the program is very Jewish.  Like Moses, Ms. Nidetch started with a list of foods you could not eat and book.



1924: Birthdate of Erich Gruenberg, the Austrian born violinist who studied at the Jerusalem Conservatory and “led the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra from 1938 to 1945.


1925: Birthdate of Julius Bronstein, a 34 for year veteran of the Chicago Police Department


1925: In what will be one of the few glory moments in the history of the Washington Senators, the Nats with Buddy Myer at 2nd base take a three games to lead over the Pirates in the World Series.


1925: Birthdate of Alan Howard Abelson, the New York native who became an editor of Barron’s magazine where he wrote “a pugnacious, sagacious stock market column that denounced Wall Street hucksterism and routinely rocked share prices (As reported by Douglas Martin)



1925(24th of Tishrei, 5685):  Thirty-two year old Polish born circus performer Siegmund Breitbart known as the “Strongest Man in the World” passed away today in Berlin after having injured himself during a performance.


1926: In the Bronx, William Schlesinger, “a pants salesman” and his wife Lillian who was “a milliner gave birth to “printer, historian, composer and printer Carl Tobias Schlesinger.



1926: Birthdate of Dr. Ruth L. Kirschstein, a National Institutes of Health pathologist who helped develop and refine tests to ensure the safety of vaccines for polio and measles, organized the NIH response to the AIDS epidemic, and became the first woman appointed director of an NIH institute.”


1927: Anna Boudin, Mrs. Jacob Panken and Florence Dolowitz organized the first meeting of the Women's American ORT (WAO). Originally founded in Tsarist Russia in the 1880s, ORT (the Russian acronym stands for Organization for the Distribution of Artisanal and Agricultural Skills) was organized to provide vocational training to help impoverished Russian Jews become more economically self-sufficient. The American arm of ORT, founded in 1922, was only open to men. Dolowitz and Boudin, who were married to ORT officers, founded WAO to assist in funding ORT programs intended to help Eastern European Jews devastated by World War I. Starting with fundraising concerts and bazaars, WAO grew in response to the rise of Nazism and the plight of Jewish refugees. Women's American ORT became an independent organization in 1940, helping to fund International ORT's growing number of vocational high schools in Europe, India, Israel, and North Africa. Today WAO focuses primarily on fundraising for ORT schools and programs around the world, including schools in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. These programs assist disadvantaged individuals and communities to be self- sufficient by providing education and training in employment skills. The organization also maintains a public policy platform advocating for quality public education, increased literacy and women's rights, the separation of church and state, the elimination of anti-Semitism, and the fostering of Jewish communities worldwide. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)


1927: It was reported today that Justice Jacob Panken has rejected the endorsement of the Communist Party because, the Communists “believe in dictatorship and ridicule and denounce the principles and practices of social democracy, while the Socialist Party believed that whatever “changes are to be made in the United States must the result of education and the intelligent use of the ballot”


1928: On the 33rdanniversary of his death, a bust of Jurist Isaac Wolffson was placed “in the vestibule of the Court of Appeals Building” in Hamburg.


1929: The British High Commissioner sends a telegram to the government in London warning that the Arabs of Palestine had recently obtained a considerable number of arms from Transjordanand the Hedjaz which they intended to use in attacks on the Jewish population.


1930: Birthdate of New Rochelle native Jack Gottlieb, a noted composer who “served as President of the ASJM for a number of years.”



1932: “The Flag Lieutenant,” a British made WW I movie featuring Abraham Sofaer as “Meheti Salos” was released in the United Kingdom today by Woolf and Freedman.


1933(23rd of Tishrei, 5694): Simchat Torah


1933: In Los Angeles, garment workers, most of whom were “Mexicans” began a strike organized by Rose Posetta (Rakhel Peisoty) of the ILGWU who believed that “Mexican garment workers” could be the backbone of a West Coast organizing movement.


1933: William E. Dodd, FDR’s newly appointed Ambassador to Germany, defied the conventional wisdom and gave a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in which he was highly critical of the Nazi regime.  Among the high-ranking Nazis in attendance were Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg.


1934: In Newark, NJ, “Carolyn (Kaltenbacher) and Jerome Meier, a wholesale wine and liquor salesman gave birth to “the oldest of their three sons” Cornell University trained architect Richard Meier, the winner of 1984 Prtizker Architecture Prize.


. 1934: In Salem, Massachusetts, Jacob Joseph Kekst, a Hebrew school teach from Lithuania and his Palestinian born wife Hannah gave birth to Gershon Kekst, the founder Kekst and Company.




 


1934: U.S. premiere of “The Gay Divorcee,” a musical directed by Mark Sandrich with a score by Max Steiner and filmed by cinematographer David Abel.


1935(15th of Tishrei, 5695): Sukkoth


1935: “Jubilee,” “a musical comedy with a book by Moss Hart premiered on Broadway tonight at the Imperial Theatre


1935: Birthdate of “historian and biographer” John Cooper, , whose works included A Social History of Jewish Food  and The Life Cycle of the Baghdadi Jews of India that he wrote with his wife, psychoanalyst Judy Cooper.


1936: Thanks to the efforts of the “Arab Kings of Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Transjordan, the general strike being conducted by the Arabs in Palestine which has been marked by death violence has been called off without resolving their attempts to put an end to Jewish immigration and land purchases.


1936: It was reported today that during the first six months of this year, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee had provided assistance to “2,047 Jews long resident in Germany but natives of other lands” including 700 from Poland who were forced to “return home” by the Nazi regime as well as assistance to “1,993 people to leave small towns and villages for larger German cities because residence in the smaller communities was no longer possible for them.”


1936: It was reported today that philosopher and historian Dr. William Durant said “I trust that before my days are end, I shall the Germany of Lessing, Kant, Goethe and Schiller restored to the moral fellowship of the nations; and the Jewish people living once more in peace and honor with Germans in Germany and with Arabs in Palestine.”


1939: The first Jewish deportees left Vienna and Bohemia.


1939: Hans Frank is appointed governor-general of Occupied Poland.


1940(10th of Tishrei, 5701): Yom Kippur; it is also Shabbat.



1940: Governor Lehman of New York missed the celebration of Columbus Day “for the first time in ten or twelve years because” today was “the holiest of the Jewish religion and he was attending to religious duties and abstaining from public appearances.


1940: All soldiers who had received a furlough starting yesterday at noon so they could observe Yom Kippur were required to return by the sounding of taps this evening.


1940:For the first time in 940 years, non-Christian religious services were held in Iceland. Approximately twenty five Jewish soldiers from England, Scotland and Canada gathered with eight Jewish refugees and Hendrik Ottósson, who had married a Jewish woman to observe Yom Kippur. Ottósson, served as their Shammash. The Icelandic authorities offered a chapel in Reykjavík's old cemetery. Ottósson found the suggestion insulting and rented a hall of the Good Templars' Lodge. They borrowed the only Torah scroll available in town.


1940: On this Jewish Day of Atonement, German loudspeakers in Warsaw, Poland, announce that all Jews in the city must move to the Jewish ghetto by the end of the month.


1940 (10th of Tishrei, 5701): In one of those calendar quirks, Yom Kippur, Shabbat and Columbus Day all fell on the same day.  As the Nazis swept across Europe, sermons provided different ways to respond to the challenge and observe the Day of Atonement. Rabbi Stephen Wise told congregants at the Free Synagogue that it was not enough for England to resist Hitler.  The resistance to Hitler must take the form of renewed and deepened loyal to morality which “in its origins is Judeo-Christian.” Rabbi Jonah Wise asked those at Central Synagogue “how much liberty can we lose and still retain from freedom” while Rabbi David de Sola Pool told those at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue “Our effective answer to the tyrannies of other lands is to build here a better society of free, unexploited happy men and women. It is within our power to reconstruct society and build it in the light of divine wisdom.”


1940(10th of Tishrei, 5701): The Nazis executed 3,400 Jews in Galicia.


1940: It was reported today that due to the start of Yom Kippur yesterday evening, “slaughters had reduced the kill of those classes generally dressed kosher.”


1941: InStanislawow, Eastern Galicia, all of the Jews living in the district, were driven out of their homes into the center of the town where massive graves had been dug. SS troops and Ukrainian militia commence machine gunning of the gathered populace. Estimates of the number of Jews murdered range from a low of 6,000 to a high of 12,000. For the Jews, it was Hoshanah Rabbah, (the Great Prayer day.) The Ukrainian and German killers throw a "Bloody Sunday" victory celebration.


1940 Sixty-four year old William Henry Dieterich, the anti-Semitic and somewhat pro-German” Senator from Illinois who was opposed by his fellow Democrat Henry Horner, “the first Jewish governor of Illinois” passed away today.


1941: At Sabac, Yugoslavia, hundreds of Gypsies are murdered. Jews were the primary victims of genocide, but not the only victims.


1941: The head of the University ofLouisville expresses his gratitude for a bequest by the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandies to the school’s Law Library.  About two decades ago, Justice. Brandies selected the LawSchool of the University of Louisville as beneficiary of specific current gifts from him because, in his judgment, this university is much less liable to political influence than institutions under complete public control.


1941(21st of Tishrei, 5702): Hoshanah Rabah


1944: Gerda Baier was deported to Auschwitz where she was subsequently murdered.


1944(25th of Tishrei, 5705): The wife and young daughter of chess champion Salo Landau were gassed today at Auschwitz.


1945: Forty women rescued from Nazi concentration camps were the first to be sheltered in the new sixty-bed wing opened” today “at the Women’s League for Palestine home at Haifa.  In New York, “Mrs. David L. Isaacs, who head the Palestine committee of the league” described “the welcome given the group rescued from Bergen-Belsen, Buchwald and Auschwitz.”


1945: British authorities continued their search of a secret radio that was “attempting to rally Jewish resistance forces.”  Shortly before a secret radio station “that was attempting to rally Jewish resistance forces…broadcast the announcement ‘Listen to the voice of Israel!  This is not a terrorist station.  This is the station of Hebrew resistance. Never again will Jews be deported from their homeland.  Our patience is over.  No power in the world shall break our determination.”


1946: U.S. premiere of “Nobody Lives Forever” starring John Garfield (Jacob Julius Garfinkle)


1947: In Chicago Mike Wallace and Norma Kaphan gave birth FOX newsman Christopher “Christ” Wallace whose career choice begs the question of nature versus nurture since his father was the CBS news personality and his step-father was Bill Leonard, President of CBS News.


1947: Ninety-four year old General Sir Ian Hamilton the commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forced during the Gallipoli Campaign which meant he commanded the first Jewish fighting unit since the days of Bar Kochba and who “carried out a spot inspection” of the newly formed Zion Mule Corps “and was delighted with the workman-like appearance of the Corps after so little training” passed away today.


1948(9th of Tishrei, 5709): Erev Yom Kippur; in the evening Kol Nidre is chanted for the first time in almost two thousand years in an independent Jewish state.


1948(9th of Tishrei, 5709): Eighty year old Alfred Kerr passed away today.




1948: Egypt, Syria and Lebanon recognize the All Palestine Government.  Jordan’s King Abdullah had already refused to grant this entity any power in territory seized by his Arab Legion.  In other words, there was to be no Palestinian control over what is now called the West Bank and the OldCitysection of Jerusalem.


1949: “Christopher Columbus” a biopic featuring Abraham Sofaer was released in the United Kingdom today.


1949: Casper Platt who had been “nominated by President Harry S. Truman to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois” “was confirmed by the United States” today.


1950: CBS broadcast the first episode of “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” which was a continuation of their vaudeville act that had been a hit on radio as well.


1951(12th of Tishrei, 5712): Sixty-five year old English born Australian war hero and diplomat Leonard Keysor who won the Victoria Cross lost his battle with cancer today.



1952(23rd of Tishrei, 5713): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of Harry S. Truman, “the godfather of Israeli independence”


1953:  The “Caine Mutiny Court Martial” opened at the Plymouth Theatre in New York.  This Broadway dramatic hit was based on the novel The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.  Wouk has had a successful writing career dealing with both non-Jewish and Jewish themes.  More to the point, he has been successful without compromising his very strong belief in traditional Judaism and the state of Israel.


1953(3rd of Cheshvan, 5714): “Suzanne Kinyas, and her two children (3 year old girl and a 1 and a half year old boy) were  killed today when a Palestinian Fedayeen squad infiltrated into Israel from Jordan” and “threw a grenade into a civilian house” at Yehud, a village eight mile east of Tel Aviv.  (Fedayeen was the 1950’s term for the Arab terrorists.  Over the decades, they change their names but not their murderous aims.)


1954(15th of Tishrei, 5715): Sukkoth


1954: In Philadelphia, PA, Congressman Joshua Eilberg and his wife Gladys gave birth to Amy Eilberg, the first female rabbi ordained by the Conservative movement.


1955(26th of Tishrei, 5716):Eighty-two year old Arthur Hammerstein, the son of Oscar Hammerstein I and uncle of Oscar Hammerstein II, who “was an opera producer and one of the writers of the song "Because of You," a major hit (#1 for 10 weeks) for Tony Bennett in 1951 passed away today. Hammerstein wrote the song in 1940. It was used in the film I Was an American Spy (1951). He was the producer of the musical comedies The Firefly (1912), and Rose Marie (1924), which he did along with his nephew. He also was the producer of the film The Lottery Bride (1930), and made an appearance as himself in an episode of the film series Popular Science in 1949. Arthur Hammerstein was born and educated in New York City. Arthur's daughter, Elaine Hammerstein was a well-known stage and film actress.”


1956: In response to a request from a very worried Jordanian King, the British government informed Israel that, in accordance with the treaties with Jordan and Iraq, Britain would go to the aid of both these countries if they were attacked by Israel.  The irony was that Israel was negotiating with France and Britain over plans to attack Egyptand seize the Suez Canal.


1957: Publication of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged which, in 2007, will be described as one of the most influential business books ever written.


1957: In Philadelphia, attorney and Maryland state legislator Joe Chasnoff and his wife, “psychologist Selina Sue Prosen” gave birth to “Oscar winning documentarian Debra Hill Chasnoff” whose death was announced to the public by “her wife, Nancy Otto.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)



 


1958: Fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in the entryway of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Society -- the oldest and largest Reform congregation, commonly known as the Temple.Five men, all associated with white separatist groups like the National States' Rights Party, were tried and acquitted. No one was ever convicted for the crime. The bombing came as Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was becoming increasingly active in the Civil Rights movement.


1959(10th of Tishrei, 5720): Yom Kippur


1959: The Play of the Week televised David Susskind’s production of Media as its first broadcast.


1960(21st of Tishrei, 5721): Hoshanah Rabah


1960; U.S. premiere of “Inherit the Wind,” the cinematic adaptation of the play co-authored by Jerome Lawrence, directed and produced by Stanley Kramer.


1961: “Let It Ride” a musical with lyrics and music by co-authored by Jay Livingston and starring Sam Leven opened tonight at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York.


1961: Today the West End production of “Do, Re Mi”  featuring the music of Jule Styne and the lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre where it “ran for 169 performances.


1963: Archaeological digs began at Masada, Israel.  Masada was the site of the famous “last stand” during the “War Against Rome” that ended with the destruction of the SecondTemple.  The archaeological dig was important because it gave credence to Jewish history.  Of course the debate continues to this day as to who was right – the Jews of Masada or the Jews of Yavnah.


1963: “A virulent anti-Semitic book, Judaism Without Embellishment, by Trofim Kichko was published in the USSR today.”


1967:  In discussing his latest archeological finds, Dr. Yigael Yadin, Israel's leading archeologist contends that King Solomon may have indulged a passion for building during his long reign from 960 to 922 B.C., but he did not build the stables at Megiddo


1969(30th of Tishrei, 5730): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1969(30th of Tishrei 5730): Seventy-two year old Dr. Max Schur, the friend and confidant of Sigmund Freud passed away



1971(23rd of Tishrei, 5732): Simchat Torah


1972: “Lady Sings the Blues” a biopic featuring Sid Melton as “Jerry” was released in the United States today.


1972: “The King of Marvin Gardens” a drama directed by Bob Rafelson, the co-producer and co-author of the script and starring Ellen Burstyn was released in the United States today.


1973: Moshe Koren safely ejected from his F-4E Phantom Jet after it fell victim to Lebanese anti-aircraft fire and was recovered by IDF forces.


1973: Ran Goren and Micha Oren were safely recovered by IDF forces after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by an Egyptian MiG-21.


1973: A week after the Yom Kippur War began; Avraham Lanir scored his third and last aerial kill, downing a Syrian MiG-17 in the vicinity of Kuneitra while flying Mirage 5


1973: As many as 15,000 Iraqi troops had reached the Syrian front and were prepared to attack Israeli forces. The Israelis lucked out and spotted a lead contingent of fifty Iraqi tanks. When the Iraqis reached to within three yards of the outnumbered Israelis, the IDF tanks opened fire destroying 17 tanks and halting the assault The Soviets completed a twenty-four hour air lift during which eighty large Soviet transport planes landed in Syria filled with a wide variety of arms that more than compensated for the Syrian losses during the first week of fighting. On the southern front, Egyptian tanks and troops continued to pour across the Suez Canal posing a new threat to the Israelis.  


1973:  In the midst of the perilous first week of the Yom Kippur War a dispute broke out between the Sephardic Chief Rabbi and his Ashkenazi counterpart.  October 12, 1973was a Friday.  As the sun was setting the Sephardic Rabbi announced that it was a sin to bake bread on Shabbat, even in war time.  The Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Goren, the man who had been chief rabbi of the IDF in the 1967 war said that it was perfectly permissible to break the rules of Shabbat and bake bread during war time.  Doesn’t this remind you of Jerusalemduring the Roman Siege?


1974: Ten people participated in the second of two demonstrations that took place in Moscow today during which demands were made for the granting of exit visas.


1975: Birthdate of Aharon Mordechai Rokeach the only child and heir of the current Rebbe of Belz, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, he was named after his father's uncle, Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, the fourth Belzer Rebbe, and his father's father, Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgorai.


1977(30th of Tishrei, 5738): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1977(30th of Tishrei, 5738): Seventy-seven year old CCNY and NYU Law School graduate Lewis E. Zorn, the former “president of the Brucks Division of the American Hospital Supply Company” and “a founder of the American Friends of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem” who was the husband of Lillian Zorn with whom he had one son, Richard, passed away today in Mount Vernon, NY.



1978: Representatives of Israel and Egypt opened peace talks in Washington, D.C.


1976: Yorkshire Television broadcast the third episode of “Dickens of London” with music by Monty Norman


1982(25thof Tishrei, 5743): Eighty-two year old publisher Robert Paul Michel Calmann-Levy the son of Gaston Michel Calmann-Lévy and Hélène Koenigswarter  passed away today.


1981:Yuli Edelstein, Victor Fulmacht, Alexander Kholmianskii, Vladimir Kuravsky, Vladimir Magarik and   Boris Teplitsky were among the “more than a hundred Moscow Hebrew teachers and their students who wrote a letter of protest to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the systematic and continuous KGB persecution of refuseniks engaged in studying and teaching the Hebrew language.”


1984: It was reported today that memoirs of Jaroslav Seifert, the newly named Nobel Prize winner in Literature, contain a “selection, titled 'Russian Bliny,' is about Roman Jakobson, a Russian born Jewish scholar who emigrated to Czechoslovakia after World War I and came to the United States during World War II.”


1984: “Garbo Talks” a comedy directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Elliot Kastner, with music by Cy Coleman and cos-starring Ron Silver, Steven Hill, Howard Da Silva and Harvey Fierstein was released in the United States by MGM/UA.


1984: A month after having been released in the United States “Blood Simple” a crime file “written, edited, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen which was the directorial debut of the Coens and the first major film of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld” was screened today at the Toronto International Film Festival.


1985(27thof Tishrei, 5746): In Cincinnati, Ohio, ninety year old Betty Fabe, the daughter of Max and Sara Hexter and the wife of Isadore Fabe passed away today.


1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748): Sixth Day of Sukkoth


1987: The New Jewish Agenda (NJA) “organized a Jewish contingent and Havdallah service at today’s March on Washington for gay rights.”


1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748):Oliver Louis Zangwill an influential British neuropsychologist passed away today. Born in 1913, he was Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 1952-81, then Professor Emeritus. He was the son of Israel Zangwill and the grandson of William Edward Ayrton. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1977


1988: Israel and China signed a trade agreement and made plans for establishing diplomatic relations.


1989: “Last Exit to Brooklyn’ the movie version of the novel by the same name starring Stephan Lang and Jerry Orbach and with music by Mark Knoplfer was released in West Germany today.


1989:A Syrian Air Force major flying a Soviet-made fighter-bomber landed in Israel today, stunning Israeli officials who said the pilot had asked for political asylum.


1990(23rdof Tishrei, 5751): Simchat Torah


1990: “Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael” a comedy co-starring Winona Ryder, directed by Jim Abrahams and featuring Valerie Landsburg, Dinah Manoff and Stephen Tobolowsky was released in the United States today


1992(15thof Tishrei, 5753): Sukkoth


1994: In a letter written to Sir Martin Gilbert today, “Jack (Izrael) Unikoski” who had been one of only a thousand teenage boys liberated by the Americans at Buchenwald on April 11, said that on VE Day he felt “joy that Germany had lost the war” but he also realized that for him “the liberation had come too late and he too had lost the war, having lost his whole family” including his parents, sister and brothers including his “older brother Isser who had died of hunger in the Lodz Ghetto at the age of 19.”1997: In “Neighborhood Report: Corona –New Worshipers Are Bane, Not Balm, for Old Synagogue,” Charlie Leduff describes the challenges faced at Tifereth Israel as an influx of  Bukharan Jews face the aging members of the nine decades old synagogue.



1997:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazisy by William D. Rubinstein, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jewsby Eva Hoffman and God & The American Writer by AlfredKazin.


1998(22ndof Tishrei, 5759): Shmini Atzeret


2000: Ben Weider received the French Legion of Honor.  A successful body builder and businessman, Weider was a student of history who worked to prove that Napoleon had been poisoned.


2000(13thof Tishrei, 5761): Vadim Nurhitz and Yossi Avrahami, two Israeli reservists who entered Ramallah by mistake were arrested by the PA. While in the custody of the PA, a mob savagely murdered them and then mutilated their bodies.


2000: During the Infitada, “vandals…desecrated the building” housing the mosaic that had been part of the Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue, Jewish house of worship that dates back “to the late 6th or early 7th century and was discovered in 1936 “by Dr. Baramki of the Antiquities Authority under the British Mandate.”


2001(25thof Tishrei, 5762): Ninety-three year old Philadelphia born playwright Ruth Goetz who collaborated with her husband Augustus Goetz on many of her efforts and was introduced to the theartre by her father, “theatrical producer Philip Goodman” passed away today.



2002: In Massachusetts, Boston College, a Catholic institution of higher learning, installed “a copy of the Torah in the worship center, where it is expected to be used” for future Friday and Saturday services.


2003:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including Madam Secretaryby Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward and Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11by Gerald Posner.


2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified one last time before the federal grand jury before being “relieved of contempt charges” in matters related to the Scooter Libby leak case.


2005: Air Force veteran and businessman, Al Hoffman, Jr. the son of a Jewish father and “Scottish-American mother” began serving as U.S. Ambassador to Portugal.


2005(9th of Tishrei, 5766): Erev Yom Kippur: In the evening, Jews all over the world gather to hear Kol Nidre marking the start of Yom Kippur


2006(20th of Tishrei, 5767): Sixth Day of Sukkoth


2006(20th of Tishrei, 5767): Sixty-one year old Don Novick, loving husband of Denise Novick and father of Rochelle and Cassie Novick passed away. The son of Russian immigrant Jews, he was raised as an Orthodox Jew in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  A member of Temple Judah, he was a pillar of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Jewish community who gave freely of his time and culinary skills to so many worthwhile events.  Among his many virtues, was the ability to cook anything you wanted to perfection, including the best falafel west of Tel Aviv.  A quite man, he touched many lives and will never be forgotten.


2006(20th of Tishrei, 5767): Eighty-six year old Gillo Pontecorvo an Italian movie director best known for making the award winning “Battle of Algiers” whose siblings included  Bruno Pontecorvo, an internationally acclaimed physicist, Guido Pontecorvo, a geneticist and Polì [Paul] Pontecorvo, an engineer who worked on radar after WWII passed away today.



2006: In New York, the Albany County District Attorney acknowledged that he was investigating the hiring of a chauffeur by the Comptroller of New York, Alan Hevesi.


2006: Judy Gold’s “her one-woman show ’25 Questions for a Jewish Mother…based on a series of interviews with more than Jewish mothers in the United States” “reopened today at St. Luke’s Theatre.


2007(30th of Tishrei, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2007: The film “Jewish Life in Cracowis screened at the GuggenheimMuseum in New York City


2007: Yaakov Katz the military correspondent and defense analyst for The Jerusalem Post, the Middle East's leading English daily speaks at the Hillel House at the University of Iowa 


2007:Some of the world's best klezmer musicians gathered in a New York neighborhood that was once home to poor immigrant Jews for a 10-day festival of the music rooted in their Eastern European cultures.


2008: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar and The Partnership:The Making of Goldman Sachsby Charles D. Ellis.


2008: The Washington Postfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews including Hitler’s Empire:How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower and two paperback offering: A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich; Translated from the German by Caroline Mustill and Just Say Nu Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do)by Michael Wex.


2008: In Atlanta, members of The Temple gathered to observe the 50th anniversary of the blast that shook the congregation, recalling its terrifying aftermath and the way it changed their congregation's mission to promote racial equality. The bombing of a prominent Atlanta synagogue in 1958 claimed no lives, but the community outrage that it prompted helped galvanize the city's nervous Jewish community to embrace the civil rights movement."What could have been a terribly tragic event had the effect of making the congregation more confident, and more willing to get involved in controversial events," said Ellen Rafshoon, who curated an exhibit on the bombing at Emory University's rare manuscripts library. The Reform congregation, housed in a handsome cluster of buildings on one of Atlanta's busiest streets, had for years discouraged conflicts with Atlanta's dominant Christian community. But the synagogue's message changed when it hired Rabbi Jacob Rothschild to lead the congregation in 1946. Sermons encouraging racial equality soon became an annual tradition on Jewish holidays, and the rabbi slowly pushed his congregants to work for integration. "He suspected all along that he was endangering the congregation and his family," said Rothschild's widow, Janice Rothschild Blumberg, who remarried after the rabbi's death in 1973. "But he felt he had to do it, that this was his duty — as a rabbi and a human being." On the early morning of Oct. 12, 1958, some 50 sticks of dynamite exploded in the synagogue's entryway, destroying a part of the building. At least six other synagogues around the nation had been targeted by bombs in the previous year. But it was a particular shock for congregants who believed Atlanta— whose leaders fostered a reputation as a bustling, progressive city — was immune from the hate crimes spreading across other parts of the South. "We were so naive at the time," said Jill Shapiro Thornton, a Templemember and a ninth-grade student at the time of the bombing. The city's Jewish community worried the bombing would be met with a halfhearted response, as had happened in the aftermath of the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Temple member who was killed by a white mob. Instead, the Templewas flooded with letters and donations, messages of support from Girl Scout troops, concerned clergy — even a white citizens council in Alabama. Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield visited the Templeand quickly went on television to condemn the bombers and the politicians who he said should share the blame. "Whether they like it or not, every political rabble-rouser is the godfather of these cross burners and dynamiters who sneak about in the dark and give a bad name to the South," he said. "It is high time the decent people of the South rise and take charge." Dozens of city, state and federal investigators fanned out across the area, arresting five suspects with ties to anti-Semitic groups. One suspect, George Bright, was acquitted in a high-profile trial, and charges against the other four co-defendants were dropped. Rothschild, meanwhile, continued to urge his flock to embrace racial equality. Among his proudest accomplishments was co-hosting an integrated dinner after Martin Luther King Jr. had won the Nobel Prize in 1964. Some 20 percent of the event's donors were Jewish, Rafshoon said. "Jews had become complacent and afraid, reluctant to stick their necks out," said Rafshoon. "The rabbi had pushed the congregation to take a stand, to support the civil rights movement. After the bombing, the big hug that came their way made Jews in Atlanta feel they could have the confidence to move forward on this controversial issue." Congregants on Sunday mingled with residents who came to pay respects in a new building near the site of the explosion. Some recalled it as a terrifying introduction to racism. Some said it cemented the Jewish community's role in Atlanta. To Blumberg, it was an act of violence that ultimately proved to be positive. "I felt it was like lancing a boil, like a surgeon opening a wound that didn't heal right," she said. That helps explain the surprising name she coined for the blast that shook Atlanta: "The bomb that healed."


2008:A critically acclaimed fully staged off-Broadway production of Joseph Stein’s “Enter Laughing: The Musical” came to a close at The York Theatre. It was nominated for a 2009 Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding revival.”


2008: The curtain came down the Classic Stage Company’s revival of “The Tempest” starring Mandy Pantinkin as “Prospero.”


2009: Time magazine published an article entitled “How Moses Shaped America” by Bruce Feiler.



2009:Israel and the U.S. are scheduled to begin their biggest joint air-defense exercise today. Code named  "Juniper Cobra," the maneuvers will be overseen by Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, chief of the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet and are designed to test the missile interceptors that would serve as a strategic bulwark in any future showdown with Iran. The first Juniper Cobra took place in 2001, when the Scud missiles of Saddam Hussein's Iraq menaced Israel. Now Iran and its nuclear project are seen as the main threat. American forces taking part will include 17 ships and ground personnel operating the Aegis and THAAD missile interceptors, which will be meshed with Israel's Arrow II missile-killer for computer-simulated


2009: As part of The New School's "Jewish Text" seminar series David Stromberg will be reading from and discussing his newest book, Baddies.


2009(24th of Tishrei, 5770): Ninety-six year old Mildred Cohn who overcame gender and religious discrimination to make major advances in biochemistry and who received the nation's most prestigious award in science passed away today. (As reported by Matt Schudel)



 2010:Joshua Sobol is scheduled talk about his novel Cut Throat Dog at program sponsored byWesleyan University Jewish and Israel Studies program in Middleton.


2010:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “Protocols of Justice: Inside the Rabbinical Court of Metz, France (1771-1789).”In this presentation, Professor Jay Berkovitz is scheduled examine several exemplary cases that came before the Metz beit din in order to learn how members of the Jewish community, as well as the judges of the court, negotiated the powerful winds of change. His talk will focus on efforts to navigate the plural jurisdictions of French and Jewish law, with particular attention to women, inheritance and family law. “The record book (pinkas) of the Metz rabbinic court is one of the most treasured documents of the early modern period that is housed in the YIVO archives. Covering the period 1771 to 1789, its pages open a window onto Jewish life in the years just prior to the French Revolution. The handwritten pinkas, penned in Hebrew by the court scribe and set in two leather-bound volumes, contains numerous cases brought before the rabbinic court by Jewish residents of Metz and neighboring towns. Decisions rendered by the court pertain to everyday life situations such as betrothal, marriage, bequests, commercial transactions and business disputes.”


2010:After six years of construction, the American Consulate in Jerusalem is scheduled to open its new facility for consular services on Rehov David Flusser in the southern Arnona neighborhood today.


2010:British Jewish author Howard Jacobson was the surprise winner of the Man Booker Prize today for The Finkler Question, the first comedy to scoop one of the English-speaking world's most coveted literary awards.


2010(4thof Cheshvan, 5771):Ninety-five year old best-selling author Belva Plain passed away today (As reported Elsa Dixler)



2010: The Guardian published Shabtai Rosenne: Eminent International lawyer, teacher and Israeli diplomat” by Malcom Shaw.



2011(14thof Tishrei, 5772): Erev Sukkoth


2011: Israeli cellist Inbal Segev is scheduled to perform at the Bulgarian Concert Evening in Carnegie Hall.


2011: Galid Shalit's parents, Noam and Aviva, arrived this evening in their home in Mitzpe Hila in northern Israel, after leaving the protest site they had been encamped at in Jerusalem. They were welcomed by dozens activists and neighbors. Also today a delegation from the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, led by Khaled Meshaal, the chief of its political bureau, arrived in Cairo evening to finalize the prisoners swap deal with Israel.


 


2012: NFTY/HUC/AJA Teen Study Weekend is scheduled to begin in Cincinnati, Ohio.


2012:The US State Department confirmed today that it had attempted to renew peace talks between Jerusalem and Damascus in 2010, before the outbreak of violence in Syria. The information partially confirmed an article in today’s Yedioth Ahronoth that stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed in principle to withdraw from the Golan Heights during indirect talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2010. (As reported by Yoel Goldman and Ron Friedman)


2012:Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip fired a Grad rocket towards Netivot today, causing one civilian to suffer shock symptoms, according to the Negev Police. The rocket fell in the backyard of a house, causing light damage to the building. Shrapnel from the rocket also punctured a number of rooms in the house, including one belonging to a child living.


2013: In Jerusalem, the Ensemble Millennium is scheduled to perform “Night Music,” a concert that will include works by Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg.


2013: The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present “American Savage: Insights, Slights and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love and Politics” featuring Dan Savage.


2013: Iran said it arrested three Israelis suspected of spying and attempting to recruit Iranian citizens to gather intelligence for Israel, Iranian news agency Mehr reported today.


2013:"The State should act forcefully to send a message to these people," said Monique Ofer, wife of retired IDF Colonel Seraya Ofer, 61, who was murdered in a terror attack outside his home in the northern Jordan Valley early yesterday. "He was an amazing man, and two bastards took his life," she said.  In a conversation with journalists on Saturday, Monique avoided giving details about the night of the attack as per the request of security forces, so as not to damage the investigation. "The Jordan Valley is one of the safest places according to statistics, the fewest terror acts, definitely in comparison to places like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv." (As reported by Ahiya Raved)


2014: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig


2014: “Race: Are We So Different?” is scheduled to open at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.


2014: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a new walking tour “Downtown Synagogues and D.C.’s Urban Evolution.”


2014: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host “Zangwill’s Ghetto: An East End Story” which is a walking tour of the author’s childhood neighborhood held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Zangwill’s birth.


2014: “The commander of the Jewish Legion, Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, who died in 1947, was exhumed and his ashes brought to Israel, in a fulfillment of the Christian Zionist’s final wish to be buried in the Holy Land, the Prime Minister’s Office announced today.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)


2014: Onno Hoes completed his service as Chairman of the Dutch Center for Information Documentation Israel.


2014:“Israel was set today to tighten border controls on travelers from Western African countries, as part of larger efforts to prevent the Ebola virus from spreading into Israel.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)


2014: “Thousands of Israelis and Jews from around the world gathered in the Western Wall (Kotel) plaza this morning, for the traditional Birkat Hacohanim (Priestly Blessing) ceremony held on Sukkot (the Feast of the Tabernacles).


2014: In honor of Sukkoth, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Pita in the Hut.”


2015: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present the 2nd Annual Concert for Daniel Pearl: "Building Bridges: From Bene Beraq to Baghdad."


2015: In Leeds, Dr. Lorna Waddington is scheduled to lecture on “The History of the Myth of International Jewish Conspiracy.”


2016: Today, Michael Dell’s “Dell Inc. announced its intent to acquire the enterprise software and storage company EMC Corporation” – an acquisition thought to be worth a record setting 67 billion dollars.


2015: Professor David Shneer’s “The Romance and Tragedy of Yiddish Culture” is scheduled to begin today.



2016: In Memphis, TN, a part of the afternoon Yom Kippur observance, Temple Israel’s own Daniel Kiel, a law professor, is scheduled to moderate a discussion on “Building A More Just Memphis.”


2016(10th of Tishrei, 5777): The somberness of Yom Kippur took an even darker turn with the passing of 91 year old Civil Rights champion Jack Green who among other things was the head of the NAACP Legal Defense fund for almost a quarter of a century.



2016(10th of Tishrei, 5777): Yom Kippur


G'mar Hatima Tova”



2016: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed today that the Islamic State group would ‘take over’ the US if Hillary Clinton is elected president


2017(22nd of Tishrei, 5778): Shemini Atzeret & Yizkor; In the evening Simchat Torah celebration begins


2017: “Hamas has signed a reconciliation agreement with the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in order that all Palestinian forces can “work together against the Zionist enterprise,” Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas deputy political leader, said in Cairo today.


2017: In the evening, the University of Iowa Hillel is scheduled to host Simchat Torah services followed by a festive dinner


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a buffet meal before holding Simchat Torah Services


2018: In Jerusalem, as part of the Young Artists of the Future Generation Concert series, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a Piano Recital by Alon Petrrilin.


2018: In a testament to the vitality of “small town Judaism” in Cedar Rapids Joseph Heeren, the son Amy and Michael Heeren, pillars of the Jewish community, is scheduled to begin celebrating his Bar Mitzvah weekend this evening. 


 

This Day, October 13, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 13


54: Roman Emperor Claudius passed away.  For Jews, Claudius has to rate as one of the best of the Roman rulers. Among other things, he took the side of the Jews when they were attacked in Alexandria; he maintained a genuine friendship with Agrippa and allowed the Jews to elect their own high Priest while refraining from tampering with the Temple treasury.


54: Nero ascends to the Roman throne. Nero would appoint four increasingly incompetent and venal governors whose misrule would play a key role in the outbreak of the Great Revolt.  When the Jews did rebel, Nero appointed Vespasian to put down the revolt.


1307: In France, Phillip IV ordered the arrest of hundreds of Knights Templar on charges of heresy.  What Phillip was really after was control of the wealth of the Templars.  A year earlier, he had expelled the Jews from France after stripping them of their wealth.  Philip’s behavior is just one more example of greed hiding behind a façade of religious belief.


1398:Richard Whittington was elected Lord Mayor of London. Whittington was one of those who defied the ban on Jews living in England when it suited his purposes. He brought a physician named Samson de Mirabeau into the realm for care for his wife in 1409.  Whittington was in good company when it came to ignoring the ban since King Henry IV brought Elias Ben Sabbetai from Bologna to serve as his physician in 1410.


1483: Isaac Ben Judah Abravanel (also spelled Abarbanel) started his exegesis on the Bible. Born in Portugal 1437, Abravanel was one of the most colorful and interesting characters of the final decades of during which Jews lived in Spain and Portugal. He was part of a distinguished family and he was well educated in Jewish and secular studies.  Abravanel was a financier, tax collector and advisor to the King Alfonso of Portugal.  When Alfonso died, Abravanel had falling out with his successor.  It was at this time that Abravanel decided to give up his political duties and devote himself to writing commentaries.  For reasons that are too complex for this brief entry, Abravanel was forced to flee to Spain where he returned to his tax collecting duties.  He left Spain in 1492 and ended up in Naples where he ended up as financier and tax collector again.  He passed away in 1503 leaving behind a body of commentaries on the Torah and the Prophets. According to some authorities, his work is solid, but not original.  He is, however seen as being the last in a long line of Jewish commentators and philosophers who were part of the Sephardic culture that flourished from the 8thto the 15th centuries.


1534: Papacy of Paul III began. In response to the threat of the Protestant Reformation, Paul “established a system of tribunals, administered by the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition’, and staffed by cardinals and other Church officials. This system would later become known as the Roman Inquisition.”  Unfortunately for the Jews, this iteration of the Inquisition also dealt with the “crimes” relating to Judaism including the attempts by Jews who had been forced to convert to return to the faith of their ancestors.


1605: Eighty-six year old French Protestant theologian Theodore Beza, the successor to John Calvin at Geneva and like Luther was a believer “that Christian churches were largely responsible for the current unbelief among the Jews and “that there would a large-scale conversion of the Jews” while still acknowledging “the Justice of divine anger the Jewish people” passed away today.


1639(Tishrei, 5400): Simcha Heller Kahana, the son pf of Yaakov Yosef Heller Kahana and Raizel Segal Kahana passed away today.


1654: (2nd of Heshvan 5415): On this date Isaac Rodriguez Cunha, a citizen of Curacao, writes a letter which is addressed “to the illustrious Gentlemen, the Mahamad of the Holy Congregation Mikvah Israel, Curacao.” This is one of the first written pieces of evidence used in fixing the dates for the founding of the Jewish community and the synagogue in Curacao. Mahamad is a term used for the “board of directors of a Spanish-Portuguese Congregation


1753(15thof Tishrei, 5514): Sukkoth and Shabbat


1753: In Philadelphia, Mathias and Tabitha Bush gave birth to Solomon Bush who will rise to the rank of Lt. Colonel during the American Revolution.


1759(22ndof Tishrei, 5520): Shemini Atzeret


1773: It was reported today that “a gentleman” who has “returned from the interior parts of North America, beyond the Ohio,” claims to have discovered “a nation of Jews” living among the Indians, “who call themselves Naphthali.” (Naphtali was the second son born to Jacob the concubine Bilhah)


1788: In Kremenetz, Judah Levin, a grandson of Jekuthiel Solomon and his wife gave birth to Isaac Baer Levinsohn a leader of the Haskalah movement


1789(23rdof Tishrei, 5550): Simchat Torah


1791 :( 15th of Tishrei, 5552): Sukkoth


1797(23rdof Tishrei, 5558): Simchat Torah


1796: Censorship of Jewish books in Russia became official policy.


1801: Birthdate of Emil Roediger the German orientalist and Hebrew linguist who edited books on Hebrew grammar.



1808(22ndof Tishrei, 5569): Shmini Atzeret


1815: Eliza and Lewis Solomon, the parents of Henry, Louis and Esther Solomon, were married today at the New Synagogue.


1816: In New York, Michael and Elizabeth Daly gave birth to Judge Charles Patrick Daly author of The Settlement of the Jews in North America.


1820: Birthdate of Sir John William Dawson the Canadian geologist who “traveled extensively in Egypt and Syria” and whose works included “Archaia” Studies on the Cosmogony and Natural History of the Hebrew Scriptures.



1821: Birthdate of Rudolf Virchow, the German biologist and anthropologist whose family may have at one time been Jewish and who studied the biological characteristics of thousands of Jewish schoolchildren as part of his attempt to “provide a rational for the sense of Jewish acculturation” even though “he still assumed that Jews were a separate and distinct racial category.”


1823: Francis Ephriam Cohen who would change his name to Francis Palgrave married Elizabeth Turner following his conversion to Anglican Christianity, a move that no doubt advanced his career as an historian and archivist.


1839: Isaias and Elisabeth Popper gave birth to the firs child Simon Popper


1843: B'nai Brithwas founded under the leadership of Henry Jones at Sinsheimer's cafe on Essex Street in New York. Its original mission was the maintenance of orphanages and homes for the elderly and widows. It extended its work to many spheres of American Jewish life, including combating anti-Semitism. (A.D.L.) and working with students on campus (Hillel).


1844: An election was scheduled to be held today to choose the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire.  The election was won by Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler who held the position from 1845 until his death in 1890.


1846(23rdof Tishrei, 5607): Simchat Torah


1846: Birthdate of Hebrew poet and Yiddish author Isaac Rabinowitz the native of Kovno many of whose works can be found in Zemirot Yisrael and who passed away in the New York City where he went to join his children.


1847(3rdof Cheshvan, 5608):Rabbi Jizchok Arye, (Isaac Loew Matthes Wormser) also called the Wonder Rabbi Michel city and Baal Shem of Michel City passed away today.


1851: Three days after he had passed away, 61 year old  Solomon Lucas, a native of Kent and the husband of Elizabeth Lucas was buried today at the “Chatham Jewish Cemetery.”


1853: “Hebrew Ceremonial” published today reported that the Jews were absent from their businesses on New York City’s Chatham Street yesterday because they were observing the “Day of Atonement, which the Hebrew still duly celebrates though three thousand years have elapsed Moses delivered his Levitical command” concerning this Fast Day.  It is the “same statute” the Jews have observed “by the rivers of Poland, in the streets of York, in the valleys of the Aragon” or now “by the banks of the Hudson” river.


1858: Birthdate of Pauline Ehrlich, the second wife of Biblical commentator and scholar Arnold Ehrlich whose daughter Olga was born in 1881.


1862: In Manchester, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and his wife gave birth Birthdate of RabbiRichard James Horatio Gottheil



1864: Henry Berg who had begun his service with Company G of the 108th Regiment in 1862 was wounded at Richmond as the Union Army besieged the Confederates.


1864: In Keokuk, Iowa, “Mr. Falk handed in his resignation as schochet for the congregation” and he was replaced by “Mr. Berman” after he sharpened his ritual knife to remove “all of the rough edges making it sharp and smooth”


1865(23rd of Tishrei, 5626): Simchat Torah


1867: In Syracuse, NY, David Stoltz and Regina Straus gave birth to Benjamin Stoltz the graduate of Columbia University Law School and husband of Rose Landsberg who was the director of the Hebrew Free Loan Association and a trustee of the Jewish Orphan Asylum Association of Western New York.


1871(28th of Tishrei, 5632): Fifty-eight year old Moses Millaud, French banker, businessman and founder of Le Petit Journal passed away today.  He was a supporter of Louis Napoleon (Emperor Napoleon) and was involved in some of the more infamous financial scandals of his time.


1873(22ndof Tishrei, 5634): Shemini Atzeret


1873: Today, the Hebrew Society of St. Joseph, MO, sent five hundred dollars to aid people in Memphis, TN caught in the grips of a Yellow Fever Epidemic.


1875(14thof Tishrei, 5636): Erev Sukkoth


1875: Two days after he had passed away, 51 year old Hyman Davis, the husband of Isabella Davis, with whom he had eight children, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1875(14thof Tishrei, 5636): Sixty-four year old Judah Leib "Leopold" Löw, the Hungarian Rabbi who incorporated elements of modernity in his Orthodox world passed away Szeged where he had been leading the community since 1850 despite many offers to lead large communities including Bucharest.


1875: It was reported today that a survey expedition composed of English officers and soldiers was attacked by marauders at their camp at Ain el Beida in Palestine. The group was conducting a triangulation exercise in western Palestine, specifically the Galilee and most important of all Safed “one of the ‘Holy Cities’ of the Jews’…” According to the report, Lieutenant Kitchener was of the English officers who was involved in this minor skirmish. [History would come to know him as Lord Kitchener, who was involved in all of those 19th British Imperial Campaigns from Egypt, to Sudan, to Khartoum to South Africa. He played a critical role in Britain’s early war effort in WWI before being drowned while on his way to Russia.  But all of that began here, in Palestine, when a 24 year old lieutenant faced an armed enemy for the first time.]


1876: In New York, Clara Koffman and Joseph B. Bloomingdale gave birth to Rosalie Stanton Bloomingdale.


1877: It was reported today that New York State Supreme Court Judge Barrett has turned down the application of Rabbi Ash of the Ludlow Street Synagogue to be given the $200 that had belonged to the late Abraham Weisberg so that he could send it to a rabbi the Polish village where the descendant’s children live.  Under the law, Barrett said that a guardian for the minor children would have to appointed before he could take action. (This is an example of the myriad conflicts that arose from the fact that fathers and husbands came to the U.S. ahead of their families with the intent to bring them to America once they had earned enough to pay for passage.)


1878(16thof Tishrei, 5639): Second Day of Sukkot


1878(16thof Tishrei, 5639): Twenty three days before his 71st birthday Seligman Baer Bamberger who was serving as the rabbi of Wurzburg passed away today.


1878: “Lord Beaconsfield’s Policy” published today, claimed that Great Britain has shifted her foreign policy for the first time in over 135 years to one of annexation and aggressive imperialism.  This change is the result of Beaconsfield’s ability to dissemble and confuse the English people which is due, in part, to the fact that he is a Jew.


1880: Birthdate of Sasha Cherny, the pen name of Russian poet and satirist Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg


1881: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and friends decided to speak Hebrew exclusively, marking the beginning of the revival of the language in modern times.  Born Eliezer Perlman in Lithuania, Ben- Yehuda is proof that one person can make a difference.  As a youngster, a rabbi gave Ben-Yeuda a Hebrew translation of Robinson Crusoe.  That experience convinced him that Hebrew should be a modern, spoken language as well as a language of prayer.  He devoted the rest of his life to the idea of living in the land of Israel where Hebrew would be the spoken language.  He arrived in Jaffa with his bride in 1881 and he became associate editor of a Hebrew Language journal.  His task of creating a modern Hebrew language was not an easy one.  He was attacked both in print and physically by those who thought he was desecrating the holy tongue.  At the same time, he had to keep inventing words since much had happened since Hebrew was last an active language.  Life was a real challenge for his children.  It was difficult for them to have playmates since they were the only people who spoke Hebrew.  Ben-Yehuda did not give up his dream.  He lived to see Hebrew become one of the three official languages of Palestine under the Mandate after World War I.  Such was his success that by the time he died in 1922, a majority of the Jews in Palestine listed Hebrew as their native tongue on the census forms.


1884: “Two Love-Sick Ducks” published today described an altercation between a Jew and a Gentile who were competing for the affections of Jewish widow living in St. Mark’s Place. The two became so violent that they ended up in front of a Judge who agreed to release them “with the hope that Providence will improve the quality of your brains.


1884: Funeral services were held today for Rabbi Adoph Huebsch at Ahavath Chesed in New York City.  The overflow crowd included numerous Jewish leaders from across the United States the most prominent of whom was Rabbi Wise of Cincinnati, the leader of the Reform Movement in the United States. Rabbi Theodore Guenzberg, Huebsch’s assistant, led the worship service.  Temple Emanu-El’s Rabbi Gottehiel delivered a sermon in German.  Rabbi Jacob delivered the English language sermon.  Following the funeral services the rabbi was interred in Linden Hill Cemetery on Long Island. 


1885: Harry Hershfield who has been described as “the Jewish Will Rogers” was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa


1885:  The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), home of the Yellow Jackets, is founded in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, Tech’s undergraduate and graduate population of 19,000 includes approximately 600 Jewish students.  There are several Jewish organizations on campus including AEPi Fraternity, Hillel and Jackets for Israel which co-sponsors the annual Israel-fest.


1888: At the insistence of his future wife, Otto Pierre Siegelstein married Mary Bubis at City Hall; a fact that he would later contest in his attempt to have the marriage annulled.


1891: As the famine in Russia worsens, it was reported that “the destitute Jews who have expelled from Kiev, Moscow and Odessa are swelling the ranks of the famished” populated primarily by Christian peasants.


1891: Three days after she had pass away, thirty year old Annie Gertrude (nee Earle) Newmann, the husband Isaiah Alfred Newmann with whom she had two children – “Percy and Winnie” – was buried today Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.


1891: Birthdate of Jennie Loitman Barron, judge, lawyer, and suffragist. Born in Boston's West End, Barron attended Boston University where she earned her BA, LL.B, and LL.M. degrees and was active in Boston University's League for Equal Suffrage. Barron started her own law firm after graduation and created a new firm with her husband Samuel Barron, Jr. when they married four years later.Barron was elected president of the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers and campaigned for uniform marriage and divorce laws, as well as for women's right to serve on juries. She also worked to mobilize women to exercise their newly established right to vote. Barron began her thirty-five year career as a judge in 1934 when she was appointed by the governor as a special justice of the Western Norfolk District Court. In 1937, she was named to be an associate of the Boston Municipal Court. She left this position when she became an associate of the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1957 -- the first woman to hold this position. Throughout her career, Barron remained active in the Jewish community serving as the first president of the Women's Auxiliary of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, on the first board of Brandeis University National Women's Committee, and as the first president of the New England Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress. Barron died in March 1969, one year after her husband's death. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archive)


1892(22ndof Tishrei, 5653): Shemini Atzeret


1892: Isaac Issacs, the deposed Secretary of the League of Republicans who is Jewish said that the Jews would not accept an apology from Mr. Blake, the campaign manager for Major Warner, the Republican candidate for governor of Missouri. “The only thing that will conciliate the Jewish vote will be the removal of Mr. Blake.


1892: “A Republican Insult To Jews” published today described the problems facing William Warner, the Republican candidate for Governor of Missouri, following the denouement of Isaac Isaacs, the Secretary of the League of Republican Clubs and the “roasting” of the Jews  by his personal manager John T. Blake.


1893: Edward Everett Hale delivered an address at the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indians in which “he spoke of the great success of Massachusetts in assimilating the Hebrew immigrants by breaking up their clannishness and scattering them among the American populations and asked why the same principle should not apply to the Indian.”


1893: The Hebrew Journal express praise for the opposition of the New York Times to an upcoming prize fight between and American and an English man which is supported by powerful interest in New York and Brooklyn.


1893: Congressman Rayner of Maryland gave a speech in the House of Representatives expressing his views on the Geary Chinese Registration and Exclusion Act which “closed with a fervid appeal…to not commit a great national crime, as gross and wicked as the treatment accorded by Russia to the unfortunate Jews in her dominion and against which our own Government had protested.”


1893: “Curious Coincidences” published today described recently discovered connections between Columbus and the Jewish people including evidence that “Hebrews were among the sailors that composed crews of the three vessels,” the role of Luis de Toress and the evidence produced by Dr. Moses of Kayserling of Budapest that Columbus set sail on the 9th day of Av and made landfall in the New World on the “Seventh Day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacle, the da of the great Hosanas.”


1893: Because it is erev Shabbat, there will be a pause in the festivities marking the Golden Anniversary of the B’nai B’rith.


1893(3rdof Cheshvan, 5654): Eighty-one year old Major Raphael J. Moses, CSA the Confederate officer who “pioneered the commercial growing of peaches in “the Peachtree State” passed away today in Belgium after which he was buried at the Esquiline Cemetery in Columbus, GA.


1894: “A Bully’s Career Ends in Death” published today described the demise of Otto Slimbach a Brooklyn bully who on the night he was mortally stabbed by an unknown party had beaten his mother and gone through the Jewish neighborhood indulging “in Jew-baiting for his further amusement.”


1894: In New York, Police Inspector Williams began an investigation into charges that the police had beaten the striking cloakmakers many of whom were Jewish including Israel Groman.


1894: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested by Commandant du Paty de Clam, an assistant to the Army Chief of Staff and charged with treason.  Dreyfus was left alone with a pistol, having been encouraged to do “the honorable thing.”  When Dreyfus refused he was marched off to prison where he would be kept in solitary confinement for the next five days.


1895(25thof Tishrei, 5656): Seventy-seven year old Jacob Reifrman the native of Opatow who wrote Hebrew poetry and was the son-in-law of Joseph Maimon passed away today.


1898:The Zionist Delegation including Joseph Seidener, Moses T. Schnirer, Theodor Herzl, David Wolffsohn and Max Bodenheimer takes the Orient Express to Constantinople as they pursue Herzl’s dream of top-down Zionism.


1899: Two days after he had passed away, 82 year old Abraham Hyams was buried today in the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”


1900: Birthdate of New Yorker Ida Klein Clurman, the husband of Sam Clurman whom she married in 1921.


1903(22nd of Tishrei, 5664): Shemini Atzeret


1903: In Brooklyn, Abraham Isaac Shiplacoff and Yetta Ettel Itta Shiplacoff” gave birth to William Morris Shipley


1903(22nd of Tishrei, 5664): Dr. Marcus M. Jastrow a noted Hebrew scholar and educator who was  rabbi emeritus of Rodef Shalom, a synagogue in Philadelphia, PA, passed away today at his home in Germantown, PA.  Born in Pozen in 1829 he graduated from the University of Berlin.  He came to the United States in 1866 and became the Rabbi at Rodef Shalom, a position he held until his retirement in 1892.  His major literary work was “A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature.”



1904: Birthdate of Isidore Grünbaum one of the last Jewish inhabitants of Kleinsteinach who in 1942 was deported to either Izbica or Theresienstadt.


1905: Sixty-seven year old Sir Henry Irving the British actor manager whose first great career success came with his portrayal of Mathias in “The Bells” (an adaptation of “Le Juif Polonais” and whose portrayal of Shylock provided him with a dignity not usually seen in other actors, passed away today.


1905: Birthdate of Alice Vantochová the residence of Prague was murder at Ujazdow in 1942


1909: In Chicago, Theresa Lupe Block and David Julian Block, a Jewish chemist and electrical engineer gave to Herbert Lawrence Block,  the Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist who gained fame as Herblock and set the standard by which all practice this genre are evaluated.




1910(10th of Tishrei, 5671): Yom Kippur


1911: Following the outbreak of war between Turkey and Italy, “fourth thousand Italian subjects, nearly all of whom were Jews” began leaving Salonica because they feared expulsion by the Ottomans


1911: Multiple telegrams were received in London from Malta, Gabes and Djerba, appealing for help for the many thousands of Jewish refugees from Tripoli.


1912: Birthdate of Hugo David Weisgall, the Moravian born American composer and conductor “who served as aid-de-camp to General Patton” during WW II.



1912: Ludwig Teller, the son of Isak and Anna Teller, who was married twice and was the father of three children, was buried today in his home town of Vienna.


1912: In Philadelphia, PA, Max and Olga Hirsh gave birth to “photographer and filmmaker” Hyman “Hy” Hirsch.



1912: Israel Abrahams, a Reader in Rabbinics at the University of Cambridge and a leader of the UK’s liberal Jewish movement addressed a meeting held in his honor at New York’s Astor Hotel.  Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, President of Judeans, presided over the meeting and introduced Mr. Abrahams.  Among the other speakers were Rabbi Joseph Silverman of Temple Emanu-El and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of the Free Synagogue.  Oscar S. Straus, Progressive Party candidate for Governor of New York, who was to have delivered an address, sent a message expressing his regrets at having been unavoidably detained. Abrahams spoke about a favorite topic of the time “The Jewish Problem.”  In a unique twist, Abrahams defined it as “The eternal question of living two lives harmoniously.”


1913: According to legend, German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzwieg attended Yom Kippur services for what he thought would be his last visit to a Jewish house of worship before converting to Christianity.  “But that prayer service moved him so profoundly that he gave up the idea of converting and became a committed Jewish philosopher, who saw his religion as preferable to Christianity.


1913: One day after she had passed away, sixty-five year old Russian-born Annie Summ, the wife of Joseph Summ with whom she had three children – “Tilly, Alexander and Samuel” – was buried today in the “Belfast Jewish Cemetery in Northern Ireland.”


1914(23rd of Tishrei, 5675): Simchat Torah


1914(23rd of Tishrei 5675): 50 year old Mrs. Rose Baruch Streng, the wife of Bernard Streng, a native of Landau, Germany passed away at her home on West 143rd Street in New York.


1914(23rd of Tishrei, 5675): Abram Scholomir, the son of Jakob Scholmir passed away today.


1914: “Russian Treaty Approved” published today described the decision of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to approve a peace treaty with Russia which might be a prelude to the signing of new treaty of commerce “to take the place of the treaty of 1832 abrogated by the United States because of Russia’s treatment of American Jews.”


1914: “Foreign Legion Of Jews published today provides Israel Zangwill’s view that Jews support the Allies over the cause of the Kaiser as can be seen by the number of Jews who have tried to enlist in the Jewish Territorial Organization which is a Zionist organization under the misconception that it is part of the British Army – proof that “it would be easy to form a foreign legion of Jews grateful for Britain’s sympathy” as can already be seen by the thousands of Jews already serving in the military.


1914: “15 Poisoned at Feast” published today described the unfortunate events at the Sukkoth Meal eaten by the large family of Samuel Horowitz where several of the attendees came down with ptomaine poisoning after having eaten some tainted fish.


1914: Judge Leon Sanders, the President of the Hebrew Shelter and Immigrant Aid Society, has organized “a special Relief Committee for the Jewish suffers in all of the nations at war, following an appeal sent to the Austro-Hungarian Legation in New York by Jews in Austria.


1915: A famous Russian Revolutionary who has recently returned to European Russia from Siberia was reported today to have said he regretted that the “abolition of restrictions endured by the Jews had not been removed a year ago” because “it might have save millions of Russian lives.”


1915: “A dispatch from Petrograd published today in The Daily Telegraph in London said that “Alexander Volzsin who “is credit with the initiator of the recently adopted statute extending residential rights to Jews” has been appointed “the new Procurator-General of the Holy Synod.”


1916: It was reported today that former New York State Assemblyman Aaron J. Levy had told a Columbus Day gathering that “he lived in expectation of the time when there be a more wholesome respect in the heart of every man for the religion of his fellow man.”


1916: “Dr. Magnes Reaches Warsaw” published today described the arrival of the Brooklyn born rabbi in the Polish capital city where he will be distributing money raised by American Jews to aid Jews suffering from the war.


1917: “In order to relieve the destitution of hundreds of Jews who are stranded in Yokohama, the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society announced” today that “it has forwarded to B.J. Fleisher, publisher of the Japan Advertiser of Yokohama , $3,000 with which to lease a suitable building for an immigrant station and that it will shortly send to the Far East a representative to superintend the caring for those in need” many of whom are Russian Jews who are trapped there because of the war.


1918: Today, “after being on duty continuously for thirty-six hours” Corporal Louis Sorrow with Company B, 307th Field Signal Battalion, “volunteered to repair telephone lines which had been cut by shell fire” and after working all night repairing breaks to the line made it possible for “constant communication” to be resumed with forward regiments.


1918: “Dies of Influenza” published today recounted the accomplishments of Reverend Madison Clinton Peters who in addition to his work as a minister, social reformer and advocate for defeating the Kaiser in the World War wrote several books including Justice to the Jews, The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud, The Jews as a Patriot and The Jews Who Stood By Washington.


1920: In Berlin chess champion Mimi (née Heller) and psychiatrist Harry Marcuse gave birth to Albert Marcuse who was raised as a Lutheran because “his family considered their Jewish heritage a liability” and who gained fame as American composer and actor Albert Hague.


1920: The Bazaar and Fair sponsored by the Kane Street Temple in Brooklyn continued for a second day.


1921: “In San Salvador, Argentina, north of Buenos Aires”, Russian immigrant, small store owner and horse herder Mauricio Minuchin and “the former Clara Tolachier gave birth to Dr. Salvador Minuchin, a cutting-edge American psychotherapist. (As reported by Sam Roberts)



1922: “Sodom and Gomorrah” an “epic film” directed by Michael Curtiz who also wrote the script was released in Austria today.


1922: “According to a German police report written today: "The fact cannot be denied that the anti-Semitic idea has penetrated the widest levels of the middle class, even far into the working class. It is clear that this movement [the NSDAP]...is gaining increasing ground and that it has a future."


1924(15th of Tishrei, 5685): Sukkoth


1925: Birthdate of Lenny Bruce. Born Leonard Alfred Schneider he was a controversial comedian and satirist. He passed away in 1966


1925: Birthdate of Brooklynite film editor Ralph Rosenblum.



1927: “In Chicago, Illinois, Hungarian born Jewess Rosika Schwimmer, an internationally known feminist, author, and lecturer, is denied American citizenship by Federal Judge George Albert Carpenter because she is a pacifist.”



1927: Birthdate of Lee Konitz, the native of Chicago who became one of the leading “Jazz-men” of the 20th century.



1928(29thof Tishrei, 5689): Seventy year old German Jewish otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess passed away today



1929(9thof Tishrei, 5690): Erev Yom Kippur


1929: In Manhattan, Joseph and Sylvia Slifka gave birth to twins – Barabara and Alan Bruce Slifka, “a New York investment manager who used his fortune to promote harmony among Israeli Arabs and Jews and to give the Big Apple Circus its start.” (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)


1930: “Darling of the Gods” “a German music written by Robert Lieberman “premiered at the Gloria-Palast in Berlin” today.


1935: “Barbary Coast” produced by Samuel Goldwyn, written by Ben Hecht, co-starring Edward G. Robinson and with music by Alfred Newman was released today in the United States by United Artists.


1936: Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau (FDR’s Jewish neighbor at Hyde Park)  pointed out that “the tripartite agreement between the United States, France and Great Britain published” today which was designed to promote the stabilizing of the three nations’ currencies and foreign exchanges” could “on twenty-four hours’ notice be revoked or altered” which an observer might have quickly deduced meant that problem of currency stability that had been a cause and result of the Great Depression has not been addressed.


1937: Birthdate of Parisian actor Samuel “Sami” Frei whose movie career began in 1960 with an appearance “The Truth.


1937:The Palestine Post reported that a slight earth tremor was felt in Jerusalem. It lasted about a second, and caused in some cases a definite sway of upper stories of buildings. There were sporadic Arab attacks, accompanied by heavy firing, at Hadera, Safed and on Kibbutz Gordonia. A curfew was imposed on Safed. Robbers operated in the no-man's-land between the Palestinian and Lebanese French border posts at Nakura. The attackers were protected by other well-armed men in surrounding area.


1938:Hans and Lotte Liebermann boarded a ship today and left Germany for the United States where their son Hans had found refuge in June of 1938.



1938: German mathematician Fritz Noether who had immigrated to the Soviet Union after the Nazis came to power and destroyed his career and had been convicted of being a Nazi spy in a trial where the charges were based on “trumped up evidence” was sentenced to twenty five years in prison today by the Soviets who had originally welcomed him with open arms.


1939: Chaim Kaplan, the director of a Hebrew School in Warsaw, described the Jewish reactions to the Soviet occupation of Poland with the following diary entry: “The Jews there looked upon the Bolsheviks as redeeming messiahs.  Even the wealthy, who would become poor under Bolshevism, preferred the Russians to the Germans.  There is plunder on the one hand and plunder on the other, but the Russians plunder one as a citizen and a man, while the Nazis plunder one as a Jew.  The former Polish government never spoiled us, but at the same time never overtly singled us out for torture.  The Nazi is a sadist, however.  His hatred of the Jews is psychosis.  He flogs and derives pleasure from it.  The torment of the victim is a balm to his soul, especially if the victim is a Jew.


1939: New York premiere of “Babes In Arms,” a musical produced by Arthur Freed with songs by Richard Rogers, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.


1939: NBC radio made its first attempt to cancel The Guiding Light, a soap opera created by Irna Phillips.


1939: In “the Nazi Amtsleiter in Łódź appointed Chaim Rumkowski the Judenälteste ("Chief Elder of the Jews"), head of the Ältestenrat ("Council of Elders").


1940: Jews from Warsaw's suburbs were ordered into the Warsaw Ghetto.


1940: On his 55th birthday, humorist Harry Hershfield, the Cedar Rapids, IA native, in making a reference to the inclusive of American society  was quoted as saying, “The is the only country in the world where they would allow Columbus Day to fall on Yom Kippur.” 


1940: “In a plea for tolerance” the leader of the Knights of Columbus in New York was quoted as having taken notice of the fact that this year Columbus Day and Yom Kippur were celebrated on the same day this year.


1940: Having been snuck across the border between Nazi-occupied France and Spain by American diplomat Varian Fry, Franz Werfel and his wife, Anna Mahler, arrived in New York on ship that had sailed from Lisbon.


1941(22ndof Tishrei, 5702): Shemini Atzeret


1941: “Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Leader of Lublin, is ordered by Heinrich Himmler to begin constructing the Belzec extermination camp and launch a program to Germanize the region.”


1942: In Newark, NJ, Louis Simon “a college professor, upright bass player, and dance bandleader who performed under the name "Lee Sims" and his wife Belle, “an elementary school teacher” gave birth to America’s troubadour, Paul Simon.



1942: It was reported today that “Len Levy, the former star for the University of Minnesota will be playing right guard when the Great Lakes Bluejackets” square off against the University of Wisconsin Badgers at Soldiers Field in Chicago.


1943: One hundredth anniversary of the founding of B’nai B’rith


1943: A revolt took place in Camp Number I at Sobibor.  Alexander Pechersky distributed knives and hatchets to other prisoners. Nine SS and two Ukrainians were killed in the fighting. Three hundred of the prisoners from Camp Number I' escaped. The other 300 would be killed. However, as a result of this revolt, Sobibor ended its operation.


1944: In San Francisco, “Edward and Dorian (Goldman) Goldstein, both of whom were jewelers” gave birth cultural “impresario” Sydney Goldstein. (As reported by Katharine Q. Seelye)



1944: Hans-Jürgen Graf von Blumenthal “a German aristocrat and army officer” who began working with the anti-Hitler resistance in 1942 was executed today for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler.


1944: The Soviet Troops entered Riga. Only a handful of Jews had survived in city where there were 30,000 Jews just ten years earlier.


1944: “The special People’s Court sentenced “Hans Neumann, Leo Drabant, his wife along with eight other resistance members” “to death because they had ‘attempted to destroy the resistance of the German People…”


1945 (6th of Cheshvan, 5706):  On Shabbat, Leon Recanati, Sephardic leader of Palestine and formerly of Salonika passed away. Recanati was a "happy admixture of a learned Jew with his Biblical wisdom on the one hand and a man of affairs with a sense of reality on the other."


1945: “Star in the Night” which marked the directorial debut of Don Siegel, with a script by Saul Elkins and which “won an Academy Award in 1946 for Best Short Subject” was released in the United States today.


1946: “Three masked gunmen” believed to members of the Irgun “escaped with $12,000 after a daring daylight robbery in down town Tel Aviv.


1946: Members of Hashomir Hatzair (Young Guard), a left-wing Zionist organization, “distributed pamphlets in Tel Aviv calling on the Jewish community in Palestine to take ‘active measures’ against Jewish terrorist organizations.”


1948(10th of Tishrei, 5709) Yom Kippur


1948: An Israeli army unit held Yom Kippur services on Mt. Zion, right outside the [then] sealed Zion's Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. There they blew the Shofar, the closest place to the Western Wall they could get.


1948: U.N. “observers reported that the Arabs had fired with automatic weapons ‘for several hours, from an area under UN supervision, and with any provocation by Jewish Forces.’”


1949: Birthdate of Marc Mandel, the son of a New York taxi driver who was nicknamed “Babaloo” by his “longer-time writing partner Lowell Ganz.”


1949: Having been confirmed by the United States Senate yesterday to serve as on Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, Casper Platt received his commission today.


1950: U.S. premiere of “All About Eve,” a drama written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with music by Alfred Newman.


1950: Birthdate of Montreal native and Canadian Conservative Party Leader Hugh Segal who left politics to serve as “Master of Massey college in the University of Tornoto.”


1950: “Harvey” a film version of the Broadway comedy directed by Henry Koster (Hermann Kosterlitz) was released in the United States today.


1952(24th of Tishrei, 5713):Samuel Bortzell, the native of Russia who moved to Sydney before World War I, enlisted with the ANZACs in 1915 and served at Gallipoli and on the Western Front before being discharged in September of 1918 passed away today leaving behind a his second wife Zena Ardon and his daughter Reva whose mother Eileen Harwood had passed away in 1931.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the cabinet had appointed a seven-member Board of Directors of the German Reparations Purchasing Company. The board was responsible, through Foreign Minister Levi Eshkol, to a five-man ministerial committee which was aided by a 13-member Planning Committee and an Advisory Council of 25 members. You might recognize the name of Levi Eshkol.  He would be Prime Minister in June of 1967 when Israel defended itself against its Arab neighbors and reunited the city of Jerusalem


1953(4th of Cheshvan, 5714): “Arab terrorists called Fedayeen, infiltrate into the Israeli village of Yahud and kill Suzanne Kinyas and two of her children (the youngest of which was only 18 months old) in their sleep bringing the toll of Israeli civilian victims to 124.


1954(16thof Tishrei, 5715): Second Day of Sukkoth


1954(16thof Tishrei, 5715): Sixty-nine year old Viennese born soprano and music teacher Emily (Emilie) Heim who found ultimate refuge from European anti-Semitism in Canada passed away today in Toronto.



1954: “A 60-minute adaptation of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart was aired today on the CBS Television series The Best of Broadway


1955: Premiere of “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” written by George Axelrod, whose father was Jewish.


1955: “The Pajama Game,” the Richard Adler and Jerry Ross musical opened in London, UK today for the first of 588 performances.


1957(18thof Tishrei, 5718): Sukkoth IV


1957: CBS television broadcast the final episode of “You Are There” a half-hour program of historical re-enactments created by Goodman Ace that included appearances by Paul Newman and Martin Gable.


1957(18thof Tishrei, 5718): Sixty-four year old literary critic and philologist Erich Auberbach passed away today.



1959: CBS television broadcast a live version “The Jazz Singer” with Jerry Lewis starring the “Al Jolson” role and featuring Molly Picon and Alan Reed.


1960(22ndof Tishrei, 5721): Shemini Atzeret


1960: Birthdate of Ari Fleischer, former Press Secretary for President Bush


1960: In the seventh game of the World Series, as future hall of famer Bill Mazeroski rounded first base after having hit the series winning home run, he runs past first base coach, Lenny Levy, the Pittsburgh native who spent most of his life serving in some capacity with the Pirates organization.


1961(3rd of Cheshvan, 5722): Sixty-six year old Hungarian born “screenwriter, director and producer” Zoltan Korda  part of the trio of Korda brothers (the other two being Alexander and Vincent ) whose works include the anti-war “The Four Feathers” and the WW II classic “Sahara” passed away today. (Editor’s note – these three brothers are fascinating, worthy of at least one of those big biographies as well as one or more epic film like the ones they used to make.)


1962(15thof Tishrei, 5723): Sukkoth


1967(9thof Tishrei, 5728): Erev Yom Kippur


1968: B’nai B’rith celebrates its 125th anniversary


1968: “A Birthday Today For B’nai B’rith” published today traces the history and contributions of the Jewish fraternal organization from its inception during the Presidency of John Tyler to the middle of the twentieth century.



1969: Episode 5 of My World…and Welcome to it created by Melville Shavelson and co-starring Harold J. Stone was broadcast today.


1971(24th of Tishrei, 5732): Fifty-seven Phoebe Ephron, part of a noted artistic family passed away today in New York City.




1971: Birthdate Sacha Baron Cohen, the British born comedian who first gained fame portraying his highly successful comedy character Ali G.


1973: Jordan entered the Yom Kippur War.  Thinking that initial Arab victories would spell the demise of Israel, King Hussein thought he would get back the West Bank and east Jerusalem.  In the end he lost again and ended up having to surrender his claims to these lands to the PLO.


1973: During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian reinforcements continued to cross the Suez Canal and began attacking Israeli forces. 


1973:  Israeli forces confronted large numbers of Iraqi tanks both on the road to Damascus and on the Golan Heights.  In both battles, Israeli forces destroyed considerable number of the Iraqi tanks while sustaining minimal losses.  Israeli aircraft refrained from shooting down the Soviet transports that were landing at Damascus.  However, Israeli forces did destroy at least two Soviet craft once they had landed sparking threats from Moscow. 


1973:  After much hesitation and despite opposition from America’s Western Allies, President Nixon ordered a massive airlift of supplies for the IDF.  The material helped offset the tons of modern weaponry being shipped into the region by the Russians.  Many Jews shifted their allegiance to Nixon and the Republicans based on the airlift.  However, they seemed to have forgotten that if the Nixon administration had not kept the Israelis from conducting a pre-emptive strike against the Egyptians before they crossed the Canal, none of this would have been necessary in the first place.


1973: Avraham Lanir was scrambled for a reconnaissance mission deep in Syrian territory. During his return to Israel, Lanir was caught in a missile ambush and his Mirage was hit in the rear, forcing him to eject. The wind carried the parachuting pilot back over the border into Syrian territory and he landed in the area of Mazra'at Beit Jinn. Israeli Armor Corps soldiers witnessed him land and attempted to rescue him, but he was captured by a Syrian jeep patrol that reached him first. Lt. Col.  Lanir was tortured to death by his Syrian captors. His body was finally returned by the Syrians in 1974. “Former Israel Air Force Commander Mordechai Hod noted that Lanir had information that would have placed the existence of Israel at risk had he revealed it to the Syrians.”


1973:Ady Bnaya and David Ya'ir made it back safely to Israeli lines after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire.


1973: Iftach Zemer and Itzhak Amitai returned safely to Israeli lines when they were forced to eject from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it suffered a technical malfunction.


1973: After his Phantom F-4E Jet fell victim to “friendly fire,” Uri Bakal safely ejected and made it back to Israeli lines.


1974(27thof Tishrei, 5735): Eighty-year old Romanian born Israeli artist Reuven Rubin who returned to his native land to serve as Israel’s first ambassador passed away today.



1974: Seventy-two year old Austrian conductor Josef Krips, whose father was Jewish which meant he had to leave his native land to pursue his career while the Nazis were in power, passed away today.


1976: In Livingston, NJ, “Mike and Sandi Friedman” gave birth to Duke University left guard “Leonard Lebrecht Friedman” whose pro career included stops with the Broncos, Redskins, Bears and Bears.




1977:The Jerusalem Postreported that US President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Israeli cabinet's approval of a "working paper" on procedures for reconvening of the Geneva Middle East peace conference. "I am pleased with that," he said. His officials explained that what the US had in mind was the creation of some sort of a Palestinian "borough" on the West Bank and in Gaza which would be linked with Jordan. Asked directly whether he advocated an "entity," Carter simply replied, "I have never advocated an independent Palestinian state."  These negotiations of 25 years ago provide a tragic-comical backdrop to the so-called peace negotiations that have been taking place since the Camp David Meetings hosted by President Clinton.


1977: Four Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demand release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction. Yes, twenty-five years ago, terrorists were interconnected, often sharing resources, training facilities and killing assignments.


1975: As the Russians worked to increase their influence in the Middle East, Soviet President Zhivkov began a visit to Tunisia.


1979(22ndof Tishrei, 5740): Shemini Atzeret combines with Shabbat


1980: Eric Levin examined the reasons for the longevity of 67 year old Garson Kanin’s marriage.




1985(4thof Cheshvan, 5646): Eighty-four year old Sidney R. Rabb, the Boston born third generation philanthropist and grocery store chain executive passed away today.         




1986:Rita Levi-Montalcini’s pioneering work on nerve growth earned her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Born in Turin, in northwestern Italy, on April 22, 1909, Levi-Montalcini had begun her research on nerve cells at the University of Turin. Banned from the university in a purge of Jews in 1938, and then forced to hide during the Nazi occupation of Italy, she immigrated to the United States and joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946. Levi-Montalcini went to St. Louis at the invitation of embryologist Viktor Hamburger; his support helped her to continue her work at a time when very few women worked in basic science research. It was at Washington University, in 1951, that Levi-Montalcini first hypothesized the existence of the nerve growth factor. Between 1953 and 1959, she worked with collaborator Stanley Cohen to identify nerve growth factor as a protein. For this work, Levi-Montalcini and Cohen shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their work had significant effects on cancer research, and has also been important in work on Parkinson’s disease. Levi-Montalcini retired from Washington University in 1977. Beginning in the 1960s, she also held an appointment at the National Laboratory for Cell Biology in Rome. After the Nobel Prize, Levi-Montalcini won many other honors. In 1986, she and Cohen were awarded the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award. The following year, she received the National Medal of Science, America’s highest scientific award. She also became the first woman ever named to membership in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)


1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748): Sixth day of Sukkoth


1987(20th of Tishrei, 5748): Ninety-seven year old Albert Lorch “Al” Loeb who played center from 1910 through 1913 for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets where he was known as the Yiddish Wildcat passed away today.


1988(2nd of Cheshvan, 5749): Seventy-five year old Melvin Frank who wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite movies “Mrs. Blandings Builds His Dream House” passed away today.



 

1989: “Look Who’s Talking” a comedy-fantasy directed by Amy Heckerling and featuring George Segal and Abe Vigoda was released today in the United States by Tri-Star Pictures.


1989: Israeli soldiers killed an 18-year-old Palestinian in a West Bank village, Qalqilya, after they were attacked by masked youths.


1989: “Crimes and Misdemeanors” directed and written by Woody Allen co-starring Martin Landau as “Judah Rosenthal” and Claire Bloom as “Miriam Rosenthal” was released in the United States by  Orion Pictures.


1990: Syria invaded Lebanon killing over 500.  There was no noticeable protest from Arab states or the U.N.


1990(24thof Tishrei, 5751): Eighty-five year old German-born Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal who survived the Holocaust thanks to his wife who was a non-Jews passed away today.



1992: Charlotte “Pomerantz's story ‘The Piggy In The Puddle’ was featured today on Reading Rainbow, where it was retold using a claymation process


1993: 150thanniversary of the founding of B’nai B’rith.


1993: U.S. Premiere of the Notre Dame football film “Rudy” co-starring Jon Favreau with music by Jerry Goldsmith


1994: Fifty thousand Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall to pray for the life of Nachshon Wachsman, a nineteen year old Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas.


1995(19th of Tishrei, 5756): Fifth Day of Sukkoth


1995(19thof Tishrei, 5756): Eighty year old Rena Galibova who is buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery passed away today.


1995(19th of Tishrei, 5756): Eighty-nine year old Henry Roth, author of Call It Sleeppassed away. Born in 1906, Roth was ignored for most of his career and was reduced to holding a variety of jobs since he could not support himself as a writer.  Later in life, he enjoyed a re-birth of interest which continued for at least a decade after his death. (As reported by Richard Nicholls)



1996: After 196 performances at the Shubert Theatre the curtain came down n “Big, the musical” which featured the music of David Shire.


1997:  Syria Invaded Lebanon again.  Actually, Syrian troops had occupied parts of Lebanon since 1977.  Lebanon is more like a satellite of Syria, than a truly independent nation.  The late President Assad had a vision of ruling Greater Syria – nation that would include Syria, parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.


1997: In “A Shrine to Books Past Clings to Independence” Dinitia Smith described the history and status of The Argosy Book Store which is operated by Ruth Shevin Cohen, the 90 year old widow of the founder Louis Cohen and their three daughters – Judith Lowry, Naomi Hample and Adina Cohen.



1998(23rdof Tishrei, 5759): Simchat Torah


1999: U.S. premiere of “The Story of Us” directed, produced and written by Rob Reiner.


2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of special interest to Jews includingThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball by Scott Simon and Rereading Sex: Battle Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century American by Helen Lefkowitz


2004(28th of Tishrei, 5765): In London, Bernice Rubens passed away at the age of 76.  The prolific British novelist drew on her Jewish upbringing to tell stories of vice and grimness with warmth and humor.  “She won Britain’s’ prestigious Booker Prize for fiction in 1970 for The Elected Member, the story of a Jewish family whose secrets drive one son insane.”


2005(10th of Tishrei, 5766): Yom Kippur is observed by Jews all over the world.


2006(21st of Tishrei, 5767): Hoshana Rabah


2006: “Stage Killing: Solving an Attempted Murder” published today provides Faith Jones account of the love triangle surrounding David Levinson, Morris Finkel and Yiddish theatre star Emma Thomashefsky Finkel.



2006: The End, Lemony Snicket’s final novel is scheduled to come out today.


2006: Daniel Handler, who wrote under the penname Lemony Snicket “appeared on the Today show today “as Lemony Snicket's representative.”


2007: Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, 5768(Second Day) – First of Cheshvan


2007: Yaakov Katz the military correspondent and defense analyst for The Jerusalem Post, the Middle East's leading English daily speaks at Agudas Achim in Iowa City, IA.


2007: Haaretz reported that in Lakewood, New Jersey, a man wielding an aluminum baseball bat attacked an Orthodox Jewish rabbi walking to synagogue critically injuring the 53-year-old man and threatening to strain the already tense ethnic relations in a New Jersey city, officials and residents said. The beating of Mordechai Moskowitz, reportedly at the hands of an African-American man, has put residents on edge in Lakewood, a diverse city of 70,000 near the Jersey Shore that is home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, as well as black and Hispanic communities.


2008: Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity


2008(14th of Tishrei, 5769): Erev Sukkoth


2008: As reports multiplied of Harvey Weinsten’s ruthless and aggressive behavior continued to multiply, today Newsweek magazine ran a story accusing him of “"hassling Sydney Pollack on his deathbed" about the release of the film The Reader.


2009(25th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-seven year old producer Daniel Melnick passed away today.




2009: Publication of “Chronic City,” a novel by Jonathan Lethem, was published today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)


2009: Assaf Ramon, the son of Colonel Ilan Ramon who died on the Columbia in 2003, was commemorated today during a military rememberance ceremony marking the 30-day anniversary of his death.


2009: Former Agriproccessor executive Shlomo Rubashkin is scheduled to go on trial in St. Louis, MO.


2009: Channel Two reported that Dalia Itzik spent NIS 75,000 of taxpayers' money on an unnecessary hotel upgrade during a 2006 4-night trip to Paris, France.


2009: The Library of Congress opens a new exhibition "Herblock!," highlighting the life and works of the great political cartoonist.


2009: A Massachusetts judge has denied a motion by Brandeis University to dismiss a lawsuit brought by three overseers of the school’s Rose Art Museum who are seeking to stop the university from closing the museum and selling its works..


2009(25thof Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-seven year old movie producer and studio executive Daniel Melnick passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



2010(5thof Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty year old lexicographer, author and tenured member of Olbom (On Language’s Board of Octogenarian Mentors) Sol Steinmetz passed away today.  (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2010: David Grossman and Nicole Krauss are scheduled to talk about their new novels, To the End of the Land and Great House at the New York Public Library.


2010: Among the 20 finalists for the National Book Awards that were announced today was Nicole Krauss for her third novel, Great House,  a sprawling story of memory and loss


2010: Ron Charles reviewed “The Finkler Question” the Howard Jacobson comic novel about anti-Semitism which just won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in London.


2011(15thof Tishrei, 5772): Sukkoth


2011(15thof Tishrei, 5722): Yahrzeit of William Schueller, husband of Eleanor Schueller and father of Deb Levin


2011: The National Basketball Association “formally approved” the purchase of the Philadelphia 76ers by an investment group that included David S. Blitzer, Art Wrubel, Adam Aron, Martin J. Geller and managing partner Joshua Harris.


2011: Milan's La Scala opera house said today that Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim would serve as its new music director from December for the next five years.


2011: IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz met with Noam and Aviv Schalit this evening, confirming that their son Gilad Schalit would be returning to Israel on October 18, Channel 2 reported.


Gantz told the Schalits at their home in Mitzpe Hila that on October 18 Gilad would be flown from a military base in Egypt to the Tel Nof Air Force Base near Rehovot. According to the report, Noam and Aviva Schalit will have their first meeting with Gilad at Tel Nof.


2011:  Hamas-affiliated media outlets began today publishing names of imprisoned terrorists who will reportedly be set free by Israel in exchange for captive soldier Gilad Schalit. The list, which has not been confirmed by Israel as of tonight, contains the names of terrorists behind painful images of death and destruction.


2012: Six13 “a six-man vocal band that brings an unprecedented style of Jewish music to the stage” is scheduled to appear in the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia Performing Art Series.


2012: Israeli films “Chasing A Star” and “One Day After Peace” are scheduled to be shown at the Syracuse Film Festival in Syracuse, NY.


2012: Tosha Skolnik, an 8th grader at Alice Deal, is scheduled to be called to the Torah as Bar Mitzvah at Adas Israel in Washington, DC.


2012: Seventy year old Barbra Streisand is scheduled to “return to her roots” with a concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY.


2012(27thof Tishrei, 5773): The cycle begins again as Jews all over the world read Bereshit.


2012: One man was reportedly killed and two others were injured tonight in an IAF attack in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. The strike targeted Islamic Jihad members who had reportedly planned to carry out an attack against Israelis during the Sukkot holiday. They were said to belong to the Mujahideen Shura Council, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda.


2012: Iran hinted today that it was responsible for a drone that flew deep into Israel on October 6, before being shot down by the Israeli Air Force.


2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Anti-Semitism by Daniel Johnah Goldhagen and the Kraus Project: The Essays of Karl Kraus translated and annotated by Jonathan Franzen as well as an interview with Scott Turrow whose latest work is Identical.


2013: “Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War” is scheduled to open today at the Maryland Museum of Jewish History


2013: “Her” starring Puerto Rican born Jewish actor Joaquin Phoenix is scheduled to debut at the New York Film Festival.


2013: The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to host a Local Author Fair featuring Melissa Ford, author of Measure of Loveand David Bruce Smith, author of American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States


2013: After almost a year, “It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond comes to an end at the Yeshiva University Museum


2013: “Skokie: Invaded, But Not Conquered” is scheduled to shown this afternoon at the Illinois Museum and Education Center.


2013: Led by Amy Barnum, Hadassah is scheduled to hold its annual dinner at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.


2014: In Scarsdale, NY, the funeral for Edward M. Davidowitz, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York is scheduled to be held Westchester Reform Temple


2014: As part of its series on the Jewish Experience in the Trenches and at the Homefront” during WW I, the Center for Jewish History is scheduled to show La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion), a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir


2014: “The principal photography” for “Get Ready For Ricki,” a cultural-wars comedy featuring Ben Platt and Charlotte Rae “began today in Rye, NY.


2014: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host a presentation by Bill Schneider entitled 2014 Election – Viewpoint from the Nation’s Electionmeister.”


2014: British lawmakers voted today to recognize Palestine as a state in a debate unlikely to change government policy but laden with political symbolism. The ayes carried the vote with 274 votes, against only 12 nays. (As reported by Lazar Berman)


2014: “Dozens of Arab rioters, primarily young men, were holed up today in the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount.”


2014: According to a report made public today one of the few remaining Jewish families in Syria “was secretly smuggled into Israel several months ago with the aid of a network of Israeli businesspeople and has begun a new life in the Jewish state.” (As reported by Gavriel Fiske)


2015(30thof Tishrei, 5775): Rosh Chodesh 1 Cheshvan


2015(30thof Tishrei, 5775): Eighty-eight year old commercial real estate mogul Julien Studley passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)



2015: Richard Larkin “an American educator who marched for civil rights in the 1960s and advocated coexistence between Muslims and Jews when he moved to Israel” was mortally wounded today “when two Palestinians boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers.”


2015: The Center for Jewish History, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Fordham University are scheduled to mark the 50th anniversary of the issuance of “Nostra Aetate” at the Second Vatican council with a screening of “Ida followed by discussion with Magda Teter, Fordham University; Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of YIVO, and Father Guy Massie, Chair, Catholic-Jewish Relations for the Diocese of Brooklyn.”


2015: LBNY Productions is scheduled to present a performance by “Ehud Banai who will perform inspiring songs that became Israeli rock n' roll anthems.”


2015: In the UK, Rabbi Jonathan Romain is scheduled to lecture on “Royal Jews – Jewish Life in Berkshire from the Readmission till Today.”


2015: Violinist Gil Shaham is scheduled to perform this evening with the Philadelphia Orchestra.


2016: The chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel, the President of the Sharia Court of the Palestinian Authority and two rabbis from a West Bank yeshiva’ were among the guests who attended a meeting this evening at the home of Israel’s president.


2016: “Bob Dylan was named the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature today, in a stunning announcement that for the first time bestowed the prestigious award to someone primarily seen as a musician.”


2016: As Jews transition from Yom Kippur to Sukkoth, The London Jewish Cultural Centre is scheduled to host “an interactive learning experience” in which Dina Brawer will present “the underlying theme behind each of the festivals.”


2016: At a meeting in Paris, a committee of UNESCO approved a “resolution sponsored by several Arab countries that referred to the Temple Mount and Western Wall…only by their Muslim names and condemned Israel as ‘the occupying power’.”


2016: “Mexico supported a resolution on Jerusalem at UNESCO’s executive board that Israeli and Jewish leaders decried as denying the Jewish people’s historic connection to the ancient city and to the Temple Mount, or Al-Haram Al-Sharif, as most Muslims refer to the site.”


2016(11thof Tishrei, 5777): Ninety-three year old socially conscious and documentary photography Louis


Stettner passed away today.”



2016: “Wallflower” “a collaboration project between Inbal pinto and Avshalom Pollak is scheduled to open at the Kay Theatre in College Park, MD.


2016: Having defeated the Giants, the Chicago Cubs led by Theo Epstein the Jewish baseball executive who worked miracles for the Boston Red Sox, turn their eyes to the East and West coasts to see if they will be facing the Dodgers or the Nationals in the next leg of their quest to break the World Series jinx.


2016: The American Jewish Historical Society and Center for Jewish History are scheduled to sponsor a Fathers and Sons concert featuring the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble playing music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich and Weinberg.


2017(23rd of Tishrei, 5778): Simchat Torah


2017: Once again the Children of Israel deal with the question of Jews and Friday the 13th.




2017: “In a New York Times op-ed titled ‘Being a Feminist in Harvey Weinstein’s World’ published today, Jewish actress Mayim Bialik said she was shocked by the scope of Holly producer Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior toward women…but was not surprised by the fact he abused his position of power to do so.”


2017: The Irish Times reported today that “according to the 2016 census” the country’s “Jewish population rose by 573 people to 2,557 since 2011.”



2017: Dance Tel Aviv is scheduled to host the first performance by Compagnie Thor “directed by Belgian dancer Thierry Smits.” 


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a Shabbat service followed an hour later by a Shabbat Dinner.


2018: At Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, IA, Joseph Heeren is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah. (Editor’s note – this is a cool kid who is one of the most regular attendees of Shabbat services in the world)


2018: In Jerusalem, the Eden-Tamir Concert is scheduled to host “We Love Tchaikovsky,” the season’s opening concert.

2018(4thof Cheshvan, 5779): Parashat Noah; for more see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/

 


 


 


 


 



 


 


 


 


This Day, October 14, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 14


680:Wamba, the Visigoth King of Hispania, abdicated.  During his reign, he issued an order expelling the Jews from Spain.  This was part of an on-going policy of abuse, mistreatment and humiliation the Jews suffered under the Catholic Visigoth monarchs.


996: Beginning of the reign of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim who ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks


1066: William and his Norman army were victorious at the Battle of Hastings.  The Jewish community in England dates from the Norman conquest of the British Isles. William brought a group of Jews from Rouen, part of his holdings in Normandy.  That decision probably did not sit well with the Pope.  William probably wanted the Jews to settle in England because of their commercial skills.  The Jews were limited in their activities.  For example, William conformed to the Pope’s decree that Jews were not allowed to keep Christian bondsman or to use Christians as nurses.


1165 (4th Marcheshvan): Maimonides and his family arrive in Jerusalem. When the Almohades, a group of Muslim fundamentalists, conquered Cordoba and threatened the Jewish community, Maimonides’ father decided it was time to leave Spain. The family settled for a while in Fez, Morocco where the Rambam wrote his commentary on the Mishnah and then moved on to Eretz Israel where they lived for a short period before finally settling in Egypt.


1270 (4 Cheshvan 5031): Moses Ben Nachman - known as Nachmanides or as the Ramban, passed away. Born in 1194, Gerona, Spain, Nachmanides was trained as a doctor and served King James of Aragon as court physician.  At the same time the Jews of Spain viewed him as their spiritual leader due to his prowess as a Talmudic scholar and sage The turning point came in his life came when he was forced by the King to defend Judaism in a debate with Pablo Christiani, a heretic Jew, in Aragon 1263.  Nachmanides was so successful that the debate was called off after four days without the usual claim of Christian victory.  Nachmanides was so bold that at one point, in discussing the concept of Jesus as the “peace of prince” that he declared, “from the time of Jesus until the present the world has been filled with violence and injustice and the Christians have shed more blood than all other peoples.:  To make a long story short, the Dominicans forced Nachmanides to flee.  He moved to Eretz Israel where he first settled in Jerusalem in 1267.  After working to refurbish the community there, he moved to Acre where he worked on his extensive Torah commentaries until his death in 1270. Nachmanides was one in long series of great Sephardic teachers, many of whom combined a secular career as physician with the role as scholars and sages.  Some people confuse the Ramban (Nachmanides) with the Rambam (Maimonides).


1494: Based on an edict issued by Grand Duke Alexander Jagellon, “it appears that the customs duties of Brest and its districts were farmed by Jews of Brest and Lutzk.”


1617: “On the death in infancy of his elder brother Henry Willoughby, 4th Lord Willoughby of Parham, Francis Willoughby, under whose leadership a group of Sephardic Jews migrated to Suriname in 1652 and “settled in the Jodensavanne area” succeeded to the title and became the 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham


1633: Birthdate of King James II of England and VII of Scotland.  James reigned during a period when the Jews were trying to gain re-admittance to England, a cause to which he showed some partiality. He ordered his Attorney General not to take any action against the Jews and see to it that they be allowed to practice their religion freely as long as they obeyed the laws of the realm.


1644: Birthdate of William Penn founder of Pennsylvania.  The Quaker leader founded a colony that adopted the Great Law, a humanitarian code which became the fundamental basis of Pennsylvania law and which guaranteed liberty of conscience.  This liberal fundamental law made Pennsylvania an early home to many non-conformists including Jewish settlers.


1663: An entry in the diary of Samuel Pepys describes his visit to a synagogue on Simchat Torah.“…after dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson's conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lattice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their Law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear him do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way, and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that everyone desires to have the carrying of it, I cannot tell, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.” (Editor’s note: I have not been able to find any explanation for the visit.)


1700: After leaving Moravia in 1697 with a group of his followers Judah he-Hasid Segal ha-Levi arrived in Jerusalem today where his 500 to 1000 followers may have more than double the city’s Jewish population.



1740(23rd of Tishrei, 5501): Forty-six year old Grace Mears, the native of Spanishtown, Jamaica and the husband of Moses Raphael Levy passed today in New York City


1753(916th of Tishrei, 5514): Second Day of Sukkoth


1759(23rd of Tishrei, 5520): Simchat Torah


1778(23rd of Tishrei, 5539): Simchat Torah


1780(15th of Tishrei, 5541): Sukkoth


1789: A deputation of six “German Jews from Lorraine” including Berr Isaac Err of Turique, a French financer and member of the city council of Nancy, appeared before the Assembly in Paris to defend the granting of citizenship to Jews of Lorraine.


1792: Birthdate of August Lewald, the Konigsberg native who in 1835 founded the periodical Europa which published the first novel written by his cousin Fanny Lewald.


1799(15th of Tishrei, 5560): Sukkoth


1808(23rd of Tishrei, 5569): Simchat Torah


1808: The Republic of Ragusa including its major city of Dubrovnik, is annexed by France. “The Old Synagogue in Dubrovnik, is the oldest Sephardic synagogue still in use today in the world and the second oldest synagogue in Europe. It is said to have been established in 1352, but gained legal status in the city in 1408.” Jewish merchants living in Ragusa must have been successful since Christian merchants moved to have them expelled during the 16th century.


There are records of Jewish merchants and physicians living in Ragusa as far back as the 16th century. The annexation by the French marked the first time that the Jews of the region enjoyed the rights of full citizenship.  The victory was short lived since when the French were defeated the Austrians took back what the French had given.


1812: Israel Isaacs married Rachel Andrade at the Great Synagogue today.


1814: Birthdate of Solomon Klein, the native of Bishcheim, who served as the “grand rabbi at Comare from 1850 to 1867.


1824(22nd of Tishrei, 5585): Shmini Atzeret


1829: Birthdate of Eduard Lasker, the German Jewish political leader who supported the unification that led to the creation of the modern German state.


1837(15th of Tishrei, 5598): Sukkoth observed for the first time during the Presidency of Martin Van Buren.


1838: In Bendin, Poland, Dobrish Erlich and Rabbi Zev Nachum Bornsztain  gave birth to their first child Avrohom Bornsztain, founder and first Rebbe of the Sochatchover Hasidic dynasty” who was “known as the Avnei Nezer ("Stones of the Crown") after the title of his posthumously-published set of Torah responsa, which is widely acknowledged as a halakhic classic” and whose “only son, Shmuel, author of Shem Mishmuel, succeeded him as Rebbe.”


1843: The Synagogue of Beracha Veshalom Vegmiluth Hasidim (Congregation of Blessing, Peace and Loving Deeds) in St. Thomas holds the first confirmation ceremony for Jewish youth ever in the Western Hemisphere. The St. Thomas synagogue has held a weekly service since it first opened its doors in 1833; reportedly, it's the oldest synagogue in continuous use under the American flag and the second oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Acclaimed Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro was a member.


1835(21st of Tishrei, 5596): Hoshanah Rabah


1853: During their Friday meeting, the Assistant Board of Alderman voted to accept an invitation from the Directors of the Jews Hospital to attend the cornerstone laying ceremony scheduled to take place on Thanksgiving Day.


1857: Henry Lewis Cohen married Priscilla Joseph at the Great Synagogue today.


1859: Birthdate of producer and author Alfred Bock, the son of a cigar manufacturer from Gieseen and the father of author Wener Bock.


1867(15th of Tishrei, 5628): Sukkoth


1869: In Amsterdam, Karel Abraham Wertheim, the son of Johannes Wertheim and Maria Rosenik and his wife Henriette van Heukelom gave birth to Charlotte Maria Werthiem


1869(9th of Cheshvan, 5630): Solomon Daniel Ghosalker a member of “the 25th regiment of the Bombay native light infantry” who “served in the Scinde campaign in 1843-45, the Indian mutiny, and the Abyssinian expedition of 1867-68” and “rose to the highest regimental rank, that of sirdar bahadur” while being honored with a first-class star of the Order of British India passed away today.


1869: Three days after he “was murdered,” Louis Kyezor was buried at the “Bancroft Road (Maiden Lane) Jewish Cemetery today.


1869: Birthdate of Sir Joseph Duveen, the London native who became one of the most influential art dealers of his time.


1871: During his sermon today, Rabbi J.J. Lyons called upon the members of the West 19th Street Portuguese Synagogue to contribute to aid the people of Chicago who are suffering from the effect of a great fire that consumed much of the city. Since money cannot be handled on Shabbat, a special meeting will be held tomorrow to deal with this.


1871: In Trieste, Italy Michele Levi and Emma Perguia gave birth to Professor Giusepp Levi “a pioneer of in vitro studies of cultured cells.”


1871: In Vienna, Alexander Von Zemlinsky, a Catholic and his wife who converted to Sephardic Judaism gave birth to composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky


1873(23rd of Tishrei, 5634): Simchat Torah


1875(15th of Tishrei, 5636): Sukkoth


1879: In the on-going battle to have the Romanian government honor its promise to grant full rights to the Jews, it was reported today that 58 deputies in Bucharest are opposed to the government’s bill granting emancipation to the Jews.  This has increased fears that the bill will not get the two-thirds majority required for passage.


1881: John W. Carroll, the actor whose fame rested in part for his portray of Fagin, the Jew in ‘Oliver Twist,’” passed away today in New York City at the age of 44.


1881:”Russian Hebrew Exiles” published today described the activities of the committee formed in New York designed to help the newly arrived Jewish immigrants from the Czar’s anti-Semitic empire. The most recent group of arrivals number 120 and plans have already been to send 70 of them to “various sections of the country” since there is no way to find all of them employment in New York.  Committees have been formed in Houston, New Orleans, Louisville, St. Louis and Wilmington, NC to help with the re-settlement plans. (This marked the first year of what prove to be a tidal wave of immigration that would last until World War I.  These well-intentioned plans would soon be overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of immigrants)


1881: “An assignment for the benefit of creditors by Hirsch Levy to Isidore Hirsch with $600 preferences was filed in the County Clerk’s office” today.


1882: It was reported today that “Mordecai Lyons,” a new play Edward Harrigan that features an array of Jewish characters is scheduled to open at the Theatre Comique next week.


1882: It was reported today “there is a singular set of lunatics in England who are devoting all their energies to the rather hopeless tasks of proving that the so-called Anglo-Saxon race is not Anglo-Saxon but Jewish.  They believe that all Englishman belong to the tribe of Manasseh and all Americans to the tribe of Ephraim and that the Irish belong to the rest of the long-lost ten tribes.”


1882: Birthdate of Eamon De Valera, Irish prime minister and president.  As Prime Minister during the 1930’s De Valera modified the Irish Constitution so that it gave recognition to many non-Catholic religious groups including the Jewish community. “The behavior of de Valera's government towards Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust is also controversial. Ireland's Justice Minister Michael McDowell later described the Irish government's treatment of Jewish refugees as ‘antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling’. Dr Mervyn O'Driscoll of University College Cork reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland: ‘Although overt anti-Semitism was untypical, the Irish were indifferent to the Nazi persecution of the Jews and those fleeing the third Reich’.However, this attitude towards Jewish refugees differed little from other Western Governments - as exemplified by the abject failure of the Evian Conference-who were unwilling to admit Jews fleeing Nazism.”


1882: There was a “serious disturbance” among the Russian Jewish immigrants on Ward’s Island, the New York entry point for those arriving from Europe.


1884: “Funeral of Rabbi Huebsch” published today described the procession for Rabbi Huebsch which began at his home on Lexington Avenue, then moved to Ahavath Chesed, before finishing on Long Island where he was interred at Linden Hill Cemetery.


1886(15th of Tishrei, 5647): Sukkoth


1866: A column styled “Law Reports: Business in the Surrogates Courts" published today reported that will  of the late Solomon D. Moses is among those that have been admitted for probate during this past week. Under the terms of Mr. Solomon's will payments of two hundred dollars are to be made to the Jews Hospital of New York and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum


1888: “Some Glances Backward” published today provided a retrospective on the fight in California to halt Chinese immigration and to ban them from living here including a speech by A.A. Haight the Democratic Governor of California in which he said that the “same argument” made “today in this country against the Chinese were used two centuries ago against the industrious Jews of Europe…. But it did not take” these bigots “a hundred years before they found out their mistake because the Jews too industry along with them and enriched the new countries in which they settled.  It will work with the same with the Chinese. If our laws permit us to drive them from the State.”


1888: “Old World News by Cable” published today described events surrounding the recent death of J.M. Levy whom many mistakenly thought was the founder of the Daily Telegraph. Actually Joseph Moses Levy bought it from the founder in 1855 three months after its opening for $4,000.  “He and his son” then “made it one of the half dozen great newspaper properties of the world.  “A very good man, charitable, just and simple manners and tastes, as was the last professing Jew of his fmily, all of whom now bear the name Lawson.”


1888: “Jews Leaving Russia” published today relied on dispatches from the London Daily News to describe the exodus of nearly 2,500 Jews from Odessa (Russia) during the law three months.  The Jews are leaving because of the Expulsion Law enacted last Spring.  The number of Jews leaving is being swollen by those who are taking advantage of the recent relaxation in the conscription laws which were designed to have just that effect.  Most of them are going to America or England but lack the capital to open business on their own.


1889: Birthdate of cardiologist Aaron Ephraim Parsonnet, the native of Balta Russia and U.S. resident since 1903 who graduated from Loyola Medical School in 1913 and eventually became the Medical Director for the Daughters of Israel Home for Aged in Newark, NJ, http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/history_of_medicine/manuscripts/parsonnet


1890:  Birthdate of General of the Army and U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower. In a recently published history about three World War II generals entitled 15 Stars, Stanley Weintraub described a hither-to little known story about Ike and the Jewish people.  While serving in the Philippines in 1938 as a Lt. Colonel, “Eisenhower got to know some of the 1,200 emigres who had fled Hitler who could find no sanctuaries in the uncaring West, including his own country.” At this time “he was made a surprising and hugely remunerative offer.  Almost certainly it came from Alex Frieder, one of three brothers from Cincinnati who had opened a cigar factory in Manila, and who played bridge and poker with…Ike.  ‘I was asked to take a job seeking in China, Southeast Asia…and every country where they might be acceptable, a haven for Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.  The proposed pay would be $60,000 a year with expenses…Te offer was, of course, appealing for several reasons.  But…I had become so committed to my profession that I declined.’” Given other facts of Ike’s life during this period and the revulsion he demonstrated when Allied troops liberated the Concentration Camps, no one should think Ike’s decision was tainted by antipathy toward Jews and that it was made for the reasons he stated. Given the political environment of the 1950’s as a Republican President, Ike was only going to have a limited amount of popularity among Jewish voters.  To his credit, he became the first President to participate in national television show sponsored by a Jewish organization.  In this case it was a program celebrating the 300th anniversary of the American Jewish Community. For many Jews living during the 1950’s Ike was the American President who sided with the Arabs against Israel.  During the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Eisenhower administration threatened Israel with economic ruin if it did not withdraw from the Sinai. This policy had four effects.  It left Gaza as a place from which terrorist could attack Israel.  It gave Nasser a new lease on life thus setting the stage for another decade of un-rest in the Middle East that reached its next crescendo in the Six Day War. During the crisis, the Americans actually sided with the Soviets who threatened the French and the British with nuclear attack if they did not remove their forces from Suez.  From the French point of view, the Americans had shown that the nuclear umbrella did not protect France when she did not agree with the United States, so the French started to build their own independent nuclear force.  This is one of those times where Jewish history is world history and world history is Jewish history.  As is so often the question, where does one begin and the other end?


1890: Chaie X. Hishovitz signed a release in the presence of Mortiz Tolk that stated in consideration of a payment of $8.00 she release Kopel Harris from their marriage, promises not to bring any further legal action against and gives him permission to marry any other person he may so desire.


1891: “The Indictment of Russia” published today speaks approvingly of Harold Fredric’s use of “cold, rigid, facts to present the date relating to the” harsh treatment of the Jews in Russia which some have “transformed into an indictment against the victims” to justify the acts of the Czar’s government.


1891: “The Local Tickets” published today analyzed the Republican and Tammany Candidates in the upcoming New York City elections including  Ferdinand Levy one of the Tammany candidates for Coroner and Meyer S. Isaacs


1892(23rd of Tishrei, 5653): Simchat Torah


1893: Because it is Shabbat, there will be a pause during the day in the festivities marking the Golden Anniversary of the B’Nai B’rith.


1893: This evening in New York five hundred people are scheduled to attend a banquet celebrating the Golden Anniversary of B’Nai B’rith where the guests of honor will include President Cleveland, Governor Flower and Mayor Gilroy.


1894(14th of Tishrei, 5655): Erev Sukkoth


1894: In Braddock, PA, founding of Congregation Agudath Achim which holds services at 7 pm on Friday and 8 am Saturday and owns a cemetery west of Braddoc,


1894: Officer Grier of the MacDougal Street Station arrested 15 year old John Shevlin after he saw him and a group of boys “chasing two old Hebrew men” whose beards they pulled and then kicked after throwing them to the ground.


1894: Marquis du Paty de Clam, a French General Staff officer is designated as Officer of Judiciary Police a position from which he masterminds enquiry against Dreyfus and invents the scenario of his hostile interrogation and handwriting test. His son will be appointedhead of Jewish Bureau under Vichy government.


1896: Birthdate of William Shemin, the native of Bayonne, NJ who “was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in action in Vesle River, near Bazoches, France.”


1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC won its second straight game of the season to go 2 and 0.


1897: In New York City, Felix Mortiz Warburg and Frieda Schiff Warburg gave birth to Frederick Marcus Warburg


1897: One day after he had passed away, 52 year old Aaron Cohen was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”


1898: Jacob C. Rosenbluth, who had served as assistant surgeon aboard the USS Massachusetts during the Spanish-American War made “Passed Assistant Surgeon” today.


1903(23rd of Tishrei, 5664): Simchat Torah


1903: “Dr. Marcus Jastrow” published today reported that among the survivors of the recently deceased rabbi were his two sons, “Morris Jastrow, the widely-known philologist and Joseph Jastrow, the well-known psychologist.”


1906: Today Dr. Bruno Alfred Döblin, the author of the novel Berlin Alexanderplats,“took up a position at the Berlin psychiatric clinic in Buch where he worked as an assistant doctor for nearly two years.


1906: Birthdate of anti-Nazi German historianPrince Hubertus zu Loewenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg, co-founder along with Otto Katz of Hollywood Anti-Nazi League which was unique in that it one of the first organization that at least, superficially, was not tied to the Jews


1906: Birthdate of author and commentator Hannah Arendt.  Many know her for her writings about the Nazis and the originator of the term “the banality of evil.”Living amidst the political turmoil of Europe greatly shaped Arendt's studies and interests. Initially a philosophy and theology student, Arendt shifted her focus to the rising anti-Semitism permeating the German polity in the 1930s. In addition to her writing, Arendt became involved in the German Zionist Organization in 1933 and worked to bring Nazi atrocities to global attention. Arendt was arrested for investigating anti-Semitic propaganda, but befriended a Berlin jailer who enabled her escape. Fleeing to Paris, Arendt worked with Youth Aliyah to help rescue Jewish children from the Third Reich by bringing them to Palestine. While in Paris, Arendt met her second husband and both were sent to internment camps in southern France. In 1941, both were able to reach America and reunite with Arendt's mother. In America, Arendt published numerous articles in Jewish studies journals, and was in charge of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, a program created by historian Salo W. Baron to recover and restore lost and damaged Jewish archives and cultural markers. The publication of her book The Origins of Totalitarianismin 1951, made Arendt an intellectual celebrity as America, searching for answers to the horrors of World War II, careened into the Cold War. The Origins of Totalitarianism sought to explain the rise and appeal of both Hitler and Stalin. Arendt went on to publish several other books including her most controversial work, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evilin 1963.Arendt taught at the University of Chicago and Wesleyan and was the first female full professor at Princeton. She continued to lecture and teach until her death in 1975.



1910: A Jew, David Effendi Molcho, First Interpreter of Imperial Divan of the Ottoman Empire is appointed member of the Senate. On this same day, Samuel Effendi of Salonica is appointed Chief of Police for the coast districts of Constantinople.


1910: Der unsterbliche Lumpg(The Immortal Blight), an operetta composed by Edmund Eysler “was performed for the first time” today” with great success at the Vienna Bürgertheater


1911: Dr. Alfred Döblin and his girlfriend Friede Kunke gave birth to their son Bodo.


1911: The New York Sun received a cablegram that read: “Fifteen thousand Turkish troops sent to Palestine” during the Turco-Italian War.


1911(22nd of Tishrei, 5672): Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret


1911(22nd of Tishrei, 5672): Holiday services, including Yizkor, began at 9:30 a.m. at the South Side Hebrew Congregation on Indiana Avenue.


1911: In an editorial published in the Outlook, former President Theodore Roosevelt proposed submitting the Treaty of 1832 which was an anathema to Jews to the Hague Tribunal for interpretation


1911: “As a result of the” Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which claimed so many Jewish lives, “the American Society of Safety Engineers was founded in New York City” today.


1912: Constantin C. Arion, who as the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs would say that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” completed his service as Minister of Administration and Interior of Romania.


1912: It was reported that a veritable “who’s who” of American Jewry including Judge Julian W. Make, Justice Samuel Greenbaum, Henry Morgenthau, Cyrus Sulzberger, Louis Marshal and Professor Solomon Schechter, attended the lecture at the Astor Hotel delivered by Israel Abrahams.  The British academic is a firm believer in the need to maintain a strong Jewish identity as the Chosen People develop national identities in the various home-countries.


1914: Sir Alfred Knox, the British military attaché described the condition of the Jews on the Eastern front when he wrote today, “It is said that a Jew was caught carrying a German officer in a sack across the bridge at Ivangorod. Both were hung.  (Jewish misery would only increase as can be seen by the 20 Jews who were killed by Coassacks at pogrom in Lemberg during November or the 64 Jews in Warsaw were arrested and detained as alleged members of a conspiracy to raise prices through speculation.  As was all too common their property was confiscated by the authorities) p 393 Max Hastings.


1914: In Manila, Philippines, Leopold Kauffmann Kahn, French born Manila businessman, the “son of Julieta and Moise Wolf Kahn” and Anacoreta Cortes Villarosa gave birth to Raoul Evaristo (Raoul) Villarosa Kahn


1914: “To Aid Jewish Sufferers” published today described the work of Leon Sanders, the President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Society to form a special committee that will provide assistance to the Jews trapped on the battlefields of eastern Europe whose members include Jacob H. Schiff, Chairman; Louis Marshal, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Dr. J. L. Magnus, Samuel Dorp, Dr. Cyrus Adler of Philadelphia and Judge J.W. Mack of Chicago.


1914(24th of Tishrei, 5675): In New York, “Hyman Goldfarb, a manufacturer of women’s hats who had to the United States from Russia 30 years ago passed away today “in his 56th year.”


1914: Louis Marshall wrote a letter to Albert Lucas, the secretary of the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War (CRC) expressing his opposition to the formation of the CRC because it undercut the efforts of the American Jewish Committee to organize “a general committee, composed of Jewish national organizations for the purposed of dealing effectively with the tremendous problem which confronts the Jews of American in respect to granting relief to the sufferers from the European War. (Editor’s Note – With all due respect to Louis Marshall, there are those who would say this was really about a conflict between the old established Jewish community and the newcomers many of whom were immigrants or the children of immigrants


1915: The Kingdom of Bulgaria declared war on Serbia today meaning that it was now one of the Central Powers – a decisions that would lead to 211 Jewish soldiers being recorded as fatalities in WW I.


1915: According to the Maccabean, “a large number of Jewish privates as well as officers have been killed and wounded… at the Battle of Loos” – a three week long British offensive that failed to dislodge the Germans -- which ended today.


1915: In New York, at the 86th Street Temple, Rabbi Maurice Harris officiated at the marriage Charlotte Glendyle Harris whose only attendant was Mrs. Ruth Schram-Rosenfeld and Rabbi Goodman Lipkind whose best man was “Dr. Jacques Zipser and whose ushers were Joseph Kann, Abraham Tobias, and Samuel S. Kogan”


1916: “The Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Williamsburg announced its plans for the upcoming season today which will include a Jewish Congress to be held on the fourth Wednesday of the month, monthly dances, lectures, games and athletic exhibitions.


1916: Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee announced today that Nathan Straus has donated $50,000 to the “new fund for the relief of the thousands of Jewish sufferers in the war stricken countries of Europe.”


1916: According to the “military critic of the Overseas News Agency” “British and French divisions with a total of more than 1,000,000 men had been virtually annihilated in the Battle of the Somme while the Russians have lost “about 1,000,000 men from June 1 to October 2.”  (These losses, especially on the part of the French and British, help to explain the oft criticized reluctance of these two nations to fight a war 20 years later.)


1917 (28th of Tishrei, 5678): Over 250 people, including students, faculty and alumni attended exercises marking the formal opening of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  Dr. Cyrus Adler, acting President of the Seminary gave the keynote address in which he urged everyone “to get behind the Government in the successful prosecution of the war.”  Additional addresses were given by two of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community - Louis Marshall, Chairman of the Board and Professor Louis Ginzberg.


1917: In Vilna, Dr. Arthur Hantke, the president of the Zionist Federation of Germany addressed “a mass meeting of Zionist on the present state of the Jewish national movement


1917: In a sign of the divisions among the leaders of the American Jewish community, the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Congress held a meeting this afternoon in the Metropolitan Building where it was “decided by a vote of 73 to 31 to refrain from calling the Jewish Congress until peace negotiations were actually under way” saying “that nothing should be done to hold back the unification of the country during the war.”


1917: U.S. premiere of “Cleopatra” starring Theda Bara (Theodosia Burr Goodman) in the title role.


 1918:  “An ‘inter-communal’ Jewish congress was organized in Vienna.” As World War I was coming to an end, it became apparent that the Austro-Hungarian or Habsburg Empire would dissolve into a group of small nations based around national constituencies. “Arriving from the principal Habsburg cities, the delegates elected a Jewish National Council and issued a policy statement that was intended as a message to the Allied Powers.  Whatever the empire’s fate, they declared, the Jews expected to be awarded the identical civil and collective recognition, and the identical protection, extended to any other nationality.


1918: Accompanied by another officer, Major Julius O. Adler was supervising the work of clearing the enemy from St. Juvin where they suddenly came upon a party of the enemy numbering 150. Firing on the enemy with his pistol, Major Adler ran toward the party, calling on them to surrender. His bravery and good marksmanship resulted in the capture of 50 Germans, and the remainder fled (For this he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross)


1919(20th of Tishrei, 5680): Sixth Day of Sukkoth


1919: In Virginia, Governor Westmorland Davis urged “citizens, irrespective of race or creed, to contribute liberally” to the Jewish relief campaign beginning today.


1920: The Bazaar and Fair sponsored by the Kane Street Temple in Brooklyn continued for a third day.


1920: “A Munich dispatch today contradicts the recent report from Berlin of the death of Professor Magnus Hirschfeld, the noted German physiologist, who was said to have in a Munich hospital as the result of a beating given by some anti-Semites because he was a Jew” but who in fact “has sufficiently recovered to have left the hospital.”


1920: “Tributes to the philanthropic work of the late Jacob H. Schiff” were read today at “the first meeting of the Business Men’s Council and Women’s Division of the Federation for Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies” which took place at the “5th Avenue home of Adolph Lewisohn.”


1921: “The Black Panther,” a German silent moved staring Eugen Burg was released in Germany today.


1921: Birthdate of Manchester, UK native Joseph “Joe” Hyman.



1921: In Philadelphia, Morris Sokoloff, an immigrant tailor and his wife, “the former Goldie Levy” gave birth to Dr. Louis Sokoloff, “the Pioneer of Pet Scams.” (As reported by Sam Roberts)



1923: The American Jewish Congress will meet today in New York.  The congress was originally to meet in Boston.  The meeting was moved to accommodate the schedule of Israel Zangwill whose schedule only had an opening for him to meet in New York.


1923:Tonight, at Carnegie Hall Israel Zangwill, Jewish scholar, author and publicist, in an address which he referred to earlier in the day as "the greatest labor of my life" declared that the Jews must forego their political hopes in Palestine "rather than kindle a conflagration which may ravage the whole world."


1923: Today, in Philadelphia, twenty-three year old Norma, NJ, native Helen Rovine married Benjamin Grossman with whom she had three children.


1924: Birthdate of Leipzig native Leo Sachs, the British educated, prize winning Israel “molecular and cancer researcher.




1929(10th of Tishrei, 5690): Jews observe the first Yom Kippur of what would become the Great Depression


1929: “Louis Fleisher, Harry Fleisher, and Henry Shorr, three members of the Purple Gang attended services at Orthodox Congregation B’nai David in Northwest Detroit.” (As reported by Robert Rockaway)


1930: “Girl Crazy” with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin opened at the Alvin Theatre.


1932: “The Big Broadcast,” a comedy produced by Benjamin Glazer and featuring George Burns playing himself was released today in the United States.


1933: Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. This was the first of Hitler’s moves to overturn the Treaty of Versailles, which was in turn part of his plan to create his Jew free Third Reich.


1933: Formation of the 6th Airlift Squadron in which author James Salter would serve following WW II.


1935: ' Barbary Coast,' a Thumping Melodrama of the Gold Rush Days -- 'Charlie Chan in Shanghai’ published today provides a positive review of the Ben Hecht written melodrama produced by Samuel Goldwyn.



1936: “For the second time this week the Montreal riot squad was called out” tonight “to disperse mobs of French-Canadian youths were breaking the windows of Jewish businessmen”


1936: Today, “two years after becoming the rabbi of the Jewish community at St. Anne’s where he was also the shochet, Rabbi Leslie Henry Hardman who in 1945 would be the first Jewish chaplain to enter Bergen-Belsen married his wife Josi today.



1936: Sir Oswald Mosely the British fascist leader who supports Hitler and Mussolini addressed “immense crowds from the top of a loud-speaker truck at Bethnal Green and Lime-house without interruption.


1937:The Palestine Post reported from Warsaw that a new Polish Labor Party resolved to oppose totalitarianism, but to stimulate Jewish emigration.


1937: Seventy-two year old  German banker, liberal politician and Vice Chancellor Bernhard Dernburg, the son of Friedrich and Luise Dernberg who had converted to Christianity and husband of Emma Dernberg passed away today in Berlin


1937: The Palestine Post reported that court proceedings were taken in Romania against Jews guilty of having Jewish National Fund blue boxes in their houses.  Yes, the little blue box that we use to this day was part of a criminal activity in Romania.  Anti-Jewish measures like this provide further proof that the Holocaust was possible, in part, because of pre-existing conditions throughout Europe.


1938: The Jewish-Americans living in Palestine of which there are eight to nine thousand made “plans today for a conference” for all of their number who have made investments in Eretz Israel to let the British and American governments know about their opposition to any move to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine.  The Jewish-Americans intend to use the conference as a way to remind the British that their investments had been predicated on the pledges made in the Balfour Declaration which were incorporated in the League of Nations Mandate that provides the basis for British rule over Palestine.  These investments have totaled more than forty million dollars.


1938: “A Man to Remember,” a dramatic film direct by Garson Kanin was released today by RKO Pictures.


1938: “L'Osservatore Romano, official newspaper of the Vatican, publishes a story accusing the Nazi Party of being behind the attacks on the Vienna palace of Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna.”


1938: Herman Goering, Hitler’s second in command, announced plans for ghettoizing Jews in all big cities.


1939: Led by team captain Sidney “Spike” Alter Penn St. University played and won its second game defeating Leigh University at New Beaver Field.


1939:  Birthdate of Ralph Lauren. Born Ralph Lifschitz in the Bronx, the famous fashion designer began by working with Brooks Brothers before striking out on his and riding his “polo pony” to fame and fortune. 1939: Dr. Ludwig Halberstädter of Tel Aviv, a Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem left the United States today aboard the American export liner Excalibur after having attended the International Cancer Congress at Atlantic City, New Jersey.Ludwig Halberstädter obtained his doctorate in 1901 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). From 1901 to 1907 he worked at the surgical clinic in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) under Carl Garré (1857-1928) and then dermatology with Albert Neisser (1855-1916) in Breslau. He was habilitated for dermatology and radiation therapy in Berlin in 1922 and in 1926 became "nicht beamtlicher ausserordentlicher Professor". His interest in irradiation resulted in studies on its effects on lower forms of life and on tissues and cells. He became director of the Radiation Department at the Institute for Cancer Research, Berlin-Dahlem and used thorium in an effort to treat cancer. Halberstädter demonstrated sensitivity of the ovary to irradiation in 1904. In 1907 he was a member of the research expedition on syphilis which went to Java under Albert Neisser’s direction. After 1933 he was one of 276 Jewish dermatologists who were able to leave Nazi Germany. He settled in Palestine that year and became director of radiation therapy at the Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem. He brought with him a tiny amount of radium and opened the first radium and X-ray institute in the Middle East. Working together with cytologist Dr. Leonid Doljansky, he was able to provide the first treatment for cancer in the country.


1939: “L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, insists that Pope Pius XII really is sorry that the Polish people have lost their country and that they are experiencing such horrible things such as persecution and mass murder” but has nothing to say about the fate of the Jews of Poland.


1940: “Charles Lindbergh delivers his second radio address to promote neutrality and urge America not to enter the European war.” (Lindbergh will join forces with America First which believes that the British and the Jews are among those conspiring to get the United States to enter the war.  Lindbergh will cling to his beliefs until he is embarrassed by having a speech scheduled for December 7, 1941.)


1940: "Four months after they had bicycled out of Paris" Margret and Hans Rey arrived in New York, their new home and the new home for Curious George.


1940: The Nazis move non-Jews out of a designated section of Warsaw, Poland, and import Jews to replace them.


1940: “The Reverend William C. Kernan, chairman of the refugee committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, NJ, is scheduled to make the address at the exercises opening the 19th academic year at the Jewish Institute of Religion” which was founded by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise who is the president of the institute and who will welcome the new students.


1941(23rd of Tishrei, 5702): Simchat Torah


1941: Birthdate of Arthur Louis “Art” Shamsky who played major league ball for seven years and managed the Modi'in Miracle of the Israel Baseball League in 2007.


1941: Karl Bishoff approved the plan of the POW camp at Birkenau today


1941: At the intervention of the Union of Jewish Communities in Romania, an order was given today to stop the deportations of Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Dorohoi district


1942: One thousand Jews living in Piotrkow, Poland are dragged from their homes in the middle of the night. Those too ill or old to move were shot on the spot. This was first of eight straight days of terror resulting in the deportation of 20,000 Jews. All of them were sent to Treblinka to be killed. The Shtetel of Piotrkow had had a Jewish population since at least the start of the fifteenth century.  At the start of World War II, the Jews made up a third of the town’s population.  After the Holocaust there were so few Jews left that they were less than one percent of the population.


1942: 3rd of Cheshvan, 5703): Twenty year old Charles Abelson of Montreal, a Private serving with the Canadian Army Dental Corps, “was presumed to have died” today “according to an official announcement” when the SS Carbou, aboard which he was traveling was torpedoed and sank. (Canadian Jewish Congress records)


1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Sukkoth I


1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Led by Alexander Pecherski and a few other Jewish members of the Red Army, a revolt broke out in the Sobibordeath camp when a number of SS guards were killed. Prevented from fleeing through the gates, 130 Jews died trying to escape through the mine fields. Thirty found their way to freedom. The remaining 140 were captured and shot. The camp itself was closed immediately. Yes, you did read a description of the same event on October 13.  Apparently different sources disagree on the date of this heroic act.  If there can be such a lack of agreement on the date of so recent an event, we should not be surprised when we have difficulty providing exact dates for ancient events.


                                                     Or, a different version


1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Leon Feldhendler and Jewish Soviet officer Aleksandr Pechersky, interned at the Sobibór death camp since September, instigate an inmate revolt and escape, during which 11 German SS guards and two or three Ukrainian SS guards are killed. Two hundred of 600 Jews in the camp are killed by gunfire and exploding mines; among them is 33-year-old Dutch painter Max Van Dam. Of the 300 who escape, only 100 are recaptured; many of the remaining 200 escapees join Soviet partisan forces. Of these, only 50 to 70, including Pechersky, will survive the war.




1943: Sixteen year old Tomasz Toivi Blatt, a native of Isbica, as Jewish shtetl in Poland whose “parents and younger brother had been gassed six months earlier” took part in the revolt at Sobibor today after which he was “shot in the jaw by a Polish farmer” but was able to survive and eventually settled in the United States where as Thomas Blatt he became a successful businessman and wrote From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival with Christopher R. Browning and a memoir Sobibor: The Forgotten Revolt — A Survivor’s Report.


1943(15th of Tishrei, 5704): Dr. Saul Tchernichovsky, the physician-poet who translated Macbeth and The Odyssey into Hebrew died today the age of 68 after settling in Eretz Israel ten years ago after fleeing from Nazi Germany.  According to the New York Times, he was born in the Ukraine, practiced medicine in St. Petersburg and Berlin. “In My Dream,” his first Hebrew poem was published in the United States in a magazine called Hagispah (Summit).  “His original verse and translations made him a leading figure in the world of modern Hebrew literature.  The government of Finland decorated him for translating the Finnish national epic, “Kalevala: and during his later years he won the Bialik Prize for his poetry.”  He also served as one of the governors of Hebrew University.  During the First World War, he “served as a Russian Army doctor on the Eastern Front.  He practiced medicine for a year in Palestine during the middle 1920’s before settling in Berlin where he was a successful physician until the Nazis came to power.


1943: Angelo Donati, an Italian banker and diplomat who has risked his to save Jews in southern France found refuge in Switzerland today after evading the Gestapo which had been ordered to arrest him.


1944:  Soviet Troops entered Riga. Only a handful of Jews survived where there were 30,000 just ten years earlier.


1944: ‘Hans Günther Adler, who wrote under pseudonym H. G. Adler” his wife and his mother-in-law arrived at Auschwitz.


1944: In Hungary, the Horthy government promises to release imprisoned Jewish-Palestinian paratroopers.


1944: As he attempts to negotiate for the safety of Hungarian Jews, Dr. Rudolf Kastner “travelled for the second time to St Margathen.”


1945: Birthdate of Alan Blinder a Professor of Economics at Princeton who served as Vice Chairperon of the Federal Reserve System during the Clinton Administration.


1947: The Palestine Supreme Court ruled that “the government must give Gershon Friedmann of Tel Aviv and his wife Erna, legal status because years ago two certificates had been deducted for them from the official immigration court.”  The decision is “a test case that may provide legal status for more than 2000 Jews who migrated to Palestine without proper certificates.”


1948:Brandeis University opened its doors to its first undergraduate class of 120 first-years.


1948: Birthdate of Minnesota native Dr. Norman J. Ornstein, the political scientist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute who is a friend of liberal Senator Al Franken, the husband of attorney Judith L. Harris and co-author of One Nation After Trump.



1948: During the War for Independence major fighting between Egypt and Israel resumed.  The Egyptians found out that the Israelis would not be any easier to defeat in “round two” of the fighting.


1949: In the U.K. premiere of “Give Us This Day” with a score by Benjamin Frankel.


1949: In Brooklyn, Basil Pollitt, a Protestant and  a lawyer who championed liberal causes, and her mother, Leonora Levine, a Jewish  real estate agent gave birth to poet, essayist and critic Katha Pollit whose works include Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism a collection of nineteen essays published in 1949.


1950: In New York City, “Two Flags West” starring Jeff Chandler premiered today at the Rivoli Theatre.


1951: Southpaw Morris "Moe" Savransky was traded by the Buffalo Bisons of the International League to Cincinnati of the National League.



1952: Birthdate of Steve Rothman, who was first elected to Congress from the 9thDistrict of New Jersey in 1997.


1952: “Justine Wise Polier” gave a passionate “speech on justice at Christ Church” today.



1952: Having been trader by the Dodgers to the Cincinnati Reds, outfielder Cal Abrams was traded by the Reds to the Pittsburg Pirates, which at that time meant he had gone from the best in the NL to the worst in the NL in one short year.


1953: Unit 101, together with a unit of regular paratroopers, all under the command of Ariel Sharon carried out a reprisal raid on the Arab village of Kibya on the night after an Israeli woman and her two infant children were murdered by Arab terrorists from Jordan.


1956: After winning their season opener, Sid Gillman’s Los Angeles Rams lost their second game of the season as the Detroit Lions prevailed at home.


1958: Foundation stone of the Knesset laid in Jerusalem.  The Knesset is the Israeli parliament.  Knesset is a Hebrew word that means “meeting.”


1959: Alexander "Alex" Bittelman’s planned memoir was condemned by Gus Hall and other leaders of the Communist Party in the United States.  This was part of Bittleman’s shift in views in the wake of the exposure of Stalin’s crimes and the Hungarian uprising in 1956.


1960(23rdof Tishrei, 5721): Simchat Torah


1961: The National tour of Flower Drum Song, the eighth musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II which had opened in May of 1960 came to a close today in Cleveland, “a month before the film version of the musical opened.”


1961: Birthdate of fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi



1962: NBC broadcast the first show of the final season The Dinah Shore Chevy Shoe starring Dinah Shore.


1964(8th of Cheshvan, 5725): Sixty-nine year old Nathan Parnes who had been a co-producer at the Second Avenue Theatre with Molly Picon and been the house manager for the Biltmore Theatre passed away today.



 


1964: The Episcopal Church cleared Jews of the charge of killing Jesus.  The Roman Catholic Church reached a similar conclusion during this period.  While this action was a cause for optimism about the future of relations between Christians and Jews, recent comments and actions by the Episcopal Church concerning the state of Israel have clouded some of this optimism.


1965:  Sandy Koufax hurled his 2nd shutout of the World Series beating Twins 2-0.  Koufax is still regarded by the greatest southpaw and the leading Jewish athlete of his time.


1967(10thof Tirshrei, 5728): Yom Kippur is observed in a united Jerusalem.


1969: On his 28th birthday, Art Shamsky started in Game 3 of the World Series.


1970: “C.C. and Company” a biker movie brought to the silver screen by executive producer Joseph E. Levine was released today in the United States.


1971(25thof Tishrei, 5732): Seventy-two year old Samuel Spewack, the husband and writing partner of Bella Spewack passed away today.


1971: “The Samuel Freeman House” was added to the National Register of Historic Places today.


1971: “Blood from the Mummy's Tomb” starring Valerie Leon was released today in the United Kingdom.


1972:Lo chiameremo Andrea (We’ll Call Him Andrew) produced by Arthur Cohn was released today in Italy.


1973:David Zeit and Eli Tovel ejected from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it was shot down by either a MiG or a SAM.  Both were recovered by Israeli forces.


1973: During the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian tanks mount a major attack against Israeli forces.  Their goal is to seize the Mitla and Gidi Passes in the Central Sinai which will then open the road to eastern Sinai Peninsula and the Negev.  Two thousand tanks were involved in the battle.  This is more tanks than were used in any single battle of World War II except for the great battle of Kursk.  In other words, this was one heck of big fight over a very limited front.  At the end of the day, the Israelis held the line.  That evening, despite the opposition of Moshe Dayan, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army ordered Israeli forces to prepare to cross the canal on the following night and begin a major assault on the Egyptian bridgeheads.  He correctly believed that the heavy Egyptian losses had weakened the Arab army.  He also had already been convinced that the only way to end the war was to cut the supply line to the Egyptian forces attacking east of the Suez Canal. Despite the battlefield successes of the last forty-eight hours, moral on the homefront was low as the Israeli casualty lists lengthened and the war moved into its second full week.  To make matters even worse, The Soviets continued to rush tons of supplies by sea and air to both Cairo and Damascus. 


1973: In one of the largest tank-to-tank battles ever fought, Israel is estimated to have lost 10 tanks, the Egyptians anywhere from 250 to 300. Iraq and Jordan send troops to the Golan, in response to appeals for assistance from Syria. (As reported by JTA)


1975: The President of the Soviet Union continued his visit to Tunisia which was part of Russia’s attempt to increase in the Middle East which was detrimental to the survival of Israel.


1977: “Equus” the film version of Peter Shaffer’s play directed by Sidney Lumet was released in the United Kingdom today.


1979(23rdof Tishrei, 5740): Simchat Torah


1980: In something that is unique to Israeli government, MK Yitzhak Yitzhaky left Likud and formed “a one man party called One Israel.”


1981(16thof Tishrei, 5742): Second Day of Sukkoth


1981(16thof Tishrei, 5742): David Nations, “the British water skiing champion in 1955 and 1956 who helped to found the British Water Ski Federation in 1955 passed away today.



1982: “A Kind of Alaska” “a one-act play written by Harold Pinter” premiered in the Cottesloe Theatre in London.


1982: In Manhattan, Mary Amanda Dargan and Steven Joel Zietlen, founder of City Lore gave birth to Benjamin Harold "Benh" Zeitlin “the 2012 recipient of Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Visual Arts category.”


1983: In the Soviet Union refusnik Iosif Begun went on trial for a third time.


1985(29thof Tishrei, 5746): Ninety-six year old Russian born Pinchas Cruso who came to the United States in 1909, served in WW I and was chairman of the Labor Zionist Movement passed away today.


1986: VHS release of “The Cage” which was supposed to have been the first pilot episode of Star Trek, featuring Leonard Nimoy as “Mr. Spock” and Malachi Thorne as “The Keeper.”


1986: Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize



1988: “Madame Sousatzka” the movie version of the novel of the same name by Bernice Rubens, directed by John Schlesinger was released in the United States today.


1989: Sixty-three year old German historian and war crimes expert Martin Broszat passed away. (As reported by Eric Pace)



1989:The Syrian fighter pilot who defected to Israel in a Soviet jet fighter said today that his flight was ''a very difficult mission'' since he flew at about 800 miles an hour and was only about 100 to 150 feet off the ground. In a meeting with journalists, the pilot, Maj. Mohammed Bassem Adel, said that the monitors on his Soviet-made MIG-23 showed that Israeli air-defense radar tracked him all along the way, and that he was worried because he knew that ''the section I was crossing is spread all over with missiles.'' But the major said he believed that he was not shot down before he landed because ''a country that has confidence in itself cannot be afraid of one single plane and would take the time to evaluate what was going on before taking action.'' Major Adel, whom the Israelis had initially identified as Maj. Adel Bassem, is balding and has a mustache, and he looks far older than his 34 years. The Israeli military allowed journalists to interview him this afternoon at a military base just north of Tel Aviv. He still wore his deep green Syrian flight jumpsuit. Two dozen Israeli military officers sat in the room as he talked. He said he fled Syria, leaving a family and fiancee behind, because ''I wanted to change my life - I wanted to live in a democratic country where people are free to express their views.'' He would not elaborate. He decided to leave three months ago but did not make his ''operational plans'' until Wednesday morning, he said. He was influenced by what he read of Israel and saw on television. ''I was not in contact with anyone here before I came; no one was expecting me,'' he added. ''I've no connection whatsoever with anyone in Israel before now.'' Before leaving, Major Adel said, he told no one what he intended to do. Once he lifted off from his base in Syria, he said he was in the air 20 minutes, and over Israeli airspace only between three and four minutes, before he landed near the town of Megiddo. On Thursday the military opened an investigation to determine how Major Adel flew into Israel in a potentially hostile fighter plan without interference. He appeared to give much of the explanation today. He said all his active electronic systems were off. Without any of his target radars armed - conditions easily monitored from the ground - air defense officers could probably see he had no immediate hostile intent. He said he did not know where he would land. ''I didn't know if there would be a facility I could land at and thought I might have to land on a highway,'' he said. ''I thought I might be intercepted by Israeli planes. But I kept flying, looking for a place to land.'' After he landed, he waited 20 minutes for security officials to arrive, and in that time he told a ground technician at the airfield that police in Syria had beaten him up after he had asked for better housing several months ago. Today, he declined to discuss his life in Syria. He said his treatment here so far has been ''gentle.'' West Bank and Gaza Killings


1990(25th of Tishrei, 5751): Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein passed away.  During his 72 years, Bernstein drew on a variety of themes from traditional Judaism to Shakespeare and racial conflicts that divided the teenage gangs of New York. There is no way that this blog can do justice to this musical genius and social icon.  The man who gave the world West Side Story was an ardent supporter in its darkest days. He came to Israel during the War for Independence to perform and his concert on Mt. Scopus after the June War is a treasure in more than one way.http://www.leonardbernstein.com/


1993: The Wldodawa Museum which erected the first monument to Sobibór victims in 1965 “established a separate Sobibór branch today.


1993: In “This Jewish Mom Dominates TV, Too” John J. O’Connor examines this comedic staple in the closing decade of the 20thcentury.



1993: A revival of “Conversations With My Father,” a play that “presents the saga of a first generation of American Jews who came of age in the Depression and were assimilated at a high price during and after World War II” opened today “at the James Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, CA.”


1994 (9th of Cheshvan, 5755): Nachsho Wachsman, a nineteen year old Israeli soldier who had been kidnapped by Hamas, was killed when Israeli forces attempted to rescue him.  “His father Yehuda was an advocated of improved Jewish-Arab relations, and a supporter of the peace process.’”


1994:  Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize.


1994: A month after premiering at the Venice Film Festival, the Woody Allen Comedy “Bullets Over Broadway” co-starring Harvey Fiertsein  and featuring Rob Reiner was released today in the United States.


1994: NBC broadcast the first episode of season three of “Homicide: Life on the Street” starring Yaphet Frederik Kotto as “Lieutenant Al Giardello” and Richard Belzer as “John Munch.”


1997(13th of Tishrei, 5758): American novelist Harold Robbins passed away.



1997: First broadcast of “The Dream Team” a British television series with scripts by Noam Friedlander.


1998(24th of Tishrei, 5759): Ninety-three year old New York native Leo S. Palitz the CCNY basketball player and physician who was married to “Lillian Nassau, the doyenne of New York antique dealers” passed away today.


2000(15th of Tishrei, 5761): As Israelis cope with the violence of yet another round of Arab terrorism, the first day of Sukkoth is observed.


2000: Broadcast of the third episode of “A History of Britain” a documentary series “written and presented by Simon Schama.


2001:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish author or of special interest to Jewish readers including  Will the Circle Be Unbroken?:Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith by Studs Terkel.


2001: Delta Flight 458 from Atlanta, Georgia to Newark, New Jersey, is diverted to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, and passengers are taken off the flight while officials investigate a report of two "Middle Eastern men" making threats in a foreign tongue -- two Orthodox Jews peacefully praying.


2003: Following today’s celebration of the 60thanniversary of the revolt at Sobibór “the grounds of the former death camp received a grant largely funded by the Dutch government to improve the exhibits.”


2004: "FDR's Auschwitz Secret," by Michael Beschloss appears in Newsweek Magazine. The article is an excerpt from Beschloss’ latest book and reveals the fact that it was FDR himself who made the decision not to bomb the Nazi death camp.’


2004: Today, Alfred Freiherr von Oppenheim, whose father,Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim had been posthumously recognized  as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1996, “was awarded the North Rhine-Westphalia Decoration of Honour.”


2005:  As part of an interview with the Israeli Interior Minister, the Jerusalem Post reported that Jewish extremists were continuing with plots against the life of Prime Minister Sharon.  While the capabilities of the Israeli security forces had improved since the murder of Prime Minister Rabin ten years ago, the Jews who are willing to murder other Jews still posed a major threat.  The Interior Minister called for the same kind of Administrative Detention be used in dealing with Jews plotting to kill government officials or blow up the Temple Mount as was used against Arab terrorists.


2006: International Haifa Film Festival comes to a close.


2006: A show featuring the works of Lazar (El) Markovich Lissitzky opens at the Phillips Collection in Washington.   According to an article in the Forwards, the “prints in the Phillips show are from his “Victory Over the Sun” drawings for an opera set.”  Lissitzky was a contemporary of Chagall with whom he was often confused.  The paintings from this period represent Lissitzky’s attempt to break from “Chagall Shadow.”


2006(22nd of Tishrei, 5767): Shemini Atzeret, 5767.


2007:The New York Times cited U.S. and Israeli military intelligence sources saying that the target of the attack in Syria had been a nuclear reactor under construction by North Korean technicians, with a number of the technicians having been killed in the strike.”


2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including  Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of An Extraordinary Musical Prodigy by Kevin Bazzan which is a biography of pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi -- pronounced, "air-veen nyeer-edge-hah-zee"– “who was born in Budapest of Jewish ancestry.” 


2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a slew of reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan, The Bulldozer and The Big Tent by Jewish author Todd Gitlin,The Year of Living Biblicallyby A.J. Jacobs, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories,1967-2007 by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar; translated by Vivian Eden and The Castle on Hester Street by Linda Heller, a book for children that is a zestful tale of Russian-Jewish immigration at the turn of the last century.


2007: As a sign of the vitality and growth of the Jewish Community, The Washington Post reported that Charles County, Maryland, is getting its first synagogue. Congregation Sha'are Shalom, which has been holding services for the last sixteen years at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Waldorf, has located an acceptable site after a five year search.  Speaking about the benefits of building a permanent home, congregation treasurer Lee Weinberger said, “With the construction of the synagogue, we will be able to expand our educational and social activities and be able to offer all our activities and services at one location."


2007: The New York Times Magazine featured an article entitled “The SY Empire” describing the growth of the Syrian Jewish Community.


2007:Rabbi Shais Taub of the Chabad Lubavitch of Wisconsin led a group of 10 Orthodox Jewish football fans on a pilgrimage from Milwaukee deep into Green Bay Packerland. They tailgated across the street from Lambeau Field, in a grass-covered parking lot, next door to Kroll's West, where butter burgers - definitely not kosher - are a specialty. They prayed, with some of the men and their sons donning a prayer shawl called a tallit and phylacteries, two small leather boxes containing verses of Scripture. They stood out amid the familiar green-and-gold sea. And they showed that people can find or express their faith at a house of worship or a house of sports. You recite morning prayers in Hebrew, even if a rock band is on a nearby stage blaring "Brown Sugar.""What's the point?" Rabbi Taub said. "Number one, Judaism is not relegated to the synagogue or the study hall. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew everywhere. If a group of Jews want to go to a Packer game, we do it like Jews.""Number two, Jewish pride," he added. "Some Jews should see this and say, 'You know what, there is nothing to hide.' I can be openly and boldly Jewish and do that anywhere on earth and go where I want to go."


2007: Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. Changed its name to  to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.


2008(15th of Tishrei, 5769): First Day Sukkoth


2008: In Canada today, a “Battle of the Booths”; Canada’s Conservative Party chooses to hold elections on the first Day of Sukkoth giving Jews the choice between the voting booths or the Festivals of Booths.  Jews can vote ahead of time, but many Jewish leaders object because holding the election on a Jewish holiday limits Jewish participation in the electoral process.  Others express no objection.


2008:Canter's Deli, a famous Jewish style delicatessen in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, California, near the border of West Hollywood, celebrated its 60th anniversary today. To mark the occasion, the deli reduced the price of their "famous" corned beef sandwich to its 1948 price of 60 cents, limited to one per customer, for a period of 12 hours.


2008(15th of Tishrei, 5769): Seventy-six year old Irish author and feminist June Levine author of Sisters passed away today.




2009: The Jewish Agency is scheduled to hold citizenship ceremonies for new immigrants on the roof of a Yeshiva overlooking the Western Wall.  Up until today the ceremonies had been held at the Western Wall plaza.  The agency changed the location for the ceremony because the rabbi responsible for the site “had demanded gender separation at the ceremonies.” 


2009: The UN Security Council is expected to meet today instead of October 20 and is expected to discuss the Goldstone Report which reported on Israeli actions during the anti-terrorist incursion into Gaza known as Cast Lead.


2009(26th of Tishrei, 5770): Sixty one year old investment banker Bruce Wasserstein passed away today.




2009:The Center for Jewish History and Leo Baeck Institute present: Music in the Age of the Wittgensteins, Part 1. The Wittgenstein Century began in the early 19th century and ended after WWI. During this period the dynasty rose from humble origins to become the wealthiest family in Austria-Hungary and produced one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein.  Great music accompanied this remarkable family all along its historical trajectory. The Wittgensteins included performers, like Paul Wittgenstein, who became known for his ability to play piano with just his left hand, after losing his right arm in World War I.  The household was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Josef Labor and Richard Strauss, with whom the young Paul played duets. They studied under great composers, hosted the greatest musicians of the time at their Musikaals, and commissioned masterpieces. This four-concert music series will present music from the gestalt of Wittgenstein family.


2010:Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco” an exhibition sponsored by American Sephardi Federation that tells the story of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world is scheduled to open in New York.


2010:“Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2010,” a one-woman exhibit, opens at the AC Galleries, in New York.


2010: Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, was presented with CCJU's prestigious Nostra Aetate Award for "his outstanding contributions to a world at peace."


2010:In an article entitledVague, Opaque and Ambiguous: Israel’s Hush-Hush Nuclear Policy, Ethan Bronner reviewed The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain With the Bombby Avner Cohen


2010:According to reports published today, “The world's youngest billionaire, Dustin Moskovitz, is 26, born just eight days after his former Harvard roommate and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg is no longer the youngest member of the Forbes 400, he is this year's biggest percentage gainer: His net worth has jumped to $6.9 billion from $2 billion. The third Facebook billionaire, 28-year-old Eduardo Saverin, left the company in a legal dispute, settled with Saverin reportedly getting a 5% stake in the company.”  All three are Jewish.


2010: The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the city’s second Holocaust museum was dedicated today at Pan Pacific Park in the city’s heavily newish Beverly-Fairfax neighborhood.


2010(6th of Cheshvan, 5771):Eighty-five year old “maverick mathematician” Benoît B. Mandelbrot passed away today. (As reported by Jascha Hoffman) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html



2010(6th of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-two year old legal scholar Louis Henkin passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17henkin.html



2011(16th of Tishrei, 5772):  Second Day of Sukkoth      



2011(16th of Tishrei, 5772):  Eighty-seven year old Morris Chaftez, the first director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/morris-chafetz-87-dies-altered-view-of-alcoholism.html



 2011: “The Big Year” a comedy directed by David Frankel and co-starring Jack Black was released today by



2011: Following Friday night services at Auguda Achim in Iowa City, IA, congregants are scheduled to view “Ushpezin,” a comedy in which an impoverished Jerusalem couple is visited by a pair of escaped convicts “become their guests (ushpezin) in the Sukkah”



2011:The disagreements and tensions within Hamas over the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap are reportedly pitting group detainees against each other in Israel's prisons. A website affiliated with Fatah reported today that great tensions emerged between Hamas prisoners from the West Bank and their counterparts from the Gaza Strip as result of the swap's characteristics.



2011:Bereaved families filed a petition with the High Court of Justice today, the first against the Gilad Shalit deal which will see 1,027 Palestinian prisoners being released in exchange for the Hamas-held soldier. They are claiming the deal is a "wholesale release of murderers" and have asked that the implementation of the exchange be delayed.


2012: The Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to sponsor a walking tour of Downtown Jewish Washington that will include a look at “the historic 7th Street, NW neighborhood from 1850 to 1950.”


2012: “Outsiders in Israel” and “Who Shot My Father” are scheduled to shown at the Syracuse (NY) Film Festival.


2012: History of Jewish Giving: Jews and Charity, a “symposium organized by Debra Kaplan, Yeshiva University and Judah Galinsky, Bar-Ilan University” is scheduled to take place in New York City.


2012: Today,the cabinet approved a resolution calling for new elections to be held in 101 days, on January 22, 2013.


2012:The Hezbollah drone that infiltrated the Negev last week beamed back live images of secret Israeli military bases, the Sunday Times reported today. According to the report, the drone was airborne for three hours before being intercepted by an F-16I jet. It is believed to have transmitted pictures of preparations for Israel's joint military exercise with the US, as well as ballistic missile sites, airfields and, perhaps, the nuclear reactor in Dimona, the Sunday Times reported.


2012(28th of Tishrei, 5773): Eighty-two year old Arlen Spector, long-term senator from Pennsylvania passed away today.



2012(28th of Tishrei, 5773): Eighty-seven year old broadcast magnate and philanthropist Joseph Rosenmiller passed away today. (As reported by Leslie Kaufman)



2012: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons, The Machine That Kills Secrets:How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information by Andy Greenberg and the recently released paperback edition of The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World by Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin.


2013: In Manhattan, the Israel Real Estate Exhibition is scheduled to come to a close.


2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Creating Identity: Yiddish across a Spectrum of Jewish Communities Today” featuring Isabelle Barrière and Sarah Benor


2013: Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eli Marom, who served as the commander of the Israeli Navy during Operation Cast Lead and during the raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara vessel, was held for questioning at around noon today at London's Heathrow Airport upon his arrival in Britain (As reported by YNet)


2013: Ten Jewish men were detained by police after they were accused of praying and bowing inside the Temple Mount enclosure on Monday morning (As reported by Stuart Winer)


2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center of Holocaust Education is scheduled to host “Ray of Hope Concert” with Alika Hope and Ray Morant.


2014: Tziporela, the award winning Israeli theatre is scheduled to perform its latest production, “Odd Birdz.”


2014: The Wiener Library is scheduled to host Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler and the First World War during which author Thomas Weber will present a picture of the German dictator’s military service which is at odds with the myth he created.


2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “The Haunted Sukkah.”


2014: “From Moses to Moses,” a three week course taught be Dr. Maurice Mirahi is scheduled to begin tonight at the JCC of Northern Virginia.


2014: Tel Aviv Noir, an anthology of Gadi Taub’s short stories published by Akashic Books is scheduled to go on sale today.


2014: In the first move to rebuild Gaza fifteen trucks of cement (600 tons), ten of steel (400 tons), and 50 of gravel  along with trucks from the West Bank filled with dates and bananas entered the coastal enclave today from Israel.(As reported by Avi Issacharoff and Marissa Newman)


2014: Sixty-two year old Berry Freundel the long-time rabbi at Kesher Israel Congregation in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. was arrested this morning and charged with voyeurism; a charge stemming from reports that he had placed a camera in the women’s mikvah.


2014: “A letter purportedly penned by slain journalist Steven Sotloff days before his murder was published in an Islamic State publication today, as the jihadists addressed the hostage’s Jewish identity for the first time connecting his death with his religious beliefs. (As reported by Marissa Newman)



2015(1stof Cheshvan, 5776): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2015(1stof Cheshvan, 5776: Ninety-four year old publisher Gerald Gross, the Jewish WW II veteran who is best known for his connection with Nazi leader Albert Speer passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2015: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “the first official event of Hilary, Toast the Term.”


2015: As part of the Tulane University Jewish Studies Speaker Series, Professor Ilan Tojerow is scheduled to speak in New Orleans.


2015: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present a Book Talk featuring Seth M. Siegel, author of Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution For A Water-Starved World


2015: This date is “a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA)” honoring Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky the Lithuanian born Jew who became “Anglican Bishop of Shanghai.”


2015: The Museum of Jewish Heritage is scheduled to host “The Picture – A Cinematic Concert.”


2016: In a testament to the vitality of small town Judaism in Iowa, at Agudas Achim, Boaz Abramoff is scheduled to participate in Erev Shabbat services as part of his “Bar Mitzvah weekend” while at Temple Judah Leah Dillon is scheduled to participate in Erev Shabbat services as part of her “Bat Mitzvah weekend.”


2016: “Carmel Shama HaCohen, Ambassador of Israel to International Organization wrote to Andres Roemer, Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO, expressing appreciation for his opposition to the resolution denying the Jewish connection to Israel and his willingness to walk out rather than vote for the resolution.


2016: Trumpeter Avishai Cohen is one of the musicians scheduled to perform the works of Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Mongo Santamaría, and Thelonious Monk at Lincoln Center.


2016: Four days after premiering at Gruman’s Chinese Theatre, “The Accountant” a crime thriller with a twist co-starring Jeffrey Tambor and Jon Bernthal premiered was released in the United States


2016: The “US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,” a national coalition of anti-Israel organizations, whose co-founder Anna Baltzer who “has declared that she is not opposed merely to any supposed Israeli occupation but to the very existence of Israel itself” is scheduled to begin it annual conference in Arlington, VA.


2016: Michael Worbs, “the chair of UNESCO’s Executive Board said” today that “he was sorry about the resolution passed by UNESCO” yesterday “ignoring Jewish ties to Jerusalem’s sites.”


2017(24th of Tishrei, 5778): Bereshit – The cycle begins again


2017: In the UK, The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Shacharit Services followed by a Shabbat luncheon.


2017: Dance Tel Aviv is scheduled to host the second performance by Compagnie Thor “directed by Belgian dancer Thierry Smits.”


2017: Theo Epstein’s Chicago Cubs take on the Dodgers in their quest to get to the World Series where they will hope to prove that last year’s victory was not a fluke.


2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center and the Chicago YIVO Society are scheduled to host “Grand Tango Duo: From Tango to Klezmer,” a “special concert honoring the memory of Chicago music teacher, Sarah Lazarus, featuring a performance by Carl Algermissen, piano, and Ethan Lazarus, cello.”


2018: The Breman Museum is scheduled to a preview reception for its newest exhibition, “Vedem Underground: The Secret Magazine of the Terezin Ghetto (1942-1944)”.


2018: In Portland, ME, “the Cantor Kurt Messerschmidt Memorial Fund and the Jewish Community Alliance” are scheduled to “present DIVAS ON THE BIMA Live in concert.”


2018: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg and Deviationby Luce D’Eramo


 

This Day, October 15, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 15

586 BCE (16th of Cheshvan, 3176): King Zedekiah was blinded and taken into captivity. He was the last king of Judea. Zedekiah’s ("Tzidkiyahu") original name was Matanya. He was torn between the two great powers of Egypt and Babylon. Unfortunately, Egypt under Hopra was no match for Nebuchadnezzar who pushed out the Egyptians and laid siege to Jerusalem. Zedekiah tried to flee from Jerusalem but was captured along with his sons in Jericho. He ended his life in a Babylonian prison.


412: Theophilius passed away clearing the way for Cyril an anti-Semite who had incited a Greek mob to kill Jew to become Patriarch of Alexandria.


912: Abdullah ibn Muhammad, Emir of Córdoba passed away. Abdullah passed away just when Cordoba was on the brink of becoming a major center of Jewish culture and learning.  Menahem ben Sharuk, the great grammarian was two years old when the Emir passed away and Hasdai Ibn Shaprut would not be born until three years after his birth.  The rise of Cordoba as a Jewish center coincided with its reemergence as a power on the Iberian Peninsula.


1218: Birthdate of Hulagu Khan, the Mongol rule who conquered Palestine in 1260 who showed toleration to all three major religions – Jews, Christians and Moslems – and whose invasion of Persia in 1255 led to the creation of the Ilkhanate, a portion of the Mongol Empire where much to the relief of the Jews “the rulers abolished the inequality of dhimmis, and all religions were deemed equal.”


1485: At Soncino, Italy, Joshua Solomon Soncino printed “The Former Prophets” with a commentary by Kimhi.  [Kimihi probably refers to David Kimihi, the 13th century rabbi known as RaDak.  But it cannot be said with certitude that it does not refer to his father Rabbi Joserph Kimhi and his brother Rabbi Moses Kimhi.] The Soncinos were a family of Sephardic Jews who had begun operating printing presses in the town of Soncino, Italy in 1483.  Yes the town was the inspiration for the last name.


1582: Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year was followed directly by October 15. The change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar helps to explain the challenge in matching dates on the Hebrew calendar with the dates on the civil calendar.


1585: Birthdate of Louis Cappel, the French Huguenot Scholar “accepted the chair of Hebrew at Samur” at the age of 28 who “made a special study of the history of the Hebrew text, which led him to the conclusion that the vowel points and accents are not an original part of the Hebrew language, but had been inserted by the Massorete Jews of Tiberias, no earlier than the 5th century.”


1655(Tishrei, 5416): The Jews of Lublin, Poland were massacred


1733: Birthdate of Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal the native of Hebron who is reported to have been the first rabbi to visit the colonies that would become the United States of America.


1737: After a slave denounced them to the Holy Office, Portuguese dramatist António José da Silva and his wife “were both imprisoned on the charge of ‘judaizing’”


1739(13th of Tishrei, 5500): António José da Silva “was garroted and burnt at a Lisbon auto-da-fe.” Born in 1705, he “was a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu)”



1742: Lea Eleonora Oppenheimer, the wife of Wolf Wertheimer ben Simon passed away today in Vienna.


1764: Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his classic history of the Roman Empire, Gibbon had the following to say about the Jewish people. (Editor’s Note: This long entry has been included to help readers decide if Gibbon was an anti-Semite in the sense that we understand that term.  Also, by reading Gibbon you may gain a greater understanding of the variety of views held by English men women when it comes to the Jewish people.  After all, this is designed as a learning experience, not just a collection of dates.


In Chapter XVI, Gibbon wrote:


“Rebellious Spirit of the Jews: Without repeating what has been already mentioned of the reverence of the Roman princes and governors for the temple of Jerusalem, we shall only observe that the destruction of the temple and city was accompanied and followed by every circumstance that could exasperate the minds of the conquerors, and authorize religious persecutions by the most specious arguments of political justice and the public safety. From the reign of Nero to that of Antonius Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives;(1) and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of the legions against a race of fanatics whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but of human kind. The enthusiasm of the Jews was supported by the opinion that it was unlawful for them to pay taxes to an idolatrous master, and by the flattering promise which they derived from their ancient oracles, that a conquering Messiah would soon arise, destined to break their fetters, and to invest the favorites of heaven with the empire of the earth. It was by announcing himself as their long-expected deliverer, and by calling on all the descendants of Abraham to assert the hope of Israel, that the famous Barchochebas collected a formidable army, with which he resisted during two years the power of the emperor Hadrian


Toleration of the Jewish Religion: Notwithstanding these repeated provocations, the resentment of the Roman princes expired after the victory, nor were their apprehensions continued beyond the period of war and danger. By the general indulgence of Polytheism, and by the mild temper of Antonius Pius, the Jews were restored to their ancient privileges, and once more obtained the permission of circumcising their children, with the easy restraint that they should never confer on any foreign proselyte that distinguishing mark of the Hebrew race.(4) The numerous remains of that people, though they were still excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honors, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from the burdensome and expensive offices of society. The moderation or the contempt of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical policy which was instituted by the vanquished sect. The patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers and apostles, to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the Sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded by the Mosaic law or enjoined by the traditions of the Rabbis, were celebrated in the most solemn and public manner. Such gentle treatment insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behavior of peaceable and industrious subjects. Their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of over-reaching the idolaters in trade, and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom.


The Jews Were A People Which Followed The Christians, a Sect Which Deserted the Religion of Their Fathers: Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed, however, the free exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them is simple and obvious, but, according to the sentiments of antiquity, it was of the highest importance. The Jews were a nation, the Christians were a sect: and if it was natural for every community to respect the sacred institutions of their neighbors, it was incumbent on them to persevere in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the precepts of philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously enforced this national obligation. By their lofty claim of superior sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations they might deserve their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind, and it was universally acknowledged that they had a right to practice what it would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favor or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of the Pagan world. To their apprehensions it was no less a matter of surprise that any individuals should entertain scruples against complying with the established mode of worship than if they had conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language of their native country.


1780: Birthdate of Eva Meijer, the sister of Abraham David Meijer and Jonas Daniel Meijer, the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands and a leader in the fight to gain full rights for all Dutch Jews.


1786(23rdof Tishrei, 5547): Simchat Torah


1787: In the Netherlands, the Jews of Amersfort including Benjamin Cohen celebrated today as a holiday because the Orange forces liberated the town.


1794(21st of Tishrei, 5555):Hoshanah Rabah


1809: In Mecklenburg, Jacob H. Marcus and his wife Judy Levi gave birth German lawyer and political leader Lewis Jacob Marcus.


1809: Birthdate of Friedrich A. Philippi, the son of a wealth Jewish banker who converted to Christianity following a pattern similar to that of the Mendelssohn family with which he was friends.


1818(15thof Tishrei, 5579): Sukkoth


1819(30thof Tishrei, 5580) Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1819(30thof Tishrei, 5580): Seventy-seven year old “a Hessian Jew who came to the Thirteen Colonies as part of the British Army that occupied New York and who served as Chazan for Shearith Israel while deciding to stay in the newly created United States where he was a leading member of the New York business and Jewish community passed away today.



1821: Birthdate of German poet Moritz Hartmann.  Hartmann was as well known for his political activities as for his poetry.  He was a liberal and took part in the revolutions that rocked Europe in the 1840’s.  “Hartmann's poems are often lacking in genuine poetical feeling, but the love of liberty which inspired them, and the fervor, ease and clearness of their style compensated for these shortcomings and gained for him a wide circle of admirers.”


1824(23rdof Tishrei, 5585): Simchat Torah


1824: In Mt. Pleasant, NY, Charity and Jacob da Silva Solis gave birth toSarah Miriam Carvalho, the wife of Solomon Nunes Carvalho.


1828: Five days after he had passed away, Joseph Moses, the son Mordecai Moses, was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”


1829(18thof Tishrei, 5590): Chol HaMoed Sukkoth


1829(18thof Tishrei, 5590): Twenty year old Hindel Henriette Warburg passed away today.


1830: Birthdate of London native Samuel Cohen who migrated to New South Wales in 1853 after which he established a successful business at Ulmarra where he also served as Mayor before returning to Sydney where he served on the Board of Management of the Great Synagogue, the Jewish Board of Education and as President of the Sir Moses Montefiore Jewish Home.


1831: In Alsace-Lorraine, Rabbi Mayer L. Eppstein and his wife gave birth to Elias Eppstein, the Bonn trained student of Rabbi Mertzig and author of “Confirmant’s Guide” and “Bible Evens” who served as rabbi at congregations “in Jackson, Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Kansas City, Missouri and Philadelphia, before settling in at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Quincy, Illinois.


1833: In Wurttemberg, Germany, Bernhard Frankfurter, the son of Mirjam Landauer and Moses Levi Frankfurter and Esther Frank gave birth to Wilhelmina Frankfurter


1834: Birthdate of Stuttgart, Germany native Leopold Adler, the husband of Rose Adler, who settled in Chicago, Illinois.


1835(22nd of Tishrei, 5596): Shemini Atzeret


1843(21st of Tishrei, 5604): Hoshana Rabah


1843: Three days after he had passed away, Solomon Rees, the son of Nathan Rees and the husband of Elizabeth Rees with whom he had three children – Abraham, Philip and Maria – was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”


1844: Birthdate of Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher. According to some Nietzsche was an anti-Semite.  In reality, his big complaint against Judaism was that it gave rise to Christianity.  Nietzsche’s sister and brother-in-law were anti-Semites.  Nietzsche did not approve of them or their politics.  However, the Nazis misrepresented his beliefs.  After Nietzsche’s death, his sister became the keeper of his literary estate and she was only too glad to bend it to fit Hitler’s will.


1849: Three days after he had passed away, Bohemian born Nathan Altman, the husband of “Brina” Altman with whom he had two children – Sampson and Michael – was buried today in the “PlymouthHoe Burial Ground.”


1851: In New founding of Shaare Brocho whose members included Rabbi Gabriel Hirsh, Nathan Weill, Emil Boris, Herbert Dahlman, and Jacob Dankel.


1852: Seventy-four year old Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, one of the “fathers modern gymnastics” who gained infamy in English-speaking countries through the publication of Peter Viereck's Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind  in which he claimed Jahn was the spiritual founder of Nazism” – a claim that was disputed by  “Jacques Barzun who  observed that Viereck's portrait of cultural trends supposedly leading to Nazism was "a caricature without resemblance" relying on "misleading shortcuts.”


1854(23rdof Tishrei, 5615): Simchat Torah


1855:  The New York Times reported that Mlle. Rachel has returned from performing in Boston and is scheduled at the Academy of Music on nights when the opera is not being performed. Mademoiselle Rachel is Elizabeth-Rachel Félix, the daughter of Alsatian Jews who was prominent actress as well as the mistress to prominent Europeans including at least one member of Napoleon I’s family.


1859: Birthdate of “Austrian physician, medical author and dramatist” Alois Pick.


1861: At their regular meeting which was held today, the Board of Councilmen (of New York City) examined a report from the Board Alderman that favored donating thirty thousand dollars to the Hebrew Benevolent Association “, for the erection of a building for the poor and orphans of that persuasion.” It was opposed by Mr. Lent who contended that the city had already done its share by donating the land on which the building was to be erected. The donation was supported by Mr. Barney, who proposed that the money should be paid in installments based on the progress of construction without more than 25 per cent to be paid at any one time. Following further discussion, the whole subject was referred to the Finance Committee.


1861: Philadelphian Samuel Goodman began serving as a 2nd Lieutenant in Company P of the 28th Regiment.


1861: Jacob Hassler, who rose to the rank of First Sergeant, began a four year hitch with Company D of the 92nd Regiment of the Ninth Cavalry.


1862(21st of Tishrei, 5623): Hoshana Rabah


1862: Birthdate of Odessa native Benjamin Calechman, the husband of the former Miriam Markman and father of Samuel Calechman.


1863: Michael Simeon married August Phillips today.


1863: The Board of Alderman met today and adopted the Report of Committee on Donations and Charities that appropriate steps be taken to ensure that a lot adjacent to the Orphan Asylum of the Hebrew Benevolent Society would become the property of the Hebrew Benevolent Society.


1863: Three days after she had passed away, Lydia Bauman, a toddler who was the daughter of David and Sarah Bauman was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1864(15th of Tishrei, 5625): Sukkoth


1866: In Merkine (Meretz), Hinde Bernstein and Isaac Margolis gave birth to Max Leopold Margolis the Lithuanian-born American philologist whose accomplishments included serving as “editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Bible into English, the finished product being published in 1917.”



1867(16thof Tishrei, 5628): Second Day of Sukkoth


1867(16thof Tishrei, 5628):


1869: Ralph Peixotto and his wife gave birth to American painter Ernest Peixotto. who “studied at the Académie Julien in Paris for five years under Benjamin Constant and Jules Lefèbvre.” After which his was exhibited in the Paris Salon and the 1893 Columbian Exposition..


1871(30th of Tishrei, 5632) Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1871: An article published today entitled “English Jews” reported that the Jews of the United Kingdom are “divided into two sects- orthodox and reformers.” The Orthodox are led by Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom who delivered a sermon declaring “that the oral law and written law are equally Divine.  The Reform or Liberal Jews are led by Professor David Woolf Marx.  A smaller group, they use a synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square.  Their numbers are described as “very small” and “the services lifeless.”  According to four speeches given by Professor Marx, the Reform believe in the “sufficiency of the law of Moses as the guide of Israel.”  The article goes on to describe, in some detail, the Jewish dietary laws and Sabbath, which it finds a joyful in event. In the end, among English Jews, their ritual is “little better than an empty shell.” For example Jews pray for next year in Jerusalem but would not move if given a chance to down and Jews pray for blessings on the Royal Family while ignoring the Parliament yet most Jews are Liberals.


1871: Following yesterday’s Shabbat sermon in which Rabbi J.J. Lyons made an appeal for financial aid for those who have suffered during the Great Chicago Fire, a committee is scheduled to meet today at the West Nineteenth Street Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue to discuss how to disperse the expected large number of contributions.


1872: Birthdate of Mrs. John D. Levy the St. Louis native who for two decades was a leading comic opera star performing under the name of Della Fox.


1873: At today’s meeting of the Free Religious Association, Jewish author and editor Moritz Ellinger said that it was “eminently proper that the Jewish religion” should be a part of the association since “it was found upon reason, had not priests, but only teachers.  It had no creed, but simply belief in a creator, and did not point men to a future rewsard, but to a reward on earth.  He argued…that the Jewish religion was not based on miracles.”  Finally like other members of the association, “Jews did not look toward the past for their Savior, but kept their face toward the future.” [The Free Religious Association was formed two years after the Civil War.  Its leaders sought to “emancipate religion from dogmatic traditions” and supernaturalism.  Non-Orthodox Jews were drawn to the organization which included Quakers, Unitarians agnostics and theists.]


1874: Birthdate of Galicia native Selma Kurz, the Austrian soprano who debuted at a concert at Vienna in 1895.


1875(16th of Tishrei, 5636): Second Day of Sukkoth


1875: School Board member Fritz A. Meyer introduced a resolution at tonight’s meeting of the Board of Education in Union Hill, NJ, to abolish the mandatory reading of the Bible at the start of each school day.  Besides raising constitutional issues, the resolution points out the fact that the Bible being used is not the text of the Catholics or the Jews and this makes the activity a matter of sectarian religious practice.


1877: “Fine Arts In America,” an article published today comments on the works of several 19th century artists including Washington Allston’s “Jeremiah” which is owned by Yale University.  The  work has many fine points, but the artist has failed “to express the exaltation of an inspired prophet.” You may judge for yourself at



1878: In New York City, Sarah Weiler or Wheeler, the widow of a rabbi, was tried on charges that she had abducted a 16 year old girl named Mary O’Connor for immoral purposes and had compelled her “to commit an act of self-abasement.”  She was sentenced to two years in the state prison after having been found guilty of one of the two counts of the indictment.


1878: Birthdate of Robert Bloom who made his way from Lithuania to Ireland to Alaska where he “was a founder of Congregation Bikkur Cholim in Fairbanks” and “chairman of Alaska’s Jewish Welfare Board.”



1880: “Whipped With Cat-O’-Nine-Tails” published today described the decision rendered by Justice Kilbreth in the case of Mrs. Lizzie Wenke who was accused of horse-whipping Isaac Stern a fellow Jew living in the tenement at 192 Broome Street.


1881: The London Telegraph reported that the Turkish governor of Jerusalem has received orders from the Sultan to resume work on the restoration of the Temple of Solomon which had stopped five years ago after having been begun by Sultan Abdul Aziz.


1881: “Work of the Young Hebrews” published today provided a summary the annual report issued by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.  The Association has about a thousand members, sponsored 8 lectures and has accumulated a library of 2,016 volumes.  The executive committee called for a fair to raise funds for a new building and “grand Chanukah ball” to be held at the Academy of Music.


1881: It was reported today that in New York, “an assignment for the benefit of creditors, by Hirsch Levy to Isidore Hirsch, with $600 preferences” has been filed in the County Clerk’s office.


1882: “Plays and Actors” published today included a dispute over the portrayal of the Jewish characters in Edward Harrigan’s new play, “Mordecai Lyons.”  A Jewish correspondent disparaged it as “another Jew play” which is coarse at best while others contend that “the Jewish part of this drama” is thought to be “serious and valuable.”


1882: “Varied Old World Topics” published today described conditions in Germany. Surprise was expressed that the “anti-Semitic agitation is gaining ground.”  Some of the support may be coming indirectly from Chancellor Bismarck would be using to it intimidate the Jews “who have been opposing his program on financial matters.”


1882: “Religious Ideas” published today described the anomaly that “Christianity was founded by Jews, preached by Jews and died for by Jews, yet Jews are the only people living directly and always within its influence upon whom, in 1,800 years, that creed has made no impression at all.”


1882: “A Riot Among the Russian Jews” describe events surrounding an outbreak of violence among the 400 Jewish immigrants temporarily housed on Ward’s Island.  The violence broke out during mealtime when Jacob Rabota, a native of Warsaw protested the way they were being fled.  The attack was in reaction to ill-will between the Jews and the staff brought on by mistreatment sanction by the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent. Rebbec Bochtel told those investigating the matter “a pitiful story of maltreatment” that “was corroborated by other women.”


1882:”Suit About A Play” published today described litigation surrounding “Siberia,” a drama about “the persecution of the Jews of Russia” written by Barley Campbell.  Plaintiffs Imrl and Bolossi Kiralfy claim they provide Campbell with the idea for the play and he agreed to write it so that they could perform it.


1883: Three days after she had passed away, Elizabeth Levy, “the youngest daughter of Joseph Levy and the former Hannah Isaacs” was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”


1884: It was reported today that Smyrna, which is second only to Constantinople “as an eastern centre of commerce” has population of 250,000, 30,000 of whom are Jews.


1886: In Lithuania, Isaac Margolis and Hinde Bernstein gave birth to Max Leopold Margolis who served as Professor of Biblical Philology at Dropsie Colliege from 1909 until his death in 1932.


1887: Russian native Solomon Altfeld and his wife Eva Levin Alffeld gave birth to Joshua Hensel Altfeld, the husband Goldie Altfeld and older brother of to Emanuel Milton Altfeld, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1914 to 1916 and a member of the Maryland State Senate from 1930 to 1934 who was the author The Jew’s Struggle for Religious and Civil Liberty in Maryland


1887: It was reported today that another 100 Jewish families have been expelled from Kiev.


1888: Democrat Martin Foran’s victory in the election for the 21st Congressional District from Ohio was reportedly due in part to his Republican opponent having lost the support of Jewish voters in the district.


1889: In Great Britain the press has reported that Baron Hirsch is negotiating with Lord Cholmondeley for the purchase of Houghton Hall estate.  The purchase will probably cost the Baron 300,000 English pounds.  Baron Hirsch's desire to purchase the estate in England may have been stimulated by "the snub he recently received from the French Jockey Club."


1890: Ferdinand Forzinetti was named commandant of military prisons in Paris, a position he held when Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned.  Later Dreyfus would credit him as one of the people who dissuaded him from taking his own life and "who knew how to combine the strict duty of a soldier with the highest feelings of humanity."


1890: Birthdate of Leib Kvitko, the Ukrainian born Yiddish poet who was a member of the Jewish Ant-Fascist Committee, an organization Stalin supported as a vehicle to gain foreign support for the Soviets during WW II.  Stalin repaid him for his efforts by making him one of the victims of the “Night of the Murdered Poets.”




1890: In Teleneşti, Bessarabia Governorate, then a part of the Russian Empire, Simcha Alter and Rivka Gutman gave birth to their fourth child Israeli painter, sculptor, and author Nachum Gutman who moved to Palestine in 1903, attended the Herzilya Gymnasium in 1908 and began studying at the Bezalel School in 1912.



1892: The Sisters of Israel Benevolent Society which meets on the last Sunday of the month was founded today in Portland, OR.


1892: Kinloch Cooke is named editor of the Pall Mall Gazette following its purchase by the Lowenfield syndicate, which according to unsubstantiated rumors is backed by Baron Hirsch.  Furthermore, other rumors include reports of a desire of members of the Jewish community to gain control of this or some other major English publication.


1893: The Jubilee Celebration of B’nai B’rith is scheduled to end this evening with services at Temple Beth-El followed by a business meeting.


1893: Colonel J.E. Bloom, the manager of the Baron de Hirsch Trade School defended his decision to “turn out” five students from their boarding house without warning because they had refused to follow the school’s rules and the school felt no obligation to support young men undermining the school.


1893: A review of “The Woollen Stocking published today described the addition of a “the Jewish politician who ‘pulls together’ with the Irish” as the newest character added to this comedy.


1894(15th of Tishrei, 5655): Sukkoth


1894: “Literary Notes” published today described the publication by A.C. Armstrong & Son of The Historical Geography of the Holy Land  by George Adams which provides an outline of Palestine that includes six maps prepared by John George Bartholomew.


1894: Col. Alfred Dreyfus was first arrested.  This marked the start of what would become known as the Dreyfus Affair.


1894: Birthdate of Moshe Sharett, second Prime Minister of Israel. Born Moshe Shertok in the Ukraine, Moshe Sharett emigrated to Palestine in 1908 where  his family was one of the founders of Tel Aviv  Sharett was the first Foreign Minister of Israel.  He was a key figure in establishing the Armistice Agreements that ended with a Jewish victory in the War for Independence.  When Ben Gurion resigned as Israel’s fist Prime Minister in 1953, Sharett was the logical choice to succeed him.  He was ousted by Ben Gurion in 1956 and he returned to the Foreign Ministry.  He passed away in 1965.


1894: Justice McMahon dismissed that assault case brought by Nathan Hirsch in Yorkville.


1894: John Shevlin who had been arrested by Officer Grier after he saw him lead a crowd chasing and beating two old Jews was released from custody when the victims could not be found to appear at the Jefferson Market Police Court.


1894: Louis Rothschild was elected treasurer of the newly formed Cloak and Suit Manufacturers Association whose 85 members met tonight and voted not to “entertain any communications from any of the trade unions.”


1895(27thof Tishrei, 5656): Nineteen year old William Nelken, the son of Sam and Sarah Nelken passed away today.


1895: In Ukraine, Jacob and Rose Maidman gave birth to Irving Maidman the husband Byrdie Maidman who settled in the United States and who should not be confused with the real estate mogul of the same name who passed away in 1979.


1895: At a meeting held at Tammany Hall this afternoon, it was agreed that Jacob A. Cantor would be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the Twentieth Senate District.  Before entering politics, Cantor, the son of two Jews from London, was a newspaper man and lawyer.  He would go on to a successful political career that would include serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.


1896: Birthdate of Newark, NJ native, Minna Wright who gained fame as “painter and printmaker” Minna Citron, the wife of businessman Henry Citrion



1897: In Warsaw, Adolph and Natalia Lieberman gave birth American literary agent and accused Soviet espionage agent Maxim Lieber.


1897: Herzl publishes his article "Mauschel" in Die Welt. Die Welt was the name of a weekly publication founded in 1897 by Theodor Herzl in Vienna as organ of the Zionist movement. In the article entitled “Mauschel” Herzl did not deny that the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jew had a basis in reality.  Rather he identified the stereotype with the Jewish opponents of Zionism and used it against them.


1897: It was reported today that all of the anti-Semitic candidates have prevailed in the “municipal elections in the province of Constantine, Algeria.”


1897: It was reported today that Jewish leaders have “published a formal protest” against a proposed made by the vice mayor of Vienna denying Jewish judges the right to “administer the oath to Christians” because “the Jews were unable to comprehend the moral and religious opinions of the Christian community.”


1898: Birthdate of Boris Aronson, the native of Kiev who became a Tony Award winning scenic designer.



1898: Theodor Herzl was invited to a private audience with Kaiser Wilhelm today when the Kaiser stopped in Constantinople for a State visit. The Kaiser asked Herzl what he wished him to ask of the Sultan:’ “A Chartered Company – under German protection,” was Herzl’s request.


1898: “The new home of the Hebrew Infant Asylum of the city of New York” is scheduled to “be fully furnished and ready for occupancy” today.


1900: Birthdate of Fritz Feilchenfeld, the native of Berlin who gained film as actor Fritz Feld whose career began in Germany and ended in Hollywood.


1900: Birthdate of New York dermatologist Samuel Peck.



1900: In San Francisco, Edna (née Armer) and Harry LeRoy gave birth to director and producer Mervyn LeRoy whose career began in 1923 with a silent film version of “The Ten Commandments” and including directing one of the best films ever made “Mr. Roberts.”


1901: Birthdate of Kiev native Louis “Kid” Kaplan the Connecticut resident who won the World Featherweight Championship in 1925 but was never able to become Lightweight Champion because both of the titleholders refused to fight him.


1903: Alabama born, New York lawyer and judge, Joseph M. Proskauer married Alice Naumberg today after which they had three children – Frances, Ruth and Richard.


1903: The Newark Young Ladies Zion Society met today and elected new officers including “President, Mrs. A.B. Pilpoul; Treasurer Miss Ida Stein; and Recording Secretary Miss Dora Varitz.”


1906; Major Alfred Dreyfus took command of the artillery unit at St. Denis, a northern suburb of Paris.


1906: The Anglican Bishop of Shangai, a convert from Judaism named Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky passed away today.


1906: Bruno Alfred Döblin, a German-Jewish author and doctor best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz took up a position at the Berlin psychiatric clinic in Buch where he worked as an assistant doctor for nearly two years.


1906: The Executive Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis held its second meeting “since the closing of the Indianapolis Convention.”


1907: Birthdate of Varian Fry, known as the American Schindler for his gallant rescue of those fleeing Hitler and the Nazis. . Some of those he saved were Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt and Alma Mahler. In 1995 Varian Fry became the first United States citizen to be listed in the Righteous Among the Nations at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem (in 2006, fellow Americans Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp were added to the list). He was awarded the additional honor of "Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel" on 1 January 1998. The film Varian’s War provides a cinematic treatment of Fry’s wartime activities



1907(7thof Cheshvan, 5668): Seventy-four year old award winning French astronomer Maurice (Mortiz) Loewy passed away today.


1909(30thof Tishrei, 5670): Mrs. Hinde First passed away today.


1909: Birthdate of American astronomer Jesse Leonard Greenstein.


1909: Birthdate of German-born British-Australian mathematician Bernhard Hermann Neumann.


1910: In their third game of the season, Georgia Tech scored its third straight vicotyr with Albert Lorch “Al” Loe, known as “the Yiddish Wildcat” at “Center.”


1909(30thof Tishrei, 5670): Mrs. Hinde Solomon First passed away today.


1911(23rd of Tishrei, 5672): Simchat Torah


1911: At the request of David Levontin, Director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, Jews assemble to pray for the welfare of the Sultan and for victory of the Turkish Army. 


1912(3rdof Cheshvan, 5673): Mrs. Elke Jakobsohn passed away.


1912(3rdof Cheshvan, 5673): Max Kohn, “a communal worker from Pueblo, CO” passed away today at Chicago, Illinois.


1912(3rdof Cheshvan, 5673): Fifty-four year old Prussian born “German American organist, conductor and composer” Max Spicker, the choir director for Temple Emanu-El and “an honorary member of the Society of American Cantors” passed away today.


1914: As the Germans and Allies continued their respective “races to the sea” which could have ended the war in weeks instead of years, the BEF clashed with the German 4th Army during the Battle of Amentieres.


1915: Birthdate of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir.


1915: It was announced today that “the Jewish conference called for by the American Jewish Committee to consider…what American Jews may do when the war ends to” ensure the rights of their co-religionists in Europe which was to be held in Washington later this month has been canceled.


 


1915: “It was announced today that thirty or more ministers” including several rabbis “will visit Public School 45 to examine experimental work under the Gary plan.


1915: In New York, “the New Synagogue” the newest “of the liberal congregations” found in the city is scheduled to hold its first services tonight, erev Shabbat, led by Rabbi Ephraim Frisch.


1915: In Portsmouth, VA, Reb Yisroel Gifter and his wife gave birth to Mordechai Gifter, the future rosh yeshiva of the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio.


1915: Louis D. Brandies of Boston is identified as the attorney leading the opposition to the increase in freight rate charges that the railroads are presenting to the Interstate Commerce Commission.


1916: As of today, “The Joint Distribution Committee of which Felix M. Warburg is Chairman…has to date received more than $5,942,000.


1916: In Boston, “resolutions advocating the establishment of a permanent American Jewish Congress at Washing and demanding that Jewish rights be guaranteed in the peace parliament at the close of the European War were adopted at today’s session of the annual convention of Poalei Zion Association of America.”


1916: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis was re-elected today President of the Zion Association of Greater Boston” following which the organization pledged a $10,000 fund “for the relief of Jews in Palestine and the maintenance of Jewish institutions in that country.


1916: “The Women’s Proclamation Committee, the national women’s organization for Jewish Relief” which is chaired by Mrs. Samuel Elkes” reported today “that there have been many responses” several of which have been “generous” “to the appeal recently issued throughout the United States.”


1916: “Recent efforts by political supporters of President Wilson to line up the Jewish vote for his re-election” by calling for the creation of a Ten Thousand Club to which each Jew would contribute a dollar for the Wilson campaign have resulted in 26 prominent Jewish leaders, some of whom support Wilson to issue, today, “a protest against such mixing of religion or race and politics.”


1917: In Columbus, Ohio, Arthur M. Schlesinger, the historian who was Jewish and his wife the former Elizabeth Harriet Bancroft who was not Jewish gave birth to historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.



1917: Kaiser Wilhelm whose earlier trips to the Middle East had led to Herzl’s hopes of having him back his Zionist project made his third and final trip to Constantinople.


1917: Rabbi Samuel Schulman, argued against the calling of an American Jewish Congress that would be seeking to protect the rights of Jews at a peace conference ending the World War saying that “America’s victory in the war…will mean a great and friendly help for procuring the rights of Jews all over the world and I consider it the duty of every American who loves his country to follow the counsel of those who intimate that it would be best if the congress were postponed.”


1918: While serving the Headquarters Company, 307th Infantry, Sergeant Max Goldstone overcame the darkness of night, heavy artillery fire and intense machine gun fire, ran a telephone line to Grand Pre making it possible for the units to remain in contact with one another.


1919(21stof Tishrei, 5680): Hoshana Raba


1919(21stof Tishrei, 5680): Ray Perlman, the daughter of Abraham A. Perlman “one of the founders and directors of the New York Uptown Talmud Torah Association and the brother of Jess Perlman the “former Resident Director of the Jewish Educational Alliance in Baltimore” and the current Executive Director of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Montreal, passed away today.


1920: “Pogrom Protest” published today described plans for a group of prominent Jewish rabbis and business men to lead a delegation on “pilgrimage to Washington to persuade President Wilson to take effective steps to pogroms in Poland.”


1922(23rd of Tishrei, 5683): Simchat Torah


1922: In Newark, NH, “a homemaker and a businessman” gave birth Lorraine Gordon who gained fame as Lorraine Gordon, jazz aficionado and owner of the Village Vanguard. (As reported by Tim Weiner)



1923: Birthdate of Walter Zacharius, the Brooklyn native, “who rode the passion-swollen wave of romance fiction in the early 1980s to build the Kensington Publishing Corporation into a leading purveyor of bodice-rippers and other romance genres…” (As reported by William Grimes)


1925: In Atlanta, GA, Leon Leo Solomon Hexter, the son of Max and Sarah Hexter and his wife Rachel Schwartz gave birth to Robert Maurice Hexter.


1925: Having blown a three to one lead, the Senators led by infielder Buddy Myer lost the seventh and final game of the World Series.  (The hapless Nats would make it back to the series one more time before drifting into the mediocrity and futility that showed my brother in me when we to games in the 1950’s on Briggs Kids Days)


1926: Birthdate of French philosopher Michel Foucault who would eventually quit the French Communist Party for “its prejudices against Jews and homosexuals.”


1927: Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen was mortally wounded while standing on a street corner during a turf war with Jacob Shapiro and Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.


1928: “The Republic of Flappers” a silent movie directed by David Constantin and filmed by cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum was released today in Jerusalem.


1929: In Terre Haute, Indiana, wholesale poultry dealer Stanley Dreyfus and his wife, the former Irene Lederer gave birth to Hubert Lederer “Bert” Dreyfus, the University of California philosophy professor who wrote What Computers Can’t Do.



1930(23rd of Tishrei, 5691): Simchat Torah


1930(23rdof Tishrei, 5691): Seventy-eight year old Sir Hermann Gollancz, the German born “British rabbi and Hebrew Scholar’ who “was the first Jew to earn a doctor of literature degree from London University” and “the first British rabbi granted a knighthood” passed away today.


1930: Dr. Drummond Shiels, Under-Secretary for the Colonies left Palestine today with “a long memorial” from the Society of Young Christians “in which they protested against Moslem demands for the abolition of the British mandate in Palestine. 


1930: Birthdate of Heiko Augstinus Oberman author of Luther: Man Between God and the Devil who noted that Rabbi Josel of Rosheim’s attempt to get relief from John Frederick’s anti-Jewish decree “as being significant in Luther's attitude toward the Jews: "Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther's career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews;"yet, Oberman contends that Luther would have denied any such "turning point." Rather he felt that Jews were to be treated in a "friendly way" in order to avoid placing unnecessary obstacles in their path to Christian conversion, a genuine concern of Luther.”


1930: The High Commissioner put an end to the proceedings against six Jews who had been arrested at Tel Aviv for protesting against Dr. Drummond Shiels when he arrived in Palestine last week.  The prisoners were released to a joyful crowd who had been angered by reports that Shiels supported creation of Parliament in Palestine that would guarantee Moslem rule and put an end to the creation of a Jewish homeland as promised by the Balfour Declaration.


1931: Saloonkeeper Heinrich Bowe was shot and killed and three Nazi Storm Troopers were wounded in clash with a group of Communists that would lead to their trial when Hitler came to power and was looking for examples of the threat posed by “Jewish-Marxists.”


1931:In the Bronx, NY, Alfred Epstein, a pharmacist from Poland and Eva Epstein, a former modern dancer from Russia, gave birth to Edmund Lloyd Epstein, “a literary scholar who, as a book editor in the late 1950s, was so taken by a well-reviewed but not especially popular first novel by a largely unknown British writer that he decided to reprint it in paperback, thus enabling the extravagant American success of “Lord of the Flies” and its author, the future Nobel Prize winner William Golding…” (As reported by Bruce Weber)


1932(15thof Tishrei, 5693): Sukkoth is observed for the last time during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover.


1935: Former U. of Michigan star football player Harry Newman, “announced today that he had changed his mind and signed a new contract so he could continue playing for the New York Giants.”


1935: Wilhelm Frick, Minister of the Interior called for codifying laws that would impose legal restrictions on Jews taking part in trade and industry.  The Nazi rise to power and the early days of the final solution were all couched in terms of the German legal code.  The Nazis hid their evil behind a façade of laws.


1936: “Great indignation has been aroused” in Bucharest “by the ordinance issued by the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist Vice Premier Ion Inculetz forbidding any instruction in the Jewish faith in the Rumanian schools.”


1936: As demand for his work dwindled and the Nazis rose to power Hungarian photographer André Kertész arrived in New York today with his wife Elizabeth having decided to accept an offer to work at the Keystone Agency.


1936: Today, “at a luncheon at the St. Moritz Hotel, Israel Silverman, the national chairman of the United Synagogue’s newly organized Committee to Combat Religious Indifference in America” presented “a plan to reawaken religious interest through a national adult and educational program” which will attract more people “will be attacked to the synagogues of America.”


1936: “Armistice in Palestine” published today described a truce that had been reached in Palestine ending “the general strike of Arabs against the British authorities intended to force the discontinuance of Jewish immigration” thanks to the efforts of the “Arab Kings of Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Trans-Jordan.”


1937: In Portland, Maine, “opera singer” Lucille (née Potter) Lavin and “businessman” David J. Lavin gave birth to comedic actress Linda Lavin who played the wisecracking waitress on the television hit “Alice.”


1937: “Double Wedding” a comedy produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with a screenplay by Jo Swerling was released in the United States today by MGM.


1937: David Feuerwerker, French born rabbi and resistance leader began his service in the French Army which would earn him the Croix de Guerre with a bronze star.


1937: “Fit for a King” a comedy produced by David L. Loew was released in the United States today by RKO.


1937: The Palestine Post reported on the end of the temporary cease-fire, and an intense revival of the Arab anti-Jewish and anti-British terror activities throughout the country. Bullets and bombs hit Jewish transport, buses in particular. The Iraqi Petroleum Company pipeline was damaged and the oil flowing from Iraq set on fire near Beit She’an. A passenger train from Haifa and a goods train were derailed. The settlements of Ginegar, Afula, Rosh Pina, and Migdal Tzedek were exposed to persistent firing and 12 Jews were injured. Telephone lines were cut. The authorities closed the Syrian border and imposed a curfew in Jerusalem.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that Jewish students in Warsaw went on strike to protest against the


Introduction of the so-called "ghetto benches" on the left side of the lecture halls at Polish universities.


1938: The Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” directed by Elmer Rice opened on Broadway today at the Plymouth Theatre.


1940: The Great Dictator, a satiric social commentary film by and starring Charlie Chaplin, was released. The film was a satiric attack on Hitler, Mussolini and fascism.  Chaplin felt so strongly about the need to expose the threat posed by the Nazis and their allies, that he was willing to break his film silence.  The Great Dictator was his first “talkie.”


1940: A memorial dedicated today by Henrietta Szold established a clinic at the Children’s Village in hone of Allice Lillie Seligsberg who had passed away in August of 1940.


1941: The Nazis began the first mass deportation of German Jews to Eastern European ghettos.


1941: As of today, “the Nazis had murdered up to 30,000 of the approximately 60,000 Jews that had not been able to flee Latvia before the German occupation.”


1941: According to a proclamation, Jews caught outside the Polish Ghetto walls could be put to death.  I am not sure what this entry really means considering the plight of the Jews of Poland at this time.


1942: An SS Aktion is undertaken against Jews of Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland that would last until October 21.  During this time untold numbers of Jews are shot in their homes and 22,000 are deported to the Treblinka death camp.


1942: The Nazis murdered 2,000 Jews living in the second ghetto at Bar in the Ukraine.


1942: The Nazis murder 25,000 Jews from Brest-Litovsk, Belorussia. Jewish resistance, led by Hana Ginsberg, attempts to fight back.


1943: Birthdate of Stanley “Stan” Fischer, the native of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia who became a leading economist and vice chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.


1944: Birthdate of Haim Saban, the native of Alexandria, Egypt whose family moved to Israel in 1956 who became a successful businessman there and the United States.


1944: Joseph Bau, who had been at Gross Rossen, was sent to Brunnitz where he went to work in the Schindler factory which made him one of those on “Schindler’s List.”


1944: Truce talks between the Hungarians and the Allies collapsed.  The Arrow Cross, a Hungarian fascist organization regained power through a coup. A Hungarian Nazi, Ferenc Szálasi, is installed as regent. There are 170,000 Jews still alive in Hungary out of a half million that had been alive at the beginning of the year.  After a three month period without deportations to the death camps, this remnant was once again vulnerable as potential fodder for the Nazi killing machine.


1944: Adolph Eichmann who had been called back to Germany when there was a halt in the deportations of Hungarian Jews, “was back to Budapest” today to finish his original mission.


1944: The Germans emptied Plaszow Camp at Cracow.  Included in the evacuation were 700 of the Jews protected by Oscar Schindler. They were sent to the concentration camp at Gross Rosen. Schindler managed to retrieve these Jews, claiming the essential nature of their contribution to his factory and the war effort. Schindler also fought for release of 300 other of "his" Jews who were sent to Auschwitz.


1945:  Execution of Pierre Laval former premier of Vichy France.  Laval was one of history’s more vile characters.  At the same time, he was the fall guy for Vichy.  Marshall Petain, the famous French Marshall who was the head of the Nazi puppet state was spared.  The French could not bring themselves to punish the hero from World War I.


1945: The Alsos Mission, part of the Manhattan Project, of which Samuel Goudsmit served as the scientific leader came to an end today.


1945: In a press conference at Tel Aviv, David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared that “Judah will arise anew as an independent state and the Jews will return freely to their own land.” In a statement that was construed to mean that the Yishuv was developing a shadow government that would assume official authority when the British left Palestine, Ben-Gurion said “Palestine’s Jews will have ‘to constitute a kind of state before the final and orderly state machinery comes into being.’”


1945: As part of the movement to bring Jewish refugees to Palestine, despite the British blockade, two ships capable of carrying more than 13,000, were in the Black Sea preparing to load Jews from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.


1946: Hermann Goering Nazi Reich marshal who had been found guilty at Nuremberg beat his scheduled date with the hangman.  He poisoned himself.


1946: “Child of Divorce,” the first film directed by Richard Fleisher was released in the United States today by RKO.


1946: The Paris Peace Conference came to an end during which the Allies – U.S., U.K., U.S.S.R. and France – “negotiated peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland” but not Germany.


1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1947(1st of Cheshvan, 5708): Eighty year old Abram I Elkus, a distinguished New York attorney and former ambassador to Turkey passed away tonight. 



1948: Following numerous violations of the UN Truce by Egypt, the Israel Army and Air force took the offensive and launched Operation 'Yoav. Since the UN would not act the Israelis felt compelled.  In addition to the immediate tactical considerations, the strategic goal of Operation 'Yoav' was to open a corridor to the Negev, cut the Egyptian lines of communications along the coast and on the Beersheba-Hebron-Jerusalem road, isolate and defeat the Egyptian forces, and ultimately to drive them out of the country.


1948: “Hostilities began today, when Israeli troops assigned to Operation Yoav took the offensive to the south, opposite Egyptian army positions in the northern Negev.


1948: Yigal “Alon led a flight of three S-199s from Herzliya (four had been planned but one went unserviceable) over the Mediterranean, where they met up with two C-46 bombers and two C-47 bombers (three were planned, but only two had been armed in time). The fighters took up station ahead of and below the bombers as the formation continued out to sea until the shore disappeared from sight. The planes turned south, then back east to approach the the target, Gaza, from out of the sun. The attack run was co-ordinated with two other groups: 103 Squadron's two Beaufighters and an escort of three 101 Squadron Spitfires attacked the Egyptian airfield at Al Arish and 69 Squadron's three B-17s bombed Majdal.”


1948: Gaza, Majdal and Beith Hanun were bombed, and part of the Air Force at El-Arish was put out of action. This action kept most of the Egyptian frontline fighters out of the skies and gave the IDF air superiority for the first time.


1949(22nd of Tishrei, 5710): Shemini Atzeret


1950: David Ben Gurion resigned as Prime Minister of Israel forcing the formation of a new government.


1951(15th of Tishrei, 5712): Sukkoth


1951: Eight months after premiering in the United Kingdom,  “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, directed and co-produced by Albert Lewin who also wrote the screenplay and featuring Abraham Sofaer was released in the United States today.


1951: During the 1951 general election, Herbert Samuel became the first British politician to deliver a party political broadcast on television when he appeared before the cameras today.


1952: Arthur Laurents’ “The Time of the Cuckoo” directed by Harold Cluman opened on Broadway at the Empire Theater.


1953: Birthdate of actor Larry Miller, the native of New York and husband of Eileen Conn who attended the bat mitzvah of Gail Barnum, the daughter of Joel Barnum and Amy Barnum of blessed memory while he was in Cedar Rapids filming “The Final Season.” (As reported by Joel Barnum)


1954: “Sabrina” a chic comedy produced, directed and co-authored by Ernest Lehman Billy Wilder was released for general showing to theatres across the country.


1956: On the day in which Iraqi troops entered Jordan in what Israel saw as a menacing move, Ben Gurion ordered a partial mobilization of Israeli forces and told the Knesset that “Israel reserves to herself freedom of action.


1958(1stof Cheshvan, 5719): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1958(1stof Cheshvan, 5719): Samuel Bass, the husband of Rena Bass passed away today after which he is buried at the Ahavas Sholom Congregation Cemetery.


1959: Filming of “The Lost World,” the movie version of the novel by the same name, directed and co-produced by Irwin Allen who co-authored the script was scheduled to begin today


1960: Ninety-year old German movie star Henny Porten, who refused to divorce her Wilhelm von Kaufmann her Jewish husband when the Nazis came to power which all but put an end to her career and any chance they had of getting out of the country passed away today.


1962: Louis Katz, who would be known as “Mr. Katz” went to work for the Forward


1964: Sir Gerald David Nunes Nabarro completed his services as an MP for Kidderminster.


1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Fifth day of Sukkoth


1965(19th of Tishrei, 5726): Sixty-four year old Israeli mathematician Abraham Frankel, the first Dean of Mathematics at Hebrew University passed away today.



1965: The Dodgers and Sandy Koufax won the 7th game of the World Series.


1965: Stevie Wonder recorded “For Once in My Life” written by Ron Miller, a Jew who had the unlikely claim to fame of having gotten his big break writing songs for Motown.


1966: Broadway composer Moose Charlap and singer Sandy Stewart gave birth to jazz pianist William Morrison Charlap.


1968(23rd of Tishrei, 5729): Simchat Torah


1968: The most popular recording of Ron Miller’s “For Once in My Life” was released today.


1969: Birthdate of game show host Paige Davis.


1970(15th of Tishrei, 5731): Sukkoth


1970: Final day of publication for The American Examiner which traces its origins back to the American Hebrew, which first appeared in 1879.


1971: Premiere of “A Safe Place” directed and written by Henry Jaglom and produced by Bert Schnieider.


1973: During the Yom Kippur War, start of the Battle of the Chinese Farm which “was fought in the Sinai, north of the Great Bitter Lake and just east of the Suez Canal near an agricultural research station” which the Israeli soldiers incorrectly thought was the home to equipment from China.


1973:  During the Yom Kippur War, General Arik Sharon led an attack on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal. Joined by Generals Adan and Magen, within a week the IDF cut off the main road from Cairo to Suez and surrounded Egypt’s 3rd Army. The hold on the West Bank greatly improved Israel's negotiating position with the Egyptians and the morale of the country.  Regardless of how one may feel about Sharon’s politics, he was a bold general.  His successful cross canal attack completely changed the military equation of the Suez War.


1973: Binyamin Livne and Rahamim Sofer were taken prisoner after their F-4E Phantom Jet was shot down by either a MiG or Egyptian anti-aircraft fire.  Tragically, Sofer would die while being held prisoner.


1973: For the valor he displayed in destroying an enemy position today in the Sinai, Sergeant Moshe Levi was awarded Israel’s Medal of Valor.


1975: The President of the Soviet continued his visit to Tunisia as part of the Russian plan to increase their influence with the Arab governments dedicated to the destruction of Israel.


1976(21stof Tishrei, 5737): Hoshana Raba


1976:Harlan County, USA, a 1976 Oscar-winning documentary film covering the "Brookside Strike", an effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky in 1973 directed and produced by Barbara Kopple” was released in the United States today.


1977: Two people were injured in two bombings today in Jerusalem.


1980: It was reported today that “1,030 Soviet Jews had emigrated from the U.S.S.R during September of 1980: Sixty-two year old Cecil Aonowitz, the son of Morris and Ethel Aronowitz was buried today.


1980: Seventy-eight year old Alexander Mach the pro-Nazi Slovak leader “who was sentenced to thirty years for his collaboration” passed away today. (As reported by Sam Goldpaper)


1981: “The KGB and police conducted searches in the homes of Pavel Abramovich, Natalia Khasina, Yulii Kosharovskii, and Leonid Tesmenitskii, activists involved in teaching and spreading knowledge of the Hebrew language.”


1981: “Forty Moscow Jews appealed to President Leonid Brezhnev demanding the release of all those detained for attempting to pay their respects to Nazi victims at Babi Yar


1981: After premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, “The Evil Dead” a horror film directed by Sam Raimi who co-authored the script was released today in the United States.


1985(30thof Tishrei, 5764): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1985(30thof Tishrei, 5764): Fifty-nine year old basketball guard Max Zaslofsky who starred for St. John’s and the professional New York Knicks lost his battle with leukemia today.



1986(12thof Tishrei, 5747): Seventy-seven year old Marcus Samuel, 3rd Viscount Bearsted, the son of Dorothy Montefiore (Micholls) and Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted who succeeded to his father’s titles after going up to Oxford and earning the rank of Major while serving with the Warwickshire Yeomanry during WW II, passed away today.


1987: In Ottawa Canada, former Penn State tennis player Nathan Levine and his wife gave birth to Canadian-American professional tennis player Jesse Levine


1988: The Summer Olympics in which Hagai Zamir competed on the Volleyball Team, opened in Seoul, Korea today.


1989: Having finally been granted an exit visa by the Soviets, refusenik Ida Nudel arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport where she was met by “Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as well as her sister, Elena Illana Fridman, and thousands of Israelis.”


1989: In Justice v Justice, Bernard Schwartz reviewed The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Civil Liberties in Modern America.



1990: Michael Douglas Bell began serving as Canadian Ambassador to Israel.


1992: Title to Temple Israel in Leadville, CO passed from the William H. Copper Family Trust


1995(21st of Tishrei, 5756): Hoshana Rabah


1999: After premiering two days ago, Rob Reiner’s “The Story of Us” was released to the rest of the United States.


1999:  Marquette University Law School Dean Howard Eisenberg delivers a speech entitled “What's a Nice Jewish Boy Like Me Doing in a Place Like This? Some Thoughts on Spirituality, the Legal Profession and Religious Diversity” at a Law School retreat.


2000(16th of Tishrei); Second Day of Sukkoth; first day for blessing the Lulav & Etrog


2000: The New York Times featured reviews of Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas, Off Camera Private Thoughts Made Public by Ted Koppel and Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach by Martha C. Nussbaum


2000(16th of Tishrei, 5761): Second Day of Sukkoth


2000(16th of Tishrei, 5761): Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Konrad Emil Bloch passed away.  Born in Germany in 1912, Bloch fled Nazi Germany in 1934.  He arrived in where he furthered his education while serving on the faculties of Yale Medical School, Columbia, the University of Chicago and Harvard.  He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1964 with Feodor Lynen for their discoveries related to the regulation of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.


2003(19thof Tishrei, 5764): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2003(19thof Tishrei, 5764): Fifty-eight year old French Jewish philosopher Benny Lévy, the last personal secretary of Jean-Paul Sartre passed away today.



2003: Academy Awarded nominated “Mystic River,” featuring Emmy Rossum, Ari Graynor and Eli Wallach was released today in the United States.


2003: Golda's Balcony, starring Tovah Feldshuh, opened at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre In this one-woman show, Feldshuh plays the role of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Golda's Balcony is set during 1973's Yom Kippur War. It splits between those events and reflections upon Meir's life, from her childhood in Milwaukee to her role in founding the Jewish state. Golda Meir is certainly not the only dramatic Jewish woman that Feldshuh has played during her illustrious Broadway career. Feldshuh has earned three Tony nominations for best actress, including the title role in Yentl (1975). She has also won four Drama Desk Awards, including one for Golda's Balcony. Her roles on television have included a Czech freedom fighter in Holocaust (1978), a role for which Feldshuh was nominated for an Emmy. She has appeared in a number of movies, including Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and A Walk on the Moon (1999). Feldshuh is also a supporter of Seeds of Peace, a non-profit organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict. She is a recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitas Award, the Israel Peace Medal, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's Jewish Image Award.  


2003: Three Americans were killed and one wounded at the Beit Hanoun junction in the Gaza Strip when a massive bomb demolished an armor-plated jeep in a convoy carrying U.S. diplomats and CIA personnel. Both the militant Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements denied responsibility for the attack.


2004: Susan "Susie" Essman “performed at the Friars Club roast of Donald Trump, in which she lampooned the tycoon.”


2004: “Being Julia” directed by István Szabó was released in the United States today by Sony Pictures.


2005:  Haaretz reported that dozens of Jewish worshippers attacked the head of the Israel Defense Forces Manpower Branch Major General Elazar Stern at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem on Friday night. Stern was in civilian dress when he came to pray at the Western Wall, accompanied by his family. Worshippers surrounded him, yelling insults, and attempted to prevent him from reaching the wall. Though police officers immediately surrounded him, the worshippers began throwing stones and other objects in his direction. Stern was not hurt, and a police officer lightly wounded in the head did not require medical treatment. The attackers were apparently motivated by Stern's role in Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, completed last month.


2006: Police said that complaints that five women had filed against Moshe Katsav “would not be pursued because the statute of limitations had run out.


2006: Ten years after his death Sam Ash, who 1924 founded what became Sam Ash Music Corp. “the larges family-owned chain of musical instrument stores in the United States” “was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame” today.


2006: The Los Angeles Times book section features a review of The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews by David Mamet.


2006: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Through The Children’s Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn


2006: “Pelech,” a unique progressive Torah/Talmud based educational opportunity for women in Israel, marks its 40th anniversary.


2006: Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann, the Israeli-American scholar who won the Nobel Prize for economics last year, said this week that Israel may not be capable of continuing to exist in the long-term. "Too many Jews don't understand why they are here," said Aumann, who moved from the United States to Israel in the 1950s and helped found the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an interdisciplinary research body that focuses on game theory. "If we don't understand why we are here, and that we are not America or just a place in which to live, we will not survive," he said in a speech at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel on Sunday. "The desire to live like all the nations will sustain us maybe another 50 years, if we are still here."


Aumann said one of the primary reasons for the recent war in Lebanon was national fatigue and quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as having said that Israel is tired of wars and sacrifices. "Fatigue, in the State of Israel's situation, will lead to death, as occurs with mountain climbing," said Aumann. "If a mountain climber is caught on the side of a mountain and it starts to snow, if he falls asleep, he will die. He must remain alert." Aumann, who lost his son Shlomo in the first Lebanon war, accused Israelis of being overly sensitive to casualties of war. "We are too sensitive to our losses, and also to the losses of the other side," he said. "In the Yom Kippur War, 3,000 soldiers were killed. It sounds terrible, but that's small change." In addition, said Aumann, last summer's disengagement from the Gaza Strip was a "tactical and ethical mistake" that gave the Palestinians the wrong message and was another factor leading to this summer's Lebanon war. "Looking at the other side is an important element of game theory," he said. "The Arabs' understanding in the wake of the expulsion was that they had succeeded, and that they have to continue on the same path. The expulsion, therefore, brought about the launching of Qassams on Israel and the abduction of the soldiers. The expulsion transmitted the message that we can be moved even from Tel Aviv, and not just from Gush Katif.""Last summer we set back peace and understanding with our neighbors by at least 10 years," said Aumann. "After the expulsion, no words will convince them that we intend to stay here forever."


2007: In Washington D.C., Nextbook Presents: Shalom Auslander, Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir, as part of the Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.


2007: The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to three Americans Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and Roger B. Myerson, a professor at the University of Chicago.


2007: Time magazine reviewed Foreskin’s Lament by Sahlom Auslander.  “Behind the worst title of the year lurks one its best memoirs.…”


2008(16th of Tishrei, 5769): Second Day Sukkoth 


2008: An “article in today’s Washington Postanalyzing the origins of the economic crisis claims that AlanGreenspan vehemently opposed any regulation of derivatives, and actively sought to undermine the office of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when the Commission sought to initiate regulation of derivatives.


2008: In “Seeking Have on Earth” Mike Boehm previews the performance of The Disappearance by Ilan Stavans.



2008: Today, GMAC, of which Bernard Madoff’s buddy J. Ezra Merkin served as Non-Executive Chairman, “had $173 billion of debt against $140 billion of income-producing assets (loans and leases), some which are almost worthless, in addition to GMAC Bank’s $17 billion in deposits (a liability) which meant that even if GMAC liquidated the loans and leases, it couldn’t pay back all of its debt.”


2009(27th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-nine year old toy collector Donald Kaufman passed away.


(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



2009: The Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the National Security council issued a new, more sever warning today against traveling in India.  The warning comes a month before the anniversary of the November, 2008 Mumbai attacks which an attack on the Chabad House.


2009: The Library of Congress hosts a discussion of the illustrated volume "Herblock: The Life and Works of the Great Political Cartoonist," published to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of syndicated cartoonist Herbert Block, with its editors Haynes Johnson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and Harry Katz, curator of the Herb Block Foundation Collection and the editor of "Cartoon America: Comic Art at the Library of Congress. The retrospective, published in cooperation with the Library of Congress, coincides with the library's new exhibition, "Herblock!,"


2009: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” is performed at Kimmel Theatre on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon Iowa. The production is based on Wendy Kesselman’s acclaimed new adaptation of the play that makes thoughtful use of recently recovered segments of Anne’s diary to deepen our understanding both of the cultural context of the events and to present a much more complex (and less sentimental) Anne.


2009: Israeli poet Efrat Mishor reads at The Mill in Iowa City, IA.


2010: Holocaust historian leads a noon time discussion at the University of Iowa Hillel in Iowa City.


2010: Mort Fertell is scheduled to speak at the Friday night dinner following the MesorahDC traditional Shabbat service at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.


2010: A major Berlin museum is launching an exhibition that seeks to explore how Adolf Hitler won and held mass support among Germans for his destructive regime."Hitler and the Germans — Nation and Crime," which opens today at the German Historical Museum, juxtaposes the Nazis' propaganda images and artifacts such as 1930s Hitler busts with footage and documentation on the regime's brutality and Germans' involvement in it.


2010: It took seven years to write and just a few days to sew together, but today the first Torah scroll written entirely by a group of women was attached to its wooden poles and declared complete. The ceremony was held at Seattle’s Kadima Reconstructionist Community, which sponsored the project.


2010: Tomer Chelouche reviewed The Arab Jew From Algeria by Joanna Paraszczuk


2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Batsheva Esther Kanievsky, the wife of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, oldest daughter of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and granddaughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, passed away today.


2011(17th of Tishrei, 5772): Seventy-nine year old super-agent Sue Mengers passed away today (As reported by Michael Cieply)



2011: The Season’s Opening Concert, featuring the “Four Seasons” 1s scheduled to take place at the Eden Tamir Music Center. What better way to celebrate the joys of Sukkoth than to listen to Vivaldi in Jerusalem!?


2011: Israeli gymnast Alexander Shatilov won a bronze medal at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Tokyo this morning, securing a place at the London Olympics in 2012. Shatilov, Israel's leading male gymnast, tied third in floor exercise to Diego Hypolito of Brazil, with a score of 15.466. Japan's Kohei Uchimura, who on Friday night became the first man in history to win three all-around titles, took the floor exercises title with 15.633 points. This was his second gold medal in about 18 hours. Zou Kai, the Beijing Olympic and 2009 world floor champion, won the silver medal with 15.500 points. Shatilov, who won Israel's first-ever World Championship medal in 2009, will be Israel's great Olympic hope, when he sets out for London in 2012.


2011: Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Kiryat Shmona today, in solidarity with economic demonstrations being held around the world..


2011: The Justice Ministry this evening gave President Shimon Peres' office the list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be pardoned and released as part of the Gilad Shalit exchange deal, with the recommendation of Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman.


2012: The ARZA Board and Leadership Council Annual Meeting is scheduled to come to an end.


2012: As Hadassah members gather to celebrate its 100th anniversary the Keepers of the Gate Reception is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem


2012: The YIVO institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present  a lecture by Victoria Sake Woeste entitled  ” Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle against Hate Speech.”


2012: Alvin E. Roth was awakened at the three o’clock this morning by a phone call that told him he was a co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science.



2012: Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today that he is currently refraining from drafting into the IDF yeshiva students, who have until now been receiving military service deferrals, until after elections, despite the current lack of any legal framework for them to avoid national service following the expiration of the Tal Law in August.


2013: As part of the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, Judy Blume is scheduled to participate in a discussion of Tiger Eyes, the first of her books to be turned into a movie.


2013: A dynamic ensemble comprising strings, winds, harp and piano which is part of the Israeli Chamber Project is scheduled to perform at the Merkin Concert Hall


2013: Glenn Greenwald announced and The Guardian confirmed that he was leaving to pursue a "once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”


2013: Members of the Netzah Yehuda, (Nahal Hareidi) Brigade captured Arab terrorists who had infiltrated the community of Eina.  Troops have been extra vigiliant since the shooting of 9 year old Noam Glick and and the murder of retired IDF Colonel Seraya Opher – events that have taken place within the last ten days.


2013: Bob Filner, the former Mayor of San Diego who was forced to resign because of his outrageous sexual antics pleaded guilty today “to a felony and two misdemeanors for unwanted physical contact with three women at public events.”


2014(21stof Tishrei, 5775): Hoshana Rabbah


2014: “Fury” a WW II epic co-starring Shia LaBeouf, Jon Bernthal and Jason Isaacs was shown for the first time at the Newseum.


2014: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is scheduled to present a lecture by Yvette Walczak, “a Polish child survivor who will speak about her experiences growing up in Poland, the Soviet invasion and later her escape with reference to her autobiography ‘Let Her Go!’,


2014: “The Kehilla Residential Programme will hold its fourth annual “Sukkahville” international design competition at Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto today to draw attention to the issue of affordable housing in the Toronto area.”


2014: “Bitain’s official Jewish leadership condemned Sir Alan Duncan MP, a former vice chairman of the governing Conservative Party for recent comments in which it said he “likened those expressing any support for settlements to anti-Semites, sexists and homophobes.”


2014: “Thousands of Jews were undeterred by the early pre-dawn hour and cold today as they made their way through the Old City of Jerusalem to the Kotel (Western Wall), for vatikin prayers at dawn on the seventh and final day of Sukkot, Hoshana Raba.”


2015: In Alexandria, VA, Congregation Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a screening of “Above and Beyond” the story how a gusty group of American volunteers helped to found the IAF and provide the IDF with air-cover in the War for Independence.


2015: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host a presentation by Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers on Academic Freedom and Anti-Semitism.


2015:Hundreds of Palestinians entered the Joseph's Tomb compound in the West Bank town of Nablus late today and set it on fire, severely damaging the Jewish holy site in what Israel called a "despicable" act.


2015: Historian Simon Michael Schama appeared on the British “debate program Question Time.”


2015: “Transforms, a five-part event on fashion, design and art is scheduled to open at the Jaffa Port.”


2015: The Jerusalem Music Center is scheduled to present a Tribute Concert honoring Marcel Goldmann.


2015: As part of B'nai B'rith UK's European Jewish Heritage Days, the Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host a screening of “David/Daoud.”


2015: In New Orleans, a week-long screening of “Rosenwald” is scheduled to come to an end today.



2016(13th of Tishrei, 5777): Parashat Ha’azinu


2016: In Cedar Rapids, IA seventh grader Leah Dillon is scheduled to be called to the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah.


2016: In Jerusalem, the Eden Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host its “Season’s Opening Concert”


2016: As part of the “Bridge to Beethoven” program, pianist Shai Wosner, is scheduled to perform at Washington Irving High School.


2016: The West End Synagogue is scheduled to host “a musical celebration of Shabbat” for children featuring Cantor Ayelet Piatigorsky, Rabbi Nadia Gold and a revolving crew of Jewish educators and musicians


2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jews and/or of special interest to Jewish readers includingGrant, a biography about the great Civil War general by Ron Chernow and the recently released paperback edition of ADHA Nation:Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic by Alan Schwarz


2017: Agudas Achim is scheduled to host a housewarming party for Rabbi Hugenholtz is has just completed here first holiday season of services in Iowa and her family.


2017: Miriam Fishkin whose family was deported to Siberia by the Soviet Secret Police during WW II is scheduled to describe her childhood ordeal at the Breman Museum in Atlanta.


2017: The Holocaust Museum and Education Center is schedule to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Babiy Yar Massacre, with a program featuring music by Fifth House Ensemble, and readings and signings by Survivors featured in Never Heard Never Forget, a new, joint publication of Holocaust Community Services, Illinois Holocaust Museum, and Reklama Media Group.


2017:In the 59th Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture New York Times columnist Roger Cohen is scheduled to discuss “German-Jewish History in the 21st Century.”


2018: In Jerusalem, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled the “Concert Lecture Series – Musiversity” featuring pianists Ariel Halevy and Dr. Dror Semmel.


2018: As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “community in Chicago is scheduled to host a luncheon featuring an address by “Benjamin Ferencz, Nurember prosecutor” while honoring “Peter Hayes and Father John Pawlikowski with the National Leadership Award for their commitment to Holocaust memory and education.”


2018: The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, IA, is scheduled to host “an evening with Ambassador Daniel Shapiro” who “was named Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Tel  Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies in March of 2017.”


2018: The Jewish Book Council is scheduled to host “a discussion between Margalit Fox, author and former NY Timesobituary writer and Ruth Franklin. (Editor’s note – this is must-attend event!  Fox’s obits are literary gems and are truly the “first draft of history.”  On top of this, she is a very patient, kind person who takes the time to answer a reader’s question.)


 


 


 

This Day, October 16, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 16


521 BCE (10th of Tishrei): Darius, the Persian monarch under whose rule the Second Temple was completed, and six companions killed another claimant to throne and cemented his position as ruling monarch.



912: Abd-ar-Rahman III began his reign as Emir of Cordoba. The Emir appointed Hasdai ibn Shaprut to serve as his physician.  Their relationship developed to the extent that the Jewish physician became the confidant and advisor to the Muslim ruler.



976: Sixty-one year old Al-Hakam II the second Caliph of Córdoba, whose subjects included Enoch Ben Moses, who followed his father as Rabbi of Cordoba and whose students included Samuel ha-Nagid passed away today.



996: Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim who “ordered…Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks” began his reign today.



1384: Jadwiga, the youngest daughter of Louis I of Hungary is crowned King of Poland. In 1385, she married Wladislaus II which meant that Lithuania was united with the kingdom of Poland. Now the rights enjoyed by Polish Jews would be extended to Lithuanian Jews.



1529:Suleiman the Magnificent gives up on the siege of Vienna which means that a large section of central Europe and all of Western Europe will remain under Christian domination as opposed to becoming part of Muslim Empire.



1649: The American colony of Maine passed legislation granting religious freedom to all its citizens, on condition that those of contrary religious persuasions behave acceptably.  This early evidence of religious tolerance demonstrates why Jews would flourish in the land that would become the United States.



1655(Tishrei, 5416): Joseph Solomon Delmedigo a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist passed away. Born in Candia, Crete in 1591 he moved to Padua, Italy, throughout most Europe and north Africa, and finally died in Prague. Yet in his lifetime wherever he sojourned he earned his living as a physician and or teacher. His only known works are Elim (Palms), dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays. He followed the lectures by Galileo Galilei, during the academic year 1609-1610. Elim (1629, published by Menasseh ben Israel, Amsterdam) is written in Hebrew, in response to 12 general and 70 specific religious and scientific questions sent to Delmedigo by a Karaite Jew, Zerach ben Natan from Troki (Lithuania). The format of the book is taken from the number of fountains and palm trees at Elim in the Sinai Peninsula, as given in Numbers, xxxiii, 9: since there are 12 fountains and 70 palm trees at Elim, Delmedigo divided his book into twelve major problems and seventy minor problems. The subjects discussed include astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, and music theory. In the area of music, Delmedigo discusses the physics of music including string resonance, intervals and their proportions, consonance and dissonance.



1655(15thof Tishrei, 5416): Sukkoth



1655(15thof Tishrei, 5416): Sixty-four year old Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, passed away.  A native of Crete, he was known for his work as a philosopher, mathematician, physician and the author of Elim (Palms) a wide ranging tome on numerous scientific subjects. 



http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0005_0_05064.html



1656: Thomas Burton, who recorded Oliver Cromwell’s assurance to Antonio Fernandez Carvajal that Jews could return to England in his famous diary appeared before parliament where he successfully defended himself against “a charge of disaffection towards the existing government.



1753: Birthdate of Johann G. Eichhorn, the German Old Testament scholar who was a pioneer in "higher criticism," which evaluated Scripture through literary analysis and historical evidence, rather than by the unquestioned authority of systematized religious tradition as can be seen in his seminal work Introduction to the Old Testament.



1773: In Braunschweig, Rabbi Meyer Hall and his wife Hale gave birth to their third son Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg the director of the Jewish Samson School in Wolfenbuttel.



1777(15thof Tishrei, 5538): Sukkoth



1783: Birthdate of Jeanette Wohl, the native of Frankurt am Main who “was a longtime friend and correspondent of Ludwig Börne.”



1793: Judah Moses married Polly Levy at the Great Synagogue.



1794(22ndof Tishrei, 5555): Shemini Atzeret



1794: In London, Mosseh and Judith de Castro gave birth to Hananeel de Castro, the husband of Deborah de Jacob Mendes da Costa and President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews who was “among the first to urge Sir Moses Montefiore to journey to the East” to intervene during the blood libels at Damascus in 1840



1805(23rdof Tishrei, 5566): Simchat Torah



1810(18th of Tishrei, 5571): Fourth Day of Sukkoth



1810: (18th Tishrei), 5571  Nachman of Breslov also known as Reb Nachman of Bratslav, Nachman from Uman, or simply as Rebbe Nachman (in local Yiddish reb Nokhmen Broslever) passed away. “Born in 1772, he was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic dynasty.Born at a time when the influence of his great-grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov, was waning, Rebbe Nachman breathed new life into the Chasidic movement by combining the esoteric secrets of Judaism (the Kabbalah) with in-depth Torah scholarship. He attracted thousands of followers during his lifetime, and after his death, his followers continued to regard him as their Rebbe and did not appoint any successor. Rebbe Nachman's teachings continue to attract and inspire Jews the world over.”  Some of his most famous quotes are:



·         "It is a great mitzvah to be happy always."


·         "If you believe that it is possible to break, believe it is also possible to fix."


·         "And know that a person needs to traverse a very, very narrow bridge, but the fundamental and most important principle is to have no hesitation or fear at all…" (This saying has been set to music in Hebrew as the song Kol Ha-Olam Kulo


 For more information about Rebbe Nachman see the attached or go to http://www.breslov.org/



1812: Birthdate of Lazarus W. Powell, the Kentucky Senator who sought to have Congress condemn General Grant for issuing General Order No.11.  Powell was animated more by his anti-war views than he was by affection for the Jews.



1814: Simon Davis married Sarah Martin at the Great Synagogue today.



1826(15thof Tishrei, 5587): Sukkoth



1833: Benjamin Phillips married Rachel Faudel at the Great Synagogue today.



1835(23rdof Tishrei, 5596): Four-month Ada Isaacs Menken, can celebrate her first Simchat Torah



1836: Joseph Jones married Sarah Simmons at the Great Synagogue today.



1839(8thof Cheshvan, 5600: Gittel Rinkel Friedlander, native of Bohemia who had married Joseph Friedlander of Saxony through which she gained permission to become a resident of that Kingdom passed away today.



1840: In Philadelphia, Myer David Cohen and Judith Simha Sols gave birth to author, attorney and Civil War veteran Leon da Silva Solis-Cohen “the brother of Jacob da Silva Solis-Cohen and Solomon Solis-Cohen, and a grandson of Jacob da Silva Solis and the husband of Lucia Manness Ritterband, with whom he had two daughters (Jessie Myra and Gertrude) and one son (Leon Manness).”



1841: Founding of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  Today Queen’s University offersJewish Studies courses that may be taken as electives by any student, or as part of a Minor in Jewish Studies. The Minor can be the main focus of a three-year BA or a secondary focus in a 4-year Honours BA.” The University is also home to Queen's University Hillel, the Jewish Student Union.



1841(1st of Cheshvan, 5602): Rosh Chodesh



1841: In Germany, on a Shabbat that was also Rosh Chodesh Chesvan, Issac Bernays, the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg condemned the newly issued Prayerbook for the Israelites and the rabbis who had authored it.  This was part of dispute that had been taking place at The Hamburg Temple among the orthodox members and the reformers who were led by Gabriel Riessler.  It was part of larger dispute that was rocking German Jewry as it dealt with issues of Reform, Orthodoxy, and coping with modernity. (If this sounds familiar, it is since we continue to deal with these issues in the 21st century.  Considering the rancor and ill will that was created, some would say that the German experience in the 19th century is primer for how not to deal with these issues.)



1841: In Vilna, Feiwe Zunser and Ita Glasstein gave birth to poet and printer Eliakum Zunser, the husband of Feige Katzewitz who came to America in 1889 where he printed books of Hebrew poetry the most famous of which was Shirim Hadoshim.



1843(22nd of Tishrei, 5604): Jews observe Shemini Atzeret on the same day that Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard was published.



1844: Saul Samuel married Catherine Levy at the Great Synagogue today.



1845(15th of Tishrei, 5606): Jews in Texas observe Sukkoth for the first time as citizens of the United States since the citizens of what had been the Lone Star Republic approved the new constitution and the statute of annexation three days before.  Today, Houston, Dallas and Austin are home to three of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the United States.



1846: One day after he had passed away, 24 year old Israel Sampson, the son of Dutch born Levi Sampson and Sarah Sampson was buried today in the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”



1847:District Rabbi Jonas Wiesner and Estra (Therese) Wiesner Schur gave birth to their daughter Fanny Abeles Wiesner.



1849: In South Carolina, Lizar and Perla Sheftall Solomons gave birth to Cecilia Solomons and became Cecilia Solomons Abrahams when she married Edmund H. Abrahams with whom she had a son Edmund H. Abrahams, “a collateral descendant of Benjamin Sheftall.”



1851: “The News by the Mails” column published today reported that “The New York correspondent of The Republic replies to the animadversions of certain parties here, in relation to his former statement that there were no Jews on Wall Street.   The letter-writer substantiates his assertion by citing names, etc; and states that the fact was mentioned in order to prove that the Jewish people have no natural aptitude for the brokerage business, and are only driven into the money-dealing business by the disabilitities which shut them out of other honorable employment.



1854: Birthdate of Oscar Wilde, the Anglo-Irish author who is remembered as much for his sexual orientation as for his literary works.  In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde presents us with a Jewish theatre manager named Isaacs.  The depiction of the character can only be described as anti-Semitic.  One critic attributes Wilde’s creation of the character to a dispute he was having with the author George Eliot.  Since Eliot had created a sympathetic Jewish figure in one of her works, Wilde felt compelled to do just the opposite. 



1855(4th of Cheshvan, 5616): Seventy-seven year old Jeremiah Heinemann, the son of Rabbi Joachim Heinemann and the brother of Moses Heinemann who had published a translation of “Kohelet” passed away today.



http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0008_0_08690.html



1859: Abolitionist John Brown, whose followers included August Bondi, Jacob Benjamin and Theodore Weiner, leads the raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. http://www.theoccident.com/WildWest/san_francisco.html



1860:Rarely has the ‘opening lecture of the season’ been attended by so large and fashionable an audience as that which assembled at Clinton Hall this evening to greet R.J. De Cordova the popular humorist, and to listen to his new poem entitled a ‘Photograph of Broadway.’ The poem was one of Mr. De Cordova’s best efforts, and can hardly fail of having what the theatrical men term a successful run. All the salient points of the great New-York thoroughfare, -- its crowd of vehicles, and pedestrians, its churches, its theatres, its hotels, its mock-auction shops, its marble stores, its policemen, its dandies, its gamblers and its beggars, -- were hit off in a style at once humorous and sarcastic, that kept the audience in a constant roar of laughter.” Mr. De Cordova was a well-known Sephardic humorist, speaker and sometime investor who was quite popular with New York audiences – Jewish and non-Jewish alike.



1861:A. Eger, the Secretary of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco wrote to I.J. Benjamin that the congregation has “set aside the sum of $250 in order to assist you in your…journey to the Orient. (“I. J. Benjamin was a nineteenth-century Moldavian Jewish world traveler. His primary goal, his mission, was to be a "living link" between all the Jews in the world, "a maggid [traveling preacher] on a world wide circuit." He wrote Three Years in America, in German, for readers in Europe, most of whom had never been to the New World and would be very curious about it. He wrote it largely to raise money to fund his travels. As reported by Gabriel Steinfeld)



http://voices.yahoo.com/three-books-jews-american-west-516671.html



1861: During the Civil War, Henry Jacobs who would reach the rank of Lieutenant, began his service with Company F of the 51stRegiment.



1862(22nd of Tishrei, 5623): Shmini Atzeret



1862(22nd of Tishrei, 5623): As Jews observe Shemini Atzeret, Major General Ulysses S. Grant is given command of the Department of Tennessee.



1862(22nd of Tishrei, 5623): Seventy-eight year old Alexander Haindorf the physician, philanthropist and advocate for Jewish emancipation who was the first Jewish lecturer at Heidelberg passed away today.



1862(22nd of Tishrei, 5623): Seventy-eight year old Alexander Gove Village a physician who championed Jewish emancipation and co-founded the Westphalian Art Association in 1831 passed away today.



1867(17th of Tishrei, 5628): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed



1867(17th of Tishrei, 5628): Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport passed away.  Born in 1790, at Lemberg, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria, “he was a Galician rabbi and Jewish scholar.” “After various experiences in business, Rapoport became successively rabbi of Tarnopol (1837) and of Prague (1840). He was one of the founders of the new Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. His chief work was the first part of an (unfinished) encyclopaedia (Ereklz Millin, 1852). Equally notable were his biographies of Saadia Gaon, Nathan (author of the Arukh), Hai Gaon, Eleazar Kalir and others.Thrown upon his own resources about 1817, Rapoport became cashier of the meat-tax farmers. He had already given evidence of marked critical ability, though his writings previously published were of a light character—poems and translations. His critical talent, however, soon revealed itself. In 1824 he wrote an article for Bikkure ha-'Ittim on the independent Jewish tribes of Arabia and Abyssinia. Though this article gained him some recognition, a more permanent impression was made by his work on Saadia Gaon and his times (published in the same journal in 1829), the first of a series of biographical works on the medieval Jewish sages. Because of this work he received recognition in the scholarly world and gained many enthusiastic friends, especially S. D. Luzzatto. After the fashion in rabbinic circles, Rapoport was known by an acronym "Shir", formed by the initial letters of his Hebrew name Shelomo Yehuda Rapoport. Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport notes that according to the Masoretes there are ten vowel sounds. He suggests that the passage in the Sefer Yetzirah, which discusses the manipulation of letters in the creation of the world, can be better understood if the Sefirot refer to vowel sounds. He posits that the word sefirah in this case is related to the Hebrew word sippur ("to retell"). His position is based on his belief that most Kabbalistic works written after Sefer Yetzirah (including the Zohar) are forgeries.”



1869: Solomon Bibo arrived in New York from his native Prussia.  This was the first leg of a journey that would take him to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he would join his brothers Nathan and Simon.  Yes, Jews played an active role in life of what we now call “the Old West.”



1869: Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women.Gertrude Himmelfarb, the wife of Irving Kristol and mother of Bill Kristol, may have been one of the most famous Jews to have studied Girton College which she attended on a fellowship after World War II.   Today, Griton is home to one of the UK’s Judaica collections and its Theology and Religious Studies program includes course work on the Old Testament; World Religions including a separate paper on Judaism  (separate papers on Indian religions, Islam and Judaism) and Jewish and Christian Responses to the Holocaust.



1869: The President of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco, CA, sent a letter to Israel J. Benjamin, also known as “Benjamin the Traveler" who was spending time in the city that informing him that the congregation had voted to give him $250 to help defray the costs of his travels.


1870: Charles August Lauff, an early settler of Marin County and his wife Maria J. Sebran, the daughter of Gregorio and Ramono Briones gave birth their son Marcius tdoay.



1870:”The New Jewish Ritual” published today described the changes being instituted by Raphael Lewin, the rabbi at Temple Israel in Brooklyn.



1871(1st of Cheshvan, 5632): Six days after the Great Chicago Fire came to an end Jews in the Windy City observed Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan



1872(15th of Tishrei, 5633): Sukkoth



1872: Birthdate of Buffalo native Julius Ullman who practiced medicine in his home town for more than sixty years.



1872:“Succoth- The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles” published today reported that “last evening witnessed the commencement of the Jewish feast of Succoth, or Tabernacles, which continues for eight days.” The article goes on to report that the first two and last two days are full holidays while the intermediate days are called Chol Hamoed and “are of no special import. The article continues with a description of the Thanksgiving aspect of the festival as well as the “extemporized booth” in which “the pious Israelite, surrounded by his family, takes his meals” in this “season of joy and thankfulness…”



1874: It was reported from Vienna today that the Italian Consul at Bucharest has refused to open negotiations for commercial treaty between Italy and Romania as long as the Jews of that country are not fully emancipated.



1874(5th of Cheshvan, 5635): Seventy-nine year old German rabbi and early supporter of Zionism Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, passed away.



http://zionism-israel.com/bio/kalischer_biography.htm



1874: It was reported today that Mr. Peixotto, the American Consul at Bucharest has refused to enter into negotiations with the government of Romania as long as the Jews of that country are denied their civil rights.



1874 (5th of Cheshvan, 5605): Rabbi Zevi Hersh Kalisher passed away.  Born in 1795 in the Polish town of Lissa that had just become part of Germany, Kalisher was unique because he was an Orthodox Rabbi who believed that Jews develop a practical program for returning to Eretz Israel instead of just waiting for the coming of the Messiah.  In 1860, he published Derishat Tziyyon , his blueprint for the return to the Holy Land.  Almost forty years before the advent of Herzl and Zionism he called for a systematic purchase of land, the development of agriculture, the development of a self-defense force and the need to develop viable businesses to replace the charitable institutions that traditionally supported the Jews in Palestine.  The Reform opposed Kalisher because of the nationalist content of the proposal.  The Orthodox saw it as a form of blasphemy.  One of the practical results of his work was the establishment of Mikveh Israel, a school located near Jaffa, designed to teach the new generation of pioneers the scientific agricultural skills that would enable them to reclaim the land.



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zevi-hirsch-kalischer



1878: In Charleston, SC, at Beth Elohim, Rabbi Levy officiated at the wedding of Georg W. Markens of Jacksonville, FL and Ann Weiskopf of Charleston, SC.



1880: Birthdate of Lodz native Louis DeWitt Gibbs, the 1906 graduate of New York University Law and state legislator who led the battle to make the Bronx into a separate country before going to serve as “a member of the New York State Supreme Court and who was the husband of Anna White Gibbs with whom he had three children – Howard, Harriet and Isadora.



1880: In New York, Maurice and Eliza Brooks Rapf gave birth to “motion picture and studio executive” Harry Rapf, the husband of Christina Uhfelder Rodin and father of Matthew and  Maurice Harry Rapf whose film career spanned 30 years – 1917 to 1949.



1881(23rd of Tishrei, 5642): Three days after Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had what is believed to be the first modern conversation in Hebrew, Jews observed Simchat Torah



1882: Birthdate of New York movie producer Harry Rapf who began a 20 year career with MGM in 1917 and was “one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.



1883(15th of Tishrei, 5644): Sukkoth



1883: “In Uman province of Kiev, Russia, David Coralnik and Gittle Coralnik birth to Dr. Abraham Coralnik the American journalist and Zionist.



https://www.jta.org/1937/07/18/archive/dr-a-coralnik-journalist-dies-of-heart-attack-at-54



http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9F03E2DE163DE23ABC4F52DFB166838C629EDE



1884: Four days after she had passed away, 66 year old Harriette (nee Moses) Nathan, the daughter of Henry and Esther Moses and husband of Louis Nathan whom she had married in 1837 was buried today at the “Willesden Jewish Cemetery.”



1886(17thof Tishrei, 5647): Shabbat Cho HaMoed Sukkoth



1886(17thof Tishrei, 5647): Sixty-year old German banker Mayer Carl von Rothschild, the nephew Amschel Mayer Rothschild passed away today



1886: In Plonsk, Scheindel (Broitman) Grun and Avigdor Grun, “a lawyer and a leader in the Hoevei Zion movement gave birth to David Grun who gained fame as David Ben-Gurion..  To describe him as one of the earliest Zionist leaders, founding father of Israel, and its first Prime Minister would not even begin to do justice to this gigantic figure. Ben-Gurion was no saint and it is easy to criticize him.  But he was a committed socialist.  He truly believed in the brotherhood of man.  At the same time, he was committed to the Zionist movement and worked to create a “new” Jew in a Jewish homeland.   Ben-Gurion was a realist and a gambler.  Despite a great deal of criticism, he was willing to accept the 1947 Partition Plan even though it meant a Jewish state without Jerusalem.  At the same time, he was bold enough to declare the independence of the Jewish state in May of 1948 when most of the “smart” leaders of the world told him to wait.  The modern state of Israel might have come into existence without Ben-Gurion, but it is hard to imagine how it would have happened.  I urge you to read more about the truly remarkable, complex leader.  He passed away on December 1, 1973.



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/david-ben-gurion



1887: “Where Has The American Merchant Gone” published today bemoans the passing of the country’s mercantile activities into the hands of recent immigrants including Jews who usually “own the largest and best stocked store in town.”  “The American importer of dry goods” have been replaced by “firms composed of well-dressed and highly intelligent Jews,” Germans or even Scandinavians. Americans shrug their shoulders, say “it could not be helped “and then curse the foreigners as they drink a cocktail to their speedy downfall.”



1887: It was reported today that the property belonging to the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews in New York City is valued at $75,000 for tax purposes.  But the building is tax exempt because it owned by a non-profit religious organization.



1888: The decision was made tonight “to depose” Professor Horowitz as manager of the fund raising theatrical productions being sponsored by the Jewish Order of the Harp of David appearing at Poole’s Theatre because “he has been running things in a high-handed manner.”



1888: Birthdate of Robert A. Hess “a lawyer who was a leader in the Milwaukee Zionist District and who in the early 1930s, attended an American Jewish Congress meeting in New York City.



1888: Sixty-year old Horatio Gates Spafford, one of the founders of the “American Colony,” whose members “engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives” lost his battle with malaria and passed away today following which he was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery.



1890: Joseph Jacobs, a Jewish glazier who was attacked by a gang in Jersey City is lying unconscious in City Hospital after having had his skull fractured by a paving stone.



1890: “City and Suburban News” published today described the upcoming social events which will be sponsored the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.



1891: The Chicago Symphony debuted today at the Auditorium Building designed by Dankmar Adler which they continued as their musical home until 1904.



1891: Birthdate of Philadelphia native Louis Samter Potsdamer the author who earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.



1892: “A Jewish Historical Society” published today described the organization of the American Jewish Historical Society under the presidency of Oscar S. Straus which has already gained the interest of European historians who are sending materials about “the Jews who first crossed the Atlantic with Columbus



1892: Saul Solomon passed away in Cape Town. A native of St. Helena, he settled in South Africa where he became a leader of the Liberal Party.  He was known as the “Cape Disraeli” because, like his English predecessor, he converted but retained a public affection for his former co-religionists.



1892: Missouri Republican Party leader Isaac Isaacs said that unless Major Warner, the party’s nominee for governor fired his campaigner manager after he made anti-Semitic remarks, he would not even get 8 of the 1,200 Jewish votes in Kansas City and would lose most, if not all, of the 25,000 Jewish voters in the state.



1892(25thof Tishrei, 5653): Seventy-four year old Saul Isaac Kaempf a native of Posen and a disciple of Akiba Eger who became an assistant professor of Oriental languages at the University of Prague passed away today.



1892: “Did Harris Get Files from the Hallman” published today described the escape of Henry Harris from the Hudson County, NJ, Jail despite the fact the a Jewish prisoner, Benjamin Greyer, had warned authorities that prisoner Paul Zimmerman who was serving as a “hallman” had supplied Harris with two files for sawing through the bars.



1893: Birthdate of Port Chester, NY native Joseph Ralph Palkin, the graduate of George Washington University, Northwestern and the Naval Dental School who worked as a dental surgeon in Washington, DC while serving on the faculty of George Washington.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/11/08/dr-joseph-r-palkin-dc-dentist/9b780a4d-66c0-4719-86a8-56459bad4502/?utm_term=.31779a68c4ef



 



1894: In New York, founding of Congregation Agudath Jesharim on East 86thStreet with services, which on Friday begin at sundown and on Saturday at 9:30  led by Rabbi Calman and Cantor L.H. Martin that is supported by a Sisterhood and Young Folk’s League.



1894: “They Will Not Deal With Strikers” published today described the organization of the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers’ Association  whose officers included Frank and Louis Rothschild and which is the manufacturer’s to the strike of  cloakmakers.  (Editor’s Note: There are Jews on both sides of this fight)



1894: “Business Men and Tammany” published today provides a cross section of responses to the nomination of Nathan Strauss for Mayor.  Most of it was negative as the respondents were “reformers” supporting William L. Strong and would have opposed any Tammany candidate. (None of the responses made any references to Strauss’ ethnicity)



1895: The will of Babet Karl which was prepared by her nephew Abraham Stern, “a wealthy real estate lawyer”  “is on the Surrogate’s calendar for probate today even though a second will which was written after this name Rabbi Wise and his son as primary beneficiary has just been found.



1895: Birthdate of Chicago native Dr. Isadore Pilot, M.D., the husband of Anna B. Pilot and the father of Sarah and Martin Pilot.



1897(20thof Tishrei, 5658): Sukkoth and Shabbat



1897(20thof Tishrei, 5658): Fifty-eight year old Elizabeth Solomon, the widow of the late Edward Solomon passed away today in the United Kingdom.



1897: The Beni Zion Association is scheduled to host a lecture at King’s Hall on Commercial Road in London.



1897: The East London Jewish Communal League is scheduled to host a “social gathering” at the Stepney Jewish Schools.”



1898: Birthdate of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who in 1949 “revealed that he was ‘converted to Zionism’ by the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis” and pledged to continue his sympathies for Israel and to do whatever” he could do “for its welfare.” (As reported by JTA)



http://www.jta.org/1949/07/24/archive/justice-douglas-says-he-has-been-converted-to-zionism-pledges-aid-to-israel



http://www.jta.org/1949/07/24/archive/justice-douglas-says-he-has-been-converted-to-zionism-pledges-aid-to-israel#ixzz3GFY0j9so



1898: In Norfolk, VA, Arther and Sadie (Spagat) Morris gave birth to Virginia Leigh Morris who gained famed as sculptor Virginia Morris Pollak.



http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/pollak-virginia-morris



 



1899: Israel Zangwill's play "Children of the Ghetto," premiers at the Herald Square Theatre in New York. The play was based on a novel of the same name published in 1892 that describes the life of a Jewish family living in London in the last decade of the 19th century.



1900(23rdof Tishrei, 5661): Simchat Torah celebrated for the first time in the 20thcentury.



1901:Forty-five year old Clarence Isaac de Sola, the “third son of Abraham de Sola and Esther Joseph married Belle Maud Goldsmith of Cleveland, Ohio with whom he had two sons and two daughters.



1902(15thof Tishrei, 5663): On the same day that the first “Youthful Offenders Institution” opened in Borstal, Kent, UK, Jews observed Sukkoth



1906: Birthdate of León Klimovsky the Argentine dentist who gained fame as a film director.



1906: Birthdate of Los Angeles native “producer, direct and actor” Sam White, the brother of Jack, Jules and Ben White and husband of Claretta Ellis whose career including everything from making musical comedies to WW II armed forces training films.



1908: Two days after she had passed away, Adelaide Decker, the wife of Louis Decker, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”



1910: Birthdate of Sir MIsha Black, Russian-born British architect and designer.



1912: Birthdate of Elizabeth H. Friedman who when she passes away in 1959 will be buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Natchitoches, LA.



1913(15thof Tishrei, 5674): Sukkoth



1913: In New York, Governor William Sulzer, who had been defended by William Marshall, was convicted on three articles of impeachment. Sulzer was replaced by his Lieutenant Governor, Martin Glynn, the author of the 1919 article “The Crucifixion of the Jews Must Stop!”



1915: It was reported today that of the 831,000 children in New York public schools, 41,000 of the m attend “Jewish religious schools of the Jewish Educational Bureau.”



1915: “Drop Jewish Conference” published today described how the opposition led by Louis D. Brandeis had thwarted Louis Marshall’s call for a national meeting of Jewish leaders to discuss what American Jews could do to improve the conditions of their European and Palestinian co-religionists after the war.



1915: It was reported today that three of the Jewish members of the Interdenominational Committee are Rabb J.L. Magnes, Rabbi H.P. Mendes and Rabbi M.H. Harris 



1915: “How great the debt which modern Judaism and the land of his adoption owe to Rabbi Max Lillienthal, a leader in Israel and an American citizen un-hyphenated was the theme of the services held this morning at Temple Emanu-EL in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.”



1916: Felix M. Warburg a co-founder and Chairman of the Jewish Philanthropic Societies gave a dinner for his “co-workers” at Sherry’s tonight where the prospects of success of the newly formed umbrella agency were discussed and among the evidence presented the fact that so far “1,200 person have contributed $800,000” which is “$240,000 more than the same persons gave last year” to the various societies and institutions that are now part of the new umbrella group.



1916: “Replying today to the charge made by a committee of Jews that the Democratic campaign managers had been attempting to inject religion into the present Presidential Campaign, Henry Morgenthau, the Treasurer of of the Democratic National Committee and Herman Bernstein issued a statement say ‘We deprecate as much and perhaps more than the signers of the protest – all of whom are supporting the Republican Committee – the bring or religion or religious issues into this campaign” and “to avoid the possibility of this we shall refrain at this time from any comment.’”



1916: A letter was published today “from Henry Sliozberg, a Jewish lawyer, who writing from Petrograd, said that the Russian Jews were hoping for an allied victory, in which they foresaw reforms affecting their own conditions” and who expressed the view “that the Jews of Russia saw in an victory of the Allies in their emancipation.”



1917: President Woodrow Wilson sent word to Lloyd George that he approved of the issuance of the Balfour Declaration.



1917: Today, a list of 159 emigres, including 99 Jews, who had arrived in Russia in sealed trains from Germany was published today.



1917: “According to a report” that today is in the possession of the Commander of the Second Field Artillery at Camp Wadsworth in South Carolina, Captain Howard Sullivan of Battery D of the Bronx who was charged earlier with trying to bar Jews from serving in the unit “directed four non-commissioned officers to take Private Otto Gottschalk from his tent, strip him, force him to drink filthy water and beat him with sticks until welts are raised.”



1917: Birthdate of Nathan “Fred” Asher, the New York native and 1939 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who at the age of 24 was the highest ranking officer on the U.S. Blue when he was attacked at Pearl Harbor where he acted to move the ship out of harm while responding to the arial onslaught.



1918: Birthdate of Abraham Nemeth, who developed the Nemeth Code, a form of Braille that greatly improved the ability of visually impaired people to study complex mathematics (As reported by William Yardley)



1918: The advance in the Argonne Forest that had begun on September 25 during which Sergeant Harvey H. Blum of the 307th Infantry “was continually with the advance line despite the fact that several section of his platoon periodically relieved one another and during which he displayed “great bravery and coolness under fire” came to an end today.



1919(22ndof Tishrei, 5680): Shmini Atzeret



1920: In a speech today, Judge Otto Rosalsky delivered a speech at the Lincoln League Republican Club in New York where he “assailed the articles in Henry Ford’s The Dearborn Independent as the work of of a madman who is a menace to American institutions.”



1921: Birthdate Krakow native Andrzej Munk, the movie director and screenwriter who took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, became a leading Polish filmmaker in the post-Stalinist era and in a moment of cosmic irony died “in car accident while on his way home from Auschwitz’ where he was shooting a film called “Passenger.”



1923: Birthdate of “Walter Zacharius, who rode the passion-swollen wave of romance fiction in the early 1980s to build the Kensington Publishing Corporation into a leading purveyor of bodice-rippers and other romance genres.” (As reported by William Grimes)



1923: Tonight at the Hotel Commodore the American Jewish Congress adopted a resolution prepared by the Committee On Palestine, assisted by Israel Zangwill, carrying out Mr. Zangwill's suggestion for a resolution insisting that the British Government fulfill its mandate under the League of Nations for the “upbuilding “of a Jewish national home in Palestine.



1924: In New York City Jennie (née Friedman) and Jacob J. Scherick gave birth to Edgar J. Scherick the ABC television producer who helped create “ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”



1927(20thof Tishrei, 5688): Sukkoth Chol HaMoed



1927: Birthdate of Lee Montague, “a tailor’s son born with the surname Goldberg in London’s East End whose long acting career including being voted “Best TV Actor of the Year in 1960.



1927: Birthdate Danzig native Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize winning author.



http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/europe/gunter-grass-german-novelist-dies-at-87.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well



1927(20thof Tishrei, 5688): Thirty-four year old bootlegger and labor racketeer Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen died after having been shot by rivals while walking on the Lower East Side.



1930: Birthdate of Dan Pagis, holocaust survivor and poet whose most famous work may be:



written in pencil in the sealed railway car

Here in this carload
I, Eve,
with my son Abel.
if you see my older boy,
Cain, the son of man
tell him that I



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Belzec_oboz_zaglady_pomnik_ewa_abel.JPG



1932(16thof Tishrei, 5693): Second Day of Sukkoth



1932: British flyweight Moe Mizler fought his last bout today.



1933: The Associated Press reported that the German citizen who had assaulted a New Yorker named Dr. Daniel Mulvhill “because he had failed to ‘salute a Nazi detachment’” was being held at an unnamed concentration camp. (This seemingly harsh punishment may have been an attempt to ingratiate the new Nazi regime with the West while it went about its various nefarious activities including re-armament in violation of the Versailles Treaty)



1935: When the Belgian steamship Leopold II was unloading 97 tons of cement at Jaffa, “a tin case of cartridges concealed in a barrel” was discovered.  According to “unconfirmed reports from Arab sources…800 rifles and 400,000 cartridges” were also found among the 537 barrels of cement.  Officials have not been able to determine who was supposed to be getting the weaponry.



1936: “Dimples” a musical with a script Arthur Sheekman was released today in the United States.



1936: In response to the violent “excesses of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirts, Sir Samuel Hoare, the First Lord of the Admiralty delivered a speech in which he said “no extremists…would allowed to threaten the liberties of British Citizens” and “Sir John Simon, the Minister of Home Affairs…declared tonight that he would be willing to receive a deputation from the East End of London and hear their grievances growing out of persecution of Jews in that part of the city by Sir Oswald’s followers.”



1937:Hans Achim Litten, a lawyer whose father had converted to Christianity before and who represented several of the opponents of the Nazis in court, arrived at Dachau where he was placed in the same barracks as the Jewish prisoners and after being tortured unmercifully would finally take his own life.



1938: “Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the United States, condemned the Munich Agreement as a defeat and called upon America and Western Europe to prepare for armed resistance against Hitler.”



1939(3rdof Cheshvan 5700):  Morris Rosenthal, the husband of Mary Rosenthal passed away today after which he was buried at Ahavas Sholom Congregation Cemetery in Baltimore County, MD.



1939: Kraków, one of the most important Jewish communities since the 1300s, is designated the capital of the Generalgouvernement.



1939: “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” a three act comedy created by those Jewish stalwarts of the Broadway Theatre, George S. Kaufman, premiered at the Music Box in New York



1939: Birthdate of ‘Naomi Weisstein



http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUNew/Weisstein.html



1940: “Arise My Life” a comedy with a script co-authored by Billy Wilder based on a story by Benjamin Glazer was released in the United States today by Paramount Pictures.



1940: Warsaw Ghetto established. (In note of historic irony, six years later to the day, those convicted at the first Nuremberg Trial were hung)



1941: “After Leon Blum had been in prison for a year, Marshal Pétain announced in a radio speech that a special Political Justice Council had decided that Blum along with other leaders of the Third Republic would be transferred to a fortified installation (Fort de Portalet, a castle in Urdos in the Pyrenees) for trial – the outcome of which he assured them would not be disappointing.



1941: The Germans murdered 4,500 Jews outside of Lubny, Urkaine (USSR). Unknown Nazi photographers left a photo of a mother and her children just before the atrocity and a photo of a group of Jews awaiting their fate.http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/october/06.asp



1941: In response to Hitler's plea that all Jews must leave Germany, the first of twenty trains left Germany for the East. Jews from Luxemburg and Vienna were part of the deportation. Within the next month 19,827 Jews from the Reich would be sent to Lodz.



1941: The German Army advanced to within 60 miles (96 K) of Moscow. One not need romanticize life in Stalin’s Russia to recognize the courage of the Soviet Army. Stalin decided to remain in Moscow and take personal command of the battle. As bad as the Holocaust was, it would have been even worse if the Soviets had not held on.  At the same time many revered the Soviet Army because it liberated so many of the camps as it later moved west towards Berlin.



1941(25th of Tishrei, 5702): Three days after the German murder of 15,000 Jewish residents of Dnepropetrtovsk, Ukraine, an additional 5000 Jews are executed in the town.



1941: The first SS deportation train of Western Jews travels to ghettos at Lódz, Lublin, and Warsaw, Poland.



1941(25th of Tishrei, 5702): Twenty trains carrying nearly 20,000 Jews travel from Germany, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, and Austria to the Lódz (Poland) Ghetto. The shipments will come to an end in the first week of November.



1942: Final liquidation of the Ghetto at Zamosc, Poland



http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/april/08.asp



1942: The Nazis arrest more than 1000 Jews in Rome and deport them to Auschwitz.



1942: “Eyes in the Night” a crime film directed by Polish born American Oscar winning director Fred Zinnemann was released today in the United States.



1943: German Ambassador to the Vatican Ernst von Weizsäcker compliments the Holy See for its "perfect even-handedness" in treating Germany and the Allies. When Weizsäcker asks what Pope Pius XII will do if the German government persists in its present Jewish policy in Italy, Vatican Secretary of State Maglione replies that "the Holy See would not want to be put in the position of having to utter a word of disapproval." The Pope is being "cautious so as not to give the German people the impression that [he] has done or has wished to do even the smallest thing against Germany during this terrible time.”



1943: Germans looking for Jews in Rome conduct house-to-house searches. About 1000 Jews are briefly held at Rome's Collegio Militare and then deported to Auschwitz. 477 Jews are sheltered in the Vatican, and another 4238 find sanctuary in convents and monasteries throughout Rome. Nevertheless, by this date more than 8300 Italian Jews have been deported to Auschwitz.



1943: In Rome, Germans searched through streets and homes for Jews.  Of the 1,015 Jews taken on that morning only 16 would survive the war.  Within two months, another 7,345 Jews would be found and deported from Northern Italy



1943: Two days after a violent Jewish revolt at the Sobibór death camp, SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the camp destroyed.



1943: Today, “45 year-old Settimio Calo left his wife Clelia and their nine children in their apartment so he could buy a pack of cigarettes and “when he got home he found the place in Via del Portico D’Ottavia, the heart the Jewish Ghetto completely empty” because “the Nazis had raided the neighborhood and round over 1,000 Jews” only sixteen of whom survived Auschwitz, none of which part of his family.



1943 Samuel Fuller and the rest of  “The Big Red One” left Liverpool for Dorchester today where they began 7 months of training for what would be the Normandy Invasion.



1944: Birthdate of Joseph Sitruk the native of Tunisia who as Joseph Haim Sitruk served as Chief Rabbi of France from June, 1987 to June, 2008.



1944: Following the coup led by the Arrow Cross, the Germans and their Hungarian allies resume resumed their attacks on the Jews of Budapest. Jews were again dragged from their homes and into the streets. Then for the next 10 days, all Jews are forbidden to leave their homes.



1944: Germans and members of the Fascist Nyilas group prohibit Jews in Budapest, Hungary, from leaving their homes. Many Jewish slave laborers are killed by Nyilas members on a bridge linking Buda with Pest.



1944: In Rome, the roundup of the Jewish population began.  “SS troops surrounded the Lungotevere, the former ghetto area, where some 4,000 of the city’s 12,000 Jews still lived.”  The SS selected 1,000 men, women and children for immediate shipment to Auschwitz.  This was only the beginning of a march to the Death Camps that took place in the city of the Pope.



1944:Composer, conductor, pianist and music critic Viktor Ullmann was sent to Auschwitz today.



1945: David Lubin’s dream for the creation of an “international organization for food and agriculture” came to fruition today with the founding of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations



1945: During the presentation of the Army-Navy “E” Award (a commendation for outstanding production during WW II) at Los Alamos, NM, Robert Oppenheimer delivered his “farewell speech” as director of the project that led to the development of the Atomic Bomb.



1945(9th of Cheshvan, 5706): Eighty-year old Berta Zuckerland, the daughter of Mortiz Szeps and the wife of Dr. Emil Zuckerkandl who was famous for her Salon in Vienna passed away today in Paris after having spent much of the war in Algeria.



1946: Ten Nazi leaders were hanged as war criminals after the Nuremberg trials.  This chart shows the fate of those tried at Nuremberg.



 



Name  

--Count--

Sentence    

Notes

 

1    

2    

3    

4    

 

 

 

Martin Bormann

I

º

G

G

Death

In absentia

 

Karl Dönitz

I

G

G

º

10 years

Initiator of the U-boat campaign and Hitler's designated successor

 

Hans Frank

I

º

G

G

Death

Expressed repentance

 

Wilhelm Frick

I

G

G

G

Death

 

 

Hans Fritzsche

I

I

I

º

Acquitted

Tried in place of Joseph Goebbels

 

Walter Funk

I

G

G

G

Life Imprisonment

Released due to ill health on May 16, 1957

 

Hermann Göring

G

G

G

G

Death

Commander of Luftwaffe. Committed suicide the night before his execution.

 

Rudolf Hess

G

G

I

I

Life Imprisonment

Hitler's deputy, flew to England in 1941

 

Alfred Jodl

G

G

G

G

Death

Posthumously acquitted of all charges in 1953

 

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

I

º

G

G

Death

Highest surviving SS-leader

 

Wilhelm Keitel

G

G

G

G

Death

 

 

Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach

I

I

I

I

----

Medically unfit for trial

 

Robert Ley

I

I

I

I

----

Suicide on October 25, 1945, before verdict

 

Konstantin von Neurath

G

G

G

G

15 years

Released (ill health) November 6, 1954

 

Franz von Papen

I

I

º

º

Acquitted

 

 

Erich Raeder

I

G

I

º

Life Imprisonment

Released (ill health) September 26, 1955

 

Joachim von Ribbentrop

G

G

G

G

Death

Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs

 

Alfred Rosenberg

G

G

G

G

Death

Racial theory ideologist

 

Fritz Sauckel

I

I

G

G

Death

 

 

Hjalmar Schacht

I

I

º

º

Acquitted

 

 

Baldur von Schirach

G

º

º

G

20 years

Head of the Hitlerjugend, expressed repentance

 

Arthur Seyss-Inquart

I

G

G

G

Death

 

 

Albert Speer

º

º

G

G

20 Years

Responsible for several aspects of industry and a central figure in leadership, expressed repentance.

 

Julius Streicher

I

º

º

G

Death

 

 




"I"indicted        "G" indicted and found guilty    


1947: In Milwaukee, WI, Charlotte A. (Lefstein) and Burton C. Zucker, who was a real estate developer gave birth to producer, director and screenwriter David S. Zuker.



 



1948: During Operation Yoav, Israeli forces were repulsed after heavy fighting as they tried to open the road to Jewish settlements in the Negev and Beersheba.



1948: “Arab Legion forces at the Arab-held Zion Gate attacked the Jewish positions on Mount Zion, but were driven off after fierce fighting.”



1948(13th of Tishrei, 5709): Twenty-seven year old Mordechai “Modi” Alon died today when his plane crashed after returning from an attack on Egyptian forces. A native of Safed, Alon trained with the RAF during World War II and flew in the first combat mission undertaken by the Israeli Air Force in May of 1948.  He scored infant air forces’ first kills when he shoot down to Royal Egyptian Air Force C-47’s over Tel Aviv. These air victories were more than just numbers.  They gave heart to the beleaguered Yishuv who had had no protection from the air forces of their Arab attackers.



1948: Leonard Bernstein, who had come to Israel specifically to do this, conducted a concert of the newly created Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Jerusalem’s Edison Theatre. “He did so amid the persistent background noise of rifle and machine-gun fire from the direction of the Old City.  The climax of the evening was Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”  According to eye witness Tom Tugend, “’Towards the end of the first movement machine-gun fire burst out in the Old City, held by Jordanian forces.  The gunfire continued unabated throughout the performance.  Lenny and the orchestra never missed a beat.’”



1948: Birthdate of Bruce Fleisher, the Union City, TN native who became a successful professional golfer.



1949(23rd of Tishrei, 5710): On the same day that the Greek Civil War came to an end marking a victory for the West in what was called the “Cold War,” Jews observed Simchat Torah



1950: Birthdate of Lowell, Massachusetts author Elinor Lipman, whose “1998 novel The Inn at Lake Devine explores anti-Semitism and Jewish intermarriage.”



https://elinorlipman.com/



1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from New York that hundreds of Jewish congregations throughout the US joined in a unique nationwide effort on behalf of the Israel Independence Bonds sales drive, to mark the recent holiday period. Tens of thousands of bonds were sold in scores of cities in which leading American personalities visited synagogues to present the facts about the importance of such action. In New York the actor Edward G. Robinson canceled his important personal plans to substitute for his colleague, Eddie Cantor, who became ill, and to participate in a series of special, festive Bond dinners.



1955: Esther Lederer, writing as Ann Landers, had her first advice column published in the Chicago Sun Times.  By the end of Lederer's life, Ann Landers had become the world's most widely syndicated column, published in more than 1,200 publications and with more than 90 million readers around the world.When Esther Lederer and her husband moved to Chicago in the 1950s, she contacted a family friend at the Chicago Sun Times to see whether the columnist Ann Landers needed any help in writing her column. The Sun Times was in the process of finding a replacement writer for the column, and Lederer took over as the new Landers, a name that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Because Lederer had been involved in politics and had volunteered extensively, she was very well connected, and her column reflected these connections. Lederer was able to solicit advice from experts in many different fields. From her column, Landers openly opposed racism and anti-Semitism, and devoted much space to fighting injustice. Lederer continued to write as Ann Landers for 46 years, until her death in 2002.



1956: “Attack” a WW II “anti—war” movie co-starring Robert Strauss was released today in the United States.



1957: The German Pharmacological Society is scheduled to present a medal at 4 o’clock this afternoon to Dr. Otto Lowei, Research Professor of Pharmacology at the College of Medicine of NYU and the winner of the 1936 Noble Prize in Medicine.



http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10F15F93A5A177B93C4A8178BD95F438585F9



1960: “Israel Gives Aid to New Nations,” an article published today described the visit to the United States of Dr. Benjamin Mazar, the noted archaeologist and President of Hebrew University. During his visit, Dr. Mazar described the aid that Israel is providing to the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia including the enrollment of 100 students from nations in these two continents in courses at Hebrew University and the sponsorship by the government of Ethiopia of several medical students at the university’s medical school. The university has also sent teams to various developing countries to aid in the development of educational and health programs.



1960: Birthdate of “Franco-British lawyer” Philippe Sands the author of sixteen books including the award winning East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity,



http://www.timesofisrael.com/all-roads-lead-to-lviv-family-history-genocide-and-the-trials-that-changed-the-world/



1961: Birthdate of French-Jewish novelist Marc Levy.



1962:”Requiem for a Heavyweight” the movie version of the Playhouse 90 play produced by David Susskind was released in the United States today.



1964: ABC broadcast the “The Addams Family Tree” part of the Addams Family series created by David Levy,



1966:”Eh?” by Henry Livings,  premiered at the Circle in the Square Downtown under the direction of Alan Arkin and featured Dustin Hoffman in “his first critical success.”



1966: “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum” based on the play co-authored by Larry Gelbart, produced by Melvin Frank who also co-authored the screenplay, with music by Stephen Sondheim and starring Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford and Phil Silvers was released today in the United Sates.



1967(10thof Av, 5727): Seventy-five year old Ralph E. Samuel, the husband of Florence Samuel with who he had three children – Ralph, Donald and Howard – “who played a central role in the founding of Commentary” passed away today in Israel.



1968: “Far From the Madding” the film version of the novel by the same name directed by John Schlesinger, with a script by Fredrick Raphael was released in the United Kingdom today.



1968: “The Boston Strangler” directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Tony Curtis in the title role was released in the United States today.



1969: A revival of “3 Men on a Horse” co-starring Jack Gilford and Hal Linden opened at the Lyceum Theatre.



1970: Anwar Sadat was elected president of Egypt, succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser.  Sadat was responsible for the Yom Kippur War.  But his claim to fame was the courage to risk all with his famous trip to Jerusalem and the peace treaty with Israel.  His motives are of less importance than the deeds he performed.



1970: Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison, was designated as a National Historic Site.  Among those who were imprisoned in the camp was George Geiger who would go on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.



1972: Thirty-eight year old Wael Zwaiter, a member of Black September was killed today for his role in the Munich Massacre.



1973: Just after mid-night, a small force of Israeli tanks crossed to the western bank of the Suez Canal.  This daring success was a closely held secret.  The first task of this force was to find and destroy the SAM-6 Missiles that were negating Israel’s air superiority.  The Israelis were dismayed to find that the French were supplying weapons to the Arabs.  Israeli pilots shot down a French Mirage that belonged to the Libyans. On the diplomatic front, President Sadat asked Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin who was in Cairo to get the UN to call for an immediate cease fire.  The Israeli Foreign Ministry exploded with indignation when Kosygin complied.  The Israelis recounted the massive buildup of Soviet military equipment that had been sent to the Arabs.  The war could not have started it the Russians had not provided the weapons.  To the Israelis, it was lie the man who supplied an arsonist with gasoline calling on the fire department to protect the arsonist.



1973: Events on the northern front dispelled any doubt as to how broad support was in the Arab world for this war aimed at destroying Israel.  Israeli forces were forced to fight two major tank battles on the Syrian front and neither of them was with the Syrians.  In the first battle a Jordanian brigade including twenty-eight tanks was beaten back.  In the second fight, the Israelis faced a larger number of Iraqi tanks.  Exactly how many Iraqi tanks were involved is unknown; all the Israelis know is that the Iraqis left the hulks of sixty tanks behind when they retreated.



1973:  Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho jointly awarded Nobel peace prize. Kissinger is Jewish.  Le Duc Tho is not Jewish.  Kissinger was a refugee from Nazi Germany. In the 1950”s when others in academia were converting to advance their careers, Kissinger did not choose to follow that path. 



1973: American Sephardi Federation and the Sephardic community at large collected $4,000,000 for Israel by week two of the Yom Kippur war.



1974: “Felix Kamov Kandel and Mikhail Suslov, leading film workers, began a hunger strike in Moscow to obtain permission for emigration.



1974: The KGB prevents “a weekly Moscow refusenik-scientist seminar from taking place.”



1974: “Soviet Jewish activist Victor Polsky was found guilty in Moscow of dangerous driving and fined 100 rubles.”



1975: “A letter of Anatoly Malkin, where he appeals to Russian Jews not to serve in the Soviet army, is publicized in the West; the authorities are using the draft as a deterrent for those who want to emigrate to Israel.”



1976(22ndof Tishrei, 5737): Shmini Atzeret and Shabbat



1976: “Enid Wurtman, co-chairman of the Union of Council for Soviet Jewry, and Connie Smukler arrived on a visit to Moscow.”



1977: Birthdate of John Meyers, creator of Blues for Peace which was set up in Israel to honor the roots of blues music and promote peace and the understanding that ALLpeoples have had their share of the blues. Blues for Peace is dedicated to the unsung heroes, local blues musicians that love the blues and pass it on to the next generation



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that three people were slightly injured, two of them tourists, by two bombs thrown at them by Arab terrorists in the Old City of Jerusalem.  There was no security barrier, no trip to the Temple Mount by Sharon, etc.  In other words, each of these current excuses for terror are just that excuses for continuing behavior of longstanding.



1977: “Equus” a film version of the play by Peter Schaffer who wrote the screenplay and directed by Sidney Lumet was released today in the United States.



1978(15th of Tishrei, 5739): Sukkoth



1980:A boycott of cooperation with the USSR is announced by Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov and Shcharansky (SOS) Committee simultaneously in London, Paris, Washington and Geneva as part of a world-wide protest against the jailing of Orlov and Shcharansky and the banishment of Sakharov.About 7,900 scientists and engineers in 44 countries will participate in the boycott. 150 scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announce on the same day that they will take part in the boycott.



1981 (8th of Tishrei, 5742): Moshe Dayan passed away.  The much acclaimed Israeli general with the eye-patch was born in 1915.  He was one of the first children born at Deganya Alef, “the mother of all kibbutzim.”  Dayan joined the Haganah at the age of 14, learning military tactics from the fabled British Captain, Orde Wingate.  He lost his left eye fighting the Vichy French in Lebanon during World War II.  Dayan held a variety of important positions during Israel’s fight for independence.  During the 1950’s he helped mold the IDF and led it to a lightening victory over Egypt in 1956.  Dayan left the Army to purse a role in politics, but returned to serve as Minister for Defense during both the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars.  In a an unexpected switch, Dayan joined the right wing government Begin government and served as the Foreign Minister who negotiated the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.  Dayan died at the age of 66, a victim of colon cancer.



1981(8thof Tishrei, 5742): Sixty five year old Haim Landau who made Aliyah in 1935, joined both Betar and Irgun before serving as an MK and government minister passed away today.



1981: “Moscow Hebrew teachers Boris Terlitzky, Yuli Edelstein, Victor Fulmacht, and Vladimir Kuravsky were warned to cease their activities.”



1981:”Writer of Central Europe Wins Nobel Prize” published today provides John Vincour’s description of the triumph scored by Sephardic Jew Elias Canetti.



http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/16/books/81nobel-cane.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D



1982: GeorgeShultz warns that the United States will withdraw from the UN if they vote to exclude Israel.



1983 (9th of Cheshvan, 5744): Dr. Leonardo De Benedetti, friend and companion of Primo Levi, passed away at the age of 85 in the Jewish Rest Home where he had lived for years.



1986: “The Name of the Rose” a medieval movie co-starring Ron Perlman was released today in Germany.



1986: “The Color of Money” starring Paul Newman in his Oscar winning role of “Fast Eddie Felson: was released in the United States today.



1986: Ron Arad, Israeli Weapons System Officer, is captured by Lebanese Shi'ite militia Amal.



http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=242616



1986:Armand Hammer returns to the United States with Jewish refusenik David Goldfarb.



1986: The Jonathan Netanyahu Memorial by Buky Schwartz, was dedicated outside the entrance to the National Museum of American Jewish History, along the walkway between 4th and 5th Streets north of Market Street today.The sculpture, donated by Muriel and Philip Berman, consists of four white marble monolithic vertical blocks, roughly 7' high by 2' deep and wide, standing in a square formation. The four blocks originated from one block of stone.Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu or Jonathan Netanyahu was a member of the Israel Defense Forces elite Sayeret Matkal unit. Yoni was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service for his conduct in the Yom Kippur War. He was killed in action during Operation Entebbe at Entebbe airport in 1976, by Ugandan soldiers, when the Israeli military rescued hostages after an aircraft hijacking. He was the leader of the assault, and the only Israeli military casualty of the raid. His younger brother Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel from 1996-1999. The National Museum of American Jewish History, founded in 1976, contains a large collection on the role and the everyday life of Jews in America. In 2010 the museum will open the doors to a new state-of-art facilit
1987(23rd of Tishrei, 5748): Simchat Torah
 
1992: “Night and the City” a movie version of the 1938 novel by Gerald Karsh, directed by Irwin Winkler who coproduced the film with Jane Rosenthal  and co-starring Alan King was released today in the United States.



1993: Anti-Nazi riot breaks out in Welling in Kent, after police stop protesters approaching the British National Party headquarters.



1995(22ndof Tishrei, 5756): Shemini Atzeret



1996: Dustin Hoffman’s “first critical success was in the play ‘Eh?,’which had its US premiere at the Circle in the Square Downtown” today.



1997(15thof Tishrei, 5758): Sukkoth



1997(15thof Tishrei, 5758): Ninety-two British philatelist Marcus Samuel who served in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve during WW II and “was also a founder member of the Society of Postal Historians” passed away today.



1997:  Prolific American Author James Michener passed away at the age of 90 in Austin, Texas. .   A non-Jew, Michener’s specialty was historic fiction in the tradition of the grand saga.   One of Michener’s most famous books was The Source.   In it he traced the history of the Jews from earliest times to modern days using the artifacts discovered at an fictional archeological dig as the literary springboard.  It is one of the easiest ways to enter into the world of Jewish history.



1997:  Sir Isaiah Berlin, who had been gravely ill since late July, made what turned out to be a final statement on the subject of the Israeli–Palestinian situation. "Since both sides begin with a claim of total possession of Palestine as their historical right; and since neither claim can be accepted within the realms of realism or without grave injustice: it is plain that compromise, i.e. partition, is the only correct solution, along Oslo lines – for supporting which Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish bigot. Ideally, what we are calling for is a relationship of good neighbors, but given the number of bigoted, terrorist chauvinists on both sides, this is impracticable. The solution must lie somewhat along the lines of reluctant toleration, for fear of far worse – i.e. a savage war which could inflict irreparable damage on both sides. As for Jerusalem, it must remain the capital of Israel, with the Muslim holy places being extra-territorial to a Muslim authority, and an Arab quarter, with a guarantee from the United Nations of preserving that position, by force if necessary."  To make a statement of this kind was unusual for him, since he rarely if ever made public statements on political topics, though, in the case of Israel, he was ready to be known as a supporter of Peace Now. On this occasion, however, he decided to take what might be his last opportunity to set out his strongly held views, which he sent in the form of a brief statement (dictated to his secretary) entitled ‘Israel and the Palestinians’ to his close friend Professor Avishai Margalit in Jerusalem.



1998: “Practical Magic,” a romantic comedy with a script co-authored by Akiva Goldsman and featuring Mark Fuerstein was released in the United States today.



2000(17thof Tishrei, 5761): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed


2000: It was reported today that Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire Labour MP had "accused Peter Mandelson,” the scion of distinguished Anglo-Jewish family “of lying to the Commons about the home loan affair that cost both of them their government jobs."


2002: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance posthumously awarded the Museum’s Medal of Resistance to Heshek Bauminger and Aharon Liebeskind, founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (JFO) in the Cracow Ghetto. Hela Schupper-Raufaizen, who fought with the JFO in Cracow, accepted the medal during the summer on their behalf. U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer made the presentation at the U.S. Embassy in Israel on behalf of the Museum. As part of the Museum’s mission to serve as this country’s national institution for Holocaust education and remembrance, the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance recognizes the bravery of Jews who rose up against the Nazis and their collaborators. The honorees or their representatives (in the case of posthumous awards) are presented with specially commissioned Medals of Resistance. Honorees also receive permanent recognition in the Museum. Aharon Liebeskind and Heshek Bauminger each led a resistance group in the Cracow Ghetto. Liebeskinds’s Akiva group combined several Zionist movements into one fighting force. Bauminger was a solider in the Polish and Soviet armies who escaped German capture. He established close ties to the Communist resistance and established another force inside the Ghetto. In October 1942, the groups merged to form the Jewish Fighting Organization. The JFO organized a number of attacks against German soldiers and equipment. On December 24, 1942, the German authorities launched a massive retaliatory campaign. Liebeskind was killed the following day, and Bauminger was caught and killed in March 1943.


2005:The New York Times book section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt, In Case We’re Separated: Connected Storiesby Alice Mattison, The Other Shulman by Alan Zweibel and The Tiger In the Attic:  Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up Englishby Edith Milton


2005(24th of Tishrei, 5767): Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded as least 5 others in two separate drive-by shootings in the West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for both attacks.


2005: Even in disaster, hope can be found.  In a move that would have been unthinkable only months ago, Pakistan has expressed a willingness to accept aide from Israel as the Moslem nation deals with the aftermath of a major earthquake. Haaretz reported that Pakistan gave Jerusalem a list of items it needs, including tents, blankets, plastic sheets for protection against the rain and for collecting bodies, water-purification equipment and dry-food packages such as biscuits. The Pakistanis insist that the aid will have to be sent through a third party such as the Red Cross.  The Israelis have provided earthquake assistance to Moslem Turkey, but this is the first time that a nation that had previously been opposed to the existence of Israel has sought aid from the Jewish state and from the American Jewish community.


2005: The New York Times published “My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Jury Room,” Judith Miller’s account of her time spent before the federal grand jury.



2007: At the Jewish Museum of Florida an exhibition styled “Zap Pow Bam - Super Heroes of the Golden Age of Comics” opens. “Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane! It’s Zap Pow Bam, a colorful dynamic exhibit that immerses visitors in an interactive world of Super Heroes, highlighting the Jewish creators of comic books from 1938 – 1950. These are America’s timeless icons like Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman – including the phone booth where Superman changed his clothes and a Batmobile. Zap Pow Bam features 1940s serials, video interviews, a drawing studio and costumes. The exhibit offers a unique perspective on the way pop culture portrays issues and how identity and culture can shape popular opinion.”



2008: Proposed date on which Italy’s Holocaust Museum will open in Rome on the 65thanniversary of the German capture of more than 1,000 Jews from Rome’s ghetto, a major Holocaust episode in Italy.



2008: At SUNY New Paltz as part of the Israel @ 60 celebration the Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish Life hosts a lecture by Dr. Len Lyons, author and member of the Ethiopian Jewry Committee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, entitled"The Ethiopian Jews of Israel." 



2008: One thousand Jews traveled in and out of Nablus on buses from midnight to 5 a.m. on Thursday, in a brief pilgrimage to the burned-out shell of the building that covers Joseph's Tomb.



2008: A play by Ilan Stavans based on “The Disappearance” “premiered at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles today.



2009: Scottish actress Ronni Ancona appeared for the second time this year on “The One Show.”



2009: The joint Israeli-US Navy military exercise code named “Juniper Cobra” comes to an end.



2009: Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” is performed at Kimmel Theatre on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon Iowa. The production is based on Wendy Kesselman’s acclaimed new adaptation of the play that makes thoughtful use of recently recovered segments of Anne’s diary to deepen our understanding both of the cultural context of the events and to present a much more complex (and less sentimental) Anne.


2009: Acclaimed Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter makes his West Coast debut at UCLA Live with his UK-based company performing “Uprising,” inspired by the Paris protests of 2006 and “In Your Rooms,” which traces Shechter’s traumatic time in the Israeli military. The 33-year-old is one of Britain’s most sought-after choreographers.


2009: In an article entitled “Book on March Rich Detials His Iran Oil Deals,” Jad Mouawad examines the life this rogue businessman who profited from the oil industry while working with a host of governmental agencies including the U.S. State Department and Mossad as he reviews The King of Oil by Daniel Ammann.


2009: The Irish tenor Ronan Tynan, a fixture at Yankee Stadium for years with his stirring rendition of “God Bless America,” was scheduled to belt out the song again during Game 1 of the American League Championship Series today. Instead, he was disinvited by the Yankees after he admitted making an anti-Semitic remark at his Manhattan apartment building a day earlier. Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for the Yankees, said the team took action as soon as Tynan acknowledged making the comment. “He acknowledged that he used the slur and the Yankees stepped right in,” Rubenstein said tonight. The Yankees indicated today that Tynan would not be invited to sing at Yankee Stadium for the rest of the 2009 postseason but might be invited back in the future. Rubenstein said the Yankees were notified about 5 p.m. Thursday by a New York University physician, Gabrielle Gold-Von Simson, who was present when Tynan made the remark. Rubenstein said the incident occurred when a real estate agent was showing an apartment in Tynan’s building to Gold-Von Simson and jokingly said to Tynan, “Don’t worry, they’re not Red Sox fans.” Tynan reportedly replied, “I don’t care about that, as long as they are not Jewish.” Rubenstein said that after admitting his remarks to the Yankees, Tynan, 49, called Ms. Gold-Von Simson to apologize. “She said that if he gave a sincere apology she would forgive him,” Rubenstein said. “He did that to her satisfaction. He was very apologetic.” Tynan has been singing “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium for years. A former member of the Irish Tenors, he did not embark on his music career until he was 33 and had already earned a medical degree. Tynan had both legs amputated below the knees after a car accident at age 20. But within a year he had entered the Paralympics, and in the 1984 and 1988 games won gold medals in the discus, the shot put and the long jump. Ronan sang at the Sept. 28, 2001, memorial for victims of Sept. 11. He first sang at the old Yankee Stadium in the 2000 season. When he will sing again at the new one is now unclear.


2010: Avishai Cohen, singing in in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Ladino, is scheduled to perform at the Winter Garden in New York City.


2010: The new Natalie G. Heineman Smart Love Preschool was dedicated to the memory of her life and her love and understanding of children.


2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is among the partners supporting Ford’s Theatre scheduled  matinee and evening productions of “Parade,” a Tony-award winning musical drama about the story of Leo Frank, who was lynched by a Georgia mob after having been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a Christian girl working in his factory.


2011: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout” by Jill Abramson and “Until The Dawn’s Light” by Aharon Appelfeld; translated by Jeffery Green.


2011: The Los Angeles Times features a review of “MetaMaus” by Art Spiegelman which is “a lavish deconstruction of his magnum opus” known to one and all as “Maus.”



2011:The Shalit family requested today be present at a High Court of Justice hearing, scheduled to discuss petitions issued geared at thwarting a prisoner exchange deal that would secure the release of their son, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, warning that any delay in the agreement's execution could lead to its failure. The court is expected to discuss the petitions of individual families of terror victims against the Shalit deal at noon tomorrow, as well as they of the Almagor Terror Victims Association.


2011:Palestinian terrorists due to be deported overseas as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal will no doubt find their way back to Palestinian land, a top Hamas official said in an interview today


2011: Two Palestinians who participated in the 2000 lynching of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Ramallah will be released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal, an official prisoners list indicated today. Israeli reservist Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were killed in October 2000, at the start of the intifada, after they mistakenly drove their car into the West Bank city. Both reservists were arrested and then beaten to death by Palestinians who stormed the police station where they were being held. Today, an official list of Palestinian prisoners due to be released as part of the Shalit swap deal indicated that two of the lynchings perpetrators were to be set free as part of the Israel-Hamas agreement. Abed el-Aziz Salha, who was 20 at the time of the lynchinfg, was arrested in 2001 and was sentenced to life in prison. He became infamous following an image taken during the lynching, in which he waved his bloody hands outside the Ramallah police station in which the attack took place. Salha arrived at the police station once he heard the soldiers were held there, entering the structure through the window. He then proceeded to go from room to room. He then saw Vadim Norzhich as he was lying on his stomach with a knife sticking out of his back, and 15 people kicking him. Salha then proceeded to remove the knife from the IDF reservist's back, only to stab him another three times, at which time he proceeded to wave his bloodied hands outside the window. The other lynch perpetrator due to be released is Rami Ibrahim, who was convicted of kicking one of the soldiers in the shoulder and of inciting others to enter the Ramallah police station. He was arrested in November of 2006 and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ibrahim has only completed 10% of his prison term until now. The Palestinian police officer who led the IDF soldiers to the police station, Ra'ad Sheikh, will not be released as part of the Shalit deal. Sheikh was convicted of hitting Norzhich's head with an iron rod. Two of the three presiding judges sought the death penalty for Sheikh, but he was eventually sentenced to life in prison.


2012: The Raw Men Empire, “an Israeli indie folk band” formed in 2009, is scheduled to perform at CMJ Music Marathon in New York.


2012: In Herndon, VA, Congregation Beth Emeth’s Hazak Chapter is scheduled to present a lecture by Dr. Mark Lowenthal, President and CEO of the Intelligence & Security Academy.


2012: Delegates to the Hadassah Convention are scheduled to “march, sing, dance and cheer” their way “through the streets in downtown Jerusalem” as they mark the opening of their convention.


2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Consulate General of Lithuania in NY are scheduled to present “Reclaiming the Jewish Narrative in Lithuania Today,” a lecture  by Markas Zingeris, Lithuanian Jewish author and Director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.


2012:Israel will weigh military action if it suspects Syria’s chemical weapons might fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said today.


2012: Vandals desecrated the grave of former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Dayan tonight (As reported by Ben Hartman)


2012: A rocket fired from Gaza hit close to a house in the Hof Ashkelon area tonight. Two people were treated for shock and minor damage was inflicted on the building, Channel 10 reported.


2012:The Contemporary Jewish Museum's “California Dreaming: Jewish life in the Bay Area from the Gold Rush to Present” is scheduled to come to an end. (For more about  American Jewry in the American West see Harriet Rochlin & Western Jewish History http://www.rochlin-roots-west.com/


2012(30thof Tishrei, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2013:The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present an evening with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz author of For the Next Generation: A Wake-Up Call to Solving Our Nation's Problems


2013: In New York, The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture”


2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to present “Middle East Updated” with Professor Sandy Lakoff


2013: The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis next week.


2013: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will be able to reopen following the vote by Congress to approve legislation that will federal agencies to resume operation and raise the debt limit.


2014(22ndof Tishrei, 5775): Shemini Atsert


2014: In the evening, Agudas Achim in Coralville, Iowa led by Rabbi Jeff Portman is scheduled to host a Simchat Torah celebration complete with “pizza and treats.”


2014: At noon today, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a Festive Concert featuring the Philomusica Piano Quartet.


2014: The Oxford University Jewish Society chaplains are scheduled to host a Simchat Torah dinner this evening.


2014: While “Senior Hamas members said today that indirect ceasefire talks with Israel in Cairo are set to resume at the end of this month”  “the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, called today for Muslims to defend the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, saying Israel was trying to seize the site, which is revered in both Islam and Judaism. (As reported by Stuart Winer)


2014: In a Congressional hearing today, Tom Frieden, the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CD) was questioned for his handling of the Ebola crisis following the spread of the disease to two nurses from the original patient in the US.”


2014: Publication of “The Beggars of Lakewood.”



2014: “In a brief reported released” today “the medical examiner said the cause of Joan Rivers’ death was brain damaged caused by low blood oxygen or ‘anoxic encephalopathy due to hypoxic arrest.’”


2014: Lewis Black is scheduled to appear at the Palace Theatre in Albany, NY.


2015: “Dozens of Palestinians set fire at dawn today to a holy site known as Joseph’s Tomb, in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Nablus in the West Bank, damaging the tiny stone compound that many Jews believe is the burial place of the son of the biblical patriarch Jacob.”


2015:  The Catinca Tabacaru Gallery is scheduled to host a reception marking the opening of Israeli artist’s Addam Yekutieli first solo exhibition.


2015: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host an “exhibition of selected works by JDOCU, who document activities of Tikkun Olam ('Repair the World') with special emphasis on Israeli and Jewish culture.”


2016(14thof Tishrei, 5777): Erev Sukooth


2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich, Murder, Inc. and the Moral Life: Gangsters and Gangbusters in La Guardia’s New York by Robert Weldon Whalen and A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem


2016: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to re-launch “Make A Difference” – the Harvey Miller Family Youth Exhibition.


2016: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host a Sukkah Decorating Party


2016: In a cultural combination that could only take place in the United States, the Bay Ridge Jewish Community is scheduled to host a Sukkah Pizza Party.


2017: “Israeli Air Force jets attacked an anti-aircraft battery well inside Syria this morning, after the surface-to-air system launched a missile at a different plane over the skies of Lebanon,


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to provide a variety burgers – Beef, Chicken and Veggie – for hungry students.


2017: “Cousins Muhammad and Khalid Muhamra and Younis Ayash Musa Zayn “were convicted today” of murder because of their role “in a deadly terror attack in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market in June 2016 in which four people were killed.”


2017: “Filmmaker and Director Aviva Kempner” is scheduled to present “the D.C. premiere of her barnd new 2-disc DVD packaged of ‘Rosenwald’” which examines the life of Chicago philanthropist and business man Julius Rosenwald.


2017: The Yeshiva University Museum is scheduled to a host a walking tour of the exhibition “The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome and Back.”


2017: “Actor-pianist Hershey Fedler is” scheduled to host a “concert in New York, leading guests at Temple Emanu-El in a sing-along concert of tunes by great 20thcentury Jewish American songwriters.”



2018: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Barnes and Noble is scheduled to host a book signing for Barbara Feller, the Hebrew teacher par excellence, author of the newly released Road to Waubeek: Discovering Jay G. Sigmund.


2018: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host an evening with former Secretary of State Madeline Albright who told Ed Bradley in 1997 “that both her Jewish origins” and the death of her grandparents in concentration camps “had been totally unknown to her” and former Vice President of Dick Cheney who may discuss his role in the one of the greatest, if not the greatest foreign policy debacle in American history and the massive economic meltdown that some consider even worse than the Great Depression.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

This Day, October 17, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 17

832 BCE(7 Cheshvan 2928): This is considered the traditional date of the inauguration of the first Temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon.  As far as many Jews are concerned, the dedication is tied to the holiday of Sukkoth and dating schemes such as these are of minimal value. In one of those oddities of the calendar, in 2005, Sukkoth began on the evening of October 17.



539 BCE:  King Cyrus, The Great, of Persia marches into the city of Babylon. This will lead to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem after 70 years of exile.



415: Emperors Honorius and Thedosius II issued an edict deposing Rabin Gamliel IV as the Nasi “because he had disregarded an earlier decree by Honorius, which had curtailed his privileges and the ban on the building of new synagogues and had adjudicated disputes between Jews and Christians.”



1448: Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II. Murad is remembered favorably by the Jews since he allowed German Jews who were fleeing persecution and death to settle in Salonica.  He also employed Jews as his court physicians. On the other hand, John Hunyadi enjoyed the support of the Italian Monk Jean de Capistrano who had previously convinced King Ludwig of Bavaria to expel his Jewish subjects. These two leaders would meet again a decade later during the siege of Belgrade with a different outcome. [Editor’s note – As you can see, conflicts between Moslems and Christians is not an invention of the 21st century]



1469: Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. Their marriage led to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.  This rapacious duo would expel the Jews in 1492.  While cloaking themselves in the Cross, they filled their pockets with stolen Jewish wealth.



1483: Pope Sixtus IV launched the Spanish Inquisition, placing it under joint direction of the Church and state. Despite his previous protest, Pope Sixtus IIIgave into Ferdinand's pressure and extended the authority of the Inquisition to Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. This consolidated the Inquisition under one central body under Torquemada. Tomas de Torquemada, 63, was the Grand Inquisitor in charge of removing Jews and Muslims from Spain. For those who are studying history in Cedar Rapids you will find out that one of the oddities of all this is that all of the major players – Ferdinand, Isabella and Torquemada – descended from Conversos which means that those who led the Spanish Inquisition had Jewish ancestors.

1532: Pope Clement VII issued an apostolical brief halting the Portuguese Inquisition “until further notice. 



1700(4th of Cheshvan, 5461): Judah he-Hasid, an Ashkenazi rabbi who had made good on his call for Aliyah by leading 1,500 of his followers from Europe to Jerusalem passed away three days after they arrived at their destination.

1756: Birthdate of Isaac Abraham Euchel, the native of Copenhagen and nephew of Rabbi Masos Rintel who was one of the founders of the Haskalah movement.

1762(30th of Tishrei, 5523): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan

1762(30th of Tishrei, 5523): Sixty-three year old Samson Gideon, "one of the outstanding members of the London Jewish Community” and "a leader in the Parliamentary struggle to pass the Jews' Naturalization Act of 1753" passed away today after having contracted dropsy leaving   £1000 of his £350,000 fortune to the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London on condition he was buried with honor as a married man in their cemetery in Mile End.

1768: Birthdate of Israel Jacobson, the native of Halberstadt Germany who was a successful businessman, philanthropist and one of the founders of the Reform Movement

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_09920.html


1775(23rd of Tishrei, 5536): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since the Americans rebelled against the British.

1781: The Americans, with a lot of help from the French, defeated Cornwallis at Yorktown.  This victory ensured the creation of the United States.  For the most part, the small Jewish population supported the patriot cause.  Of course the victory meant that the “last best hope of man” would become a haven for the Jews of Europe.

1793: Birthdate of Isaac Noah Mannheimer, the Copenhagen Talmudist and Rabbi who held a variety of posts in Denmark, Germany and Austria.  A leader in the Reform Movement, he served as a representative in the Austrian Reichstag.

1794(23rd of Tishrei, 5555): Simchat Torah

1796(15th of Tishrei, 5557): Sukkoth

1801: In Paris Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and his wife gave birth to French journalist Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy.

1803(21st of Tishrei,

1808: With Napoleon's arrival at the Duchy of Warsaw, the new State parliament called for equal rights. Unfortunately this did not include the Jews whose rights “would be postponed for 10 years in the hope of eradicating all their distinctions which set them apart."


1810: On the day after his death, Reb Nachman of Bratslav was buried at Uman making it the destination for an annual pilgrimage for thousands of Chassidim.



1812: In the Netherlands, Branca and Hirschel Eliazer Kann gave birth to Jacob Kahn



1813(12rid of Tishrei, 5574): As the war between Great Britain and the United States drags into its second year, Jews on both side of the Atlantic celebrate Simchat Torah.



1819: One day after he had passed away, Joseph Wolfe was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”



1830: Birthdate of Mortiz Ellinger, who emigrated to the United States from Bavaria in 1854 where he held several city government jobs while being active in the B’nai B’rith and editing The Menorahand The Jewish Times.



1831: Birthdate of Bernhardine Wetzlar.



1832(23rdof Tishrei, 5593): Simchat Torah



1832(23rdof Tishrei, 5593): Forty-six year old Moses Lemans, the Dutch born Jewish educator and author whose works including The Spirit of the Talmudic Lordand a biography of Maimonides, passed away today.



1835: Birthdate of Abraham Harkavy (Avraham Eliyahu ben Yaakov Harkavy), the Russian born Jewish historian and author. As an author, he was one of the first to write in Hebrew in modern times.



1841: In Charleston, SC, Mr. S. Frankford married Harriet Cohen, “the second daughter of A.N. Cohen.”



1843(23rdof Tishrei, 5604): Simchat Torah



1843: Birthdate of Hebrew teacher, author and commentator Abraham Baer Dobsewitch, the native of Pinks who moved to the United States in 1891 where he continued his work until his death in 1900/



1846:On Sabbath Bereshit a Beth-din was established, composed of the following gentlemen: Chief Rabbi Lilienthal, Moreno [Isaac M.] Wise, Rabbi of Albany and Syracuse; Moreno Doctor Felsenheldt, and Moreno Doctor Kohlmayer. Dr. Lilienthal, elected Rosh Beth Din, presented the Dayanim to his congregations, and in a sermon, delivered on that occasion, declared, on behalf of the Beth-din, that their services were ready to be given to every Jewish congregation in America, without claiming any clerical rights or dues.



1850:  Anti-Christian rioters pillage Christian neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria.  Several Christians die during the riot.  This serves as a reminder that sectarian violence in the Middle East was a fact of life before the birth of the Zionist movement and that this long-standing pattern of violence had nothing to do with the Jews.



1851(21st of Tishrei, 5612): Hoshanah Rabah



1851: A letter was sent to Samuel J. Rubinstein thanking him for his two years of “excellent service” as the treasurer of the synagogue in Dublin, Ireland.



1852: Today, in St. Louis, “a document was ratified that created B’nai El which resulted from a merger of B’nai B’rith, Emanu-El and United Hebrew” after Rabbi Lesser had convinced the Jewish population of the absurdity of such a small community trying to support three congregations.



1853(15thof Tishrei, 5614): Sukkoth



1854:Ernestine Rose, a leading early American advocate for women's rights, presided over the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphia which opened on this date. At the Philadelphia meeting, Rose declared, "[I]s woman not included in that phrase, 'all men are created … equal'? ... Tell us, ye men of the nation … whether woman is not included in that great Declaration of Independence?"



1857: In Louisville, KY, Isaac Sale and Henrietta Dinkelspiel gave birth to Moses N. Sale, the husband of Florence D. Rider, who became a Circuit Court Judge in St. Louis, MO.



1858: Birthdate of David Samuel Margoliouth, The son of Ezekiel Margoliouth and the nephew Moses Margoliouth, both of whom were Anglican converts, he was a noted Orientalist and Oxford Don. Among other accomplishments, “He identified a business letter written in the Judeo-Persian language, found in Danfan Uiliq, northwest China, in 1901, as dating from 718 C.E. (the earliest evidence showing the presence of Jews in China).” He passed away in 1940.



1862(23rd of Tishrei, 5623): Simchat Torah



1862: As the Jewish “holiday season” comes to an end with the celebration of Simchat Torah, General U.S. Grant returns to active field service as he takes command of the Department of Tennessee.  In that capacity he will issue the infamous General Order Number Eleven that expelled Jews, “as a class” from the district under his command.  This regrettable episode would be used by some to unfairly brand Grant as an anti-Semite.



1863(21st of Tishrei, 5764): Hoshana Rabah



1864(17th of Tishrei, 5625): As the Jewish soldiers serving with the Army of Northern Virginia observe Sukkoth Chol Hamoed, General James “Pete” Longstreet, Lee’s good right arm resumes command of troops after having been seriously wounded during the Battle of Wilderness.



1866(8thof Cheshvan, 5627): Hungarian journalist Sigmund Saphir, who “edited several German papers including the Pesther Tageblatt and who was the nephew of “humorist Mortiz G. Saphir” passed away today.



1872(15th of Tishrei, 5633): Sukkoth



1875: It was reported today The Hebrew Charity Fair is to take placed in December at New York’s 22nd Regiment Armory.  All proceeds from the event will go to support Mount Sinai Hospital.  Women from all of the city’s synagogues are actively working to prepare for the event.



1875: According to an article entitled “The Wandering Jew” published today, the first document mentioning this mythic figure are about 650 years old, dating back to the reign of Henry III. The next references to him do not appear until the 16thcentury when he supposedly revealed himself to a weaver in Bohemia.  Contrary to the name, the Wandering Jew has nothing to do with Judaism.  Rather he is a Christological Character tied to one of the stories relating to the Crucifixion



1875: “The Bible in the Public Schools” published today described the conflict going on at the Board of Education of Union Hill, NJ concerning mandatory Bible readings at the start of each school day.



1877: Herman C. Bush wrote a letter from Cincinnati today addressed to his friend Christopher J. Bush of New York confessing that he had stolen seven piece of cassimere from his employer in New York City. He claimed that he had sold five of the pieces to a Jew on the corner of Baxter and Leonard Streets.  Further investigation would establish that this was the address of a second-hand clothing store owned by Louis Lazarus, who had been arrested previously on charges of receiving stolen goods. Lazarus claimed the items in question had been bought by his son who had no idea that they were stolen. Lazarus would later be arrested.  There is no word as to the fate or religion of either of the men named Bush.



1877: Dr. F. De Sola Mendez is scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York City, starting at 8 p.m.



1879: Birthdate of German historian Eugen Täubler who  worked as a lecturer at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies) in Berlin from 1910 to 1914 and again from 1933 to 1941 after which he and his fled Nazi Germany for the United States where he became a professor at HUC in Cincinnati.



1880: James John Woolley married Hannah Cohen today in London



1881: “Minor Affairs Abroad” published today provides a statistical snapshot of births in Russia including the fact that Jews accounted for 3 percent of the 8,119 out-of-wedlock births



1881: One hundred thirty two more Jewish immigrants from Russia are expected to arrive in New York City today.



1882:  Leo Pinkser published his famous pamphlet"Autoemancipation; A Warning of a Russian Jew to his Brethren."He published it as a result of the Russian pogroms of the previous year. Pinsker advocated establishing a homeland as a cure for anti-Semitism. He thought that a Jewish congress should decide if that homeland should be in Eretz-Israel, the United States or some third choice.  Only later did he join with the “Lovers of Zion Movement” and acknowledge that Eretz-Israel was the only place for a Jewish homeland.  Pinkser died in 1891, six years before the First Zionist Congress.  His writings and efforts laid the groundwork for Herzl and others.  In 1934, his remains were re-interred on Mt.Scopus.



1882: Mr. and Mrs. Julius W. Kaskel buried their three week old son Asher in the Hebrew Cemetery in Leadville, CO.



1882: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be sponsoring a concert at Chckering Hall later this week.



1882: It was reported today that Israel Ettler has been arraigned in the Harlem Police Court for his alleged role in the recent riot at Ward’s Island.



1884: It was reported today that Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be hosting a celebration marking the 100th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore tomorrow night. (The overwhelming number of centennial celebrations marking the birth of Montefiore attests to his importance to Jews throughout the world and the affection in which he was held.  But how many people know who is today/)



1885: The first American Rabbinical Conference was held in Cleveland, Ohio



1885: “Statistics of the Jews” published today used figures provided by The Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Marseilles to present a demographic picture of world Jewry. There are 6,377,601 Jews in the world, 5,407, 602 of whom live in Europe, 245,000 in Asia, 413,000 in Africa, 300,000 in American and 12,000 in Oceania.  Of the European countries, Russia has the largest population at over 2,000,000 followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire with 1,600,000.  With a combined Jewish population of 3,000 Norway and Sweden have the fewest.


1885:A law enacted on this date madereligious instruction for Jewish children living in Lübeck who were attending public schools compulsory. The city paid an annual subsidy to the synagogue in Lubeck for providing this instruction


1886: “Moses and Henry George” published today provided George’s praise for the system “Moses tried to found in which there was an absence of poverty and the idea of the brotherhood of man was paramount. To that end, “Moses proved not only for a fair division of the land among the people but for a redistribution every 50 years making monopoly impossible.”


1887: In Richmond, VA, Gustavus and Pauline Lonnersteadter Thalhimer gave birth to Wharton graduate Morton Gustavus Thalhimer, the husband of Ruth Wallerstein Thalhimer.


1888: “A Jewish Wedding” published today described the wedding ceremony that joined  New Yorker Louis H. Rascover to Miss Carrie Thalheimer in Reading, PA which was one of the social highlights of the year. The ceremony was followed by a reception attended by five hundred people from New York and most of the major cities in eastern Pennsylvania.  Before her marriage, Miss Thalheimrt “was the acknowledged belle in Hebrew society circles in Reading.”


1888:  The leaders of the Jewish Order of the Harp of David who were sponsoring a series of “grand operas, tragedies and high comedies at Poole’s Theatre for the benefit of its charitable and mutual benefit funds” clashed with Professor Horowitz, the man it had retained to manage the events during which the latter ceased the proceeds from the ticket offices and only agreed to pay the actors after they threatened not to perform this evening.


1890: A citizen’s committee met with Mayor Grant today and urged him to appoint Coroner Ferdinand Levy to serve as a Police Justice.


1890: Three days after she had passed away today, 86 year old Hester Meyers, the daughter of Isaac and Sarah Levy and the widow of Daniel Meyers was buried today in the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”



1891(15thof Tishrei, 5652): Sukkoth



1891: In Jerusalem, “Rabbi Bernard and Miriam (Charlap) Abramowitz gave birth Abraham Elijah Abramowitz the graduate of Yishivah Meah Shearim who served as Rabbi at Agudath Achim in Shreveport, Ahavath Sholom in Ft. Worth, Texas and B’nai Bazalel in Chicago.



1891: Birthdate of Henry Torres, the attorney who defended Samuel Schwartbard, the Jewish poet and anarchist who was accused of assassinating Simon Petlioura for his role in the Ukrainian Pogroms  in which thousands of Jews including his parents were murdered.



1892 In Chester, PA, founding of “Congregation Bena Israel Ansa” led by Rabbi Berman and whose members included S.D. Levy.



1893: In Berlin, “dental surgeon and businessman Dr. Hugo Ascher and Minna Luise (Schneider) Ascher gave birth to painter Fritz Ascher.



http://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/



1893: In response to an allegation published in The Evening Post that Otto Irving Wise is a “hack politician” one of his friends said today “that Mr. Wise had been connected with Tammany Hall for short time only and then resigned and affiliated himself with the Republicans.”



1894: As reported today, the average age of the 163 people living at the Aged and Infirm Hebrews is seventy-two.



1894: The Lexow Committee (named for its chairman Clarence Lexow), the New York State Senate Committee investigating charges of corruption in the New York City Police Department heard more testimony including charges of police intimidation and payoffs in the operation of soda water stands on the Lower East Side by Samuel Ebert, Wolf Lipman, Samuel Cohen and Amelia Levine.



1896: The University of Wisconsin football team led by first year head coach Philip King, a Jewish native of Washington, DC won its third straight game this afternoon.



1897(21stof Tishrei, 5658): Hoshana Raba observed for the first time during the President of William McKinley.



1897: Letters were written today to a large number of charitable from Messrs. Barnato Brothers explain that the enclosed checks were part of bequests from that late B.I. Barnato.



1898: A.C. Wheeler writes a letter to the New York Times in which he takes issue with the surprise expressed by the paper’s London correspondent at the positive and warm reception received by Israel Zangwill during his highly successful lecture tour.



1898: One day after she had passed away, 56 year old Nellie Monk, “the widow of Israel Monk,” was buried at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.”



1900: Birthdate of molecular biologist Alfred Ezra Mirsky, the husband of children’s author Reba Paeff and the father of Reba Goodman and Jonathan Mirsky.



1900: Herzl meets with the Ernest von Koerber, Austrian Prime Minister.



1901: In Vitebsk, Russia, “Barnett (Dov) Freedman, a tailor, and his wife Beila Henah” gave birth to Harry Freedman the holder of two degrees from the University of London and recipient of “semicha from Jews College who was the husband of “Rebecca (Bea) Ginsberg” who served congregations in Melbourne and New York.



http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/freedman-harry-mordecai-12510



1903(26thof Tishrei, 5664): Lewis Abraham Tallerman, the brother of Australian merchant Daniel Tallerman passed away today.



1903: Birthdate of author Nathanael West best known for Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locusts.



1905(18thof Tishrei, 5666): Sixth Day of Sukkoth



1905(18thof Tishrei, 5666): Forty-six year old South African stockbroker Charles Ansell who moved to London in 1888 and was the uncle of Albert Hyamson passed away today in leaving an estate valued at £346,000.



1905: Birthdate of Lev Nussimbaum, the native of Kiev “who wrote under the pen names Essad Bey and Kurban Said. 



1909(2ndof Cheshvan, 5670): Six year old “Feiwe Licht” passed away today.



1910(14thof Tishrei, 5671): Erev Sukkoth



1910: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “local Hebrews are preparing for the celebration of the feast of which begins tonight at the Sons of Israel Synagogue” where “they have three sprays of the lulav or bulrushes from Palestine which will be used in the declaration of the altar.”



1911: Today twenty-eight year old Abraham Falick the Rumanian born son of “Nathan and Mollie (Greenberg) Falick who came to the United States in 1903 as political refugee and began working in the furniture business where he formed and led two of his own companies – Bauman and Falick, Inc. and Windsor Furniture Company while becoming a leader in the Jewish community “married Frieda Schulman, the daughter of Getzel Schulman.”



1911: In New York Dr. Morris Loeb said today that it was his understanding that his brother, James Loeb, the retired banker, was going to underwrite the expense of translating 200 hundred volumes of the classics into English. The volumes in question were originally written in Latin and Greek.



1914: Birthdate of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman.



1915: Birthdate of Arthur Miller.  Two of this American playwright’s noted works were “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible.”  His other claim to fame was his marriage to Marilyn Monroe.  Monroe conversion to Judaism was tied to her relationship with Miller.

1915: “The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of American announced” today “the Isidore Hershfield, a New York lawyer” would be sailing for Europe “charged with the mission of locating the families and relatives of American citizens various war zones of Europe.”

1915: “The Jewish Congress Organization Committee, meeting” today “in the Broadway Central Hotel decided to hold” next month “a preliminary conference of representatives from Jewish organizations to decide on methods of election and other technical details of convening the congress which is to deal with the whole of the Jewish problem with special reference to the situation in Europe created by the war.”

1915: “Dr. Samuel Betttelheim, editor and proprietor of the Hungarian Jewish News of Budapest arrived in New York” today “with the intention of attending the American Jewish Conference which was scheduled to be held in Washington…but which has been called off” and which will be replaced by another national meeting whose attendees will be more representative of the Jewish community.

1915: “In his farewell sermon at St. Philip’s Episcopal Cathedral this morning” in Atlanta, GA, “Dean John R. Atkinson” said, “the most Christian people I have found in Atlanta are the Jews” because “they have more true charity.”

1915: “In an address this evening at public meeting” in Baltimore, MD, “held to celebrate the found of the Order of B’nai B’rith, Simon Wolf of Washington said that on the eve of his departure for California to attend the Peace Conference, President Wilson entrusted him” with “a letter in which the President wrote that when the hour of peace should arrive he, as the representative of a people firm in advocacy of civil and political rights, would use his best efforts to secure the rights of the Jews in Russia and Rumania.”

1915: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was among the speakers who addressed the meeting at the Century Theatre where resolutions were adopted condemning the treatment of the Armenians by the Ottomans.

1916: It was reported today “a committee of women” whose members include Mrs. William Einstein, Mrs. Sidney Borg, Mrs. Henry Goldman, Mrs. Henry Zuckerman, Mrs. Israel Unterberg, Mrs. Samuel Elkeles and Mrs. Alexander Kohut has been formed to make a special appeal to those of their for contributions to the Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City.

1916: Eighteen year old Mischa Levitz, famed Russian born concert pianist made his American debut in New York, at Aeolian Hall

1916: Cartoonist Rube Goldberg married Irma Seeman after which they set up housekeep at 98 Central Park West in New York City where they gave birth to two sons, Thomas and George.

1917:  Birthdate of Herschel Schater, the Brownsville native who was youngest son of a 7th generation shochet and a real estate manager and as chaplain serving with the Third Army was the first rabbi “to enter and participate in the liberation of Buchenwald.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1917: Birthdate of Alfred Edward “Fred” Kahn “a leading regulatory scholar who wielded his influence in both government and academia, helped spur a broad movement beginning in the mid-1970s toward freer markets in rail and automotive transportation, telecommunications, utilities and the securities markets.”

1917: “Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers announced tonight that the Special Assembly of the Jews of America to plan the continuation of the Jewish war relief and completion of the $10,000,000 1917 fund which is to bring together about a thousand of the most prominent Jews from all parts of the United States will be held at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on October 28th.

1918: Four days after he was killed, “Rifleman Israel Davis” was buried today in the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”

1919(23rd of Tishrei, 5680): Simchat Torah

1919: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) created.  RCA and NBC were inextricably linked with David Sarnoff. 

1919: Birthdate of Russian physicist Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov

1920: Today South Jersey's first Conservative congregation was officially "organized" and elected Morris Handle as Beth El's first President.

1920: Birthdate of Montreal native and McGill University graduate Elie Abel, who worked for the New York Times and NBC News before becoming “Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/us/elie-abel-newsman-and-teacher-dies-at-83.html

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf1n39n4q2/entire_text/

1920: In Brussels, Sadi Kirschen and his wife gave birth to Claude-Anne Kirschen who gained fame as Claude-Anne Lopez one of the most, if not the most formidable, expert on Benjamin Franklin.  “Her father was a defense lawyer for Edith Cavell, the British nurse who was executed by the Germans after she helped scores of Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Belgium during World War I.” (As reported by William Yardley)

1920: Birthdate of Grangeville, Idaho native and USC graduate Betty Brown who gained fame as Betty Sarah Wouk, when she married Herman Wouk, the great American Jewish novelist whose service on the USS Zane gave him two great gifts, Mrs. Wouk and the material for the “Caine Mutiny.”

1921(15th of Tishrei, 5682): Sukkoth

1921(15th of Tishrei, 5682): Sixty-four year old Jacob Brenner who had passed the bar exam in 1879 and eventually became a Brooklyn magistrate married Louise Blumenau, “the daughter of prominent Brooklyn real estate developer Levi Blumenau” with whom head six children -- Arthur and Mortimer both of whom became lawyers and “Republican party leaders,” Rose who was President of the National council of Jewish Women, Rica, Selma and Caroline” passed away today “while giving a speech at Temple Beth-Elohim.”

https://brooklynhistory.org/library/wp/jacob-brenner-papers-1884-1921/

1923: Birthdate of Isaac Saba Raffoul, “a Mexican businessman.”

1924: The Ku Klux Klan staged its second march in less than six months in Las Vagas, Nevada but found little support for its message of hating Catholics and Jews.

1925: Birthdate of Irwin Silber, “a founder and the longtime editor of the folk-music magazine Sing Out!, who was one of the prime movers behind the folk-music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.” (As reported by William Grimes

1927(21st of Tishrei, 5688): Hoshanah Rabah

1927: Birthdate of guitarist Barney Kessel.

1929: “The Informer,” a film version of the novel with the same name with a script by Benn W. Levy was released in the United Kingdom today.

1930: In Biddeford, ME, Samuel and Leah Osher gave birth to Marion Osher, the future wife of Hebert Sandler her partner in creating Golden West Financial.

1931: After a month, filming of “The Trunks of Mr. O.F.” starring Peter Lorre and Hedy Lamarr came to an end.

1931: With Sid Gillman playing End, Ohio State defeated the University of Michigan.


1933:Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Strangely enough, the New York Times story referred to him as a German scientist.  I guess the guys at the Times had not figured out that for all of his greatness, he was just another Jew fleeing Hitler’s Germany.  When is a Jew in Germany a German and not a Jew?  When he wins the Nobel Prize.



1935: When the Belgian steamship Leopold II was unloading 97 tons of cement at Jaffa, “a tin case of cartridges concealed in a barrel” was discovered.  According to “unconfirmed reports…from Arab sources…800 rifles and 400,000 cartridges” were also found among the 537 barrels of cement.



1935: “The party of Haj Amin el Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem asserted” today that the arms discovered yesterday when the SS Leopold II was being unloaded in Jaffa yesterday, “were part of a Jewish plot” and gave rise to the threat of a general Arab work stoppage.



1936(1stof Cheshvan, 5697): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan and Shabbat



1936: At Temple Emanu-El, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Making a Name.”



1936: At West End Synagogue, Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Neglected Teacher – Experience.”



1936: New York University, with Harry Shorten playing end lost to the University of North Carolina today.



1936: At Temple Israel, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Another Flood – The Only Way Out.”



1936: Marvin Lowenthal is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Jews at the Crossroads” this after afternoon at the Central Synagogue on East 62nd Street.



1937: As the Arab Reign of Terror designed to drive the Jews from Eretz Israelcontinued, The Palestine Post reported that the Mandatory Administration at last admitted that the renewed Arab terror and sabotage causes extensive damage. One of the main buildings at LyddaAirport was destroyed by arson and the authorities decided that severe measures would be taken against the town. British women and children living in Hebron were evacuated to Jerusalem and were accommodated at the YMCA. A Cook’s cruise was temporarily suspended and tourist agents reported cancellations. Railway service suffered from frequent interruptions. Jewish buses were shot at and a number of passengers were wounded. One Arab attacker was killed. The Mandatory Government decided to exert a stricter control over the activities of the Wakf (Moslem religious endowment fund).



1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): A band of Arab terrorists shot and killed a ten-year old Jewish boy from Yemeni at Tirath Shalom which is located near Ness Zionah in southern Palestine.



1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): In the wake of renewed Arab terrorism, “Samuel Gutman, a young Jewish theological student studying his Talmud lesson in the shade of a tree in the Schneller quarter of Jerusalem was attacked by an Arab, who stabbed him six times.”



1937 (12th of Cheshvan, 5698): In the wake of renewed Arab terrorism, two buses filled with Jewish workers returning to Jerusalem from the quarry near Motzah were fired on by Arabs.  The gunmen escaped having failed to wound or kill any of their targets.



1937: A movement “led by Max Seligman” a lawyer from Cardiff, Wales, now living in Tel Aviv, that is seeking to convert Palestine into a British Crown Colony as a way of ending the fighting between Arabs and Jews files an application with the Palestine Attorney General’s office in attempt o register an organization called “The Palestine Crown Colony Association.”



1937: Late tonight Arab terrorists attempted to blow up a ridge on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  The bridge was partially damaged but the road remained opened to traffic.



1938(22nd of Tishrei, 5699): On the 45thbirthday of her son, painter Frtiz Ascher, 71 year old Minna Luise Ascher passed away today.



1939: The Nazis deported over one thousand Jews from Moravska Ostrava, of the former Czechoslovakia, and sent them to Lublin region of Poland. There, they were forced to build themselves a labor camp. Adolph Eichmann, now in charge of “Jewish resettlement”, greeted the train



1939: With the cessation of hostilities the Nazis finally fixed the Polish-German frontier. At a meeting, Hitler made clear that the policy would be to cleanse Poland’s towns of Jews, Poles and intelligentsia from all lands falling within the Gerneralgouvernement. Implementation was put in the hands of Henreich Himmler and his SS.



1939: Hitler lectures General Wilhelm Keitel and other top Wehrmacht generals on the need for “Jews, Poles, and similar trash” to be cleared from old and new territories of the Reich.



1940(15thof Tishrei, 5701): Sukkoth



1941: “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” co-starring Simone Simon with music by Bernhard Herrmann who won an Oscar for his work on this picture was released in the United States today.       


1942: According to reports published in the New York Times, Palestine is filling a dual role in the British war effort.  It is home to a key military headquarters called the “Palestine Base and Lines of Communications Headquarters.”  It has also become an industrial center that fills many needs of the British military in the Middle East including the manufacture of mines and hand grenades and the repair of British and American tanks and other military vehicles damaged during combat action.  Many of the workers are refugees from central and eastern Europe which has given them the capability of producing goods that used to be supplied by “Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany and other industrialized European nations.”



1942: Austrian librettist, lyricist and writer Fritz Löhner-Beda was deported to the Monowitz concentration camp near Auschwitz.



1942: Over 10,000 Jews were transferred from Buchenwald Concentration camp to Auschwitz.



1942: The Nazis murdered 1600 Jews from Buczacz, Ukraineat the Belzec death camp.



1942: Four hundred and five Jews held in the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, Germany, concentration camps are deported to Auschwitz. Austrian-Jewish opera librettist Fritz Beda is among those deported from Buchenwald.



1942: Birthdate of Yosef Lahav (Joe Sikorel), the native of Alexandria, Egypt who died when the Dakar was lost at sea in 1968.



1943(18thof Tishrei, 5704): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed



1943(18thof Tishrei, 5704): Seventy-five year old Montgomery, AL native and founder of the Manufacturers Trust Company Nathan Jonas, the philanthropist and son of Jacob and Bella Jonas whose wife Jennie Straus Jonas pre-deceased him passed away today “in the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn which he founded.”



https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/10/18/85127556.pdf



1943: A Jewish partisan unit commanded by Abba Kovner destroys two rail engines and two bridges near Vilna, Lithuania.



1943: German Ambassador to the Vatican Ernst von Weizsäcker writes to the German Foreign Ministry that the College of Cardinals has been “particularly dismayed” since the roundup of Jews in Rome is occurring “below the very windows of the Pope.” He notes that the Pope continues to do everything he can “not to burden relations with the German government and German agencies in Rome.”



1944:  Adolf Eichmann returned to Budapest. He demanded that 50,000 Jews be assembled to be used as forced laborers in Germany.  He further ordered that they should march there on foot.



1944: At Birkenau, Dr. Mengele began another selection of children to be sent to the gas chambers. Only his small selected group of about 200 twins were continued to be spared his wretched wrath.



1945: Premiere of “Week-End At The Waldorf” based on Vicki Baum’s novel Grand Hotel with a script co-written by Bella Spewack



1946: King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia sent a letter to President Truman charging that the American leader’s “call for opening the gates of Palestine to more Jews was in ‘complete contradiction’” to what the King said were “presidential assurances to the Arabs.”  The King described the Jews as “aggressors from the start” when it came to matters regarding Palestine. 



1946: In Warsaw, “Ozjasz Szechter, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, and Helena Michnik, a historian, communist activist, and children's-book author” gave birth to Adam Michnik, the author and historian who was imprisoned by the Polish Communist regime and worked to bring it down.



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/09/solidarity-poland-berlin-wall-1989



https://www.centralsynagogue.org/about_us/shofar_shabbat/michnik



1946: A production of “Lysistrata” written by Gilbert Seldes opened at the Belasco Theatre.



1947: Following a six day trial, Yossef Vavriel and Abraham Katalan, two members of the Irgun, “were convicted of carrying arms in a room of the house at Kiryat Sahul where two British policemen” who had been kidnapped from a swimming pool in June were being held prisoner. The two British policemen had not been harmed by their captors.



1947: David Ben-Gurion called on members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to disband their organizations and join the Haganah as the Jewish community moved to protect itself from attacks from the Arabs.  Ben-Gurion denied that negotiations were being held with the leaders of these organizations since his goal is to have only one military force that will answer to the civilian leaders of the Yishuv.



1947: Mr. Moshe Shertok the head of Political Department of the Jewish Agency, addressed the United Nations, making the case for the creation of a Jewish state as part of the Two State Solution. Moshe Shertok would become Moshe Sharett after the creation of the state of Israel, serving as it first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister.



1947: U.S premiere of “The Exile” directed by Max Ophüls and filmed by cinematographer Franz Planer.



1948(14th of Tishrei, 5709): Erev Sukkoth;



1948: Israeli naval vessels shelled Majdal which had been occupied by invading Egyptian troops.



1948(14th of Tishrei) Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, also known as the Maharitz, passed away. Born in 1865 he moved to Jerusalem in 1930. He was the first Rebbe of Dushinsky and Chief Rabbi (Govad) of the Edah HaChareidis of Jerusalem.



1948: The 52nd and 54thBattalions of the Givati Brigade began a three day action aimed at taking control of “the internal Negev road from Julis to Bror Hayial through Kawkaba and Huleiqat.”



1948: During Operation Yoav, Egyptian forces begin withdrawing from the Negev after suffering heavy attacks by the Israelis.  The Egyptians were retreating from land to which they had no legal or moral claim. Operation Yoav was conducted during the Israeli War for Independence.  It took place following numerous violations of the UN brokered cease fire about which the international organization did nothing. 



1949: Premiere of “The Reckless Moment” a “film noir directed by Max Ophüls and produced by Walter Wanger.”



1950: David Ben-Gurion made an attempt to form a minority government consisting of Mapai and Sephardim and Oriental Communities today, but it was not approved by the Knesset.



1950: In New York, Edith (née Leibovitch)Tolkin, “a studio executive and film industry lawyer” and “the late comedy writer Mel Tolkin” gave birth to Middlebury College graduate Michael L. Tolkin, the novelist and film writer who won an Edgar Award for the screenplay for “The Player”



1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that the Joint Distribution Committee agreed to defray half the cost of the upkeep and medical treatment of the North African immigration. The forced migration of Jews living in Moslem lands to Israelis one of the untold “refugee” stories.  Following the creation of the state of Israel Jews from such places as Morocco came to Israel, in part, because the local Arab population had turned against.  This happened despite the fact that Jews had lived there for centuries.  It is interesting to compare the efforts of the Israelis to integrate immigrants into their society as opposed to the Arab treatment of their Moslem brethren who had left what would become the state of Israel for whatever reasons. 



1956: U.S. premiere of “What Happened to Julie on Her Honeymoon?” produced by Martin Melcher.



1956: “Attack” a WW II “anti—war” movie co-starring Robert Strauss was released today in the United States.



1957(22nd of Tishrei, 5718): Shemini Atzert



1958: NBC broadcast “An Evening with Fred Astaire,” the Emmy winning special directed and co-produced by Bud Yorkin (Alan David Yorkin)



1959(15th of Tishrei, 5720): Sukkoth



1959: In the UK, Julie Brett and Eric Selig Phllip Cowell, Sr. who is Jewish gave birth to television personality Simon Cowell.



1963(29th of Tishrei, 5724): Mathematician Jacques-Salomon Hadamard passed away at the age of 98. Although Hadamard claimed to be an atheist when it came to religion he became an active in support of Jewish causes following the Dreyfus Affair.  Part of this may have stemmed from the fact that his wife was related to the wrongly accused French Colonel.


1963: “All the Way” the movie version of the 1960 play produced by David Susskind was released today in the United States.

1963: “Jennie,” “a musical with a book by Arnold Schulman, music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz “opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.”

1966: During a discussion of the construction of the new chapel at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim of Montreal Jack Breslow expressed his concerns about the arrangement of the seating and positioning of the bimah which he feared would be “a departure from the tradition of Conservative Judaism” and impractical while Rabbi Shuchat took the view that “the location of the bimah had no bearing on the tradition of Conservative Judaism.”

1967: Barbra Streisand starred in “Belle of 14th Street” a special on CBS television.

1967(13th of Tishrei, 5728): Seventy-one year old Eugene Otterbourg, the son American “envoy to Mexico, Marcus Otterbourg,” a 1904 graduate of CCNY and the third generation attorney who “was a founder and senior partner of Otterbourg, Steindler, Houston and Rosen” where he was “a specialist in bankruptcy and reorganization law” passed away today.


https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/10/18/83636558.pdf


1967:  Memorial service for Brian Epstein was held at New London Synagogue – The Jewish Connection to the lads from Liverpool.


1968: “Far From the Madding Crowd,” a film adaptation of the 19th century novel directed by John Schlesinger with a script by Frederic Raphael was released in the United States by MGM today.


1973: The “Battle of the Chinese Farms” comes to an end when an Egyptian counter-attack fails to dislodge Israeli troops leaving the bridgehead across the Suez Canal intact. The battle, which began on October 15th was one of the bloodiest and costliest of the war.


1973: During the Yom Kippur War, the Soviets were landing 70 planes per day crammed with modern supplies at Egyptian and Syrian airports. Egyptian forces failed in their attempts to dislodge Israeli forces from their new positions on the west bank of the Suez Canal.  At the same time, the Egyptians were not making any progress with the attacks on Israeli positions east of the Canal.  As the fortunes of war began to turn against the attacking Arab Armies, the Soviets increased the pressure for a cease fire.  The Israelis were unwilling to consider any action that would reward Arab Aggression.



1973:  OPEC started an oil embargo against a number of western countries.  Supposedly OPEC was using the Oil Weapon to reverse the Arab defeat during the Yom Kippur War.  In point of fact, OPEC succeeded in raising the price of petroleum which enriched OPEC, shifted the economic balance and along the way impoverished millions of people living in Third World Nations – untold numbers of Arabs and other followers of Islam living in non-OPEC nations.


1974: Birthdate of Larchmont, NY native and Wesleyan University graduate Ariel Levy, the author who is also a staff writer for the New Yorker.


https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/ariel-levy


1975:  The United Nations declared that “Zionism is racism.”  This came in the same period when the U.N. General greeted the pistol packing Yasser Arafat with a standing ovation. Arafat was still in the full flush of his victory; having been responsible for the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics and the slaughter of the Israeli athletes.



1975: U.S. premiere of “Rooster Cogburn” produced by Hal Wallis.



1976(23rd of Tishrei, 5737): Simchat Torah



1977(5th of Cheshvan, 5738): Eighty-one year old English film producer Sir Michael Elias Balcon, the grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis and Tasmin Day-Lewis passed away today.



https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Michael_Balcon



1977(5th of Cheshvan, 5738): Seventy-five year old David “Dave” Ziff who played “end at Syracuse University in the early 1920’s” and then played two seasons for the nascent National Football League passed away today.



1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that a prominent, unnamed, West Bank figure, whom the local Arab politicians expected to become a central member of any Palestinian delegation at the renewed Geneva Peace Conference, was seeking an urgent meeting with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, to check whether Israel would be prepared to negotiate an eventual self-determination for the Palestine Arabs at the conference table.



1978: “Goin’ Coconuts” a musical comedy directed by Howard Morris was released in the United States by Columbia pictures and proved to be box office flopped that was panned by ciritics.



1979(26th of Tishrei, 5740):  Seventy-five year old Sidney Joseph Perelman, known as S.J. Perelman, who was born in Brooklyn in 1904, raised in Providence, where he graduated from Brown University passed away today. For almost forty years, Perelman was a true man of letters gaining fame as a cartoonist, author, screenwriter, and satirist.  A city boy by birth, Perelman chose to live in rural BucksCounty for forty years.  During that time he wrote, “A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.”


https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/18/archives/sj-perelman-humorist-is-dead-sj-perelman-humorist-dead-at-75.html


1983(9th of Cheshvan, 5744): Seventy-eight year old Raymond Aron passed away. Born in Paris,  the famed author and social commentator, served in the French Air Force and then fought with the Free French during WW II. While his name may not be a household word, he was a life-long friend and worthy intellectual opponent of Jean-Paul Sartre.


http://www.egs.edu/library/raymond-aron/biography/


 


1984(21st of Tishrei, 5745): Hoshanah Rabah


1984(21st of Tishrei, 5745): Seventy-one year old “retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge and graduate of what is now Rutgers Law School  Morris Malech” the decorated WW II veteran and husband of “the former Freda Lipowitz” with he had two sons – Harry and Edward – passed away today.


https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/20/obituaries/morris-malech-71-former-jersey-judge-dies.html


1984(21st of Tishrei, 5745): Eighty-one year old Rabbi Levi Arthur Olan passed away. Born in 1903 at Cherkasy, Ukraine, he was Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1929 to 1948. From 1949 to 1970 he was Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, Texas.


http://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0181/ms0181.html


1985(2nd of Cheshvan, 5746): Ninety-year old conductor and opera manager Joseph Rosenstock passed away today. (As reported by Dena Kleiman)


http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/18/arts/joseph-rosenstock-90-conductor-of-operas.html


1985: Funeral services are scheduled to be held this afternoon at Hempstead, Long Island, for former New York Knicks basketball star Max Zaslofsky.


1988:Today’s announcement that chemist Gertrude Elion had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine represented the culmination of an unlikely career. The young Elion had known what she wanted to do—but nobody seemed ready to let her do it. New York’s HunterCollege provided her with a free education during the Depression, but when she graduated at age 19, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, not one graduate school would provide her with needed financial aid. Unable to find a laboratory job, she started secretarial school. Supporting herself as a doctor’s receptionist and a substitute high school science teacher, Elion earned a master’s degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 (she was the only woman in her classes). With more lab opportunities open to women during World War II, Elion found a job at Burroughs Welcome, a pharmaceutical company, in 1944.Elion’s research with her mentor and partner George Hitchings led to the first effective treatment for childhood leukemia and to immunosuppressants that made organ transplants possible. Her anti-viral research led to treatments for many ailments including AIDS. Elion, whose doctorates were all honorary, received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Hitchings and British scientist James Black. Elion thus joined an impressive list of American Jewish female Nobel Prize winners in science that also includes American-born Rosalyn Yalow (1977), and Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori (1947) and Rita Levi-Montalcii (1986) who were born and educated abroad. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive.


1989: An army inquiry completed today found that a Syrian MIG-23 fighter-bomber was able to penetrate Israeli airspace unchallenged last week because of an error by the air defense officer on duty at the time. The inquiry, by two senior officers, has not been made public. But the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Dan Shomron, discussed the findings on Israeli television tonight and said the penetration occurred because ''an officer did not exercise correct judgment.'' General Shomron said the investigation did not find fundamental problems with Israel's air defense system. He said the officer, who has not been identified publicly, ''has been called in for questioning.'' Other officials said the man would probably be reprimanded for failing to fire anti-aircraft missiles or scramble interceptors. The Syrian pilot, Maj. Mohammed Bassem Adel, told reporters on Friday that he spent only three or four minutes over Israel. He said he flew at more than 800 miles per hour at about 150 feet and turned off all the electronic systems that could signal hostile intentions. He landed at a field near the town of Megiddoand said he wanted to defect.


1989: “Closer Than Ever” a revue featuring the music of David Shire “opened in previews” today at the Cherry Lane Theatre.


1990: Publication of William Steig’s Shrek!  a picture book for children about a young ogre whose name is derived from the Yiddish work for “fear” or “fright.”


1990: “Reversal of Fortune” film adaption of Alan Dershowitz’s book produced by Edward R. Pressman and co-starring Ron Silver was screened in Los Angeles for the first time.


1994: The draft of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was finalized.  This would prove to be one of the tangible positive by-products of the Oslo Peace Process.


1995(23rd of Tishrei, 5756): Simchat Torah


1995: “The Babysitter” starring Alicia Silverstone was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures.


1997(16th of Tishrei, 5758): Second day of Sukkoth


1997: “Shooting Fish,” a British comedy starring Dan Futterman as “Dylan” was released today in the United Kingdom by Entertainment Film Distributors.


1997(16th of Tishrei, 5758): Ninety-six year old character actor Ben Welden passed away today.


1998: A Palestinian conducted a grenade assault on the Beershebabus terminal, wounding 67 Israelis, including 24 soldiers.


1999: The New York Times book section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jews including Bad Jews And Other Stories by Gerald Shapiro and Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel.


2000: At the Library of Congress opening of an exhibition entitledHerblock’s History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium that presents works by cartoonist Herb Block, who chronicled the nation’s political history and caricatured twelve American presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton.


2001 (30th of Tishrei, 5762):Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi was shot to death in the first assassination of a serving Cabinet minister by Palestinians.  Born in Jerusalemin 1926, Zeevi served in the Palmach.  He enjoyed a very successful thirty year career in the IDF.  After retiring with the rank of Major General, he pursued a career in politics. A general in the Israel Army, Zeevi had a distinguished military career before pursuing a political career. 



2001(30thof Tishrei, 5762): Eighty-six year old Oscar winning composer and lyricist Jay Livingston passed away today. (As reported by Richard Severo)



http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/arts/jay-livingston-86-who-wrote-hit-songs-with-ray-evans-for-the-movies-dies.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1



2003(21st of Tishrei, 5764): Hoshana Rabah



2003: U.S. premiere of “Runaway Jury,” co-starring Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz



2004: The body of Sam Kellerman the brother of Max Kellerman an American boxing commentator and sports talk radio host based in Los Angeles was found in a Hollywood (CA) apartment” which led to the arrest of “former boxer James Butler” who “ later confessed to the murder and was given a 29 year sentence.”



2004(2nd of Cheshvan, 5765): Uzi Hitman “an Israeli singer, songwriter, composer and television personality” passed away. His career began in 1976 and he became a popular Israeli artist during the 1980s and 1990s. He has famously composed a popular melody for Adon Olam in 1976. His most famous songs include Noladati Lashalom (I Was Born for Peace), Ratziti Sheteda (I Wanted You to Know), Todah (Thank you) and Kan (Here), which reached 3rd place during the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Hitman also appeared on the 1980s children's programmes Parpar Nehmad and Hopa Hei. He died after a heart attack at the age of 52. He was buried at the Yarkon Cemetery near Tel Aviv. The City of Ramat Gan renamed Kikar Hashoshanim (Roses Square) in his neighborhood of residence to Kikar Hitman (Hitman Square).



2005: Haaretz reported that Kinneret Mendel and Matat Rosenfeld-Adler, 21-year-old cousins from the settlement of Carmel, and Oz Ben Meir, 15, from the settlement of Ma'on were murdered by terrorist on Sunday and buried today.



2005(14th of Tishrei, 5766): Erev Sukkoth



2006: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called on President Moshe Katsav to resign in response to the police's recommendation to indict him on a number of charges including rape. "In the current situation, almost without connection to the criminal question, I believe that it would not be right for President Katsav to continue to serve as president," said Livni. Livni made the comments at a ceremony marking the opening of "Kadima House" in Hadera



2007(5thof Cheshvan, 5768): Ninety eight year old WW II Australian hero General Paul Cullen passed away today.



http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/cullen-paul-alfred-20603



https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P10685368



2007(5thof Cheshvan, 5768): Eighty-eight year old Hempstead, NY, native Milton “Mickey” Rutner the third baseman who played in 12 games for the 1947 Philadelphia Athletics passed away today in Georgetown, TX.



https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rutnemi01.shtml



2007: “Bernard and Doris” a ‘semi-fictionalized” biopic directed and produced by Bob Balaban “premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival” today.



2007:Virtuoso Pianist Vladimir Feltsman plays “Music from Poland and Russia” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Since his arrival in the U.S.from the Soviet Union in 1987, world-class pianist Vladimir Feltsman has graced every major concert hall in the country. Feltsman performs music from Poland's keyboard master, Chopin, and one of Russia's most dramatic piano pieces: Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition."



2007: As an example of the secular power 21stcentury Jews have attained, a photo is taken at 10:13 a.m. of Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general chatting with Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman prior to the start of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The two Orthodox Jews were classmates at YaleLawSchool. 



2007: The New York Times features a review of Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won’t Do) by Michael Wex.



2007:A London-based Jewish radio station, Shalom FM, founded by Mike Menoza as a way of providing, "some balanced reporting about the community and Israel" ceased broadcasting at midnight.



2008: In a reversal of cultural roles. The Jerusalem Cinematheque features an American film about an Israeli. The film is “You Don’t Mess with Zohan” an American made film about an Israeli.  Zohan Dvir, a powerful and iniquitous Mossad agent, wants to change professions to hair styling. He escapes to the US, where he finds a job at a New York salon and quickly turns into a local star. But his past comes back to haunt him in the form of “The Phantom” – the Palestinian fighter who was Zohan’s sworn enemy. While the two plan on eliminating one another, they discover a greater enemy hovering over the two of them. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan puts our local conflict into the Hollywood grinder and comes out with an entertaining and irreverent summer comedy, full of Adam Sandler’s familiar and beloved vulgar humor. With Sandler’s absurd accent and hairdo, the result is a welcome satire.”



2008: Jerusalem mayoral candidate Nir Barkat toured Jewish and state owned lands in an area between the French Hill and the Arab neighborhood of Anata, promising that “In Anata, a new Jewish neighborhood will be established and this will provide a solution to the housing needs of students and the city’s younger generation.



2008 (18th of Tishrei, 5769): Eighty five year old Montreal native Ben Weider who was a founder and longtime president of the International Federation of Body Builders” passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/othersports/21weider.html?_r=0



2009:Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” is performed at Kimmel Theatre on the campus of Cornell College in Mt. Vernon Iowa. The production is based on Wendy Kesselman’s acclaimed new adaptation of the play that makes thoughtful use of recently recovered segments of Anne’s diary to deepen our understanding both of the cultural context of the events and to present a much more complex (and less sentimental) Anne.



2009:  At Agudas Achim in Iowa City, Sam Stalkfleet is called to the Torah as a the Bar Mitzvah


2009: PBS broadcast the first episode of “Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth” featuring Ruth Reichel, “the last editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine.”


2009: At the 14th St Y in Manhattan opening of the LABALMA Exhibition followed by the Y Dance party.


2009(29th of Tishrei, 5770):Sheldon Jerome Segal “an American embryologist and biochemist who spent his entire career working on contraception and made major innovations in the field of long-lasting alternatives, including in the creation of Norplant, the first major development advance in birth control since the birth control pill” passed away.


2009(29th of Tishrei, 5770): Seventy-eight year old novelist Norma Fox Mazer, passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/arts/25mazer.html


2009: “A Believer in Heroism, to Jews’ Lasting Gratitude” published today told the tale of Dr. Tina Strobos who hid more than 100 Jews from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam.



2010: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival opened in Washington, DC.


2010: Dr. Stephen Whitfield, Professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, author of In Search of American Jewish Culture and one of Tulane University’s most distinguished graduates is scheduled to speak at the Guardain-Benefactor Luncheon sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.


2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Great House by Nicole Krauss and David Susskind: A Televised Life by Stephen Battaglio.


2010:The IDF Israel Defense Forces attacked a terrorist cell planning to launch Qassam rockets or mortar bombs at Israel from Gaza.


2011: President Shimon Peres is scheduled to open his residence to the public today from from 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon. It is the continuation of a long-held tradition for the presidents of Israel to open the residence to the wider public during one of the intermediate days of the Succoth.


2011:Philip Levine, the newly named Poet Laureate is scheduled to open the annual literary season of the Library of Congress with a reading of his work at the Coolidge Auditorium.


2011:Ron Skolnik, Executive Director of Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) is scheduled to speak on "Rent, Cottage Cheese and Peace: What's making Israel tick these days?" at Kol Ami, the Northern Virginia Reconstructionist Community


2011: Dr. Michael Berenbaum is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Three German Jews Rediscover Their Judaism” during which he will examine the lives of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Gershom Scholem.


2011: A genuine simchah as the family and friends of Laurie Silber celebrate the birthday of this remarkable ayshish chayal: loving wife, devoted daughter, doting mother and grandmother, sweet singer of Psalms who brightens the Musical Shabbat and energetic community leader who taught in our Sunday School for many years and who brings new energy to Temple Judah in each of her terms as co-President.  For those lucky enough to know her she is a “chever” – a friend for all seasons.


2011:The Israel Law Center (Shurat Hadin) is set to launch a hotline today, to help Jewish college students who are victims of anti-Semitism on their campuses. Students in the US can call the Israel Law Center Campus Hotline on (718) 907-9258.  


2011:The State today responded to petitions lodged against the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit at the High Court of Justice today, saying the swap was strictly a political matter to be carried out by the government.


2011:The High Court of Justice rejected numerous petitions against the execution of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal today, effectively removing the last legal obstacle en route to the release of the abducted Israel Defense Forces solder


2011(19thof Tishrei, 5772): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2011: Following a speech by David Einhorn today at the Value Investing Congress in which he “publicly announced his short position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, its share price fell by 10 per cent.


 2011(19th of Tishrei, 5772): Ninety-four year old audio innovator Edgar M. Villchur passed away (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



2012(1stof Cheshvan, 5773): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2012(1stof Cheshvan, 5773): Eighty-nine year old “Stanford R. Ovshinsky, an iconoclastic, largely self-taught and commercially successful scientist who invented the nickel-metal hydride battery and contributed to the development of a host of devices, including solar energy panels, flat-panel displays and rewritable compact discs,” passed away today. (As reported by Barnaby J. Feder)



2012: University of Liverpool Professor Eve Rosenhaft is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Black People under Nazi Rule: Perspectives on the ‘Racial State’” at the Wiener Library in London.


2012: The Washington Jewish Film Festival and the Hebrew Language are among the sponsors of the scheduled screening of “Four Pairs of Shoes” at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.


2012: Israeli singer-song writer Onili (Nili Ohayon) is scheduled to perform at Littlefiled in Brooklyn.


2012: Israel has not done enough to carry out the directive issued by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to increase the country's aerial firefighting capabilities, in spite of the growing threat of wildfires posed by rockets and missiles pointed at the Israeli home-front both from the north and south, the state comptroller's report stated today.


2012:Incoming Egyptian ambassador to Israel Atef Salem presented President Shimon Peres with his official credentials at the President's Residence in Jerusalem today. Salem, the first ambassador sent by new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, said at the ceremony that Cairo is committed to all agreements with Israel, including the peace agreement.


2012: Friends and family look forward to celebrating the birthday of Laurie Silber a pillar of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jewish community whose efforts has included multiple tours as President of Temple Judah, enthusiastic singing member of Shir Yehuda, long-time Sunday School teacher as well as a loving wife, devoted mother and “grand” grandmother   An Ashish Chayil in the truest sense of the term.


2013(13thof Cheshvan, 5774): Eighty-four year old Emmy award winning producer Lou Scheimer passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2013: At the Library of Congress, the Czech film series that features movies with Jewish themes is scheduled to show “Four Pairs of Shoes.”


2013: The Center For Jewish History is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem” featuring Jeremy Dauber author of The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye


2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to present “Behind the Scenes of Elegy” in which Ron Hirsen discusses his play that “reveals the family dynamic between Holocaust survivors and the next generation.”


2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the National Archives are scheduled to present “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage”


2013: Middle Eastern vocalist and composer Galeet Dardashti is scheduled to demonstrate the melismatic vocal ornaments present in Mizrachi Jewish music and Persian classical music to students at Tulane University


2013: US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism following an IDF guided tour of a recently unearthed tunnel running beneath the border with the Gaza Strip today. (As reported Naama Barak)


2013: While Israel issued no official response to a Washington Post report today that claimed Turkey had deliberately exposed a network of up to 10 Iranians working for the Mossad, a former Israeli spy chief fumed that, if accurate, the incident constituted a grave betrayal by Turkey of years of unwritten understandings between the two intelligence communities.


2014: SukkahPDX 2014 , Juried Outdoor Design Exhibit sponsored by the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to come to an end.


2014(23rdof Tishrei, 5775): Simchat Torah


2014(23rdof Tishrei, 5775): Ninety-five year old Mildred Puro Pittman, who had been pre-deceased by both of her husbands – Joseph Puro and Howard Pittman – passed away today in Delray Beach


2014(23rdof Tishrei, 5775): Eighty-five year old playwright Herb Shapiro passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2014: In the UK, the Oxford University Jewish Society chaplains are scheduled to host a festive lunch at their home.


2014: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Ritual Committee hosts a Pizza dinner prior to the Consecration Ceremony honoring the newest youngster in the Religious School.


2014: “The US State Department denied claims today that US Secretary of State John Kerry made statements yesterday suggesting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fueling the spread of Islamic terror in the Middle East.” (As reported by Joshua Davidovich)


2014: Following yesterday’s congressional hearings, Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appears to have become the scapegoat for the current Ebola outbreak in the United States.


2014: “Fury” a very disappointing movie set in the last days of WW II starring Shia LaBeou, Logan Lerman, John Bethanal and Jason Isaacs was released throughout the United States two days after its premiere in Washington, DC.


2014: An Ebola defense exercise was held early today with participants including Ben-Gurion International Airport units, the Health Ministry, MDA, the Interior Ministry Population and Migration Authority and the Israel Police.


2015: Shabbat Noach


2015: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host “a women’s tefillah service” this morning designed to provide “an opportunity for all women from whatever strand of Judaism to come together and pray together.”


2015: Rabbis and leaders of the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist movements in conjunction with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations have designated today as a special Sabbath of Solidarity with Israel.


2015: As a sign of the vitality of “small town Judaism” in Cedar Rapids, Temple Judah Shabbat morning services are scheduled to “go on the road this morning” when they are held at Cottage Grove Place for the convenience of its Jewish residents.


2015: “New York City mayor Bill de Blasio visited victims of a recent terror wave in Jerusalem today as part of a “solidarity visit,” saying that pain felt by Jerusalem was also being felt by his city.”


2015: The Tulane University Jewish Studies is scheduled to host Dr. Steve Whitfield, the Max Richter Professor of American Civilization at Brandeis University and the smartest person I ever met at Tulane as he speaks about “Franz Boas and the Struggle Against Racism.”


2015: “The Decent One” a documentary about Himmler is schedule to open at Cinema Village in NYC.



2016(15th of Tishrei, 5777): Sukkoth;


2016: Among the candidates for the short-list of the “Baillie Gifford Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for non-fiction are Ben Judah author ofThis is London and Phillipe Sands author of East West Street.


2016(15th of Tishrei, 5777): Ninety-two “celebrity” dentist Irwin Smigel passed away today.



2016(15th of Tishrei, 5777): On the Jewish calendar 73rd anniversary of the Sobibor Uprising which began in the early hours of a day when Jews were commanded “to dwell in booths.”



2016: On the final day of the Conference of the “US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation” a group whose leader is opposed to the existence of the state of Israel, attendees are scheduled to lobby members of Congress.


2017: The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted “a film screening and conversation with Israeli documentary directory Boris Maftsir, creator of the Searching for the Unknown Holocaust film series this afternoon.”


2017: Master Canasta Teacher, Judie Begoun, from the L'Chaim Center in Deerfield is scheduled to offer tips as part of “Friends, Fun and Games” sponsored by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.


2017: At the Bard Graduate Center, Andrea M Berlin is scheduled to present “Jewish Daily Life in the time of Herod the Great” which is part of the Leon Levy Foundation Lectures.


2017: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to present Deborah Dash Moore and Ronit Stahl speaking on “Jewish New York, 1917” part the exploration of “New York Jewry’s myriad responses to WWI from the viewpoints of military and social urban history”


2018: In Atlanta, GA, the Bremen Museum is scheduled to host another stop in its “Historic Jewish Atlanta Tours” with a visit to “historic Oakland Cemetery” whose “Jewish Hill” is the final resting place of “several members of the Rich family who founded Rich’s Department Store Dr. Joseph Jacobs, owner of the pharmacy that served the first Coca-Cola; Jacob Elsas, owner of the Fulton Bag & Cotton Mill; as well as members of the Montag, Selig, Massell, Haas, and Guthman families.”


2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is schooled to host “Nudge, Wink in Whitechapel: Secret Histories from the Lyrics of the Cockney-Yiddish Music Hall at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” – a lecture by “historian, Yiddishit and performer Vivi Lachs, the author of Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1885 – 1914.


 


 


 

This Day, October 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 18



67 CE: Roman soldiers captured Gamla, a fortress in Israel's Golan region, and killed all its inhabitants. The ancient historian Josephus Flavius, a leader of the Jewish revolt against Rome, fortified Gamla as a main stronghold in 66 CE. The Romans attempted to take the city by means of a siege ramp, but were turned back by the defenders; only on the second attempt did they succeed in penetrating the fortifications and conquering the city. Thousands of inhabitants were slaughtered, while others chose to jump to their deaths from the top of the cliff. The location of ancient Gamla was discovered in archeological excavations during the 1970s; the remains have been preserved as a national park (As reported by Aish)



323:  Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine's sole control over the Roman Empire. Constantine is perhaps best known for being the first Roman Emperor to endorse Christianity.  To put it mildly, Constantine tipped the scales in favor of Christianity and helped begin a downward spiral for European Jewry for an extended period of time.  This is an example of the fact that Christianity owes its dominant position to the power of the state.  As one author has pointed out in a recent bestseller, the Sword of Constantine was the vehicle for empowering the Cross of the Church.


412:Cyril was made Pope or Patriarch of Alexandria. Two years later, he “incited the Greeks to kill or expel the Jews. He forced his way into the synagogue at the head of a mob, expelled the Jews and gave their property to the crowd. The Prefect Orestes, who refused to condone this behavior, was set upon and almost stoned to death. Only one Jew, Adamanlius, agreed to be baptized. Within a few years Jews were allowed to return, but a majority of them returned only after the Mohammedans conquered Egypt.”


614: Today the fifth Council of Paris “prohibited the Jews from asking or from exercising civic or administrative rights.”


1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock. His treatment of a Christian shrine provides an insight as to how Islam treated the holy sites of other religions.  In other words, Islam’s current claims to the Temple Mount are consistent with a pattern of usurpation and destruction.


1035: Sancho III, King of Navarre, called by some, the Great, was assassinated during a revolt. Four officials and sixty Jews were put to death during that revolt, because the locals considered Jews to be "property" of the crown.


1210:  Pope Innocent III excommunicates German leader Otto IV. This was part of Innocent’s drive to become the dominant power in Europe.  Jews will recognize him as the true father of the Inquisition and the driving force behind the Fourth Lateran Council that served to demean the Jewish people and force them to live a life isolated from their Christian neighbors which would ensure their impoverishment.


1270: The Last Crusade ended.  The Crusades began in 1095 with the People’s Crusade.  These first Crusaders moved through Central Europe like a giant wave attacking the local Jewish communities as they moved toward the Holy Land.  There were eight crusades, the last two led by the French King, Louis IX known as St. Louis.  St. Louis actually died of the plague in 1270 in Tunisthus failing to reach the Holy Land.   Many historians see the Crusades as a negative in Jewish History.  The slaughter of the Jews in Europe by the Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land and the slaughter of the Jews of Jerusalem by the Crusaders once they got there are two examples for this view.  The fact that the Crusaders lost out boded well for the Jews since Islamic dominated societies at this time provided better treatment for the Jewish citizens.


1356: Basel, Switzerland was destroyed by an earthquake which was the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps.  In all likelihood, no Jews died in the earthquake since the Jewish community in Basel had been dissolved in 1349 when 600 adults were burned to death and the children were forcibly baptized in response to claims that the Jews were well-poisoners who were responsible for the Black Death.


1503: Pope Pius III passed away. The Papacy of Pius III was one of the shortest in history since it had begun on September 22, 0f 1503.  He was a compromise Pope who was preceded by Alexander VI and followed by Julius II, two the Medici popes who showed some sympathy for the Jews and otherwise left them alone while they pursued other, more worldly interests. There are those who think that Pius may have died as the victim of sort of Medici induced plot.


1571: In Mexico, an inquisition was set up that remained in force until the end of the eighteenth century.


1635: Urban VIII issued “Cum sicut acceptimus” a papal bull dealing with the requirement to feed poor Jews imprisoned for failure to pay their debts.


1739(16th of Tishrei, 5500):António José da Silva, a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu) fell victim to the Inquisition suffering death in an auto-da-fé.


1747:  In London, establishment of the Sephardi Jews’ Hospital (Beth Holim).


1747: Three Jewish doctors, Jacob de Castro Sarmento, Dr. Phillip de la Cour and Dr. Joseph Vaz de Silva offered their services to the newly opened Beth Holim - The Sephardi Jewish Hospital.


1748: Signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession. The Jews of Silesia would now live under Prussian rule instead of Austrian governance.  Silesia would eventually become part of Poland.  This is an excellent example of how the Jews never moved; the nations of Europe kept redrawing their boundaries so that a Jew, depending upon the time period could be an Austrian, a German or a Pole.  Breslau, which at one time was home to a significant Jewish community, is located in Silesia.


1761: Birthdate of Rabbi Wolff Kalusner


1762: Birthdate of Lazarus Bendavid, the native of Berlin who became a leading mathematician and philosopher.


1763: Uriah and Eva Hendricks gave birth to Richa Hendricks who would marry Abraham Gomez


1764: Uriah and Eva Hendricks gave birth to Rebecca Eve Hendricks who married Solomon Levy


1779: The combined Franco-American forces ended the Siege of Savannah during which Philip Minis, a member of a prominent Jewish family served as guide and helped the attackers find the best landing place for their forces.


1816: Jacob Weil, delivered a speech in the chapel of the Jewish school (Philanthropin) of Frankfort where he would become an instructor two years later, in which “he expressed the hope that the new era would bring the emancipation of his” fellow Jews.


1817: In the book burning at the Wartburg festival today, Saul Asher's writing "Die Germanomanie" ("The Germano Mania") was burned.”


1818: Inauguration of The Hamburg Temple, “the first reform synagogue in Germany.”


1818: “On the anniversary of the Battle of Nations near Leipzig, the members of the New Israelite Temple Society inaugurated their first synagogue in a rented building in the courtyard between Erste Brunnenstraße and Alter Steinweg in Hamburg's Neustadt quarter which was called the Hamburg Temple “the first reform synagogue in Germany” and was led by Dr. Eduard Kley and Dr. Gotthold Salomon


1835: Lipman Levy married Hannah Jones at the Great Synagogue.


1837: Meyer Hartog Silver married Rachel David Blok in Amsterdam today.


1839: Two days after her death, Gittle Rinkel Friedlander, the wife of Joseph Friedlander, the daughter of Joseph Rinkel and the mother of Henriette Friedlandler Munk was buried today at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Dresden.


1842: In Hambrug, the cornerstone was laid for the new house of worship to be used by the city’s Reform Jews.


1844: “Under the editorship of Joseph Mitchell,” The Jewish Chronicle “tool the title of The Jewish Chronicle and Working Man’s Friend.”


1846: Birthdate of Kovno native Isaac Rabinowitz who lived in Telshi where he met his wife for 22 years before eventually settling in New York where he tried to continue he vocation of writing songs and translating novels into Yiddish.


1848: In New York, Temple-Emanuel “organized an elementary school” which “was maintained until 1854” when it was replaced by “a religious school” that had over 500 students as of December, 1870.


1851(22nd of Tishrei, 5612): Shemini Atzeret




1854: In New York City, Henry Waldstein and his wife gave birth to chemist Martin E. Waldstein who earned a Ph.D. in 1875 at Heidelberg after studying at the Columbia College of Schools of Mines and who became the “head of Atlanta Chemical Works.”


1855: In Krojana, Germany David J. and Esther Marks Meyerhardt gave birth to Max Mayerhardt who practiced law in Rome, GA for forty years. (Editor’s note – some sources show his birthdate as 1855



1859: In Paris, pianist Michal Bergson and Katherin Levison, the daughter of an English doctor gave birth to French philosopher, author and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature Henri Bergson.


1860: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis Berkowitz and Henrietta Jaros Berkowitz gave birth to William J. Berkowitz the Kansas City, MO businessman, founder of Berkowitz and Company Printers and a “delegate to the National Conference of Jewish Charities and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations” who married Emilie Block with whom he had three children – Eugene, Estelle and Walter.



1861: “Rabbi Wolff Klausner…celebrated his one-hundredth anniversary today.


1862: During the Civil War, Philadelphian Joseph L. Moss began serving in the 113thRegiment with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.


1863(22nd of Tishrei, 5764): During the U.S. Civil War Union forces raid Fort Brooke, near Tampa, FL as Jews on both sides of the conflict observe Shemini Atzeret


1864: In Manhattan, the founding of the Progress Club at Fifth Avenue and 63rdStreet who members included Levi Samuels, Jesse S. Epstein, Henry Goodman and Charles M. Eisig.


1867: Birthdate of Adolf Büchler “a Hungarian-Austrian rabbi, historian and theologian. In 1887 he began his theological studies at the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, and at the same time studied in the department of philosophy of the university under Ignác Goldziher and Moritz Kármán. Büchler continued his studies at the Breslau Seminary, and in 1890 graduated as PhD at Leipzig University, his dissertation being Zur Entstehung der Hebräischen Accente, which was afterward published in the Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften of 1891. Büchler returned to Budapest to finish his theological studies, and was graduated as rabbi in 1892. He then went to Oxford for 1 year, where he worked under the direction of his uncle, Adolf Neubauer, and published an essay, "The Reading of the Law and Prophets in a Triennial Cycle". The same year he accepted a call as instructor at the Vienna Jewish Theological Seminary, teaching Jewish history, Bible, and Talmud. He became Principal of Jews' College in London, in 1906. He passed away in 1939.


1869: In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Temple Emanu-El was formed under the leadership of David Adler and Herny Friend.


1871: It was reported today that 800 buildings have been burned by arsonists in Boguslav who are described as “fanatical oppressors of the Jews.”  [Boguslav is a city in the Kiev district of the Ukraine which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. The Ukraine was the scene of periodic spasm of anti-Semitism from the 17th century through the 20th century.]


1872: In “Plzeňský, Česká republika,” Lazar and Therese Sucharipa Epstein gave birth to Adalbert Epstein, the husband of Emma Epstein with whom he had two sons – Friedrich and Wilhelm.


1873: “Explorations in the East” published today examined recent archaeological discoveries including the Stone of Moab which was uncovered five years ago. Questions still remain about its authenticity.  There is a thriving traffic in fake ancient antiques some of which are attributed to Professor Shapira a noted Orientalist living in Jerusalem. [Moses Shapira would be involved in several cases where he was accused of forging or creating relics.  These charges would contribute to his death in 1884.  Shapira was born a Jew but became an Anglican while living in Palestine.]


1873: Based on information that first appeared in Germany’s Cologne Gazette, it was reported today that the Kingdom of Poland has a total population of six million people, over 800,000 of whom are Jews meaning that they make up about 13 per cent of the total.  Since 1816, the Jewish population has quadrupled. The eastern districts of the kingdom have the largest proportions of Jewish citizens while the western districts have a larger proportion of Germans in their population.


1875: Birthdate of Lawrence, Kansas native Bella Ney Cahn Printz who was first married to Louis Coahn with whom she had two children and then was married to Bert Printz.


1878(21st of Tishrei, 5639): Hoshana Raba


1878: A meeting of property owners was held tonight at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at #110 West 42nd Street to protest the construction of a horse-railroad at this location.  The protesting property owners include Jews and non-Jews who are united in a desire to protect their aggregate investment of $1,730,000


1878: It was reported today that Italy, France and the United Kingdom have informed the government at Belgrade that they will not recognize Serbian independence until the civil and political of its Jewish citizens is guaranteed.


1879: At tonight’s meeting of St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City, the report of the house physician stated that in the past fiscal year, the hospital treat 1,216 patients two of whom were Jews.


1880: In Odessa, Chava Zach and Yevno Jobotinsky gave birth to Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky. There is no way that this blog can do justice to the life of this complicated person who played such an active role in the activities that led to the creation of the state of Israel.  His untimely death in 1940 prevented him from seeing the horrors of the Holocaust and the final fruits of his labors.  Regardless of your view of his Revisionist wing of the Zionist movement all would do well to learn more about him which should include reading Vladimir Jabotinsky's Story of My Life Edited by Brian Horowitz and Leonid Katsis






1880: Five days after she had passed away, Elizabeth (nee Moses) Leverson, the wife of Montague Leverson whom she had married in 1815, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1880: In the past six months the Jews of Newcastle-upon-Tyne have purchased beef from 15 different shipments from the United States. This is an indication that American meat is gaining in acceptability among the British since the “the Jews are the most particular race of people upon the face of the earch grading the wholesome state of their butcher’s meat.”


1881: It was reported today that 131 Russian Jewish immigrants were on board the SS Italy when it docked at Castle Garden.


1881: It was reported at tonight’s annual meeting of the Society of St. Luke’s Hospital that the Episcopal institution had treated 1,665 patients in the past year, seven of whom were Jewish.


1881: “Mr. Jacobsohn’s Grievance” published today described the suit that Adolph Jacobsohn has brought against Moses Keniger.  The Plaintiff claims that the Respondent has defamed him by claiming that he “failed to fast and pray on Yom Kippur” and that, instead, he had gone to Connecticut “to purchase goods.”  Jacobsohn is seeking two thousand dollars in damages because he claims that his fellow Orthodox Jews have refused to do business with him.


1882: In New York City, a concert sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association will be held in Chickering Hall this evening.


1883: There were several families of Russian Jewish immigrants aboard the SS Canada when it arrived in New York today.


1883: Henry J. Greenberg, a thirty year old Jewish peddler from Huntingdon County, PA, registered at Hartman’s Hotel in the Bowery.


1884:Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at New York’s Temple Beth-El will deliver the address at the centenary birthday celebration being sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association tonight.


1884: An “informal celebration” marking the 100thbirthday of Sir Moses Montefiore was held “in the last chapel of the Five Points House of Industry.  N.W. Platzek, President of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association provided the opening remarks to the standing room only crowd during which he praised Montefiore and introduced the evening’s main speaker, Dr. Kohler, Rabbi of Temple Bethel.  Kohler, who began his speech in English, but switched to German so that all assembled could understand spoke glowing of Montefiore’s efforts including those alleviate the suffering of the Jews of Russia.


1884: Birthdate of Emmanuel “Manny” Shinwell, the British trade unionist who would become a member of Clement Attlee’s government – the first Labour government in British history.


1885: “A Magazine Library” published today provides a look at various traditions and tales based on folklore including The Merchant of Venice which Shakespeare seemed to have completely twisted from its Italian origins.  “According to an authority from 131 years, in the time of Pope Sixtus, Paul Sedchi insured his ships with Samson Ceneda, a Jewish underwriter…”  It was the gentile Secchi who bet the pound of flesh meaning that when his ships were lost he was the one who “insisted on taking his pound” from Ceneda, the Jew.  In response to all of these the Pope said: “Go ahead Secchi carve your meat rare; but we wold advise you to careful it you cut a scruple more or less than is due you shall certainly be hanged.” (Editor’s Note: The Pope would be “Sixtus” not Sextus. In terms of the reference to Shakespeare it might be a reference to Sixtus V, one of the Popes issued a bull against the Blood Libel since the only other Sixtus it could be was Sixtus IV who instituted the Inquisition)


1885: Concert pianist Fannie Bloomfield became Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler today when “she married her second cousin Sigmund Zeisler, the defense lawyer for anarchist accused of violence in the Haymarket Riots with whom she had two sons – Paul and Ernest


1886: A bail of $300 was set yesterday in the Essex Market Police Court for Wolf Bloom a 26 year old Russian Jew who is charged with violating the Sunday “closing laws.”


1886: Henry L. Sayles is scheduled to on trial in the Court of General Sessions for his role of alleged financial improprieties surrounding the Broadway Surface Railroad in New York.


1888: Attendance at Poole Theatre fell off markedly tonight following the withdrawal of support of the production by the Jewish Order of the Harp of David,


1889(23rdof Tishrei, 5650): Simchat Torah


1889: In Hamilton, Ohio, Rose and Samuel Hurst gave birth to Fannie Hurst, the St. Louis educated novelist who wrote Imitation Of Life


1890: Mayor Grant responded to a request by a committee led by Samuel Roeder for the appointment of Coroner Ferdinand Levy to one of the vacant Police Justiceships by expressing doubt that such a vacancy existed but adding that even if one did he would not fill it until after the elections had been held.


1891: It was reported today that “Count Koffsky, the Cossack Chief of Police whose brutalities in evicting the poor Jews of Moscow last March shocked the whole world has been” accused of being part of a forgery ring involving 200,000 rubles.


1891: In New York, Albert Loeb, “ a successful investment banker with Kuhn, Loeb and Company” and his wife Rose, a cousin of Peggy Guggenheim, gave birth to American author Harold Albert Loeb, “the found editor of ‘Broom,’ an international literary and art magazine.”


1893: “Otto Irving Wise’s Candidacy” published today provided background information on the Republican nominee for the Assemblyman in the 21st District including the fact that he is the son of Dr. Aaron Wise, the rabbi at Rodolph Shalom, the brother of Stephen S. Wise, the rabbi at Madison Avenue Synagogue and the editor of The Hebrew World


1894: The Jockey Club purchased Baron Hirsch's three year old English horse Matchbox for 18,000 English pounds


1894: The Lexow Committee which had already heard testimony from Senator Cantor and from Jewish soda water peddlers on the Lower East Side continued its hearings into charges of corruption in the New York City Police Department.


1894: A circular printed in Hebrew advertising a meeting of Republicans in New Haven to be held tonight when translated revealed “a bitter attack on the Irish and requesting the Russians to turn out to the mass meeting and denounce the Irish.” (The Republicans canceled the meeting for fear of trouble.)


1896: German Lutheran missionary Johann Ludwig Schneller, the founder of Jerusalem’s Schneller Orphanage passed away


1896: In London, operetta composer Victor Hallaender and his wife gave birth to German-American film composer Friedrich Hollaender “who worked on more than 200 films” including one of my all-time favorites, the original version “Sabrina” the 1954 romantic comedy.


1897(22ndof Tishrei, 5658): Shmini Atzeret


1897: The Hambro Synagogue is scheduled to hold services this evening at Bonn’s Hall in London.


1897: In Warsaw, Adolph and Natalia Lieberman gave birth to Maxim Lieberman, the WW I U.S. Army veteran, literary agent and Soviet Spy.


1898: Birthdate of Viennese singer and actress, the non-Jewish wife of Kurt Weil who left Germany after the rise of the Nazis came to power.


1898(2ndof Cheshvan, 5659): David Levi, who fought in the Italian wars of independence and whose literary efforts included “Il Profeta,” a five act drama set in the final days of the First Temple, passed away today.


1898(2ndof Cheshvan, 5659): Eighty-nine year old Ralph Disraeli, the son Isaac D’Israeli passed away today in Yorkshire


1898:Herzl has an audience with Wilhelm II in Constantinople.


1898: Louis Selig, Director of the Hebrew Charities in Detroit is scheduled to be one of the speakers at the Civic-Philanthropic Conference that opens today in Battle Creek, Michigan.


1898: Two days after he had passed away, 74 year old Leopold Mohr was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”


1898: United States took possession of Puerto Rico.


1902: Herzl begins his trip to London in search of support for the Jewish homeland.


1902:  Inaugural service of the Jewish Religious Union which led to the formation of the Liberal Jewish Movement.


1902(17th of Tishrei, 5663): Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkoth


1902(17th of Tishrei, 5663):Reuben Asher Braudes, the Wilna born Hebrew author whose novels included The Repentant, Religion and Life and The Morning Light and editor of the Yiddish weekly Yedhudit passed away today in Vienna.


1903:Hedwig Bergman, the daughter of Rabbi Adolf Rosenzweig and Rabbi Juda Bergman gave birth to physicist Ernst David Bergman, “the father of the Israeli nuclear program.”


1903: Birthdate of Zygmund William Birnbaum a native of Lwów, Austria-Hungary who gain fame as Bill Birnbaum, Professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.


1904: Birthdate of Chaim Shirman an Israeli scholar of medieval Spanish Jewish poetry who passed away in 1981.


1904: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Simenhoff officiated at the wedding of Sam H. Baron and Jennie Widelitz.


1904: Birthdate of screenwriter Hans Wilhelm “who was forced to emigrate after the Nazi takeover in 1933” because of his “Jewish heritage.”


1905: Birthdate of New York native and CCNY graduate Samuel Perlman who served as a Rabbi in Bayonne, NJ and Quincy, MA and the Director of the Hebrew Home for Orphans and Aged of Hudson County before passing away in 1975;1905: This marked the first day of what was the blackest week in Russian Jewish history until the Holocaust. The Black Hundreds and other bands of reactionary, anti-Semites were formed during and after the Russian Revolution of 1905.  They alleged that the Jews were responsible for Russia’s many military, economic and political ills. These government sanctioned militias killed hundreds of Jews and injured thousands more. Over forty thousand homes and shops were destroyed in one week of rioting.


1905: Start of a Pogrom in Rostov.


1907: In Frankfurt am Main, Amalia Margarethe Mandello, (Seligsohn) a teacher;  and  Herrmann Mandello, who  worked in a department store gave birth to Johanna Mandello Mandello  who gained fame as photographer Jeanne Mandello.



1908(23rd of Tishrei, 5669): Simchat Torah


1908: After Jews had gathered at the gates of the jail in Bialystok follow a government spread rumor that prisoners were to be released, soldiers fired into the crow killing twenty-two of the JewsBorukh-Mikhal bar Asher ROGAL, 53.


Moshe bar Yakov SACHARNI, 28.


Shmuel-Hersh bar Eliezar MARGOLIUS, 34.


Moshe bar Nisen FAJNSZTAJN, 50.


Golde-Sura bas [daughter of] Mordekhai PASTRIGACZ, 70.


Chaya bas Moshe CHWOROWSKI, 50.


Feygl bas Yitzhak TICHOWSKI, 38.


Hindl-Bayle[4] 25.


Ester bas Shmuel BARTINOWSKI, 17.


Szprinca bas Avraham WAJNBERG, 54


Leib bar Tzwi-Hirsh LIBERMAN, 17.


Guta-Freyda bas Mordekhai KAPLAN, 20.


Freyda bas Yitzhak KOPICER, 56.


Chana bas Dovid Zalman KAPLAN, 60.


Khisa bas Moshe Zev PINONZNIK, 40


Tzipora bas Benimin KOHEN, 70.


Beyla bas Moshe LIBERMAN, 32.


Chaya bas Ahron KOHEN, 19.


Rywka LEWIN, 30.


Chashe bas Yitzhak MOSKOWSKI, 20.


Chava bas Yehoshua Haim LIBERMAN, 21.


Ester bas Yakob-Leib KURAN, 21.


1908: When Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting Pot” opened today in Chicago it was declared an “immediate success” and ran for three weeks.


1910(15th of Tishrei, 5671): Sukkoth


1910: Birthdate of Morris Kertzer, the Canadian born rabbi who earned a bronze start for bravery during the Battle of Anzio and who became an active leader in the move to improve relations between Christians and Jews after the war.




1911: It was reported today thatJames Loeb, the banker, who retired from the firm of Kuhn, Loeb Co, a few years ago, has made arrangements for the translation into English and publication at his own expense of the classical authors of all periods.”  The volumes in question were originally written in Latin or Greek. Professor Salomon Reinach, the French archaeologist and intellectual (who happens to be Jewish) brought the need for this project to Mr. Loeb’s attention.  Details are not available at this time because Mr. Loeb is traveling.


1911(26th of Tishrei, 5672): Michael Cadison a native of Lithuania and the son of Joseph Ezra Cadison and Ida Yenta Kadison and the husband of Fannie Anne (Frume Sheina) Cadison passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.


1912(1st of Cheshvan, 5673): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan and Shabbat


1912: Fifty-four year old Mobile, Alabama merchant Abraham H. Spira passed away today.


1912(1st of Cheshvan, 5673): “Communal worker” Levin Fredman passed away today


1912: When the Turco-Italian War came to an end today the Italians were effectively in control of Libya whose Jewish community dates back to the first century before the common era according to archeological evidence at Benghazi.


1913: “The Girl from Utah” a Paul Rubens’ musical “opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London” today where it “had an initial run of 195 performances” after which Charles Frohman would produce a successful American version in 1914.


1914: During World War I, The Yorkshire Herald, an English newspaper, reported on the Czar’s awarding the Cross of St. George to a Jewish soldier named Leo Osnas by that his display of bravery “has won freedom for the Jews in Russia; he has gained for his race the right to become officers in the Russian army and navy, hitherto denied them, and he has so delighted the Russian government that it has since proclaimed that henceforth Jews in the Empire shall enjoy the full rights of citizenship.  Surely no man’s winning the Victoria Cross ever resulted in such magnificent results for a subject people as this.”  As Martin Gilbert points, the Herald went a bit too far in its praise since under the Czars the Jews never attained full citizenship nor did the persecution ever stop.


1915: “Wilson’s Pledge to Jews” published today quotes Simon Wolfe as saying that “he had” a letter from Woodrow Wilson “in which the President said that when the time should come for the making of another treaty with Russia ‘none shall be granted by the Government of which I am President unless the Jews are given full rights.’”


1915: It was reported today that Dr. Samuel Bettelheim, the editor and proprietor of the Hungarian Jewish News of Budapest said he had “come to New York because it is the biggest and greatest Jewish center in all history” and “it is here that a world-wide movement should start” that will guarantee the rights of the Jews of Rumania and Russia after the war, as well as ensuring the growth of the Jewish community in Palestine.


1915: “Lashes Atlanta Churches” published today described the farewell sermon Dean John R. Atkinson who has resigned from St. Philip’s Episcopal Cathedral spoke disparagingly of the houses of worship in Atlanta say that the “Jews” were “the most people” he met while in the city.


1915: It was reported today that Rabbi Stephen S. Wise told those attending a mass meeting held to protest the Ottoman treatment of the Armenians that he was there “not an opponent of Turkey nor as a champion of Armenia but to protest against inhumanity, whether committed by Germans against Belgians, by Russians against Jews or by Turks against Armenians.” Instead he was there to call upon Germany and Austria to work to end “the Armenian atrocities.”


1915: “All Europe Crave Peace Says Bernstein” published today included the first-hand report by Herman Bernstein of conditions in the war zone including the observation that he “found that the Jewish people was the most tragic victim of the war.  In Russia the Jews were crucified during the war in Russian fashion.  For their military defeats on the battlefield the Russian authorities made military pogroms against their own peaceful Jewish population. In Austria, where the Jews even though economically wretched, enjoyed equal rights and freedom, where the Jews have fought bravely and loyally, they have now been deprived of many of their rights.”


1916: “Rabbi Rudolph Grossman, President of the New York Board of Hewish Ministers and Rabbi Bernard Drachman, President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations…issued statements” today “denouncing Meyer London for his attack” on “ex-Judge Leon Sanders, his opponent for Congress in the Twelfth District” in which London reportedly referred to his opponent as a “cheap Tammany kosher-ham sandwich politician.”


1917: One day after she had passed away, Sarah Bernstein, the Russian born wife of Elias Bernstein with whom she had six children, was buried today at the “Brady Street Burial Ground.”


1917: It was reported today that in giving their consent to hold the upcoming Special Assembly of Jews In America at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the Trustees were breaking traditions that had existed for 250 years which is further proof that “this special assembly is the most important national gathering of Jews since the European war began and the most important event to Jewry since the entry of the United States entry into the war.”


1918: The Assistant Minister of the Interior was told today that using a knowledge of Polish as a criteria for resettling those who had fled during the war “was harsh” because under Russian rule the Czars had worked to keep the Jews from studying Polish and because the documents issued by the Russians “contained no proof of permanence in any given city.”


1918: Sergeant Abraham Blaustein was part of the 165thRegiment which forced the Germans to retreat from Somerance and the surrounding ridges.


1919: Birthdate of New York native Arthur “Artie” Marpet who played basketball for three years at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.


1919: In Fort Dodge, Iowa, Samuel and Daisy Lumelsky Rabiner gave birth to France E. “Francie” Cohen.


1919: A pogrom began at Ivankiv, a town the Ukrainian district of Kiev. This was part of a series of pogroms that racked the Ukraine during 1919 during the Civil War that found the Whites, the Cossacks and the Reds battling for control of what had been the Russian Empire.


1920: Birthdate of actress and political activist Melina Mercouri, the wife of movie director Jules Dassin who was a victim of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist.


1923: Birthdate of Ukrainian born American director Boris Sagal



1926:In Paris, Sholom Schwartzbard goes on trial for allegedly having assassinated Symon Petliura the Ukrainian leader who played a leading role in the pogroms during which Schwartzbard’s family was wiped out.  Despite the fact that Schwartzbard had in fact shot him, a jury would acquit him after an eight day trial.


1926: U.S. premiere of “The Eagle of the Sea,” a silent film produced by B.P. Schulberg and co-starring Florence Vidor, the future wife of Jascha Heifitz.


1927(22nd of Tishrei, 5688): Shemini Atzertz


1927: Sholem Schwartzbar is scheduled go on trial in Paris today for the assassination  of General Simon Petlura who was responsible for the slaughter in Kiev in 1919 that claimed the lives of 50,000 Jews.


1927:  Columbia Broadcasting System went on the air. This radio network lost money in its first year, and two years later it was purchased by William S. Paley, the son of Jewish cigar manufacturer from Philadelphia.


1927: Birthdate of Marvin Joseph Rotblatt, a left-handed relief pitcher who toiled for the Chicago White Sox for “three seasons in the late 1940s and early 1950’s” (As reported by Richard Goldstein)


1928: Birthdate of Jack Weinstein the native of Saint Francis, Kansas who was award the Medal of Honor “for courageous actions during combat operations in Kumsong, South Korea, on October 19, 1951.”


1929: Birthdate of New Jersey state Democratic political leader Byron Baer who passed away in June, 2007. “In 2005, shortly before he retired from the Senate, the New Jersey Association of Jewish Federations presented Baer with the Shem Tov and Distinguished Service awards. Jeffrey Maas, then executive director of the association, said Baer was responsible for making sure Jewish community centers, nursing homes, and social service agencies received extensive state funding.”


1929: Birthdate of Erasmus High alum Hillard (Hilly) Elkins the award producer who worked in theatre, the large screen and the small screen and who may be best remembered for “Oh! Calcutta!”



1930(26th of Tishrei, 5691): Parsahat Bereshit – the cycle begins again


1930: Birthdate of Wilno, Poland native Esther Rudomin who gained fame as award winning author Esther R. Hautzig, the wife of “concert pianist Walter Hautzig with whom she had two children – Deborah and David.



1930(26th of Tishrei, 5691): Forty-two year old Bialystok born conductor and composer Josiah Zuro who collaborated with his father Louis, passed away today in California.



1931: “Keep Banks Open, Dr. Palyi Advises” published today described the view of Dr. Melchoir Palyi, the economic advisor to the Deutsche Bank, “the largest commercial bank in Germany” that now is not the time to close the banks because such a move punishes the whole community turning “a minor panic into a major one” but rather it is the time to extend liberal credits and then punish the banks when the panic is over.  (Editor’s Note – Palyi was a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism who would seek refuge in the United States after the Nazis came to power.)


1933(28th of Tishrei, 5694): “Rabbi Jacob Mayer Kahan” passed away today at “Far Rockaway, NY.”


1933: The Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation was officially dedicated today. “The Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation, located in central New Jersey, was a major Boy Scout training facility for almost 50 years. It was named after Mortimer L. Schiff, the father of John M. Schiff; both of whom were World Scout Committee members and notable early Boy Scouts of America (BSA) leaders.The land was purchased for the BSA by Mrs. Jacob Schiff in memory of her son, Mortimer, who died while President of the BSA in 1931…When the Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation was closed, Nassau County Council's Camp Wauwepex in Wading River, New York was renamed as the John M. Schiff Scout Reservation, in honor of Moritmer's son, John.”


1933: Birthdate of Irwin Mark Jacobs the Cornell University electrical engineer who co-founded Qualcomm.



1934: U.S. premiere of “Man of Aran,” a “British fictional documentary” produced by Michael Balcon.


1934: “An exchange agreement to facilitate the importation of Palestinian oranges into Germany has been devised by the Anglo-Palestine Bank of London and Tel Aviv and the banking firm of M.M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg.”  The agreement will “enable Germany to buy about three million dollars worth of Jaffa oranges during the coming year…”


1935(21st of Tishrei, 5696): Hoshana Raba


1935(2st of Tishrei, 5696): Seventy-two year old Lt. General Milton J. Foreman whose service in the Spanish American War, the First World War and the post-war period earned him a Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver star and decorations from Belgium and France passed away today.


1935: The German government introduces the anti-Semitic Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People.


1936: “A Detroit all-star soccer team…held the Maccabees of Tel Aviv…to a 2 to 2 tie before 10,000 spectators at the University of Detroit stadium.”


1936: At the Free Synagogue, meeting in Carnegie Hall, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “The Truth About Palestine: Britain, Arab, Jew.


1936: In “Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Human Destiny” published today John Cournos provided a reviews of The Meaning of History by Nicolas Berdyaev the Christian philosopher who “credits the Jews with being the first people to contribute the concept of ‘historical’ to world history” saying that the Jews not only “grasped the significance of the past present; they were also the first people to link these up with the future” as can be seen “in Daniel’s interpretation  of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream” which “Berdyaev sees as the first attempt in the history of mankind to attribute a design to history…”


1936: At the Jewish Science Society, Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “How to Banish Fear” this morning.


1936: “Between the beginning of 1933 and July 1, 1936, the Jewish population of Germany decreased from approximately 517,000 persons to about 405,000 persons according to figures sent by Michael Traub of Berlin, director of the Palestine Foundation Fund of Germany, to the United States Appeal’ and made public today.


1936: In Philadelphia  “An appeal to this country to be on guard ‘against those who would pit one religious or racial group against another’ was voiced tonight by the Governor of Pennsylvania who spoke at the opening session of the annual convention of Hadassah” which is being attended by 1,200 delegates and “several hundred guests’


1936: The SS Excalibur of the American Exports line unloaded it cargo at Tel Aviv, making it the first American ship to use the newly built port facilities at the first “all Jewish metropolis”


1937, The Palestine Post reported that renewed Arab terror claimed three more Jewish victims, while violence continued throughout the country. One Arab assailant was killed in the Old City of Jerusalem. In Ness Ziona an 11-year-old Yemenite boy, Eliahu Sherabi, was fatally shot in the head while sleeping in his house. Jewish buses were shot at and armed Arabs attacked workers of the Palestine Quarries near Motza. Arabs had also attacked Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, where the children's house became their main target. In Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jew, Shmuel Guttman, was stabbed five times in the Mea She' street, near the Sheller compound, by an Arab who escaped. The town was under night curfew for more than a week.


1937: Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on “Problems of Youth” at a luncheon at the Hotel Astor.  The luncheon is the opening event of a campaign by the Women’s League for Palestine to raise $100,000 to build “a home for immigrant girls in Jerusalem.”  Mayor La Guardia will also address the gathering while Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Rabbia Israel H. Leinthal will open the dirve.


1937: As Arab violence continued to grow, a gang of terroirsts attacked the Jewish settlement at Artuf in southern Palestine and a band of twenty armed Arabs “attacked the Baharieh police post between Hebron and Beersheba” and made off with weapons belonging to the British police.


1938(23rd of Tishrei, 5699): Simchat Torah


1938: During his third visit to Germany, Charles Lindbergh attends a dinner at the U.S. embassy in Berlin. Hermann Göring presents him with the Service Cross of the German Eagle with Star, also known as the Order of the German Eagle (Verdienstorden vom Deutschen Adler).Personally created by Adolf Hitler, this is the highest honor which the Nazi government can give to a foreigner and was last presented to Henry Ford two months earlier.


1938: “The German government expeled 12,000 Polish Jews living in Germany; the Polish government accepts 4,000 and refuses admittance to the remaining 8,000, who are forced to live in the no-man's land on the German-Polish frontier.


1938: With Jerusalem under a virtual state of siege because of the worst outbreak of Arab violence since 1929, the British declared a state of virtual martial law and sent troops into the Old City aimed at driving out the “rebel bands.”  “The Mufti of Jerusalem, leader of the rebellious Moslems, declared from exile in Syria, that the Arab peace terms included an independent Ara state and an end to Jewish immigration into Palestine.


1939: In Poland, Arthur Weissmann, the brother of Holocaust survivor and author Gerda Weissmann complied with the German summons to register for military service and was never seen again.


1941: When it appeared that the Germans might defeat the Red Army outside Moscow, Chaim Kaplan the director of Hebrew school in Warsaw wrote in his diary, “a Nazi victory means complete annihilation, morally and materially, for all the Jews of Europe.”


1941: Mass executions of Soviet Jews in Borisov, Byelorussia, 50 miles east of Minsk, Byelorussia, are carried out by an Einsatzkommando (special killing squads) following a night of celebration by German troops.


1942: The Nazis gassed 1,594 deportees from Holland at Auschwitz.


1943: Pope Pius explained his failure to speak out against the Nazi deportation of the Jews of Rome.  He told Harold Tittman, the United States representative to the Vatican that a “demonstrative censure” might provoke a class with the SS “that could benefit only the Communists.”


1944(1st of Cheshvan, 5705): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1944: Seven hundred Plaszów, Poland, camp deportees are sent from the Gross-Rosen, Germany, camp to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. Oskar Schindler, owner of a newly opened munitions factory in Brünnlitz, persuades the SS to give him all 700 Jews for use as workers. Schindler also makes arrangements to have 300 Jewish women transferred from Auschwitz to his factory.


1944: As the Red Army drives toward Berlin, the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia. This would help to lead to Soviet control of Czechoslovakia after the war; a fact that proved oddly beneficial to Israel when it was fighting for its independence.  The Israelis had no aircraft.  There was a store of surplus ME-109’s in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets gave the Czechs permission to sell the planes to the Jews which meant that the first fighter craft flown by the Israelis in May of 1948 were planes left over from the Luftwaffe.


1944(1st of Cheshvan, 5705): Eva Heyman and Gisi Fleischmann, head of the women's Zionist movement in pre-war Slovakia were murdered at Birkenau.


1944(1st of Cheshvan, 5705): Forty-six year old composer, conductor and pianist Viktor Ullman was gassed today at Auschwitz-Birkenau




1944: “The Master Race” a film about post-war plans to continue the Nazi dream directed and written by Herbert Biberman was released to ay RKO.


1945: “The Seventh Veil” a “melodrama” with music by Benjamin Frankel was released in the United Kingdom today.


1945: Nazi war crimes trials opened in Nuremberg, Germany. This week marked the appearance of The Nuremberg Interviews edited by Robert Gellately. The book is a collection of the interviews conducted by a Dr. Leon Goldensohn, a U.S. Army psychiatrist.  He was assigned by the Army to interview the defendants and the witnesses at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials.  His detailed notes which have been annotated and edited by Professor Gellately provide a chilling window into the minds of those who made the Holocaust.


1946: In Toronto, Bernice (née Ash) and Mac Shore gave birth to Oscar winning composer Howard Leslie Shore.


1946: In Jerusalem, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his wife gave birth to Rabbi and MK Ya’akov Yosef.


1947: In three separate incidents seen as part of the work of Jewish fighters seeking to end British rule in Palestine, a British army truck “was blow up by a mine just west of Petah Tikva injuring two soldiers, “another army truck hit two mines near Benyaminia” without any casualties and an RAF jeep “ran over a mine on the road near Hadera wrecking the Jeep” without any casualties.


1947: Birthdate of songwriter Laura Nyro who passed away in 1997.


1947: The University of Michigan, led by Dan Dworsky who played “linebacker, fullback and center” defeated Northwestern for their fourth straight win of the season


1947: “Several …banners with legends such as ‘Don’t dissect our country’ and ‘Remember the Warsaw ghetto’ went up on the wire in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this afternoon.”


1948(15th of Tishrei, 5709): For the first time in almost 2,000 years Jews celebrate Sukkoth in their own country.


1948:Gertrude Berg made her television debut as Bronx housewife Molly Goldberg on NBC's Chevrolet on Broadway in 1948. The Goldbergs began running as a comedy series on NBC radio in 1929 and became one of television's earliest and most popular situation comedies beginning in 1949. Berg produced and scripted the shows and portrayed Molly Goldberg, the family matriarch. Each show offered audiences a pleasant, often comical portrayal of the life of a second-generation Jewish American family. Assimilation into American culture was a prominent theme throughout the series with the last season incorporating the family's move from their Bronx apartment to a fictitious suburb. After the series' cancellation in 1955, Berg went on to win a Tony Award in 1959 for her work in the Broadway comedy A Majority of One by Leonard Spigelgass (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)


1950: In Brooklyn Lola (née Liska) Schleifer and textile manufacturer Morris Wasserstein gave birth to Tony Award winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, the author of “The Heidi Chronicles.”


1951(18th of Tishrei, 5712): David Cohen, the husband of Eva Cohen and the father of Aaron Cohen passed away today after which he was buried in the Ahavas Sholom Congregation Cemetery in Baltimore County, MD.


1952: In New York City Robert Levine and his wife gave birth Charles Michael Levine, the State University of New York drop-out who gained fame Chuck Lorre the creator of numerous successful sitcoms including “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon.”


1954: “A committee of Hadassah members, headed by Mrs. Maxwell Kaufman, is scheduled to decorate the House of Hospitality auditorium for the annual United Nations Dinner sponsored by the American Association for the U.N., San Diego Chapter, this evening.


1954: Texas Instruments introduces the first transistor radio. “The transistor was invented and patented in the 1920s by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. Its re-invention some twenty years later earned Bell Telephone Laboratories the Nobel Prize, but Bell Labs was forced to abandon all patent claims to the field-effect transistor (which completely dominates modern electronics) because of Lilienfeld's prior work.” 


1954: "The Week in Religion" aired for the last time over Dumont television. First broadcast in March 1952, this ecumenical Sunday evening panel show divided the hour into 20-minute segments each for Protestant, Catholic and Jewish news.


1954: George Pirkis Kidd began serving as the first Canadian Ambassador to Israel.


1956: Birthdate of Leningrad native Yevgeny Arkadievich Yelchin who gained fame as Eugene Yelchin, the illustrator and author children’s books including the Newbery award winning Breaking Stalin’s Nose.


1958: Birthdate of New Jersey native Leon Calvin Murray, the Ohio State University and NFL running back who converted to Judaism.



1961: Six months after premiering in Italy, “The Golden Hours” with music by Stanley Black was released today in the United States.


1964: Ed Sullivan alleged that Jewish comedian had given him the finger during tonight’s show – a claim that Mason denied and which led to his ban from the leading variety show and a lawsuit which Mason won.


1965: Al Silverman, editor of Sport magazine was the maters of ceremonies at today’s luncheon at Cavanaugh’s Restaurant where Sandy Koufax was award the Corvette the “magazine presents each year to the outstanding performer in the World Series.”



1966: “The Apple Tree, “ “a series of three musical playlets with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics Sheldon Harnick” who collaborated together on “the book” featuring Larry Blyden “opened on Broadway today at the Schubert Theatre.


1967: MGM released “Far from the Madding Crowd” directed by John Schlesinger with a script by Frederic Raphael.


1967:  Funeral services were held today for attorney Edwin Otterbourg two days after he had passed away at the age of 82.



1968(26th of Tishrei, 5729): Forty-seven year old Julius Bahr Kahn, Jr., the son of Leona and Julius Bahr Kahn, the husband of Carol Kahn and University of Chicago educated pharmacologist passed away today.



1970: Final performance of “Steambath,” “second play by Bruce Jay Friedman that had opened “off-broadway at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre in June of 1970.


1973 (22nd of Tishrei, 5734): Shemini Atzeres


1973 (22nd of Tishrei, 5734): Seventy-four year German-born American philosopher, Leo Strauss, passed away.





1973: Major Asa Kadmoni was awarded the Medal of Valor for the extraordinary courage he displayed “fought a large enemy force while surrounded in the Sinai” today.


1973: During the Yom Kippur War, the Israelis were able to finally put a pre-fabricated bridge across the Suez Canal.  Moving the bridge into position and actually using it to span the Canal was a costly operation.  One hundred IDF soldiers died in the attempt with forty-one dying in a single night.  The bridge made it easier to move tanks across the Canal but there was no lightening quick strike as had been seen in 1956 and 1967.  In fact, if the Egyptians had pressed home their advantage while the bridge was being put in place, the whole plan would have ended in failure.  This is another example of how much the Yom Kippur War was “a near run thing.”


1973: Guri Palter and Itzhak Bar’am were taken prisoner after ejecting from their F-4E Phantom Jet that had fallen victim to an Egyptian SAM.


1973: Doron Shalev and Yosef Lev-Ari were taken prisoner after ejecting from their F-4E Phantom Jet that had fallen victim to an Egyptian SAM.


1973:The half-track in which Eliezer Kalina was riding was hit by Syrian gunfire killing the two other occupants and leaving Kalina so gravely wounded that his leg had to be amputated. He overcame adversity to form a volleyball team which he led to three gold medals and one silver medal at the Paralympic Games.


1973: During the Yom Kippur war, Colonel Giora "Hawkeye" Epstein went on a two day spree in which he downed 17 enemy aircraft.


1973: The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob) a French-Italian comedy film directed by Gérard Oury was released today in France and Italy.


1974: After two years of negotiations over the proposed Jackson-Vanick Amendment, Secretary Henry Kissinger and Senator Henry Jackson exchanged a series of letters that would pave the way for Jews to leave the Soviet Union in large numbers with relatively little impediment.


1974: “Airport 1975” a sequel to the 1970 disaster movie featuring Norman Fell, Jerry Stiller, Sid Caesar, and Larry Storch was released today.


1976: Refusniks who had been detained after staging a sit-in demonstration in the Supreme Soviet “were taken into the woods and released” this evening.


1981: Publication of “How Clifford Odets Spent His last Desperate Days” by Margaret Brenman-Gibson



1981: ABC broadcast the first episode of season 4 of Taxi created by James L. Brooks and Ed Weinberger and co-starring Judd Hirsch and Andy Kaufman.


1982(1st of Cheshvan, 5743): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1982(1st of Cheshvan, 5743): French political leader and former Premier, Pierre Mendès France passed away.  Political accomplishments aside, Mendes France may be best remembered for his choice of beverages.  Convinced that the French drank too much wine, Mendes France made a point of drinking milk in public.  When he first appeared on the American news program Meet the Press, a class of milk was prominently placed next to the French leader much to the delight of the interviewers.



1984(22nd of Tishrei, 5745): Shemini Atzeret


1985(3rd of Cheshvan, 5746): Sixty-two year old Maurice Cerier, United Jewish Appeal’s assistant vice president for major gifts, died of a brain tumor” today.



1986(15th of Tishrei): Sukkoth


1987(25th of Tishrei, 5748): Eighty-seven year old Philip Levine, the renowned pathologist who is the namesake of the “Philip Levine Award” passed away today.(As reported by Peter Flint)



1987:“In Jerusalem of the 1800’s” published today which is excerpted below, Nitza Rosovsky, curator of the exhibits at the Harvard Semitic Museum and author of Jerusalem Walksprovides a virtual walking of Jerusalem highlighting the history of the city by referencing various architectural gems



1988: Israel's supreme court upheld the ban on Meir Kahane`s Kach Party as racist.


1988 ((7 Cheshvan 5749): Bar Mitzvah ofAharon Mordechai Rokeach the only child and heir of the current Rebbe of Belz, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, he was named after his father's uncle, Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, the fourth Belzer Rebbe, and his father's father, Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgorai.


1988: In Waterford, CT, premiere of “Italian American Reconciliation” co-starring Helen Hanft.


1988: ABC broadcast the first episode of “Roseanne,” starring Roseanne Barr.


1990: "O you beloved Spain, ‘mother’ we call you, and throughout our lives we will not forget your sweet language. Even though you have expelled us as a stepmother from your womb, we have not stopped loving you as our holy ground, where our ancestors are buried and where the ashes of thousands of tormented and burned still lie..." Haham Solomon Gaon quoted at the ceremony of the Prince of Asturias Concord Award, Oviedo, Spain.


1990: “Once on This Island” “a one-act musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens” opened on Broadway today at the Booth Theatre.


1992(21st of Tishrei, 5753): Hoshana Raba


1992: Seventy-six year old Abraham Manie “Abe” Adelstein the son of Jews from Latvia who became the Chief Medical Statistician of the UK passed away today.



1992(21s of Tishrei, 5753):Yoram Ben-Porath, the president of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leading Israeli economist, died today in an automobile accident. He was 55 years old. Also killed in the accident near the town of Eilat were his wife, Yael Cohen Ben-Porath, 42, a lecturer in the university's philosophy department, and their 5-year-old son, Yahali. Mr. Ben-Porath was named president of Hebrew University, Israel's largest and oldest, in 1990. He had previously served as its rector. He received his doctorate from Harvard and was known for his research on surveys and random sampling. During the 1980's he was active in the Israeli political movement Peace Now, which favors conciliation with the Arabs.


1994: “Shrunken Heads” a horror film directed by Richard Elfman with music by Danny Elfman was released in the United States today.


1996: “Swingers” a comedy-drama directed and filmed Doug Liman was released today in the United States.


1998:The New York Times book section included a review of The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gatesby Jewish author Wendy Goldman Rohm.


2000(19th of Tishrei, 5761): Fifth Day of Sukkoth


2000(19th of Tishrei, 5761): Seventy-four year old Julie London, the actress and jazz singer with the unique silky voice passed away today.




2001: U.S. premiere of “The Grey Zone,” a film based on Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account written by Dr. Miklós Nyiszli co-starring Harvey Keitel and produced by Avi Lerner.


2002(12th of Cheshvan, 5763): Eighty-eight year old producer Frank Rosenbeg passed away today. (As reported by Elaine Woo)



2002:  Congregation Har Sinai, a congregation that traces its origins to pre-Civil War Baltimore began the dedication of its new facility in Owings Mills, MD


2003(22nd of Tishrei, 5764): Shemini Atzeret


2003: A revised version of “Mourning Becomes Electra  “an opera in 3 acts by composer Marvin David Levy” “premiered at the Seattle Opera today.


2004: The New York Timesbook section features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jews including Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh and The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary by Robert Alter  


2004: The Jewish Women's Archive joined with National Women's Philanthropy of the United Jewish Communities for an historic celebration of 350 years of American Jewish community. The evening showcased Jewish women, of the past and the present, whose boldness, vision, and hard work have shaped the American and the American Jewish life. Part of the International Lion of Judah conference in Washington, D.C., the event was attended by more than 1,200 women from across the United States. An extraordinary group of contemporary women of achievement were brought together for this evening to reflect upon their own work and careers within the historical context of 350 years of Jewish women creating community in North America. Honorees included Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Representative Shelley Berkley; communal leaders Shoshana Cardin, Amy Friedkin, Carole Solomon, and Linda Rae Sher; artist Judy Chicago; actress Tovah Feldshuh; composers Debbie Friedman and Elizabeth Swados; cookbook author Joan Nathan; authors and activists Blu Greenberg, Ruth Gruber, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin; Rabbi Sally J. Priesand; and Barnard College President Judith Shapiro.


2005:Matt Bloom unsuccessfully challenged Satoshi Kojima for the AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship.


2005: The Icon Festival, a celebration of science fiction and the imagination is held yearly during the Hol Hamoed period of Sukkoth began today at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.


2006:The exhibition "Israel - Art and Life 1906-2006," curated by Amnon Barzel, opens at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Much like the exhibition "The New Hebrews," curated by Dorit Levita around a year ago in Berlin, this exhibition also attempts to survey 100 years of Israeli art. The exhibition features the works of 35 artists from the Bezalel era through the young generation of contemporary artists.


2006: French Jewish director’s O Jerusalema film version of the history written thirty years ago by Collins and Lapierre premiered in Paris, France.


2006: Edah HaChareidis organized this evening’s demonstration in Jerusalem that was a protest against the upcoming “Gay Pride” parade.


2006: The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz was not released to the public today as previously announced.


2007:The Center for Jewish History presents a screening of the documentary On My Way to Fathers Land a 1995 Hebrew Language film with English subtitles directed by Aner PremingerThe filmmaker brings his father back to his native Vienna as part of a quest to understand his history as an Austrian, a Jew, a communist, and a Zionist. Following the screening, Matti Bunzl, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois leads a discussion about the movie.


2007(6thof Cheshvan, 5768): Sixty-nine year old British writer and satirist Alan Coren whose children Giles, born in 1969 and Victoria born in 1973 followed in his professional footsteps, passed away today.



2007: Limmud FSU, the largest Jewish studies and cultural event ever to take place in Russia opened in Moscow.Limmud is a unique volunteer-run organization designed to build community, foster learning, and offer exciting, interactive programs for Jews of all shapes and ranging from Jewish learning and discussions to performance arts to nature walks and singing. The first Limmud began approximately 25 years ago as an annual, volunteer-driven event in Nottingham, England. In recent years, Limmud’s events have been recognized as a "best practice" of Jewish life and have spread across the global Jewish community. There are currently 11 Limmuds around the world, spanning 4 continents.” Limmud comes from the Hebrew word meaning “to learn.”


2008: On the fifth day of the 24th Haifa International Film festival, screenings of a variety of films including “A Jumpin Night in the Garden of Eden,” a 1980’s film that was the first cinematic effort to document the American Kletzmer revival.


2009 (30 Tishrei, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan I


2009:This afternoon the Open Door Reading Series at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD presents a reading by Gail Collins from "Words that Burn Within Me: Faith, Values, Survival," a book of poetry and prose by the late Hilda Stern Cohen. Werner Cohen, Hilda Cohen's widower, will offer a preface to the event relating his discovery of his wife's journal after her death.


2009: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem and an hitherto unpublished short story by Kurt Vonnegut appearing in his latest work "Look at the Birdie"


2009: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity” by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and “Manhood For Amateurs” by Michael Chabon and the recently released paperback edition of “Writing In The Dark” a collection essays by David Grossman, the Israeli novelist and peace advocate who defends the necessity of literature in a violent world.


2009: The Washington Post features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Enemies of the People:My Family's Journey to America” by Kati Marton2009: In Washington D.C., opening night of Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival


2009:In an opinion piece published today in The Times and Democrat newspaper, Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County Chairman James Ulmer defended the fiscal policies of U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, by saying he was "like Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves."


2010: In an interview published today, author Stacy Schiff talked about growing up in Adams, Massachusetts.



2010:Michal Govrin, author of Hold on to the Sun is scheduled to appear at the Library of Congress as part of the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC. “Israeli author and poet Govrin, recently named by Paris’ Salon du Livre one of the most influential international writers of the past thirty years, received the Kugel Literary Prize in Israel. Her newest work, a collection of fiction and autobiographical stories, spans her life as a writer. Throughout these essays and stories, Govrin explores sudden fractures in the flow of reality that reveal the mystical moments of revelation underlying daily life. Born in Tel Aviv, Michal Govrin is the daughter of an Israeli pioneer father and a mother who survived the Holocaust. After obtaining her Ph.D. in theater studies from the University of Paris, Govrin moved back to Israel where she became one of the country’s most prominent writers, an award-winning poet, and a theater director. Govrin has published nine books of poetry and fiction.”


2010: In an article entitled “Confessions of An Agent” published in Sports Illustrated, Josh Luchs “a dyslexic Jewish kid” tells how he used $2,500 of his bar mitzvah money to pay a college player in violation of NCAA rules in hopes that he would become a client of Luchs.  In the article Luchs gives detailed accounts of the various players he would illegally pay during his twenty year career.


2010:General Staff Forum members gathered this morning at the Rabin Center to mark 15 years since the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "Rabin is not with us today, but his spirit and legacy continue to guide us, and with that his hope that there will be an equal, united, and inventive society here. We return here today knowing that this torch of hope...is in secure and good hands, and [we're here] in the belief that it will remain in such hands in the future," IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said at the ceremony, which was held in the presence of head of the Rabin Center and daughter of the late prime minister, Dalia Rabin, and his sister, Rachel Yaakov Rabin.


2010: The New York Times featured a review of Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in His Laboratory by Patrick Wilcken


2010: A memorial service honoring the late William Coblentz one San Francisco’s most ardent champions of major civic projects and one of its most influential attorneys is scheduled to be held at the Herbst Theatre.


2010: A website providing information on over 20,000 works of art stolen by the Nazis from their Jewish owners during the 1930s and 1940s was launched today.


2011(20thof Tishrei, 5772): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2011(20thof Tishrei, 5772): Eight-nine year old Ruby Cohn, the academic who was the leading authority on Samuel Beckett, passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2011(20thof Tishrei, 5772): Norman Corwin, a producer and dramatist from the golden age of radio passed away today at the age of 101. (As reported by William Grimes)



2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to co-sponsor a screening of “The People v Leo Rank,” a film that “is both a…murder mystery and an insightful look at racial, religious, regional and class prejudices in the early years of the 20th century.”


2011:The Ballad of Shoe Dependency: Nan Goldin Shoots a New Ad Campaign for Jimmy Choo published today



2011: Rabbi Ita Paskind, the Assistant Rabbi of Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, Virginia, is scheduled to deliver the first in a series of lectures on “Aggadah's Influence in Development of Law in the Torah.”


2011:Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit today a strategic turning point in Hamas’s struggle against Israel. “This is a strategic turning point in our struggle against the Zionist enemy,” Haniyeh said at a celebration in Gaza this evening, adding “it was thanks to our resistance that we were able to release the land and the people.” Hamas freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit today after holding him in captivity for over five years. Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his return. Hamas and other Gaza militant groups have vowed to seize more Israeli hostages for exchange until all 5,000 Palestinians still in Israeli prisons are released.


2012: The 96th Hadassah Convention is scheduled to come to an end in Jerusalem.


2012: Hayehudim, considered one of the most successful Rock bands in Israel, is scheduled to perform at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill


2012: Pianist Jeanne Golan is scheduled to perform the piano sonatas of Viktor Ullman under the sponsorship of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center


2012:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a screening of “Everything is illuminated.”


2012: President Shimon Peres said today that the people of Iran should be encouraged to overthrow their government


2012: A new centrist “super party,” bringing together former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Kadima chair Tzipi Livni and popular political newcomer Yair Lapid, “is not going to happen,” Lapid said today.


2013: A screening of “Ghosts of the Third Reich” which “documents the stories of the descendants of the Nazis who confront their family’s past and communicate their most profound feelings of guilt by inheritance” is scheduled to take place today at the Library of Congress.


2013: In the UK, The Wiener Library is scheduled to present “Hitler’s Helpers: The Female Administrators of the Holocaust”


2013: Today Rachel Lichtenstein reviewed No Place Like Home, “Judah Passow’s affectionate yet unsentimental collection of photographs documenting the diversity of Jewish life in Britain today.”




2013: Folk/Reggae/songwriting Rabbi Jack Gabriel is scheduled to lead a special Kabbalat Shabbat service at Kol Ami in Arlington, VA.


2013: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to slow down settlement construction today.The Wall Street Journal quoted Merkel as saying following a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, "We call on Israel to opt for a restrained approach in its settlement policy. I have said this repeatedly in talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu, because we must not put at risk the talks." (As reported by JP staff)


2013: Scattered showers fell in northern Israel this morning, eventually making their way to Tel Aviv in the early afternoon. Temperatures fell considerably on Friday and the rain was accompanied by strong winds in some areas of the country.


2013(14th of Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety-one year old airline victims advocate Hans Ephraimson-Abt passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2013(14th of Cheshvan, 5774): Seventy-year old Norman Geras, Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University of Manchester and husband of Jerusalem born children’s author Adèle Geras passed away today.





2014(24th of Tishrei, 5775): On Shabbat the cycle is scheduled to begin again with “Bereshit.”


2014: Ninety-eight year old Chinese translator Stanley Shapiro passed away.



2014: Four-time Tony nominee Tovah Feldshuh is scheduled to recreate her award-winning performance as Golda Meir in “Golda’s Balcony” at the Victoria Theatre.


2014: “Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman called Jews visiting the Temple Mount a "herd of cattle” today.” (As reported by Tova Dvorin)


2014: “Dozens of Israeli trekkers stranded by avalanches and snowstorms which killed at least 29 people — including three Israelis — in the Himalayas this week will be airlifted from the mountainous region of Annapurna today.


2014: “A senior Palestinian official called today for Washington to develop a strategy to simultaneously combat radical Islamism while working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute – following US secretary of state's remarks on the link between the two ongoing conflicts.”


2014: Louis Black is scheduled to appear the Seneca Allegany Casino in Salamanca, NY.


2015: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback editions of The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World by George Prochnick and PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollit


2015: “Valley,” the first full length feature directed by French born Israeli Sophie Artus, is scheduled to be shown as the closing film at the 3rd Chelsea Film Festival.


2015: The Jewish Museum of London is scheduled to host a “Walking Tour of the Old Jewish East End including a visit to Sandys Row Synagogue.


2015: The Nebraska Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host its annual meeting “The Boomer Years” this afternoon.


2015: The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host Leon Taranto speaking on the “History and Genealogy of the Jews of Rhodes and their Diaspora.”


2015:Still Engines, a conference scheduled to be held at Mishkenot Sha’ananim today, will address the subject of freedom of speech and public discourse


2015: “Thousands of people demonstrated in Rome, Paris and Madrid today in solidarity with Israel, as the Jewish state experiences weeks of escalating violence and daily terror attacks” including “the Chairman of the Italian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee” who “said that it is a moral duty to stand by Israel


2015: The ever-popular Maccabeates are scheduled to return to the JCCNV today for two performances.


2016(16th of Tishrei, 5777): Second Day of Sukkoth


2016: “The CIC (Chinese in Iowa City) is scheduled to join members of the University of Iowa Hillel chapter to discuss autumn traditio2016: The Israel Museum is scheduled to host its annual kite festival including “kite-making workshops and kite flying with the help of kite experts.”


2016: A revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” “featuring new movement and dance routines by Israeli choreographer Hofesh Schecter is scheduled to be performed at the Broadway Theatre


2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host CNN’s Ana Navarro discussing “the new age of alternative facts”


2017: “Likud MK Sharren Haskel, Yesh Atid MK Haim Jelin, Zionist Union MKs Yossi Yonah and Nachman Shai, and Knesset Secretary Yardena Meller-Horowitz complained about mistreatment at the Inter-Parliament Union assembly in Saint Petersburg, Russia, including being heckled while trying to speak at the event today.”


2017: In Atlanta, as part of its Historic Jewish Atlanta Tour seies, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host a visit to “historic Oakland Cemetery” where attendees will “explore the history, burial customs, and symbolism found throughout the Jewish Grounds of this powerful city landmark.


2017: At the Bard Graduate Center, Andrea M Berlin is scheduled to present “Reading, Writing and Jewish Daily Life through Graffiti” which is part of the Leon Levy Foundation Lectures.


2017: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host a lecture by Wojciech Tworek, a postdoctoral fellow at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto on “Mystic, Teacher, Troublemaker: Shimon Engel and the Challenges of Hasidic Yeshiva Education in Interwar Poland.”


2017: Yeshiva University Museum, Center for Jewish History and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host Paula Fredriksen on “A Tale of Two Cities: Rome and Jerusalem” in which she will explore Rome’s role in building as well as destroying the Jewish capital.”


2018: In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Allison Schachter of Vanderbilt University is scheduled to give a lecture titled, “Madame Bovary in the Jewish Provinces: Fradel Shtok’s Modernist Yiddish Prose” during which she  will discuss Fradel Shtok, a celebrated poet credited with writing the first sonnet in Yiddish and focus on her life after she published a collection of her lesser-known prose writings in 1919, which were dismissed by critics at the time as too similar to Gustave Flaubert, a French novelist and leader in literary realism, and too dissimilar compared to prominent Yiddish author and playwright Sholem Aleichem.


2018: In Des Moines, IA, The Iowa Jewish Senior Life Center is scheduled to host its Fall Fundraiser completing with a “silent auction, wine tasting and appetizers.”


2018: The American Jewish Historical Society is scheduled to host a “staged reading feat” in which Alysia Reiner and David Basche will reading the wartime letters from newlyweds Lenny and Diana Miller found in We Are Going to be Lucky.



2018: At Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA, “Steve Feller, the B.D. Silliman Professor of Physics, is scheduled to lead the third of the Thursday Forums where attendees will discuss the novels of Leon Uris.


2018: In Jerusalem, Mercaz Hatarbuyot is scheduled to host an evening of classical and Klezmer Music featuring concert pianist Eliah Zabaly and clarinetist Ira Goyfeld.












This Day, October 19, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 19


1187:  Pope Urban III passed away. Urban was a supporter of the Crusades, the cause of so much Jewish misery. A large part of his papacy was spent in struggle with Frederick I, the Emperor who issued “The Confirmation of Rights of the Jews of Regensburg” that stated, “We must make provision for them tom maintain their customs and secure peace for their persons and property.” 


1216: King John of England died at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry.Richard's brother John's lack of judgment and popularity meant that he was always short of money and support. While his barons might grumble at John's incompetence and resist his ever-increasing demands for money, the Jews had no such leverage.  When the Baron’s forced him to sign the Magna Carta they included a clause that restricted claims of Jews against debtors who died owing them money. John pressed his Jews to provide a royal dowry for his daughter, Joan, followed too quickly by the massive so-called Bristol Tallage, which depleted the wealthiest Jews upon which it largely fell.  Henry was only a nine year old child.  As Henry III will also clash with the Barons and will look to the Jews as a source of revenue to prop up his throne.


1216: King Henry III who gave “Peter de Rivel gives him the office of Treasurer and Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, the king's ports and coast, and also "the custody of the King's Judaism in Ireland" began his reign today.


1298:  Two hundred Jews were massacred in Germany.  This was part of a period half century of violence aimed against the Jews of Germany.  Much of the popular sentiment was aroused by claims that Jews were using Christian blood to make matzoth.  The clerics were working to enforce laws against any kind of intercourse between Christians and Jews.  And the royalty was trying to figure out ways to strip the Jews of their wealth.  It was this kind of violence that would cause Asher ben Yechiel (see above) to flee Germany in 1303.


1329 (9 Cheshvan 5090):Asher ben Yechiel passed away. Born in 1250 this great Talmudic commentator was known as Rabbenu Asher or the "Rosh". He fought against the over-philosophizing of his day. Asher was a unique case.  He was Ashkenazi and had begun his work among the Jews of France of Germany.  When his life was threatened in Germany he fled to Spain where he became rabbi of the Sephardic Jews of Toledo.   His rabbinical academy attracted students from Europe and Russia. His works included "Diskei Rosh", discussions, over 1000 Responsa, a commentary of the MishnayotZerayim and Teharot, and notes on some Talmudic Tractates. He encouraged his pupil, Isaac ben Yoseph, to write Yesod Olam "Foundation of the World," a scientific work on astronomy and the calendar. At the time of his death he was preparing a codification of commentaries that for the first time included the views of the German and Spanish rabbinical authorities.  His son, Jacob ben Asher, would finish his father’s task by writing a code called Turim.


1433: In Figline Valdarno, Republic of Florence, Diotifeci d'Agnolo , “a physician under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici” and his wife gave birth to Marsilio Ficino, the Roman Catholic priest and Christian Kabbalist..


 
1466: In Poland, the Thirteen Years War comes to an end with Polish forces victorious over the Teutonic Knights.  This victory came during that period of time when Poland was on its way to becoming home to the largest Jewish population in Europe.



1469:  Ferdinand II of Aragon wedded Isabella of Castile, a marriage that paved the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain. The marriage also paved the way to Spanish Inquisition, The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.  In other words, these two Hispanic lovebirds closed out what had been one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in history and opened the door to what would become the most vibrant Jewish community in the history of the Diaspora.


1518: “Shealtiel a Sephardic Jew who had served as Kahya for twenty years was ousted from office by the community leaders, after many complaints of bribery and arbitrary taxes were lodged against him by Jews. The community banned him and his sons from holding the position of kahya or performing any other function involving contact with the Ottoman authorities.” (As described by the Jewish Virtual Library)


1686(2nd of Tishrei, 5446): Jacob Abendana passed away today after which he was buried in the Velho Sephardic Cemtetery.


1733: The will of Barbados resident Abraham Burssy was dated today.


1735(2nd of Cheshvan, 5496): Moses Kalman, grandfather of A.M. Rothschild passed away.


1739: In Portugal, Antonio Jose da Silva, who was a Converso born in Brazil to Converso parents was found guilty of heresy. He was a well-known dramatist and his works were popularly referred to as those of “The Jew.” Da Silva whose parents had also been persecuted by the inquisition was arrested numerous times and tortured. Although the King himself was inclined toward leniency, he was burned. At the same time, one of his plays was playing in a popular theater in Lisbon.  Despite the King’s inclination towards leniency Da Silva was garroted and burnt at a Lisbon auto-da-fe. His wife, who witnessed his death, did not long survive him.  At the time of his death, one of da Silva’s plays was being performed in a popular Lisbon theatre.  Da Silva's tragic story has inspired several modern writers, including the Portuguese Camilo Castelo Branco (author of the novel O Judeu), who was himself of Converso origin.


1753(21stof Tishrei, 5514): Hoshana Raba


1767: Birthdate of Salomon Heine, the Hamburg born banker who was the father of Amalie Friedlander and the uncle of Heinrich Heine.


1773: In New York City, Jonas Phillips, the son of Aaron Phillips and his wife Rebecca Mendz Machado gave birth to the their second child and first son, Naphtali Phillips who married Esther Siexas one year after the death of his first wife Rachel and became the publisher of the National Advocate.


1781: Emperor Joseph II issues the Toleration Decree in which the Jews of Austria were accorded civil and political equality.


1781: The British fleet having been defeated by the French fleet thanks in no small part to the anti-Semitic plundering of St. Eustatius by Admiral Rodney, Cornwallis’s army which lacked supplies, provisions or a route of escape, marched out of Yorktown and surrendered to George Washington.


1781: The articles of capitulation were signed today marking the end of the siege of Yorktown and for all intents and purposes the end of the American Revolution.


1783(23rdof Tishrei, 5544): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since the signing of the Treaty of Paris which marked the end of the American Revolution


1790: Feiwel Duschenes and Brache Duschenes gave birth to Joachim Duschenes, the husband of Sara Duschenes.


1803:  In Great Britain, an official fast for success in the war against France begins.


1810: The Grand Duke of Frankfurt, a French official, resisted granting full equality to the Jews.  A.M. Rothschild was sure that the Grand Duke was just holding out for a larger bribe.


1812:Napoleon begins his retreat from Moscow.  This marks the beginning of the end for the emancipation of the Jews of Europe that had followed in the wake of France’s military victories. The defeat at Moscow would hasten the return of the reactionaries.  Figuratively, if not literally, ghetto doors that had been thrown open would be closed again.


1821(23rdof Tishrei, 5582): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time since Mexico and the nations of Central America threw off the yoke of Spanish rule.


1826: Birthdate German Jewish philosopher Manuel Joel who followed Abraham Geiger as the rabbi in Breslau.


1842: Birthdate of Adolph Meyer, the native of Natchez, Mississippi and student at the University of Virginia who left school to fight in the Confederate Army and who later represented Louisiana’s First Congressional District for 18 years.


1846(29thof Tishrei, 5607): Sixty-nine year old Jacob Hirsch Kann, the son Miriam and Isaac Jacob Kann and the husband of Jetta Kann with whom he had 13 children passed away today.


1847: After struggling for two years, Temple Emanu-El purchased “a church on Chrystie Street between Hester Streets for $12,000 which it would alter so that it was ready to be used as a Jewish house of worship by Pesach, 1848.


1851(23rdof Tishrei, 5612): As the turmoil that would lead to the coup that would end the Second Republic gripped France, Jews observed Simchat Torah


1854:Ernestine Rose, a leading early American advocate for women's rights, presided over the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphia which ended today. (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)  http://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/19/1854/ernestine-rose



1859: In Mulhouse, Alsace, Second French Empire,Raphaël Dreyfus was a prosperous, self-made, Jewish textile manufacturer and his wife Jeannette Dreyfus (née Libmann) gave birth to the youngest of their nine children, Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer whose trumped up treason trial would split French society and become a prime catalyst for the creation of the Zionist movement under Herzl. 



1859: In Liverpool, Professor Prag and his wife gave birth to Joseph Prag, the graduate of Queen’s College who was a member of the Anglo-Jewish Association and the Conjoint Committee for Foreign Affairs as well as a Warden of the North-West London Synagogue.



1860(3rdof Cheshvan, 5621): Rebbe Eliezer Horowitz of Dzhikov, the son of Rebbe Naftali Tzvi passed away today.



1861: One day after he had passed away, 40 year old Lazarus Leopard was buried today at the “Brompton (Fulham Road) Jewish Cemetery.”



1862: Philadelphian, Abraham Kuhn completed his service with Company B of the 27thRegiment.



1863(23rd of Tishrei, 5764): Simchat Torah


1863: During the American Civil War, on the same day marking the end of the Jewish “holiday season” General U.S. Grant replaces William Rosecrans as Commander of the Army of with General George Thomas. Thomas will appoint Major Alfred Mordecai Junior, Senior and Supervising Ordinance Officer of the Army of the Cumberland. Young Mordecai was a West Point Graduate and the son of one of the Army’s highest ranking Jewish officers in the pre-Civil War U.S. Army.


1864(19th of Tishrei, 5625): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1864: During the American Civil War, Union forces under the command General Sheridan decisively and dramatically defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Cedar Creek. This victory marked the end of the Valley Campaigns of 1864.  From this time on no Confederate Army could threaten Washington with invasion through the Shenandoah Valley and the rich valley farms would no longer be a source of supply for the armies of Robert E. Lee. The defeated Confederate was commanded by a general with a name straight out of Bereshit – Jubal Early. Major Lyon Levy Emanuel, a member of a prominent Jewish family from Philadelphia was among those fighting with Union in the Shenandoah Valley


1864: "Our Paris Correspondence" published today reported that "Baron Erlanger and his fair bride, Miss Slidell, were the prime pets of the brilliant feudal throng, and the joy at Baden-Baden knew no bounds…nothing remains of all the Summer's gay humbug but Erlanger’s courtship with Miss Slidell. The Erlangers are German Jews, originally from Marburg, a University town in the Electorate of Hessen, but the academic glories of that town made but little intellectual impression upon the Erlanger stock, who took themselves to Frankfort, where they attained to wealth by stock-jobbing, and to a baronetcy by the grace of the King of Portugal, to the great distress of Rothschild-- he being no longer the only Jew Baron…”  Erlanger was a member of family of German-Jewish bankers who was head of the leading banking house in France.  Miss Slidell was the daughter of John Slidell of Louisiana, a Confederate diplomat living in France who tried unsuccessfully to get the French to recognize the South’s independence during the Civil War.  Erlanger was not the first Jew to marry into Slidell’s family.  August Belmont was his brother-in-law.  The Rothschild’s claim to the title Baron stemmed from the Austrian house of the famous banking family.


1876: Argentina completed legal reforms that would permit the establishment and consolidation of Jewish agricultural settlements.


1876: Judith Aria, the eldest child of Alexander Aria and the former Flaimngo Abigail was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1876: Rosalie and Samuel Peck gave birth to Eleanor Peck, who became Eleanor Kuh when she married Millard F. Kuh with whom she had one son, Howard Michael Kuh.


1877: The report of a correspondent who is traveling with the Russian Army during the Czar’s war with the Ottoman Empire reported that there are more Jews at the Bulgarian town of Sistova now than on his last visit.  He described the Jews as “more bestial than before.”  Once he had reached the Czar’s headquarter encampment, the correspondent found himself eating food provided by “a firm of enterprising Israelites” that charges “Fifth Avenue Hotel prices.”


1878(22nd of Tishrei, 5639): Shemini Atzeret


 
1878: “In Lipine, Silesia,” Whilhelm and Johanna Lebowitsch Sonderling gave birth to Jacob Sonderling who in 1904 received a Ph.D. from the University of Tiibgingen, “was ordained by Dr. Baruch Jacob” and “married Emma Kleman” with whom he had three sons – Egrmont, Fred and Paul – after which “during the First World War he served as a Germany Army Chaplain on the staff of Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and then came to the United States where he “founded the Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles.”
 
1879: In Bucharest, the Chamber of Deputies is scheduled to vote on a measure designed to resolve the issue of Jewish emancipation.  Under the proposal, the Jews will have to apply individually for naturalization except for those who have served in the army.  Jewish veterans will be granted full citizenship en bloc. 



1880: It was reported today that in the past year St. Luke’s Hospital treated 1,114 patients in the last year, four of whom were Jewish.


 
1880: An article published today described the bustling commercial activity in Smyrna, a Turkish city where trade “is chiefly in the hands of the Greeks and the Jews.”  Smyrna, according to the article, was the scene of “one of the most striking episodes in the history” of the Jews – the rise to prominence of Shabbetai Zvi.


 
1881: Birthdate of Harold Hirsch the University of Georgia football player who studied law at Columbia and went to serve as the General Counsel for The Coca-Cola Company.  According to some, Hirsch played a role in designing Coke’s uniquely shaped bottle.



1881: In Charleston, Rabbi David Levy officiated at the marriage of Albert De Leon of Baltimore, MD and Amanda Moise, the “eldest daughter of B.F. Moise.”


1882: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association is sponsoring tonight’s concert at Chickering Hall in New York.


1882: Israel Ettler, is scheduled to return to court today where he will face charges involving his role in the recent “riot” among the immigrants on Ward’s Island.


1882(6thof Cheshvan, 5643): Seventy-four year old Celia Marks, the daughter of Moshe and Hannah Wolfe and the wife of David Woolf Marks passed away today.


1883: Three days after she had passed away, Henrietta (Montefiore) Samuel, the daughter of “Horatio Joseph Montefiore and the former Sarah Daniel Mocatta” and the wife of Horatio Simon Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.


1883: It was reported today that Mrs. Martin Scherbner has filed for a divorce in New Jersey Chancery Court because her husband deceived her before they were married.  Before their wedding he assured his Catholic bride that he was not Jewish, but Catholic like her.  After the wedding, he confessed that he was Jewish.


1883:Sir Moses Montefiore has given a gift of 99 English pounds to the London Sheriffs' charitable fund. That sum represented 1 pound for each year of the giver's age. Nearly 50 years ago the aging philanthropist had held the office of Sheriff for London and Middlesex.


1884: It was reported today that 40 year old Benjamin Levy “is lying at his home…dangerously near death.”  According to Levy and those who witnessed the event, Levy was beaten by a policeman in plain clothes.  The officer claimed he had been provoked by Levy and his companions “who were full of liquor” The officer’s claim is questionable since the beating took place on Yom Kippur.

1884: “Statistic of the Deaf and Dumb” published today reported that “in Berlin the greater proportion of deaf-mutes is found the Israelites where consanguineous marriages are frequent and the smaller number among the Catholics to whom such marriages are forbidden.” In evaluating these statistics it should be noted that the same article said that the causes of “deaf-mutism” are “damp atmosphere, uncleanliness, bad air in dwellings and” parents who are laundresses, excavators, miners and weavers.


1885(10th of Cheshvan, 5646): A mounted officer serving with the New York Park Police found the dead body of a man identified as 29 year old Albert Unger propped against a tree just south of Camp Grant.


1886: Birthdate of Reb Velvel (Yitzchok Zev) Soloveitchik, the native of Belarus and son Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk


1886:”A Thrifty Prince” published today erroneously reported that the Princess of Battenburg, the wife of Prince Alexander of Hesse “was the daughter of a German Jew” named Haucke. (Actually her father was a German professional soldier).


1886: “Violated the Sunday Law” published today described the plight of Wolf Bloom, a 26 year old Jewish immigrant from Russia who had been arrested on charges brought Cornelious Leary for having violated the Sunday Law (aka Blue Laws) by having the employees of his cloak factory work on Sunday.  In his defense Bloom said that as a Jew he observed Saturday as “his holy day” which is why he worked on Sunday. (In a world where everything seems to be open 7/24/36, it is hard to remember that Sunday closing laws were the norm in many parts of the U.S. well into the second half of the 20th century)

1886: In New York City Angeline Seligman married Albert H. Gross


1887: Joseph Krauskopf began serving as the rabbi for Keneseth Israel, a Reform congregation in Philadelphia, PA.


1888: Moshav Gederah was attacked by Arabs. Gederah was one of the first agricultural settlements developed by Jewish pioneers.  It was established by a Russian-born Jew named Yehiel Michael Pines in 1884.  Money for purchasing the land came from the Moses Montefiore Testimonial Fund.  Grapes and grain were the principal products of the moshav.


1888: As charges of financial mismanagement swirl around the theatrical productions that the Jewish Order of the Harp of David have been sponsoring at Poole’s Theatre in New York, a threatened injunction brought by one group of claimants might cancel tonight’s performance of “King Solomon.”


1888: It was reported today that Mrs. John Jacob Astor has made a bequest of $25,000 to St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.


1888: It was reported today that of the 1,793 patients treated at St. Luke’s, an Episcopal Hospital in New York, 19 of them were Jewish


1889: It was reported today that property valued at $27,500 owned by the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and property valued at $4,000 owned by the Talmud Torah on East Broadway, were among those charitable and educational institutions granted an exemption from paying property taxes.



1890: It was reported today that during 1889, St. Luke’s Hospital a New York facility supported by Episcopalians that is non-denominational when it comes to offering services, served 1,997 patients of whom 38 were Jewish.


1890: The managers of theSociety of St. Luke’s hospital reported that of 1,384 patients treated this year four of them were Jewish.


1890: The Jews of Alpena, Michigan met today and adopted the articles of incorporation and by-laws creating Temple Beth El for which they agreed to purchase a building on White Street to use as a sanctuary.


1890: “A Big Hotel Planned Where Jews Will Be Welcomed” published today described the purchase of 10,000 acres owned by the Mutual Life Insurance Company in the Adirondacks around Lake Saranac Nathan Strauss on which he along with Isidor Straus, Max Nathan and Mayor Hugh J. Grant will spend one million dollars to develop with cottages and a luxury hotel that will be open to all who wish stay which would set it apart from many of the hostelries in the areas which do not accept Jewish guests.


1891: “An Indictment of Russia “ published today described the “golden age of the Jews in Russia” which “lasted from 1857 to 1877” was followed by a “return to oppression” in which “nobody in Russia has dreamed of paying a debt owed to a Jewish trader or artisan” in the past twelve months.


1892: In Lancashire, Thomas and Annie Mackereth give birth to Sir Gilbert Mackereth who in 1937 while serving as the British council “advised an increase in border patrol around Palestine due to the high numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazism in Hitler's Germany”  At the same he “observed that the Arab nationalists had hired known criminals in Syria who crossed the frontier to join bandit groups in Palestine where they blew up passenger trains, menaced and murdered both soldiers and civilians alike, and indiscriminately robbed Arabs, Christians and Jews.” (As reported by Leslie Stein)


1894(19thof Tishrei, 5655): Fifth day of Sukkoth


1894(19thof Tishrei, 5655): Forty-five year old James Darmesteter who “published a thesis on the mythology of the Avesta, in which he advocated that the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism had been influenced by Judaism (and not backwards as many scholars say) passed away today


1894: After visiting his son Lester, Abraham Keyser, a retired grocer left to go home and was never seen alive again.


1894(19thof Tishrei, 5655): Forty-five year old James Darmesteter author of Les Prophetes D’Israel (The Prophets of Israel) passed away today.


1894: In New York, morning newspapers described the decision of the Trustees of the Hebrew Institute to not to let the Women’s Municipal League use its building for a meeting even though only one of the five, Nathan Straus had opposed the request.


1894: The two children of Mrs. Urchittel, who had been sent to the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, were returned to her at a meeting of the Lexow Committee which is investigating corruption in the New York City Police Department.  The children had been taken from her based on the testimony of two men from the 12th Precinct who claimed she ran “a disorderly house” when in fact her only crime was her refusal to pay them blackmail.  State Senator Cantor had previously testified before the committee on her behalf.


1895: Birthdate of New York City native Walter Staunton Mack, Jr. the Harvard educated, WW I Naval officer and  long-time President of Pepsi-Cola.
 
1896: The Vitascope Theatre opened in Buffalo, New York.  It was one of the first buildings built deliberately for the showing of motion pictures.  The theatre was owned by Mitchell Mark. In 1906 this Jewish entrepreneur teamed with his brother Moe, Adloph Zucker and Marcus Lowe to for the Automatic Vaudeville Company. 



1896:Gaston Michel Calmann-Lévy and Hélène Koenigswarter gave birth to Nicole Germaine Oulman


1896: Colonel J.E. Bloom, Chairman of the Wage Earners Patrotic League presided over a mass meeting at Cooper Union where delivered an address opposing William Jennings Bryan and his Free Silver Platform.


1896: Birthdate of NYU star basketball player Nat Holman who went on to a successful coaching career at City College of New York that included winning both the NCAA and NIT titles
 
1897(23rdof Tishrei, 5658): Simchat Torah is observed for the first time during the Presidency of William McKinley



1897(23rdof Tishrei, 5658): In London, the Hambro Synagogue is scheduled to hold services at Bonn’s Hall.


1897: “The East London Jewish Communal League winter session” opened this evening “with a social gathering at the Stepney Jewish Schools.”


1898:The Zionist Delegation aboard the "Emperor Nicolai II" is on its way to Palestine.


1898: Forty-two year old Harold Frederic the journalist who visited Russia in 1891 to investigate the conditions of the Jews and who wrote The New Exodus: A Study of Israel In Russia in 1892 passed away today.



 


1899:



 


1904: Birthdate of Hayyim Schirmann, the Russian born Jewish scholars who specialized in Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and who  worked in Berlin until the rise of the Nazis when moved to Palestine and began teaching at Hebrew University.  He passed away in 1981.



1905: A two day Pogrom began at Kishinev.  This was the second Pogrom at Kishinev in two years.  The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 is the more famous (or infamous) of the two.


1906: Birthdate of Polish born, American cinematographer Irving Glassberg


1907: After winning the first two games of the season, The Tennessee Volunteers coached by Izzy Levene lost to arch rival Georgia Tech in Atlanta.


1907: In Morristown, NJ, Adelaide “Addie” Wolf and “Otto Herman Kahn, a wealthy banker and patron of the arts gave birth to Roger Wolfe Kahn, jazz bandleader and composer, who like his father appeared on the cover Time magazine.

1908: “Irving Lehman” published today described the qualifications, career and family history of 33 year old Irving Lehman “who was nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court by the Tammany County Convention” and who will be the youngest person to serve on the bench if elected which seems to be highly likely.


1909: The Jewish Record Story Contest which offers three cash prizes to the Jewish women who write the best articles “on prominent modern Jews” as well as the possibility of being published in The Jewish Record came to an end today.


1912:  Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya from the Ottoman Empire. “According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, Jews were first settled in Cyrene and other parts of present-day eastern Libya by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Lagos (323-282 B.C.E.) With their numbers likely bolstered by Berbers who had converted to Judaism, later supplemented by Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, and, from the seventeenth century, by Jews from Leghorn and other Italian cities, Jews lived continuously in Libya for well over two millennia, predating the Muslim conquest in 642 C.E. by centuries. In 1911, 350 years of Ottoman rule ended and the Italian colonial period began. At the time, Libya’s Jewish population numbered 20,000. The next quarter century was to prove a golden age for Libya’s Jews. By 1931, nearly 25,000 Jews lived in Libya.”  For more about the Jews of Libya see


1915: Birthdate of major league pitcher Samuel Ralph "Subway Sam" Nahem


1916(22nd of Tishrei, 5677)” Shmini Atzeret


1916: Birthdate of New South Wales native Julius Cohen, the RAAF pilot and public servant who changed his name to Richard Kingsland to avoid being a victim of anti-Semitism.


1916: Tonight, “at a series of big rallies… which marked the start of the homestretch” of the Presidential campaign in New York, Oscar charged “that President Wilson and his advisers had insulted the Jews by appealing to them to sell their birthright as American citizens by voting for the President on the ground that he had appointed a number of Jews to responsible offices…”


1916: Birthdate of pianist Emil Gilels.  Born in Odessa, Gilels is variously described as a Ukrainian, and a great artist who made his career in the Soviet Union until his death in 1985.  But his name appears on the list of Jewish Pianist. This litany of origins points once again to the difficulty of answering the question, “Who is A Jew?”


1916: Dr. Judah Magnes, “who went abroad in July armed with credentials from the Secretary of State to investigate the methods of distribution of the vast sums of money raised in this country for the relief of Jewish War Sufferers” sailed from Europe today with the expectation that he will return to New York next week.


1917: Benny Leonard (the Ghetto Wizard) defeated Jack Britton in what would be the first of three bouts between the two.


1917: At Moscow, the mayor and members of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers intervened to stop anti-Jewish rioting.


1917: In Indianapolis, IN, Bella and Bernard Isaacs, the future “Superintendent of Hebrew Schools” in Detroit gave birth Irving Raphael Isaacs, WW II Army Air Corps veteran and the husband of Martha Lillian Horelick
 
1917: In Lugansk, “several Jewish shops and houses were looted and burned before the militia could restore order.



1917: In Petrograd, “several Jews were injured” during “anti-Jewish rioting” which was triggered by “a shortage of supplies.”


1918: Sergeant Abraham Blaustein, who was serving with the 165th Regiment on the Western Front left Excamont today to attend the Army Candidate School at La Volbonne.


1918: In Lockhart, Texas, Edith Violet (née Schwarz) and Charles H. Strauss gave birth to Robert Straus the Democratic political leader whose career including serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union under Republican President George H.W. Bush.


1918: In the Bronx, Samuel and Molly Eisen gave birth to their only child, Max. Max Eisen was one of the nation’s leading press agents who “from 1954 to 1997… was the press agent for more than 60 Broadway shows and dozens of Off Broadway productions.”


1919:The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago White Sox, 5 games to 3 in the16th World Series. This series is known as the Black Sox Scandal since 7 White Sox players threw the series.  Supposedly the Series was fixed by Arnold Rothstein.  Although raised as an observant Jew, Rothstein turned his back on his Jewish upbringing after his Bar Mitzvah.  A son of wealthy middle class parents, Rothstein hung out with “Irish gangsters” and married out of the faith.  Did Rothstein fix the series?  Or was this part of a pattern of blaming Jewish and other foreign influences for corrupting a pristine America.  This was a common theme among Natavists during the 1920’s.


1922: Birthdate of author and historian Ruth Gay, a writer known for her nonfiction books documenting Jewish life in the Old World. Ms. Gay's books include Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II which dealt with a little-studied subject - the more than 250,000 Jews who returned to Allied-occupied Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. She also wrote The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait which chronicled Jewish life in Germany from the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the rise of Hitler in 1933. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Peter Filkins called it "moving and lively.""What emerges is the portrait of a culture very much alive and aware of its own rich heritage," he wrote. In 1997, Ms. Gay received the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction for Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America. In that book, she examined the immigrant experience through the lens of her own girlhood in the Bronx. Ms. Gay has also coauthored a book with her daughter, Sophie, entitled Ms. Gay's book The Jewish King Lear Comes to America. She passed away in 2008.


1923: Hadoar, a Hebrew Language weekly published in the United States temporarily suspends publication


1923:Czernowitz born authorRosalie Beatrice Scherzer married Ignaz Ausländer. Her increasingly famous works were published under her married name, Rose Ausländer even though her marriage proved to be short-lived.


1923: Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett completed his service as Minister of Health in the government led by David Lloyd George.


1924(21st of Tishrei, 5685): Hoshana Rabah


1926: In New Haven, CT, Anna Henrietta Mendel and Sol Ellis Wallant gave birth to author Edward Lewis Wallant.


1926:  Birthdate of American moral philosopher Joel Feinberg.


1927(23rdof Tishrei, 5688): Simchat Torah


1927: Pan American World Airways, one of the corporate clients of press-agent Benjamin Sonnenberg, began operations today.


1927: Harry Blitman who has not lost a bout, fought his 26th bout.


1928: Birthdate of “animator and voice actor” Louis Sheimer, the Pittsburgh, PA who helped to found Filmation.


1928(5th of Cheshvan, 5689): Sixty-seven year old Chess Champion Berthold Lasker passed away.  Chess must have been in his genes since he was the brother of Emanuel Lasker.


1929(15thof Tishrei, 5690): Sukkoth


1930: Sir Hermann Gollancz, “the first British rabbi to be granted knighthood” was buried today at the Willesden Jewish Cemetery followed by a memorial service at the Bayswater Synagogue.


1934: Boxer Harry Blitman fought his 76th and penultimate bout.


1934: “Forbidden Territory,” a film version of the book by the same name starring Gregory Ratoff and with Music by Louis Levy was released in the United Kingdom today.


1936: Harry Newman scored the Brooklyn Tigers' only touchdown in a loss to Pittsburgh at Forbes Field


1936: In Philadelphia, “about 2,000 delegates and visitors from 45 states” attending the annual convention of Hadassah hear a message from President Roosevelt in which he praised the “women’s Zionist organization” for its “fine humanitarian work.”


1936: “Sir Philip Game, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police is demanding some Cabinet decision… on which to base his plans for protecting the people of East London” a large number of whom are Jewish from “physical attack and oratorical abuse by Sir Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirts.”


1937: Haj Amin el Huseini, the Mufit of Jerusalem, leader of the latest wave of Arab violence who is currently in Syria, is trying to get permission to take refuge in Italy, where Mussolini’s fascist government has expressed support for the Arabs.


1937: Arab violence continues as bombs were thrown in the Shimon Hazadik quarter of Jerusalem, in Safed at group of reserve Jewish policeman and in the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area.


1937: Birthdate of Peter Max. The American Pop Artists was born in Berlin, and raised in Shanghai, China and in Israel before his family settled in the United States in 1953. Max's art work was influential and much imitated in advertising design in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  His artwork may be viewed at numerous websites.


1938: In Great Neck, NY, Jeanette and Bernard Workman gave birth to Peter Israel Workman the founder of Workman Publishing.


1938: The National Council of Catholic Men sent a letter to President Roosevelt today asking him “to exercise his influence to avert the closing of the doors of Palestine to Jewish refugees and the abandonment of the Jewish national home policy Great Britain.” 


1939: At the World’s Fair in New York, members of the New York Council Pioneer Women’s Organization meet this morning for a ceremony at the Palestine Pavilion followed by a luncheon at the Café Tel Aviv.


1939: A Jewish ghetto at Lublin, Poland, is established.


1939:  The American film classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” starring Jimmie Stewart premiered.  The real Jewish connection comes from Columbia Studios the production company that made the movie.  Harry Cohn owned and ran the studios.  He was one of a group of Jewish movie moguls who helped to create the middle brow American culture and the myths that were a part of it. 


1939: Otto Blumenthal and his wife moved from Utrecht to Delft because they had been able to find a flat in that Dutch city.  Blumenthal could only find one student to tutor which left them so impoverished that they had to live on charity.  After the Nazi invasion, the Blumenthals would be forced to leave Delft because of ethnic cleansings.  The tragic life of the mathematician would end at Theresienstadt in 1944 where he had gone voluntarily to care for his sister.


1940: Air raid sirens sounded tonight in Jerusalem as Axis planes were spotted approaching the coast of Palestine.  No bombs fell on the City of David.


1941(28thof Tishrei, 5702): Just ten days after celebrating 77th birthday, “Jessica Blanche Peixotto, Professor of Social Economics, Emeritus” at U.C. Berkeley passed away today.
 
1941: During the Battle of Moscow, Stalin institutes martial law, ordering the NKVD to shoot looters and anybody else who looked suspicious.  Yes, this was more of Stalin the brutal.  But it replaced Stalin, the confused, the supreme leader of the Soviets who had so supremely bungled everything in the fight against Hitler.  Although the Battle for Moscow would rage into the spring of 1942, these aggressive tactics provided the impetus for the defense that brought the seemingly invincible Nazi military machine to a grinding halt.  From a Jewish perspective (and from the point of view of the western democracies as well) whatever was good for the Russians was good for the Jews and the West in the fight against fascism in general and the Holocaust in particular.



1942: Today, the Gestapo arrested Robert Abshagen who would later be beheaded for his work with the Red Orchestra resistance group.


1943: In Trieste, the Nazis conduct a round up Jewish citizens.


1943: Operation Reinhard, the German program to murder all of the Jews in Poland, “was terminated today by a letter from Odilo Globocnik which meant that operations at Treblinka came to an end but the murder of the Jews continued.


1943: Streptomycin the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was first isolated by researchers at Rutgers University by a Jewish research student from Connecticut named Albert Schat. However, according to academic tradition, Schatz's supervisor, Professor Selman Abraham Waksman, took credit for his student's discovery and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1952. Schatz was belatedly awarded the Rutgers medal in 1994, at the age of 74.


1944(2nd of Cheshvan, 5705): Sixty-seven year old screen writer Isadore Bernstein, passed away today.


1944: Today fifty-nine year old Dr. Ernst Eylenburg who had been transported from Berlin to Terezin in 1943 was transported from Terezin to Auschwitz where he was murdered.


1944: Today, a month after her 51st birthday, Anna Skobisova who had been transported from Prague in 1943 was transported to Terezin to Auschwitz where she was murdered.


1946: After two weeks, the curtain comes down on “A Flag is Born” at the Adelphi Theatre.


1948: In some of the fiercest fighting of the War of Independence Israeli forces are victorious at Huleikat after fighting both Egyptian and Saudi army units.  This victory opened the road to rest of the Negev.


1948: A naval battle took place between three Israeli warships near Majdal, and an Egyptian corvette with air support. An Israeli sailor was killed and four wounded, and two of the ships were damaged. One Egyptian plane was shot down, but the corvette escaped. This naval clash was part of the Israeli attempt to thwart the Egyptian drive up the coast through Gaza with the aim of taking Tel Aviv. [While people have heard of the Israeli Air Force and the accomplishments of the IDF’s armored and infantry units, they are unaware of the fact that Heil HaYam HaYisrael (the Israeli Navy) has played an active role in the defense of Jewish people going back to the days of the British Mandate.


1948: Stan Andrews, who had promoted to the rank of major and made the IAF “liaison to the UN truce supervision forces in the South” today “flew as an observer in a Beaufigher D-171” belonging to Squadron 103.


1948:This afternoon, Len “Fitchett left Ramat David to take part in a naval skirmish off Majdal but before he could reach the Egyptian vessel, he encountered three Egyptian fighters: two Spitfire LF9s and a Fury. Fitchett jettisoned his ordinance and dove for the surface, maneuvering violently. The Fury moved in for a rear attack. Just before hitting the sea, Fitchett hauled back on the stick and leveled out. The Fury slammed into the sea. Its pilot, Sqn Ldr Muhammad Abd al Hamid Abu Zaid, commanding officer of 2 Sqn REAF since May 22, was considered one of the REAF's top flyers and had flown 72 sorties since May.”


1948: In Iraq, “the discharge of all Jewish officials and workers from all governmental departments was ordered.’


1948: Tonight, the 51st Battalion of the Givati Brigade launched an unsuccessful attack from the south on the Egyptian held police fort of Iraq Suwaydan


1948: Founding of Tzova, a kibbutz in the Judean hills outside of Jerusalem.


1951: During the Korean War, near Kumson, when his platoon came under enemy attack Sgt. JackWeinstein volunteered to stay and provide cover while his men withdrew. Weinstein killed six enemy combatants and, after running out of ammunition, used enemy grenades around him to keep the enemy forces back. Weinstein held his position until friendly forces moved back in and pushed the enemy back. (He received the Medal Honor for this action)


1951: In compliance with a decision reached in 1950 at a meeting of the foreign ministers of France, the UK and the US, the United States officially ended the “state of war with Germany” that had existed since December of 1941.


1952: “Two’s Company” a musical revue with lyrics by Sammy Cahn opened its out of town tryout at the Shubert Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.


1953: In a radio broadcast to the nation Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion blatantly “says that no IDF unit had left its base on the night of the attack on Qibya and that it seems as though it was done by a group of local Israeli villagers.”


1953(10thof Cheshvan, 5714): Forty-six year old attorney Felix Solomon Cohen who received the Department of Interior’s Distinguished Service award for his handbook on federal Indian law passed away today.


1954(22ndof Tishrei, 5715): Shmini Atzeret


1954(22ndof Tishrei, 5715): Seventy year old Sholom Joseph Perlmutter, the vice president of the Hebrew Actors Union, co-founder of the Society of Jewish Composers and the Jewish Playwrights League as well as a “historian of the Jewish theatre” who wrote Jewish Dramatists and Jewish Composers passed away today at Coney Island Hospital.


1961: Helen Shaprio’s “Walkin’ Back to Happiness” topped the UK pop charts today.


1963(1stof Cheshvan, 5724): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan; Parashat Noah


1963(1stof Cheshvan, 5724): Eighty-one Russian born American author Elias Tobenkin, the son of Marcus and Fanny Tobenkin and the husband of the former Rae Schwid with whom he had one son, Paul, passed away today.
 
1963: Birthdate of New York native “Jonathan David Haidt, the Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business.”

1963: Today actress Hope Lang married Jewish producer, director and writer Alan J. Pakula who would marry the former Hannah Cohn Boorstin after this union ended in 1971.


1964:Simon and Garfunkel's first LP, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which consisted of 12 songs in the folk vein and five written by Paul Simon was released today and initially was a flop.


1965(23rdof Tishrei, 5726): Simchat Torah


1965: “The Man Who Has Almost Everything Gets Another Honor” published today tells of Sandy Koufax being named the outstanding player in this year World Series, which helped the Dodgers win by pitching three victories even though he had refused to pitch the opening game because it was Yom Kippur.


1966: United Artists released “The Fortune Cookie,” a comedy directed and produced by Bill Wilder, with a screenplay written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond and starring Walter Matthau.


1966: In Queens, Madeleine and Charles gave birth to actor Jon Favreau who followed the faith of his mother and “attended Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah.”


1967(15thof Tishrei, 5728): Sukkoth


1967: Polish born Canadian physician and Holocaust survivor Henry Morgentaler “presented a brief on behalf of the Humanist Association of Canada before a House of Commons Health and Welfare Committee that was investigating the issue of illegal abortion.”


1968(27thof 5729): Parashat Bereshit – on Shabbat the cycle begins again


1968(27thof Tishrei, 5729): Sixty-eight year old Polish born poet Anatol Stern who was sent to the Gulag at the start of WW II and then allowed to live in Palestine before returning to Warsaw where he passed away today.


1970: Birthdate of SNL cast member Chris Kattan the son of an Iraqi born Jew


1970: After thirteen previews, the Broadway production “The Rothschilds” produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd, opened today at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where it ran for 505 performances. Hal Linden, who happened to be Jewish, played Mayer Rothschild. “The Rothschilds” is a musical that tells the story of the rise of the famous Jewish banking family


1971: Broadway premiere of “The Incomparable Max,” with a script co-authored by Jerome Lawrence based on a collection of short stories by Max Beerbohm.


1971: Reed v. Reed for which Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the plaintiff’s brief was argued before the Supreme Court today.


1971: Look magazine which had carried a large feature article on the demise of the American Jewish community was published for the last time – while the Jewish community continued to survive and thrive.


1973: “The Way They Were” a film that spans the Depression through the Post-War years directed by Sydney Pollack, written by Arthur Laurents, with must by Marvin Hamlish, starring Barbra Streisand and featuring Herb Edelman was released today in the United States by Columbia Pictures.


1973 (23rd of Tishrei, 5734): Simchat Torah


1973: The Battle of Ismail which took place south of the Egyptian city as part of a plan to cut off supplies to Egypt’s Second Field Army continued for a second day.


1973: The Yom Kippur War continued to exact its toll.  By nightfall, the Syrian counterattack on the Golan Heights had been repelled with losses that included thirty Jordanian and Iraqi attacks.  Israel may have been alone, but the Syrians certainly were not.  On the Suez front seventy Egyptian tanks were knocked out and fourteen of Sadat’s aircraft had been shot down.  With the war entering the end of its second week, the Arabs were looking to the Soviets to bring about a face-saving cessation of hostilities.  Secretary of State Kissinger, who had arrived in Moscow, joined the Soviets in issuing a call for the end of hostilities. 


1976: “Thirteen activists held a demonstration at the Supreme Soviet” at the end of which  participants were detained and  taken into the woods where some of the  refuseniks, including Zahar Tesker, were beaten up by the police.


1976: A “press-conference organized by Natan Sharansky was held at Vladimir Slepak’s apartment in connection with beating of activists in the forest near Moscow, following the demonstration at the Supreme Soviet.”


1976: At “a joint Israeli-American committee meeting in New York participants agree in principle to restrict aid to “drop-outs” in Vienna.”


1977: U.S. premiere of “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” the film version of the novel by Judith Rossner directed by Richard Brooks and produced by Freddie Fields, the brother of band leader Shep Fields.


1979: “French Postcards” a comedy produced and written by Gloria Katz and starring Mandy Patinkin and Debra Winger was released today in the United States.


1979: After premiering in Toronto, “And Justice for All” a film that looks at the dark side of the judicial system with an Oscar nominated script co-authored by Barry Levinson, featuring Lee Strasberg, Darrell Zerwling and Sam Levene was released in the United States today.


1980(9thof Cheshvan, 5741): Sixty year old Sydney Stuart Baron, the “son of a Brooklyn shoemaker,” “an ‘A’ English student at New Utrecht High School” and husband of high school sweetheart Sylvia Schreibman whose public relations clients included Anheuser-Busch, Iona College, Beth Jacob Schools and Carmen G. DeSapio whom he served as press agent passed away today.
 
1982: Yitshak Moda’I began serving as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.



1984(23rd of Tishrei, 5745): Simchat Torah


1984: In “New Moon Offered” published today, Allen Hughes provides a glowing review of Light Opera of Manhattan’s production of Sigmund Romberg’s 1928 class “New Moon.”


1986(16thof Tishrei, 5747): Second Day of Sukkoth



1986(16thof Tishrei, 5747):Eighty-one year old Moses Asch, the driving force behind Folkways Records passed away today.. (As reported by Jon Pareles)  Eighty-one year old

1987(26thof Tishrei, 5748): Forty two year old Jacqueline du Pre the brilliant Anglo-Jewish cellist who had been stricken by multiple sclerosis passed away today.
 
1988: Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger win the Nobel Prize for Physics.



1989: A London revival of “Stop The World – I Want to Get Off “directed by, and starring, Anthony Newley opened today at the Lyric Theatre.


1990: Two days after opening in Los Angeles, “Reversal of Fortune” a film adaption of Alan Dershowitz’s book produced by Edward R. Pressman and co-starring Ron Silver opened in New York today.


1992(22nd of Tishrei, 5753): Shemini Atzeret


1992(22ndof Tishrei, 5753): Eighty-three year old “the son of a wholesale confectioner and cousin of Geoffry Pyke” passed away today after enjoying a career as food scientist, author and broadcaster.
 
1994(14thof Cheshvan, 5755): Twenty-one Israelis and one Dutch national were murdered and another fifty were injured by a Hamas terrorist who set off a bomb as bus was approaching Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.


 
1994: Sivan Horesh survives the No. 5 bus bombing on Dizengoff Street in central Tel Aviv.



1995: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre


1996: During the U.S Presidential election, Chris Wallace served as moderator for the Third Presidential Debate.


1996: “The Fortune Cookie,” a comedy directed, produced and written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond and co-starring Walter Matthau was released to theatres today.


1996: The talents of cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Jules Feiffer were on display as he spoke to a gathering at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  The lecture was sponsored by the Center for the Book and coincided with the exhibition of Mr. Feiffer's gift to the Library, a major portion of his works, including manuscripts, typescripts and a large selection of original cartoon drawings. ." Mr. Feiffer opened his lecture with a showing of his animated film "Munro," about a 4-year-old boy who finds himself drafted into the Army, which refuses to discharge him. During the lecture, Feiffer reported that "My mother, Rhoda Davis Feiffer, saved all of my drawings and every scrap of paper. She was the only Jewish mother that thought that being a cartoonist was an honorable profession.” From the time he was a child, Mr. Feiffer aspired to be a cartoonist. "I was a boy cartoonist living in the Bronx during the Depression with friends living in the other boroughs of New York," he said. Mr. Feiffer used to sell his comics on street corners, competing with the boys who were selling real comic books. In the 1930s many Jews began producing comics as a way of assimilating into American society. According to Mr. Feiffer, two Jewish men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, created "Superman" as a way of opposing anti- Semitism in America and abroad. "Every boy wants to be invincible, to fight, kill and maim … and Superman does those things, except he is heroic," said Mr. Feiffer. Superman was a metaphor for fighting evil, such as the Nazis. "Superman really came not from Krypton, but from the planet Poland," he said.


1997: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Jewish history or culture including Perfidia by Judith Rossner,Miriam’s Kitchen A Memoir by Elizabeth Ehrlich and The World Is The Home Of Love and Death by Harold Brodkey.


2000(20th of Tishrei, 5761): Sixth Day of Sukkoth


2000(20th of Tishrei, 5761): Sixty-four year old Rabbi Binyamin Herling was murdered today when “Fatah members and Palestinian security forces opened fire on a group of men, women and children” at Mount Ebal.


2001: In “Her Name Still Rings A Bell” published today described the “life of Mercedes Jellinek, daughter of a wealthy Austrian businessman with a passion for the newly invented motorcars at the turn of the 20th century.”

1999: The 1960 production of Peter Pan with music by Mark “Moose” Charlap and July Styne and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green was released today on DVD.


2003(23rd of Tishrei, 5764): Simchat Torah


2003: The New York Timesfeatures reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics related to Jewish history or culture including Blacklist by Sara Paretsky, Arthur Miller: His Life and Work by Martin Gottfried and The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon R. Kass.


2004: Archivists in the Dutch City of Tilburg announced the discovery of the diary of a Holocaust victim that has an eerie similarity to that of Anne Frank.  The Holocaust era diary and love letters written by Helga Deen, a Jewish woman, for her Dutch boyfriend while she imprisoned in a Dutch internment camp were donated by the family of the now deceased Dutch man.  Deen died at Sobibior.


2004: In “Cole Porter and Moss Hart’s Jubilee: Still Smart, Funny and Tuneful” published today Michael Dale sings the praises for the musical Jubilee.

2004: Adam Aptowitzer, a tax and charity lawyer in Ottawa and “former Ontario chairman of B'nai Brith Canada’s Institute for International Affairs” “made statements today on the  broadcast of the Michael Coren Show defending the bulldozing of Palestinian terrorists' homes as a means of deterring further suicide bombings” arguing “that such actions were permissible when used to prevent deaths.”


2005: Second Day Sukkoth 5766.


2006: The Times of London reported on the premier of the documentary “Spell Your Name” by the Ukrainian director Sergei Bukovsky. The 90 minute film records testimonies of Jews who survived the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. The highlight of the event was the appearance of Steven Spielberg whose grandparents came from the Ukraine.


2007: “Things We Lost In The Fire” directed by Susanne Bier with a script by Allan Loeb was released today in the United States and Canada.


2007: Rex Ditto, one of the men convicted of murdering Allen Shalleck who co-authored parts of the Curious George series with Margaret Rey in the 1970’s was sentenced to life in prison today.


2007: The Washington Post featured a review of Jezebel: The Untold story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen by Leslie Hazelton.


2007: The New York Times featured a review of Young Stalin by Jewish historian Simon Sebag Montifore.   This book could be viewed as a prequel to Mr. Montifore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.


2007: “The Last Jews of Libya” opens at São Paulo International Film Festival in São Paulo, Brazil.“The Last Jews of Libya documents the final decades of a centuries-old North African Sephardic Jewish community through the lives of the remarkable Roumani family, who lived in Benghazi, Libya, for hundreds of years. Thirty-six thousand Jews lived in Libya at the end ofWorld War II, today none remain. The film traces the story of the Roumanis from Turkish Ottoman rule through the age of Mussolini and Hitler to the final destruction and dispersal of Libya's Jews in the face of Arab nationalism.”



2008: The New York Times includes reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein and Explainers a new anthology “which ­gathers all of Jules Feiffer’s Village Voice strips from 1956 to 1966.



2008:A former Israeli soldier, Marti Mintz, who was trained in a counter-terror unit of the IDF and is married to an Australian risked his own life today to save five people during during a fire that had broken out in supermarket in Perth, Australia. 



2009(1st of Cheshvan, 5770): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan



2009(1st of Cheshvan, 5770):Ninety one year old Joseph Wiseman a Canadian actor, best known for starring as the titular antagonist of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, passed away today. (As reported by Adam Benstein)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/20/AR2009102003549.html



2009: At Olam Tikvahthe new sisterhood Co-President Rachel Rothberg, leads a discussion of the well-reviewed book Sarah by Marek Halter. 



2009:In Chevy Chase, MD, Richard Breitman, a professor of history at American University, discusses and signs Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945. McDonald was the first U.S. ambassador to Israel.



2009: In “A Believer in Heroism, to Jews’ Lasting Gratitude,” published today Joseph Berger described the exploits of Dr. Tina Strobos who is scheduled to be honored today by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, based in Westchester.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/nyregion/17metjournal.html



2009: CBS is scheduled to hold a memorial service today at the Time Warner Center in New York for Don Hewitt the creator and longtime executive producer of ''60 Minutes.'' Hewitt died of cancer in August at age 86. In addition to his work at ''60 Minutes,'' Hewitt also produced the first televised presidential debate in 1960.



2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a screening of “Adam Resurrected” based on novel of the same name in which “a former circus clown who was spared the gas chamber so that he might entertain thousands of Jews as they marched to their deaths, Adam Stein is now the ringleader at an asylum in the Negev desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors.”



2009:“Jewish Transit Berlin: From Hell to Hope,” the 52-minute documentary, which premiered today at the Berlin Jewish Museum, relates the unusual and brief history of the Displaced Persons camps set up in postwar Berlin.



2009:“Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags,” a documentary about the rise and decline of New York’s garment district — and the efforts to preserve what remains of a sector that played a vital role in the American Jewish experience during the past century — premieres tonight on HBO. Its director, Marc Levin, recently sat down with the Forward’s senior writer Nathaniel Popper to discuss the Jewish workers, employers and gangsters who shaped the fashion industry; how the garment district influenced designers like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, and what the Torah has to say about what we wear.

 
2010: Scribner published a collection of short stories, Palo Alto, by James Franco


 
2010:Israeli author David Grossman who was named the winner of the Germany's book publishers' association’s 2010 Peace Prize in honor of his support for reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians is scheduled to be awarded the $30,200 prize today during the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. In his epic novel To the End of the Land, Grossman tells the story of a woman's journey through Israel. It was written after Grossman's son was killed by a Hezbollah missile in 2006. Past winners include Orhan Pamuk, Susan Sontag, Amos Oz, Vaclav Havel and Octavio Paz.


 
2010: Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor at The New Republic is scheduled to introduce “Ruth Franklin, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction” at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.


 
2010:Labor Party lawmakers lambasted their fellow MK, Einat Wilf today for proposing to cancel the annual memorial rally marking the assassination prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Wilf had also suggested removing Rabin's picture from Labor's hall in the Knesset building, claiming that the party was trapped in immortalizing the slain party leader and his failed attempts to bring about a lasting peace. Labor should instead adopt the same euphoric approach it had before Rabin's assassination, she claimed. The proposal was met with fierce opposition from her colleagues.  "This is a shameful idea that arouses repugnance and horror. The [memory of the] assassinated prime minister's political and social activities deserves to be amplified," said MK Daniel Ben-Simon. "Wilf's proposal harms the slain premier's memory and legacy."


 
2010:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that his cabinet needed more time to decide when and how to dismantle certain illegal West Bank outposts, due to the "political implications" involved.  The government "needs time to consider its priorities" with regard to these outposts, Netanyahu said ahead of a High Court of Justice deliberation on the matter. The court last year ordered the state to explain why it had not evacuated six illegal West Bank outposts - Givat Assaf, Ma'aleh Rehavam, Givat Haroeh, Mitzpeh Yitzhar and Mitzpeh Lachish - that were slated for evacuation in 2004.


 
2010(11th of Cheshvan, 5771): Tom Bosley, best known for his role as Richie’s father on the t.v. sitcom “Happy Days” passed away.
 
2011(21stof Tishrei, 5772): Hoshanah Rabbah
2011: This afternoon Israel Defense Forces soldiers thwarted a stabbing attack at the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank, Channel 10 reported. According to the report, a Palestinian woman in her 20s arrived at the junction, pulled out a knife and charged at a crowd of soldiers and civilians shouting “God is great” and “Death to the Jews”. An IDF soldier saw the charging woman and pointed his weapon at her at which point she threw down her knife and lay on the ground. The woman was then arrested. No one was injured in the incident. When questioned by security forces, the woman said she had planned to stab soldiers and that she had waited for the completion of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal to conduct the attack.
2011:A day after returning to his home in Mitzpe Hila after five years in Hamas captivity, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit marked the Simchat Torah holiday at home with his family tonight.

2012: At the Wiener Library in London, Dr. Ruth Levitt is scheduled deliver a lecture on “Jews in the Netherlands,” a country where “some 75 percent” of the Jews “were deplored and killed in the Holocaust


2012: Director Arnon Goldfingers award winning film, “The Flat,” is scheduled to open at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas


2012:Four masked individuals infiltrated the IDF's Naftali camp near the Golani junction in the North early this morning and stole four weapons. The infiltrators tied up the soldier on guard duty, stealing his and three other weapons before escaping


2012:The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) announced today that the long-time director of its Jerusalem office, Wendy Singer, will be leaving her position early next year. Singer will be replaced by Leslie Levy Mirchin, who is currently the lobbying group’s local director of policy and research


2013: As part of the Performing Arts Series, the Jewish Community Center is scheduled to present “The Marcy and Zina Show” featuring Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich.

 
2013: In California, the Center for Jewish Culture is scheduled to present Khaossia, performing EOSLove Across Time, Space, and Sound, a concert based on a love story from Puglia, after the Shoah.


 
2013: Gaza-based Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called today for Palestinians to wage a “popular uprising” in the West Bank

 

2014: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest including Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich and The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker.

 
2014: In Washington, DC, the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to begin today.



2014: Ed Stein’s comic strip “Freshly Squeezed” ended today.
 
2014: “Hitler’s Hidden Drug Habit” is scheduled to be shown on British Channel 4.
 
2014: The Center For Jewish History is scheduled to show “Jacques Faitlovitch and the Lost Tribes,” a film that explores the ‘extraordinary odyssey’of Jacques Faïtlovitch, a Polish Jew who “discovered” Ethiopian Jewry, in 1904, and thereafter set about reestablishing a connection between their community and the rest of the Jewish world.”


 
2014: “Police opened an investigation today after graffiti was found in the Temple Mount compound depicting a swastika as the equivalent of a Star of David.”


 
2014: “The daughters of slain American tourist Leon Klinghoffer released a statement today, a day before the opening of the play recounting the murder of their father, saying it “rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes” the killing. (As reported by Lazar Berman)


 
2014: A spokesman for Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital confirmed reports issued today by Reuters that it had treated a daughter of Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader for Hamas, following complications during a standard medical procedure in Gaza.” (As reported by Marissa Newman)


 
2014: In Boston, Ashkelon native Roni Vorvoreanu, 16, will fly the Israeli flag today for the first time in the Head of the Charles Regatta rowing race, considered one of the sport’s premier events. (As reported by Tamar Pleggi)



2014: Funeral services for Mildred Puro Pittman, the widow of Joseph Puro and Howard Pittman is scheduled to take place in Great Neck, NY

 
2014: “Louis-Fest!” a celebration of the life of local realtor, bicycle enthusiast and musician Louis Lederman of blessed memory will be held today at The Willow (formerly Jimmy’s Music Club
following the Saints vs. Detroit Lions game. (As reported by the Crescent City Jewish News)

 
2014: “Dancing in Jaffa” is scheduled to be shown at The Twin City Jewish Film Festival


 
2014(25thof Tishrei, 5775): Eighty-four year old photographer Alfred Werthimer passed away today. (As reported by William Yardley)
 
2015: “Israeli Bedouin leaders today expressed shock, surprise and outrage at news that the perpetrator of yesterday’s deadly terrorist attack at the Beersheba central bus station was an Israeli Arab from a Bedouin village east of the city, in the country’s Negev region.”



 
2015: “A Jewish and a Muslim cemetery were defiled with Nazi symbols and anti-migrant slogans in western Austria, police said today, just weeks after similar attacks on a refugee hostel and Jewish museum.”

2015: Martin Kaufman is scheduled to begin teaching the Leon Finley Course in Jewish Studies which will focus on the lives and teachings of Maimonides and Nachmanides.

 
2015: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to a screening of “The Blum Affair” directed by Erich Engel.


 
2016(17thof Tishrei, 5777): Third Day of Sukkoth



2016:  Today, “the municipality of Amstelveen south of Amsterdam where several thousand Jews live, inaugurated a street sign bearing the name of” writer Jules “Schelvis, who survived seven Nazi concentration and death camps” and who “died earlier this year in Amstelveen.”


2016: In Little Rock, Chabad Center for Jewish Leadership under the leadership of Rabbi PInchas Ciment hosted “Sushi in the Sukkah.”


2016: In Jerusalem, the Admaya Conference “where architects, builders and creative types discuss the opportunities for building with earth” is scheduled to open today.

 

2016: Dora Horn is scheduled to “provide a look at the contemporary significance of the Book of Job” during an appearance at Ursinus College.

 
2016: “A safari in search of wild animals” is scheduled to place in the center of Jerusalem this evening.



 
2016: The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC), in cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), is scheduled to present a one-day professional development workshop on "Choice and Responsibility during the Holocaust."


2017: Case Western Reserve University is scheduled to host “What are the Dead Scrolls and Why are They Important” with Alex Jassen.


2017: “Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protesters launched major protests against the arrest of draft-dodging community members today, capping a week of road-blocking actions and scuffles with the police”

2017: JW3 is scheduled to host two screening of “Moos,” a comedy about Jewish families following their dreams.


2017: “Designs on Britain” an exhibition depicting “how much of the most iconic British design was produced by immigrants” to the UK opened today at the Jewish Museum in London.


2017: Katinka’s Tail, the latest book by Judith Kerr, the 94 year old English author whose family fled Nazi Germany is scheduled to “be published by HarperCollins in hardback” today.


2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “An Evening with Mel Brooks,” the man who gave us The 2000 Year Old Man, The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.


2017: The Leo Baeck Institute and the Jewish Review Books are scheduled to present Abraham Socher, David Sorkin and Leora Batnitzky discussing “Why Moses Mendelssohn Matters.”


2017: The American Sephardi Federation is scheduled to present “Rescuing Endangered Jews: The Unit for Aliyah, Absorption, & Special Operations.”


2018:  “Architect Leora Berry, the Deputy Director of the Bible Land Museum is scheduled to lead a tour that “will highlight the architectural qualities originating from countries of the ancient East, which are incorporated in the museum`s modernist façade, as well as models from the museum`s collection that illustrate ancient construction techniques and the philosophies and beliefs associated with architectural elements that appear on ancient artifacts.”


2018: “Architect and geographer Michael Jacobson” is scheduled to lead a tour of the Library and Garden at the National Library of Israel.


2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society Friday Night Book Club is schedule to “Rachel Adler’s short essay ‘Feminist Judaism: Past and Future.’”


2018: Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak is scheduled to “deliver remarks during” Friday night serves at Temple-Emanuel followed by “an extended Oneg Shabat and a moderated conversation.”

This Day, October 20, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 20


1409 BCE (10 Cheshvan 2351): This is the traditional date of the death of Gad, son of Jacob, one of the Twelve Tribes (born 2196).


460: Aeilia Eudocia, the Byzantine Empress who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in 438, passed away today.


1314: Louis IV, who in 1349 would authorize the Duke of Guelders “to receive Jews in his duchy where they provided services, paid a tax and were protected by law” began his reign as “King of the Romans.”


1314: In an agreement signed today by Rabbenu Asher and his sons “Judah ben Asher and his brother Jacob were appointed trustees” of a trust that would distribute funds to the poor.”


1614: Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, “the most famous (or infamous) Christian Kabbalist of the 17th century” and author of the Short Sketch of the Truly Natural Hebrew Alphabet who “claimed that he had rediscovered the key to peace on earth in the shape and sound of the Hebrew letters” was baptized today.



1650: Coronation of Queen Christina of Sweden, who became a Catholic, moved to Rome in December 1655 and made Clement X prohibit the custom of chasing Jews through the streets during the carnival.


1722: Wolf Popper “a Primator of the Jews of Bohemia” and his wife gave birth to banker Joachim Edler von Popper, “commonly known as ‘Court Jew’ to the Habsburgs.”


1740: Maria Theresa takes the throne of Austria. France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refuse to honor the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession begins. At the end of the war, unfortunately for the Jewish people, she would still be on the throne. She attempted to expel all of the Jews from Bohemia. She imposed a myriad of restrictions on the Jews living in her realm but was not averse to gouging them for as much money as she could. Like her Russian counterpart, she sought to limit the number of Jews living in her empire. And then, with the partition of Poland the number of her Jewish subjects soared when she acquired Galicia. The famous Jewish historian Simon Dubnow said that this Empress caused the Jews more trouble than all of the Emperors who had come before her.


1753(22nd of Tishrei, 5514): Shabbat and Shmini Atzeret


1772(23rd of Tishrei, 5533): As relations between Britain and her American colonies begin to deteriorate to a level that will eventually lead to revolution, Jews on both sides of the Atlantic observe Simchat Torah


1779: During the American Revolution, the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania passed a series of resolution related to Solomon Bush who had been wounded and taken prisoner by the British before being paroled so he could recuperate at the home of his father, Matthias Bush.


1780)21st of Tishrei, 5541): Hoshana Rabah


1781: The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II of Austria issued the Patent of Toleration which was an edict extending to religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians living in the Habsburg Empire. The Jews would have to wait another year. In 1782 Joseph II issued the Patent of Toleration for the Jews of Lower Austria, thereby establishing the civic equality of his Jewish subjects.


1791(22nd of Tishrei): Shemini Atzeret


1802: Hyman Hurwitz married Hesther Levy at the Great Synagogue today.


1803: The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase. The tiny Jewish population of New Orleans and the surrounding bayou country were now “American Jews.” The first Jews probably came to the Louisiana coast at the start of the 18th century when they brought trade goods from the Caribbean. Ironically, Judo Turo, the famous merchant and philanthropist who would contribute to the development of Jewish communal institutions arrived the same year that the Louisiana Purchase was ratified. St. Louis, the other “city” the United States acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase would not see its first Jewish settler until 1807.


1820: Birthdate of Whilhelm Wolfensohn the Odessa born author and playwright.


1827: During the Greek Liberation War, an allied fleet made up of British, French and Russian ships defeated a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino. The battle effectively marked the end of the war and paved the way for the creation of the independent nation of Greece which had been part of the Ottoman Empire. According to Nikos Stavrolakis one of the founders and director of the Jewish Museum in Greece from 1977 until 1993, “The Greek War of Independence brought disaster to the Jewish communities in the Peloponnesos the place where the revolution erupted in 1821. The Jews, because of their close association with the Ottoman administration, were massacred along with the Turks. The Jewish communities of Mistras, Tripolis, and Kalamata were decimated; the few survivors moved north to settle in Chalkis and Volos, still under Ottoman rule. Patras lost its ancient Jewish community, which was re-established only in 1905.”


1824: Abraham Jacob Jones married Rebeca Montefiore at the New Synagouge today.


1828: Birthdate of Horatio Gates Spafford , the New York born lawyer who was one of the founders of the “American Colony,” whose members “engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives”


1829(23rd of Tishrei, 5590): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson.


1840:Solomon Benedict de Worms, Hereditary Baron of the Austrian Empire, and Henrietta Samuelde Worms gave birth to their third son, Henry de Worms, a leading member of the Conservative Party in the UK.


1848(23rd of Tishrei, 5609): As Europe is racked by Revolutions and thousands head for California in search of the newly found gold, Jews observe Simchat Torah


1850: Birthdate of Adolf Rosenzweig, the Hungarian born Biblical and Talmudic scholar.


1852: It was reported today that “An insane Jew died at the House of Industry in Boston, last week, at the age of 30 years. This is the 1st Jew that ever became a public charge in the City of Boston within the memory of one of its oldest city officials.”


1852: In Romania, Idel Ber Brociner and his wife gave birth to author Marco Brociner who was the brother of Joseph Brociner, Maurice Brociner and Andrei Brociner.”


1855: Reverend Findlay is scheduled to deliver a sermon tomorrow evening at the Presbyterian Church in the Williamsburg section of NYC entitled "The Restoration of the Jews."


1859: Birthdate of John Dewey, the American educational philosopher who met Anzia Yezierska in 1917 while she was auditing one of his seminars at Columbia.  Despite the differences in their ages, they became romantically involved which led to his writing her poems and she describing their relationship in a novel, All I Could Never Be.



1862: In New York City, Robert Weeks Nathan and Anne Augusta Florence gave birth to Maud Nathan, the wife of Frederick Nathan and an American social worker, labor activist and suffragist for women's right to vote who came from a prominent Sephardic family that included her cousins Emma Lazarus and Benjamin Cardozo and the author of several “papers on Christianity and Judaism” including “The Heart of Judaism” which she “read before the Council of Jewish Women.”


1865: Sir Saul Samuel began his second term as Treasurer of New South Wales.


1867(21st of Tishrei, 5628): Hoshana Rabah


1867(21st of Tishrei, 5628): In Prague, five days after he had passed away, Rabbi Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport was buried after eulogies were delivered by Rabbi Hurwitz and Dr. Jellinek, who had come from Vienna for this solemn occasion.


1868(4th of Cheshvan, 5629):Ephraim "Ferdinand" Waldstein, the son of Zadok and Esther Waldstein and the husband of Lea "Lisette" Koppel Waldstein, passed away today after which he was buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery at Muenchen, Bavaria.


1872: In Egeln, Germany, Selig and Juliane Blumenthal, gave birth to Alfred Blumenthal who would die at the age of 70 in Theresienstadt.


1872: In Cleveland, founding of The Excelsior Club whose members have included Nathan Loeser, Sol M. Hexter, Joseph Goodhart and Herman Koppel


1874: On his twentieth birthday, Adolf Aharon Rosenzweig “entered the rabbinate of Pasewalk in Pomerania.


1875(21st of Tishrei, 5636): Hoshana Rabah


1876: Samuel A. Lewis, who is a candidate for Alderman at Large in New York City, was described as a native New Yorker and a Hebrew who “occupies a god social position.”  He has served as a School Commissioner, and has twice been elected Alderman at Large.  Currently he is President of the Board of Alderman and editor of the Hebrew Leader.  He had unsuccessfully sought the nomination to serve as Mayor of New York.



1878(23rd of Tishrei, 5639): Simchat Torah


1878: According to a report published today on conditions in the French colony on the island of Cyprus the native (non-European) “community consists of Muslims, Jews and Christians.  Of these a European merchant can always believe the first upon his simple word, the two latter he can rarely credit on oath, and the harder they swear the more certain one may be that they are stating what is not the case.” [The report is unusual for two reason – first it lumps Jews and Christians together and second it speaks highly of the trustworthiness of a local Muslim population, two things that western writers rarely, if ever, did.


1879: According to a letter published today reported that Joseph Barclay, the recently consecrated Bishop of Jerusalem, “showed an extraordinary interest in the conversion of the Jews” even when he was a “mere child.” Before being appointed Bishop, Barclay served as the Superintendent of the Church of England’s Missions to the Jews of the Continent and served in Jerusalem for ten years where he became a noted Orientalist. [Barclay was one of a large cast on English characters who showed an unusual interest in Palestine and the Jewish people.]


1880: Three days after he had passed away, 87 year old Jacob Quixano Henriques, a native of “Spanish Town, Jamaica” was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1880: In Jackson, CA, Dora Steckler gave birth to her third child who was born two months after the death of his Charles Steckler, a local merchant who is buried in Givoth Olam Cemetery.



1880: Three days after he had passed away, Karl Schmidt, a native of German and the husband of Mary Schmidt, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


188O: Birthdate of Kolin native Rudolf Saudek, the sculptor and graphic artist who after surviving Theresienstadat returned to Prague where “he held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts.”


1882(7th of Cheshvan, 5643): Eighty-one year old Solomon Benedict de Worms the grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild who was successful British stockbroker and plantation owner in Ceylon before being named as a Baron by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, passed away today.


1882 George de Worms “became 2ndBaron de Worms” after which he “was awarded the honor of Knight Commander of the Order of Franz Joseph.”


1883: It was reported today that the families that recently arrived from Odessa aboard the SS Canada will be sent back to Europe because they are destitute.


1883: It was reported that Henry J. Greenberg a Jewish peddler from Pennsylvania, whose body was found in a hotel in the Bowery probably committed suicide.  Before coming to New York, he had visited his brother Marcus in Boston.


1883: This morning, Isaac Cohen, President of Ansche Chesed on Hester Street, visited the Tenth Precinct and requested that a police officer be sent to the synagogue that evening because he feared that there might be an “uprising” during the scheduled business meeting.


1883: Harry and Caroline Breslau gave birth to Hermann Bresslau


1883: In Nizhny Novgorod violinist Abram Krein and his wife gave birth to composer Alexander Abramovich Krein whose works included “Kaddish” which he composed in 1921 “for tenor soloist, choir and orchestra.



1883: Violence broke out during the business meeting of Ansche Chesed B’nai Kovanah that was held tonight at the Hester Street Synagogue.


1884: It was reported today that in the past year St. Luke’s Hospital in New York treated  1.497 patients, 18 of whom were Jewish.


1884: Professor Felix Adler was among the members of the Tenement House Commission that met this afternoon in New York.


1884: Isaac Hamburger, Grand Master of The Grand Lodge of the United states of the Independent Order of Free sons of Israel and H.I. Goldsmith, the organization’s Grand Secretary sign an address on behalf of its 12,000 members living throughout the United States, that is being sent to Sir Moses Montefiore on “the one hundredth anniversary” of his birth “recognizing his unique greatness to which no one nation can lay claim.”


1885: “A Suicide At Riverside” published today describes events surrounding the death of Albert Unger whose body was found by a police officer after he heard two gunshots.  Unger, who belong to several Jewish organizations, had recently been discharged by Steinhardt Brothers where he had worked for 12 years, but Abraham Steinhardt refused to discuss the matter. 


1887(2nd of Cheshvan, 5648): Baron Hermann de Stern passed away in London. Born at Frankfort in 1815 he and his brother moved to London in 1844 where they became respected members of the financial community through their company, Stern Brothers


1889: “Russian Converts” published today described the pressure brought to bear on Jews to convert to the Orthodox Church. As a result, “young men” who were “once honest Jews” are now “spurious Christians.”


1890: Sixty-nine year old Sir Richard Francis Burton a British orientalist and explored who antagonized the Jewish population of Damascus while serving there as consul in 1869, passed away. Burton’s The Jew, the Gipsy and el Islam which was published 8 years after his death was critical the Jews and “asserted the existence of Jewish human sacrifices.


1892: Eduard Schnitzer passed away. He was born in 1840 to assimilated German Jewish parents. His parents had him baptized at the age of two because they thought it would advance his career. Schnitzer later converted to Islam and took the Turkish name of Emin Pasha. As, Emin Pasha, he traveled throughout the world as an explorer, adventurer and doctor, spending much of his time in Khartoum in the Sudan. He was a tireless fighter against the slave trade which was still rampant. He returned to Central Africa on a semi-political voyage for Germany and was killed there by slave traders.


1893: Birthdate of New York native chemist William Edward Popkin, the graduate of CCNY and Cornell who had two daughters – Mae and Jane – with his wife Esta.


1893: “George Samuel’s Big Estate” published today described the disposition of his estate which was valued at $2,365,000 most of which went to his nephew Baron Henry de Worms who represents a Liverpool borough in the House of Commons.


1893: In Germany, the annual report of the Social Democrats published today complained that when the right wing Anti-Semites boycott Jews firms nothing is done but when the Social Democrats do the same they are prosecuted with the full “rigors of the law.”


1893: In Vienna, Ludwig Teller, the “son of Isak and Anna Teller, and his second wife Natalie Thalia Teller  gave birth to Erwin Teller,


1894: Seventy-six year old James Anthony Froude who in 1869 “was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews, defeating Benjamin Disraeli by a majority of fourteen” and who wrote Lord Beaconsfield, a biography of Benjamin Disraeli published in 1890, passed away today.


1894: When Alexander III died in Crimea today, “according to Simon Dubnow: ‘as the body of the deceased was carried by railway to St. Petersburg, the same rails were carrying the Jewish exiles from Yalta to the Pale. The reign of Alexander III ended symbolically. It began with pogroms and concluded with expulsions.’"


1894(20th of Tishrei, 5655): Shabbat Sukkoth Chol Hamoed


1894(20th of Tishrei, 5565): Fifty-four year old Austrian neuroanatomist and ophthalmologist Ludwig Mauthner who discovered “Mauthner Cells” passed away today.


1894: Dr. Charles Henry Parkhurst, the leader of the “municipal purity movement” in New York told a reporter today of the broad support he has found among women in New York including “Mrs. Frederick Nathan, who belongs to an old and highly distinguished Hebrew family of great wealth and social position.”


1894: French police officer and handwriting expert Alphonse “Bertillon's provisional report, submitted today inferred ‘without any reservation whatever’ that Dreyfus was guilty.”


1894: Samuel Greenbaum, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Educational Alliance took issue with the a request by the Women’s Municipal League for the use of the Hebrew Institute Building which is controlled by the Alliance was handled; especially the influence the of Nathan Straus who is neither an officer or a director of the Alliance.


1895: In New York, “Russian Jewish immigrants Ida (Edelson) and Abraham Ryskind multi-talented author and political activist Morrie Ryskind who earned  “the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway production “Of Thee I Sing.” (As reported by Jeffrey Schmalz)



1897: As of today, there eight men, six women and two children residing as patients “in the Jewish Seaside Convalescent Home at West Brighton.”


1897: Birthdate of London born American Oscar winning composer Adolph Deutsch.



1897: The Jewish Board of Guardians Emigration Committee is scheduled to meet at 4:30 pm


1897: The Jews’ College Education Committee is scheduled to meet this evening at Tavistock House.


1898: In Wilkes-Baree, PA, Edward and Bess Cohen gave birth to Edith Cohen who became Edith Lieberman when she married William Lieberman


1899: In ParisGaston Michel Calmann-Lévy and Hélène Koenigswarter gave birth to


 Robert Paul Michel Calmann-Levy


1899: One day after he had passed away, 72 year old Solomon Simons was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”


1900: Birthdate of Sidney R. Rabinovitz who gained fame as philanthropist and supermarket executive Sidney R. Rabb.



1904(11th of Cheshvan, 5665): Sixty-one year old Joseph Bernhardt Bloomingdale the husband of Clara Koffman and the father of Rosalie Stanton Bloomingdale passed away today in New York City.


1904: Birthdate of multi-talented author Charles Kaufman, the native of Patterson, NJ, who screenplay for the film “Freud” was nominated for an Oscar.


1905: A two day pogrom at Kishinev came to an end. According to some reports only 19 Jews were killed and 56 were injured.  This was the second pogrom that had taken place at Kishinev in the first decade of the twentieth century. The first pogrom in 1903 was the more infamous and deadly of the two.  Jewish self-defense leagues formed in 1903 helped to hold down the casualties in the second pogrom.


1905: A two day pogrom at Rostov came to an end leaving more than 150 Jews murdered, 500 more wounded and great damage done to the “Jewish shops, stores, warehouses and mills” despite the efforts of “a small self-defense detachment organized by the Po’le Zion.


1908(25th of Tishrei, 5669): Fifty-five year old Vaiben Louis Solomon, the son of Rachel (Cohen) Solomon and Judah Moss Solomon, husband of “Mary Bridgland” and then Alice Solomon  who combined a career as a businessman with a career in politics that climaxed with him becoming the “21st Premier of South Australia” passed away today.



1909: Birthdate of silent screen actress Rebekah Isabelle "Carla" Laemmle, “the niece of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/movies/carla-laemmle-actress-with-silent-screen-debut-dies-at-104.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0


1910: Sixty-seven year old David B. Hill the Democratic political leader who as U.S. Senator from New York and Governor of New York openly opposed the American Protective Association (APA) an powerful anti-immigrant organization that favored discrimination against many groups including Jews, passed away.


1911: In the United Kingdom, the Home Secretary declined “to reduce sentences in connection with anti-Jewish riots in Wales.


1911:The “American Jewish Community in Jerusalem resolved to ask Jews in the United States to effect repeal of clause of naturalization laws providing for expatriation of naturalized American citizens resideing abroad.”


1911: “Ernst Schenieder, a notorious anti-Semite” was “appointed Chief of the Education Department for Lower Austria.


1911: In Austria, “Albert Frankfurter and Leopold Kronberger” received the “title of Court Councillor.”


1914: “The first remittance” from the American Jewish Relief Committee consisting of five thousand dollars for the Jews of Palestine and five thousand dollars for the Jews of Galicia was sent abroad today.


1915: A wireless telegraph from Berlin received at Sayville, Long Island today said “286 Jews in the German Army have been promoted to be officers.”


1916(23rd of Tishrei, 5677): Simchat Torah


1916: Producer Joseph M. Schenck who was Jewish married actress Norma Talmadge following which the couple formed the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation.


1916: It was reported today that at the Republican rally held at the Star Casino on Lexington Avenue, “the most enthusiastic applause came when Isaac Siegel happened to mention the name of Morris Hillquit, the Socialist writer and candidate for Congress” in what was supposed to have been a speech that would generate support the candidacy of Republican Charles Evans Hughes.


1917: In Berlin, Helen and Franz Hessel gave birth to Stéphane Frédéric Hessel, the naturalized French citizen who “was a diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, French Resistance member and BCRA agent.”


1917: During WW I, a German submarine commanded by Martin Niemoller sank a British steamer. This is the same Martin Niemoller who as Pastor Niemoller became an anti-Nazi who went to the camps in 1937 where he remained until the end of WW II.


1918: The New York Branch of the Jewish Welfare Board has transformed the dormitories of the Jewish Theological Seminary into a canteen for soldiers. Among other things, the canteen will provide meals for the troops and their visiting family members. The effort is being led by Mrs. Solomon Schechter whose son, a graduate of Columbia, is serving with the Army in France.


1918; Sergeant Abraham Blaustein who had been attending Army Candidate School at Dijon left today heading for La Vallone where he was to rejoin the 165th Regiment


1918: The founding conference of Yevsektsiya took place today. Yevsektsiya was the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist party and was established to popularize Marxism and encourage loyalty to the Soviet regime among Russian Jews. “For most of its existence, the Yevsektsya was headed by Semyon Dimanstein. Yevsektsiya was entirely subordinate to leadership of the Soviet Communist party. Yevsektsiya members were people of Jewish origin, but they were hostile to traditional Jewish culture and instead sought to assimilate Jews into the new Soviet society, often by repressive measures. In line with official Soviet doctrine, Yevsektsiya was deeply opposed to Bundism and Zionism, labeling them forms of "bourgeois nationalism”. The Yevsektsia was disbanded in 1929. Many leading members perished in the Great Purge. Dimanstein was arrested and received death sentence in 1938 and was executed. He was rehabilitated posthumously in 1955, 2 years after the death of Joseph Stalin.”


1920: Max Bruch passed away. The German composer and conductor was a Protestant. However, he wrote a piece for cello and orchestra which remains quite popular, Kol Nidrei based on Hebrew melodies, most notably the melody of the Kol Nidre, which gives the piece its name.


1920: Birthdate of Janet Rosenberg, the Chicago native who married Cheddi Jagan and as Janet Jagan played a key role in the political life of Guyana including serving as its sixth President.


1920: Birthdate of Clara Bagelman who gained fame as Claire Barry who with her sister formed a popular Yiddish singing duo.



1923: Birthdate of actor Herschel Bernardi who is best remembered as Lt. Jacobi on the television hit, “Peter Gunn,” the voice of Charlie the Tuna and the second person to play Tevye in the Broadway hit, “Fiddler on the Roof.”


1924(22nd of Tishrei, 5685): Shemini Atzeret


1925: In Hechingen, Germany, writer, doctor and diplomat Friedrich Wolf who would take his family to the Soviet Union after the Nazis came to power and his wife gave birth to movie director Konrad Wolf, “the younger brother of Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf.”


1925: Birthdate of columnist Art Buchwald. The cigar-chomping humorist first gained popular acclaim for his daily column written from Paris. His annual Thanksgiving column where he would explain the holiday to the French was a classic.


1927: In Brooklyn, Estelle (née Rapaport)[4] and Morris K. Bauer, attorneys who shared a law practice gave birth to Joyce Diane Bauer who gained famed as psychologist, quiz show contestant and columnist Dr. Joyce Brothers.


1928: “In the presence of 400 Jewish leaders representing twenty-five States and Canada, Mr. Louis Marshall opened the Non-Zionist Conference at the Hotel Biltmore” this evening. (As reported by JTA)


1930: Lord Passfield issued his "White Paper" banning further land acquisition by Jews and slowing Jewish immigration. Chaim Weizmann who had always toed a pro-British line resigned in protest.


1930: In Boston, Sam Fisher who “ran the Fisher Shoe Company” and his wife gave birth to Jerome Fisher, the founder of “Nine West, a women’s shoe company.” (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)



1932: “The Old Dark House” a horror film produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr, with a script co-authored by Benn W. Levy and co-starring Melvyn Douglas was released in the United States by Universal Pictures.


1933: “The Perils of Pauline” filmed by cinematographer Richard Fryer was released in the United States today by Universal Pictures.


1933(30th of Tishrei, 5694): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1933(30th of Tishrei, 5694): “Loney” Haskell, the husband of the former Jessie Garson Haskell and the businessman turned entertainer who delivered the eulogy for Harry Houdini and was Secretary of the Jewish Theatrical Guild of America at the time of his death passed away today.



1935: Birthdate of Jerry Orbach. The actor has played everything from the father in the film “Dirty Dancing” to Detective Lenny Briscoe in “Law & Order.”


1935(23rd of Tishrei, 5696): Simchat Torah


1936: In Philadelphia, “delegates at the annual convention of Hadassah…cheered today” when a cablegram from Palestine was ready “announcing that ground had been broken on Mount for the Rothschild Hadassah University and Medical School, the first Medical Center in Palestine.”


1936: Felix M. Warburg, announced last that for “the third successive year Lawrence Marx” “the guest of honor at a dinner tonight at the Hotel Plaza” “will head the annual deficit campaign of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies.


1936: In Warsaw, “at the College of Commerce more than twenty Jewish students were severely beaten today by Nationalists when they refused to obey an order to leave their seats at the front of a class and occupy ‘ghetto’ back benches.”


1936: “The Charge of the Light Brigade” a film set in the Crimean War directed by Michael Curtiz, produced by Samuel Bishcoff, Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner with music by Max Steiner was released in the United States today by Warner Bros.


1936(4th of Cheshvan, 5697: Mrs. Sarah Sandler, mother of New York Attorney Bernard Sandler, passed away in Tel Aviv today at the age of 85. Mrs. Sandler had lived in Palestine for the last 18 years. She was active in numerous charitable activities and refused her son’s request that she return to New York after the most recent outbreak of Arab violence.


1937(15th of Cheshvan, 5698): Felix M. Warburg, a member of the Jewish family known for its financial acumen and philanthropies passed away today at the age of 66.



1937: In response to discrimination policies, Jews of Poland, assorted liberals and students went on strike. Within a few weeks the government succeeded in putting down the strike and enforcing its decrees. The environment of anti-Semitism obviously existed before the Nazis arrived and made their work much easier.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that a loud explosion which shook the American Colony was found to be due to a bomb thrown at a Jewish shop at the Simon the Just Quarter, just off the Nablus Road in Jerusalem. Shots were also fired at Jewish buses and an Armenian photographer was hit. A £2,000 fine was imposed on the Adh Dahariya village for raiding a police post. An immediate fine collection began in kind, livestock, wheat and other movables.


1938: Adolf Hitler gave “a speech at the city hall of Krumau, a city in southern Bohemia, in which he praised ‘Providence’ for having helped the German people achieve so much in recent years” bit added that “this was only possible because we stood armed…”


1940: More than 7000 Jews from the Saar region of Germany are interned at the camp at Gurs, France.


1942(9th of Cheshvan, 5703): Twelve thousand Jews are murdered at Bar in the Transnistria region of the Ukraine.


1942: Samuel “Willenberg boarded the Holocaust train along with 6,500 inmates of the then-liquidated Opatów ghetto, and went with them to the extermination camp at Treblinka.”


1942(9th of Cheshvan, 5703): Seventy-four year old classical scholar Friedrich Münzer who had been officially classified as Jewish in 1935 by the Nazis died today at Theresienstadt concentration camp.


1942: The deportations of Jews from Slovakia were halted today after a group of Jewish citizens, led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, built a coalition of concerned officials from the Vatican and the government, and, through a mix of bribery and negotiation, was able to stop the process. By then, however, some 58,000 Jews had already been deported, mostly to Auschwitz. The deportations would be resumed in 1944.


1943: Mrs. Moses Schorr, her daughter Felicia and the grandchildren of Moses Schorr arrived in the French town of Vittel where they were supposed to be exchanged for German POW’s.


1943: Irene Sendler was arrested in a Gestapo night raid on her apartment and taken to Pawiak prison where she was tortured. Sendler held out and did not betray any of confederates with whom she worked to smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.



1944: Nazis put 25,000 Hungarian Jewish men and 10,000 Jewish women to work digging anti-tank trenches in the path of the advancing Red Army.


1944: Men of the Polish Home Army attack Jewish houses in the freshly liberated village of Ejszyszki. The village's Jews subsequently retaliate against the Poles.


1944: 22,000 Budapest Jews are entrained for deportation to Auschwitz.


1944: Nazi administrators at Auschwitz burn documents related to prisoners and their fates.


1944: Nazis initiate death-march deportations of Jews from Budapest, Hungary, to Germany.


1944(21st of Tishrei, 5769): At Birkenau, 600 of 650 boys between the ages of 14 and 16 whohad been locked in barracks since the Revolt at Birkenau on October 7, would be gassed. Most of them were Hungarians. Many race about the camp, naked and panicked, before being clubbed by the SS guards who pursue them. The 50 survivors are put to work unloading potatoes from railcars.


1944: On this day the deportations from Hungary begin again. Despite the uprisings, more Jews from Theresienstadt were selected for death. Another 1,416 would be gassed.


1946: Birthdate of Austrian Novelist Elfriede Jelink, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature. “Elfriede Jelinek was born in the village of Mürzzuschlag in Styria, Austria. Although Jelinek’s father was classified a Mischling (a person of “mixed races”) under National Socialism, he and his wife escaped the most extreme excesses of anti-Semitic persecution due to his work as a chemist in war research. Jelinek is not considered a Jewish writer per se, but the author herself positions her writings within the Jewish tradition and history. Critics, too, prompted by the scathing irony underlying her texts, traces a continuity between the Austrian Jewish satirical tradition - represented in the writings of Karl Kraus or Elias Canetti - and Jelinek, while recognizing the latter’s radicalization of that tradition.”


1947: The leaders of the Jewish refugees living in DP camps under British control sent a telegram that “makes clear the wishes and determination of the refugees to find a home in Palestine.’Nothing will deter us from Palestine. Which jail we go to is up to you (the British). We did not ask you to reduce our rations; we did not ask you to put us in Poppendorf and Am Stau.’" [Poppendorf and Am Stau were in Germany.]


1947: HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) opened hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. While engaging in its highly publicized search for alleged Communists, HUAC certainly had a tendency to stir up a lot of collateral anti-Semitic dust. Ironically, many of the cooperative witnesses who were the first to take the stand were Jewish including Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer (ex-chairman of the Republican Party's California State Committee) and Ayn Rand. Warner told HUAC: "Ideological termites have burrowed into many American industries, organizations and societies. Wherever they may be, I say let us dig them out and get rid of them. My brothers and I will be happy to subscribe generously to a pest-removal fund. We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don't like our American system of government and prefer the Communistic system to ours." Ayn Rand who was identitified as a “Russian émigré” attacked "Song of Russia," complaining that the Soviet peasants smiled too much. Red-baiter Adolphe Menjou testified on Oct. 21 that he believed the Communist Party should be "outlawed." HUAC and its right-wing supporters were quick to tie Jews to Communists, making the two seem to be one in the same. However, they never identified the friendly witnesses as Jews. This would have interfered with the Right Wing prejudice and conspiracy theoris.


1948: After five days of fighting along the Jerusalem Corridor, there is no major change in territorial holdings.


1948(17th of Tishrei, 5709): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1948(17th of Tishrei, 5709): “In a low-level bombing attack on the strategic Egyptian-held fortress of Iraq-El-Suweidan, one of the recently acquired Bristol Beaufighter Bombers was shot down, killing Len Fitchett, Dov Sugarman, and Stanley Andrews


1948: “A smaller force from the Fifth Battalion broke-away and travelled with a battle corps of the 10th Armored Brigade on the Bayt Jibrin highway and captured Beit Jimal.


1948:The internal Negev road from Julis to Bror Hayil through Kawkaba and Huleiqat was taken today by Givati's 52nd and 54th battalions. Upon taking Huleiqat, the Israelis discovered a mass grave where the Egyptians buried Israeli casualties of the failed July Negev Brigade attack.


1950: The SS Benjamin Peixotto, a decommissioned Liberty ship was refloated in a harbor in Hong Kong after having been damaged by a typhoon.  The ship was named after the 19th century American-Jewish leader who had served as U.S. Consul to Bucharest.


1952: In Philadelphia, PA, Norma (née Goodman)Mayron, a real estate agent, and David Mayron, a pharmaceutical chemist gave birth to actress and director Melanie Joy Mayron who was the product of a “mixed” marriage since her father was Sephardic and her mother was Ashkenazi family.



1952: Birthdate of Dalia Itzik, the native of Jerusalem born to a family of Iraqi Jews who was the first female Speaker of the Knesset.


1953(11th of Cheshvan, 5714): Sixty-one year Fred E. Ahlert, the Fordham Law School graduate who decided to become a composer and songwriter passed away today.



1953: CBS broadcast an episode of “See It Now” entitled "The Case of Milo Radulovich" co-produced by Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Wershba which was a landmark in exposing the Red Scare led by Joe McCarthy and other reactionaries. (Wershba was Jewish; Murrow wasn’t)


1953: General Kenneth Nichols retired from the Army which enabled him to become a senior management at the AEC which would enable him to lead the fight to take away the security clearance for J. Robert Oppenheimer.


1954(23rd of Tishrei, 5715): Simchat Torah


1954: The 1954 musical version of “Peter Pan” directed by Jerome Robbin with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.


1959: CBS broadcast an adaptation of “The Turn of the Screw” directed by John Frankenheimer.


1963: Today “a special memorial programs was held at the Hebrew Confederate Cemetery the plaque marking the final resting place of Henry Grintberger who was killed at the Battle of Cold Harbor was corrected so that it no longer showed the last name of Gersberg.


1963: In Moscow, Rudolf Naumovich Solovyov, and Inna Solomonovna Shapiro gave birth to Russian electronic journalist Vladimir Rudol'fovich Solovyov who “was awarded the TEFI Russian television prize as the best interviewer.”


1964: Herbert Hoover 31st President of the United States passed away. Hoover named Benjamin Cardozo as Associate Justice to the Supreme Court in 1932. How a Hawkeye Quaker came to name a liberal Sephardic New York Jew to the High Court without incurring a burst of anti-Semitic diatribes is one of the under-told stories of the 20th century


1964: “Golden Boy” a musical based on Clifford Odets’ play of the same name produced Hillard Elkins by with music by Charles Strouse starring Sammy Davis, Jr. opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre.


1964:Henry David Leonard George Walston, the son of Florence and Sir Charles Waldestein began serving as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a position he would hold until the “beginning of 1967.


1967: Seven men were convicted in Meridian, Miss., of violating the civil rights of three murdered civil rights workers. Two of the three victims were Jewish youngsters who had come South during the summer of 1964 to work on a voter registration project. Their deaths helped bring about the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.


1969: NBC broadcast episode six of “My World…and Welcome to it” created by Melville Shavelson, co-starring Harold J. Stone.


1971: “The Organization” the third and final of the “Mr. Tibbs Trilogy” that began with the ground-breaking “In the Heat of the Night” produced by Walter Mirisch was released today in the United States.


1971: “T. R. Baskin” a dark “romantic” drama directed by Herbert Ross, produced and written by Peter Hyams and co-starring James Caan was released today in the United States by Paramount Pictures


1972: In Ann Arbor, Michigan, cardiologist Irwin Schatz and his wife gave birth to Brian Emanuel Schatz, the future Senator from Hawaii.


1973: When their F-4E Phantom Jet was hit by an Egyptian SAM, Aharon Sagi and Moshe Barton were recovered by the IDF after safely ejecting from their aircraft.


1973: David Zeit and Yoram Rubenstein were taken prisoner after their F-4E Phantom Jet was hit by an Egyptian SAM.  The Israeli Air force faced a Soviet designed air defense network that was more sophisticated than anything any air force had had to cope with in modern warfare.  The willingness of these flyers to take to the skies is a tribute to their individual courage and those who were shot down were no less heroes than those who made it safely back to base.


1973: “Starting at sunrise” today, “the Israeli Air Force launched aerial attacks for the duration of the day, targeting Ismailia, the nearby al-Galaa' army base, and Jebel Mariam


1973:Israeli forces came within 10 miles of Damascus.


1973: William Shatner married Marcy Laffert. Yes, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were both played by Jewish actors.


1973: The Israelis shot down Syrian aircraft on its way to bomb the oil refineries at Haifa. The IDF force on the west bank of the Suez Canal continued to widen its area of activity. The Israelis were actually taking control of some of the roads between Cairo and the Canal – between the Egyptian capital and the attacking Egyptian armies. While the Israelis understand what is happening, the Egyptian high command either is not aware of what is going or is hiding the truth from its battlefield commanders.


1976: Twenty-eight activists demonstrated at the Supreme Soviet demanding that those who beat up Jewish activists on October 19 be punished.


1977: Rachel Vixman, “authority on parliamentary procedure and a founder of the Pittsburgh Chapter of Hadassah” was interviewed to by Ida Selavan for a project created by the Pittsburgh Section of the National Council of Jewish Women.



1982: Revival performance of Abraham Goldfaden’s “Shulamith” presented by Ben Bonus, Lively and Yiddish Productions, in association with the Yiddish Musical Theater of Israel, producer, Dr. Rabbi Israel Walin at the Norman Thomas Theater in New York City.


1982(3rd of Cheshvan, 5743):Aryeh Ze'ev (Leib) Gurwicz “the son-in-law of Rabbi Elyah Lopian and best known as Rosh Yeshiva of the Gateshead Yeshiva in Gateshead, England, where he taught for over 30 years” passed away today.


1983: Today, “Lillian Goldman moved out of the Waldorf-Astoria suite she shared with her husband Sol” the hold of “New York City’s largest private real estate empire” and “began divorce proceedings in which she asked for half of his $1 billion in assets.”


1985: In a review entitled “A Place Like No Other,” Michael Grant, the author of The Jews in the Roman Empire and A History of Ancient Israel examines Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets From the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times  by F. E. Peters.


1986: Shimon Peres completes his second term in office as Prime Minister of Israel.


1986: Yitzhak Shamir began his second office term as Israel's prime minister


1988: In Moscow, founding of Mikhoel’s Cultural Center.



1989(21st of Tishrei, 5750): Hoshana Rabah


1989(21st of Tishrei, 5750): Sixty-five year old “Israeli radio broadcaster, journalist, playwright, and author” Dahn Ben-Amotz who made Aliyah in 1938 and whose parents died in the Holocaust lost his battle with liver cancer and passed away today.


1990: Among those celebrating today’s Cincinnati’s four game sweep that made them World Champions is Larry Rothschild the former pitcher now serving as a coach for the Reds.


1990(1st of Cheshvan, 5751): Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Chehsvan; parashat Noach


1990(1st of Cheshvan, 5751): Eighty-two year old Stanley “Stan” Jaloff, the California native who was a star basketball player for the University of Washington Huskies from 1928 to 1930 passed away today.


1992(23rd of Tishrei, 5753): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Bush.


1994(15th of Cheshvan, 5755): Shlomo Calbach passed away. Words cannot describe what he has done. Everybody has their favorite Carlbach tunes or songs. Here are two sites where you can sample some of his work by BenZion Solomon. I do not get any royalties. I just happen to like them. http://www.israel-music.com/ben_zion_solomon_sons/nishmas_kol_chai/
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1995: NBC broadcast the first show of season 4 of “Homicide: Life on the Street” based on a book by David Simon and co-starring Richard Belzer and Yaphet Kotto.


1998: “After eighteen years of using the Sabin vaccine, the federal government recommended that children use the Salk vaccine exclusively” today


2000(21st of Tishrei, 5761): Hoshana Rabah


2000: “Bedazzled” a remake of the 1967 comedy directed by Harold Ramis who co-produced the film and co-authored the screenplay with Larry Gelbart was released in the United States today.


2002: In an article entitled “Funny, You Don't Look Jewish,” Judith Shulevitz reviews Hillel Halkin's Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of IsraelAcross the Sabbath River relates an improbable story: a people on a remote border of India, Tibet and Burma want to migrate to modern Israel because they believe themselves to be descended from one of the 10 tribes exiled from ancient Israel 2,700 years ago, and close analysis of their folklore hints that they may be right.”


2002: Ceremonies marking the dedication of Har Sinai’s new facility in Owings Mill, a reform congregation with roots in pre-Civil War Baltimore came to an end.


2004:The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported on a speech given by Schindler's List survivor Rena Finder. Now 75 and living in Massachusetts, Finder told of what it was like to be a ten year old in Krakow, Poland in 1939 when the Nazis arrived. "Nobody saw us, nobody helped us, nobody cared." In speaking about Schindler she said, "What Oskar Schindler did for us and for the world, nobody, nobody had achieved."


2004: The Cedar Rapids Gazettereported that "a Holocaust-era diary and love letters written by a Jewish woman for her Dutch boyfriend in an internment camp in 1943 have been donated to a Dutch archives." The woman who was named Helga Deen died at Sobibor.


2005: Mikhail Khodorkovsky was delivered to the labor camp YaG-14/10.”The labor camp is attached to a uranium mining and processing plant and during Soviet times had a reputation as a place from which nobody returned alive.”


2005: Earle Irving Mack, the son real estate developer H. Bert Mack and Ruth Kaufman Mack, completed his service as the 30th United States Ambassador to Finland.


2006: “The Great Conjurer,” a new play about Franz Kafka, premiers at the Kirk Theatre in New York City.


2007: As part of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Concert the Alei Gefen Chorus performs "A Ceremony of Songs" at Kol Haneshama Synagogue, to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan.


2007: In a story with dateline of Fayetteville, Arkansas, The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that “a Jewish synagogue is rising in the hills of Arkansas, in large part because of the generosity of the project contractor: a Muslim immigrant from the West Bank. Fadil Bayyari, a Springdale, Ark., general contractor, agreed to waive his regular fee for Temple Shalom, saving the Reform congregation at least $250,000. Bayyari, who built the mosque in Fayetteville, cited both religions’ ties to Abraham and said the fact that his faith community, too, lacked its own building until the mosque was completed.”


2008(21st of Tishrei, 5769): Hoshana Rabbah


2008: “The re-trial of Phil Spector for murder in the second degree in the death of Lana Clarkson began today.


2008: Haaretz reports that “the Foreign Ministry is examining an initiative aimed at reaching a long-term non-belligerence pact with Lebanon to prevent renewed fighting along the northern border.”


2008: The Menier Chocolate Factory production of Jerry Herman’s “La Cage aux Folles” transferred to the West End at the Playhouse Theatre co-produced with Sonia Friedman Productions, Robert G. Bartner, David Ian Productions, The Ambassador Theatre Group, Matthew Mitchell and Jamie Hendry Productions


2009: The first group of Kaifeng Jews arrived in Israel, in an aliyah operation coordinated by Shavei Israel.


2009: Andrew Ross “Sorkin's book on the Wall Street banking crisis, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, was published by Viking” today.


2009: Opening session of the National Jewish Democratic Conference Washington Conference.


2009: Opening session of the Presidents’ Conference in Jerusalem.


2009: At the Hyman S. Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Zoë Heller discusses The Believers in a conversation with Ron Charles, Senior Editor of The Washington Post Book World


2009: International Harp Contest in Tel Aviv-Jaffa comes to an end.


2010: A program entitled “Miryam Kabakov, ed., Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires” is scheduled to be presented at The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary in Washington, D.C.


2010: The American Jewish Historical Society and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to present :Revisiting the American Soviet Jewry Movement: A Panel Discussion Honoring the Publication of Gal Beckerman's book When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry


2010(12th of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-five year old Coleman Jacoby, “a comedy writer during the golden age of television who, with his partner Arnie Rosen, created some of Jackie Gleason’s most memorable characters and engineered one of the great match-ups in television history, Gleason and Art Carney,” passed away today (As reported by William Grimes.’)



2010(12th of Cheshvan, 5771):Seventy-seven year old  Robert Katz, an author and screenwriter who incurred the wrath of the Vatican by accusing Pope Pius XII of failing to act to stave off a Nazi massacre of Italians in 1944, passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2011(22nd of Tishrei, 5772): Shemini Atzeret


2011:Today, two Israeli soldiers were struck by a Palestinian vehicle at a checkpoint near Beit Ur al-Fauqa south of Ramallah in the West Bank. The soldiers were lightly injured and evacuated to a hospital in Jerusalem after a Palestinian driver reportedly sped past other cars waiting in line at the checkpoint, ramming the soldiers, and then speeding away. The event was currently being treated as a hit-and-run incident and not as a terrorist attack with nationalistic motives. Yesterday an IDF force from the Kfir Brigade prevented a stabbing attack in the Etzion bloc of West Bank settlements by a Palestinian woman in her twenties. The Palestinian woman arrived at the the Gush Etzion Junction Wednesday afternoon and crossed the road, approaching soldiers and Israeli civilians standing at a bus stop. She then brandished a knife and ran towards the soldiers and civilians, screaming "Allahu Akhbar" and "Death to Jews," Channel 10 reported. Soldiers detained the woman and she was subsequently arrested. No injuries were reported in the incident. According to the report, the woman told security forces who arrived on the scene that she had come to the junction with the intention of stabbing soldiers. She had waited until the release of Palestinian prisoners in the Gilad Schalit deal before attempting to carry out the attack.


The IDF said that it is continuing to operate under an increased alert level in the area, praising the soldiers at the junction who identified the attacker and said that because of their alertness, prevented an attack.


2011: Noam Shalit, father of recently released Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, said today that claims his son was not tortured during his time in Hamas captivity should be taken "with a grain of salt."


2012(4th of Cheshvan, 5773): Eighty-six year old philosopher Paul Kurtz passed away today.




2011: Ninety-year old Jerzy Bielecki, a World War II resistance fighter, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



2012(4th of Cheshvan, 5773): Eighty-five year old science writer and Timemagazine editor Leon Jaroff passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



2012: Temple Beth-El in Bloomfield, Michigan, is scheduled to host a special ceremony blessing pets belonging to members of the congregation.


2012: The Israeli band, Flora, is scheduled to perform at Muchmore’s in Brooklyn, NY


2012: Shalom Bard is scheduled to make his debut as RBC resident conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra today “at a special concert featuring violinist and conductor Maxim Vengerov.”


2012:Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid called to "finally get rid of the Palestinians" by giving them their own state at a cultural event in Kiryat Motzkin today.


2012: The Israeli Navy today surrounded a ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists intent on breaching Gaza’s blockade as it approached the coastal strip. IDF soldiers boarded the vessel without employing the use of force and rerouted it to the port of Ashdod, where it arrived just after 8 p.m. local time


2013: In Baltimore, Barry Steelman is scheduled to present “Standing by Their Flags,” exploring the Jewish military experience on both sides of the Civil War at the Jewish Museum of Maryland


2013: Dani Shapiro “appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul to discuss her new book Devotion.


2013: ‘Nazi loot’ Is In Major National Gallery Show” published today described E. Randol Schoeberg’s contention that “An unfinished portrait by Gustav Klimt used as the centerpiece of the National Gallery's major new exhibition is loot stolen by the Nazis.”



2013: Folk/Reggae/songwriting Rabbi Jack Gabriel, a leader in the Jewish Renewal Movement is scheduled to perform in Alexandria, VA.


2013(16thof Cheshvan, 5774): Ninety-year old Sid Yudain, the founder of “Roll Call” passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2013: In Australia, “The Songs They Sang,” a musical narrative of the Vilna Ghetto during World War II is scheduled to be performed at the South Melbourne Town Hall


2013: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a walking tour that will showcase Jewish life in the historic Seventh Street, NW Community from 1850 to 1950


2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host as special of book launch of Out Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust edited by Elaine Saphier Cox


2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Performing Captivity, Performing Escape: Cabarets and Plays from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto”


2013:The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats is scheduled to close today.


2013: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont, Norman Mailer: A Double Life by J. Michael Lennon, Identical by Scott Turow and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi


2013: In Milwaukee, WI, Meaghan Meredith Reider, daughter of Sue and Dr. Ron Reider, pillars’ of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Jewish community married Mikhail Iosifovich Guterman son of Dina Gezhes and Iosif Guterman.


2013: While no injuries or significant damages afflicted surrounding areas, a string of minor earthquakes have rattled Israel’s North over the past few days – including two today alone. An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale hit the Hula Valley-Kinneret region this morning at around 11:50 am, with its epicenter in the northwestern portion of the Kinneret – a few kilometers northeast of Kibbutz Ginosar and a few kilometers south of Capernaum, according to data from the Israel Geophysical Institute’s Seismology Division. Just four hours later, at 3:54 p.m., another quake with a 3.5 magnitude similarly shook the region. (As reported by Sharon Udasin)


2013: News of Karnit Flug's appointment as the head of the Bank of Israel has been well received, with opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich of Labor even hailing the appointment as "enlightened." Her appointment along with that of Janet Yellin as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board means that Jewish women occupy the two highest financial positions in their country’s for the first time in history


2014: John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer” which is  consistently accused of being anti-Semitic because of its sympathetic and factually inaccurate portrayal of the terrorists who hijacked the “Achille Lauro” and murdered wheelchair-bound Jewish-American Leon Klinghoffer” is scheduled to have its debut at the Met in New York today.


2014: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival  is scheduled to host “Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks for a multi-media concert based on the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah and featuring Bosnian-born composer and accordionist Merima Kljuco.”


2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present an evening of film and discussion with historian Linda J. Borish, examining “Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympics.”


2014: “Twenty-one year-old British citizen Garron Helm was sentenced to jail for sending a “grossly offensive” anti-Semitic tweet to Liverpool Labor MP Luciana Berger, UK's Jewish News reported today.”


2014: In Coralville, IA, Agudas Achim is scheduled to host its inaugural Sisterhood Lunch Out for 5775.


2014: “Former Nazis should not be collecting Social Security benefits as they age overseas, the White House said today, responding to an Associated Press investigation that revealed millions of dollars have been paid to war-crimes suspects and former SS guards forced out of the US.” (As reported by Richard Lardner, David Rising and Randy Herschaft)



2014: “Former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon announced today that he will start a new political party focused on reducing the cost of living in Israel.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)


2014: “A former National Union of Students (NUS) President voiced condemnation for the Goldsmith University and its Student Union's rejection of a motion to commemorate the Holocaust.” (As reported by Cynthia Blank)


2015: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival are scheduled to host “The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII.”


2015: At the Skirball, Dr. Ron Wolfson, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, is scheduled to discuss The Best Boy in the United States: A Memoir of Blessings and Kisses


2015: The Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art foundation which was established to honor the hundreds of “Monuments Men” who saved more than 5 million artworks stolen by the Nazis announced today that it will cease operations at the end of October due to a lack of funds


2016(18thof Tishrei, 5777): Fourth Day of Sukkoth


2016(18thof Tishrei, 5777): Ninety-one year old Litvak Stanley Silverstein, who co-founded Nina Footware with his brother Mike passed away today. (As reported by Daniel Slotnik)



2016: In England, an election is scheduled to be held to fill the seat vacate by former Prime Minster David Cameron in which 81 year old Larry Sanders, the brother of Senator and failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is the Green Party Candidate.


2016: In Haifa, “a competition for the title of Strongest Person” is scheduled to take place “at the BIG station in the Checkpoint intersection.”


2016: The Skirball Center is scheduled to host “Let’s Talk About Pickles” a discussion about the best green vegetable in the world lead by Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation.


2016: “Israeli archaeologists found the site of a fierce battle where the Roman army bombarded and breached the walls of Jerusalem before conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple almost 2,000 years ago, officials said today.”


2016: The London Jewish Cultural Centre is scheduled to host a screening of “Watermarks” Yaron Zilberman’s film about “the champion women swimmers of the legendary sports club, Hakoah” which “was founded in 1909 in response to the notorious Aryan Paragraph, which forbade Austrian sports clubs from accepting Jewish athletes.”


2017(30thof Cheshvan, 5778): First Day Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan;


2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “a special Oneg Shabbat” marking the opening of the exhibition of “On Jews and Chocolate” – “an indulgent evening for the chocolate lover in all of us.”


2017: Today, a group of about 300 men and women including “dozens of veterans of the Six Day War” were barred by Security guards from “entering the main plaza of the Western while holding a Torah scroll while a “Six Day War veteran named Micha Eshet, 70, was shoved to the ground by Orthodox protesters while holding the scroll…” (JTA)


2017: In Atlanta, the High Museum of Art is scheduled to host a talk by Holocaust survivor Henry Friedman “talk about his post-war experience as a street artist in Italy on his way to America.”


2018: In Jerusalem, the Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a “Special Concert” featuring Pianist Oxana Yablonskaya playing the works “by Schubert, Liszt, Chopin and Mendelssohn.”


2018: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host a lunch after morning services.


2018: During Homecoming Week at the University of Iowa, this evening Hillel, led by its Executive Director David Weltman, is scheduled to host a special evening complete with drinks and hors d’oeuvres.


2018(11thof Cheshvan, 5779): Parashat Lech-Lecha; for more about the start of the four thousand journey of the Jewish people see http://downhomedavartorah.blogspot.com/



 


 


 


 


 


This Day, October 21, In Jewish History by Mitchell A. Levin

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OCTOBER 21


1553 BCE(11 Cheshvan 2207): On the civil calendar, this date marked the death of Rachel, the matriarch and wife of Jacob, at the age of 36. She died during the childbirth of Benjamin, near Efrat, and is buried in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem).



336 BCE (24th of Tishrei, 3425): According to the Book of Nechemia, Ezra and Nechemia convened the Jewish community in Jerusalem. (As reported by Aish)



http://www.aish.com/dijh/Tishrei_24.html

681: The revised laws adopted by the Twelfth Council of Toledo including 28 anti-Jewish measures among which was forbidding converts to Christianity from returning to Judaism went into effect today

686: Pope Conon was consecrated today at a time when the Jews of Toledo were “suffering multiple persecutions.

1096:  During the First Crusade, the Turks destroyed the portion of the Crusader army led by Peter the Hermit.  Peter escaped and joined the main crusader army.  The main body took Jerusalem from the Moslems in 1099.  The Crusaders slaughtered the Jews of Europe as they made their way to the Holy Land.  When they got to Jerusalem, the continued their bloody behavior as they slaughtered the Jews living in David’s City.

1328(9th of Cheshvan, 5089): Asher ben Jehiel an leading German Rabbi who moved to Spain after Rudolf I “instituted renewed persecution of the Jews” passed away today in Toledo.


1409: Birthdate of Italian noble man Alessandro Sforza, the patron of “Jewish Italian dancer and dancing master Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro” who converted to Roman Catholicism under his influence



1422: King Charles VI, the monarch who banished the Jews from France in 1394, passed away.



1486: The body of one of the sons of Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, (Jerome of the Holy Faith) who had been arrested with other Marranos who had taken part in the rebellion against Pedro Arbucs was publicly burned today after he had killed himself in order to escape the disgrace of being publicly burned alive. Other members of the Santa Fe family were burned as marranos in 1497 and 1499. Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, Jerome of the Holy Faith was born Ibn Vives Lorki (Al-Lorqui, Joshua ben Joseph). A Jewish Christian convert, he was a Spanish physician and writer who wrote as Gerónimo de Santa Fe (Hieronymus de Sancta Fide, Jerome of the Holy Faith). His Jewish name came from the name of his birthplace, Lorca, near Murcia.



1512: In what may have been one of the most far-reaching decisions in the history of academia, Martin Luther joined the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg.  It would be almost five years to the day (October 31, 1517) from his appointment, that Luther would post his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle. (This gives a whole new meaning to the term “publish or perish”).  Seven years after his appointment (1519) “Luther denounced the doctrines” regarding the treatment of the Jews.  His final view of the Jews would be codified in the 1544 pamphlet “Concerning The Jews and Their Lies” that included a call for burning synagogues and destroying the homes of Jews.

1553: Volumes of the Talmud were burned in Venice

1718(26th of Tishrei, 5479): Edel Oppenheimer passed away today in Vienna.

1753(23rd of Tishrei, 5514): Simchat Torah

1780(22ndof Tishrei, 5541): Shemini Atzeret


1781: In Austria, Joseph II rescinded the law forcing Jews to war a distinctive badge which had been in effect since 1267, more than 600 years.



1791(23rdof Tishrei, 5552): Simchat Torah



1804: Birthdate of French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey who created one of the earliest surviving pictorial record of Palestine.



1805: Under the command of Lord Nelson the British won the decisive Battle of Trafalgar where the British forces included “Benjamin da Costa, a midshipman on the Temeraire,”Moses Benjamin and Joseph Moss serving aboard the Victory, John Benjamin on the Royal Sovereign, Henry Levi, Benjamin Solomon, Joseph Manuel and Nathan Manuel on the Britannia Philip Emanuel on the Colossus, and Thomas Brandon and James Brandon, who was killed, on the Revenge. (As reported by Daphne Anson)



1809: In Glasgow, Elizabeth Currie and William Stenhouse gave birth to noted Chemist John Stenhouse whose assistant included Raphael Meldola, the descendant of Sephardic Jews who had been in England since the 18th century.



1810(23rdof Tishrei, 5571): Simchat Torah



1812: Isaac Isaacs married Polly Solomons at the Great Synagogue today.



1816: The will of Hyam Levy, who resided at “4 Cock Court, Jewry Street” and which was witnessed by Abraham Marks, Naphtali Hart and Nathan Levy” was probated today.



1817(11thof Cheshvan, 5578): Meyer Abrahamson, the native of Hamburg who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor who served as “the physician to the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg” and who also pursued a literary career passed away today.



1833: Birthdate of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, creator of dynamite and the Nobel Prizes “Since 1901, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 802 individuals.” While Jews account for only 0.2% of the world’s population, 180 or 22% of the recipients are classified as Jewish or of Jewish ancestry.  This anomaly has fascinated writers and researches for decades, but so far has not been satisfactorily explained. [Editor’s note – Claims that Jews are somehow smarter are just as specious as are claims that they are all crooks because of the disproportionate number of Jews involved in recent financial scandals.  For more details on Jewish winners, see www.jinfo.organ very informative site that seems to be everybody’s primary source when it comes to these matters.]



1835: In Charleston, SC, Mr. Alexander Solomons officiated at the weeding of Nathan Emanuel of Georgetown, SC and Henrietta Eugenia, the “third daughter of the late Michael Simpson.”



1837(22nd of Tishrei, 5598): Shmini Atzeret



1837(22nd of Tishrei, 5598): Thirty-one year old Michael Joseph Gusikow, a multi-talented musician who



1846: Bernard Jacob married Maria Moss at the New Synagogue today.



1847: Birthdate of Danish political leader and author Edvard Brandes.



1853(19th of Tishrei, 5614): Sukkoth Chol HaMoed



1853(19th of Tishrei, 5614): Eighty-year old Samuel Meyer Ehrenberg, the Director of Wolfenbüttel Samson School, passed away today.



1861: Temple Emanuel of Davenport, Iowa was formed today as B’Nai Israel Congregation



1864(21st of Tishrei, 5625): Hoshanah Rabah



1864: Two days after he had passed away, 24 year old Jacob Stiebel, the son of Sigismund Stiebel and the former Eliza Jacob Mocatta was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”



1864: “Jewish Festivals” published today reported that “The last of the series of Autumnal Jewish festivals will commence this evening. It is a part of the festival of Succoth tabernacles, previously described in the Times. It is called Shemini Artzareth, and the institution will be found in Numbers xxix, 35. Part of the liturgy of the day is a prayer for rain and a propitious season. To-morrow evening commences the festival of Simchas Torah, rejoicing of the law. According to the regular service of the synagogue each Sabbath a sedrah or "section" of the law of Torah or Pentateuch is read, so that the whole five books of Moses are read each year, and with the new year the first book of Bereshit or Genesis is commenced while the reading of the last section of Deuteronomy is reserved for this festival. It is customary on the eye of this festival to take out all the "rolls or the law" deposited in the Ark, and to carry them in procession round the synagogue, which is brilliantly lit up. In order to pay due honor to the law, both at the termination of its reading and at the commencement, two persons are appointed in each synagogue to fill the offices of Bridegroom of the Law and Bridegroom of the Beginning. The liturgy of the day celebrates the excellence of the law and the mission of Moses, and its festival is greeted with joyous demonstrations. With this festival the Autumnal festivals of the Hebrews are brought to a close. According to the teachings of the Jewish sages, the festival teaches this lesson: Rosh Hashanah (New Year) calls the Israelite to examine his past conduct, the Arsareth Yermi Tershura, ten days of repentance, tell him to repent and amend his conduct, the Your Kippur (Day of Atonement) directs him to make his peace with God and his fellow-men, and when his mind is thus properly prepared, (Succoth,) or Tabernacles teaches him to rejoice in the belief of the Divine bounty, and Simchas Torah seals his attachment and adherence to the law. [Editor’s Note-This article shows an amazing comprehension of Jewish holidays, especially when you consider that it was published in an American newspaper at a time when the Jewish population was comparatively small.]



1865(1st of Cheshvan, 5626): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan



1866: Louis Israel Aaron the Prussian born American businessman and philanthropist today married Mina W. Lippman with whom he had “five children” two of whom, “Marcus and Charles survived to adulthood.



1866: Two days after he had passed away, Middlesex native Daniel Collins, the son of William Collins and the former Priscilla Marks was buried today at “Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia.”



1867(22nd of Tishrei, 5628):  Shemini Atzeret



1867:  Zigmund Schlesinger, frontiersman and Indian fighter gave up life in the Wild West and moved to New York today where he pursued a more civilized life of commerce and business.  The following monograph entitled “Zigmund Schlesinger: A Defender of the West” by Seymour "Sy" Brody provides a glimpse of less than typical life for an American Jew.


“General George Forsyth was delegated by General Philip Sheridan to hire 50 first class frontiersmen to fight the attacking Indians. One of the first to apply was a young Hungarian-Jew, Zigmund Schlesinger, who had immigrated to America in 1864. Schlesinger came to New York City and worked at many jobs. He heard about the opportunities that existed in the West and left New York to go to Kansas. In Kansas, he tried his hand at business by baking bread and cake and selling the foods under a canvas tent. The bakery failed as did some other business ventures. When Schlesinger applied for the frontiersman with Forsyth, they were not anxious to have him. He was small with a high-pitched voice and had very little experience or knowledge of firearms and horsemanship. He was told if they couldn't get 50 men, he would be hired. Schlesinger was lucky. He was hired since a 50th man was not found. In his diary, Schlesinger wrote of his first day as a member of the scouts in August 1868. After riding all day, Schlesinger recalled how stiff and tired he was when it was over. His riding abilities bore the brunt of ridicule from others. He was also reminded that he was a Jew. Schlesinger had been involved in many minor encounters with the Indians. The encounter that earned him the respect of the others took place at the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River in 1868. His scouting expedition was set upon by Chief Roman Nose with his band of Cheyenne and Sioux Indians. The scouts were pinned down for 9 days. Their horses had been killed and they suffered 19 casualties. Schlesinger had been wounded in both legs and the head. Yet, he managed to shoot down any Indian who exposed himself. They held off the Indians until a U.S. Army relief column came to their rescue. Forsyth wrote a letter to Rabbi Henry Cohen of Texas, lauding the heroism of Schlesinger: "...He was the equal in manly courage, steady and persistent devotion to duty, and unswerving and tenacious pluck of any man in my command." Schlesinger left the company and returned to New York. Eventually, he settled in Cleveland, where he established a successful cigar store business. Active in Jewish organizations, Schlesinger was one of the organizers of the Hebrew Free Loan Association, vice-president of his temple, and president of the Hebrew Relief Association. He died in 1928, leaving behind a legacy as a Jewish Indian fighter and as a philanthropist.”



1869: Birthdate of William Edward Dodd, the first American Ambassador to Germany appointed by Franklin Roosevelt.  Dodd became an early foe of the Nazis and tried to warn Americans of the evil that Hitler represented. For more about Dodd see “In the Garden of the Beasts.”



1871: Birthdate of Eva Dux, the wife of Solomon “Sol” Peyser and the mother of Philip and Theodore Peyser.



1871: Birthdate of Cambridge trained orientalist Lionel David Barnett, “the son of a Liverpool Banker” who in 1901 married the former Blanche Berliner with whom he had two children



https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/93E11399C980BEE964D977602A5660FC/S0041977X00151286a.pdf/div-class-title-lionel-david-barnett-div.pdf



1873: “Season of Wonders” published today described many of the unusual apparitions that can be seen at this time of the year including “the erudite Hen that lays eggs inscribed with Hebrew characters.”  The article does not say if the Hebrew is script or block printing.



1874: Birthdate of Albert Abram Aftalion, a native of the Ottoman Empire who taught economics at the University of Paris for 14 years before WW II.



1875(22nd of Tishrei, 5636): Shemini Atzeret



1878: “A committee was empowered to rent the mansion on the southeast corner of Stuyvesant Avenue and McDonough Street for a term of five years at annual rent” to be used for the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum.



1879: Pauline Markham (the future wife of Wyatt Earp) arrived in Yuma, AZ with a theatrical troupe headed for Tucson.



1879: According to a report published today based on a dispatch from Bucharest, the measure adopted by the by the Romanian government concerning the emancipation of the Jews does not contain all that they, the Jews want.  But under its terms they are better off than they were before. If they accept the compromise, “there is no reason why they Jews…should not have a peaceful and prosperous political future before them.”  Support for Romania by the Great Powers depended, in part, on granting the Jews full rights as citizens.  The Romanians did not wish to do this and they kept looking for ways to grant the Jews as little as possible while hoping that the Powers would be satisfied with a minimalist approach.



1880: In today’s review of the recently published A History of Our Own Times: From the Accession of Queen Victoria to the Berlin Congress by Justin McCarty includes a chapter styled “On the True Faith of a Christian” describes the fight to remove the “disabilities of Jews in England, who for so many years were prevented from occupying the seats in Parliament to which they had been elected by” the words in the oath.



1882: “To Make Farmers of Hebrews” published today described the creation of the Maccabees, an organization formed in Cincinnati, Ohio, “to encourage and aid in the promotion of agriculture among” the Jewish people in the United States.  Moses Krohn, Henry Stix, Joseph Abraham, Joseph Trounsine, Alexander Straus, Max Isaacs and Henry Lowenstein are among those who will serve on the new organizations Executive Council.



1882: In Cardiff, Wales, Albert Cahn and the former Matilda Lewis, the daughter of Dr. Sigismund Lewis, gave birth to “businessman, philanthropist and cricket enthusiast” to Sir Julien Cahn, 1stBaronet Cahn of Stanford on Soar.



1883: At the Essex Market Police Court Judge Gardner heard the facts surrounding the row that had taken place last night at Ansche Chesed, a synagogue located on Hester Street.  After hearing the witnesses and the police officers, Gardner told Mr. Korn, one of the congregants, that “he ought to be ashamed of himself for fighting in a sacred place” and fined him $5 for his role in the matter.



1883: “The Jews of Wazan” published today reported that there are 10,000 people living in this Moroccan city, 600 of whom are Jews. Unlike in other cities like the melha, or Jewish quarter, is not “dirtier than any other part of town” and “the well-to-do appearance of the grownups…and pretty laughing faces of the children, show that in Wazan…the ancient race is not subject to persecution.”



1883: “Cremated After Burial” published today described the hassle that had taken place to ensure that the remains of the late Marcus Kronberg were cremated as he had requested; a request that his widow had at first tried to avoid by having him embaled and prepared for a traditional burial.  (The embalming was necessitated by the fact that he had died of typhoid in Chicago but the cemetery was in Washington, PA)



1884: Sara Rock, “a well-formed” 18 year old Polish Jewess sued Kever Leiman for $40, the value of the engagement gifts she said he had given her and that were then taken away by his father.



1884: Henry Lehr went on trial today for the murder of John Wilson in Passaic County, New Jersey.  The Jews of Patterson, NJ, have provided financial support for their co-religionist who claims the shooting was an accident.



1884: “Life in Tenement Houses” published today included a report by “Dr. Simeon New Leo, Chief Sanitary Inspector for the United Hebrew Charities” said that after inspecting numerous downtown tenement houses the “great and crying evil was” the lack “of a proper water supply and bathing facility.”  He also said that the law requiring each tenement dweller “to have 600 cubic feet of air space” need to be enforced and that those buildings that could not comply should be torn down. (Dr. Leo was active in many Jewish organizations including the Young Men’s Hebrew Association whose first meeting was held in his home.)



1885:John Edward Moss, President of Shaar Hashomayim laid the cornerstone for a new synagogue on McGill College Avenue. The building was consecrated in 1886.  It had cost $40,000 to build. 



1885: Moses G. Zalinski, who rose from the rank of Private to the rank of Captain, began serving with the 1st Artillery today.



1886: In Cleveland, Ohio, Anshe Chesed, laid the cornerstone for its new temple today.



1886: In Cleveland, Ohio, a grand ball took place this evening that was attended by city’s “Hebrew elite.”



1887: Isaac and Esther Jacob gave birth to their son Jacob.



1887: In Belz, “Jacob Kremer, a provision master in the army of Czar Nicholas II” and “Anna (nee Rosenbluth) Kremer gave birth to Isabelle “Isa” Yakovlevna Kremer the multi-talented soprano who performed in Europe, the United States and Argentina, who may have been the first woman to bring Yiddish songs to the concert stage in Russia and whose first husband, newspaper editor Israel Heifetz “died while a prisoner at the Nazi concentration camp at Fort Breendonk in the Netherlands.



https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1956/07/09/86641479.pdf



1887: “Claimed By Two Mothers” published today described the custody battle between the Lees, an African-American family and Brodsky, a family of immigrant Jews from Poland over child known as either Nellie Lee or Yetta Brodsky.



1887: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the Rabbi at Temple Beth-El met with a reported from the New York Times so that he could explain the growing popularity of the Reform movement.



1888: Actor’s from Poole’s and the Oriental Theatre met at 56 Orchard Street today where they formed the Hebrew Actor’s Union.



1889: While touring the Middle East, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Constantinople for the first time, which would lead to a second visit in 1898 that would when he would meet with Herzl.



1890: “Charles Frohman’s newly-organized company is scheduled to perform a new play ‘Men and Women’ at the Twenty-third Street Theatre” in New York



1891: Dr. Walter Kempster, one of the U.S. Government Commissioners who sets sail today for the United Sates today having completed his investigation of Russian treatment of the Jewish population “has the highest opinion of the Jewish population…and is boiling over with indignation and horror at the inhuman treatment they are receiving from the Russians.”



1891: Baron and Baroness von Suttner and Professor Nothnagel were among those who founded a society for combatting anti-Semitism today



1892: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band marched in today’s Columbus Day Parade in Harlem.



1892: German histologist and medical author Gustav Jacob Born and Bertha Epstein Born gave birth to their son Wolfgang, the half-brother of Max Born, the physicists who played a critical role in the development of quantum mechanics.  Gretchen Kauffmann, the mother of Max, was Gustav’s first wife.  She passed away after having given birth to Max and his younger sister Käthe. Gustav Born was born in 1862 at Posen.  By the time he passed away in 1900 he had made several contributions in the fields of microscopy and embryology.



1893: “The Week at the Theatres” published today described the upcoming revival of “The Merchant of Venice” in which famed Shakespearian actor Richard Mansfield will play Shylock with a portrayal “that will surely be original” but “also true to Shakespeare” and Beatrice Cameron will play the Jew’s daughter, Portia.



1894: Jacob Siegel and a family of Polish Jews – Hyman, Rosie, Becky and Henry Rubin – were among those injured when a stove exploded causing a fire at the tenement at 60 Orchard Street



1895: In Petach Tikva, Avraham and Liba Rochel Shapira gave birth to Rivka Pinchasovich



1895: In Chicago, “Leopold and Marie (Friedman) Saltiel” gave birth to “Chicago-Kent College Law graduate and WW I U.S. Navy veteran William David Saltiel, the “Assistant Corporate Counsel for the City of Chicago, City Attorney and Special Assistant to the United States Attorney General and husband of Cicely Friedman Haas



1896: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Barnett A. Elzas officiated at the marriage of Melvin M. Israel and Corinna Florance Moses, the daughter of Melvin Israel.



1896:Herzl is elected honorary member of "Kadimah."



1897: Mr. Herman Hart “treated two hundred fifty old soldiers to refreshments” this afternoon while they were attending the Earl’s Court Exhibition free of charge in honor of Trafalgar Day.



1897: In London, the Jewish Board of Guardian Relief Committee me at 3:30 pm today followed by a meeting of the Executive Committee at 5 pm.



1897: The members of the Musical and Dramatic section of the East London Jewish Communal gave a concert at the Poplar Union today.



1897: In London, the House Committee of the Home for Aged Jews met this evening.



1899: “San Toy,” or “The Emperor's Own,” a musical comedy with songs by Paul Alfred Rubens premiered at Daly’s Theatre in London



1900: Today the “new structure” housing the “North-West London Synagogue” “was opened by Sir Marcus Samuel.



1901(8th of Cheshvan, 5661): Faiga Adler passed away today in Pittsburgh, PA.



1905(23rd of Tishrei, 5666): Simchat Torah



1905: Based on information provided Boris Gorb, a 17 year old Jew from Uligania now living in New York, “massacres” began in Ekaterinoslva today”  which would claim the lives of “thousands of Jews” including  his father Simon who “had been mortally wounding defending Dora” his 15 year old daughter.



1907: The Tennessee Volunteers coached by Izzy Levene recovered from their loss at Georgia Tech to defeat Clemson today bring their record to 3 and 1.



1908: Birthdate of Vilnius native Abram Snejder who gained fame as violinist Alexander “Sasha” Schneider, a member of the Budapest String Quartet and the broth of Mischa Schneider



http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/04/arts/alexander-schneider-violon-virtuoso-dies-at-84.html



1910: The Minister of the Interior takes prompt steps to suppress anti-Semitic manifestations at Kirk-Klisse, near Adrianople (Edirne, Turkey).



1912: Birthdate of composer George Solti.



1914: “Threads of Destiny” a silent film about the aftermath of a massacre and exile of thousands of Russian Jews starring Bernard Siegel as “Isaac Gruenstein” was released today in the United States by the Lubin Manufacturing Company.



1915: “Reports submitted” tonight “at the forty-first annual meeting of the United Hebrew Charities at Temple Emanu-El showed that the organization, despite the European war, had given more aid and accomplished more along constructive lines during the past year than in 1914.”



1915(13thof Cheshvan, 5676): Eighty year old “Eliezer Liepman Philip Prins, the Dutch born son of “Raphael (Philip) Liepman Prins and Mietje Benjamin Schapp, the husband of Henriette Jacobson with whom he had 8 children and a long time worker in his “family’s famous carpet business” who moved his family to Frankfurt in 1885 so he could pursue a life devoted to the study of Jewish subjects and whose library “consisting of 6,000 books which was moved to Jerusalem” passed away today.



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/prins-liepman-philip



1915: It was reported today that “two hundred and eighty-six Jews in the German Army have been promoted to be officers and 4,000 Jewish soldiers have been decorated with Iron Crosses,” 16 of which were Iron Crosses First Class.



1916: William M. Ingraham, the acting Secretary of War wrote to J.P. Tumulty, the Secretary to President Wilson acknowledging that Captain Le Roy Eltinger had included remarks in his book that were “derogatory to the Jewish race,” that he had been ordered to ordered to go over the book and remove all such remarks and that “the Jewish race has undoubtedly furnished many able officers and many brave soldiers to all the armies of the world and the department is satisfied that many such are now in our own army.”



1916: Herman Bernstein, Rabbi Joseph Seff, Judge Leon Sanders and Bernard Edelhertz were among the speakers who addressed a rally for Woodrow Wilson at Cooper Union which closed with a prayer for the President’s re-lection delivered by Henry Morgenthau, the former Ambassador to Turkey who is now serving as the Treasurer of the National Democratic Committee.



1916: In California, Mary Antin who was part of the women campaigning for Republican Presidential candidate Charles Evan Hughes “said she had heard that the Jews of the nation were going to vote for President Wilson because he had appointed Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court.” (I guess she had not heard about Louis Marshall and other prominent Jewish leaders who were lifelong Republicans and were supporting Hughes.)



1917: Four days after she had passed away, Bertha Cohen, the daughter of Phillip Joseph Salomons and the former Cecilia Samuels was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”



1917: At a conference held at the Broadway Central Hotel attended by 200 delegates representing various Rumanian Jewish organizations, “a resolution was adopted today urging the dispatch of Jewish commissioner to supervise the distribution of food in Rumania.”



1917: Four days after he had passed away, Noah Simons, the husband of Fanny Simons, was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”



1918: In Brooklyn, Bertha (née Lerner) and Max Himmelfarb gave birth to Milton Himmelfarb an American scholar and brother of Gertrude Mimmelfarm who is famous for his comment on Jewish voting patterns. "Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans."



1918: Today, after one of Corporal Louis Sorrow’s “helpers had been killed and the other wounded by heavy shell fire” Sorrow, who was serving with Company B of the 307th Field Signal Battalion near Fleville “continued on alone and repaired the break in the telephones” – behavior which would be described as a display of “unusual bravery to duty” when he was awarded the “Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism.



1918: Sergeant Abraham Blaustein who had been attending Army Candidate School rejoined his unit, the 165th Regiment, at La Vallone today.



1920: Birthdate of Louis Herman “Red” Koltz the native Philadelphian who played college basketball for Villanova  before turning pro where he spent most of his career playing for teams that were the foil of the Harlem Globetrotters, including the Washington Generals.



1920: The Temple Emanu-El Sisterhood held it semi-quarterly meeting today at 318 East 82nd Street in Manhattan.



1920: Birthdate of Philadelphia native, Louis Herman “Red” Klotz, the Villanova and Philadelphia Sphas basketball player who “was founder and owner of the Washington Generals” the team that always lost to the Harlem Globetrotters.



https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/sports/basketball/red-klotz-beloved-foil-for-globetrotters-dies-at-93.html



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/louis-herman-klotz-basketball-player-and-coach-whose-washington-generals-side-lost-thousands-of-9631500.html



1921: Louis Marshall took up the role of conservationist when “in an address at the University of the State of New York at Albany” delivered today he “argued that ‘the people of this State have been guilty of criminal recklessness in the manner in which they have permitted their magnificent forests to be destroyed.”



1922: The final chapters of the serialized version of Bambi written by Felix Salten (Siegmund Salzmann) for “an adult audience” was published in the Neue Freie Presse today.



1922: Birthdate of Prague native Peter Demetz, “an American literature scholar of Germany and a Sterling Professor at Yale University, who was also the Craig Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rutgers University”



1922: Future Bantamweight Champion Charlie Phil Rosenberg (a product of the Lower East born Charles Green) fought a second bout with Olympic Bantamweight Champion Frankie Genaro



1922: In Paris, Nazi sympathizer Eugene Schueller, “the founder of L’Oreal, one of the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty companies and Louise Madeleine Berthe Doncieux gave birth to their only child, Lilian, the wife of another pro-fascist, anti-Semitic politician Andre Bettencourt with whom she shared similar views until after WW II when she tried to “cleanse” her past.



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/world/europe/liliane-bettencourt-dead-loreal.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=thumb&module=region&region=region&WT.nav=region



1924(23rdof Tishrei, 5685): Simchat Torah



1925: Birthdate of Wolf Stefan Priwin, the native of Berlin and brother of Andre Previn who gained fame as American director and television producer Stephen “Steve” Wolf Previn.



1925: Preferred Pictures, a movie production company formed by B.P. Schulberg in 1919 filed for bankruptcy. This cleared the way for him to join Paramount Pictures and its founder, Adolph Zukor.



1926: Birthdate of Mel Simon the Brooklyn native “who helped shape suburbia developing shopping malls” and who was the co-owner of the N.B.A. Indiana Pacers. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



1926: In Brooklyn Henry and Bertha Sadoff gave birth to Frederick Edward Sadoff, who gained fame as the actor Fred Sadoff whose first role was on Broadway in the musical “South Pacific.”



1926: “The Good Reputation” with a script by Walter Wasserman was released today in Germany and France.



1927 Birthdate of Howard Zieff, the commercial director and ad photographer who stuffed an actor with spicy meatballs in a memorable Alka-Seltzer spot and used an American Indian in print ads to convince people “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye,” and then went on to direct movie comedies



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/movies/25zieff.html?ref=obituaries



1927: “Heimweh” a silent film produced and written by Max Glass was released in Germany today.



1928: Alfred Hugenberg, the German businessman and political leader served in Hitler’s first cabinet was appointed chairman of the conservative German National People’s Party of DNVP.



1930: The Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development or Hope Simpson Report of October 1930 was released today.  The report followed the Arab Riots of 1929.  Prepared by Sir John Hope Simpson, it recommended limited Jewish immigration due to the lack of agricultural land to support it.  The report said nothing about limiting Arab immigration into Palestine.  The Arab population had been growing since WW I thanks in no small measure to the economic improvements brought about by the Jewish population.



1931: After having agreed to work to overthrow the Weimar Republic, conservative political leader Alfred Hugenberg and Adolph Hitler joined together to create a short-lived united front.  Like so many other Hugenberg thought he could control Hitler and instead just ended up being used by him.



1931(10thof Cheshvan, 5692): Sixty-nine year old Austrian playwright and author Arthur Schnitzler, the son of Dr. Johann Schnitzler passed away today. Born in Vienna in 1862, Schnitzer trained to be a physician.  However, he decided to follow his passion and become a playwright and author.  One of his more memorable lines was “If a person knew at twenty how fortunate he is to be twenty, he would get a stroke because of sheer bliss.”



http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/schnitz.htm



1932(21stof Tishrei, 5693): Hoshana Raba



1932: “Trouble in Paradise” a comedy directed and produced by Ernst Lubitsch who also co-authored the script was released in the United States today.



1932: In Baltimore, MD, “a five-story art deco style expansion to the downtown store, described as "Greater Hutzlers", opened” today. “Hutzler's, or Hutzler Brothers Company, was a department store founded in Baltimore by Abram G. Hutzler in 1858. From its beginning as a small dry goods store at the corner of Howard and Clay Streets in Downtown Baltimore, Hutzler's eventually grew into a chain of 10 department stores, all of which were located in Maryland.”



1933: Three weeks after premiering “Footlight Parade” a musical featuring the lyrics of Irving Kahal and the music of Sammy Fain was released in the United States today.



1933: “Walls of Gold” a drama produced by Sol Wurtzel and co-starring Sally Eilers whose mother was the Jewish America Paula (née Schoenberger) Eilers.



1933: Germany withdrew as a member of the League of Nations – a move that was in keeping with Hitler’s contempt for the Versailles Treaty of which the League was a creation. 



1934” “In Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, Samuel and Sarah (Chysyk) Wekselbaum gave birth to Natan Wekselbaum” the owner of Gracious Home, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/obituaries/natan-wekselbaum-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries



1935: Hank Greenberg was named the American League Most Valuable Player in a unanimous vote by sportswriters.


1936: In Philadelphia, Miss Susan Brandeis, the daughter of Louis Brandeis sat on the platform when Hadassah members “pledged to plant 10,000 trees in Palestine as a tribute to Justice Brandeis on his 80th birthday” which will be celebrated on November 13.


1936: Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary told a meeting that “one remedy being considered” to deal with Oswald Mosely and his Fascists “is the creation of special ‘danger areas’ where political processions and demonstrations could not be held during a specified period” “which would prevent the Fascists from concentrating in the future in Leeds, Manchester and the East End of London, the largest centers of Jewish population in England.”


1936:  “A course on modern Palestine, for which alertness credits will be given to teachers” which will be taught by Abraham Revusky, author of Jews in Palestine is scheduled to meet for the first time this evening at the Brooklyn Jewish Center.


1937(16th of Cheshvan, 5698):American rabbi Henry (Haim) Pereira Mendes passed away.  According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, this son of Abraham Pereira Mendes was born in Birmingham, England. He was educated at Northwick College (rabbinics), at University College (London), and at the University of the City of New York, taking the degree of M.D. He became minister of the Manchester (England) Sephardic congregation in 1874, and in 1877 was called to the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York, of which he is still (1904) the minister. In 1881 he was one of the founders of the New York Board of Ministers, and acted as its secretary from its foundation up to 1901, when he became president. He joined Dr. Morais in helping to establish the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1886, of which he became secretary of the advisory board and professor of history. On the death of Dr. Morais he became acting president of the faculty until the appointment of Dr. S. Schechter. In 1884, the centennial of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore, he moved his congregation to convene the leading Jews of New York to mark the event by some practical work: the outcome was the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, established in the same year. He was made vice-president of the Gild for Crippled Children in 1896, and in 1901 established the Jewish branch of that gild. He promoted the formation of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of the United States and Canada (1897) and was subsequently elected its president. Mendes was one of the founders of the Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York (1902), of whose advisory board he is chairman. In Zionism, Mendes stands specially for its spiritual aspect; he served as vice-president of the American Federation of Zionists and was a member of the Actions Committee of Vienna (1898-99). The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1904. In conjunction with his brother Frederick de Sola Mendes, and others, he was one of the founders of "The American Hebrew” in 1879, to whose columns, as to those of the general press, he is a frequent contributor. He is the author of Union Primer and Reading Book (1882); Jewish History Ethically Presented (1895); Looking Ahead, a plea for justice to the Jew (1900); The Jewish Religion Ethically Presented (1904). Among his other writings are: In Old Egypt, stories about, but not from, the Bible;Esther; Judas Maccabæus; and many essays in periodical publications.


1937: The Palestine Post reported the death at 66 in New York of Felix Warburg, the banker and a great philanthropist, the leader of the non-Zionist group of the Jewish Agency.  Born in Germany in 1871, Warburg eventually became a senior partner in the firm of Kuhn, Loeber and Co where he played an active role in the financial aspects of the industrial development of the United States.  Warburg engaged a wide variety of philanthropic activities.  “Although not a political Zionist, Warburg was involved in a variety of projects designed to develop Eretz Israel.  He was a co-founder of the Jewish Agency and founder of Hebrew University.  He actively protested British attempts to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine.  His former home on Fifth Avenue is now the Jewish Museum.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish constable, Eliahu Shitreet, was seriously wounded by an Arab terrorist in Haifa.



1937: The Palestine Post reported that the new Mandatory Ordinance introduced a more limited definition of a family and "dependants," further limiting the number of Jews eligible to immigrate under this category.



1937: Attendees at a dinner hosted by the New York-Brooklyn Federal of Jewish Charities paid tribute to the memory of the late Felix Warburg.  Ironically, the dinner had originally been planned as tribute to Warburg’s son, Paul Felix Warburg, “head of the business men’s council of the federation.”



1937: In Jerusalem, Avinoan Yellin, inspector of the Jewish Schools in the Government Department of Education was shot by an Arab gunman who ambushed him as walked towards his offices.  Yellin, the son of Hebrew University Professor David Yellin, was taken to Hadassah Hospital where his condition was described as “grave” following surgery.



1937: “The Awful Truth” a comedy written by Viña Delmar with an uncredited assist from Sidney Buchman was released in the United States today by Columbia Pictures.



1938: “In direct contravention of the recently signed Munich Agreement, Adolf Hitler circulated among his high command a secret memorandum stating that they should prepare for the "liquidation of the rest of Czechoslovakia" and the occupation of Memel.”



1939: Birthdate of James D.G. “Jimmy” Dunn, the English born New Testament Scholar who has followed in the footsteps of E.P. Sander in working on “redefining Palestinian Judaism in order to correct the Christian view of Judaism as a religion of works-rightousness.”



1939:  Penn State, led by their captain Sidney “Spike” Alter were held scoreless by Cornell as they lost their first game of the year.



1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan



1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Residents of the Jewish community at Koidanov, Belorussia, are murdered.



1941(30th of Tishrei, 5702): Thousands of Jews are murdered at Kraljevo, Yugoslavia.



1941: The first transport of Jews left Cologne, Germany for the Lodz Ghetto.



1942:  In Brooklyn, Dr. Murray Blum and Ethel Silverman gave birth to Judith Susan Blum who as Judith Sheindlin gained fame as “Judge Judy”



http://www.judgejudy.com/



1942(10th of Cheshvan, 5703): At Szczebrzeszyn, the final Jews remaining were rounded up in a night of fierce and deadly slaughter. Those who were not shot were taken to Belzec. In Zwierzyniec, more Jews were rounded up. The guards all carried walking sticks that they would use to pull out Jews who lagged behind as they were marched to the town square. Those pulled out where shot on the spot.



1942(10thof Cheshvan, 5703): Eighty-four year old Helene (Goldschmidt) Tedesco, the daughter of Selig Meier Goldschmidt and Clementine Goldschmidt and the wife of Leon Yehuda Tedesco passed away today in Marseilles.



1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): Shmini Atzeret



1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): The last surviving 2,000 residents of the Minsk ghetto were rounded up and killed in pits outside the city.



1943: Lucie Auerbach, who was six month pregnant, led an ambush in which five German guards and truck drivers were killed while members of the French resistance rescued 13 of their comrades including her husband Raymond had been held by the Gestapo at Montluc.



1943(22nd of Tishrei, 5704): During the final Aktion in Minsk, Belorussia, about 2000 Jews are murdered at Maly Trostinets.



1944: Birthdate of Marilyn "Mandy" Rice-Davies, the British show girl whose involvement in a “Sex Scandal” brought down the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and later would convert to Judaism and marry an Israeli.



1944: The retreating Nazis burned trunk loads of files, documents and papers concerning the Jews of Birkenau. The Germans were busy destroying the evidence of their evil. At the same time thousands of Jews would be sent away from Birkenau. The human evidence was being moved as well. Tens of thousands would die from hunger, cruelty and the raw elements as they marched from the concentration camp towards central Germany. Some would eventually find their way to Dachau and Stutthof.



1944 (4th of Cheshvan, 5705):  Frances Y. Slanger, R.N. died in Elsenborn, Belgium, a victim of a German artillery attack. She was the first American nurse to die in Europe after the June 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy. She was 31 years old. On the night before she died, Slanger had written a letter to the Stars and Stripes military newspaper, on behalf of military nurses, praising American G.I.'s and thanking the wounded for the privilege of easing their pain and sharing some of their hardships. Featured on the newspaper's editorial page by editors who did not know of her death, Slanger's letter evoked a deep response. When the news of her death was published, Stars and Stripes received an unparalleled outpouring of letters from its moved readership. Charles Sawyer, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium speaking of Slanger, said "if there is in heaven and in our hearts a special shrine for those who have given the most and the best, it is held sacred for the American nurse." Born in Poland, Slanger came to Boston, Massachusetts when she was seven years old with her family. She helped her father, a fruit peddler, while she attended high school. She graduated from the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing in 1937 and entered hospital work. In 1943, she enlisted in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and attended the first nursing basic training program at Fort Devens. In Europe, she worked as part of a surgical team on the front lines.In June 1945, a cruise ship, refurbished as a hospital ship to return wounded American soldiers from Europe, was commissioned as the Frances Y. Slanger. In November 1947, her body was returned to Boston for reburial. More than a thousand people, including the mayor of Boston, paid their respects.(As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archive)



1946: The HMS Moon, a British minesweeper captured the SS Alma off the coast of Lebanon and towed her to Haifa.  The vessel contained 800 Jewish refugees trying to enter Palestine despite the White Paper and the British Blockade.  According to reports by the British, the Jews “took strong but unsuccessful action” in an attempting to prevent British sailors from boarding the Alma and tying tow ropes to the vessel.  The British claim that no Jews were injured or killed.  The Stern Gang used rumors about harm that had come to the refugees to issue a shoot to kill order aimed at British soldiers and sailors.



1947: “In the little town of Raanan on the coastal plain between Tel Aviv and Nathanya a new children’s village and farm school was dedicated today by the Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America.”  Initially the facility will be home to 170 holocaust survivors ranging in age between 5 and 17 years of age who have been living in displaced persons camps in Cyprus or at the Athlitit detention center.  The village will eventually be able to house anywhere from 300 to 500 children.



1947: The UNSCOP majority report with its recommendation of partition was sent to the UN General Assembly with the approval of both the United States and the Soviet Union.



1948: Israeli naval vessels supported by planes from the Israeli Air Force shelled Egyptian positions in Gaza.



1948: At four in the morning, Israeli troops attack the fortified positions of the Egyptians outside of Beersheba.  The Egyptians are taken by surprise since they did not know that the Israelis had opened the road to the Negev two days earlier.  The Egyptians surrendered and the ancient place to which Abraham returned after “the binding of Isaac” was in Jewish hands.



                                                                   Or



1948: During Operation Moseh, which was named after “Moshe Albert who fell defending the besieged Beit Eshel” “the Negev Brigade and 8th Armored Brigade attacked Beersheba from the west. Another force joined them from the north. The Egyptian army garrison consisted of 500 soldiers with some light artillery. They put up some resistance for five hours before surrendering.



1948: Twenty-three year old Abraham Abarzel the native of Algeria and member of the French Commando Company of the Palmach Hanegev’s 9th Battalion evacuated to Kibbutz Dorot after being “mortally wounded in the battle for the capture of Beersheba.”



1948: During Operation Ha-Har, “Moshe ("Morris") Ben-Dror, the commander of the Fifth Battalion, put together a battle corps consisting of two companies of riflemen, a support company and saboteurs, who were instructed to take Bayt Nattif and to destroy its houses, whose inhabitants had fought against the Convoy of thirty-five fallen soldiers who were sent to aid their beleaguered comrades in Gush Etzion



1949: Birthdate of rightwing Israeli politician and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu



1952: In Beverly Hills, CA, Phoebe and Henry Ephron gave birth to Amy Ephron the multi-dimensional author whose work includes A Cup of Tea and One Sunday Morning.



1952:The Jerusalem Post reported that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion met "Hazon Ish," the supreme authority on interpretation of the Jewish law for extreme Orthodox Jewry. After an hour of animated discussion the area of disagreement between the two leaders remained fundamentally as wide as ever, but they came closer on the need for the mutual understanding. “Hazon Ish” was the appellation applied to the famed Talmud scholar Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz.  Born in Poland in 1878, he moved to Eretz Israel in 1933.  He settled in B’nai B’rak  (yes the same place mentioned in the Haggadah) where he severed as communal leader while writing forty books on a variety of religious topics. Although principally an academic scholar, he applied himself to practical problems such as the use of milking machines on Shabbat and the cultivation of hydroponics during the sabbatical year, when it is forbidden to cultivate land in Eretz Yisrael. He was even once consulted by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion on the question of drafting young women to the Israel Defense Forces.  He passed away in 1953.



1953: In Hampstead Garden Suburb, Middlesex, Norman Mandelson, the grandson of the founder of the Harrow United Synagogue and “advertising manager of The Jewish Chronicle and the former Mary Joyce Morrison gave birth to Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, “a British Labour politician, president of international think tank Policy Network and Chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel.”



1954:The City of Hope Auxiliary of San Diego is scheduled to honor the member of its Founder and President for 17 years, Anna Shelley, with a Memorial Fund Luncheon at 12 noon at the Beth Jacob Center.



1954: In Connecticut, Barbara (Freedman) Berg and film producer Dick Berg, gave birth to guitarist and record producer Antony Rains “Tony” Berg, “an A&R exec with Geffen records, the brother of Pulitzer Prize winning author A. Scott Berg and business executive Jeff Berg  and the father of musician Elizabeth Anne “Z’ Berg.



1954: “Casino Royale,” “a live 1954 television adaptation of the novel of the same name” co-starring Peter Lorre was broadcast for the first time today.



1956: An Off-Broadway production of “Johnny Johnson” a musical with music by Kurt Weill directed by Stella Adler co-starring Gene Saks opened at the Little Carnegie Playhouse at Carnegie Hall.



1956: Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe appeared as contestants on the panel quiz show “What’s My Line?”



1956: Sid Gillman’s Los Angeles Rams lost their third straight game when they were defeated by the Green Bay Packers bring their record to a miserable 1 and 3.



1958: Following Gracie Allen’s retirement, CBS broadcast the first episode of “The George Burns Show” the first attempt by Burns to perform without Allen since the two hooked up in the days of Vaudeville.



1959: In New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened to the public. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  This is yet another example of Jewish philanthropy for the civil society.


1959: U.S. premiere of “A Bucket of Blood” a satire with music by composer and cellist Fred Katz.


1961: Seventy-seven year old “Walter Edward Sachs,” a “limited partner in Goldman, Scahs” married his third wife Virginia Maitland today.


1961: Author James Michener purchased a painting by Morris Louis, the great Jewish Washington abstractionist whom kingmaker-critics would anoint as the greatest painter since Jackson Pollock.


1962(23 of Tishrei, 5723): Simcaht Torah


1962: The Observer reported today that “during a public debate of the case for a referendum on whthere to the European Economic Community” “British historian and Conservative peer Max Beloff “argued that a referendum is not meaningful unless clear alternatives are set before the electorate; in the absence of such clarity, ‘the electorate would…be doing no more than indicating a very general bias one way or another.


1962: “The Century 21 Exposition” also known as the Seattle World’s Fair for which Lawrence Halprin provided the “master landscaping plan” came to a conclusion today.


1965: Helen Schucman commits the first lines of A Course in Miracles to paper.  Dr. Helen Schucman was a Jewish research psychologist who was a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University.


1966(7th of Cheshvan, 5727): Sixty-nine year old Lewis Coleman Cohen, Baron Cohen of Brighton, the son of a Hastings jeweler under whose leadership the Alliance Building Society “grew into one of the largest and most successful building societies in Britain and who “chaired the inaugural meeting of the Labour Friends of Israel” passed away today.


196717th of Tishrei, 5728): Third Day of Sukkoth


196717th of Tishrei, 5728): An Egyptian missile attack sank the Eilat an Israeli ship 13 miles away from Port Said which meant the attack that cost the lives of 48 Israelis, took place in international waters.  Israeli artillery opened up all along the Suez Canal setting the refineries at Suez City on firing thus forcing the evacuation of thousands of Egyptians.


1967: First broadcast of “Twice a Fortnight” co-starring Abba Eban’s nephew Jonathan Lynn.


1967: “Jerusalem of Gold, Israel Festival Song, Strikes Gold” published today descried how “a song originally commissioned by the May of Jerusalem for the 1967 Israel Song Festival in May has become, since the Six Day War, one of the biggest hits ever.”


1970: “Little Fauss and Big Halsy” a comedy produced by Albert S. Ruddy was released today.


1971: For the first time BBC 1 broadcast “Edna, the Inebriate Woman,” produced by Irene Shubik and featuring June Brown.


1973: Yitamar Barne’a and Gil Haran ejected from their F-4E Phantom Jet after it fell victim to a Syrian MIG-21, the most advanced Soviet aircraft of that period.  Barne’a was taken prisoner.  It is unclear as to whether Haran was captured or killed.


1973: “Israeli forces, led by reserve Maj. Gen. Avraham Adan, encircled the Egyptian Third Army while forces led by Sharon take up positions less than 40 miles from Cairo.”


1973: During the Battle of Ismailia, Egyptian forces “abandoned the Touscan strong point” after having beat off an attack by the Israelis while other Israeli forces who had “attacked Heneidac at dawn…captured the position before noon.”


1973: Israeli forces sustained serious casualties as they fought to re-capture Mount Hermon from the Syrians.  The Israelis referred to the 8,200 high mountain as “the eyes of the State of Israel.”  Henry Kissinger flew from Moscow to Tel Aviv where he pressured the Israelis into accepting a cease fire.  Kissinger and the Israelis knew that the Egyptian Third Army which was on the east bank of the Suez Canal was on the verge of annihilation.  Kissinger claimed that such a crushing defeat would weaken Sadat and keep him from making any kind of political settlement in the future.  There are those who contend that Sadat was able to sign a peace treaty with Israel because he felt that Arab honor had been redeemed in 1973.  Others contend that Sadat also made peace because in 1973, the Egyptians with every possible military advantage still could not defeat Israel and that there was no point in continuing the endless hostilities.


1973: “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams” a female midl-life crisis movie for which Sylvia Sidney received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, co-starring Martin Balsam, featuring Dori Brenner in her screen debut, directed by Gilbert Gates, written by Stewart Stern and with music by Johnny Mandel was released today in the United States.


1975: “Hadassah rededicated the rebuilt and refurbished Hadassah University Hospital at Mount Scopus.”


 


1975: “Fifty-two British MPs signed a motion condemning Soviet treatment of Professor Levich and urging the Soviet government to honor the Helsinki agreement.”


1975: “The USSR permanent mission at the UN protested demonstrations by ‘Zionist hooligan groups.’”


1976: Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature


1976: Victor Elistratov, Mikhail Kremen, Arkady Polishchuk and Boris Chernobilsky were taken away by police today after a demonstration in Moscow in which the protestors wore yellow stars on their chests.


1979: Birthdate of Israeli jazz guitarist and composer Assaf Kehati.


1981(23rdof Tishrei, 5742): Simchat Torah


1981: Ninety-eight year old Frances Taussig, “a past president of the American Association of Social Work” passed away today.



1982: Following his death yesterday, the coffin of Leib Gurwicz, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Gateshead Yeshiva in Gateshead, England “was carried by his past and present pupils through the streets of Gateshead, past the synagogue and kollel and taken to the Newcastle Airport on the first league of a journey that will end with burial in Israel tomorrow.


1982: Space epic “The Right Stuff” directed by Philip Kaufman who also wrote the screenplay and produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff had a limited release in the United States today.


1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff arrived in Lebanon to lead a memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert, an American Jewish Marine killed by Arab sniper fire.


1983: U.S. premiere of “The Dead Zone” a horror film directed by David Cronenberg.


1984: In Hackensack, NJ, funeral services were held today for seventy-one year old “retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge and graduate of what is now Rutgers Law School  Morris Malech” the decorated WW II veteran and husband of “the former Freda Lipowitz” with whom he had two sons – Harry and Edward.


1986: During “Operation Wrath of God” Munzer Abu Ghazala, a senior PLO official and member of the Palestinian National Council, was killed by a bomb as he drove through a suburb of Athens


1987: Former Miss America Bess Myerson is arrested on charges of bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud, all involving an alimony-fixing scandal. She is later found not guilty.


1988: Today Israeli Army officials reported that the Palestinian arrested in the grenade assault on Monday that wounded 67 Israelis, including 24 soldiers, confessed to several recent terrorist incidents. The suspect, Salem Rajab al-Sarsour, 29, an Islamic militant, admitted the assault on the Beersheba bus terminal, a similar grenade attack late last month on an army post in Hebron, and the fatal stabbing of an elderly rabbi, also in Hebron, in late August, the Israeli officials said.


1988: “Mystic Pizza” on which David Stern worked as a production assistant which was “one of his first gigs in L.A.” was released in the United States today.


1990(2ndof Cheshvan, 5751): On Yair Street in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bak’a 19 year old terrorist Omar Said Salah Abu Sirhan stabbed Iris Azulai as she walked out of her house after which she murdered Eli Altaretz and Shalom “Charlie” Chelouche.


1990: Jewish actor Alan Rosenberg, the President of the Screen Actors Guild and his wife Marg Helgenberger gave birth to their first child, Hugh Howard Rosenberg.


1993(6th of Cheshvan, 5754): Seventy-five year old Long Island University basketball star who went on to play in the NBA passed away today in Florida.



1994: “The Puppet Master” a sci-film with a script by David S. Goyer and featuring Yaphet Kotto and Richard Belzer was released in the United States today by Buena Vista Pictures.


1995(27th of Tishrei, 5756): Eighty-three year old Jack Rose, the Russian immigrant who began as a gag writer for Milton Berle and Bob Hope before pursuing a career as a screenwriter.


1998:Sergio Mattarella, who when he became President of Italy condemned the attack by Palestinian terrorists on the Great Synagogue of Rome  began serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy today.


2000(22nd of Tishrei, 5761): Shemini Atzeret


2000: The BBC broadcast “Nations” part 4 of “A History of Britain” presented by Simon Schama.


2001: The Sunday New York Times features reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including A History of Britain Volume II: The Wars of the British, 1603-1776 by Simon Schama, Cultivating Delight:  A Natural History of My Garden by Diane Ackerman and Too Close To Call: TheThirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election by Jeffrey Toobin.


2002(15th of Cheshvan, 5763): A car packed with explosives pulled up to a bus in northern Israel during rush hour, igniting a massive fireball that killed 14 people along with two suicide attackers.


2002(15th of Cheshvan, 5763): Ninety-three year old German born Australian mathematician Bernhard Hermann Neumann passed away today.



2003: Exactly one year after a suicide bomber killed 14 Israeli bus riders, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Israel tear down a barrier being built as an anti-terrorist measure.  The U.N. objects to what critics claim is the “jutting the fence into the West Bank.”


2004:  An Israeli air strike in Gaza City killed Adnan al-Ghoul,a leading Hamas weapons maker who was responsible for some of the group’s most powerful bombs and its homemade rockets, Israel’s military said.


2005: The Icon Festival comes to an end at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. The Icon Festival, a celebration of science fiction and the imagination is held yearly during the Chol Hamoed period of Sukkoth. 


2005:  As a testimony to the vibrancy and creativity of Israeli society, Haaretz reported that “Lumenis, the developer, manufacturer and seller of laser and light-based devices for medical, aesthetic, ophthalmic, dental and veterinary applications, has announced the launch of a series of new products over the past two weeks. First, Lumenis demonstrated its FDA-approved AquaLite dental laser system at the American Dental Association convention and released it for sale.This week, the Yokne’am-based company announced that it had received FDA clearance to market the new Selecta family of lasers and would introduce a total of eight new ophthalmic lasers and delivery devices. All eight have received FDA approval.” One can only imagine how much more the Israeli scientific community could accomplish if the nation was not having to spend so much of its resources in a battle of survival with those Arabs and Moslems dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state


2005(18th of Tishrei, 5766): Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


2005(18th of Tishrei, 5767): Rabbi Hermann Naftali Neuberger, the President of Ner Israel and the man who helped to save 60,000 Persian Jews.  His legacy includes three sons who became prominent rabbis in their own right and two other sons who became prominent members of the legal profession.



2006: David Samson, the President of the Miami Marlins “completed the Ford Ironman World Championship Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii” making him “the only team president of a major U.S. sports franchise to have completed the Ironman Triathlon.”


2006(29th of Tishrei, 5767): Eighty-eight year old Milton Selzer whose career began during “the Golden Age of Television” passed away today.




2006: Palestinian terrorists fired four Kassam rockets at the western Negev, a day after several other rockets hit Israel. All of them landed in open areas, causing no injuries or damage. Seventy year old


2007(9th of Cheshvan, 5768): Seventy year old “R. B. Kitaj, an American artist who became influential in Britain with figurative and Pop Art paintings that ran against the grain of 1960s and ’70s abstraction” passed away today.  (As reported by Martha Schwendener)



2007(9th of Cheshvan, 5768): Ninety-two year old art dealer Ileana Sonnabend passed away today. (As reported by Robert Smith)



2007: A 10-day klezmer festival featuring over 100 klezmer musicians comes to an end in New York.


2007: In “A Counter History” published today, Alex Witchel traces the history of the New York deli and the role of Abe Lebewohl, who started the 2nd Avenue Deli in 1954. (Editor’s note – the 2nd Avenue Deli makes the best tongue on pumpernickel sandwich in the world and their meat knishes are beyond compare.)



2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section features Marvin Kalb’s review of Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War by Howard Kurtz and The Siege of Mecca: The forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov.


2007: The Sunday New York Times book section features reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex by Andrew Wilson, The Conscience of Liberal by Paul Krugman, Supercapitalism by Robert Reich, Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoirby  Shalom Auslander, Weimar Germany: :Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz, The Last Chicken In America, Ellen Litman’s elegantly constructed web of stories about Russian-Jewish immigrants living in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, The Sabotage Café by Joshua Furst fiction editor of Zeek and Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith.


2007: The Chicago Tribune carried a front page story entitled “How Holocaust heroine rescued 2,500 children” that told the story of how four Kansas high school students “discovered” and publicized the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker an unsung Polish heroine of the Holocaust


2007: the State Senate voted to oppose the Elliot Spitzer plan to issue special driver’s licenses to immigrant workers without requiring proof of legal immigration status by a 39–19 vote


2007: The latest adaptation of I.L. Peretz’s “A Night in the Old Marketplace” has its last performance at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, PA. The musical is the creation of composer Frank London.


 


2007:Archeologists overseeing contested Islamic infrastructure work on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount have stumbled upon a sealed archeological level dating back to the First Temple period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Sunday. The find marks the first time that archeological remains dating back to the First Temple period have been found on the contested holy site, the state-run archeological body said.


2008(22nd of Tishrei, 5769): Shemini Atzeret,


2008:Inside the grand Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in this bustling seaside city, five mostly elderly women and a middle-aged man from the Jewish community here gathered this evening to commemorate the holiday of new beginnings: Simhat Torah. For the dwindling Jewish community of Alexandria, where fewer than 25 members now remain, six local attendees is nearly par for the course. And new beginnings seem far away. The last minyan witnessed by the synagogue was last Yom Kippur, when participants sent by the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and several foreign visitors attended services


2008: The Israeli feature film Seven Minutes in Heaven, directed by newcomer Omri Givon, took the top award in its hotly contested category at the 24th Haifa International Film Festival, which ended tonight.


2008: Ruth Gruber, Journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian and U.S. government official “was honored for her work defending free expression by the National Coalition Against Censorship.


2008: “The National Coalition Against Censorship honored Anthony Lewish for his work in the area of First Amendment rights and free expression.”


2009: Closing session of the National Jewish Democratic Conference Washington Conference.


2009:Freelance writer David Sax discusses his new book, Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.


2009:The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival feature programs centered around Morris Dickstein’s  Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression  and Shana Liebman’s Sex, Drugs and Gefilte Fish: The Heeb Storytelling Collection


2009:The IDF and the US military are scheduled to begin a major joint air defense exercise today, highlighting military ties between the two allies at a time of heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.


2009:The Anti-Defamation League said today that despite the apology of two South Carolina Republican Party chairmen for characterizing Jews as penny-pinchers, “they need to do more to publicly disavow their words and to understand why their remarks were so insensitive.”


2009: The Senate plenum and executive council of Tel Aviv University approved the appointment of Professor Joseph Klafter as the school’s 8th president.


2009(3rdof Cheshvan, 5770: English mystery writer Lionel Davidson passed away. In 1966, he won his second Gold Dagger for A Long Way to Shiloh which was published in the United States as The Menorah Men, a story that revolves around the search for a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. The story draws from the Copper Scroll found at Qumran in 1952, which lists buried treasure.


2010: Samuel Heilman is scheduled to deliver The Bernard Wexler Lecture on Jewish Historybased on The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneersonat The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, DC.


2010: Artist Noam Braslavsky unveiled a life-sized sculpture of Sharon in a hospital bed with an IV drip at the Kishon Gallery in Tel Aviv.


2010(13th of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-one year old pianist and author Natasha Spender, the daughter of Jewish refugees from Lithuania who was “the second wife of poet Sir Stephen Spender” who had Jewish members in his family tree, passed away today.



2010:The Chief Rabbinical Council today formed a committee to examine the conversion processes not only in the IDF but also in the State Conversion Authority. Five senior rabbis will be presenting their findings to Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief IDF Rabbi Rafi Peretz within four months.The Reform and Masorti movements slammed the rabbinate for its decision, and Kadima called on the rabbinate to find any possible way to ease the path of those seeking to join the Jewish nation.


2011(23rd of Tishrei, 5772): Simchat Torah


2011:A brushfire broke out between Kibbutz Yasur and Moshav Ahihud in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel today. 24 fire engines and five firefighting aircraft are being used in an effort to contain the blaze. Dozens of area residents have been evacuated from their homes. No injuries have been reported, thus far. Highway 70 has been closed between the Ahihud and Yavor junctions, causing heavy traffic in the region. The cause of the blaze is as of yet unknown.


2011:The Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court agreed to a police request today to extend the remand of 14 people arrested during a rally outside the Sharon prison last night. Police suspect that the eight men and six women arrested called for more IDF soldiers to be kidnapped and for additional Palestinian security prisoners to be released during the demonstration outside the Sharon district prison. Judge Aviva Talmor ruled to extend the detention of the suspects, who include 11 Israeli Arabs and three Jewish Israelis, for another four days in order to allow police to continue their investigation. According to police, the demonstrators were bused in to the area and began waving Palestinian flags while shouting slogans.  Police and Border Police asked the demonstrators to disperse after informing them that they were holding an illegal rally. Warrant officer Yaniv Hindai, for the police, submitted a confidential investigation report to the court and requested that an additional charge of assaulting police officers be added to one suspect, Hamadeh Qasem. However, lawyers for the arrested men and women, who include attorney Orna Cohen of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, deny that the demonstrators had called for the abduction of additional IDF soldiers. The suspects’ attorneys also claimed that the demonstrators had only referred to the release of three Arab-Israeli women prisoners in the Hadarim prison who had not been included in the deal to release Gilad Schalit. In extending the suspects’ remand, Judge Talmor noted that police had carried out a “consistent, responsible and professional investigation” and that evidence submitted had raised a reasonable suspicion that each of the 14 people arrested were linked to the alleged offenses.


2011: Today, as a freshman at the University of Michigan, Zach Hyman “scored the first goal of his collegiate career.”


2011:Theo Epstein officially resigned as general manager of the Red Sox late Friday night to accept the position of Cubs president of baseball operations. The announcement was made in a joint news release after some cajoling from Major League Baseball, which was upset the two teams’ contentious negotiations for compensation regarding Epstein is a distraction from the World Series.


2012: The Los Angeles Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Who Could That Be at This Hour?  By Lemony Snicket (who is really David Handler, the son of Lou Handler a Jewish accountant)


2012: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including the recently released paperback edition of Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore.


2012: Carl Bernstein is scheduled to address a luncheon sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington


2012: Jeanne Golan is scheduled to perform the second and final, in a series of recitals featuring the complete piano sonatas of Viktor Ullman at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center


2012: The Wiener Library, “the world’s oldest Holocaust memorial institution,” is scheduled to host an Open Day as part of the Bloomsbury Festival, which will give a wider audience a chance to view the new temporary exhibition, ‘Rescues of the Holocaust: Remembering Raoul Wallenberg and Lives Saved’. 


2012: In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Temple Judah is scheduled to sponsor “Yiddish Café & Cabaret” featuring Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel (Temple Judah Confirmation class of 1973), “the Java Jews” (Des Moines gift to klezmer) and Dr. Bill Carson, director of bands at Coe College.


2012: Former Mossad chief and Yesh Sikuy director Meir Dagan is facing the threat of assassination by an Iranian hit squad as he recovers from a liver transplant in Belarus, The Sunday Times reported.



2012: Israel’s security forces are being tested rigorously in the upcoming days as they take part in two major drills aimed to test their ability to face both natural disasters and war. The largest-ever joint Israeli and American military drill began today at the same time that the country’s emergency services were participating in their first earthquake preparedness drill.



2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present “Sex, Yiddish and the Law: Jewish Life in Metz in the 18th Century”


2013: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS), is scheduled to host a seminar, Introduction to Holocaust Studies through the International Tracing Service (ITS) Collection at the Wiener Library, designed for advanced undergraduate, master’s-level and first-year PhD students.


2013(17thof Cheshvan, 5773): Seventy-two year old New York City “budget maven” Paul Dickstein passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



2013: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was announced today as the winner of the first Genesis Prize, a $1 million award dubbed “the Jewish Nobel Prize.” (As reported by Lazar Berman)



2013: Two mortar shells fired from Syria, likely spillover from the bloody civil war in the country, landed on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights today near Tel Fares. (As reported by Lazar Berman)


2013: An Opera Fights Hungary’s Rising Anti-Semitism published today described how Ivan Fischer’s “The Red Heifer” is being used to combat rising anti-Jewish sentiment.



2014: In Glencoe, Illinois, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to host a screening of the documentary “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus.”


2014: The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to present Zachary Lazar, author of I Pity the Poor Immigrant and “Art Spiegelman’s WORDLESS! With music by Phillip Johnston.


2014: “A monumental Roman inscription bearing the name of Emperor Hadrian, which surfaced in Jerusalem during salvage excavations earlier this year, was displayed to the public by the Israel Antiquities Authority today.” (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)



2014: “Former Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar was elected as the new Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, with 28 votes, while Rabbi Aryeh Stern of the Halacha Brura Institute was voted in as Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi with 27.” (As reported by Hezki Ezra)



2015: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to present a screening of “The World Was Ours, an award-winning one-hour documentary narrated by the award-winning actor, Mandy Patinkin that explores the vibrant and creative life of the Jewish community of Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) between the two World Wars.”


2015: “All 19 Jewish House lawmakers slammed UNESCO for its vote charging Israel with changing the status quo at a Jerusalem holy site.”


2015: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pounded today with a barrage of condemnations after he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler only decided on the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews after receiving input on the matter from Jerusalem’s then-grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist widely acknowledged as a fervent Jew-hater.” (As reported by Adiv Sterman and Raphael Ahren)


2015(8thof Cheshvan, 5776): Seventy-nine year old comedian Marty Ingels passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2015: One rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an open area in southern Israel tonight. The code red sirens sounded in the Sha’ar HaNegev and Sdot Negev Regional Councils next to the Gaza border, but the projectile landed in The Sha’ar HaNegev area.


2016(19thof Tishrei, 5777): Fifth Day of Sukkot


2016: Leonard Cohen is scheduled “to release his 14th studio album ‘You Want It Darker’ today.



2016: “American Pastoral” the movie version of Philip Roth’s award winning novel opened in 15 theatres across the United States today.


2016: “Keeping Up with the Jones,” a spy-spoof featuring Gal Gadot which had premiered was released in the rest of the United States today.


 


2016: “The Israeli-American seven-piece group Anbessa Orchestra” is scheduled to perform at Barbes in Brooklyn, NY.


2016: In Jerusalem, the Admaya Conference is scheduled to come to an end “with workshops, techniques and displays of earth building” that will be of interest to “the whole family.”


2016: “Denial” comes to the “heartland” with the scheduled opening of the film today at two theatres in Des Moines, Iowa.


2017(1stDay of Cheshvan 5778): Parashat Noach and Second Day Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2017: The Lincoln Center Cinema is scheduled to host a screening of “Aida’s Secrets” followed by a Q & A with directors Alon and Shaul Schwarz.


2017: In the United Kingdom, Trafalgar Day when Englishmen and Anglophiles pay homage to the memory of Lord Nelson, his victory and the sailor who served with him including those who trained by reading Sir Alexander Schomberg’s “A Sea Manual recommended to the Young Officers of the Royal Navy as a Companion to the Signal Book.”


2018: Rob Snyder, author Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City, is “scheduled to lead a walking tour and panel discussion in the northern Manhattan neighborhood once known as “Frankfurt on the Hudson” for its large population of German-Jewish refugees.”


2018: In Atlanta, Helen Weingarten, “who entered Auschwitz as one of five sisters” of whom only four survived and who “narrowly escaped death when the 500 women she was with were redirected from the entrance to the gas chambers and sent to Germany for slave labor” is scheduled to speak at the Breman Museum this afternoon.


2018: Sarina Roffé, a professional genealogist, founder of the Sephardic Heritage Project, and author of Branching Out from Sepharad: A Global Journey of Selected Rabbinic Families with Biographies and Genealogies which outlines the history and expulsion of Jews in Spain, their history in Syria, and immigration to the Americas” is scheduled to “discuss the Kassin rabbinic dynasty from the 12th century through the 50-year leadership of Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin in Brooklyn, and to solve a Converso mystery” at the Center for Jewish History.


2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to host “the People vs. Noah” with Prosecutor Alan Dershowitz, Defense Attorney Joe Lieberman and Michael Mukasey, “former Attorney General of the United States” serving as the presiding Judge.


2018: The Cleveland Browns with Greg Joseph as their Placekicker is scheduled to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at noon today.


2018: The New York Times published reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum and No Property In Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding by Sean Wilentz


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

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

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OCTOBER 22

362: A mysterious fire destroys the temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch. According to one source,the Christians living in Antioch who were angry with the Emperor Julian for the favor he showed to Jewish and pagan rites, and, outraged by the closing of its great church of Constantine, burned down the temple of Apollo in Daphne. Julian had promised to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, a promise he was unable to keep due to his untimely and mysterious death. Julian was the last non-Christian emperor of Rome.  He opposed the special privileges that his predecessors had granted to Christianity because he thought the road to restoring Roman grandeur lay in returning to basic Roman values which were tied to their pagan religion

741:  Charles Martel passed away.  Charles Martel or Charles the Hammer is credited with saving Europe from Islam by defeating the Moors at the Battle of Tours. This effectively meant, that Islamic culture would remain south of the Pyrenees in what is modern day Spain.  Although fighting would continue between invading Moslem armies and defending Christian armies, most of Europe was destined to be Christian.  This division would have profound consequences for the development of Jewish civilizations in various parts of Europe, Africa and Asia.  Charles Martel was the grandfather of Charlemagne, the great French leader and effectively the first Holy Roman Emperor.  Charlemagne treated his Jewish subjects comparatively well even in the face of pressure from the Catholic Church 

1495: Ines Lopez of Ciudad Real, Spain was accused of heresy. In confessing, she wrote to the Inquisitional Court stating she was a 'Christian', but admitted wearing clean clothing on Saturday. In the letter she accused her cousin of teaching her to observe Passover, saying it was good "for her soul." Turning in her cousin satisfied the Inquisition, but they could do nothing as she was safe in Constantinople. Soon after this, Lopez was sentenced to life imprisonment, ordered to wear the San Benito and was burned at the stake.

1586: Sixtus V issued Christiana Pietas, a papal bull that ameliorated the restrictions placed on Jews by his papal predecessors. Among other things, the papal bull allowed the reprinting of the Talmud and other Jewish books provided that they had properly been censored before publication.  The successor to Sixtus would not only reverse this bull, he would promulgate even more onerous restrictions on the Jewish people.

1586: A bull issued today by Sixtus “permitted the Jews to rebuild synagogues on the earlier sites, provided the contributions for the support of catechumens be not reduced in amount.”

1597: The Roman Curia ruled that a Jewish child baptized without the permission of his parents, as required by canonical law, must be brought up as a Catholic.  The ruling required the removal of the child from hits parents.

1601: The thirty-one page L’abitacolo degli Oranti or Me’on ha-Sho’alim (The Abode of the Supplicants) by Devora Ascareilli which “was completed in about 1537” was published today in Venice possibly making it the first book published by a Jewish woman.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/devorah-ascarelli

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/ascarelli-devora

https://www.jewisheritage.org/web/european-routes/women-in-judaism/45

1668: The Jews of Barbados were forbidden to engage in foreign or local retail trade. Jews were forbidden from purchasing slaves, and were forced into living in a Jewish Ghetto in Barbados. All the discriminatory laws were removed by 1802, by the colonial government of Barbados. In 1820, the British Parliament also confirmed this repeal of the discrimination laws against the Jews.

1688: Birthdate of Nadir Shah of Persia.  A member of the Afsharid dynasty, he was positively disposed towards his subjects.  Persecution of the Jews resumed after he was assassinated in 1747

1727: Coronation of George II who was so moved when he saw Charles Macklin’s portrayal of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice (of which a bystander said “This is the Jew/That Shakespeare Drew”” the English king “was so moved he could not sleep”

1746:  The College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University, received its charter.  Like all elite colleges, Princeton has a checkered past when it comes to Jewish students and faculty.  Today the university boasts a Jewish Studies Program and a Hillel Chapter.  Albert Einstein is probably the most famous Jew to serve at Princeton.

1780(23rd of Tishrei, 5541): Simchat Torah

1792: French troops take Frankfurt and the tri-color floats above the arsenal located at the north gate to the ghetto.  Oddly enough, the Jews of Frankfurt respond as “Prussian patriots” and cheered when the French were to leave a few weeks later.

1799(23rd of Tishrei, 5560): Last Simchat Torah of the 18th century.

1804: Birthdate of Palestinian geographer Joseph Schwarz.

1806: In London,Nathan Mayer Rothschild married Hannah Barnet-Cohen the daughter of Lydia and Levi-Barent Cohen.

1817: Moses Asher Goldsmid, the London born son of Asher Aron Goldsmid and Rachel Kijser married Eliza Solomon at the Great Synagogue today after which they had three children – Augustus, Louisa Sophia and Charles Godsmid.

1821: Two days after he had passed away, 90 year old Mordecai Levy, the father of Moses Levy, was buried today at the “Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.”

1824: A day after he had passed away, Benjamin Moses Van Praagh, a native of Holland, the son of Moses Lammerts Van Praagh and Mindele Benjamin Van Emden and wife of Elizabeth Joseph Speyer with whom he had two children – Lewis and Morris – was buried at the “Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery.”

1832: In Prussia, Mr. and Mrs. Heinrich Damrosch gave birth to German American musician and conductor Leopold Damrosch “who was baptized a Lutheran when marrying his wife, former opera singer Helene von Heimburg.”

1835: During the Texas War for Independence Albert Moses Levy who had come to Texas as a member of the New Orleans Greys and who had been appointed surgeon in chief of the volunteer army of Texas began his army career which last would less than five months before he transferred to Republic’s fledgling Navy. In 1986, the state of Texas would institute Albert Moses Levy Day to honor Levy and all of his fellow Jews who served during the War for Independence.

1836: Sam Houston is inaugurated first President of the Republic of Texas.  Jews played an active role in the settlement of Texas from the earliest days.  Samuel Izaacs was reported to be the first Jew to settle in Texas when he arrived in 1821 with the party led by Stephen Austin.  Dr. Moses Levy, a native of Richmond, Virginia, was the surgeon-in-chief of the volunteers.  Castroville, Texas takes its name from Henri Castro, a French native who provided financial aid for the fledgling republic in return for a large land grant in south Texas between San Antonio and the Rio Grande River.

1837(23rd of Tishrei, 5598): Simchat Torah.

1837: In Liverpool, UK, Eliazer Laman Fox, “the proprietor of a large cap making business” and his wife gave birth to Ephraim Laman Zox who moved to Australia in 1852 where he became a successful financier and political leader.

1839: Birthdate of Leon Jacob Wertheim the Amsterdam born banker and author who was a friend of the French poet Lamartine

1843: Birthdate of Moshe Leib Lilienblum

1845: Birthdate of Liverpool native Esther Anna Phillips who would be interred in the Jewish cemetery at Natchitoches, LA when she passed away on May 18, 1924.

1847(12th of Cheshvan, 5608):Henriette Herz née De Lemos who was “best known for the "salonnieres" or literary salons that she started with a group of emancipated Jews in Prussia” passed away today. Henriette Herz had grown up in the Berlin of the Jewish emancipation and had shared tutors apparently with the Mendelssohn's daughters. At age fifteen, she married a physician, twenty years her senior. Dr. Markus Herz had studied medicine at the University of Königsberg, one of only three universities that accepted Jews -- but only in its medical faculty. She was said to be an extremely beautiful woman.After a few years the salon split in two, a science-seminar led by her husband and a literary salon by Henriette herself. Most notable men and women in Berlin were said to have attended her salon. Among her friends and acquaintances were Dorothea von Schlegel, Jean Paul Richter, Friedrich Schiller, Mirabeau, Friedrich Rückert, the Danish Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Johannes von Müller, the sculptor Schadow, Salomon Maimon, Friedrich von Gentz, Fanny von Arnstein, Madame de Genlis.Alexander von Humboldt often visited and even received Hebrew lessons from Henriette. The theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was another frequent visitor; a fact which for Jews was her undoing.  After the death of her husband she came under the powerful influence of Schleiermacher and converted to Protestantism.  Strange that the daughter of a Portuguese Jewish family, a family that clung to its faith despite the blandishments of Catholic Princes and the threat of the Inquisition, would surrender to the blandishments of the pseudo-equality of 19th century Germany. 


1844: Birthdate of actress Sarah Bernhardt.  Born in Parish, she was the illegitimate daughter of Judith van Hard who came from a Dutch Jewish family. Since the youngster’s presence interfered with her mother’s way of life she placed in a convent and baptized, but was always conscious and proud of her Jewish origin.”  Ms. Bernhardt was an international star of the legitimate stage and the silent silver screen.  She passed away in 1923.



1845(21stof Tishrei, 5606): Angiolo Fiorentino, the son Solomon Fiorentino and Laura Gallico, who was born at Monte San Savino in 1770 and “was a Hebrew instruct at Leghorn and Florence” passed away today.



1852: A column entitled "Austria" published today reported that a fire had broken out in a synagogue in Kolmed, Galicia where approximately a thousand Jews were attending services.  The warning cry of "fire" was first heard in the women's balcony.  In the ensuing stampede to avoid the flames thirty-six women were crushed to death as they tried to make their way down the narrow stairway.  The fire had been set by a gang of thieves who snatched pearls, diamonds and other jewelry from the women during the confusion.


1860: It was reported today that in New York, the Board of Alderman had adopted report in favor of leasing, at the rate of $1 per year, a plot of ground on the corner of Third-avenue and Seventy-seventh-street, for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the lease to continue so long as it is used for such purposes.



1860: In Stuanton, VA, Abraham Singer and Regina Gutman gave birth to Philadelphia attorney Jacob Singer the graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, husband of Lea Marguerite Frank and Republican Party activist who joined B’nai B’rith in 1890 while serving also serving as a trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary and a director of Congregation Adath Jeshurun and the B’nai B’rith Manual Training School.



1861: "Affairs in Utah" published today Jews were an important component of this Mormon dominated territory. “A new Governor has been talked of for some time, for this Territory, but I believe no such person has yet appeared in this vicinity. As far as I can see, the reappointment of the late incumbent, Mr. Cumming, would meet the views of Jews and Gentiles here perhaps as completely as could be done by selecting any other name. That burly old gentleman somehow had the knack of getting decently along with both the contending elements of this community, though I believe neither could drive him an inch further than he was inclined to budge.”



1864:22nd of Tishrei, 5625): Shmini Atzeret coincided with Shabbat



1864: During the Civil War. Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr. was named Acting Chief of Ordinance for the Department and Army of Tennessee, one of the largest military units in the Union Army.



1866: “Singular Discover: A Colony of Jews in the Heart of China” published today described the plight of the Jews living in Kaifeng, the capital of Hunan province, which was one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China.  According to a stone found on the site of the now destroyed synagogue, the Jews had first arrived during the Hon Dynasty (200 BCE-200 CE), this house of worship had been built in 1163 during the Sung dynasty and rebuilt about 300 years ago during the Ming dynasty.  There are between 200 and 400 people who identify themselves as Jews living in the city.  The last Rabbi, who apparently was the last person to know Hebrew, passed away about 40 years ago.  The Jews still knew the names of their holidays but had no knowledge of how to observe them. The Jewish community has suffered serious economic loss as a result of the many years of violence that have racked the area.  The synagogue had fallen into a state of disrepair and ruin.  There was no money to rebuild it. According to this account, the Jews actually tore the decaying building down with the hope of selling the scrap for money to help to meet their basic needs.  Somehow, one of the main stones from the synagogue ended up as part of the local mosque.  



1866: In London, Henrietta Susannah Temperley Budd and Edward John Oppenheim, a Jewish leather merchant gave birth to Edward Phillips Oppenheimer who became “one of the country’s most popular writers of spy novels.”



1867(23rdof Tishrei, 5628) Simchat Torah



1867: In Farnworth, Widnes, Lancashire, German born chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond and Frida Löwenthal gave birth to British chemist and archaeologist Sir Robert Mond, the brother of Sir Alfred Mond, first Baron Melchett.



https://www.rom.on.ca/en/about-us/our-history/founders/sir-robert-ludwig-mond



1873: The Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary “was founded in Berlin today “by Rabbi Dr. Israel Hildesheimer (also Esriel or Azriel) for the training of rabbis in the tradition of Orthodox Judaism.”



1874: In New York City, at the Academy of Music, Bayard Taylor gave a lecture on the topic of “Ancient Egypt.”  The well-attended event was sponsored by the Hebrew Young Men’s Association. John R. Brady, a justice of the state Supreme Court introduced the speaker.  In his opening remarks, Brady, who was not Jewish, said, “…the purpose of the …Young Men’s Hebrew Association…are first, the establishment of a reading room and library; second, the delivery of lectures on historical , scientific and social topics and on Jewish history and literature, and in the third place, entertainments of a social, artistic, literary and musical nature….This is a program so entirely comprehensive that he who cannot be satisfied with any of the several subjects suggest me be extremely unworthy of the designation of an American citizen.  The lecture tonight is given on the invitation of the descendants of a race who were formerly bondsmen on the banks of the Nile, who helped build the pyramids, and hence the propriety of commencing a lecture season with a lecture, the subject of which is identified with that extraordinary performance.”



1875(23rdof Tishrei, 5636): Simchat Torah



1876: In Fürth, Middle Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, Baruch Rothschild and his first wife Fanny Rothschild gave birth to “Charlotte (Lotte) Rothschild” who became Charlotte Stern when she married Markus Stern



1876: In Baltimore, MD, the new Hebrew Orphan Asylum was dedicated in ceremonies led by Dr, Benjamin Szold.  Governor John Carroll and Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Latrobe were among the dignitaries in attendance. Szold was the rabbi for Temple Oheb Shalom and the father of Henrietta Szold.



1878: Moritz Ellinger has been chosen to run for the position of Coroner by the opponents of the Tammany political machine.



1878: In Charleston, SC, W.W. Sale officiated at the wedding of Dr. T.E. Hertz and Mrs. Louis E. Jenkins.



1880: In Hungary“Bertha Katscher (1856-1927) and her husband Max Schwimmer (1845-1922), both from secular Jewish, upper middle class backgrounds” gave birth to their third child Franciska aka Franzi, a graduate of National Music Academy in Budapest who was a feminist and music teacher in Hungary and then, starting in 1922 the United States where she supported her mother and her sister until her death in 1963.



1883: In Temesvar, Hungary, Dr. Jules Rosenberg, a leading Jewish lawyer, shot and killed Count Etienne de Battyany in duel fought over the affections of Mlle. Hona de Schossberger.



1883: It was reported today that a dispute over the process of selecting officers to lead Ansche Chesed B’nai Kovanah was the cause of the altercation that took place at the synagogue on the Lower East Side after Shabbat had ended last week.



1883: The original Metropolitan Opera House in New York held its grand opening with a performance of Gounod's ''Faust.'' The Met was the product of the Metropolitan Opera Association.  Two decades after the opening of the Met, Otto H. Kahn took over as head of the association and chaired it for almost three decades until his death.



1884: “Shot For A  Robbing A Melon Patch” published today described events surround the fatal shooting of John Henry Wilson.  Wilson was shot while stealing melons from a patch guarded by a 19 year old German, Henry Lehr.



1884: It was reported today that Justice McCarthy is “reserving his decision” after hearing the evidence in a suit brought by Sara Rook, an 18 year old Jewess from Poland who has been living with her uncle Jacob Leiman, against her cousin Kever Leiman to whom she claims she is engaged and who wrongfully took back gifts he had given as part of the engagement.  Kever’s parents testified that the jewelry belonged to his mother who had lent the items to the young lady and that the event which she claims was her engagement party was in fact the engagement party for Kever’s younger brother.  (Yes, this Jewish soap opera actually appeared in a major secular newspaper.)



1886(23rd of Tishrei, 5647): Simchat Torah



1886: It was reported today that when a member of the Ohio Grand Lodge of Mason was challenged over his role in laying the cornerstone for Anshe Chesed in Cleveland, he “explained that it is the duty of Masons to lay a cornerstone whenever called upon.”



1886: It was reported today that Mary Suselinski, the young servant girls who had tried to poison the Ginsburg family, told authorities that she was really a Christian and not Jewish.  She had only claimed to be Jewish because she thought it would be easier to find work that way.



1887: In “The Growth of Liberalism,” which was published today, Rabbi Kaufman Kohler defended his decision to begin delivering lectures on Sunday at Temple Beth-El that would replace the traditional Saturday services.  He began the practice 14 years ago while in Chicago and states that it is quite popular with the Reform leaders in German.  He claims that the young men this congregation are highly supportive of the change and the need to attract younger members to Jewish congregations is one of the many reasons for making the shift from Saturday to Sunday. (Those of you who know about the history of the Reform movement will recognize this as a contemporary account of one of that movement’s attempt to create a Judaism that conformed to the world around it,)



1887(4th of Cheshvan, 5648) Seventy-one year old historian Simon Hock passed away today.



http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Hock_Simon



1888: It was reported today that the members of the newly formed Hebrew Actors’ Union “are all Socialists and” that they “intend to join the Central Labor Union.”



1888: It was reported today the Centurywill be publishing an article on Assyrian monuments written by Professor Morris Jastrow.



1888: It was reported today that Professor Morris Jastrow “will take charge of the course in Semitic Languages at the University of Pennsylvania while his colleagues are conducting an expedition to Babylonia. 



1890: Birthdate of Martha Wertheimer the Frankfurt born author and journalist who lost her newspaper job when the Nazis came to power and whose inability to find safe sanctuary abroad led to her eventual murder at Sobibor in 1942.



1890(8thof Cheshvan, 5651): Joseph Rosenthal who has been head of the “dry good firm of J. Rosenthal & Co. for the last forty five years” and “was a generous contributor to Hebrew charities”  passed away today at his home on East 61st Street in New York.



1891: “Russia and Europe” published today described the problems that the Czar’s government is having dealing with the disastrous famine gripping the country including the persecution and expulsion of the Jews which has deprived the regime “of the those citizens” who are most useful “in times of distress” and has made the possibility of obtaining a loan even more difficult because of the opposition of Jews throughout Europe to such an action. 



1891: “In Belarus, Menachem Mendl Hyman and Esther Bella Kaplan gave birth to Ben Zion Hyman, the “husband of Fanny Feigeh Mindl Konstantynowski” and University of Toronto trained electrical engineer who founded “Hyman’s Book and Art Shoppe” and the Toronto Jewish Public Library.



1892: In Clinton, NY, Hamilton College announced “the prize oration and essay subjects” that included “The Hebrew Prophets as Social and Political Reformers” and “Pathos in the Life and Poetry of Heinrich Heine.”



1892: Edwin Einstein, the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City “made his first formal speech of the campaign at a meeting tonight in the Hebrew Institute Hall at East Broadway and Jefferson Street.



1893: Birthdate of Manfred George Cohn, the German born journalist who gained fame as Manfred George, the refugee from the Nazis who “started work in New York as editor of Aufbau and turned it into an important journalistic voice for the Jewish exile community in the post-World War II era, leading him to be called ‘a central figure in Jewish journalism of the Hitler and post-Hitler period’".



1894: According to reports published today, Jacob A. Cantor has five opponents in his bid to be elected to the House of Representatives from New York’s 15thCongressional District. Cantor’s is the first name on the ballot which bodes well for his chances of being elected.



1896: “Baroness Hirsch’s Check” published described how the widow of the Baron had sent a check for $1,000 to Temple B’nai Israel in Columbus, GA after she had received a request four months ago from Mrs. Gabriel, the President of the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society who unfortunately passed away on the same day that the check arrived from Paris.



1897: “The Sunday –Sabbath” published today described a meeting of the Central Union in Berlin where “it was resolved that the Sunday-Sabbath Sabbaths were against the interests of Judaism and should be abolished”



1897: It was reported today that over 200 Jewish family from Galicia who “have all been reduced to a state of starvation” have arrived in Budapest.



1897: The Treasurer of the Central Synagogue “acknowledged with the thanks of a donation from H.I. Beddington towards the building fund of the Central Synagogue.



1897: Thirty-eight year old “Marks David Greenberg” was buried today at the “Plashet Jewish Cemetery in London.”



1898: Captain Mathew Nathan, a graduate of the Royal Military Academy and the son of Jonah Nathan was promoted to the rank of major in the engineers



1899: The USS Scorpion (PY-3) which had been commanded by Adolph Marx the first Jewish graduate of the United States Naval Academy during the Spanish-American War was recommissioned today.



1900: In Lodz, Israel Jakob Perelberg (who changed his name to Perlberg) and the former Tajbe Markus gave birth to Wolf Perelberg who gained famed as movie producer William Perlberg.



1902:Meeting with Colonial Minister Joseph Chamberlain: Herzl presents the plan for the colonization of Cyprus and the Sinai Peninsula, including El Arish: Jewish settlers under a Jewish administration.



1903: Birthdate of Curly Howard.  Born Jerome Lester Horwitz, Howard was one of the Three Stooges, along with his brother Moe Howard and Larry Fine.



1904: In Brussels, “Paul Louis François Spaak and Marie Anne Augustine Janson” gave birth to dramatist Claude Spaak, the husband of Suzanne Spaak, the lady of luxury who joined the joined Leopold Trepper’s “Red Orchestra and saved 163 Jewish children from sent to the death camps before being captured, tortured and murdered by the Nazis – actions for which she recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.



1905: Birthdate of Budapest native József Kozma who was the brother of Ákos Kozma and who gained fame as composer Joseph Kosma.



1906: Birthdate of Manfred Erich Swarsensky the German born rabbi who came to the United States after being imprisoned in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp came to the United where served Temple Bethel “a reform congregation in Madison, Wisconsin.”



1906: Birthdate of New Yorker Sidney Krischner, who gained famed as Pulitzer Prize winner dramatist Sidney Kingsley.



1909(7thof Cheshvan, 5670): Lieb Tubiansky passed away today.



1911: At a meeting in Pilgrims’ Church, Representative William Sulzer stated “that when Congress convenes in December he will introduce a joint resolution for abrogation of the Treat of 1832 in Russia.”



1911: In response to objections from Rabbi Moses Gaster, the “hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London” the Board of Deputies revised their decision “with respect to authority for control of Shehitah as provided in the Slaughter of Animals Bill.



1912(11thof Cheshvan, 5673): Sixty-seven year old Rabbi David Shayne passed away at Atlantic City.



1913: In Duluth, MN, Isadore and Ann Jaffe gave birth to Edward Jaffe. Isadore Jaffe “was a tailor from Lithuania who borrowed the money for a passage to America from a woman acquaintance who assumed he would then send for her and marry her. When he did not, she came over herself, tracked him down in Duluth and got a rabbi to perform the wedding.” Edward Jaffe moved to New York and “became  a press agent legendary for his lost causes, chutzpah and angst, who all but made Broadway his alias and held that the best kind of promotion was self-promotion.” (As reported by Ralph Blumenthal)



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



1913: In Budapest, Dezső and Júlia Friedmann-Berkovits gave birth to Endre Ernő Friedmann who as Robert Capa became one of the most famous of photographer of his time.  He survived the Spanish Civil War and World War II only to die in 1954 while covering the war in Indochina.  Capa was in the first wave of troops that hit the beaches at Normandy and his photos are the classic views of the Longest Day.
http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/robert-capa-1913-1954
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Soldier
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353
http://www.skylighters.org/photos/robertcapa.html


 
1914: In Wellington, Kansas, Bella and Moses Simon gave birth to Pauline Simon the graduate of the University of Nebraska who became Pauline Hirschfeld when she married Louis Hirschfeld the founder, in 1939 of The Lithoprint Company



1914: “Nathan Straus sent a letter to Govern Glynn of New York today praising the work the Governor had accomplished in the way of legislative reform, particularly the new primary law and the Workmen’s Compensation Law.”



1914: “Great Russian Host on Prussian Border” published today described the multi-ethnic force under General Rennenkampff that included Jews from Riga and Libau which was preparing an new attack on Eastern Front.



1914: In Canonsburg, PA “was broken for a synagogue, which was made of brick, “cost in the neighborhood of $7,000” and whose officers were “president, Samuel Burg; vice president, B. (Benny) Klee; secretary, Samuel Finkel; treasurer, Jacob Morris.”



1914: In describing the fighting on the Eastern Front during World War I,a correspondent for the London Standard reported he shudders “to think of the ravages made by the waves of troops, both German and Russians who passed to and fro over what was once a peaceful, quiet agricultural region inhabited chiefly by Jews.”



1915: Birthdate of Aaron Katz, who would spend fifty years of his life seeking to exonerate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.



1915: Colonel John Monash, who was a brevet brigadier-general was decorated with the Companion Order of Bath.



1915: “Seligman for Perkins” published today quoted a letter from Isaac Seligman to Frank Moss and the Perkins Campaign stating this endorsement of Moss was only for the primary election and that he was prepared to cast his vote for Charles A. Perkin in the upcoming general election for district attorney.



1915: The list of the newly re-elected trustees of the Hebrew United Charities published today included “Mrs. J.B. Greenhut, Louis J. Grumbach, Morris Mayer, Alexander New, Daniel Richter, Jack W. Schiffer, Louis Stern and Edwin C. Vogel.”



1915: Birthdate of Sydney Simon Shulemson DFC who “was a Canadian fighter pilot, and Canada's highest decorated Jewish soldier, during World War II…After the war, Shulemson located aircraft and recruited pilots for Israel's growing Israeli Air Force.”  He passed away at his home in Florida in 2007



1915: In the village of Ruzhany, Perla and Shlomo Jeziernicky gave birth to Icchak Jeziernicky who would gain fame as Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel.


1915: “German Jews Aid Turks” published reported that the “Jewish parishes of Germany have sent to Constantinople two railroad cars filled with hospital supplies for the Turkish Army” under the control of Herr Nosig, the Jewish delegate” who “was received in audience by the Sultan, the heir to throne, the Minister of War, Enver Pasha and other representatives of the Turkish Government.”  (Herr Nossig was Alfred Nossig, the son of Fryderka and Iazk Nossig, who had been born in the Ukraine in 1943 and who died in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 – just another prominent German Jew whom the Germans considered to be only a Jew)


1915: It was reported today that “a Moslem-Israelite Union for the promotion of solidary between Jews and Turks” exists in Constantinople.

 
1915: It was reported today that “the Turkish, German and Austro-Hungarian Governments have exchanged views with the purpose of reaching an agreement concerning the betterment of the position of the Jews in the East.”



1916(25th of Tishrei, 5677): Sir Jacob Elias Sassoon, 1st Baronet “the elder son of Elias David Sassoon” who  built the Knesset Eliyahoo in Mumbai, Ohel Leah in Hong Kong, and Ohel Rachel in Shanghai” which was completed after his death, passed away today.


1916: The Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War reported a list of contributions today including $300 from Congregation Gates of Wisdom, $654 from Congregation A.B.I in New Britain and $100 from Beth H’am Hagodal in Jersey City.


1916: “The Provisional Zionist Committee, the organization which in in control of the activities of the Zionist movement, announced that it has secured the consent of the State Department to the sending of a consignment of drugs to Palestine on the Syrian relief ship that is to leave New York under the joint auspices of the Syrian Committee and the Red Cross.”


1916: “Consent has been secured to send a medical unit consisting of ten doctors, five nurses and representative of the Provisional Zionist Committee to Palestine” to deal with the typhus, cholera and other epidemics” that are overwhelming the country due to the scarcity of physicians.


1916: In a case of Jew versus Jew “]at a meeting of the United Hebrew Trades held this afternoon at the Star Casino, five thousand people “derided and jeered at Saul J. Dickheiser, the former Deputy Attorney General of New York State when he challenged Morris Hilliquit during” the speech given by the self-described “scientific socialist.”


1916: Owen Johnson described The Arcade on Lincoln Square, an ethnic melting pot that includes “Jews with their clothing bazars” as being Manhattans “New Bohemia.”


1917(6th of Cheshvan, 5678): English solicitor George Solomon Joseph, the husband of the former Henrietta Franklin, the father of “composer, arranger and musical teacher” Jane Marian Joseph, passed away today after suffering a heart attack.


1917: It was reported today that “a resolution introduced by ex-Assemblyman Solomon Suffrin” at conference of Rumanian Jews meeting in New York “pledging to the” United States “the loyalty of Rumanian Jewish citizens and promising cooperation in the sale of Liberty bonds was carried unanimously by a rising vote.”


1917: It was reported today that “the Russian peace program drawn up by the Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates” included 15 parts, the seventh of which stated “Rumania to be restored her old frontiers on condition that she…grant equal rights to the Jews.”


1917: At the Fusion coalition party’s headquarters in the Hotel Manhattan, Henry Morgenthau the former Ambassador said that Mayor Mitchel would win re-election with a “plurality of approximately of 40,000” that would spell defeat for the other three candidates including Morris Hillquit.


1917(6th of Cheshvan, 5678): Seventy-seven year old Giuseppe Foa, the husband of Annetta Luzzati Foa and the father of Ida Dolce Foza Ghiron, who was the Grand Rabbi of Turino until 1903 and knight of the Crown of Italy passed away today in Turin.


1917: The two hundred aged residents of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in NYC gave $100 to Superintendent Albert Kruger "with instructions of buy a Liberty Bond in the name of the institution.  Among the contributors were 109 year old Nissen Rosenstein said to be the oldest man living in NY who gave five dollars and 113 year old Ethel Polansky who contributed one dollar.  The residents held a service before making their donations during which they prayed "for the success of the American arms and the coming of an honorable peace.


1918(16th of Cheshvan, 5679): Eighty-two year old Leopold Bloch, the “son of Samuel and Theresia Bloch” and the husband of Rosa Bloch with whom he had three children passed away today in his native Vienna.


1919:  Birthdate of author and political radical Doris Lessing.  Lessing led a colorful life.  Born Doris Tayler to English parents living in Persia (now Iran) her father moved the family to what was then the British Colony of Rhodesia.  In 1943, after divorcing her second husband she married Gottfried Lessing, a German Jewish Marxist, in order to give him the protection of citizenship. Strange what some people would do save one Jewish life while others turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the screams of tens of thousands.


1920: The Young Israel Synagogue announced that the courses being offered for the coming season are Biblical History to the Diaspora, Post Exilic Jewish Education, Hebrew Grammar and Conversation, Current Jewish Problems, Jewish Customs and Ceremonies and The Bible in English.


1920: “Catherine the Great” a German silent film about the Russian ruler directed and written by Reinhold Schünzel


1921: Birthdate of Alexander Kronrod, Russian mathematician


1921: Eugen Schiffer completed his service as Minister of Justice in the Weimar Republic


1922: In Niagara Falls, NY, Anna Cohen and Louis Goodman, “Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland” gave birth the youngest of their five children illustrator Jeremiah Goodman.



1925: “The Farmer from Texas” a “German silent comedy” directed, produced and written by Joe May with sets designed by Paul Leni was released today in Germany.


1926: In New York City, William Isaiah and Sonya Clare (Breitman) Teichner gave birth to Temple University trained M.D. Victor Jerome Teichner, the member of the United States Naval Reserve and Columbia University certified psychoanalysis who was President of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts and the husband of Gail W. Berry.


1926: In a surprise assault, J. Gordon Whitehead repeatedly punches magician Harry Houdini in the stomach in Montreal. The episode contributed to the death of Houdini on Halloween.


1927: Pincus “Pinky” Silverberg won the NBA World Flyweight Championship today in Bridgeport, CT.


1928: “Four hundred Jewish leaders attend the non-Zionist Conference on Palestine.”


1930: In a case of Jew versus Jew, Abie Bain fought Light Heavyweight Champion Maxis Rosenbloom in Madison Square Garden with the champ winning with a TKO in the 11th round.


1930:Birthdate of Frank Lowy, the European-born Australian-Israeli businessman who is one of the richest people in Australia. He is known for his co-founding and continuing involvement with The Westfield Group, a retail giant that owns dozens of shopping centers in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Great Britain.


1931: Five days after his thirtieth, Harry Mordecai Freedman the Russian born of “Barnett (Dov) Freedman and Beila Henah” who received “his rabbinical ordination from Jews’ College in 1924” and received his Ph.D. from the University of London 1930 “was naturalized as a British citizen” today.


1931(11th of Cheshvan, 5692):Rabbi Morda Zambrowsky of Mahanoy City, PA, the son of Rabbi Joshua Zambrowsky of Congregation Poiley Tzedeck, died in St. Joseph Hospital late tonight,


1931: A codicil to the well of Dr. Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian physician turned playwright who passed away yesterday, was read tonight. The codicil called for a pauper’s funeral, forbidding “wreaths, obituary announcements and all accessories to the funeral ritual such as a guard of honor,” Schnitzler wanted the money that would have been used for the funeral to be given to various hospitals. The codicil also forbids eulogies and the wearing of mourning clothes.  Finally, he left instructions that a needle be “thrust through his heart to remove any doubt of his death.


1931: “The Virtuous Sinner” a comedy directed by Fritz Kortner, produced by Arnold Pressburger and with music by Nicholas Brodszky was released today in Germany.


1932(23rd of Tishrei, 5693): Simchat Torah


1932: “Dinner at Eight,” a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber “opened at the Music Box Theatre.


1932: Three retired major league baseball players including Moe Berg arrived in Japan as part of a tour to teach baseball at various universities after which Berg “went on to tour Manchuria, Shanghai, Peking, Indochina, Siam, India, Egypt and Berlin.” (This is not to be confused with Berg’s more famous 1934 tour where he reportedly engaged in espionage activities for the U.S. government)


1933:Bernard Bergman, the nursing home mogul, received his rabbinic ordination, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein today.


1934: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native David Libai, Israeli lawyer and politician.


1935: Brigadier General Charles H. Sherrill was quoted today as saying “I went to Germany for the purposed of getting at least on Jew on the German Olympic team and I feel that my job is finished.”


1936: “The School for Jewish Studies” is scheduled to “hold an open convocation at 9 P.M. in the Community House of Temple Emanu-El” where Dr. Louis I. Newman of Rodeph Sholem will be the principle speaker.


1936: It was reported today that the government “is issuing free railway tickets to bring” “the Jorga-Cuza anti-Semitic groups to the congress” that they are holding in November which 200,000 are expected to attend.


1936: “An anti-Semitic demonstration took place at the University of Prague today in connection with the first lecture by Professor Kelsen, who had previously lectured at universities in Germany but had to leave that country on account of his democratic and pacific convictions.” (Kelsen is Professor Hans Kelsen https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11018.html


1936: Harold Jacobi, the chairman of the publication committee, announced today that “President Roosevelt is among the sponsors of a book entitled Reconstruction recording what the Jews of American have done for the relief and rehabilitation of their less fortunate coreligionists throughout the world.”


1936: Rabbi Israel Goldstein, of the National Conference of Jews and Christians was among the “jurors” who, “following a mock trial of more than three hours” found newspaper publisher William Randolph Hurst guilty of “perverting the news, breed war, breaking strikes, fascism and destroying liberty.”


1937(17th of Cheshvan, 5698): Seventy-eight year old Frank Heino Damrosch, the German born son of “conductor, violinist and composer” Leopold Damrosch and “the former Marie Helene Von Heimberg” a leading opera singer and the husband of “Hetty Mosenthal” who pursued a career in business and served as a “lieutenant in the National Guard” before devoting himself to the field of music which included the found of the Institute of Musical Art passed away today in New York City.



1937: “Conquest” a “historic film” written by S.N. Behrman, Salka Viertel and Samuel Hoffenstein and filmed by cinematographer Karl Freund was released in the United States by MGM


1937: The Palestine Postreported that Avinoam Yellin, the senior inspector of education and a prominent Jewish leader, was shot and seriously injured by an Arab terrorist lying in wait at the entrance to his office.


1937: Funeral services were held today for Felix Warburg at Temple Emanuel on New York’s Fifth Avenue.


1937: Warm tributes were paid to the memory of Felix Warburg tonight at a dinner given by the Joint Distribution Committee of which he was an honorary chairman.


1939(9th of Chesvan, 5700) Shimon Yehuda Hakohen Shkop passed away. Born in 1860, “he was a rosh yeshiva ("dean") in the Yeshiva Shaar Hatorah and in the Telshe yeshiva and a renowned Talmudic scholar. He was born in Torez in 1860. At the age of twelve he went to study in the Mir yeshiva, and at fifteen he went to Volozhin yeshiva where he studied six years. His teachers were the Netziv and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, with whom he was very close. Shkop married a niece of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon and in 1885 was appointed to the Telz Yeshiva, where he remained for 18 years until 1903. While there, he developed a system of talmudic study which combined the logical analysis and penetrating insights of Rabbi Chaim Brisker with the simplicity and clarity of Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) and which became known as the "Telz way of learning". In 1903, he was appointed Rabbi of Moltsh, and in 1907 of Bransk. A famous pupil of his in Moltsh was Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna who studied under him for a year in 1906, before leaving to the Slabodka yeshiva when Rabbi Shkop himself left. During World War I, the communal leaders urged him to leave before the Germans arrived, but he refused and stayed with his community.Between 1920 and 1939, at the request of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, he succeeded Rabbi Alter Shmuelevitz as Rosh Yeshiva of the renowned Sha'ar HaTorah in Grodno. He raised the level of the institution and transformed it into one of the finest yeshivos in Poland and beyond. Hundreds of young men flocked there from near and far. For many years, Rabbi Zelik Epstein, who was married to a granddaughter of Rabbi Shkop, has headed a successor in Queens. It is known as an exemplary institution. It was there that he taught Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz, the Suvalker Rav.As a young man of eighteen, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz was invited by Rabbi Shimon to give the third level lecture in the Yeshivah Ketanah in Grodno. At the age of 22, he headed a group of students who transferred from Grodno to Mir. However, his four years in Grodno with Rabbi Shimon had a profound influence on his approach to Talmudic analysis. In 1928 Shkop traveled to the United States in order to raise much needed funds for the Yeshiva. After delivering a lecture at Yeshiva University, he eventually acceded to Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel's invitation to serve as a Rosh Yeshiva of Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan (RIETS) in New York. In his absence from Poland, he was greatly missed by Rabbis Yisrael Meir Kagan and Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, who pleaded with him to return. He also received a scathing letter from Rav Yeruchom Levovitz, the mashgiach of Mir, which, according to an eyewitness, he ignored. For family reasons, Rabbi Shkop chose to return to Europe in the fall of 1929.Shkop had a winning personality. He was an active member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of the Agudas Yisroel. Many of his students attained distinction, among them Rabbis Elchonon Wasserman of Baronovitch, Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman of Ponevezh and Isser Yehuda Unterman, a future Israeli Chief Rabbi. Dayan Michoel Fisher of London was also a pupil of Rabbi Shkop. Shkop formed close bonds with [the younger] Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal, the future Manchester Rosh Yeshiva. He would sometimes come to England to raise funds for his yeshiva, and Rabbi Segal took advantage of these opportunities to serve as his attendant, spending one vacation at Rabbi Shimon's summer resort, studying with him and accompanying him on his walks. He published his classic essay titled Sha'arei Yosher (The Gates of Honesty) in 1925 and Ma'arekhet ha-Kinyanim in 1936. Novellae on the Talmud tractates Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Basra were published posthumously in 1947 with a preface by his son, and on Nedarim, Gittin, and Kiddushin in 1952, and on Yevamos and Ketuvot in 1957. Rabbi Shkop's Talmudic novellae are still studied in yeshivos throughout the world today. Sha'arei Yosher is largely concerned with the intellectual principles by which the law is established, rather than with concrete laws, and is stylistically similar to the Shev Shema'tata of Aryeh Leib HaCohen Heller, on which it was partly based.As the Russian army was about to enter Grodno during World War II, he ordered his students to flee to Vilna and he himself died two days later on the 9th of Cheshvan 5700 (1939) in Grodno. Including his death, the Jewish people lost three Rabbis and Torah giants in 10 months: Harav Shimon Shkop, Harav Boruch Ber Leibowitz of Kamenitz and Harav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Zaniemanski Forshtat section of Grodno.




1939: Birthdate of English professional football player George Cohen who was on the 1966 World Cup Team.


1939: The Brooklyn Dodgers, whose roster included Ed Merlin and Leo Disend defeated the Philadelphia Eagles led by Fullback  “Dynamite” Dave Smulker in the first televised professional football game which “was played in Ebbetts Field before 13,000 people” at a time where there were “approximately 1,000 television sets in New York City.”


1940: The Nazis deported 6,300 Jews living in Baden, the Saar and the Palatinate where there had been Jewish  since the 14th century to the Gurs Concentration Camp in southern France which was the first stop on the trip the death camps in Poland.


1940: Jewish business owners in the Netherlands must register their businesses with the occupying Nazis.


1941: Birthdate of Max Apple, author of I Love Gootie: My Grandmother’s Story and The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories



1941: Rear Admiral Joseph Taussign who had been forced to retire in September, 1941 “due to his age, despite his petition to continue on active duty with the impending international crisis” and whose 1940 before Congress had accurately predicted the coming war with Japan, today was reported to the rank of Vice Admiral.


1941: The Rumanian command headquarters for the ODESSA "ACTION" were blown up. Seventeen Rumanians and four Germans were killed. In reprisal for this apparent act of defiance over 5,000 Jews were rounded up in Odessa and shot dead the next day. Considering what the Nazis did to the Jews of the Soviet Union, it is always amazing to read about the excuses that were concocted for various mass murders.


1942:  The keel was laid for the HMS Totem which would renamed INS Dakar when the Israelis purchased the submarine from the British in 1965.


1942(11th of Cheshvan, 5703): Sixty-nine year old Dr. Sigismund Schulz Goldwater who served as Superintendent of Mount Sinai Hospital and Commissioner of Health in New York City passed away today.



1942(11th of Cheshvan, 5703): Icek and Fraidla Dobrzynska, Jewish parents of two children who had been deported from Poland's Lódz Ghetto in September 1942, commit suicide


1942(11th of Cheshvan, 5703): Jacob Joseph, a captain in the United States Marines Corps who was the great-grandson of Rabbi Jacob Joseph and son of New York State Senator Lazarus Joseph was killed today while fighting on Guadalcanal.


1943(23rd of Tishrei, 5704): Simchat Torah


1943: Birthdate of violinist Paul Zukofsky


1944:The Federation of Jewish Communities officially reestablished its activities today a few days after the liberation of Belgrade, when its surviving chairman, Friedrich Pops, reopened its office. Fifty-six Jewish communities were reconstructed, and the federation, with the aid of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), engaged in a variety of welfare projects, including the reopening of the home for the aged in Zagreb, extending material aid to the needy who began to return to their daily lives, etc. It also reestablished its ties with the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations.


1944: As the Soviets closed in on Budapest, 25,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and forced to dig anti-tank ditches on the Westward roads. Thousands were shot during the marches.


1946: A transport ship is scheduled to leave Haifa today bound for Cyprus loaded with 800 Jews who been taken off  the SS Alma when it tried to run the British blockade designed to keep Jews from settling in Eretz Israel.


1946: Birthdate of Tel Aviv native Israel Bartal, the “Avraham Harman Professor of Jewish History, and the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Hebrew University” who was “one of the founders of Cathedra, the leading scholarly journal on the history of the Land of Israel.”


1947: Canadian Ethel Stark became the first woman to conduct at Carnegie Hall when she raised her baton in front of “the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra, the first Canadian orchestra to play at the legendary venue.” (As reported by the Jewish Women’s Archives)


1947: In describing the tenuous situation in Jerusalem, Zipporah Borowdky, who had just arrived from the United States, wrote her parents that “Jerusalem is thick with barbed wire and barricades…I still haven’t gotten used to the idea of being frisked every time I go into a public building, even the Post Office.


1948: Israeli naval commandos using explosive boats sank the Egyptian flagship Emir Farouk, and damaged an Egyptian minesweeper.


1948(19th of Tishrei, 5706): Fifth Day of Sukkoth


1948(19th of Tishrei, 5706): One day after having been mortally wounded during the battle to take Beersheba, 23 year old Avraham Abarzel, an Algerian native who survived the Nazi occupation of France and was serving as a member of the French Commando Company of the Palmach Hagegev’s 9thBattalion passed away after which he was buried at Kibbutz Dorot and later “re-interred at the Nachlat Yitzhak military cemetery.


1948: During the War of Independence, the Third Cease Fire went into effect. 


1948: The Arab Liberation Army did not feel itself bound by the Third Cease Fire and it  “continued to harass Israeli forces and settlements in the north. On the same day that the truce came into effect, the Arab Liberation Army violated the truce by attacking Manara, capturing the strongpoint of Sheikh Abed, repulsing counterattacks by local Israeli units, and ambushed Israeli forces attempting to relieve Manara. The IDF's Carmeli Brigade lost 33 dead and 40 wounded.”


1948:The Arab Liberation Army violated the truce by attacking Manara, capturing the strongpoint of Sheikh Abed, repulsing counterattacks by local Israeli units, and ambushed Israeli forces attempting to relieve Manara. The IDF's Carmeli Brigade lost 33 dead and 40 wounded. Manara and Misgav Am were totally cut off, and Israel's protests at the UN failed to change the situation.  [Editor’s note – the more things change, the more they stay the same.]


1948: Operation Yoav, the goal of which was to secure the Negev, came to a close today.


1948: As of today “twelve more Spitfires were ready at Kunovice for a second Velvetta mission but Yugoslavia had rescinded permission for the Israelis to refuel” forcing Sam Pomerance to begin “stuffing even more fuel tanks into the Spitfires in the hope of extending their range to allow a non-stop flight to Israel.”


1948: Birthdate of Peter D. Kramer, the New York born psychiatrist and son of Holocaust survivors whose latest book was Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants.



1948:”Off the coast of Ashkelon, Maoz Ben Hecht took part in the attack on two Egyptian Navy ships, Emir el Farouq and the escorting minesweeper.”


1951(22nd of Tishrei, 5712): Shmini Atzeret


1951(22nd of Tishrei, 5712): Sixty-three year old Polish born, Maine-raised producer and co-founder of the American Society of Cinematographers Phil Rosen whose career spanned 35 years starting in 1915 passed away today.


1952(3rd of Cheshvan, 5713): Sixty-one year old bacteriologist Dr. Barnett Cohen, the Russian born son of “Louis and Rose Cohen” and “associate professor of physiological chemistry at John Hopkins University School Medicine” passed away today.
 
1952: The complete “Jewish Torah” was published in English for the first time. A collection of oral and written commentary (dating 200 BC to AD 500) on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah comprises the basic religious code of Judaism.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from London that Eliahu Elath, accompanied by eight senior members of his staff, presented Queen Elizabeth II with his credentials as the first Israeli ambassador to the Court of St. James.

1952: In West Homestead, PA, Dr. Harold Goldblum and Shirley (née Temeles) Goldblum gave birth to multi-talented actor Jeffrey “Jeff” Lynn Goldlbum who appeared in such films as “The Big Chill” and “The Fly.”

1953(13th of Cheshvan, 5714): Seventy-nine year old Dr. Max Danzis, the graduate of Bellevue Medical School, “the nationally known surgeon and one of the founders of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, NJ” passed away today.

1956(17th of Cheshvan, 5717): Seventy-two year old Benjamin Antin, a former New York State Senator and director of the Bronx Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association whose survivors included his Robert H. Antin of Cedar Rapids, passed away today

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9804E6DC1F31E23BBC4B51DFB667838D649EDE

1956: In a second round of meetings, Israelis led by Ben-Gurion meet with the British and French at Sevres, France, to make plans for coordinating a triple military attack on Egypt.

1958: Edgar D’Arcy McGree completed his service as Canadian Ambassador to Israel.

1958: Margaret Blanche Meagher began her service as Canadian Ambassador to Israel.

1959: In Newark, NJ, Claire (née Goldfein) and William Robert Shaiman gave birth to award winning composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman.

1960: The ITV network transmitted the first episode of “The Strange World of Gurney Slade” starring Anthony Newley today.

1961(12th of Cheshvan, 5722): Eighty-two year old film executive Joseph M. Schenck whose interest in young starlets spanned an era from Norma Talmadge to Marilyn Monroe passed away today.

http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/joseph-schenck/

1965: Protestant theologian Paul Tillich passed away.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4466666?uid=3739640&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102792017967

1966(8th of Chesvan): Eighty-two year old Michael Noyk, the Lithuanian born solicitor and Irish Republic leader passed away today in London. For more see http://books.google.com/books?id=ae1vo477tVgC&lpg=PA72&vq=noyk&pg=PA72#v=snippet&q=noyk&f=false

1969: Having premiered in Germany, “Marlowe” a detective movie reminiscent of the 1940’s genre featuring music by Peter Matz was released in the United States today.

1973: Security Council Resolution 338 establishing a cease fire ending the Yom Kippur War was officially supposed to go into effect at However, combat did not cease.  Syrians continued to bombard Israeli positions.  Israeli forces on the west bank ceased a major juncture of highway connecting Suez with Cairo.  In Lebanon, Fatah, the Palestinian terrorist organization announced it would not accept the cease fire and fired rockets into northern Israel.  It would be another 48 hours before the facts on the ground would reflect the desires of those on the banks of New York’s East River.

1973 Israel took full control over all Syrian positions on Mt. Hermon. (JTA)

1973: “A combined force of Egyptian paratroopers and commandos…repulsed a final Israeli effort to capture the city’ Of Ismalia.

1976: “Car Wash” a comedy with a script by Joel Schumacher, the son of Swedish Jew Marian Kantor Schumacher and featuring Irwin Corey and Melanie Mayron was released in the United States today.

1976: After “40 activists demonstrating in the Supreme Soviet, marched out to the reception room of the Central Committee with yellow stars on their clothes… they are detained and taken to a drunkards facility, registered and forewarned

1978(21st of Tishrei, 5739): Hoshana Raba

1978(21st of Tishrei, 5739): Eighty-seven year old Samuel Eliezer Goldfarb, “the New York born son of Polish immigrants Malya Molly Goldfarb and Nesanel Dovid Bryer, a cantor and small merchant” considered to be “the father of Jewish music in America” and brother of Israel Goldfarb passed away today.

https://jewishamericansongster.com/

http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv69441

http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv49530

1981: Birthdate of American actor Michael Aaron Fishman best known for his portrayal of “D.J. Conner” in the long-running sitcom “Roseanne.”

1982: After having passed away two days earlier in England, Rabbi Leib Gurwicz, the Gateshead Rosh Yehsiva was laid to rest “before the onset of Shabbat” in Israel after “a gathering of more than 15,000 people heard eulogies by leading Israeli rabbis in the Kiryat Mattersdorf neighborhood.”

1983: Admiral Arnold Resnicoff remained in Beirut after yesterday’s memorial service for Sgt. Allen Soifert instead of flying back to Italy because it was Shabbat.

1984: After the Alignment agreed to join a national unity government with Likud in 1984, Sarid left the party today to join Shulamit Aloni's Ratz.”

1984: Abd Rabbo murdered Ron Levy and Revital Seri today when he “came upon the two hiking south of Jerusalem, tied them up at gunpoint, placed bags over their heads and shot them dead.” (As reported by Elhanan Miller)

1986:  Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian born physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate passed away.  He was an anti-fascist who helped his Jewish friends escape from Hungary.



1989(23rd of Tishrei, 5750): Simchat Torah



1989: The funeral of Israeli journalist Dahn Ben-Amotz was held today.

1992: “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a play by Wendy Wasserstein that focuses on three Jewish-American sisters and their lives “premiered off-Broadway in a Lincoln Center Theater production at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater.”

1993: U.S premiere of “Twenty Bucks” with a script by Leslie and Endre Bohem, co-starring David Schwimmer and photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki.

1999: Maurice Papon, an official in the Vichy French government during World War II was jailed for crime against humanity. Papon was a senior police official and instrumental in the deportation and murder of large numbers of French Jews.  He covered up his crimes for several decades but eventually he was brought to justice.

1999:  “One Day in September” an Academy Award winning documentary about the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics was released today in the United States.

1999: Barry Blaustein’s “Beyond the Mat,” a documentary about wrestlers outside of the ring was released today in the United States.

2000(23rd of Tishrei, 5761): Simchat Torah

2000: The New York Times featured reviews of two books by Jewish authors: The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation by Howard Kurtz and Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/22/reviews/001022.22debottt.html

2001: Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad “was able to get a loan at relatively high rate from the Bank Leumi” to cover part of the 1.5 million NIS that his father had had to return to donors.

2002: The Anaheim Angels defeated the Giants in the third game of the World Series. Scott Schoeneweis, whose mother was Jewish, pitched the final two innings of a 10-4 Angel victory -- he allowed no runs, struck out two, and gave up only one hit.  The Angels went on to win the series in seven games

2002: Domazlice -- An old Jewish cemetery was desecrated in a southwestern Czech town. Five tombstones were toppled at the cemetery in Domazlice, 94 miles southwest of Prague, and five copper lanterns stolen. Copper plaques with Hebrew inscriptions were removed from two tombstones.

2002:At least 14 Israelis were killed and more than 45 injured when an explosives-laden sport utility vehicle driven by a Palestinian suicide bomber rammed a bus near Hadera in northern Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

2005: The World Series in which the Houston Astros whose roster included Brad Ausmus began today.

2005:  What do you do with the Etrog after Sukkoth?  According to the Jerusalem Post, Uzi Eli the "etrog medicine man" has created a variety of etrog-based juices, tonics, pastes, and creams that are more than just medicine; they are a way of life. There is evidence that in the Middle Ages the etrog, or as it is called in English, citron, was used as a remedy for seasickness, pulmonary troubles, intestinal ailments and other disorders, according to Fruits in Warm Climates by J. Morton. Jews are not the only ones who believe the curative value of the etrog. In India, the peel is eaten to cure dysentery and halitosis, while the distilled juice is given as a sedative. In China, the peel is made into a tonic and used as a stimulant and expectorant. In West Tropical Africa, the etrog is used only as a medicine, most often against rheumatism. In Panama, etrogim are ground up and combined with other ingredients and given as an antidote for poison.

2006: The Chicago Tribune book section featured reviews of two books about I.F. Stone: All Governments: The life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone by Myra MacPherson and The Best of I.F. Stone edited by Karl Weber

2006: University of Chicago Professor, Norman Gelb’s long-discredited theory on the Dead Scrolls has gained new support based on recent archeological digs at Qumran.  Rather than being a monastery used by the Essenes, Qumran may have been a fortress and then a pottery factory.  According to Gelb, the caves were a repository of literature brought from Jerusalem at the time of destruction of the Second Temple, placed in clay containers purchased at the pottery factory and then hidden from the Romans in the local caves.  This would mean that the Dead Scrolls are not the unitary work of one sect but a collection of literature from a variety of authors.

2006: At Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, Rabbis James Ponet is scheduled to officiate at the wedding Adam Louis Berenzweig and Anya Miriam Kamenetz, the daughter LSU English Professor Moira L. Crone and LSU English Professor Rodger L. Kamenetz who “is also the founder of the Jewish studies program” and he author of The Jew in the Lotus, Stalking Elijah, The Lowercase Jew and The Missing Jew: New and Selected Poems.

2006: The Chicago Tribune reported on Dina Babbit’s attempt to reclaim artwork she had created while an inmate at Auschwitz.  As a teenager Babbit’s life was spared because she was able to draw pictures for Dr. Josef Mengele.  Babbit has been trying to claim the paintings since 1973 when she first found out that they had survived the war.  A museum at Auschwitz has the paintings and despite repeated requests from a variety of sources claims that the only one who could make a claim for them would be Mengele since the work was done for him.  Babbit wants the art works as a way to bring some sort of closure to the evil experience she endured with her mother.


2006: Siraly (Seagull in English) the newest nightspot in Budapest opened its doors on Kiraly Street in the heart of what used to the city’s Jewish ghetto.  The three level bar hosted a Hebrew rapper in the theater space, paintings by a young Hungarian Jew and, on the front door, a mezuzah with a playful cartoon of a little girl.  The opening is a climactic event in the Jewish gentrification on this formerly Jewish section that was laid waste by the Nazis and smothered by the Communists.


2006:The New York Timesfeatures reviews of the following books by Jewish authors and/or that featured Jewish topics including Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57by Michael Weisskopf and two books by Lemony Snicket, The End: A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the 13thand The Beatrice Letters. Lemony Snicket is the pen name of author Daniel Handler, Jewish33-year-old native of San Francisco


2007: At the Englert Theater in Iowa City, IA, Ambassador Samuel Lewis, one of Washington's most experienced and respected Old Middle East Hands facilitates a presentation that is part of  "US and the World," the ongoing series, which focuses on US policy in the Middle East, past, present and, so far as possible, future. Ambassador Lewis, served 31 years as a career diplomat, including eight years as US ambassador to Israel during the Carter and Reagan Administrations, i.e., the period that included the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.  On retirement from the Foreign Service, he served as founding president and CEOof the US Institute of Peace.


2007:  Zigota, a tiny fringe studio/movement theater ensemble presents its new show “The Passerby” at the intimate Tmumna Theatre in south Tel Aviv.


2007: “Yael Naim, the self-titled second studio album by Yael Naïm” featuring the single "New Soul" was released today “ “on the Tôt ou tard label.”


2007: The New York Times and the Washington Post each featured a review of Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House by Valerie Plame Wilson. Like Madeline Albright, Plame did not find out that she was “part Jewish” until she reached adulthood. At least one great grandfather was a rabbi.  Her husband, Joe Wilson, who was part of the “leak scandal”, has two Jewish children from his first marriage.


2007: The New Republic magazine featured a review of Fateful Choies;Ten Decisions That Changed The World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw.  Kershaw views the Holocuast as one of these ten decisions.  “Kershaw argues that the Nazi program for the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question,’ adopted in the summer and autumn of 1941, was for Hitler a strategic decision.  In his view the war could never be won unless the Jews were destroyed.”


2008: Simchat Torah, 5769 (The Holiday Season ends)


2008: “Role Models,” a comedy directed and written by Shaker Heights, Ohio, native David Wain premiered in Westwood today.


2008:Award-winning Israeli author Etgar Keret reads from his writing as part of the Raymond Carver Reading series at Syracuse University.


2008: The New Republic includes reviews of Indignationby Philip Roth and Khibet Khizeh by S. Yizhar; translated by Nicholas de Lange.


2009(4th of Cheshvan, 5770): “Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died today at the age of 83”. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)



2009: The annual Presidents’ Conference comes to a close in Jerusalem.


2009: In “Examining a Man Who Was (of Wasn’t?) a Holocaust Hero” Stephen Holden reviewed Gaylen Ross’s documentary about the controversial Hungarian entitled “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis.”



2009: Sportswriter and author John Feinstein reads from and discusses Change-up: Mystery at the World Series, his new book for young readers (ages 9-12), at Aladdin's Lamp Children's in Arlington, Va.


2009: At the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a program entitled “Past Imperfect: New Jewish Fiction” provides an opportunity to meet three of the newest authors of Jewish fiction:Binnie Kirshenbaum (The Scenic Route), Jonathon Keats (The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six) and Norah Labiner (German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons).


2010:YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present a program entitled “Lenin's Jewish Question” in which Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern an Associate Professor of Jewish History at Northwestern University and author of Lenin's Jewish Question is scheduled to his discoveries about Lenin’s maternal Jewish great-grandfather named Moshko Blank, “Blank's conversion to Christianity, and related questions, such as why Soviet communists sought to suppress any discussion of Lenin's Jewishness, why Russian racists attempted to portray Lenin as a Jew, and why Lenin approached the Jewish question as he did.”


2010: The Jewish People Policy's annual conference held its closing session in Jerusalem today


2011: Jews begin the cycle again with the reading on Bereshit.


2011:The 21st Holocaust Remembrance Concert, featuring the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is scheduled to take place in New York City.


2011:Firefighters battled flames at the Gilon junction and the Ahihud Forest this afternoon, after extinguishing two blazes that had broken out earlier that day


2011: Israel gave Egypt a list of 81 Egyptian prisoners held in Israel to be released in exchange for Ilan Grapel, according to Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabeh, Army Radio reported early this morning.


2012: The Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia is scheduled to present “a play reading” of My Name is Asher Lev.


2012:The American Jewish Historical Society and Yeshiva University Museum are scheduled to present “Jews as Art Dealers and Collectors,” a panel discussion that will examine Jewish “prominence as collectors and dealers supporting their claim to membership in European high culture and making them the principal targets of Nazi dispossession


2012: “The Queen of Versailles,” directed and produced by Lauren Greenfield and starring Jackie and David A. Siegel was nominated for Best Documentary Film by the International Documentary Association (IDA)


2012:More than 2,500 people signed up to participate in a global Shema flash mob as part of a campaign to promote religious pluralism in Israel.  The gatherings early this afternoon came two days after Conservative Jewish congregations were asked to dedicate a recitation of the Shema to the topic as well.


2012: The Israeli air force hit a rocket launching squad in the northern Gaza Strip today, reportedly killing three. The airstrike came in response to rocket fire on southern Israel from Gaza and a mortar attack on an IDF patrol, military sources said.


2013: Mayor Nir Barkat defeated Moshe Lion in today’s mayoral election in Jerusalem.(As reported by Yoel Goldman)


2013: Today, “1n a panel discussion at Yeshiva University Sheldon Adelson said that the United States must get tougher about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program


1981: Birthdate of American actor Michael Aaron Fishman best known for his portrayal of “D.J. Conner” in the long-running sitcom “Roseanne.”


2013: Rihanna is schedule to be giving a public concert in the Tel Avi’s Park Hayarkon as the ballots from the city’s election are being counted (As reported by Renee Ghert-Zand)


2013: The JCCNV is scheduled to present “My Name Is Asher,” a play reading by Aaron Posner adapted from the novel of that name by Chaim Potok.


2013: The Israel Action Center at the JCRC is scheduled to present “Iran: The Nuclear Threat and Implications for the Greater Middle East.”


2013: The Center for Jewish History” is scheduled to present “The Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia – 1350 to the Present Day.”


2013: “An earthquake measuring 3.3 on the Richter scale took place today in northern Israel, according to the Israel Geophysical Institute. It is the fifth quake in the Galilee in less than a week. The quake was centered at a depth of two kilometers, beneath the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret).” (As reported by Gil Ronen)


2013: Mohamed Aazi, 28, and who helped plan the bus bombing in Tel Aviv last November in which 29 people were injured was killed in a clash this morning with Israeli Special Forces.2014:The American Sephardi Federation and Congregation Shearith Israel is scheduled to present Mimouna’s Moroccan Jewish Caravan: “Preserving the Past, Connecting in the Present & Building the Future.” http://mimounacaravan.rsvpify.com/


2014:Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man: A Novel, and her daughter Meg, author of the literary sensation The Interestings and the new young adult novel Belzharare scheduled to discuss their writing and the family influences that have shaped their work at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.


2014:A resident of Gaza was arrested on Wednesday morning by security forces after having illegally infiltrated into Israeli territory. (As reported by Ari Yashar)


2014: “The world-leading Israeli defense company Elbit Systems announced today that it has been awarded contracts from an unnamed Asian country for roughly $85 million, as Israel's Asian ties continue to blossom.” (As reported by Ari Yashar)


2014(28th of Tishrei, 5775): Fifty-six year old “Rabbi Dr. Judith Abrams, the founder and director of the online Talmud learning website, MAQOM, died of a heart attack today in Houston.”


2014: “A baby girl was killed and eight people were injured today, after a terrorist hit them with his car outside the Givat Hatachmoshet (Ammunition Hill) Light Rail stop.” (As reported by Tova Dronin)


2014: “NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa, is free of the virus and will leave the Nebraska Medical Center today.” (As reported by Daily Forward)



2015: In Iowa City, the University Iowa Office Of Research & Economic Development is scheduled to host a lecture by Israeli author Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years


2015: Leslie Epstein, an American novelist who grew up surrounded by some of the luminaries of Hollywood's Golden Age, speaks about his experience as the son and nephew of the writers of Casablanca and dozens of other classic films is scheduled to lecture on Behind the Scenes: Growing Up Jewish In Hollywood sponsored by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.


2015: Richard Baranick and three of the surviving “Monuments Men” – “Harry Ettlinger, Motoko Furjishiro Huthwaite and Bernard Taper – were honored today with the Congressional Gold Medal.”



2015: Sidney “Blumenthal’s name came up today during” the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi “public questioning of Hillary Clinton at which time a motion calling for Blumenthal’s deposition to be made public was defeated by the Republicans in a straight party line committee vot


2015: In Los Angeles, celebrities including Israeli movie star Odeya Rush, actress Karla Souza, actor Michael Richards and comedian Jerry Seinfeld attended the third annual Red Star Ball sponsored by The American Friends of Magen David Adom


2015(9thof Cheshvan, 5776): Seventy-eight year old Tony and Emmy award nominated author Jerome Kass, the husband of Delia Ephron passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2015: Former BBC investigative journalist and television producer Dina Gold is scheduled to recount her successful legal battle to reclaim a building originally owned by her German ancestors and seized by the Reichsbahn, Hitler's railways, in 1937 in a lecture co-sponsored by the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival entitled “Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice at Krausentrasse 17/18 Berlin.”  


2016(20thof Tishrei, 5777):  Shabbat Chol Hamoe’ed


2016: Hollywood superstar Scarlett Johansson swapped the red carpet for a turn behind the counter at her new popcorn shop in Paris today where she “dished out the crunchy treat to punters at the launch of the Yummy Pop store she and husband Romain Dauriac have opened in the city’s trendy Marais district.”


2016: “Night” an exhibition of work by Israeli Michal Rovner is scheduled to come to close at the Pace Gallery.


2016: The Cornelia Street Café is scheduled to host a performance by Israeli-born jazz guitarist Gilad Hekselman


2016: In NYC, the Beer Garden is scheduled to host Sukktoberfest! Completed with “ice cold harvest beer, glatt kosher bratwurst, a band and a Sukkah.”


2017: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including For Two Thousand Years by Mihail Sebastian and the recently released paperback editions of The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israelby Uri Bar-Joseph and Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film by Alexandra Zapruder.


2017: As part of the 2017 Rabbi Jeff Portman Lecture Series, Dr. Robert Cargill is scheduled to present “When Tobias Met Sarah, A Romance.”


2017: Temple Israel Ner Tamid is scheduled to host 2016 Reuben Award Winner, cartoonist Terri Libenson speaking on “A Jewish Family Invades the Comics.


2017: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “A celebration of the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Labor Bund, the socialist movement which has figured so prominently in the history of Eastern European and World Jewry.”


2017: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker is scheduled to host “Middle East Security: Fresh Takes on Long-Standing Challenges.”


2017: “The Wedding Bar and Bat Mitzvah Show – Simchas Live” is scheduled to take place at the Village Hotel Watford


2017: Today, “the Los Angeles Times reported that 38 women have accused Academy Award winning screenwriter James Toback, the Manhattan born son of “Selma Judith (née Levy), a president of the League of Women Voters” and “Irwin Lionel Toback, a stockbroker and former vice president of Dreyfus & Company” “of sexual harassment or assault.”


2017: The Sydney Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a book launch for When Freedom Beckons; The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Jewish Journey to Australia by Vasilios Vasilas


2018: The ASF’s Sephardi Scholars Series is scheduled to present “Synagogue of Iran: Design and Development in Urban Contest” During which “Professor Mohammad Gharipour will discuss his research and recently published book, Synagogues of the Islamic World: Architecture, Design, and Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), which explores how the architecture of synagogues in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain responded to contextual issues and traditions, as well as how these contexts influenced the design and evolution of synagogues.”


2018: In London, at the Jewish Museum, Dominik Czechowski is scheduled to deliver a talk on “The Charms of Frankenstein.”


2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host an evening with author Gary Shteyngart whose most recent work was Lake Success



 


 


 

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

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OCTOBER 23


521 BCE (17thof Tishrei):The first Babylonian record of Nebuchadnezzar III the usurper who challenged the rule of Darius, the Persian ruler under whose reign the building of the Second Temple began.


42 BCE: The army of Marcus Junius Brutus was defeated at the Second Battle of Philippi.  Brutus committed suicide at the end of the day. Since he was one of those who murdered Julius Caesar, the death of Brutus was probably not mourned by most Jews.  Caesar's popularity was such among the Jews of the Roman Empires that when he died, the Roman biographer Suetonius wrote, “Public grief was enhanced by crowds of foreigners, lamenting in their own fashion, especially Jews, who came flocking to the Forum for several nights in succession.” Additionally, the victory paved the way for the eventual rule of Augustus who was a better Emperor than most from the Jewish point of view.


1086:  At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI.  Yusuf ibn Tashfin was the leader of group of puritanical Muslims known as Berber Almoravids. Many Jewish and Muslims scholars and intellectuals left areas controlled by these Berbers and took refuge in Toledo which had been conquered by the Christians in 1085. Periods of Berber control were not a Golden Age for the Jews of Iberia and thousands of Jews joined the army of Alfonso.  Although Alfonso lost the battle, the Berbers were too battered to take advantage of their victory and Yusuf had to return to North Africa marking the end of this phase of the long, drawn-out conflict between Christians and Muslims. During the centuries’ long contest, Jewish loyalties varied depending on the nature of the combatants.  All of this would come to an end with the Expulsion of 1492.


1392: Pope Boniface IX who in 1376 exempted his physician Angelo di Manuele and his son Angelo from all taxes “appointed the physician Solomone de Sabalduchio his "familiaris,"


1396: “The charter granted to the Jews of Carinthia and Styria today which states that the privileges granted them in 1377 shall be confirmed, is merely a confirmation of the pre-existing "Handfeste"


1456: Seventy Year old John of Capistrano a Franciscan friar who would be canonized by the Catholic Church but who was also known as the “Scourge of the Jews” for his “fiery sermons” that “persuaded southern German regions to expel their Jewish populations,” passed away today.


1548: French Protestant theologian Theodore Beza, the successor to John Calvin at Geneva and like Luther was a believer “that Christian churches were largely responsible for the current unbelief among the Jews and “that there would a large-scale conversion of the Jews” while still acknowledging “the Justice of divine anger the Jewish people” arrived in Geneva, today.


1625: “Pope Urban VIII forbids Jews from having gravestones within the city limits of Rome.”


1703: Letters of privileged granted today by King Leopold I “left it in the hands of the municipal councils” in Hungary to either admit or exclude Jews from their territory.


1715: Birthdate of Peter II of Russia.  During his reign, Peter modified some of the anti-Jewish rulings of his predecessor, Catherine I.  At the request of some of the Cossack leaders, he allowed them to return to the fairs in Little Russia since their presence was essential for the commercial wellbeing of the area.


1726:António José da Silva a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew"“went through the great auto-da-fé held” today “in the presence of King John V and his court, abjured his errors, and was set at liberty.” His mother would not be released until October of 1729.


1776: The brigantine Andrea Doria left the United States headed for the Dutch held island of St. Eustatius with a copy of the Declaration of Independence.  The Andrea Doria returned from the island which had a significant Jewish population which was supportive of the Americans with the first of several loads of arms and munitions that were critical to American success.


1793: Aaron Aarons married Hannah Levy at the Great Synagogue today.


1812: Uriah P. Levy, “a grandson of Revolutionary War patriot Jonas Phillips” and the first Jew to rise to the rank of Commodore in the United States Navy began his military career as a “sailing master.+


1818(23rdof Tishrei, 5579): Simchat Torah


1842: Fifty-six year old Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius the German Biblical critic and Hebrew language expert who authored a Hebrew grammar and a commentary on Isaiah passed away today.


1847: In Germany, Lazarus Morgenthau, the son of Moses and Brunhilda Morgenthau and Seline Babette Morgenthau gave birth to Maximilian Morgenthau


1853(21stof Tishrei, 5614): Hoshanah Rabah


1853: “Compulsory Christianity in Italy,” published today summarized the events of the last five years that are known as the Mortara Affair or The Kidnapping of Edgar Mortara which it says is recent stretch of Papal power in Italy ,making a noise in Europe, which will not be hushed up.  It also pointed out that the Papacy and this policy are propped up on the bayonets of Napoleon III’s troops and that if these troops were withdrawn the populace would rise up to defend the rights of the Jewish child’s father. “If rascally servants may clandestinely baptize the children of Hebrews, there is no reason why they not extend the same blessing to those of Protestants and if the Church can lawfully found a claim to the possession of their persons and their minds upon such a ceremony in the former case, they may in the latter.”


1854: It was reported today that in the matter of Abraham Oettinger v Uriah P. Levy, the judge decided in favor of the Plantiff and gave a judgement in the amount of $313.69.  This was a landlord/tenant dispute over who should pay for plumbing repairs. [Yes, this is the same Uriah P. Levy who was highest ranking Jewish officer in the United States Navy and a member of one New York’s most prominent Sephardic families.


1855: Birthdate of Emily Levy, the Hamburg born linguist and lexicographer.


1859: Birthdate of Simon Marx, the native of Alsace who is better known as Sam Marx, the husband of Minnie Marx and the father of the  Groucho Marx and the rest of the Marx brothers.


1860: “The Present Condition of the Jews” published today stated that, The second of Mr. De Cordova’s course of lectures, to be delivered this evening at Clinton Hall, is upon this highly interesting topic. To discuss it, it is needless to say, the lecturer lays aside the vein of light humor and pleasantry, which usually characterize his productions, and gives us sober facts and apposite illustrations instead.”


1860: A very large audience listened to Mr. De Cordova’s lecture on ‘the Past and Present condition of the Jews,’ delivered in Clinton Hall this evening. Commencing with the Biblical renown of the Israelites, the lecturer traced the distinction of that nation in the field of letters of arms, of medicine, and, in fact, of all the arts and sciences, demonstrating that they are well worth a place in history. He cited the popular idea of a Jew as that of a man with a very protuberant proboscis, engaged in buying old clothes, renovating them by same mysterious and secret process, and selling them for eight times their value to unsuspecting countrymen. He accounted for the degraded condition of the lower class of Israelites from the fact of the relentless persecutions to which the race has been subjected in Austria, Spain, Germany and other countries, where they have been obliged to withstand the most terrible pains and penalties in their adherence to the religion of their fathers. He read official correspondence from Holland to show the good effect of emancipation the Jewish nation in that country, and from the increasing liberality manifested in all countries -- taking example by America -- he foretold a glorious future for Israel. As to the politics of this country he knew many Jews who would vote for Lincoln… Some who would vote for Douglas….Some who would go for Breckenridge and two or three who were Know-Nothings…In conclusion, Mr. De Cordova paid a glowing tribute of admiration to our free institutions, which alike honor and protect the Jew and the Gentile” [Editor’s Note – De Cordova was a Sephardic Jew who was quite popular as a humorist, author and public speaker.]


1861: Samuel Du Pont the U.S Navy officer in charge of the expedition aimed at taking Port Royal, SC from the Rebels “was furious” when he saw the article published in today’s New York Times providing details of his activities.  “Jacob da Silva Solis Cohen, as Sephardic Jew…was an assistant surgeon with Dupont’s expedition to Port Royal” who also served with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron which was a key, if unsung, element in the Union’s victory.


1862: Philadelphian Benjamin B. Goodman who had risen to the rank of 2ndLieutenant in the 27th Regiment completed his enlistment today but apparently his sense of duty was not since fulfilled since he would re-enlist just eight days later.


1864 :( 23rd of Tishrei, 5625): Simchat Torah


1864: Major Mordecai was named Chief of Ordinance, Department and Army of the Ohio, which was one of the major military units of the Union forces during the American Civil War.  Ordinance dealt with Artillery, the one element of the Northern Army that consistently out-performed its Confederate counterparts.


1866: Today in Pilsen, the City Council decided to declare” the secondary” school to be Czech which caused great indignation among the Germans, especially the Jews” “who spoke Czech but considered German to be their mother tongue.”


1866: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassman, a leading German gynecologist who would be forced to flee when the Nazis came to power.


1867: Seventy-two Senators were summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate, the upper house of the Canadian Parliament. Jews played an active role in Canadian politics as can be seen by the fact that Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in 1807 and Henry Nathan was elected as to serve as an MP in the House of Commons in 1874.  But a Jew did serve in the Canadian Senate until 1955 when David Kroll was appointed to serve in the upper chamber.


1868: Birthdate of Sir Alfred Moritz, the younger son of Ludwig Mond, who gained fame as an industrialist, financier, politician and Zionist and was the husband of Dame Violet Florence Mabel Mond.


1868: The Jews of Barbados were denied the right to engage in retail trade.


1872(21stof Tishrei, 5633): Hoshanah Rabah


1872: “Minor Topics” published today described the theory of “J.B. Bartnett, a Hebrew scholar” that “Ireland was…settled” by people “from Judea when the Prophet Jeremiah emigrated” there “with the remnant of the tribe of Judah. According to Bartnett, prophet brought with him the stone known as ‘Jacob’s Stone’ which was kept in the sanctuary of the first temple at Jerusalem” and has become “the Stone of Destiny” that was used to crown Irish kings and was later taken to Westminster Abbey by Edward III who used it for the same purpose.


1874(12th of Cheshvan, 5635):Abraham Geiger a German rabbi and scholar who led the founding of Reform Judaism passed away. (There is no way this brief entry can do him justice.  See below for gateway article into his fascinating life.)



1875: Birthdate of  Alsatian native Armand Spira, the husband of Suzanne Metzger and father of Henry and Andre Spira and the father-in-law of Marcelle (Kehrli) Spira.


1877: Louis Lazarus, the Jewish owner of a second-hand clothing store on the corner of Baxter and Leonard in Manhattan, was held at the tombs Police Court on the charge of receiving stolen goods.  Bail was set at $1,500.


1878: It was reported today that Moritz Ellinger has been chosen to run for the position of Coroner by the opponents of the Tammany political machine.


1879: It was reported today that Joseph De Longpres, a fourteen year old who had arrived yesterday in New York from New Orleans is missing. He was last seen entering a hack hired by a Jew whom he had met on the boat coming up from New Orleans. The boy, who had money and luggage when he left the ship is described as “timid and effeminate.”  There is no other description of the other party except that he was a Jew.  How this was deduced is not mentioned.


1879: Three days after he had passed away, 70 year old German native Lesser Friedlander, the husband of the former Elizabeth Assur, was buried today at the West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.


1879: The Vicksburg (Miss.) Herald reported that a meeting held in Bolivar County adopted resolutions denouncing Edward Storm as “a dishonest Jew, the servile tool of the slave-owner before the war and the convenient and abandoned ally of the carpetbagger.” The citizens of Bolivar County are urged to vote against Storm who has been nominated by the Republicans for the position of County Supervisor.” [A Google Search cannot find any reference to a Jew named Edward Storm.  Poor man, he was hit with the big three of the post war South – Republican, Carpetbagger and Jew.]


1879: Simon Curriak, a Jewish tailor working on Division Street in NYC, has come forward to claim his children who being held at Castle Garden.  In the meantime, an unidentified Jewish newspaper editor has asked the authorities to hold the children until he can present their case to “the local Jewish societies” who will provide for their needs. 


1881: Eighteen year old Recha Goldschmidt married Alfred Schwarzschild, the son of Isaac Jacob Schwarzschild and Rosalie Kulp.


1881: It was reported today that the Jewish synagogues of East Prussia, which total 34, “recently held their first convention.


1881: It was reported today that “the Russian Government proposes to give special privileges to those Jews who will engage in agricultural pursuits.” The Jews will be allowed to purchase land outside of the Pale of Settlement, “but they will be under strict surveillance.” 


1881: It was reported today that for Jews, the disappearance of “religious hate” has so completely disappeared” from Serbia that a Jew has been elected to the Serbian Parliament.  This stands in stark contrast to “the neighboring kingdom of Romania” where “persecution of Jews still goes on.”


1882: It was reported today that the six largest Jewish congregations in New York are Temple Emanu-El Temple Beth El, Ahavath Chesed, B’nai Yeshurun, Shearay Tefilla and Rodoph Sholom. The membership of these congregations total approximately 1,500.


1883(22ndof Tishrei, 5622): Shmini Atzeret


1883(22ndof Tishrei, 5622): Seventy-nine year old German physicist Peter Riess the first Jewish member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences passed away today.


1883: In New York, Christopher Oscanyan, an Armenian-American, delivered a lecture at Steinway Hall entitled “The Women of Turkey and the Jews of the East.”


1884: New York Mayor Franklin Edson and Jesse Seligman were among the dignitaries who attended the dedication of the new building housing the Hebrew Orphan Asylum


1884: It was reported today that in New York City, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on holding “a Montefiore centenary celebration.”


1884: Rabbi Mendes of Shearith Israel wrote to President Chester A. Arthur inviting him to participate in the upcoming events celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore.  Arthur’s private secretary replied with a note expressing his high esteem for the great philanthropist and his regrets that he would not be able to attend due to other official demands on his time


1885: “The Mystery At Wilmington” published today described events surrounding the death of lodger at the Clayton House in Wilmington, Delaware. “The man’s features are clear German, and there are evidences that he was of the Hebrew faith.” (The latter statement may have been a polite reference to the decedent having been circumcised.)


1886: Birthdate of Paul Ferdinand Strassmann, “a pioneer in surgical gynecology.”


1886: It was reported today that the Honorable S.S. Cox will address the upcoming opening exercise of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.


1886: In Natchez, LA, Samuel and Caroline Friedman gave birth to Louisiana state legislator Leon Friedman


1887: “From Anjou to Touraine” which was published today described the history of the region during Medieval times including the fact that “in 1329, when the Jews were accused of having formed a plot to poison all the wells and springs in France, 160 unfortunate people of that race were burned at the stake in Chinon.”


1887: Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, the rabbi at New York City’s Temple Beth-El gave the second of his Sunday lectures today which was entitled “What is Judaism?”


1888: In New York, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment met today and provisionally approved expenditures for several agencies of the city government and charitable institutions including an expenditure of $60,000.00 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.


1888(18thof Cheshvan, 5649): Seventy-six year old Samuel  Bernheimer, the native of Hohenems, Austria and the wife of Henrietta Cahn whom he had married in New Orleans, passed away today in Mississippi.


1889: In Rockford, Illinois, Professor E.L. Curtis delivered a sermon in which he declared that the Book of Job is only a poem written by some pious Jew during the period of the exile.


1889: A group of Russian Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms and persecution who had arrived in Argentina aboard the SS Weser founded Moisés Ville a small town in Santa Fe province which was part of the Jewish agricultural settlements to be financed by Baron Maurice Hirsch.


1889:Birthdate of Avshalom Feinberg one of the  leaders of Nili, a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine helping the British fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Feinberg was born in Gedera, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and studied in France. He returned to work with Aaron Aaronsohn at the agronomy research station in Atlit. Soon after the beginning of war, Aaronson founded the Nili underground along with his sister Sarah Aaronsohn, Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. In 1915 Feinberg travelled to Egypt and made contact with British Naval Intelligence. In 1917, Feinberg again journeyed to Egypt, on foot. He was apparently killed by a Bedouin near the British front in Sinai, close to Rafah. His fate was unknown until after the 1967 Six-Day War when his remains were found under a palm tree that had grown from date seeds in his pocket to mark the spot where he lay. In 1979 a new Israeli settlement in the Sinai Peninsula, Avshalom was named after him. Although it was abandoned following the Camp David Accords, a new village by the same name was founded in Israel in 1990.


1892: Birthdate of Gummo Marx. This actor and comedian was one of the famous Marx Brothers.  He died in 1977.


1892: Professor Adolph Cohn of Columbia delivered the address of welcome at this evening’s dinner honoring French Admiral Abel de Libran and his staff which was attended by many prominent New York dignitaries including President Rosenthal of the French Hebrew Society.


1892: Fifty-two year old Mehmed Emin Pasha passed away today, reportedly murdered by two Arab slave traders in the Congo Free State while working for the German East Africa Company. One of the minor romantic figures of the 19thcentury, he was born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer, to a German-Jewish family.  He converted to Christianity and then to Islam, as he played multiple roles in different parts of the Ottoman Empire.


1892: In his formal speech which the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City delivered at the Hebrew Institute Hall last night, Edward Einstein called on his mostly Jewish audience to go to the polls and “rebuke the present City Government.


1893: Richard Mansfield’s unique portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venicewas seen for the first time at Hermann’s in New York City.


1893: “Cholera Panic” published today described the reaction to outbreak of the disease including the decision by the Chief Rabbi of Leghorn to close “the grand marble synagogue which is the wealthiest synagogue in the world” with the exception of the one in Amsterdam and the “panic and flight” of the Jews living in Baghdad.


1893: In Altoona, PA, “Abraham and Ida Einstein Abelson” gave birth to Myer Abelson who rose to the rank of Sergeant while serving with the “50th Infantry in WW I.”


1894(23rdof Tishrei, 5655): Simchat Torah


1894: Birthdate of New Jersey native Alexander Rudolph, the son of a Kosher butcher, who gained fame as World Middleweight Champion Al McCoy.


1895: Birthdate of Austrian native Wolfgang Ackerman, the physician decorated for his service in the Austrian Army during WW I and author of “And Are We Civilized” who moved to the United States in 1924.



1896: Hattie Heller of St. Louis, the Vice President of the National Council of Jewish Women in Missouri submitted her annual report to “Miss Sadie America, Secretary of the National Council of Jewish Woman that St. Joseph “is the only town of any size, with a Jewish population large to warrant forming a section” that has not formed a section of the organization.


1896(16thof Cheshvan, 5657): Sixty-eight year old Adolph H. Maas who “began his business career in Savannah, GA before moving to New York in 1852 where he developed a successful chemical manufacturing company passed away today at his home on Lexington Avenue.


1897(27thof Tishrei, 5658): Parashat Bereshit


1897(27thof Tishrei, 5658): In Liverpool, two and half year old John Raphael Davis, the son of Helen and D.E. Davis passed away today.


1897: H.R. H., The Prince of Wales is scheduled to be a guest of Lord Rothschild at Tring Park starting today.


1898: Dr. Joseph Krauskopf, who served as the rabbi to several American Congregations was the founder of The National Farm School said today "Tolerance of another's rational faith is the truest stamp of the genuineness and high standard of one's own faith."


1898: The Judeans hosted a dinner at the Tuxedo honoring Israel Zangwill.  Dr. Danzinger, President of the Association and Judge Sulzberger from Philadelphia flanked Zangwill on the dais. Zangwill spoke to the group of literary, civic and academic leaders about the evolution of the Jew over the centuries including the development of Jewish culture in the United States. Other attendees at the kosher dinner were Isidore Strauss and Adolph Ochs of New York.


1899(19th of Cheshvan, 5660): One day after his 62nd birthday Australian businessman and political leader Ephraim L. Zox who held several leadership positions in the Australian Jewish community including serving as President of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation passed away today.



1901: “Enid Miriam Gotthelf married Percy Lewis Hallenstein, the London born son of Recbecca and Micahelis Hallenstein, who later changed his name to Halsted “at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Australia.”


1901: In Charleston, SC, Rabbi Simenhoff officiated at the marriage of Marcus Barshay to Lena Banov.


1902: Max Brod met Franz Kafka for the first time when he gave a lecture on Arthur Schopenhauer at Charles University.


1904: Birthdate of “German screenwriter and art director” Hans Jacoby who was forced to leave Germany in 1933 but was lucky enough to resume his career in Hollywood.


1904: Birthdate of American artist Edward Biberman




1905: In Zurich, Switzerland “Gustav Bloch and Agnes Bloch (née Mayer)” gave birth to Felix Bloch who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952.



1905(24thof Tishrei, 5666): Nineteen year old Theodore Bachman, the son of Johanna Bachman and the nephew of Isador Bader, “the agent for the United Hebrew Charities at the Immigrants’ Home on Montgomery Street” was murdered today during the pogrom at Ekaterinoslav making him one of the 2,000 Jews who have been killed there since October 21st


1907:W.R. Wheeler, who is a member of the commission appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to visit foreign countries for the purpose of studying matters bearing on the American immigration problem, sailed for America on the Adriatic. Before he left England he met with Israel Zangwill, the novelist, who is the President of the Jewish Territorial Organization. Among other things, Zangwill expressed his concern that Jews immigrating to the United States quickly assimilated into the general American culture and lost their Jewish identity.  Zangwill felt that America was a much better place for Jews to be than other hostile countries such as Russia, but he looked forward to a time when Jews would be united within their own national territory.


1907: In St. Petersburg, Russia Prince Peter Dolgorouky and Countess Sophy Bobrinsky gave birth to their only child Sofka Skipworth who was honored for her valiant work in saving Jews during the Holocaust.




1908:  Birthdate of Iya Frank, the Russian born physicists who won the Nobel Prize in 1958. Establishing the Jewish lineage of those who lived in the Soviet Union can present quite a challenging.  Frank’s father definitely was Jewish.


1909: Birthdate of Avraham Bergman, the Petah  Tikva native who as Avraham Biran was the archaeologist who led the dig at Tel Dan and “headed the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.”




1910: In Berlin, art gallery Hugo Perls and his wife gave birth art dealer and “art sleuth” Frank Perls.


1910: The National Farm School, led by President Joseph Krauskop of Germantown held its 13th annual meeting in Bucks County, PA today.


1911(1stof Cheshvan, 5672): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


1911(1stof Cheshvan, 5672): Fifty-six year old Kovno native David Apotheker, the Yiddish author and anarchist who came to the United States in 1888 where he worked “as a printer in Philadelphia” and joined the anarchists in New York passed away today.




1911: “Senator Penrose assured a delegation of Jews from Philadelphia headed by Judge Mayer Sulzberger that he will take up the Passport Question with President Taft and Secretary Knox as soon as soon as Congress convenes” and that his of the opinion that final notice should be served on Russia that the United States will no longer tolerate discrimination against class of citizens.”


1914: “Mass Meeting for Palestine Cause” published today described plans for an upcoming meeting sponsored by Hadassah to deal with the crisis faced by the Jewish community due to World War.


1914: “Wars Horrors In Russia” published today described a Jewish soldier in the hospital at Petrograd “who was raving mad” after having taken part in a bayonet charge against the Austrians where “he drove his bayonet through the chest of his opponent he heard him “gasp the Hebrews death prayer which begins ‘Hear, O Israel.”


1914: “Nathan Straus for Glynn” published today described the Jewish leader’s support for Martin H. Glynn, the first Catholic chief executive of the state of New York.


1916: “Honest John O’Brien” opened tonight on Broadway at a theatre co-owned by Sam H. Harris.


1916: Oppose a Census of Jews” published today described the view of several newspapers including the Vorwarts and the Tageblatt that the motion passed by the General Committee of the Reichstag calling for a census of men serving in the various associations charged with providing the necessities of life for the nation is anti-Semitic because it counts the Jews doing this as if they are “shirkers” and does not count the number of Jews serving in the army.


1916: In St. Louis, “the House of Deputies of the Episcopal General Convention adopted without opposition a resolution” urging that converts from Judaism be allowed “to observe the national rites and ceremonies of Israel when they accept Christ…”


1917: The Industrial Removal Office, whose officers included Chairman Reuben Arkush, Vice Chairman, Alfred Jaretzki and Secretary Nathan Bijur held it 16thannual meeting today in New York City.


1917: Two hundred “aged residents” of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob held a prayer meeting today during which they prayed “for the success of the American army and the coming of an honorable peace before turning over $100 of their savings to “Superintendent Albert Kruger with the instructions to buy a Liberty bon in the name of the institution.”


1917: Birthdate of Dub Karel who in 1942 was transported from Prague to Majdenak where he was murdered.


1918: Birthdate of “Harold P. Manson, director of the office of Academic Affairs of the American Friends of the Hebrew University and the husband of “Mrs. Natanya Neumann Manson, a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.”


1918: Birthdate of Meri Vilner, the native of Vilnius who as Ber Kovner became a leader of the Communist Party of Israel. He was a cousin of Abba Kovner, the famous resistance fighter and Israeli poet.


1918: Constantin C. Arion, the Rumanian Minister of Foreign Affairs who had said that his “Government would grant rights to the Jews in accordance with the peace treat” and that the Government “would completely abolish Article 7 of the Rumanian Constitution” which states that “Jews in Rumania are aliens and that naturalization is only possible for them individually” completed his service in that government position today. (Editor’s Note – Going back to the Congress of Berlin, Rumanian government were always promising to emancipate the Jews living in the country and always failing to do so.)


1919(25thof Tishrei, 5680): Manhattan native Benjamin Duberstein, who changed his name to Dubois when he enlisted in the Army and who rose from the rank of private to major while serving with the Third Division in France where he contracted pleurisy lost his battle with tuberculosis and passed away at Fort Houston, TX.


1920(11thof Cheshvan, 5681): Parashat Lech-Lecha


1920: The Tri-City Conference of Social Workers with attendees coming from Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York is scheduled to open this evening at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association on West 110th Street.


1924: In Pennsylvania, William and Edith Lieberman gave birth to S. Bernard Lieberman


1926: Middleweight Seymour “Cy” Schindel won his 9th bout giving him a record of 8 victories and one loss today.


1927:  In Israel, a moshav that would be late known as Netanya is founded by Nathan Strauss.


1927(27th of Tishrei, 5688): Forty-nine year old Joel Blau, the former rabbi of Peni-El Temple and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, New York who is the current rabbi at the West End London Synagogue passed away today.


1927(27th of Tishrei, 5688): Seventy-four year old Alois Eisler, the husband of Emilie Eisler and the father of “Otto Eisler; Dr. Rudolf Eisler and Paul Eisler” passed away today in the Czech Republic.


 


1927: “Sunset” a play “written by Isaac Babel in 1926, based on his short story collection The Odessa Tales” “premiered at the Baku Worker's Theatre” today.


 


1929: Birthdate of Leonard Freed, the son of Jewish immigrants who became a leading documentary photojournalist who photographed everything from the Amsterdam Jewish Community to the Civil Rights movement with a special emphasis on Martin Luther King, Jr to the Yom Kippur War passed away today.



1929: In Los Angeles, Nathan and Pearl Adelson (née Swartz), “children of Russian immigrants who had settled in Nebraska” gave birth to real estate developer and television producer Merv Adelson.



1929: The city of Netanya named in honor of philanthropist Nathan Strauss. Originally, a coastal Moshav, within a decade it was thriving Mediterranean seaside resort.


1931: The part of recently deceased playwright Dr. Arthur Schnitzler’s will, dealing with the disposition of his property is scheduled to be read today.


1934(14th of Cheshvan, 5695): Seventy-nine year old Samuel Samuel the British businessman who founded Samuel Samuel & Co in Yokohama in partnership with his brother Marcus and who served as a Conservative MP from 1919 until he passed away today.


1934: Nathan L. Goldstein, President of the United States Maccabiah Association announced today that “the United States will be represented by a team of twenty five athletes at the second Maccabiah” scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in April of 1935.


1934: In the Bronx, “Samuel and Fannie Kaplan of the Sefardi Recanati family from Salonika, Greece, gave birth to Leonard Martin Kaplan who gained fame Orthodox rabbi and author Aryeh Moshe Eliyahu Kaplan.



1935: Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz are fatally shot in a bar in Newark in what will become known as The Chophouse Massacre.  Were there Jewish gangsters?  Yes!  But contrary to a recent revisionist books on the topic, these thugs were not role models or heroes.


1936(7th of Cheshvan, 5697): Hyman Goldman, the center for the Lehigh University football team from 1918 to 1920 who went on  to serve as an assistant coach for his alma mater and a successful career as a chemical engineer passed away today.


1936: In Amsterdam, violinist Bronislaw Huberman who was the founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra performed as a soloist this evening with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Bruno Walter. 


1936: In Chicago, Elizabeth (Brandau), a housewife, and Nathan Kaufman, a produce businessman gave birth to director and screenwriter Philip Kaufman who became involved with the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he receives story credit. While the character of Indiana Jones was created by George Lucas, it was Kaufman who came up with the story and the pursuit of the Ark of the Covenant.


1936: It was reported today that the sponsors of Reconstruction, a book “recording what the Jews of America have done for the relief and rehabilitation of their less fortunate coreligionists throughout the world” include President Roosevelt, former Governor Alfred E. Smith, Governor Lehman, Mayor La Guardia, New Jersey Governor Harold G. Hoffman, Illinois Governor Henry Horner, Tennessee Governor Hill McAlister and Wyoming Governor Leslie A. Miller.


1936: “The purge of German Kultur of Jewish influences advanced another step today when the biblical text of the world-famous oratorio ‘Judas Maccabeus’ by George Friedrich Handel, the Anglo-German composer who lied buried in West Minster Abbey, was changed a new ‘German’ text was substituted.”


1936: “Under threat of boycott and picketing by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League and the American Jewish Congress, the management of the Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse announced today that it had inefinitely postponed the showing of the film ‘Amphitryon’ which “was financed by the French branch of UFA which is virtually owned by the Nazi government.”


1936: As the Mosely inspired fascist attacks continued in the United Kingdom, “Sophie Tucker complained today that ruffians in London’s East End had thrown rocks at her.”


1938: Thirty-six old Alsatian-born American movie mogul William Wyler married Margaret “Talli” Tallichet with whom he had five children -- “Catherine, Judith, William Jr., Melanie and David Wyler.”


1939: Warner Brothers released The Roaring Twenties, a “crime thriller” produced by Hal Wallis and Samuel Bischoff with a script co-authored by Mark Hellinger, Jerry Wald and Robert Rossen based on The World Moveson by Mark Hellinger.


1940: 21st of Tishrei, 5701): Hoshanah Rabah


1940: The Jewish Hospital in Warsaw was forced to close and move into the Warsaw Ghetto.


1940: In Brooklyn, William Greenwich and “Russian Jewish department manager Rose (Baron) Greenwich gave birth to Eleanor Louise Greenwich who gained fame as singer “Ellie” Greenwich.


1940: Hitler and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco met in Hendaye today where the Nazi leader demanded that his fascist client join his war effort; a demand that the Spaniard turned down.



1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Odessa "action" continued as 19,000 more Jews were gathered into the city square, sprayed with gasoline and burned alive.


1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): Thousands of Jews are murdered at Kragujevac, Yugoslavia.


1941: Father Bernhard Lichtenberg was arrested for protesting against German deportation of the Jews. He died on his way to Dachau


1941(2nd of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis executed 10,000 Jews of the Vilna ghetto


1941: Isidore Newman, who was training as a Wireless with SOE was described today as “good at PT; knows a lot and so this makes him a little unpopular with others in the group.”


1942: The Battle of El Alamein began with a major attack by British forces on Rommel’s Afrika Corps and their Italian Allies.  When the fighting started the Axis were on the verge of sweeping the British out of Egypt, seizing the Suez Canal, cutting the Imperial lifeline to India and destroying the Jewish community in Eretz Israel. The well-supplied Allied forces overcame the usual timidity of their generals and broke the Axis lines, starting the Germans on a long retreat that would end with surrender in Tunisia in 1943.


1942: Algerian-Jewish resistance leader José Aboulker met with American General Mark Clark in Morocco. Aboulker is given 800 Sten guns, 800 grenades, 400 handguns, and 50 portable radios. This is in preparation for Operation Torch, the November, 1942 landing of American and British forces in North Africa.  One of the big unknowns was how the French forces would react.  Would they resist since the French Vichy government was allied with Germany, or would they greet the Allies as liberating comrades in arms.  The Americans hoped for the latter, but as this action showed, they were preparing for the former.


1942(12th of Cheshvan, 5703): Forty-one year old  Ralph Rainger who was born Ralph Reichenthal was among ,the 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner who are killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. The award-winning composer was responsible for such hits Love in Bloom, Blue Hawaii and Bob Hope’s signature song, Thanks for the Memory.


1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704): Fifty-two year old violinist and bandleader Ben Bernie (Bernard Anzelevitz) whose orchestra “was heard via remote broadcast from the Hotel Roosevelt in New York on the first such broadcast by NBC” passed away.  (Editor’s note – some sources show the death date as October 20)


1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704): Five days after their deportation train left Rome, its 1,060 Jewish passengers were gassed at Auschwitz and Birkenau.


1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: Eighteen hundred Polish Jews formerly held at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, arrive at Auschwitz, where the women revolt outside the gas chambers, killing one SS guard and wounding two. SS reinforcements use gas grenades and machine-gun fire to subdue and kill the resisters.


1943: In Lithuania, a Jewish partisan unit destroys telegraph and telephone lines along the Vilna-to-Lida railway


1943(24th of Tishrei, 5704: One thousand, seven hundred-fifty Polish Jews, believing they were awaiting transport to South America, were sent to Birkenau instead. The women took part in a minor revolt in response to SS Sergeant Josef Schillinger's request for them to strip. He was shot and other SS men were injured. Rudolf Hoess ordered the removal of each of the women into the camp grounds, and had each one shot. According to Jerzy Tabau, who later escaped, "the extermination of the Jews continued relentlessly. . ."


1944: In Budapest, Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg and Swiss consul Carl Lutz continue to issue protective documents to Jews, partly in response to a decree that Jews in Hungary who are of foreign nationalities or those holding foreign passports will be exempt from forced labor.


1944: Hungarian authorities agreed to send another 25,000 Jews to Germany for purposes of forced labor. Charles Lutz, the Swiss Consul managed to save thousands of others by issuing collective passports and protective documents.


1944: As of today, the National Citizens Political Action Committee “had received contributions totaling $271, 531 and spent $165, 018.


1945: Birthdate of Kenneth Feinberg, an American attorney, specializing in mediation and alternative dispute resolution who first came to fame as the Special Masster of the September 11thVictim Compensation Fund.  He has remained in the public eye as the TARP “pay czar” and the man who was supposed to sort out the mess related to compensating the victims of the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.


1946: The original Kibbutz Ein Tzurim was founded today in Gush Etzion. The Jordanian Army destroyed the Kibbutz during Israel’s War for Independence.


1947:  In Kiriyate Bialik, Hadasa and Moshe gave birth to Yosef (Yosi) Barena who at the age of twenty would perish aboard the INS Dakar.


1948(20th of Tishrei, 5709): Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkoth


1948: The 4th Battalion of the Givati Brigade captured the village of Ajjur.


1948: Beit Jibrin was captured by the 52 Battalion of Givati and the 8th Brigade today


1949: An Israeli government spokesman reports hundreds of Jews in Iraq had been brutally arrested, and all their property confiscated.


1950(12th of Cheshvan, 5711): Al Jolson passed away.  Born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania in 1886, Jolson’s father was a Cantor for a synagogue in downtown Washington D.C. at the turn of the century.  Jolson chose to use his singing talents in a different manner.  As one of America’s first “superstars, he starred on Broadway, radio and film.  He is most famous for starring in the first talkie – the first full length film with sound.  It was called the Jazz Singer.




1951(23rd of Tishrei, 5712): Simchat Torah is celebrated by congregants of Adas Israel in its new home at Connecticut Avenue and Porter.


1951: In Manhattan “radio station manager R. Peter Straus” and “Ellen Sulzberger Straus, a cousin of New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger” gave birth to magazine published Diane Straus, the Yale University graduate and “stepsister of Monica Lewinsky.”


1951(23rd of Tishrei, 5712): Sixty-seven year old Ukrainian born playwright and screen writer Leo Birinski passed away today “at Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx” after which he was tragically buried at Potter’s Filed.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported at length on the research conducted in the Negev wadis by Dr. Nelson Glueck, the president of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Dr. Glueck discovered and described many wadis, situated deep in the Negev wastes, whose sides had been terraced from bottom to top. There were numerous cisterns to catch the run-off rainwater, as well as many dams and irrigation channels, a testimony to the former intense cultivation and human presence in that currently uninhabited territory. Glueck would eventually record all of his findings in a popular tome entitled Rivers In The Desert.


1953(14th of Cheshvan, 5714): Eighty year old Florence Walston, the daughter of Caroline and David Lewis Einstein the widow of Theodore David Seligman and archeologist Sir Charles Walston passed away today.


1955: In New York, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, held a cornerstone ceremony which was designed to serve as fund raiser for erecting a new community center. The inscription on the stone read: "Dedicated to Sephardic Unity and Community Service."


1955: It was reported today that Dr. Benjamin Mazar, the President of Hebrew University is visiting the United States as part of an effort to highlight the observance of the school’s thirtieth anniversary. The university currently has 4,000 students and a faculty of 560.


1956: The Hungarian Revolution began as Hungarians sought to remove Soviet forces from their country.  The revolt would turn violent as Soviet tanks returned to the streets of Budapest.  The Hungarian Revolt came at the same time as the Suez Crisis when the Israelis rolled across the Sinai and an Anglo-French force intervened.  In an interesting role reversal the Eisenhower Administration did nothing meaningful to stop the Soviets.  At the same, the Eisenhower Administration joined forces with the Soviets to support the Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser against the English, French and the Israelis.


1958: Russian novelist Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The author of Dr. Zhivago was born to Jewish parents in Moscow.  His father was a professor of painting and his mother was a concert pianist.


1960: U.S. premiere of “The Magnificent Seven” the classic western with a most memorable score created by Elmer Bernstein and a script co-authored by Walter Bernstein


1961(13th of Cheshvan, 5722):Harold K. Guinzburg, founder of Viking Press, and the father of publisher Thomas Guinzburg, passed away.


1962: “The Longest Day” an epic about June 6 with a script co-authored by Romain Gary and co-starring Red Buttons was released today in Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom.


1963: Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre.


1963: Ivry Gitlis performed in Vilna making him the first Israeli violinist to play in the Soviet Union under the cultural exchange between the two countries.


1963: In New York City “Martin and Rhoda Brecker” gave birth to Allison Ivy Brecker, part of a quadruplet birth, who married “film composer Edward Shearmur” and gained fame as movie executive “Allison’Alli’ Ivy Shearmur.”



1970(23rd of Tishrei, 5731): Simchat Torah


1970:The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” co-authored by Jerome Lawrence was performed professionally for the first time at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.


1972: A terrorist plot was thwarted today when an Algerian “diplomatic courier” who was a Palestinian was “arrested at the airport in Amsterdam for carrying arms” for unknown reasons.


1972: “Pippin” the “Tony Award-winning musical with lyrics and music by Stephen Schwartz” premiered on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre” with John Rubinstein, the son of concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, playing the title role.


1973: Rabbi Sally J. Priesand offered the opening prayer in the United States House of Representatives, at the invitation of Congresswoman Bella Abzug. According to Abzug, Priesand was not only the first Jewish woman, but the first woman to be accorded this honor. October 23, 1973 also turned out to be the day on which the first resolution to impeach President Richard Nixon was offered. Priesand became the first woman to be ordained by a rabbinical seminary in June 1972. While Priesand was the first American woman rabbi, she was not the first woman to study toward that goal. She was preceded at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion by other women including Martha Neumark, Helen Levinthal Lyons, Toby Fink, and Norma Kirschner.


1973:  The UN Cease Fire Resolution was proving a difficult document to enforce on the ground.  There was opposition in Israel to accepting a cease fire.  In particular, Menachem Begin, speaking for the coalition of right wing parties, opposed accepting the cease fire as long as Arab forces occupied our territory i.e. any part of the Sinai east of the Suez Canal.  Ironically, this would be part of the very land that Begin would trade with Sadat to gain a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.


1974(11thof Cheshvan, 5735): Ninety-four year old Hungarian playwright and screen writer Melichor Lengye; passed away in Budapest.



1975: John Gunther Dean, the American diplomat who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 at the age of 12 was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark.


1976: “Information was received that Victor Elistratov, Mikhail Kremen and Arkady Polishchuk were detained for 15 days, and Boris Chernobilsky was placed in Butyrskaya prison.”


1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association, reacting to the recent passenger aircraft hijacking incidents and the murder of a Lufthansa pilot, had postponed its threatened 48-hour global air-transport strike, after the UN agreed to hold a full meeting of the General Assembly on the subject of air piracy.


1977:  The Jerusalem Post reported that Lev Ovsiher, a highly decorated Jewish Red Army veteran, gave his 17 medals back to the Soviet government, to protest the refusal to let him immigrate with his family to Israel.  Yes, it was only a quarter of a century ago that the Refusniks were fighting to leave the Soviet Union.  Change does happen and sometimes it is for the better.


1980: Today “In a provocative essay in the New England journal  Dr. Arnold Relman, the editor in chief, issued the clarion call that would resound through his career, assailing the American health care system as caring more about making money than curing the sick.”


1981: In the Soviet Union, “massive pressure was exerted on Hebrew teachers” as “KGB departments in various cities summoned teachers and demanded that they stop teaching” the forbidden language.


1983: A suicide terrorist truck bomb killed 243 US personnel in Beirut.  President Reagan responded by withdrawing the Marine peacekeeping force from Lebanon.  There are those who feel that this response was viewed as a victory by the terrorists who moved forward with attacks on airports in Europe and the downing of an airliner over Scotland. 


1983: While a chaplain for the United States Sixth Fleet, Arnold Resnicoff was present in Beirut, Lebanon, during the suicide truck bomb attack that took the lives of 241 American military personnel, and wounded scores more.


1983(16th of Cheshvan, 5744): Thirty-six year old newscaster Jessica Savitch and 34 year old Martin Fischbein, the vice president and assistant general manager of the New York Post were killed in an automobile accident today. (As reported by Peter Kerr)





1983: Following a lengthy and intense debate within the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) faculty senate, voted 34-8 to admit women to the JTS Rabbinical School. (As reported by Jewish Women’s Archives)


1986(20th of Tishrei, 5747): Sukkoth Chol Hamoed


1986(20th of Tishrei, 5747): Eighty-six year old Helen Rovine, the Norma, NJ, native who married Benjamin Grossman with whom she had three children, passed away today in Philadelphia.


1987: “Suspect” a courtroom drama written by Eric Roth was released today.


1987: Sixty-three year old David Gorcey, son of Russian Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother, who was known as one of “The Bowery Boys” passed away today.


1991: Nicholas Davies and Robert Maxwell, filled a libel suit against Faber & Faber Ltd the publisher of The Samson Option by Seymour M. Hirsch


1992: “Zebrahead” starring Michael Rapaport was released today in the United States today.


1994: “Ex-Judge Wachtler’s Early Release From Halfway House Denied” published today described the decision not to release Sol Wachtler “because he sneaked out to attend a political fund raiser.”



1996(10th of Cheshvan, 5757): Ninety-one year old social critic Diana Trilling the widow of Lionel Trilling passed away today.




1996: In Providence, RI, pediatrician Scott Berns and pediatric intern Leslie Grove gave birth to Sampson Gordon Berns “a Massachusetts high school junior whose life with the illness progeria was the subject of a documentary film recently shortlisted for an Academy Award.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)


1998: “The Last Day” an Oscar winning documentary that ‘tell the story of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust” premiered in Los Angeles.


1998: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the Wye River Memorandum, thus bringing about the end of his first government. He did this with his own mouth: After being perceived as undermining the Oslo Accords, and after declared that any withdrawal from more than nine percent of the West Bank would harm Israel’s security, he ratified the accords and sought a 13-percent withdrawal. His term was rife with conflicts with the United States president, and he made both the right and left heartily sick of him. A decade later, Netanyahu is at a similar juncture.


1998 (3rd of Cheshvan, 5759): Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed abortions, was murdered at his home in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., when a sniper fired a shot through his kitchen window.  Slepian was murdered on a Friday night after his family had returned home from Shabbat eve services.


1998: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat signed a land-for-peace agreement at the White House, following nine days of talks at Wye River, Md.


1999: The Howard Nemerov House was dedicated today at Washington University in St. Louis.


2001(6th of Cheshvan, 5762): Eighty-four year Daniel Wildenstein, who enjoyed prominent positions in the world of thoroughbred horse-racing and art passed away today. (As reported by Alan Riding)



2002(17th of Cheshvan, 5763): Sixty-nine year old Al Lerner, the billionaire owner of the Cleveland Browns passed away today.





2003: Israel honored Hans von Dohnányi by recognizing him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for saving the Arnold and Fliess families, at risk to his own life.


2003(27th of Tishrei, 5764): Ninety-one year old “Judah Benzion ‘Ben’ Segal”, the “Professor of Semitic Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies,” the father of Professor Moshe Zvi Segal and the brother of Dr. Samuel Segal” passed away today.



2004(8th of Cheshvan, 5765): Parashat Lech Lecha


2004(8th of Cheshvan, 5765): Eighty-seven year old opera mainstay Robert Merrill (Moishe Miller) passed away today.



2005:  The New York Times reviewed The Life of David by Robert Pinksy.  This biography is one of the first books in the “Jewish Encounters” series, which will match prominent Jewish writers with a variety of subjects.


2005: In an article styled “Curacao’s place in the Diaspora,” the Boston Globe reports on the history of this Jewish community including the founding of Mikve Israel-Emanuel which was built in 1732, nearly 100 years after the first Jews arrived. Most of them were Sephardics fleeing persecution in Europe.


2006(1st of Cheshvan, 5767): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2006: The Jerusalem Postreported that Indonesia will purchase four Israeli unmanned planes, or drones, through a Filipino distributor. The deal was a surprise to some because Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has long supported Palestinian independence efforts and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.


2006: Max Kellerman began hosting the 10 AM to noon program on WEPN, replacing ESPN's nationally broadcast Colin Cowherd program.


2007: The Upper Midwest Region of Hadassah hosts its annual Big Gifts Dinner honoring Barbara Melamed with Hadassah’s Myrtle Wreath Award. Babara Sofer,The Israel Director of Public Affairs and Communications for Hadassah and popular columnist for the Jerusalem Post is the featured speaker for the event.  Held in Minneapolis, this is one more example of the vitality of the Jewish community of Minnesota, a state where Jewish Republicans and Jewish Democrats run against each for major state offices.


2007: “Emmanuelle Grey Rossum’s album ‘Inside Out’ was released” today “and peaked at 199 in the U.S. Billboard Charts.


2007: “Avenue Q,” Moshe Kepten’s Israeli version of the Broadway hit musical debuts at Beit Lessin, in Tel Aviv.


2008: “Mother Economy,” the 19-minute film on view at New York’s Jewish Museum since July 1, comes to an end   This exhibition, continuously screening in the 300-square-foot Goodkind Media Center marks the American debut of Israeli artist Maya Zack and is a powerfully imaginative meditation on Holocaust remembrance and on the myth of the Jewish mother. The elaborate set and intricately choreographed narrative, in which a mysterious protagonist methodically documents personal artifacts of absent family members before baking a noodle kugel, is saturated with ambiguous details, inviting layers of interpretation.


2008: Today, during a congressional hearing, Alan “Greenspan admitted that his free-market ideology shunning certain regulations was flawed.”


2008:As part of the Israel@ 60 Celebration, the Resnick Institute for the Study of Modern Jewish presents a screening and discussion of the award-winning Israeli documentary, "No. Seventeen was Anonymous." The event is facilitated by Professor Tova Weitzman of Vassar College.


2008(24th of Tishrei 5769):Friends and family of Avraham Ozeri voiced sorrow and anger at the killing of the 86-year-old they described as "salt of the earth" in today's stabbing attack in Jerusalem.
"My father was a man whom everyone loved and who never wronged a single person. To stab a man such as this, at this age, is an animal-like act," said Ozeri's son, Amos. He added that his father's motto was "love of the land." Ozeri was born in the capital's Bukharan Quarter to parents who had immigrated from Yemen. He was educated in a cheder orthodox primary school and later in a talmud Torah, another religious institution. From the age of 15 he held various temporary jobs. In 1942, he enlisted in the British Mandate police force, and served as a guard north of the Dead Sea. At one point, he was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Jewish underground, although he was released after a short period of time. Ozeri fought in the 1948 War of Independence in the Yemin Moshe and Abu Tor areas of Jerusalem. He volunteered in the 1956 Sinai Campaign and 1967 Six-Day war, working on Israel Defense Forces fortifications.
Ozeri then worked for 35 years as a customs official, retiring in 1998. A year later, his wife Rivka passed away. Nir Yogev, Ozeri's grandson related that his grandfather had planned to participate in a 10-kilometer run in Tel Aviv on Saturday. "Grandpa was an exemplary sportsman and was involved in long-distance running for 40 years. Over the years, there wasn't a marathon that grandpa didn't take part in. His closet was full of trophies and awards. Up until a few years ago he would run with me and [his other] grandchildren every Shabbat from the neighborhood of Gilo to the neighborhood of Ramot, and back," said Yogev.


2008:Vandals rampaged through a sprawling Jewish cemetery in Romania's capital, toppling tombstones and smashing markers for as many as 200 graves. After communism ended in 1989, there was a rise in anti-Semitic articles in nationalist newspapers. That largely disappeared after former President Ion Iliescu recognized the Holocaust. Iliescu appointed an international panel led by Nobel-prize winner Elie Wiesel in 2004 to investigate the Holocaust in Romania, concluding that the government of Marshal Ion Antonescu was responsible for the deaths of up to 380,000 Jews and more than 11,000 Gypsies, or Roma. More than 40,000 Jews are buried in the Jewish Cemetery in south Bucharest, including some victims of the Holocaust. None of the Holocaust victims' graves was vandalized.


2008:Today, the German government handed Israel's national Holocaust memorial personal details of the 600,000 Jewish residents of Nazi Germany, the most comprehensive record to date of German-Jewish life during the Nazi era. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann presented the "Directory of Jewish residents in Germany 1933-1945" during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial\


2009(5th of Cheshvan, 5770): Ninety-fiver year old Canadian-born character actor Lou Jacobi passed away in New York City.



2009: As part of his World Tour, Leonard Cohen performs at Madison Square Garden.


2009: The New York Times featured a review of The Humbling, Philip Roth’s latest novella


2009: “Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis” opens at the Cinema Village in New York City.  This is a cinematic presentation of material covered in the recently publish, Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust by Anna Porter.http://www.killingkasztner.com/  


2010(15th of Cheshvan): Yahrzeit of Shlomo Carlebach


2010: Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple is scheduled to open tonight as Theatre J kicks off its 2010-2011 season in Washington, DC.


2010: New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman said that many Americans are becoming "fed up" with Israel.


2010: The vote on a bill that would reinstate stipends for men who study Torah full-time will not take place tomorrow as was previously scheduled, the Prime Minister's Office announced today. 2011: Seventy-one year old Ophir Award winning cinematographer “Amnon Salomon” a “disciple of cinematographer David Gurfinkel” lost his battle with cancer today and passed away.



2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor “A Walking tour of Old Town Alexandria” that will include visits “to the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses along King Street-including some that show traces of past Jewish owners.”


2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a Walking Tour of Jewish Sites in Arlington National Cemetery that will include visits to “memorials by or for Jews, and headstones of prominent Jewish leaders buried at Arlington.”


2011: Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C.


2011: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Alice Hoffman’s latest book, a novel entitled “The Dovekeepers,” which attempts to retell the story of the Jewish resistance during the Roman siege of Masada in the first century and “The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-45” by Ian Kershaw.


2011: Israel has offered to aid the Turkish government in any way it can after a massive earthquake shook the Turkish southeast, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today.


2011:  Police have arrested a third suspect in the torching of a mosque in the Beduin village of Tuba Zanghariya in the Galilee in early October, police announced today. The suspect, a minor, was arrested day before yesterday and brought before the Rishon Letzion Magistrate's Court on Sunday morning, where his remand was extended by five days


2011: National Infrastructures Ministry announced today that Egypt has resumed natural gas deliveries to Israel. Deliveries began gradually on Thursday night, beginning with small quantities to test the pipeline and a continuous flow beginning later..


2012: Israeli cellist Elad Kabilio is scheduled to appear at the Joyce Theatre in New York


2012: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to present “An Evening with Romanian Jewish Author Norman Manea” during which he will from his latest novel, The Liar


2012: An IDF officer was critically wounded while carrying out a routine patrol near the Gaza border fence today. A blast was heard in the vicinity of the incident which the IDF believes was caused by a roadside bomb.


2012: The Emir of Qatar embraced the Hamas leadership of Gaza today with an official visit that broke the isolation of the Palestinian Islamist movement, to the dismay of Israel and rival, Western-backed Palestinian leaders.


2013: The Jacqueline and Myron Blank Fund along with The Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines are scheduled to host a program in dedicating the Iowa Holocaust Memorial at the State Historical Building


2013: Emmy Award winning theatre critic Pat Launer is scheduled to discuss “Broken Glass” one of the last plays by Arthur Miller that combines themes of Kristallnacht with anxieties of a American Jewish couple living in New York.


2013: The Lawrence Family JCC is scheduled to host a screening of “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” which “chronicles the efforts of Gilbert Kraus and his wife, Eleanor, two Americans who undertook the successful rescue of 50 Jewish children from Vienna in the late spring of 1939.”


2013: Israeli warplanes hit a convoy of advanced missiles heading out of Syria and into Lebanon where they were to be delivered to Hezbollah, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported today (Reported Stuart Winer)


2013: When the Red Sox take the field against the Cards tonight in the opening game of the World Series, Craig Breslow will be in the Boston bull-pen.


2013: According to unofficial figures released today 35.9% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Jerusalem and 31.5% of the eligible voters went to the polls in Tel Aviv during the just completed mayoral elections.


2013: Israel's unusual period of seismic activity continued today as yet another small earthquake was felt - this time in the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. (As reported by Ari Soffer)


2013(19thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-year old sandal maker and musician Allan Block passed away today, (As reported by Bruce Weber)



2013(19thof Cheshvan, 5574): Ninety-two year old Bill Mazer“who was a voice and face of sports coverage in New York for decades, pioneering sports-talk radio and becoming a television fixture while earning the nickname the Amazin’ for his encyclopedic recall of sports facts and figures” passed away today. (As reported by Richard Goldstein)



2014(29thof Tishrei, 5775): Ninety year old Frank Mankiewicz, the son of Herman J. Mankiewicz and nephew of Joseph L. Mankiewicz whose writing career took detours to serve in the Presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kenney and George S. McGovern passed away today.



2014: The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education is scheduled to host a screening of “American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco.”


2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to host a lecture by Dr. Philip Balma on “Hiding in Plain Sight: Italian Jews and the Film Industry.”


2014: The University of Connecticut is scheduled to “I Have No Right to Be Silent” -- a panel discussion on the social activism and human rights work of Rabbi Marshal Meyer.


2014: The Chicago International Film Festival which has included a screening of “Gett” is scheduled to come to an end today.


2014: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host “Two Jewish Loves: Food and Literature.”


2014: “The Sturgeon Queens” is scheduled to be shown at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival.


2014: Rita Jahan-Foruz is scheduled to introduce her biographical film this evening at the Skirball Center.


2014: Three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun who was killed when a terrorist “drove his car into a crowd waiting at the Ammuniition Hill light rail station” was laid to rest early this morning. (As reported by Lazar Berman)


2014: “Robin Banerjee, Amy Winehouse’s bassist for a portion of her career will be performing at Barby Tel Aviv tonight.


2014: “French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman is indicted for referring to Dieudonné as a “professional anti-Semite” during a television appearance.”


2014: The 28th Israel Film Festival opens this evening.


2015: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Temple Judah is scheduled to host “Shabbat Alive!” with Rick Recht.


2015: The Jewish National Fund’s 15th Annual National Conference is scheduled to open in Chicago.


2015: “Rock the Kasbah” a comedy “directed by Barry Levinson and written by Mitch Glazer is scheduled to be released in the United States today by Open Road Films


2015: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host an evening of Brahms featuring “the Jerusalem Quartet” which is “joined by two friends and frequent collaborators, Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan and clarinetist Sharon Kam (sister to the Jerusalem’s' violist Ori Kam).”


2015(10thof Cheshvan, 5776): Sixty-six year old Thomas G. Stemberg, the founder of Staples whose Roman Catholic mother Erika Ratzer was disinherited for marrying Jewish Viennese hotel manager Oscar Stemberg passed away today. (As reported by Sam Roberts)



2016(2st of Tishrei, 5777): Hosha’na  Rabbah  (Editor’s note – excuse those who may seem a little tired since they may have been up all night studying




2016: The 15th International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition, named in honor of Lublin born violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski is scheduled to end today


2016: At the Jewish Museum “Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes” organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator and Jens Hoffmann, Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs is scheduled to come to an end today.


2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Rules For Others To Live By: Comments and Self-Contradictionsby Richard Greenberg, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion by Gareth Stedman Jones and The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg


2017: Today, “The Knesset unanimously passed a law to ban Israel’s binary options industry, a vast, multibillion dollar scam that has defrauded millions of victims worldwide for a decade.” (As reported by Simon Weinglass)


2017: In New Orleans, the Uptown JCC is scheduled to host a screening of “The Women’s Balcony.”



2017: The Landmark Centre in Beachwood, Ohio is scheduled to host Jonathan Schneer, a professor of history George Tech speaking on “The Making of the Balfour Declaration.



2017:The American Sephardi Federation and New York Jewish Travel Guide are scheduled to present “Jewish Heritage of Malta” -- an evening exploring a beautiful island's connection to Jewish history and culture



2018: The Cleveland Jewish News is scheduled to co-host “Women Leadership” moderated by Lauren Rich Fine.


2018: JW3 is scheduled to host a screening of “Female Human Animal”


2018: In London, the Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Get Creative” a workshop where youngsters will make “spooky arts and crafts inspired” by the museum’s “Frankenstein Exhibition.”


2018: The 92nd Street Y is scheduled to host an evening with John Grisham on the same day that his latest novel goes on sale.


2018: The Streicker Center is scheduled to “Can We Talk?” an evening where Melissa Rivers “channels her mother,” the late Joan Rivers.


2018: The National Jewish Book Award Luncheon is scheduled to take place at the Lander College for Women today.


2018: The American Jewish Historical Society to host “The Man who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox,” a “book talk with author Vanda Kreff, MOMA curator Dave Kehr and Brooklyn College Professor Frederick Wasser.”


2018: Howard Kaplan’s latest novel, To Destroy Jerusalem, is scheduled to be released to the general public.



2018: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to host “Exhibiting Difficult Histories: The ‘Anti-Zionist’ Campaign in Poland, 1967-1968, And Its Echoes Today” a discussion led by Dariusz Stola, the director of POLIN.


 

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

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OCTOBER 24


51: Birthdate of Titus Flavius Domitianus, who gained fame as the Roman Emperor Domitian.  Domitian was the son of Vespasian and the brother of Titus, all three of whom played a key role in the destruction of Jerusalem which was one of the cornerstones of power for the Flavian dynasty.  Domitian was even more hostile to the Jews than either of his predecessors as can be seen by his ruthless enforcement of the ban on Romans converting to Judaism and his rigorous efforts to collect the special taxes assessed against the Jews. His death in 96 would not be mourned by the Children of Israel.


69:  At the Second Battle of Bedriacum, forces under Antonius Primus, the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian, defeat the forces of Emperor Vitellius. This victory helped to pave the way for Vespasian to become Emperor of the Roman Empire.  According to Jewish mythology, it was Yoachanah Ben Zachai’s prediction that Vespasian would attain this goal that led to him being able to establish the academy at Yavneh.  Vespasian turned matters around Jerusalem to his son Titus who would destroy the Temple within the year.


996: Hugh Capet, King of France who was being treated by a Jewish physician, passed away. The king's decision to use a Jewish doctor gave created the myth (which was believed by many) that the Jews had killed the king.


996: Robert II, who “conspired with is vassals to destroy all the Jews who would not accept baptism” and inspired mob violence against the Jews including “the learned Rabbi Senior” began his solo reign as King of France today.


1147: After a siege of 4 months crusader knights led by Afonso Henriques defeated the Moors and re-conquered Lisbon. According to one source, Alfonso was concerned about his chances of defeating the Moors.  He looked to the Bible for support and comfort; something he found in the story of Gideon where a force of 300 Israelites defeated a Midianite army numbering 125,000.  Following his victories at Santarém and Lisbon, Alfonso allowed the Jewish population to remain, to build synagogues and to enjoy most of the same rights as the rest of the citizens of his realm.


1273: Coronation of King Rudolf I who in 1286 “instituted a new persecution of the Jews, declaring them servi camerae ("serfs of the treasury"), which had the effect of negating their political freedoms


1492: The Jews were again accused of stabbing a consecrated wafer in Mecklenburg, Germany. Twenty-seven were burned including two women, and all the Jews are expelled from the duchy. The spot where they were killed is still called the Judenberg.


1648: The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War. While the Jews of Europe were not combatants or participants in the peace talk, this treaty did have far-reaching impact on them.  The treaty brought an end to the Holy Roman Empire which meant that the various states of Germany were able to choose their own religion and develop on their own.  The independence of the Netherlands was recognized.  The tolerant Dutch nation had already proven itself as a hospitable for Jews and six years after the treaty European Jews would find haven in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam.  According to some historians, the treaty marked the end of the religious wars that had gripped Europe (much to the detriment of the Jews) and marked the rise of the modern nation-state system.  While anti-Semitism would continue to be part of the European landscape, the Jews of Europe would fare better after 1648 under a system of national citizenship.


1669: William Prynne, a lawyer, author and political leader who opposed re-admitting Jews to England passed way.  One of the pamphlets published by Prynne that decried “their ill deportment” and “misdemeanors” found favor with the merchants in London who claimed to oppose the admissions of Jews on religious grounds but who were “jealous of the wealth of the Hebrews” and did not want to compete with them for business.


1764: In Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn and his wife gave birth to their oldest daughter, Brendel Mendelssohn who gained fame as German novelist Dorothea von Schlegel, and the mother of painter Philipp Veit.”


1755: Birthdate of Abraham Mordecai, the native of Philadelphia, PA, who was probably the first Jew to settle in Alabama.



1777(23rdof Tishrei, 5538): Simchat Torah


1781: “Abraham ben Moses Atziplotz” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”


1784: In Leghorn, Tuscany, “Joseph Elias Montefiore and his young wife Rachel, the daughter of Abraham Mocatta, a powerful bullion broker in London, who were in the town on a business journey” gave birth to their first child Sir Moses Montefiore, who in a life time that spanned more than a century, proved to be not only a great leader of the Anglo-Jewish Community, but one of the most formidable Jews of the 19th century.  There is no way to do justice to this great man’s life in this brief blog.  You are encouraged to examine the many sources available about this successful financier, public servant and philanthropist whose generosity was integral source of support for the Jewish settlers of 19th century Palestine.



1792: Marriage of Ruben and Roeschen Gumperz.


1795: Third partition of Poland, between Austria, Prussia and Russia. This is an example of the law of unintended consequences.  Russia, which had been trying to keep Jews out, now found itself with millions of Jewish Poles as Russian citizens.  For the next hundred years the various Czars devised plans to control or destroy the Jewish community in Russia.  The most famous example was the one-third, one-third, one-third program.  One third of the Jews would convert, one third would immigrate and one third would die.  Thus Russia would be rid of its Jews.


1804(19thof Cheshvan, 5565): Marx Levy Mordechai, the rabbi at Trier and husband of Eva Lwow, who was the father of Heinrich Marx and the grandfather of Karl Marx passed away today.


1807: Birthdate of Prussian poet and philologist Ludwig Wihl who “advanced the theory that Phoenician was a linguistic derivative of Hebrew, and that Phoenicia had exercised a profound influence on the art of early Greece” but whose refusal to be baptized “doomed” his university career.


1811: Birthdate of Ferdinand Hiller the native of Frankfurt am Main who gained fame as composer and director and who founded the Cologne Conservatoire in 1850 where he served as Kapellmeister until 1884.


1821: Joel Benjamin married Frances Cohen at the Hambro Synagogue today.


1821: Eighty-one year Elias Boudinot, the 10th President of the Continental Congress who was persuaded by James Adair’s History of the American Indians that the Indians were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes and that the Hebrew was the origin of their language, passed away today. (Editor’s note – Boudinot was but one in a long list of people who held this belief which is why some early explorers were rumored to have included somebody with a knowledge of Hebrew among those serving in their expeditions.)


1826(23rdof Tishrei, 5587): Simchat Torah


1826(23rdof Tishrei, 5587): German actor and theatrical manager Jacob Herzfeld passed away.


1828: At The Hague, Moses de Pinto and Sara Salvador gave birth to Dutch jurist Aaron Adolf de Pinto.


1828: Emmanuel Hart was buried today at the “Plymouth Hoe Burial Ground.”


1831: In Philadelphia, Clarissa and Joseph M. Asch gave birth to Myer Asch the dentist turned soldier who began his service as a Second Lt. in Company H of the First Cavalry, Jew Jersey Volunteers in 1861 and rose to the rank of Colonel, in recognition of his valor combat and as a P.O.W. in Libby Prison before being discharged in 1865.


1838: Cerf Cylick married Isabella Magnus at the Great Synagogue today.


1841: Birthdate of Jacob Bettelheim, the Austrian-German author and writer.


1841: Birthdate of Elie Scheid, a native of Hagenau, Alsace and founder of the Ḥebra 'Am Segullah burial society who authored separate histories of the Jews of this hometown and Alsace who became Baron Edmond de Rothschild’s primary assistant when he began his work supporting the colonization of Palestine.


1844: Birthdate of Karl Lueger, the Austrian politician who exploited popular anti-Semitism to be elected Mayor of Vienna.  There are those who contend that his successful exploitation of anti-Semitism served as a role model for another resident of Vienna - Adolph Hitler.


1845(23rh of Tishrei, 5606): Simchat Torah


1848: Birthdate of Wilhelm Fleiss, the native of Arnswalde who became a noted otolaryngologist and a friend of Sigmund Freud.


1848: Michel Goudchaux resigned as Minister of Finance after the Assembly adopted a measure today that he interpreted as a vote implying that he was not honest.


1851: The New York Times reported that "the emigration of Jews is on the increase in consequence of the oppressive ukases of the Emperor."


1852: American statesman and unsuccessful Presidential candidate Daniel Webster who served his country as a Senator and Secretary of State passed away.  While serving as Secretary of State in President Millard Filmore’s administration, Webster actively opposed as treaty with Switzerland that would have discriminated against American Jews trying to do business in Switzerland. Webster and the American Jewish community enjoyed a positive relationship as can be seen by the fact that he was asked to speak at the Hebrew Benevolent and German Benevolent Society meeting in 1849 in New York City. He had to turn down the invitation because of ill health but he expressed his “respect and sympathy”  who have “preserved through darkness and idolatry of so many centuries.


1853(22nd of Tishrei, 5614): Shemini Atzeret


1853: The New York Times reported that Dr. Raphall, a New York rabbi, will deliver a lecture about Russia at a meeting of the Young Men's Literary Association on October 26.  Tickets will cost fifty cents.


1853: When an army of Kurds attacked the city of Al-Jazira, it was Muslims, Christians and Jews who picked up arms to defend the city.


1855: In Germany David J. Meyerhardt and his wife the former Esther Marks gave birth Max Meyerhardt the husband of Nettie Watson, the father of Jennie, Julia, Max and Louis Meyerhardt who became a Judge in Georgia.



1856: Birthdate of Sir Stuart Samuel, the brother of Sir Herbert Samuel. ” He was educated at Liverpool Institute and University College School, London” and “was a member of the banking firm of Samuel Montagu and Company.” “Sir Stuart…was president of the Board of Jewish Deputies” and “headed the commission of inquiry sent by the British government to Poland to investigate the anti-Jewish excesses in 1919”


1858: Two days after she had passed away, Eliza Stiebel, the daughter of Jacob Abraham and Rebecca Daniel Mocatta and the wife of Sigismund Stiebel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1862(30th of Tishrei, 5623): On Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, Abraham Lincoln continues his quest to find winning generals by replacing Don Carlos Buell with William S. Rosecrans for his failure to pursue the Confederates after the Battle of Perryville.


1869: Elizabeth Samuel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”


1870: In Algiers under the leadership of Adolphe Cremieux, France granted French citizenship to all Algerian Jews.  Prior to this date, citizenship was conferred on individual Jews based on their application.  Algeria had been taken over by the French and this move was part of the French program of colonization. Approximately 50,000 Jews gained French citizenship in this way.


1872(22ndof Tishrei, 5633): Shemini Atzeret


1873: In Philadelphia, PA, “Jacob and Betty (Rebecca) Bacharach” gave birth to Harry Bachrach, the Republican Mayor of Atlantic City and Postmaster serving under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt and founder of the “Jewish Community Center in Atlantic City who was the husband of Hattie Bacharach and the brother of Benjamin Bacharach, the President of Beth Israel Synagogue and Congressman Isaac Bacharach who “represented the Second District of New Jersey” for almost twenty years.


1874: According to a travelogue published today, most of the establishments for money changing in Bayonne, France are owned by Jews.


1875: “The Wild Huntsman” published today provides a brief summary of the legend of the Wandering Jew, one of those canards which has helped to fan the flame of anti-Semitism for centuries.  This mythic figure supposedly refused the suffering Jesus a drink of water from a horse trough or refused to provide shelter for the Virgin Mary and Jesus when they were fleeing to Egypt.  Regardless, “in some countries” he is now seen “as kind of personification of Jews” in general.


1877: In Ronnenberg, Germany, Simon and Henrietta Seligman gave birth to Frantz Seligman, the husband of Erna Seligman.


1877: “Receiving Stolen Goods” published today described a scheme to buy stolen cloth that has landed Louis Lazarus, the owner of second-hand clothing store and his son in Samuel in the Tombs.


1878: At the home of the bride in Charleston, SC, Rabbi Levy officiated at the marriage of Emil Eckstein of Savannah, GA and Fannie Livingston.


1879: Birthdate of Sydney G. Gumpertz, the native of San Raphael, CA,  who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during WW I.


1879: In Providence, Rhode Island, the Unitarians are holding a convention where they are “discussing the subject of Monotheism’ and have concluded that the only true monotheists are the Jews, Moslems and the Unitarians. They feel that the Trinitarian belief of Christians moves them away from true monotheism.


1880: Fifty five year old Oswald Hönigsmann an Austrian lawyer and parliamentarian who spoke out on behalf of the emancipation of the Jewish people passed away today.


1880: In Russia , Ada and Louis Landman gave birth to American Reform Rabbi Isaac Landman who “was editor of the ten-volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia,” “the first Jewish chaplain in the United States Army to serve on foreign soil” during World War I and a leading anti-Zionist.





1881: Three days after he had passed away, Russian born Marcus Spero, the husband of Leah Spero, with whom he had three children – “Eamanuel, Harriet and Esther – was bred today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery.”


1882: Birthdate of “Skalat, Austria” native Maurice Oliver Magid, the 1905 graduate of the Cornell University Medical College who “was the  attending gynecologist to the New York City Correction Hospital and associate gynecologist to the Bronx Hospital.


1883(23rdof Tishrei, 5644): Simchat Torah


1883: Police arrested Aaron Hammer and Moses Rauch, two Jews whose celebration of Simchat Torah got so rowdy that Bernard Levy felt the need to call the authorities for protection.


1883: Jews throughout the world celebrated the 99th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore.


1883: “Mr. Oscanyan’s Varied Show” published today included a description of that part of the lecture the Turkish born American writer gave about the conditions of “the Jews of the East” with whose persecution he commiserated.


1884: Sir Moses Montefiore celebrated his one hundredth birthday, an event that was marked with celebration throughout much of the world including a letter from Queen Victoria to the successful businessman, philanthropist and humanitarian.


1884: Services are to be held “simultaneously” at four o’clock this afternoon at synagogues in the United States to mark the 100th birthday of Sir Moses Montefiore.  The speeches delivered during these services will be given to the Anglo-Jewish statesman on November 8 “which corresponds with the 24th of October in the Jewish calendar.


1884: “A Home for Hebrew For Orphans” published today provided a complete description of the newly opened Hebrew Orphan Asylum.  The four story building on the corner of 10th Avenue and 136thStreet is designed to accommodate 1,000 children of both sexes and was built at a cost of $60,000.00.


1886: It was reported today that the Wendell Phillips Literary Society is scheduled to “give a dramatic entertainment” at upcoming fundraising event sponsored by the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society.


1886: The Independent Hebrew Citizens’ Association of the Tenth Ward endorsed “Tommy” Grady who is running for seeking to represent the Eighth District in Congress. 


1886: Forty-three year old Herman W. Hellman, the Bavarian born husband of Trevino born Ida Heimann “was elected President of the Congregation B’nai B’rith” today in San Francisco.


1887(6thof Cheshvan, 5648): Sixty-six year old Charlotte Beyfus the wife of Abraham Oppenheim and the granddaughter of Meyer Amschel Rothschild passed away today.


1887: “The Religion of Humanity” published today provides a summary of the Dr. Kaufmann’s recently delivered addressed entitled “What is Judaism?”  Kohler feels that Judaism is a religion of humanity and that “It is the Jew’s mission to stand by that religion of human which teaches the unity of the Cosmos in God, the spirit of truth and the social unity of man as based upon his God’s childship.”


1888: Birthdate of Lviv native Marek Weber, the successful “German violinist and bandleader” who fled Nazi Germany where his work was labeled “degenerate” and came to the United States where he was featured as the “Waltz King” on NBC radio.



1888: “Starving and Freezing” published today described the plight of the Polish Jewish farmers in Ramsey County, North Dakota.  The seventy families who came from Chicago two years ago and settled 18 miles from Devils Lake have lost everything as a result of an early frost that wiped out their Wheat crop this year.


1889: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association began its 16th season tonight with a program at Chickering Hall in NYC.


1889: “Thinks Job A Poetic Myth” published today described a skirmish in the battle between those who read the Bible literally and those who think it is subject to interpretation – a schism that was found in both 19th century Judaism in Christianity.  In this case, it was a Presbyterian Minister, E.L. Curtis who “startled his orthodox congregation” by asserted that the Book of Job “was only a parable and the other persons mentioned were but the creatures of poetical fancy.”


1891: In Russia, where the onset of winter has worsened the effects of the famine, two or three riots broke out aimed at the Jews.


1892: After spending three months at A.B. Simpson College “an institution where converted Jews are trained for missionary work thirty three year old Isaac Hertzfeld was baptized today – a an action that he would later publicly renounce.


1892: The New York Times described a change “in the future career” of Baron Hirsh, “who having devoted his youth to accumulating millions is now devoting his old age to philanthropy.”  One example of this was the Baron’s decision to donate all of his “turf winnings,” a sum of 14,500 English pounds, to “deserving English charities.”


1893: The will of David James, the well-known Anglo-Jewish actor left £15,000 to various legatees and provided that his widow should receive the interest on the remaining £30,000 with the principle reverting to various Hebrew charities at the time of her death or re-marriage whichever comes first. (Smith’s birth name was Belasco, which he dropped as he developed his acting career)


1893: “Mr. Mansfield As Shylock” published today reviewed the latest New York production of The “Merchant of Venice” which featured Richard Mansfield in the role of Shylock. Unlike Edmund Kean who played Shylock as a Biblical figure, Mansfield portrayed him as a character from the Middle Ages who “loves his daughter” but “hates his enemy with deadly bitterness


1894: Professor Willis J. Beecher delivered a lecture “The Old Testament as a Whole, “the second in his series on the “Study of the Old Testament.”


1895: “Correct Spelling of Barnato’s Name” published today speculated on the correct spelling of the diamond mine mogul wondering if it was “Barney” or Barnie” a point rendered moot by the fact that his name is “Barnett which is a common surname among Christians and Jews.”


1896: In New York, the Hebrew Institute Literary Society hosted a debate on the abolition of capital punishment tonight.


1896: The teachers and pupils of the Kaminsky Conservatory of Music performed at the Hebrew Institute tonight.


1896(17thof Cheshvan, 5657): Seventy-eight year old Sir Albert Abdullah David Sassoon, the son of David Sassoon, who was a leading merchant in Baghdad who settled in Bombay where his business success reportedly made him “one of the richest men” in the city, passed away today.


1897(28thof Tishrei, 5658): Eighty-three year old Yetje Hangjas, “the eldest sister of Simon Dejong passed at Haarlem, Holland.


1897: Phoebe Myers, “the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gershon Myers” married Ellis Moses “the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Moses” at the Western Synagogue.


1897: The Young Zion Institute is scheduled to hold a “public meeting at the Cannon Street Road Hall” today.


1897: At the Great Synagogue in London, Rabbi Singer is scheduled to deliver an address “at the annual thanksgiving service for the children who enjoyed” the support “of the Jewish branch of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund”


1898(8th of Cheshvan, 5659): Daniel Levy Maduro Peixotto died at Guantanamo, Cuba, from the effects of fever contracted during the Spanish-American war.A member of a prominent Sephardic family that had settled in New York, this son of Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto volunteered to join the U.S. Army at the outbreak of the war with Spain serving “with the Third United States Volunteer Infantry, first as first lieutenant and acting quartermaster, and then as captain of Company D. At the time of his death he was military governor and provost marshal of Guantanamo.”


1898: Ralph Disraeli was buried today in Buckinghamshire, UK.


1898; Following the end of the Spanish-American War the 2ndNebraska Volunteer Infantry including Sergeant Charles of North Platte, Private Elmer Heller of Omaha, Corporal Samuel Jacoby and Private Joseph Meitner both of Chadron, Private Joseph Wolf of Lincoln and Private Louis Abel of Norfolk were among those mustered out today.


1899: Birthdate of Warsaw native Anatol Stern, the poet turned screenwriter who survived the Gulag, lived in Palestine before returning to his native land where he died at the age of 68.


1902(23rd of Tishrei, 5663): Simchat Torah


1902: Herzl had another meeting with Lord Rothschild and an appointment in the British Foreign Office.


1903: It was reported today that “The American Jewish Year book for the year 5664 (which began September 22, 1903)…has been issued.  This fifth annual volume, which is 316 pages in length, was edited by Cyrus Adler.  Ninety-six pages are devoted to the annual report of the Jewish Publication Society.  While the volume contains a great deal of information about Jewry there is no description of the Zionist Convention held at Basel or the Pogrom at Kishinev.  The former “was held too late to be included.  The latter will be covered in a special pamphlet issued by JPS.


1904: After premiering in London, “The Cinglee” a musical containing “additional material by Paul Rubens opened in New York at the Original Daly’s Theatre where it ran for 33 performanes.


1904:  Birthdate of producer, director and playwright Moss Hart.  Hart achieved success both on Broadway and in films. One of Hart’s most famous cinematic triumphs was “Gentlemen’s Agreement” which he produced.  One of his greatest Broadway triumphs came at the end of his career when he served as director for “My Fair Lady.”  He was married to Kitty Carlisle.  Unbeknownst to many of her fans, the sophisticated Ms. Carlisle was actually Catherine Conn, a Jewess from New Orleans whose mother was an aggressive social climber.  Hart himself passed away in 1960.  You can read more about the fascinating life of Moss Hart in his autobiography, Act I.


1905: Birthdate of French Trotskyist leader Pierre Frank.



1906: Birthdate of fencer Theodore Lorber who finished in seventh place at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.


1906: In Vienna, “Edmund von Motesiczky, “a talented cellist and keen huntsman” and “Henriette von Lieben who came from one of the most wealthy and cultured families in the Habsburg Empire” gave birth to painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky.



1908(29thof Tishrei, 5669): Sixty-nine year old Solomon Sonneschein, the Moravian born rabbi who married Rosa Sonneschein in 1864 and whose last pulpit was at Temple B’nai Yeshurun in Des Moines, IA passed away today.


1908: The New York Times publishes an interview with Israel Zangwill entitled “Israel Zangwill’s Serious Purpose,” in which the Jewish author discusses his views on the literary worlds of the United States and Great Britain and the reaction to his “The Melting Pot.”


1910(21stof Tishrei, 5671): Hoshana Rabah


1910: Birthdate of Julius Pike, the tackle for the University of Maine “Blackbears” who was team captain in 192 when the team finished “with a record of 5-1-1.."


1910: Birthdate of Yoel Zussman, the native of Krakow who became the fourth President of the Supreme Court of Israel.


1910: Archaeologist Max von Oppenheim, a member of the famous German-Jewish banking family requested to be allowed to leave the diplomatic service so that he could work on the excavation at Tel Halaf which he asked his father to finance.


1910: The Oscar Hammerstein production Victor Herbert’s “Naughty Marietta” opened its pre-Broadway run in Syracuse, NY.


1913(2erd of Tishrei, 5674): Simchat Torah


1914: Dr. J. L. Manges and Dr. Schmarya Levin are scheduled to address tonight’s meeting hosted by the New York chapter of Hadassah at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association building where they will seek ways to alleviate the threat faced by the Jewish settlers in Palestine resulting from the start of the World War.


1914: The American Jewish Relief Committeewas established by Jacob H. Schiff, Louis Marshall, and Felix Warburg. It soon combined with the Central Relief Committee founded by Orthodox leaders and the People's Relief Committee representing labor, into one organization the American Joint Distribution Committee. The “Joint” would become a vital force in providing aid to Jews caught up in the hostilities of World War I which had begun in August of 1914.


1915: In Manchester, UK, Mr. and Mrs. Neville Laski gave birth to English author Marghanita Laski.


1915: “More than 1,000 persons witnessed the laying of the cornerstone of the new Sinai Temple near East 163rd Street, the Bronx” which was done in a formal manner by Adolph Lewis who used a silver trowel with his name engraved on it to “spread the mortar” following with they heard a speech by “Rabbi J. Leonard Levy of Pittsburgh who talked of the place the Jews occupies in American life.”


1915: “A memorial service for Jewish soldiers who have lost their lives in the European war was held” tonight “at Mount Zion Temple on West 119thStreet under the auspices of the German-Jewish Military Society.”


1915: “To Aid Jewish Charities” published today described plans for “a meeting of the council of Jewish Communal Institutions of which Leo Arnstein is President will be held in New York at the end of October or early in November to consider the desirability of establishing a Bureau of Philanthropy to act as a central investigating body for the study of social problems affecting the Jewish community in New York numbering more than 1,000,000.”


1915: The American Jewish Conference which was scheduled to open today in Washington, DC did not meet due to a clash between different factions in the Jewish community represented, respectively, by Louis Marshall and Louis Brandeis who said the conference “would be futile because the conference would purport to be an assembly authorized to express the will of the Jewish people, whereas it would in fact have not such mandate and would lack the necessary support of the Jews of America without which its action would be ineffective.”


1915: In a letter written today, “Sir Henry McMahon, then His Majesty's High Commissioner in Egypt, promised the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali, to ‘recognize and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories proposed by him (Sharif of Mecca)’” -- territories that included the Arabian peninsula, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq Transjordan) and Palestine a portion of which was Tel Chai “an agricultural community settled by Jewish workers from Metulla in 1907.


1915: British High Commissioner, Henry McMahon reached an agreement with Abdulla Hussein of the Hashemi family, trading a revolt against Turkey for Arab independence everywhere except Eretz-Israel. This agreement, which was in direct contradiction with the Sykes-Picot treaty, was like the Balfour Declaration - vague and ambiguous. Many of the problems that we face in the Middle East today can be traced back to the various deals (many of which were dishonest to say the least) made by the British and the French as they sought to break the back of the Turkish Empire and defeat Germany through the “back door.”


1916: In New York, Louis Marshall presided over a meeting where the remarks by Republican Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes about “the treaty relations with Russia” “were received with great applause” in a section of the city “where the Jewish population is large.”


1916(27thof Tishrei, 5677): Sixty-six year old Antonie (Toni) Amalia Liebermann, the daughter of Ferdinand and Fanny Reichenheim and the wife of Professor Dr. Carl Theodor Liebermann passed away today in Berlin.


1917: Felix Frankfurter is acting as Secretary for the Labor Commission President Wilson sent to Arizona to settle “the big copper strike” which is threatening the manufacture of munitions that rely on the metal.


1917: As part of the final push to publish the Balfour Declaration, Ronald Graham writes Lord Balfour, “Almost every Jew in Russia is a Zionist, and if they can be made to realize that the success of Zionist aspirations depends on the support of the Allies and the expulsion of the Turks from Palestine, we shall enlist a most powerful element in our favor.”


1917: It was reported today that 113 year old Ethel Polansky gave one dollar and 109 year old Nissen Rosenstein, the oldest man in New York State gave five dollars towards the purchase of a Liberty Bond by residents of the Home of the Daughters of Jacob in New York City.


1918: “The Intermountain Jewish News (IJN)” reported today that 27 year old Denver native Sergeant Morris Fishel had passed away at Camp MacArthur six days ago and had been buried at Mt. Nebo Memorial Park in Aurora, CO.


1918: Sarah Friedman, of blessed memory, the wife of Hyman Friedman is scheduled to be buried today in New York City.


1918: Two days after he had passed away, 82 year old Leopold Bloch, the son of Samuel and Theresia Bloch and the husband of Rosa Bloch was buried in his home town of Vienna.


1918: Hyman Gerson Enelow, a member of the Overseas Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board who was touring the war zone wrote today “I have been to some places where one sees the boys going and coming from the trenches.  Everywhere they are they are glad to see a Rabbi and hear a kind word.  It makes them feel they are not forgotten.” In the hospitals “the doctors and nurses do all they can” and “they appreciate a Rabbi if they never did before.”


1920: In Manhattan, Sidney Donheiser and Bertha Younger gave birth to Julius Stuart Younger, the virologist who “was the last surviving member of the original three-man research team assembled by Dr. Jonas Salk” that found the Polio Vaccine.(As reported by Sam Roberts)



1920: The Tri-City Conference of Social Workers which had opened last night with concert held its business meeting to at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association on West 110thStreet.


1920: The Intercollegiate Zionist Association, the League of the Jewish Youth, the Intervarsity Menorah, Young Judea, Y.W. H.A., Y.M.H.A and the Teachers’ Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary arranged today’s Friedlander Memorial Meeting “to honor the memory of Dr. Israel Friedlander” who was ‘slain by bandits” while delivering aid to Jews in the Ukraine in the Great Hall of City College where more than three thousand young and men heard addresses by Dr. John Finley, Dr. Judah L. Magnes, Ruth Dressler and Leon Hoffman.


1920: David de Sola Pool resigned as a member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Welfare Board today.


1920: “In the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, Abraham Seldin, a dentist from Bessarabia” and the “former Laura Ueberal,” a native of Vienna gave birth to Donald Way Seldin, the driving force behind “what is now the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center” and an expert witness in the trial of Nazi doctors who worked at Dachau.(As reported by Sam Roberts)



1920: Dr. Cyrus Adler presided over “the Annual Meeting of the Jewish Welfare Board which was held at 2 p.m. today at the Jewish Center…in New York City.”


1920: Today marked the end of the election of delegated for 23rd annual convention of the ZOA which is scheduled to begin on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, in Buffalo, NY.


1922(2nd of Cheshvan, 5683): Fifty-seven year old Meir Selig Goldschmidt, the son Clementine Fuld and Selig Meir Goldschmidt and the husband of Selma Cramer passed away today.


1923: Birthdate of British born American poet Denise Levertov.  Her pedigree is of interest since it provides a picture of the fate of European Jews.  Her mother was Welsh.  Her father was an Anglican parson. In point of fact, he was an immigrant from Germany who had been raised as a Chasidic Jew before converting to Christianity.


1923: In the Bronx, Betty and Dr. Lee Fisher gave birth to Edwin Zalmon Fisher a cartoonist whose work was a regular feature in The New Yorker magazine.




1924: Birthdate of Gusta Dynerova, who was shipped from Prague to Ujazdow in 1942 where she was murdered.


1925: In Brooklyn Max and Beatrice Feldstein gave birth to Albert “Al” Bernard Feldstein “who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Mad in 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire.” (As reported by Bruce Weber)


1926: Suffering from acute appendicitis and having ignored medical advice that he have immediate surgery, Harry Houdini performed at the Garrick Theatre despite having a fever of 104 °F (40 °C).


1926: Following what would be his last performance, Houdini was taken to the Grace Hosptial in Detroit.


1927: At Temple Sinai in Chicago, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Clarence Darrow debated “Is Zionism a Progressive Policy for Israel and America?  Wise argued the affirmative and Darrow the negative.  Darrow, the famous defense lawyer “had many Jewish friends and denounced anti-Semitism” but like so many of his generation (Jew and non-Jew alike) “he never supported a separate homeland for Jewish people.


1929: Birthdate of Daniel Donald Dorfman “a highly visible financial journalist whose televised market reports could send a stock soaring — or plummeting — but whose career was tarnished by accusations of insider trading.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)


1929: Birthdate of Moroccan native Yehonatan Yifrah who made Aliyah in 1951 and went on to serve as “secretary of the Sderot Workers Council” and an MK from 1969 to 1973.


1929: On what is known as Black Thursday, a record number of shares are traded on the NYSE as stock prices tumble, only to rebound when Richard Whitney steps on the floor and dramatically purchases large blocks of Blue Chip stocks.  This provides only a brief respite on the road to Black Tuesday when the bottom fell out of the market marking the start of the worldwide Great Depression with all of its negative consequences including the rise of Hitler.  The money for Whitney’s dramatic purchases was provided by the three leading New York Bankers, none of whom were Jewish.


1930: Birthdate of Elaine Feinstein Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator who was born in Bootle, Lancashire. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester. She has worked variously as an editor for Cambridge University Press (1960-62), as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College (1963-6), as Assistant Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Essex (1967-70), and as a journalist. She contributes to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, and was Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore and Tromsoe, Norway. Elaine Feinstein's first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye, was published in 1966. Her later work has been influenced by the poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva, a poet whose work she has translated from the Russian. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1990. Her first novel was The Circle (1970), which, like much of her early work, explores themes of female identity seen both inside and outside the family unit. Later novels, such as The Survivors(1982), draw on her knowledge of 20th-century European history and an awareness of her own Jewish heritage. Her most recent novel is The Russian Jerusalem(2008).She is the author of a number of plays for television including “Breath,” televised by the BBC in 1975, and “The Diary of Country Gentlewoman,” a twelve-part series (based on Edith Holden's novel) produced by ITV in 1984. She has also written radio plays, including “Foreign Girls” (1993) and Winter Meeting (1994), and is the author of several biographies, among them studies of the singer Bessie Smith and the writer D. H. Lawrence and a portrait of the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, published in 2001. Her book, Anna of all the Russias: The Life of a Poet under Stalin (2005) is a biography of Anna Akhmatova. Elaine Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was elected on to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. She lives in London. Her most recent poetry collection is Talking to the Dead (2007), dedicated to the memory of her husband, Arnold.



1930: British Labour Party MP Harry Gosling passed away today opening the way for Barnett Janner to seek this seat in constituency that had a large Jewish population – something did help the Jewish politician  in his first campaign but helped him to gain the set in the next general election.



1931: With Sid Gillman playing end, OSU lost to Northwestern today.



1932: Rufus D. Isaacs, “the last member of the Liberal Party to serve as Foreign Minister” and “the second practicing Jews to be a member of the British cabinet” appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which in its day was sign of being a significant figure in the wordl.



http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19321024,00.html



1933:Nazis pass a law against “Habitual and Dangerous Criminals” that justifies placing the homeless, beggars, unemployed and alcoholics in concentration camps. (Jewish Virtual Library)


1935: “Rendezvous” a spy movie set in WW I produced by Lawrence Weingarten with a screenplay co-authored by Bella and Samuel Spewack co-starring Binnie Barnes, the daughter of George Barnes, an Anglo-Jewish policeman was released today in the United States by MGM.


1935:Final day for the publication of the American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune.



1935(27th of Tishrei, 5969): Abraham "Abe" Landau, a henchman of gangster Dutch Schultz succumbed to his wounds today.



1935: In Montreal, Abie Baine was knocked out in a bout for the Montreal Athletic Commission World Heavyweight Title.



1935: Mussolini’s Fascist Italian Army invaded Ethiopia.  This act of naked aggression helped to make Mussolini a pariah among many Europeans.  In turn, this pariah status helped to drive Mussolini into an alliance with Hitler that had disastrous results for Italian Jews.  Strange as it may sound, the road to Auschwitz for Italian Jews went through Addis Abba.



1936(8thof Cheshvan, 5697): Parashat Lech-Lecha



1936(8thof Cheshvan, 5697): Isidore Abramowitz passed away today after which he was buried at the United Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond (Staten Island) NY.



1936: “The Labor Court at Berlin decided today that a National Socialist maid order by her employer to in a Jewish-owned shop has the right to leave immediately and that the employer must continue to pay her wages until the expiration of the legal notice term.”



1936: In Poland, “anti-Semitic riots in which four Jewish students were injured seriously led to the temporary closing of the University of Lwow Polytechnic School today.” (Editor’s note – According to some, the rampant anti-Semitism in pre-WW II Poland, is one of the under-studied aspects of events that led up to and helped make possible the Final Solution)



1936: As part of the “purge of Jewish influences” on “German Kultur” it was reported today that “several German composers received orders to write new music to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ to replace that by Felix Mendelssohn.”



1936: Bronislaw Huberman, founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra told the Times he had just conferred with Arturo Toscanini on arrangements for the opening concert of the PSO which will be conducted by Toscanini.  The symphony has seventy members most of whom are refugees from various European countries where they were leading performers.  The concert is schedule for December and is the first of a series of scheduled performances.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that Avinoam Yellin, Senior Jewish Education Officer succumbed to his wounds inflicted by an Arab terrorist. The entire Yishuv mourned this outstanding national leader. The Palestine Police offered a £1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Yellin's assassin.


1937: The Palestine Post reported that two Arabs were killed and two others wounded by unknown persons, believed to be Jewish, in Haifa and Jerusalem.


1937: The second season of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra begins today in Tel Aviv under the direction of Hans Wilhelm Steinberg.


1937: Two days after he had passed away, funeral services were held today for “seventy-eight year old Frank Heino Damrosch, the German born son of “conductor, violinist and composer” Leopold Damrosch and “the former Marie Helene Von Heimberg” a leading opera singer and the husband of “Hetty Mosenthal” who pursued a career in business and served as a “lieutenant in the National Guard” before devoting himself to the field of music which included the found of the Institute of Musical Art” followed by private burial services.


1937: “I’ve Got the Tune,” “an American radio opera with words and music by Marc Blitzstein” was broadcast for the first time with Bernard Hermann as the conductor.


1937: The Los Angeles Times reported today that “studio moguls” (many of whom were Jewish) grew so worried about the increased activism of their stars” (many of whom were Jewish) “that they were considering inaugurating ‘a squelch campaign against anything savoring of political activities’” which would include a clause prohibiting such behavior in future contracts.


1938: In the wake of the Munich Agreement and its appeasement of Hitler, “French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet carries out a major purge of the Qui d'Orsay, sacking or exiling a number of anti-appeasement officials such as Pierre Comert and René Massigli”


1938: In what would prove to be one more step on the road to WW II and the Shoah, “at a "friendly luncheon" in Berchtesgaden, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop tells Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Germany, that the Free City of Danzig must return to Germany, that the Germans must be given extraterritorial rights in the Polish Corridor, and that Poland must sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.”


1939:  The Jewish Big Band Leader Benny Goodman recorded "Let's Dance"


1939: Jews in Wloclawek, Poland, are required to wear a yellow cloth triangle identifying them as Jews


1940(22ndof Tishrei, 5701): Shemini Atzert


1940: Birthdate of Rehovot native Yossi Sarid who served as an MK from 1974 through 2006 and was a columnist for Haaretz.



1940: In Brooklyn, Jack Meltzer and the former Kitty Talber gave birth to actor and preservationist Daniel Meltzer.



1940: In what should have been a moment of national shame, Marshall Philippe Petain, the Head of State of Vichy France shook hands with German Chancellor Adolf Hitter.


1941: Six thousand work passes were distributed in Vilna. This meant 4,000 Jews without work passes would be sent to their doom in Polna. They were hunted down by the Lithuanians. Among the dead were 885 children.


1941 Sixteen thousand Odessa, Ukraine, Jews are force-marched out of the city toward Dalnik, where they are bound together in groups of 40 to 50 and shot, at first in the open and later through holes drilled in the walls of warehouses. Three of these structures are set ablaze and a fourth is exploded by artillery fire.


1941:  Twenty thousand Jews fell into Nazi hands at Kharkov.


1941(3rd of Cheshvan, 5702): As part of the Odessa Action, an additional 16,000 Jews were taken from Odessa and sent to Dalnik. In Dalnik, they were all shot in ditches; machine gunned down, or burned alive in warehouses.


1941: Sixty-five year old Gershon Lichtenstein “was deporte


1942: The Jews of Lichtenstein were deported.


1942: Étienne Szabo, the husband of Violette Szabo, one of those murdered by the Nazis at Ravensbruck, was mortally wounded while “leading his men in a diversionary attack on Qaret el Himeimat at the beginning of the Second Battle of El Alamein.


1944: Allied airman classified as Terrorflieger ("terror aviators") who had been shipped to Buchenwald which was unusual because Western POWs to a concentration camp, were not executed today as had been planned due to the intervention of Luftwaffe officers.


1945: The UN officially came into existence today upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—France, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. Whatever one’s view of the UN is, it must be remembered that this organization played a key role in the creation of the state of Israel and unlike its predecessor, the League of Nation, it has not witnessed the start of a World War.


1947: In Brooklyn, Moshe Teitelbaum, the Grand Rebbe of the Satmar Chasidim and “Leah Meir, daughter of Rabbi Hanoch Heinoch Meir of Karecska” gave birth to “Aaron Teitelbaum, “one of the two Grand Rebbes of Satmar and the chief rabbi of the Satmar community in Kiryas Joel.”


1947: Birthdate of actor Kevin Kline.  Kline whose father was Jewish but whose mother was not appeared in such films as The Big Chill and Sophie’s Choice.


1947: Members of the Haganah attacked forty members of the Irgun who were posting “propaganda posters.” Two members of the Haganah were wounded during the fight that took place fifteen miles south of Tel Aviv.


1948(21stof Tishrei, 5709): Hoshana Raba


1948: “Israeli forces belonging to the Givati Brigade captured Deir ad-Dubban in a northward push in Operation Yoav.”


1948: Operation Ha-Har, a week-long successful “campaign to expand the Jerusalem Corridor as far as the western foothills of the Judean mountains” came to an end today.


1948(21stof Tishrei, 5709): Seventy-two year old Rustem Vambery, the jurist who had opposed the Communists and Fascists and was the son of Armin Vambery, the biographer of Theodor Herzl, passed away in New York today.


1948: The IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire upper Galilee, driving the ALA, and Lebanese army back to Lebanon, and successfully ambushing and destroying an entire Syrian battalion.] The Israeli force of four infantry brigades were commanded by Moshe Carmel


1952: The Arab Liberation Movement became the only party in Syria.  For those who keep asking what happened to the Moslem/Arab world, they might want to consider this entry.  While Israel was working to develop democratic institutions from the very birth of the nation, its northern neighbor was set on a course of one-party totalitarianism


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the German Chancellor, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, defended the presence of former Nazis in his Foreign Ministry by claiming that they were irreplaceable and indispensable. It was things like this that caused many Israelis and Jews living elsewhere to want to reject any reparation payments by the West German government.  As far as they were concerned, the new Germans were the old Germans in disguise.


1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jerusalem District Court ruled that according to the Nationality Law, a child whose father is Israeli and whose mother rejected Israeli citizenship, for both herself and her child, is nevertheless a citizen of Israel.  The question of “who is a Jew” has taken on many guises and shapes from ancient to modern times.


1954: Birthdate of Tampa, FL native Martin “Marty” Baron the former editor of the Boston Globe who, in case of Jew as a Jew, was portrayed by Lev Schreiber in the film “Spotlight” and who became the editor of the Washington Post in December, 2012.


1954: Birthdate of Congressman Brad Sherman, representing California’s 27thDistrict in the House of Representatives.


1954: In San Diego, the city-wide B.I.G (Bonds of the Israel Government) banquet scheduled to be held at the El Cortez Hotel will feature a performance by Jan Peerce, a top tenor of the Metropolitan Operan and a speech by Alex Lowenthal of Pittsburgh, National Chairman of “Cash Sales for the Israel Bond Drive.


1956: In Tel Aviv, “Dr. Rozelia Ruth Garti, a pediatrician who came to Israel from Sofia. Bulgaria, in 1949” and Hayim Baltsan, the journalist, author and founder of founder of the ITIM news agency gave birth to “concert pianist Astrith Baltsan.”




1956: As the Israelis, French and British worked on plans for what will become known as the Suez Campaign or the One Hundred Hours War, the British negotiators made it clear to the Israelis that they must move towards the Canal so that the British and French would have an excuse to intervene.  The Israelis primary point of interest was seizing Sharm el-Sheik which would open the Straits of Tiran.  The Israelis said they would move to take the Mitla Pass in the central Sinai and the British conceded that this would suffice for their needed “fig leaf.”


1958: “Torpedo Run,” a WW II submarine movie directed by Joseph Pevney was released in the United States by MGM.


1959: Birthdate of Yakov Kreizberg, the Russian born American orchestra conductor.


1960: “The Alamo” a one-sided costume drama about the fight in Texas co-starring Laurence Harvey and featuring a score by Dimitri Tiomkin was released today in the United States.


1961: Italian premiere of “El Cid,” on which Michał Waszyński served as Executive Producer.


1961: United Artists released “The Manchurian Candidate,” with a screenplay by George Axelrod, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant and a score by David Amram.


1962: The recording of “Piano, Strings and Bossa Nova,” an album by composer Lalo Schifrin was completed today.


1962: “The Manchurian Candidate” directed by John Frankenheimer who co-produced the film with George Axelrod, the author of the screenplay, with music by David Amram and co-starring Laurence Harvey was released in the United States today by United Artists.


1964: The “Tokyo” Summer Olympics where the Soviet Union Volleyball team led by Georgy Mondzolevski won a Gold Medal, came to an end today.


1966: Birthdate of oil magnate and “Russian Oligarch”, Roman Abramovich.


1966: Simon and Garfunkel’s album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” “was released today by Columbia records.


1970: Birthdate of actor Adam Goldberg who was featured in Saving Private Ryan


1971: Birthdate of Caprice Bourret.  Born Caprice Valerie Bourret, she gained fame as an actress and model, including her role in introducing the Wonderbra.


1973: As the Yom Kippur War was coming to an end Israeli troops were 65 miles from Cairo and 26 miles from Damascus.  While the Arabs scored major victories early in the conflict, the Israelis turned things around and the aggressors were actually worse off from a military point of view at the end hostilities than they were when the shooting started.  However, the military victory did little to heal the aching Israeli psyche or ease the sense of loss over those who fell in defense of the Jewish homeland. The IDF death toll stood at 2,522.  These losses were over three times the number suffered during the Six Day War.  Furthermore, as Yigal Yadin pointed out, this was the first war in which fathers and sons went into action at the same time.  It was also the first time where the IDF casualty list included fathers and sons.  The war proved once again that the Arabs nations could fight and lose, time after time and still exist.  For Israelis, the wars were beginning to seem interminable and there was no margin for error.  All they had to do was lose once and the state would cease to exist.  The Yom Kippur War showed just how dependent Israel was on the United States for its military and economic wellbeing.  The war further heightened Israel’s sense of isolation as Third World countries caved into the Arab Petro-Power and broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.  Strangely enough, the Egyptian ability to cross the Suez Canal would provide Sadat with a sense that he had redeemed his country’s national honor and provide him with the impetus to negotiate the Camp David Peace Accords.  At the same time, the sense of malaise that would grip Israel as a result of the Yom Kippur War would provide some of the momentum that would end the Labor-Zionist control of the Israeli government and bring Begin and his Right Wing nationalist forces to power. 


1973: “A second cease-fire was put into effect, but fighting continued between Egypt and Israel as a result of which the Soviet Union threatened the United States that it will send troops to support the Egyptians.  (As reported by JTA)


1973: Colonel Giora "Hawkeye" Epstein “downed three more MiG-21s west of the Great Bitter Lake.”


1974: David Fyodorovich Oistrakh, Ukrainian born violinists, passed away.


1976: First Jewish film & TV festival


1976: “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” a mystery directed and co-produced by Herbert Ross, written by Nicholas Meyer and co-starring Alan Arkin and Joel Grey was released in the United States today.


1976: The cabinet resolved, without prejudging the charges against Asher Yadlin concerning  improper conduct in the management of Kupat Holim that it could no longer delay the appointment, and named Director-General of the Treasury Arnon Gafni as governor of the Bank of Israel


1977: Menachem Begin completed his term in office as Communications Minister of Israel.


1977:  The political party founded by Yigal Yadin joined the government formed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  Begin had won an upset victory over the Labor Zionist who had governed the country since 1948.  Yadin believed that by joining the new government he could help fashion a much need policy of social reform and play a key role in future negotiations with the Arabs.  He based this second hope on the key role he had played in negotiating the cease fire with the Jordanians in 1948.  Much to his bitter disappointment, Yadin would find that his plans for social reform would fall victim to Ariel Sharon’s need for money to finance his plan for an expansion of settlements in the West Ban.


1977: The Democratic Movement for Change (DASH), which had won 15 Knesset seats in the last election, joined Menachem Begin in a new coalition with Meir Amit, the retired Major General, serving as minister of transport and communication. He would resign within a year.


1978(23rdof Tishrei, 5739): Simchat Torah


1979: One persona was injured today when terrorists set off a bomb in the bus terminal in Tel Aviv.


1980: “It’s My Turn” “a romantic comedy” written by Eleanor Bergstein with a title song written by Michael Masser and Carole Bayer Sager and co-starring Charles Grodin was released in the United States today by Columbia Pictures.


1980: The first national US tour of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: “The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” started today in Washington, D.C.


1980: “Leningrad refuseniks Lev Furman, Yuli Karolin and Isaac Kogan sent a telegram expressing their sympathy to the Jews of France in connection with the attack on the rue Copernic Synagogue in Paris.”


1981: Birthdate of American fashion designer Zac Posen who as a child reportedly stole yarmulkes to use as materials for dresses he made for dolls.


1981(26thof Tishrei, 5742): Forty-three year old Raffaele Efraim Pacifici, the son Rabbi Reuven Pacifici who died at Auschwitz, passed away today at Kfar Saba.


1981: Seventy-nine year old law school graduate and pharmacist turned world chess champion Alexander Kervitz passed away today.



1982: Today, in New York, “at the Park East Synagogue” Rabbi Arthur Schneier officiated at the wedding of Harvard MBA Michael Scharf, the “son of Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Scharf” and “Fiona Vivienne Lunzer” one of the five adult daughters of Ruth and Jack Lunzer, whose collection of Hebrew books  were “the basis of the Valmadonna Trust Library.”



 


1982: NBC began broadcasting “Little Gloria…Happy at Last” a miniseries based “on the book by Barbara Goldsmith” the wife of actor Jonathan Goldsmith, produced by Scott Rudin and co-starring Martin Balsam.


1983: Following a lengthy and intense debate within the Conservative movement, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) faculty senate voted 34-8 to admit women to the JTS Rabbinical School on. The favorable vote was facilitated by the decision of several JTS faculty members who opposed the innovation not to participate in the vote. In 1977 the seminary's chancellor, Gerson Cohen, had appointed a Committee for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis. Despite the 1979 committee's final report, which recommended ordination for women by a vote of 11 to 3, tensions within the JTS and the movement delayed a positive vote until 1983.( Editor’s Note – “The next fall, in September 1984, 23 women entered JTS as members of the seminary's first class to include female rabbinical students. In the spring of 1985, Amy Eilberg, who was already studying at JTS when women's ordination was approved, became the first woman ordained as a rabbi by the Conservative movement.”)



1986: In Toronto, Sandi Graham (née Sher) who was Jewish and Dennis Graham gave birth to Canadian rapper, songwriter, and actor Aubrey Drake Graham who “was raised by his mother in Toronto's predominantly Jewish area of Forest Hills (and attended Forest Hills P.S. and Forest Hills Collegiate)



1986(21stof Tishrei, 5747): Hoshanah Rabah



1986: “Soul Man” a controversial comedy produced by Steve Tisch was released today in the United States.


1988: The Summer Paralympics where the Israeli volleyball team led by Hagai Zamir won a silver medal came to a close today.



1993: The Art Institute of Chicago presents the work of Israeli photographer Michal Rovner



1993(9th of Cheshvan, 5754): “Two IDF soldiers, Staff Sgt. (res.) Ehud Rot, age 35, and Sgt. Ilan Levi, age 23, were killed by a Hamas Iz a-Din al Kassam terrorist squad. The soldiers entered a Subaru with Israeli license plates outside a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, whose passengers were apparently terrorists disguised as Israelis. Following a brief struggle, the soldiers were shot at close range and killed. Hamas publicly claimed responsibility for the attack”



1994: A revival of “Mother,” the teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky was featured on the PBS Great Performances series today



1996: Actress Rena Shere Sofer played the role of Lois Cerullo on General Hospital for the last time.



1997(23rdof Tishrei, 5758) Simchat Torah



1999: Bruce Fleischer won the EMC Kaanapali Classic.



1999: “None of the Above” published today reviewed The Big Test The Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicholas Lemann.



http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/24/books/none-of-the-above.html



2000: Following its original Broadway opening on May 23, “Proof” costarring Ben Shenkman as “Hal” transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre today.



1999: The New York Times includes reviews of the following books by Jewish authors: The Play Goes On: A Memoir by Neil Simone and In Search of American Jewish Culture by Stephen Whitfield, one of Tulane University’s most illustrious graduates and AEPi’s most illustrious “brother.”



2001: Benefit Premiere for the NYC Theatrical Release of the controversial movie “Trembling Before G-d” at Film Forum.



2001: The sale of Fox Family Worldwide, Inc. to The Walt Disney Company which Haim Saban had announced in July was completed today.



2002: Premiere of “Broken Wings” an Israeli film directed by Nir Bergman.



2004: Eight months after premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, “Walk on Water,” an Israeli film starring Lior Ashkenazie and directed by Eytan Fox was first shown in the United States today.



2004:The New York Timesbook section featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on Jewish topics including Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies by George S. Kaufman with Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Ring Lardner and Morrie Ryskind, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenmentsby Gertrude Himmelfarb, Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs and Chronicles Volume One by Bob Dylan, an autobiography of the life of Robert Zimmerman



2004:  Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sponsored its annual Big Dinner fund raising activity. For once, the city of Cedar Rapids was awash with real corned beef and Dr. Brown's Cream Soda. “Es, es mien kinder; es.”


2004:  The Jerusalem Post reported that approximately 140,000 Muslim worshippers attended Ramadan prayers on the Temple Mount on the previous Friday afternoon. Considering the violence of the Intifada, it is rather amazing that Israel was willing to risk this large a gathering.  It speaks well of the Israelis that they were willing to run the risk so that others, even those who oppose its very existence, might celebrate their religious observances. 


2005 (21 Tishrei 5766): Hoshana Rabbah


2005: “The Luddite from York University” published today described the antics of David Noble, who teaches at Canada’s third largest university. As reported by Steven Plaut) [This item is an example of the anti-Semitism that has cropped up on college campuses in North America.]



2006: In her first weekly column which is called "Breaking the Sound Barrier" Amy Goodman wrote, "My column will include voices so often excluded, people whose views the media mostly ignore, issues they distort and even ridicule]


2006(2ndof Cheshvan, 5767): Eighty-seven year old Sally Lilienthal the peace activist who founded Ploughshares Fund passed away today. (As reported by Patricia Sullivan) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102601603_pf.html



2006(2ndof Cheshvan, 5767): Eighty-eight year old “ Benjamin Meed, a leading advocate for Jewish Holocaust survivors who in the decades after the war gathered them together by the tens of thousands, reuniting people with friends, neighbors and family members presumed to have been lost forever, died today at his home in Manhattan. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2007: “Third World Love” celebrates the release of its fourth album, “New Blues,” with a performance of Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine.


2007: Marianne Pearl, the widow of Daniel Pearl, dropped her lawsuit “seeking damages against al-Qaida and Pakistan’s largest bank.


2007: Terrorists went on a shooting spree in an attack on the West Bank in and around the Ariel junction, seriously wounding one IDF soldier.  Hamas and Fatah both claimed they were each responsible for the attack.


2008: Opening of Fall Chavurah (SLIID), hosted by CeRTY of Central Reform Congregation, in St. Louis.


2008:At New York University Etgar Keret joins Todd Hasak-Lowy, professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Florida, for a fiction reading and conversation with NYU professor Matthew Rohrer.


2008(25 Tishrei, 5769): Sixty-five year old “ Rabbi Moshe Cotel, an acclaimed pianist and composer whose works were often infused with themes emanating from his deep Jewish roots, a weave of influences that only later in life led him to the pulpit, passed away today  at his home in Manhattan. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)



2008: Gottschalks, a department store chain founded by German Jewish immigrant Emil Gottschalk in 1904 as a dry goods store in downtown Fresno, California, “was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE officials stated that the value of the stock was too low to continue to be listed, and that its average global market capitalization had remained below $25 million for 30 straight trading days.”


2008: BBC broadcast “American Fervour,” episode three in “The American Future: A History” a four-part documentary series written and presented by Simon Schama.


2009(6th of Cheshvan, 5770): Norma Fox Mazer, an award-winning novelist for young people whose work helped illuminate many dark corners of adolescence, exploring subjects like poverty, betrayal, abandonment and loss, passed away at her home in Montpelier, VT at the age of 78.


2009: At the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival a program entitled “SLAM! An Evening of Spoken Word Poetry” featuring Jake Marmer who “merges poetry and performance into philosophically viral mixtures like existentialist dancehall, talmudic jazz poetry and personalized bop apocalypse.”


2009: In Jerusalem, Khan Theatre presents "Happiness," a comedy written and directed by Michael Gurevich. The show won two Israeli Theatre Awards for 2004: Best Director and Best Choreography.


2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure by Nathan Rabin and The False Friend by Myla Goldberg


2010: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to conduct “A Walking Tour of Old Town Alexandria” that will enable participants to learn about the long and storied Jewish history of this Virginia’s city, from the 1850s to today including the sites of two former synagogues and several Jewish businesses along King Street-including some that show traces of past Jewish owners.


2010: Max Weinreich Center at YIVO along with Hunter College and the Posen Foundation are scheduled to present: A Conference on the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Simon Dubnow The day-long conference on the life and career of the renowned historian will include a look at "Dubnow on the East European Jewish Past,""Dubnovism in the 20th Century" and "Dubnow and Jewish Ideologies of His Time."  Dr. Brian Horowtiz of Tulane University is scheduled to be one of the presenters.


2010(16th of Cheshvan, 5771): Ninety-eight year old “Joseph Stein, the Tony Award-winning author of “Fiddler on the Roof” and more than a dozen other Broadway musicals, died today in Manhattan. (As reported by Anita Gates and Bruce Weber)



2011: A Dramatic Reading entitled “The Civil War at 150 United By Faith, Divided by War: Jews and the Civil War” is scheduled to take place tonight at the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival at the Washington DC JCC.


2011: A new memorial honoring 14 Jewish chaplains who died in the service of the United States is scheduled to be dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.


2011: Mayor Carolyn Goldmark Goodman greeted President Obama at the McCarran Airport and “gave him one of her luck mayor chips as a gift” signifying that she did not share her husband’s (and former Mayor) displeasure with remarks the President had made about the city.


2011: In a tale of two Jews in the city of Chicago, incoming Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein arrived at Wrigley Field this morning to meet some of the team's employees and check out his new digs while Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced to defend the decision to arrest two nurses who remained in Grant Park after the 11 pm closing time as part of the Windy City’s local version of the national protest against economic inequality.


2011: An IDF soldier was arrested by Military Police today on suspicion of leaking information to right-wing elements over military activities in the West Bank. The soldier, from the Samaria Division, allegedly took advantage of his clerical position in the army to send information which allowed activists to disrupt the IDF's operations in the area, and enabled them to carry out 'price tag' attacks.  The investigation may lead to further arrests, defense sources have said. Two weeks ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that groups of settlers carrying out self-defined "price tag" attacks against Palestinians "operate almost like terrorist organizations." The attacks, carried out against Palestinians and private property, "embarrass the State of Israel," he said during a military tour. Barak also praised the West Bank settlement leadership for condemning the acts. At the beginning of the month, a mosque in the northern town of Tuba Zanghariya mosque was burned, causing significant damage. The attackers left the words "price tag" scrawled on nearby walls. "These are events that need to be fought against. They humiliate the State of Israel and harm its strength and the legitimacy of all settlement within it," Barak said. The attacks also harm "Israel's standing and normal relations with our neighbors, the Palestinians." President Shimon Peres said of the Tuba Zanghariya arson attack: "It brings great shame upon us. It is a terrible thing that I condemn in the strongest possible terms." 


2011: In “Ruth Weiss: Beat ‘Goddess’ True Innovator of Poetry & Jazz” Lourdes Acevedo described the life and impact of the beat generation poetess.



2012: The Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to sponsor a lecture by Thomas E. Mann entitled “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: The Clash Between Our Constitutional System and Political Extremism.”


2012: Professor Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University, Berlin) is scheduled to deliver a lecture, “The Witness and the Holocaust - Oral Testimonies and Historical Knowledge” in London, UK.


2012: The Annual Conference of the Program Directors of Reform Judaism that has been meeting in Denver, CO, is scheduled to come to an end.


2012: Today, President Shimon Peres accused Palestinians of using aid donations to fund their rocket campaign against Israel.


2012: More than 60 rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza have hit southern Israel in the last 24 hours, striking several homes and injuring three. Between late last night and late this morning Israel Air Force planes hit four of what the Israel Defense Forces said were rocket launching sites, as well as a tunnel used for smuggling terrorists into Israel, according to statements issued from the IDF. The rockets and mortar shells began falling on southern Israeli communities late last night and have continued through the day today




2012: The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia are scheduled to host a lunch where attendees can question Tim Kaine, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia about his views and policies


2013: The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center is scheduled to co-host the Chicago book launch of Against A Tide of Evilby Dr. Mukesh Kapila.


2013: The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to present Fritz Stern and Elisabeth Sifton, authors of No Ordinary Men who will lead a discussion about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Von Dohanyi.


2013: The RAC is scheduled to observe Food Day with a webinar that will feature special guests, Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea; and Rabbi Mary Zamore, editor of "The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic,” discussing the various challenges within our global food system, and how we can apply our Jewish values to conscious eating, and the concept of “food with integrity.”


2013: Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said today that a "civil war" has erupted in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Global Jihad elements that have attempted to drag Israel into the conflict (As reported by JPost Staff)


2013: Los Angeles premiere of “The Pin,” a love story about two Jewish teenagers hiding in a barn in Lithuania during WW II.


2013: IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz announced that Colonel Rasan Alian has been appointed to commander the Golani Brigade making him the first Druse officer to hold the position.


2014(30th of Tishrei, 5775): Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan


2014: “The Obama administration this week refused Israel defense minister’s requests to meet several top national security aides, still miffed over negative comments he made about Secretary of State John Kerry’s Mideast peace efforts and nuclear negotiations with Iran, US officials said today. “


2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host a piano recital by Tom Zalmanov as part of its “The Future Generation Series.”


2014: The police arrested three Palestinians who were throwing rocks and fireworks at them after the conclusion of prayers on the Temple Mount.


2014: The Women at the Wall celebrated Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan today and their first ever Bar Mitzvahu using a miniature Torah scroll that they had “snuck” in the Kotel plaza.


2014, In Canada, “Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts is presenting An Evening with Jeffrey Tambor, the multi-award winning actor of film, television, and Broadway.”


2014: Temple Judah is schedule to host its first Musical Shabbat of the season along with addition of the Caster/Barnum baby naming


2014: Nick Kotz is a former reporter for The Washington Post and The Des Moines Register is scheduled to discuss  The Harness Maker’s Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise Of South Texas at the Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.


2014: An untold number of Jews are scheduled to join in a unique Shabbat experience – ShabbatUK



2015: Tamar Ettun’s first solo exhibition at the Fridman Gallery is scheduled to come to a close.


2015: The JCCNVA is scheduled to host “Blue Like Me: The Art of Sinoa Benjamin” which traces the artist’s “roots in the Bene Israel community where she grew up.”


2015: Israel is scheduled to go on “winter time” meaning 2am becomes 3am


2015(11th of Cheshvan, 5776): Shabbat Lech-Lecha


2015(11th of Cheshvan, 5776): Ninety-six year old “Earl Raab, longtime executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, an intellectual, a prolific writer and a leader in Jewish life for more than 50 years” passed away today.



2015(11th of Cheshvan, 5776):Rabbi Haim (Howie) Yehiel Rothman, who died today of injuries he sustained during a deadly terror attack at a Jerusalem synagogue almost a year ago, was laid to rest in the evening in an emotional ceremony at the capital’s Givat Shaul cemetery.


2015: In New Brunswick, NJ, Congregation Poile Tzedek which had been “declared a National Landmark in 1995” and three Torah scrolls were consumed by fire while one other Torah was saved when Rabbi Mykoff “raced” into the burning building and retrieved the holy scroll.


2015: “Thousands of left-wing Israelis turned out in Tel Aviv tonight for a rally condemning the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what they called its poor response to the current security situation” and demanding that Netanyahu resign.


2016(22nd of Tishrei, 5777): Shemini Atzeret


2016: The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is scheduled to host a Tot Simchat Torah


2016: In the evening, start of Simchat Torah celebration


2016: A Code Red alarm sounded just before 7:00 a.m. “warning of an impending rocket attack” from Gaza.


2016: “Palestinian officials announced a year-long campaign to commemorate 100 years since the “crime” of the Balfour Declaration, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported today.”


2017: It was announced today that “the new Holocaust memorial in Westminster will be built by the British architect Sir David Adjaye and Israeli designer Ron Arad.”


2017: Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America by University of Southern California professor of history Steven J. Ross “which illustrates how Nazi agents operated in LA” is scheduled to be released by Bloomsbury Press today.


2017: In Beachwood, Ohio, Georgia Tech professor of history Jonathan Schneer is scheduled to lecture on “Ministers at War: Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet 1940-45” which should shed some light on the men who enforced the White Paper even after the war in Europe had ended and the Prime Minister who at the end of war reneged on his promise to Chaim Weizmann.


2017: As “part of the series German-Jewish History in the Now: The Contemporary Relevance of German-Jewish History” presented by the Leo Baeck Institute ‘historian Michael Brenner (University of Munich/American University) and Gavriel Rosenfeld (Fairfield University), are scheduled to discuss what factors and what actors contributed to the collapse of a fragile pluralism in the 1930s, and what that means for our own democracy.”


2017: At the Bard Graduate Center, Andrea M Berlin is scheduled to present “The Great Revolt and its Jewish Afterlife” which is part of the Leon Levy Foundation Lectures.


2017: Peninnah Schram, a professor emerita at Yehshiva University is scheduled to lecture on “Have I Got A Story For You: Exploring the Jewish Oral Tradition” at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center.


2018: “Down With the Butchers! The Radical Symbolism of Kosher Meat in the Works of Morris Winchevsky, Y.L. Gordon and Mendele Mocher Sforrim,” a lecture by Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler “that will focus on the literary intersection between kashrut, social injustice and the concept of the modern Jewish protest” scheduled for this afternoon at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has been postponed.


2018: The sixth Pianos Festival is scheduled to open at the Jerusalem Theatre.


2018: The first session The Jewish Learning Institute’s course “Wrestling with Faith” is scheduled to begin this evening.


2018: “The Disabled Receiving Cutting-edge Care in Haifa,” a photographic exhibition that is part of the Streicker Center’s “Home: Lens on Israel” series is scheduled to come to an end today.


 


 


 


 

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

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OCTOBER 25


732:  Christian forces led by Charles Martel clash defeat the invading Moors at the Battle of Tours which is near Poitiers in modern day France. The victory at Tours ensured that Western Europe would be Christian.  For Jews, it also meant that the Sephardic culture would flourish for several centuries to come.  



1135: Louis VII, who “banished from the kingdom those Jews who had been converted to Christianity and had later returned to Judaism” was crowned “Junior King of France” today; following a Capetian custom of holding the coronation of the heir apparent while the current monarch was still alive.



1147: The armies of the Second Crusade (1147-49) were destroyed by the Saracens at Dorylaeum (in modern Turkey). The Crusaders went on with fruitless campaigns against Damascus, Syria.  The Jews were bystanders during the Crusades.  Unfortunately they fell victim to the wrath of the Islamic and Christian combatants at various times throughout this tumultuous period.  Furthermore, one cannot understand what is happening in the part of the world best described as the “Islamic/Arab Arc” if one does not have a sense of the period of the Crusades.



1154: King Stephen of England died. Stephen was an inept monarch who reigned during a period of turmoil and civil war. The first blood libel took place in during his rule in 1144.  Unlike the nobles and monarchs of France and Germany, Stephen protected his Jewish subjects from the kind of suffering that the Crusaders were inflicting on their European co-religionists.  Stephen reportedly did burn the house of Jew living in Oxford but that was because the Jew refused to contribute to the maintenance of the monarch.  While the act is inexcusable it is consistent with the greed of many of European nobles who were in constant need of money and saw the Jews as a cash-cow to be milked to death.



1187: Gregory VIII, the Pope who called for the disastrous Third Crusade, began his papacy. Each of the crusades was a disaster for the Jewish people in way or another.  On top of everything else, the Third Crusade removed the protective hand of King Richard from England and left the Jews to suffer under the anti-Semitic Prince John.



 1268: Jucef ibn Astrug Ravaya, a Jew, was appointed bailiff of Besala (modern day Spain). Jucef later became chief bailiff in Aragon and Valencia. Jucef and his brother were the chief administrators in the government of King Pedro III. Under Jucef's administration, he and his brother were able to raise funds from within the Jewish community to finance an invasion of Sicily.



1400:  The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer passed away.  Born in 1340, Chaucer is view as one of the great pre-Shakespearian writers.  From a purely Jewish perspective, the author of The Canterbury Tales is slight bit on the flawed side.  This is remarkable when you consider that the Jews had been expelled from England almost a century before Chaucer lived.  In the “Prioress’s Tale” Chaucer tells of an eight year old hymn signing Christian boy who is murdered as he passes through the Jewish section of his town. The boy is seized by “this accursed Jew” who cuts “his throat and casts him into a pit.”  In the end the Jewish community is wiped out as punishment for the crime.  This version of the blood libel proves that you did need Jews around to preach anti-Semitism, that anti-Semitism was part of the fabric of Christian civilization and that Jews are not the cause of anti-Semitism.  



1408: In Spain, The Council of Regency, under the inspiration of the apostate Paul de Santa Maria, reinstituted all previous anti-Jewish legislation of Alphonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284).



1495: Manuel I the Portuguese monarch who released all the Jews imprisoned by his predecessor John II, began his reign today



1541: The Jews of Algeria escaped capture by the Spanish Army which gave rise to Purim Edom



1734: Rachel Pinto, the wife of Jacob Pinto, passed away today after which she was interred at Hunt’s Bay Cemetery in Port Royal, Jamaica.



1742: Birthdate of Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, the Christian native of Parma who was a noted Hebraist.  After being named Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Parma, he delivered “His inaugural lecture on the causes of the neglect of Hebrew study.”



1760: King George II who had given royal assent to the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753 which was repealed a year later by Parliament, passed away today.



1760: King George III assumes the throne of Great Britain.  The Jews of the 13 colonies would adopt the view of their non-Jewish neighbors and see George as a modern day Pharaoh.



1765: A group of Philadelphia merchants gathered in the State House to sign the non-importation agreement to fight the hated Stamp Tax of the British government.  The merchants and other citizens of Philadelphia agreed "not to have any goods shipped from Great Britain until after the repeal of the Stamp Act.” “The first man to step forward to sign his name was the president of Mikve Israel Congregation, Philadelphia's only synagogue, Mathias Bush.”Other Jewish signers included Benjamin Levy, David Franks, Samson Levy, Hyman Levy, Jr., Moses Mordecai, Michael Gratz, and Barnard Gratz.”



1786: In Philadelphia, PA, Joseph Mordecai in a Hebrew ceremony, married Esther "Hetty" Marache, daughter of Solomon Marache and Rebecca "Myers" Marache after which “they moved to Virginia and on to Charleston, SC, where they lived for many years” and had six children:Solomon Joseph, Rebecca [Hertz], Judith, Thomas Whitlock, Harriett and Esther "Hetty".



1796(23rdof Tishrei, 5557): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the last time during the Presidency of George Washington.



1797: In Charleston, Rabbi Abraham Azuby officiated at the wedding of Solomon Cohen and “Miss Ella Moses Hart, the niece of the late Philip Hart.”



1800: Birthdate of British historian and Whig MP Thomas Babington Macaulay who advocated full civil rights for English Jews as can be seen by his support of Robert Grant’s bill for the “Removal of Jewish Disabilities.”



1803: Twenty-three year old London born Sephardic Jew Jacob da Dilva Solis, whose great-grandfather was Solomon da Silva Solis, arrived in the United States today marking the American being for the Solis-Cohen family.



1822(10th of Cheshvan, 5583: Abraham Touro died today in Boston at the age of 48.Born in 1774, he was the “oldest son of Isaac Touro, Abraham was born in Newport, Rhode Island. After the death of his father in Jamaica, he lived with his mother and siblings in the home of his uncle Moses Michael Hays in Boston, Massachusetts. As an adult, Abraham lived in Medford, Massachusetts. He entered into the merchant trade and insurance business with his cousin, Judah Hays, taking over the family business when his uncle died. Like his brother Judah, Abraham was known for his philanthropy, contributing to, among others, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Female Asylum, and the Boston Asylum for Indigent Boys. It was his caring and concern for the synagogue and cemetery in Newport, however, that he truly is remembered. In addition to the maintenance of the synagogue, he also contributed funds and oversaw the erection of a fence around the cemetery, the sidewalk from the cemetery to the synagogue, and maintenance and repair of the street that would one day bear his family name.”



1829: A day after he passed away, Hyam Emanuel was married at the Brady Street Jewish Cemetery.



 



1836: Birthdate of Hannah Conquy Abecassis, the native of the Azores “whose forced her to marry her uncle Abraham Abecassis avoiding a marriage with a catholic man she liked.”



1837: This evening Rabbi Poznanski officiated at the wedding of Henry S. Cohen to Caroline Harris, the “daughter of the late Jacob Harris.”



1845: A fire broke out at Constantinople which had consumed the greater part of the Jewish quarter, and destroyed several Synagogues. "Distress, starvation, and misery of all kinds prevail among the unfortunate Jewish population."


1848: In Galicia, Dr. and Mrs.Heinrich Franzos gave birth to author Karl Emil Franzos.


http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Franzos_Karl_Emil


1848: In Aufhausen, Germany, Emmanuel Frank and Elise Reese, the sister of Michael Reese, gave birth to Babette Reese Mandel, the wife of Chicago businessman Emanuel Mandel, whose philanthropies and good works included the founding of the Maxwell Street Settlement and serving as “as vice president of the Local Board of the Council of Jewish Women.”


1848: In Galicia, which at the time was part of the Austrian Empire, Heinrich Franzos, “a highly respected doctor” whose “family came from Sepharidi Jews who had fled the Inquisition” and his wife gave birth to author and journalist Karl Emil Franzos


http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Franzos_Karl_Emil


1849: Rabbi Rosenfeld officiated at the marriage of L.J. Myers of Savannah, GA and Priscilla Tobias, the daughter of Charleston, SC resident Abraham Tobias.


1850: The Will of Frances Abrahams, the mother-in-law of John Moses was probated today in the United Kingdom.


1853:23rd of Tishrei, 5614):Simchat Torah


1853:The Five Academies comprising the Institute of France held their annual meeting today.  Among the presenters was M. Holely of the Academy of Fine Arts, composer of the "Wandering Jew" who read "an interminable discourse on Frohberger, a German organist whom no ever heard of, and whom the writer himself acknowledge was snuffed out by Handel.


1858: In his role as President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews, Sir Moses Montefiore sends a letter to the leaders of the American Jewish community asking that they join “with the Jews in England, Holland and France” in seeking the support of their respective governments to take whatever action is possible to ensure the return of Eduardo Mortara to his parents after he had been seized by Catholic authorities so that he could be raised in their faith.


                                                                                OR


1858: TodaySir Moses Montefiore, the President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews wrote a letter the President of the Hebrew Congregation in the United States and others that urged the American Jewish community to join its co-religionists in England, Holland France in seeking the support of their government in having the Mortara child returned to his parents and to avoid any such future seizures. It summarized the threat that the seizure Edgardo Mortara posed to Jews and “every other denomination of faith” except the Roman Catholics. Montefiore reiterated that this was not just a matter of religious freedom. The behavior of the Catholic Church placed “in peril, personal liberty, social relations and the peace of families.”


1860:An article published today based on information from the Beirut correspondent of the Boston Traveler entitled “Affairs in Syria,” reports that  "The Anglo-American Committee, while it retains its original name, has now among its members leading men from the Greek, the Roman Catholic and the Jewish persuasions, and relief is extended to men of every creed irrespective of any peculiarity of faith…It will perhaps interest your readers to know that Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler the Chief Rabbi of the Jews, who resides in London, has issued an address to the Jews throughout Europe, calling upon them for liberal contributions for the poor in Syria, and that the Rothschilds and other eminent and wealthy Israelites are feeling much interest in the subject. Dr. Adler bases his appeal upon the ground that Syria and Palestine is the land of their fathers, and that as it is a land so full of holy associations connected with the past, and so replete with hope for the future, they must rally to the aid of their Christian brethren in the East, who are children of the same Almighty Father, and calls upon them to give liberally as they hope to be restored to the land to which their traditions, prophecies, and hopes, point as their future home."


1861: Isaac Goodman who rose from the rank Private to Sergeant during his four years with the Union Army began his service today with the Company F of the 91st Regiment.


1862(1st of Cheshvan, 5623): As Jews observed Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, General U.S. Grant assumed command of the 13th Army Corps and the Department of Tennessee, a move that would position him to lead the Union to victory at Vicksburg.


1862: The New York Timesspecial correspondent traveling with the Army of the Potomac reported that the recent order relating to sutlers have, to a great extent, cleared out the "Jews" as well as "Gentiles," who had turned Bolivar Heights into a Chatham-street. Bolivar Heights was the site of the Union Army’s camp.  Chatham-street was a reference to a street of that name in NYC which was the site of much of the second-hand clothing business; a business allegedly dominated by Jews who were rumored to always taking advantage of their Christian customers.


1862: Birthdate of Matthias Max Bernstein, the German born physician who came to England in 1892 where became a member of the British Medical Association and a member of the “Executive English Zionist Federation.”


1863:A writer for the Richmond Examiner proposes a plan for stowing the population of the entire Confederacy in Richmond, and supplying them with food. While the article is allegedly a satire, the paragraphs about the Jews have the whiff of anti-Semitism.Nowwe approach naturally enough the Jews, a class which includes not only the unworthy Israelites, but all who indulge the alleged Hebraic propensity for exacting the pound of Christian flesh and amassing riches at the expense of the life-blood of their fellow-citizens. Such are Yankee tradesmen of whatever denomination, restaurant keepers, confectionery and apple sellers, oyster-cellar men, proprietors of hotels and boarding-houses, and the like. All these come under the same head, and are to be disposed of in the same manner…I am told that the Jews, in addition to the shop in which they are now reduced to the unprofitable business of selling lead pencils at a dollar apiece, meerschaum pipes made out of plaster of Paris, empty pocket-books, and rotten shoe-strings, at similar rates, own a vast number of the best houses in the city, purchased by their honest gains, and now filled with flour, bacon, sugar, salt, coffee, tea, corn, meat, oats, hay, fodder, shucks and other necessaries of life. If this be true, not a moment is to be lost in ousting them, in order to save the army and the people from starvation. They are said to have packed away in their cellars and garrets enough clothing, made and unmade, to furnish every respectable man, woman and child in the Confederacy with two complete Winter suits, besides whisky, brandy and wine enough to keep the taro-banks, cannal-pockets, Congress and Governor Letcher supplied for nearly three months to come. These must be obtained without delay or regard to law or peril to life or limb. My neat and simple plan for effecting this with the required promptness, is to detail the provost-guard, city battalion, night watch, Col. Bronner's cavalry, and any other force that may be needed, to seize Jews, restaurant men and chattels, expose the same to sale -- not at Yankee auction, but at a ladies' fair, to be conducted exclusively by the poor women of the city, assisted by some honest hospital steward (if such can be found,) and in the meantime to lodge the said Jews, restaurant, confectionery, oyster, hotel and boarding-house men in the exceeding capacious and patriotic flour mills of the metropolis, which are now lying idle for lack of the wheat and confidence of our long-headed, good-memoried country gentlemen. If the several mills do not suffice to contain them all, plenty of room can be found in the various tobacco warehouses, which are to be emptied in pursuance of my plan, as will be shown further on. Having packed the Jews, foreign or native born, everyone in the mills and warehouses, it would be cruel to forget that they have been accustomed to active, industrious life, and to leave them a prey to idleness and their own villainous imaginations. I propose to be guilty of no such inhumanity, but to give them constant and laborious employment during the whole term of their incarceration. With this view I have consulted Adjt.-Gen. Richardson, and find that he has now in the Virginia Armory something above one thousand tons of old flints, which he has kindly placed at my disposal. These flints must be carefully skinned by the imprisoned Jews, and the hides thus obtained are to be sold to the Navy Department...”


1864: During the Civil War, Philadelphian Jacob Miller began serving with Company C of the 61stRegiment.


1871: An article published today compared the methods of Irish men and Jews who are engaged in the second-hand clothing business.  The Irish rely on a network of their fellow country men and women who work as servants in the homes of the wealthy.  “The Jewish old-clothes man” works in the street relying on his ability to trade and barter as opposed to using cash for the purchase of items.


1872(23rd of Tishrei, 5633): Simchat Torah


1875: William F.  Kintzing, the defense attorney for the three man charge with the murder of a Hebrew peddler in the woods at Westchester (NY) opposed the district attorney’s motion to transfer the case from the Court of General Sessions to the Oyer and Terminer, the court with criminal jurisdiction. Judge Sutherland ruled that since this was a capital case, the transfer was proper and he approved the motion. The three would eventually be convicted of the immigrant Jewish peddler who was supporting his children still living in Europe.


1875: The New York World, a newspaper that supports Democrats published an attack on Jacob Hess, a Republican and leader in the Jewish community


1877: It was reported today that New Yorker Abraham S. Isaacs, an editor of the Jewish Messenger, plans to publish a work on Hebrew literature.


1877: It was reported today that a volume written by Helen Zimmern on the life and works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing will be published in London this fall. Lessing was the close friend of Moses Mendelssohn and wrote “Nathan the Wise.”


1879: The Yuma Arizona Sentinel reported today that “Pinafore Company” bound for Tucson that included Pauline Markham had stopped in Yuma, AZ.


1879: It was reported today the Senate in Bucharest has passed a bill that would revise the Romanian Constitution to allow for the emancipation of the Jews by a large majority.


1881: Birthdate of Pablo Picasso who befriended the Italian-Jewish painter Amedeo Modigliani.  He posed for a portrait by Modigliani and tried to help him be a commercial success.  According to a 2004 film featuring the relationship between these two artistic giants. Picasso painted a portrait of Modigliani.  Picasso reportedly uttered Modigliani’s name on his death bed.


1881: Birthdate of Waterbury, CT, native Alfred William Pollak the graduate of Columbia who pursued a career as a physician and author.


1882: “Mordecai Lyons,” a new play by Edward Harrigan is scheduled to open at the Theatre Comique in New York City.  The three act plays includes scenes in a pawnbroker’s shop and a chop-house on Houston Street.


1882: In Vienna, along with Moses Schnirer, Ruben Bierer and Peretz Smolenskin, Nathan Birnbaum founded “Kadima” the Zionist student association whose future members would include Sigmund Freud, Isidor Schalit and Fritz Löhner-Beda.


1882: It was reported today that “Jew” Rosa was among the confederates of the “notorious counterfeiter” Van Rensselaer Abrams. (It has not been ascertained if Rosa’s appellation was indicative of his religious origins.)


1882: A review published today of “Mordecai Lyons” by Edward Harrigan decried it is a “another ‘Jew play’” which reminds us that “when the Jew is not honestly reproduced that he should not be reproduced at all.”


1883: “Celebrating A Fest Too Well” published today described a Simchat Torah celebration that a group of Polish Chassidim held in room above the crockery store owned by Bernard Levy.  When Levy heard furniture and windows breaking, he attempted to control the group.  But the abundance of liquor and beer prevented this and Levy was forced to call the police.


1884: The Young Men’s Hebrew Association will hold a Montefiore centenary celebration in Chickering Hall this evening starting at 8 o’clock.


1884: In New York City, Jess Seligman delivered the opening remarks at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association “Montefiore Centenary Celebration” which the Anglo-Jewish leader’s one hundredth birthday


1884: Baltimore’s Lloyd Street Synagogue was the scene of special ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore.


1885: “The Strength of Ideas” published today contends that “No race has ever been affected by its wars as the Jews have been affected by the single idea that it was their duty to remain a separate people.”


1886: The Financial News which had been founded by Harry Marks in 1884 began running a series of articles that exposed corruption in local government many of which were written by Marks himself.


1886: It was reported today that Tommy Grady, who is running against Tim Campbell for in the 8thCongressional District gave an hour-long address to the Tenth Ward Hebrew Citizens’ Association during which he tried “to impress his listeners that he was a friend of the” Jews.  (This “courting of the Jewish vote, is yet another example of what differentiated the Jewish American experience from life in Europe, Asia and/or Africa)


1887: Herman De Stern, a German born English grocer was buried today at the Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.


1889: It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman and Judge Richard O’Gorman addressed the meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association held at Chickering Hall.  The speeches were followed by a musical event featuring soprano Isabelle Rockwell and tenor Hugo Distlehurst.


1889:  In New York City, The American Hebrew reports that Dr. Abraham Neumark "...will hold regular discourses on the Talmud and lectures in German every Saturday afternoon." at Orach Chaim.


1890: Birthdate of Ernst Lothar Müller, the native of Brno which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who gained game as “writer, director and proudcer” Ernst Lothater, the brother of Hans Müller-Einigen, and husband of actress Adrienne Gessner with whom he went into exile following the Anschluss.


1891(23rd of Tishrei, 5652): Simchat Torah


1891: “Russia’s Grim Outlook” published today described the impact of the famine in the Czar’s domains where it is predicted there will be increasing violence aimed at the Jews


1891: Birthdate of Charles Coughlin.  He was an American Roman Catholic priest in Detroit and a vicious anti-Semite. In October, 1938 he began his weekly anti-Semitic broadcasts over national radio. The program was very popular, to say the least. He also formed the Christian Front in New York City which carried out anti-Semitic street meetings and boycotted Jewish businesses. Those who are critical of Roosevelt’s policies regarding European Jewry and the apparent passivity of American Jews in response to the menace Hitler posed to the Jews, would do well to read about American during the 1930’s when anti-Semitism was both public and acceptable.


1894: In New York, The Board of Estimate and Apportionment acted today on the provisional estimates for 1985 for charitable institutions which included $80,000 for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and $85,000 for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society of New York Orphan Asylum.


1894: In Newark, NJ, A mob of angry Polish and Russian Jewish unemployed hat-makers “surrounded the non-union hat factor of J.L. Kreidel threatening death to Kreidel and his nephew” if they did not join the union within the next 24 hours.


1894: In a move to attract Jewish support, the Woman’s Municipal Purity Auxiliary which is part of the anti-Tammany movement, is scheduled to hold its meeting this afternoon at the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway.


1895: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Emanuel “Manny” Victor Littauer who after leading Columbia’s football team to an undefeated season in 1915 gave up the game because of his parent’s fears and joined the school’s basketball team the following year.


1895: “In the Shtetl of Oratov” which is now part of Ukraine the former Dvora Krasnyanskaya and businessman “Joseph Shkolnik” gave birth to “Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik” who gained fame as Levi Eshkol. Everybody knows the names of the glamorous Israeli leaders – Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, etc.  But few know the name of Levi Eshkol.  This little known Israeli political leader succeeded Ben Gurion as Prime Minister of Israel in 1963.  He was a compromise candidate of whom little was expected.   Yet he was the Prime Minister in 1967 when Israel won its great victory over the Arab states and Jerusalem was re-united.  Born in Kiev, Eshkol moved to Palestine in 1914.  He served in the Jewish Legion during World War I was active in the Labor Zionist movement during the inter-war period.  His major accomplishment was the establishment of what would become Israel’s water authority.  In a parched land, this was work of major importance.  Eshkol joined the Haganah serving as a recruiter and later as the “chief supply officer” for it and its successor, the IDF.  As should be obvious, Eshkol’s biggest accomplishment was to serve successfully in a variety of unglamorous positions that were vital to the establishment and growth of Israel.  He died of heart attack in 1969.



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/levi-eshkol



http://theprimeministers.org/biography-levi-eshkol/



http://research.haifa.ac.il/~eshkol/



1896: Rabbi Beisnmar is scheduled to officiate at the funeral of Brooklyn dry goods merchant Joseph Wechsler followed by burial in Salem Fields, Cypress Hills Cemetery.



1896(25thof Cheshvan, 5657): Retired real estate broker Moses kind who “was a member of Stchelberg & Co (cigar makers) and who was a Director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Mount Sinai Hospital passed away today.



1896: The funeral for New York businessman Adolphus H. Maas who began his career in Savannah, GA before manufacturing chemicals in Newark, will be held today at 9:30 this morning.



1897: In Bradford, PA, founding of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association whose members included M.A. Nusbaum, A.D. Cohn, L.J. Kreinson and E. H. Werthman.



1898: The Order Knights of Zion, also called the Western Federation of Zionists, whose members included Max Shulman, Sam Ginsburg and George K. Rosenzweig with offices in Chicago was organized today.



1898: Private Samuel M. Cowen of Waterbury, Private Michael G. Greenberg of New Have and Private Arthur S. Loeb were among the members of the 1stRegiment of Connecticut Volunteer Artillery mustered out of federal service today.



1898: “The Federated Zionist Societies of the Middle West” was organized today in Chicago.



1903: In Debrecen, Hungary, Yosef Weissmandl, a shochet and his wife gave birth to Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, the rabbi and community leader “best known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination during the Shoah.”



1903: Today, “at the National Farm School, at Farm School, PA, a Zionist society called Farm School Brothers of Zion was organized” after which officers were elected including “Vice President M.J. Nowick and Secretary Charles Horn.



1905: In Manhattan, Samuel Fassler, the founder of Fassler Iron Works, “the son of Abba and Chaya Fassler” and his wife Rose Fassler gave birth Benjamin Fassler



1904: Birthdate of University Alabama “three sport star” Andrew “Andy” Howard Cohen the brother of Syd Cohen and “the New York Giant second baseman who, in 1928, inspired the poem "Cohen At the Bat."



1905: British Major-General Sir Charles Wilson passed away at Tunbridge Wells (UK).  Born in 1836, Wilson received his first commission in the Royal Engineers in 1855. In 1864, at the instigation of George Grove, Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts helped finance the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. Volunteers were called for from the Royal Engineers to carry out the work and Wilson who had just been promoted to the rank of Captain was selected. The aim of the work was to lay the basis for the improvement of the water supply of Jerusalem, which at the time was severely polluted. In addition to producing a topographical map of the city and its immediate environs, in 1865 the survey party carried out a series of levels from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, which established the relative levels of the two bodies for the first time.While Wilson was still in Palestine engaged on the Survey, the Palestine Exploration Fund was founded. On Wilson’s return to England, the PEF Committee engaged him to carry out a 'feasibility study' for proposed Survey of Western Palestine and to identify suitable sites for future exploration. In November 1865, Wilson and his party landed in Beirut and surveyed their way south to Palestine, planning the Great Mosque of Damascus along the way. From January to April 1866, Wilson carried out reconnaissance and survey work in Palestine, paying particular attention to the archaeology and ancient synagogues of the region. In the same year, Wilson was appointed to the Ordnance Survey of Scotland and, in 1867, acted as Assistant Commissioner on the Borough Boundary Commission. In this year, also, he became a member of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1868, he volunteered to take part in the Ordnance Survey of Sinai, along with Capt. H.S. Palmer. The report of their work contains Wilson’s chapters on the route of the Israelites and the prehistoric and Byzantine archaeology of the region. In recognition of Wilson’s work in Jerusalem, he was awarded the Diploma of the International Geographical Congress in 1871.Throughout his military career Wilson remained in touch with the Palestine Exploration Fund, serving as its Chairman during the period from 1901 to 1906. (As reported by the Palestine Exploration Fund)


1906: Major General Georges Picquart, who risked his career when he identified Ferdinand Esterhazy as the author of the bordereau that had been wrongly attributed to Dreyfus was named Minister of War.



1906: Birthdate of Reuven Borstein, the native of Taurage who made Aliyah in 1926, after which he gained fame as Reuven Barkat.



1906: Installation of Rabbi Jacob Meir as Hahambashi of Palestine.  Six months later In April he was deposed by the Sultan of Turkey, and Eliahu M. Panigel was put in the position instead to oversee the orthodox community. Jacob Meir went on to become Chief Rabbi of Salonica.



1912(14thof Cheshvan, 5673): Sixty-eight year old “merchant and realtor” Henry Korn passed away today in New York.



1909: “Jacob H. Schiff created a Trust Fund of $50,000 to establish Teachers’ Institute” at Hebrew Union College.



1910(22ndof Tishrei, 5671: Shemini Atzeret



1913: Birthdate of Avraham Yoffee, the native of Yavne’el who served as a general during the Six Day War and as a member of the Knesset.



1914: The first meeting of a special committee formed to alleviate the suffering of the Jews in war-torn Europe chaired by Jacob H. Schiff is scheduled to take place today at Temple Emanu-El.



1914: As part of the campaign to raise $100,000 to alleviate the suffering the Jews in Palestine Louis Brandeis, Chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, addressed the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall.



1915: “Honor Jewish Heroes” published today described a memorial service conducted by Rabbi Tinter at Mount Zion Temple which “eighty-four German Jewish veterans of European wars attended in their uniforms” that paid homage to those Jewish soldiers who have died during the last year in WW I.



1915: “No Houses Left In Sochaczew” published today described the destruction of the Russian city where “a few bearded, ringleted Jews clad in long black cassocks shuffle through the market place and a few Jewish women come to the big iron town pump for water” making it seem “as though the ancient people had one more taken up their dwelling on the ravished slopes of Jerusalem and were shouldering again the age-long burden of their people.”



1915: It was reported today that the sanctuary being built by “Sinai Temple in Stebbins Avenue near East 163rd Street in the Bronx” “will cost about $95,000” and should be ready for occupancy next summer.



1916: According to reports by New York Times correspondent Cyril Brown who is traveling with General Von Falkenhayn’s German forces in Romania, published today, the “large number of Romanian Jews among the prisoners” captured by the Germans indicates “that a considerable percentage of the Romanian Army was composed of persecuted Jews who do not enjoy equal rights of citizenship” and who, as one of the captives said ‘We have no vote but are compelled to fight.’”



1916: “The charges that Jews were being discriminated against when they sought enlistment in the New York National Guard were not sustained in a report” compiled “by General Louis F. Stonesbury, Adjutant General to Governor Whitman which was made public today” despite “the evidence that two Sergeants who had direct relation with the enlistment of recruits had admitted to a distinct bias against Jewish applicants…”



1917: Leon Trotsky told Julius Martov and other party members who had expressed their disgust at the way in which the Bolsheviks had seized political power, "You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!" To this Martov replied in a moment of rage, "Then we'll leave!", and then walked in silence away without looking back. He paused at the exit seeing a young Bolshevik worker wearing a black shirt with a broad leather belt, standing in the shadow of the portico. The young man turned on Martov with unconcealed bitterness: 'And we amongst ourselves had thought, Martov would at least remain with us.' Martov stopped and with a characteristic movement tossed up his head to emphasize his reply: 'One day you will understand the crime in which you are taking part.' Waving his hand wearily he left the hall.”



1917: On the Julian calendar a revolt St. Petersburg marks the start of the October Revolution which will topple the Provisional Government and bring the Bolsheviks to power.  This corresponds to November 7 on the Gregorian calendar but it explains why the “October Revolution” took place in November.



1918: Birthdate of actor Milton Selzer.



1918: In Brooklyn, Julius and Esther Leipzig gave birth of Isidore Leipzig who gained game as photographer Arthur Leipzig.



http://www.arthurleipzig.com/



1918: “The Polish Ministry for Religious Affairs” resolved “to open a modern rabbinical seminary at Warsaw to prepare rabbis” to serve in Poland.



1918: In Emsworth, Hampshire, Air Commodore P.J. Wiseman and his wife gave birth to archaeologist and biblical scholar Donald J. Wiseman who served as vice president of the British Academy under Sir Isaiah Berlin who among other things established the date of Nebuchadnezzar's first capture of Jerusalem as 15/16 March 597 BCE after extensively examining the Babylonian texts.



1918: The funeral of Julius M Guinzburg, of blessed memory, the brother of Edwin, Adolph, Fernando, Eleanor and Flora Buchbinder is scheduled to take place at the West End Synagogue in New York City.



1919: Winston Churchill “wrote a memorandum for the Cabinet proposing that the Ottoman Empire should not be divided among the victorious powers, but preserved intact, and placed under the authority of the League of Nations.  Such a plan would bring an end to the concept of a British Mandate in Palestine, and would have led to the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration pledge of a Jewish National Home.”



1921(23rdof Tishrei, 5682): Simchat Torah is celebrated for the first time during the Presidency of Warren Harding and for the second time under the strictures of the Volstead Act.



1922: In the Bronx, comedian “Milton Moss and the former Eva Goldstein” gave birth to “Milt Moss, a comic actor who delivered the rueful catchphrase “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing” in a memorable commercial for Alka-Seltzer in 1972.” (As reported by Daniel E. Slotnik)



https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/television/milt-moss-actor-alka-seltzer-commercial.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well



1923: In Vienna, Leo Sirota and Augustine Horenstein gave birth to Beate Sirota who gained fame as Beate Sirota Gorden, “who at 22 almost single-handedly wrote women’s rights into the Constitution of modern Japan” (As reported by Margalit Fox)



http://jwa.org/thisweek/oct/25/1923/birth-of-beate-sirota-gordon-who-wrote-equality-into-post-war-japanese



1924:The Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election. This document, which was a forgery, called for increased Communist agitation in Great Britain.  Zinoviev was Grigory Zinoviev, the son of Jewish dairy farmers, who was head of the Comintern.



1925: “The Guardsman, an Austrian silent comedy film directed and written by Robert Wiene and co-starring Maria Corda who rescued her husband Alexander Korda from the clutches of Miklos Horthy, the first of Europe’s fascist anti-Semitic dictators.



1925: In Sosnowiec, Poland, chocolate salesman Issachar Feiner and his wife Rivka Herzberg gave birth to Haim Feiner who gained fame as Israeli entertainer Haim Hefer.



1926:”The Student of Prague” “a 1926 Expressionist silent film by actor and filmmaker Henrik Galeen” was released in Germany today.



1927: “A house (called Brandsby Lodge and belonging to Sir Charles Wilson M. P.) with adjoining land, at the corner of Louis Street and Chapeltown Road, was purchased and at a meeting of the New Briggate synagogue building committee today  the decision to appoint local architect, J. Stanley Wright was adopted – the projected cost to be £23,000.



1928:  After having premiered in Denmark six months ago, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” a silent French movie filmed byRudolph Maté was released today in France



1929: Arthur Ruppin wrote in his diary describing the devastation the Arabs had wrought on the settlement of Hulda in Palestine. In 1930, Hulda was resettled as a Kibbutz by a group of young Zionist pioneers known as the Gordonia, followers of A.D. (Aaron David) Gordon.



1930: Birthdate of American Jewish author Harold Brodkey.



1930(3rd of Cheshvan, 5691): Seventy year old Russian-Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine passed away.



http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7016-haffkine-waldemar-mordecai-wolff



1930: Several thousand people gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the “British government’s new…policy on Palestine.”  The demonstration turned violent when the protestors marched passed the city’s main synagogue which was surrounded by a guard of mounted officers. Several of the people in the group who were identified as being Orthodox resorted to violence over what they considered was a desecration of the Sabbath by having the Jewish guards mounted on horses, a violation of halachah.  At the same time a picture of Lord Passfield was ripped to shreds by the mob.



1931: Birthdate of Queens native Miriam Levine, the daughter of “postal worker” and Hunter College graduate who gained fame as Miriam Bockman, the wife of Eugene J. Bockman , who was a powerful leader in the reform wing of the Democrat Party. (As reported by Sam Roberts)



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/obituaries/miriam-bockman-groundbreaking-manhattan-democrat-dies-at-86.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well



http://thevillager.com/2018/07/12/miriam-bockman-86-manhattan-county-leader/



1935: A Zionist Committee in Locarno signed a contract with a steamship company that would provide transportation to Palestine during 1936 for 80,000 Jews who will be settling in Tel Aviv.



1936: In London, Peter and Miriam Gilbert give birth to their son, Martin, the grandson of Eastern European immigrants who gained fame as Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.  As the author of over 80 volumes, he is one of the most prolific historians of our time.  As anybody who has read his works knows, he is also one of the most reliable authorities who turns works of history into works of literature. Yet as busy as he was, he always had time to answer questions from his readers in the most patient and understanding of manner.



1936: The Berlin-Rome Axis was formed. This was the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini that helped paved the way to World War II and the Holocaust.



1936: Birthdate of Rochester, NY native Michael Gedaliah Kammen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/us/michael-kammen-historian-of-us-psyche-dies-at-77.html



1936: “Palestine Editor Predicts An Accord” published today described the belief of Gershon Agronksy, the founder and editor of The Palestine Post of Jerusalem that “Arabs definitely hope for severe limitation of Jewish immigration and all it stands for” while “Jews hope that nothing will be done to restrict their settlement of country” and the British are looking “for a settlement which would make a repetition of the recent Arab outbreak impossible.”



1936: A review of Anti-Semitism, Historically and Critically Examined by Swedish professor A. G. Chater was published today.



http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E02EEDF153DE33BBC4D51DFB667838D629EDE



I936: In Philadelphia, B’nai B’rith sponsored a celebration commemorating the 300thanniversary of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, banishment from the colony of Massachusetts which was attended by 5,000 Protestants, Catholics and Jews before his statue in Fairmont Park.



1936: Rabbi Henry A. Schorr the leader of Temple Adath Israel and the Jewish chaplain at Bellevue Hospital paid tribute to his fellow Rotarian Reverend William H. Kephart, the pastor of the North New York Congregational Church who is observing the 40th anniversary of his ministry.



1936: “Jewish leaders of the United States and Canada meeting” in Chicago “ today as the Plan and Scope Committee for the 1936 National Campaign of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee were informed that $2,374,062, more than double the funds collected during 1935, has been raised so far.”



1936: At Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, “a successful penalty kick by Gauol Machlis…enabled the touring Maccabee soccer team from Tel Aviv to defeat the Illinois All Stars 1 to 0…”   in front of a crowd of 20,000 ran soaked fans.  The receipts from the game will be shared by various Chicago charities.



1936: It was reported today that “when King Edward opens the new session of Parliament on November 3,” his address from the throne which is really a statement of the government’s proposals will include the measures “the Baldwin government plans to take to ride the country of the nuisance caused by Sir Oswald Mosley’s Fascisits.



1937:Babes in Arms is a musical comedy with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart” which had opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre “transferred to the Majestic Theatre” today.



1938: Look magazine “printed a series of André Kertész’s photographs, entitled ‘A Fireman Goes to School’ but credited them erroneously to his former boss Ernie Prince” which so infuriated the Hungarian born photographer so much that “he considered never working with a photo magazine again.”



1939: In a letter dated today, “Harry A. Jung, honorary general manager of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation” complained to Representative Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Committee on un-American Activities” about the release of letters that connected his federation with “Nazi organizations.”



1939: Mayor La Guardiapraised the Youth Aliyah Fund which is providing financial support to send Jewish children to Palestine. At the same time, New York’s mayor warned the members that they must be vigilant in guarding the rights of all minorities.



1939: In Highland Park, Illinois, Mrs. Babette Mandel, the widow of Emanuel Mandel who was one of the founders of the Mandel Brothers store, will celebrate her 91stbirthday with her son Edwin, “her son-in-law Albert S. Lauer, two grandson, Albert E.M. Lauer and Frank Mandel and three great-grandchildren



1940(23rdof Tishrei, 5701): Simchat Torah



1940: “Seven Sinners” produced by Joe Pasternak, featuring Mischa Auer and filmed by cinematographer Rudolph Maté was released in the United States today.



1940: General Government (the Nazi government of Poland) ended the granting of any more visas to Polish Jews.



1940: As part of Operation Wagner-Bürckel it was decided to evacuate the Jews from Baden (between 6,500 and 7,500) as well as 895 Jews from Karlsruhe,to Gurs where they were locked up under French, not German, administration.



1941: In Melbourne, Stella Campbell and David “Max” Reddy gave birth to Australian-American singer and actress Helen Reddy.



1941(4th of Cheshvan, 5702): Romanian soldiers massacred 26,000 Jews in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union.  The Romanians were allies of the Germans and participated in their crimes.


1941: Jews at Tatarsk in Soviet Russia revolt against murderous peasants and SS killing squads. The rebellion is put down by regular German Army units, artillery, and air power. All Jews in Tatarsk are murdered.


1941:As of today according to an order issued by the Nazis, all Jews were to have relocated to the Moscow suburb of Riga. As a result, about 30,000 Jews were concentrated in the small area known as the Moscow Forshtat by the end of October 1941.


1941: Einsatzgruppen report to Berlin complains the local population of White Russia was not being helpful in the various actions. “Actions” was the expression for rounding up and murdering Jews.  Therefore the Germans themselves would have to step up efforts.



1941: In what is described as “The Birth of the Gas Chamber,” in Germany Dr. Viktor Brack rolled out the new plan for mass execution with "the installation of the necessary buildings and gas plants." Eichmann approved of this method. Such a procedure would assure a systematic method of extinguishing the Jews and reduce incidents of public killings.



1941: The movie of version of Poe’s  “The Tell-Tale Heart” direct by Jules Dassin, co-starring Joseph Schildkraut with music by Sol Kaplan was released today in the United States.



1942: Dutch resistance leader Jaap Nunes Vaz, founder of the underground paper Het Parool was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sobibor.



1942: In Oszmiana, Lithuania the Nazis demand that the community give up 400 of its 1000 Jews. The selection of the victims is assigned to the Jewish police in the nearby city of Vilna. Vilna Ghetto leader Jacob Gens decides to hand over Oszmiana's elderly Jews in order to save the others.


1942: Birthdate Los Angeles native Gloria Katz, the award winning screen writer of the 1973 hit “American Graffiti.”



1942: Male Jews in Norway are arrested and sent by sea to Szczecin, Poland, then by railcar to Auschwitz;



1943(26th of Tishrei, 5704): In Birkenau, 2,500 girls from Salonica, Greece, held in Block 25 were all gassed. They sang Hatikvah as they were marched to the death chambers.



1943: The Germans begin the liquidation of the corpse-burning squad at the labor camp in Janówska, Ukraine.


1943: SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons at the Reich Anatomical Institute at Strasbourg.


1944: Birthdate of Ronit Lentin, the Haifa born Associate Professor of Sociology at Dublin’s Trinity College whose works include Racism and anti-racism in Ireland and  Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence http://www.worldcat.org/title/israel-and-the-daughters-of-the-shoah-reoccupying-the-territories-of-silence/oclc/44720589?tab=details  and


1944: The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers' occupation. During the 1920, Joel Teitelbaum had served as a rabbi in Carei.  Teitelbaum would later be named Grand Rabbi and head of the Satmar.Liberation came too late for most of the Jews of Romania. Over 264,000 Jews perished in Nazi death camps during World War II. Most of the survivors fled postwar communism and emigrated to Israel or the United States. Only 14,000 Jews, most aged over 60, live in Romania today.


1945: Jews are attacked in Sosnowiec, Poland.  Yes, the war and the Holocaust ended in May of 1945.  But Polish anti-Semitism seems to have a life of its own.


1945: A Haifa military court sentenced 21 year old Joseph Morakh to five years in prison for possession of 23 hand grenades, 20 bombs and assorted other ammunition.



1945: Representative Andrew L. Somers, a Democrat from New York, challenged the British Ambassador to find out the “true facts” surrounding the sentencing of twenty “boys and girls” in Tel Aviv.  Members of the group, who range between the ages of 15 to 20, will be sentenced tomorrow to a total of 118 ages on weapons possession and other charges despite the fact that, according to the Congressman, “twenty six prosecution witnesses had failed to establish the connection between the children and the arms.”



1945: Lee Krasner married Jackson Pollack.  Krasner was Jewish – Pollack was not.



1946 Twenty-three former Nazi doctors are tried at Nuremberg on charges of conducting unethical experiments on camp inmates. The various experiments included the drinking of seawater, bone grafting, exposure to mustard gas, and other atrocities. This is the so-called "doctors' trial";



1947: The Irgun threatened to fight a “civil war” with Haganah following recent clashes between the two organizations. 



1947: The University of Michigan Wolverines led by Fullback and Linebacker Dan Dworsky defeated Minnesota today which was Homecoming in what was their fifth victory in what would become a perfect season.


1948(22ndof Tishrei, 5709): Shimini Atzeret



1948:  A new road to S’dom was opened during the Israeli War for Independence.  In November a military contingent made up of new immigrants would move through the Negev and break the six month long siege of S’dom.  Yes, this is the same place as mentioned in Genesis.


1949: “Everybody Does It” a comedy featuring George Tobias with “original music by Alfred Newman” was released today in the United States.


1953:The Temple of Truth (Congregation Beth Emeth) groundbreaking ceremony took place today


1953:”Salute to Israel” published today described plans to honor Professor Benjamin Mazar and President Harry S. Truman at a dinner to be held next month at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.


1955(9th of Cheshvan, 5716): Sixty-four year old Edward “Eddie” Jacobson, the Man from Missouri who helped convince that other Man from Missouri, Harry Truman, to support the creation of the state of Israel, passed away in Kansas City, Missouri.

1956: David O. Selznick” the scion of Jewish family from Pittsburgh contacted director John Huston at the Blue Haven Hotel in Tobago and enthusiastically welcomed him to the project – filming a re-make of Farewell to Arms with a script by Ben Hecht.


1956: In preparation for the Sinai Campaign, the Israeli government begins to mobilize its reserves and orders a battalion of paratroops to be ready to go into action within four days.


1959(23rd of Tishrei, 5720): Simchat Torah


1962: A month after opening in the United Kingdom, “The War Lover,” the film version of the novel by the same name with a screenplay by Howard Koch and featuring Al Waxman was released in the United States today.


1964: Call It Sleep, a critically acclaimed 1934 novel by Henry Roth that was commercially unsuccessful “received a second life when it was reviewed by literary critic Irving Howe on the front page of The New York Times Book Review” today leading to “its paperback edition, published by Avon, to sell over a million copies” and the novel being included on TIME magazine's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.”


1965(29th of Tishrei, 5726): Fifty-five year old Eduard Einstein, second son of Albert Einstein passed away at the age of 55.


1967(21st of Tishrei, 5728): Seventy-eight year old German born Austrian author and journalist who survived internment in Dachau and Buchenwald and resumed his career in the United States in 1939 passed away today.

1968: Birthdate of American sports announcer Josh Lewin.


1973: A second cease fire went into effect marking the end of the Yom Kippur War.


1973: The Soviet withdrew its threat to send troops to support the Egyptians.


1973:After the official end of the Yom Kippur War, General Israel Tal, serving as commander of the southern front, received an order from Chief of Staff General David Elazar and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to attack Egyptian forces. Tal refused to follow the order, insisting that it was an unethical order and requesting authorization for the requested attack from the prime minister and the Supreme Court. Such authorization never came. Tal won the argument, but his refusal to follow the illegal order as a practical matter eliminated the chances of his being nominated for the position of Chief of Staff to succeed General Elaza (As reported by Haaretz)


1973: “Ismail Azmy's decision to detonate a bridge over the Sweetwater Canal on October 20 in order to stall an Israeli attack, in violation of direct orders not to do so, led to him being relieved of his command” today.


1974:  An Arab summit at Rabat Morocco put an end to Jordanian involvement in the lands west of the Jordan River which it had seized in 1948 and held until 1967.  The Arab governments agreed that the PLO, fresh from the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, was designated as the “sole representative’ of the Palestinian people.  This ascendancy of extremism in the Arab world fueled Israeli support for the expansion of settlements on the West Bank and gave impetus to Right Wing politicians seeking to unseat the Labor Zionists.


1974: “Moshe Leshem, the Israeli ambassador to Denmark, protested to the Danish Foreign Ministry against Soviet distribution of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel pamphlets in Copenhagen.”


1975: Pravda printed ‘a long, scathing attack on Egypt” today designed “to coincide with President Sadat’s visit to the United States” where he was seeking to salvage a future out of the Yom Kippur defeat.


1976: Most of the protestors, including Vladimir Slepak, Anatoly Sharansky, Yuli Kosharovsky, Yosef Beilin and Felix Kandel who were on their way to protest at the Central Committee were arrested at or near their homes and charged with “hooliganism.”


1978: Israeli Cabinet approved "in principle," a draft compromise peace.  This was a necessary step on the road to peace between Israel and Egypt.


1978: “Comes a Horseman” a dark western directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring James Caan was released in the United States today.



1979: Mayor Ed Koch announced today that “caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and humorist S. J. Perelman” who had passed away on October 18 “are among the recipients of the Mayor’s Awards for Arts and Culture.



1980: Barbra Streisand's "Guilty," album goes #1 for 3 weeks and her single "Woman In Love," goes #1 for 3 weeks.



1984: An off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures” opened today at the Promenade Theatre.



1984: Ellen Bottomley Fiedler, the widow of Arthur Fiedler who she had had “three children – Johanna, Deborah and Peter—“ passed away today.



1986(22nd of Tishrei, 5747): Shemini Atzeret



1990: The XIV Dalai Lama and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi met during the historic Jewish-Buddhist dialogue in Dharamsala, India.



1991: Seymour Hersh was sued for libel today for material in The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.



1991(17thof Cheshvan, 5752): Alfred Morris, the son of Polish Immigrants whose career in hairstyling began at the age of 20 led him to open “the Morris School of Hairdressing, followed by the Morris School of Beauty Culture in Portman Square which became the diploma awarding London Institute of Hairdressing.”



1992: After 245 performances Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women was performed for the last time at the Neil Simon Theatre.



1992: Latvia adopts its first constitution in the post-Soviet period. There are approximately 11,000 Jews living among 2.5 million Latvians.  Jews have lived in Latvia since the 17thcentury.  There were approximately 90,000 Jews living in the Baltic republic at the outbreak of WW II.  There were approximately 320 left on Latvian soil at the end of the war.  The President of Latvia has publicly apologized for the role Latvians played in the decimation of the Jewish populace.



1995: In Washington, Prime Minister Rabin countered Arab slogans by declaring, “There are not ‘two Jerusalems.’  There is only one Jerusalem.  For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem.  Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours and will be ours – forever.”



1996: The first community bar mitzvah is held in Beijing for Ari Lee, the son of community founders Elyse Silverberg and Michael Lee.



1996: “When We Were Kings” an Academy Award winning boxing documentary featuring Norman Mailer was released in the United States today.



1997: Greville Janner “was created a life peer as Baron Janner of Braunstone, of Leicester in the County of Leicestershire” today.



1997: In a letter sent today Holocaust denier David “Irving threatened to sue John Lukacs for libel if he published his book, The Hitler of History without removing certain passages highly critical of Irving’s work.”



1998:The New York Times included reviews of two books by Jewish authors: Too Good To Be Forgotten: Changing America in the '60s and '70sby David Obst and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David Remnick.



2000: Today, in Vienna, “the second building of the Jewish Museum was opened in Judenplatz with the unveiling of the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial to the Austrian Jews who perished in the Holocaust.”



2001(8thof Cheshvan, 5762): Seventy-five year old Harry Gerard Bissinger II, the husband of Eleanor Lebenthal Bissinger and brother of Eli Kaufman passed away today.



2002(19th of Cheshvan, 5763): Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota along with his wife, daughter and five others, just 11 days before Election Day. The anniversary of Wellstone’s death should serve to remind us that by the end of the 20th century Jewish political leaders were no longer confined to major metropolitan areas with significant Jewish populations.  In Minnesota, the heart of the American heartland, there were actually Jewish senators who came from both the Republican and the Democratic Party.  This achievement is all the more remarkable when one remembers that a United States Senator could use the word “Kike” in a speech on the Senate Floor in the 1940’s and get away with it.



2002: “Roger Dodger” a comedy co-starring Jesse Eisenberg and featuring Ben Shenkman was release in the United States by Artisan Entertainment.



2002:In “Jews rank high among winners of Nobel, but why not Israelis?” published today, Shule Kopf examines reasons for Jewish over-representation among Nobel Laureates and the future of Jewish intellectualism.
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/18676/jews-rank-high-among-winners-of-nobel-but-why-not-israelis/



2003(29th of Tishrei, 5764): Parashat Bereshit – the Torah cycle begins again


2003: Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general's office on charges of fraud.


2004: Former ALP minister Barry Cohen describes his belief that the Australian Labor Party is becoming anti-Semitic in article appearing in The Age. Barry Cohen was arts minister in the Hawke government. The article is quoted in attempt to give American Jews a sense of the Jewish community “down under.”


It's a sepia-toned family portrait taken in the late 1930s of Mendel and Mindel Kozerwoder and their children Itzek, Charna, Malka, Mania, Yidel, Moishe and baby Faigele. There's nothing unusual about it but it is very precious to me, for they are all members of my family who, with one exception, perished in the crematoriums of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Clasped in the hands of my great-uncle is a photograph of my grandparents, Moishe and Zelda Kozerwoder. Itzek, the only survivor, gave me the photograph after I returned from a visit to Poland, during which I went to the villages of Pajcczno and Dzialoszyn, from which my grandparents departed in the late 1890s. Their travels took them to England, South Africa (where my father was born) and finally to Australia, just after the outbreak of World War I. The photo is the only image I have of the many members of my family who were murdered by the Nazis. When I look at it, my emotions range from gut-wrenching pain to seething rage. It has ensured that I belong to that school of Jewish resolve whose motto is "never again”. There is nothing special about what happened to me and my family. Many Jewish families suffered the same fate. I became aware of the Holocaust in 1944 as the Allied armies swept across Europe and liberated the death camps. I was only nine years old but I can still recall the pain I felt as I watched the newsreels of the emaciated survivors and the mountains of corpses. oon afterwards I was sent to boarding school to prepare for my bar mitzvah. There was a noticeable shortage of synagogues in the country town of Griffith, NSW, where I was born and where my father was the local dentist.My introduction to anti-Semitism commenced on my first day at school. The school sergeant refereed three fights between myself and classmates who called me "a dirty f---ing Jew". I was lucky. Bloody noses and black eyes were nothing compared to what happened to those members of my family who did not have the prescience to depart Europe as my grandparents had done. t didn't, however, make it easier to ignore the taunts and the occasional vicious remark that came at the most unexpected moments and from the most unexpected quarters. Like most Jews in a predominantly Christian society, I developed a defense mechanism to cope. Humor was one weapon. Knowing the history and roots of anti-Semitism was another. So, too, was the pride in seeing the survivors of the Holocaust recreating a Jewish nation for the first time in 2000 years. he survivors of the camps, a million Jews expelled from Arab countries and idealists from all over the Diaspora overcame the combined Arab military forces to ensure that not only did Jews have a haven, but one that was free and democratic. Israel has remained that way, in stark contrast to its Arab neighbors. ustralia is probably the least anti-Semitic country in the world, but what happened to my family made a deep impression on me. I became obsessive about discrimination; be it fighting for civil rights in the US, or against apartheid or the appalling treatment of our indigenous people was, however, an armchair critic mouthing off endlessly about what the government should do. Then a friend hit a sensitive nerve. "What are you doing about it?" he asked. It wasn't difficult to decide. I knew the enemy was on the political right: Nazis, fascists, conservatives, whether from the extreme right that led to the Holocaust or the social exclusion practiced by the genteel middle class. In 1964 I joined the ALP. Not that the Labor Party of the early 1960s was a beacon of light, for there were many ALP members still steeped in the White Australia philosophy and indifferent to the suffering of Aborigines. But those who spoke up about such injustices were almost all from the ALP. By the time I arrived in Canberra in 1969 as the MP for Robertson I felt at home in the company of those led by Gough Whitlam, who forced the Labor Party to change. However, I can still recall the wry amusement my opposition to apartheid caused colleagues. I was accused of being obsessive on the question of racism and to that charge I plead guilty. I became deeply involved in the fight for Aboriginal rights and to this day one of the proudest moments of my life was to be one of a small group of "yesterday's heroes, looking frail and aged", who were brought on stage at the Reconciliation Conference in Melbourne in 1997 to be honored for our work in the 1967 referendum. I have often been asked if my being Jewish was ever an issue during my 20 years in Federal Parliament. Not to the best of my knowledge. I cannot recall a single anti-Semitic remark from either side of the House. That did not mean that everyone agreed with my views on Israel. Nor did I expect them to. However, while my views remain the same, the Labor Party's these days are very different. The Labor Party has always had Palestinian supporters but they used to have little influence on the party's policy. They were more than counter-balanced by the influence of then ACTU president Bob Hawke. In the immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur War and before my first visit to Israel I attended a meeting he addressed in Sydney. I have not heard a more passionate, nor better informed, defense of Israel or more scathing indictment of its opponents. Convinced that MPs could understand Israel's problems better if they went there, I organized a series of delegations. By the time I retired in 1990 more than half the ALP caucus had visited Israel. But gradually, Labor's Left and more extremist elements, such as the Greens and Democrats, became increasingly shrill in their denunciation of Israel. I found out what Israel was up against when representing Australia at Inter-Parliamentary Union conferences from 1973 until 1981. Created to foster peace and democracy, the union was dominated by communist dictatorships, Third World "democracies" and the 22 Arab countries. Every IPU conference devoted a major part of its sessions to denouncing Israel. It was a mirror image of the UN, whose obsession with Israel was aptly illustrated by Israeli ambassador Abba Eban when he said: "If a resolution was put before the UN that the earth was flat and that Israel caused it, 145 would vote for it, five against with 45 abstentions." That trend has infected the ALP. The handful of pro-Palestinian supporters has grown steadily as the party has become dominated by the education mafia; former public servants and party union apparatchiks. Plenty will say: "Why shouldn't the Labor Party support the Palestinians?" No reason, providing the case they put is not based on the lies spouted by the Palestinian propaganda machine. Nowhere is Israel subjected to more criticism than in Israel. Demonstrations in excess of 100,000 are regularly held in Rabin Square. Supporters of the Peace Now movement have protested in support of Palestinians. In contrast, when Jews have been massacred by terrorists there have been wild celebrations in the Arab streets. How can any social democrat ignore such barbarism? There are Labor MPs who are vigorous supporters of Israel but their numbers are diminishing and they are being drowned out by the more vociferous members of Labor's hard Left. When Australian Jews respond to the grotesque exaggeration about Israel, we are accused of being part of the "Jewish lobby". Israel's opponents in Australia now include those who support the Palestinians not for ideological reasons but because of the increased number of Arab voters in their electorates. This trend reached a crescendo in the aftermath of September 11. For me September 11 was the clearest demarcation ever between good and evil. Yet many Australians could not contain their glee that at last "the Yanks had got their just deserts". I have never been able to fathom the vicious anti-Americanism that permeates so much of Western society. Despite all their faults, Americans have been the one constant bastion against totalitarianism of the right and left. Does anyone doubt that fascism and communism would have been defeated without the US? From the left's point of view, the triumph over communism has been America's greatest crime. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the revelation that matters were far worse than even the Americans had claimed, forced the left to face up to the fact that for decades their defense of tyrants such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro et al was inexcusable. There were no apologies, however. Being on the left means never having to say you're sorry or admit you're wrong. This goes a long way to explaining their attacks on George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, while ignoring the monstrous crimes of the Assads, Saddams, Gaddafis and other Arab despots. The war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have given the left a new lease on life. But this time it has a new twist, a distinctly anti-Semitic one. It surfaced immediately after September 11 and was summed up in comments by Sydney Morning Herald columnist Alan Ramsey, who suggested that the cause of September 11 was America's Middle East policies and their failure to rein in the Israelis. This has been repeated ad nauseam by one left/liberal commentator after another. Israeli scientist Haim Harari nailed this nonsense in a speech earlier this year: "The millions who died in the Iraq-Iran war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Muslim regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam did not invade Kuwait, endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel . . . The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. I could go on and on." Anyone who believes that "reining in the Israelis" will bring peace and prosperity to the Middle East should change their medication. The ranting and raving, common among the extreme right, has been taken up with gusto by the left. When it started to infect the social democratic wing of the Labor Party I became extremely worried. There will be those in the ALP who will say "our policies support Israel's right to exist, so what are you complaining about?" That's not good enough. Not for me. I'm sick of the calumny heaped on Israel - most of which is a pack of lies. I'm sick of Labor leaders making all the right noises to Jewish audiences while an increasing number of backbenchers launch diatribes at Israel. When the likes of Labor MP Tanya Plibersek rise in the House of Representatives and call Ariel Sharon "a war criminal" and Israel a "rogue state", or Opposition whip Janice Crosio makes the absurd claim that Israeli forces had destroyed Bethlehem, Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, I want to hear more than stony silence from those in the Labor Party who say they support Israel. Some do. Most don't. How long is it since any Labor leader gave the sort of passionate and accurate defence of Israel we used to hear from Hawke or Kim Beazley? I don't want even-handedness when it ought to be obvious to all but the blind that there is no moral equivalence between a country that seeks to defend its citizens from thousands of terrorist attacks, and the terrorists themselves. I want to hear Labor MPs stand up and be counted. I want to see an end to well-known Labor identities marching behind banners equating Israel with Nazism. Silence on these issues isn't good enough for me. If people want to criticize Israel, fine - plenty of Israelis do. But let it be reasoned criticism, and if they want even-handedness let them also berate the Arab world for its denial of basic human rights for any of its citizens. Let's hear the Labor feminists take the Arab nations to task for their abominable treatment of women. Let's hear those Labor supporters, who are so loud in their denunciation of homophobia, demand an end to the barbaric treatment of gays. Let's also hear civil rights activists bemoan the lack of basic freedoms available to most of the 300 million Arabs in the 22 Arab countries. There will be some who will argue that I am exaggerating; that the evidence is sparse; that this typical Jewish paranoia. Not at all. It came from the horses' mouths, and the head horses at that. Before the Iraq war one of the most senior NSW right-wing MPs told me: "I understand and support Israel's position, but in my group, I'm the only one."Soon after I told a Labor legend: "Anti-Semitism is now rampant in the Labor Party." I expected a vigorous denial. His response confirmed my worst fear: "I know," he said. For better or worse my character and life were shaped by the anti-Semitism I experienced as a boy and a young man. I was proud to belong to a party that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer. The Australian Labor Party can choose any path it likes. So can I.



2004(10thof Cheshvan, 5765): Eighty-six year old Newark, NJ native “Bernard Morris “Bernie” Weiner, the Kansas State University offensive lineman who played two years of professional football with the Brooklyn Dodgers passed away today.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WeinBe20.htm



2005 (22 Tishrei, 5766): Shemini Atzeret.



2005: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish interest including "Team of Rivals," Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “look at Lincoln through his relationships with his former political rivals turned cabinet members…”



2006: Andy “Bachman, a graduate of University of Wisconsin–Madison with a 1996 rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College, became Beth Elohim's first new senior rabbi in 25 years” today.



2006 (3 Cheshvan 5767):Fifty four year old Robert Rosenberg, author, poet, Internet pioneer and journalist, died of cancer in Tel Aviv.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/journalist-robert-rosenberg-dies-at-54-1.203476
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2006/10/25/robert-rosenberg-israeli-internet-pioneer-journalist-and-social-activist-dies-at-54/



2006: One day before her 70th birthday Deborah Poritz, the first female Chief Just of the New Jersey Supreme Court, resigned her postion.



2007: In New York the Center for Jewish History sponsors a showing of a Russian language film directed by Paul Loungin entitled “Roots”This farcical comedy follows the exploits of a Jewish con-artist who turns a small town in provincial Ukraine into a fake site of heritage tourism for unsuspecting Americans.” Olga Gershenson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, leads a discussion of the film after the showing.



2007: New York’s Erez Safar celebrates the launch of his new website called Shemspeed (www.shemspeed.com) with parties at Hamaabada in Jerusalem and the Knitting Factory in New York.



2007: French President Nicolas Sarkozy honored Avner Shalev director of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial with a Legion of Honor award.



2007(13thof Cheshvan, 5768): Ninety-six year cellist Harvey Shapiro passed away today.
http://www.juilliard.edu/journal/remembering-master-cellist-and-teacher-harvey-shapiro
http://www.jameskreger.com/article5.htm



2008: The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company presents a production “Chaim’s Love Song” by Martin Chernoff at the Hillcrest Center in Saint Paul, MN.



2008(26thof Tishrei, 5769): Ninety-four year old Estelle Reiner the mother comedic talent Carl Reiner and the mother of Rob Reiner passed away today.(As reported by Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/movies/30reiner.html



2009:In Cedar Rapids, Iowa the Hadassah Donor Dinner features Temple Judah’s own Murray Wolfe, an award-winning playwright, who will read from his just completed one-man autobiographical play, “My Name is Moses Volvovic.” Murray’s many interests and accomplishments mark him as the epitome of the term Renaissance Man. Of course Murray is fortunate to enjoy the support of his wife Charlene a culinary virtuoso and an Ashish Chayil in the truest sense of the term.



2009: A revival of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” opened at the Nederlander Theatre.



2009(7thof Cheshvan, 5770): Ninety-three year old landscape architect Lawrence Halprin passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/arts/design/28halprin.html



2009: Having missed the first ten games of the season, Mathieu Schneider “made his Canucks debut today in a 2-0 win against the Edmonton Oilers.



2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb and the recently released paperback edition of The Journey by H. G. Adler; translated by Peter Filkins



2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary by Bertrand M. Patenaude



2009: At The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival Deborah Bodin Cohen reads from her new children's picture book, "Nachshon, Who Was Afraid to Swim: A Passover Story" (illustrated by Jago),



2010:The Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation is scheduled to hosts its Hall of Fame Induction Dinner Gala in Southfield, Michigan, where they will honor the MJSF Hall of Fame Class of 2010, including George Cantor (of blessed memory), Richard "Hap" Foreman, Richard Goldberg, and Larry H. Sherman. The honors will continue with the Jewish News Athletes of the Year and Bill Hertz Scholarship winners, Alvin Foon Humanitarian and Book of Life awards.



2010: Capitalism and the Jews by Jerry Z. Muller is scheduled to be the featured volume at tonight’s sessions of The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival.



2010: The New York Times featured a review of Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart who said, “These days, you can call me a Russian writer, American writer, Jewish writer, lefty writer. I don’t care. Anything is good, as long as it’s part of the big soup of literature.”



2010:Ehud Netzer “an Israeli architect, educator and archaeologist,” who was leaning against a railing at the dig at Herodium was seriously injured when the railing collapsed.


2010:Thirty-nine year old Joshua Frydenberg, a graduate of Bialik College in Melbourne who is Australia’s first Jewish lawmaker for the federal Liberal Party paid homage in his maiden speech to all of his family members who perished during the Holocaust and one who survived – his great-aunt Mary Frydenberg.. (As reported by JTA)


2010: A report in the French daily Le Figaro late today revealed new information on the military wing of Hezbollah’s structural make-up, with details on the guerrilla group's 10,000 operatives and arsenal of some 40,000 rockets. The report also focused on Syria's role in Hezbollah operations, in both manufacture and transportation of rockets. According to the Le Figaro report, which quoted anonymous officials in the French Defense Ministry and Western intelligence sources, Hezbollah has three units dedicated to the transportation and maintenance of its rocket arsenal. Hezbollah’s Unit 100 reportedly deals with deployment and training, and making sure the missiles reach their final destinations, in various camps located within 150km from Israel's northern border. As has been widely reported, Le Figaro noted that Iranian officers are responsible for training Hezbollah guerrilla fighters.

2011: Theo Epstein was introduced today as the head of baseball operations for  the Chicago Cubs.  Under Epstein’s leadership, the Boston Red Sox finally won a World Series for the first time since 1918. The Cubs hope that the Jewish baseball executive will end their draught which dates back to 1908. This is a miracle that even Moses might not be able to pull off.


2011: The Intimate Grammar, a cinematic adaptation of David Grossman's book of the same name, is scheduled to be shown at The Hyman S & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival in Washington, D.C.


2011: “Ben-Gurion: A Political Life” by Shimon Peres with David Landau is scheduled to go on sale in the United States.



2011: A day-long Symposium, “Jews in Britain: Medieval to Modern” is scheduled to take place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.



2011: The friends, family and fans of Sir Martin Gilbert celebrate the 75thbirthday of this remarkable man. His career is a tribute to his drive, intellect and artistic skills.  The grandson of Eastern European immigrants, he became the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.  He has found time to write over 80 volumes that are rock solid history written with the flair of a novelist while teaching and serving the public as a member of the Commission of Inquiry on the Iraq War.  At the same time, he has not comprised his personal values describing himself “as a proud practicing Jew and a Zionist.”



2011:Today, Israeli police forces raided three buildings in Jerusalem allegedly being used by Palestinian militants for illegal activities.



2011:Today, Turkey finally accepted Israel's earthquake aid, two days after a devastating temblor hit eastern Turkey, and following a number of rebuffed Israeli government offers of assistance. According to a Foreign Ministry spokesman, the Turks made a request through Israel's embassy in Ankara for Israel to send mobile homes to the devastated Van province where the earthquake hit.



2012: The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall. This “one-night performance” will be under the baton of Zubin Mehta and will be followed by a “black –tie benefit supper at The Plaza.” (The IPO has come a long way since Leonard Bernstein conducted them in Tel Aviv as the artillery boomed during the War for Independence in 1948



2012: Over 100,000 worshippers are expected visit Rachel’ Tomb to mark the anniversary of her death. (The actual anniversary falls on Shabbat this year so the observance has been move to Thursday to avoid desecrating the Sabbath)



2012:Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to sponsor a lecture Dr. Jack Minker, “Saving Soviet Scientists during which he will discuss his new book , will discuss his new book, Scientific Freedom and Human Rights: Scientists of Conscience during the Cold War.



2012: As we celebrate the 76th birthday of Sir Martin Gilbert, his family, friends and multitude of admirers pray for his a refuah shlemah while standing in awe of the support being given to him by his loving wife during these trying times


2012: Despite a Gazan mortar shell exploding in an open field near the Eshkol Regional Council Area this morning, a tense quiet prevailed in the South as an informal cease-fire brokered by Egypt appeared to be holding. The cease-fire followed two days of intense violence which saw some eighty rockets and mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev.


2012: An earthquake and tsunami could cost Israel NIS 100 billion to NIS 150b., Home Front Defense Minister Avi Dichter said today. Speaking at a meeting of economic officials convened as part of a five-day earthquake preparedness drill, Dichter said he was referring to a possible scenario in which thousands of Israeli would be killed.


2012: The NBA announced today that David Stern will be retiring as league commissioner in 2013.  Adam Silver will be replacing him in the top job.


2012:The Tragedy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi” published today.

2012:Britain favoured execution over Nuremberg trials for Nazi leaders

2012: Nicolas Rapold reviewed “Orchestra of Exiles” which “retraces the world-renowned violinist Bronislaw Huberman’s heroic feat of organizing an orchestra far from the genocidal scourge of the Nazis”


2013: “One Chance” an English biopic directed by David Frankel and produced by Simon Cowell which had first been seen at the Toronto International Film Festival was released in the UK today by The Weinstein Company headed by Bob and Harvey Weinstein.


2013: Guest artists Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor are scheduled to perform at Rutgers University


2013: At Rutgers University, Dr. Jeff Friedman is scheduled to facilitate a discussion “on reconstructing historical dance works with differently gendered casting.”


2013: The Edin-Tamar is scheduled to host “Excellence-The Future Generation” which will also be broadcast on Kol Israel.


2013: The Jewish National Fund Conference is scheduled to begin in Denver, CO.


2013:A supposed makeshift grenade was thrown at an Israeli bus transporting students to schools this morning


2013: The Republican Jewish Coalition called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-SD) to advance a new sanctions bill against Iran through the Senate toward final approval. The coalition could not appeal to any Republican Jewish senators since there are none.  (The House has one Jewish Republican member)


2013(21st of Cheshvan, 5774): Eighty-three year old Viennese native Paul Reichmann, the Canadian real estate mogul who made and lost a fortune passed away today. (As reported by Jonathan Kandell)



 


2014: In Fairfax, VA, Major General Jeff Jacobs is scheduled to be the speaker at Congregation Olam Tikvah’s fifth annual Military Shabbat.


2014: In conjunction with the Chief Rabbi’s Shabbat UK, the Central Synagogue in London is scheduled to host a special Shabbat service followed by “Just One Shabbos Communal Lunch”



2014: The JCC of Northern Virginia is scheduled to host “Fall Comedy,” an “evening of comedic storytelling with Annabelle Gurwitch, a Jewish mother, a passionate environmentalist and a reluctant atheist.”


2014: “Zero Motivation,”a “comedic portrait of everyday life for a unit of young, female Israeli Soldiers” is scheduled to be shown at the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival.


2014: Jerusalem’s Japanese Cultural Festival is scheduled to come to an end today.


2014: The Coe College Concert Band & Jazz Band under the direction of William S. Carson is scheduled to perform tonight in Cedar Rapids. 


2014: “Finance Minister Yair Lapid admitted today that Israel was experiencing a low point in its relationship with the US, saying “there is a crisis with the Americans and it must be dealt with like a crisis.”  (As reported by Itamar Sharon)


2014: Regardless of your interest, celebrate the birthday of Sir Martin Gilbert’s birthday by reading any one of his marvelous books including Churchill and the Jews, In Ishmael’s House and the classic Israel: A History


2014(1st of Cheshvan, 5775): Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan – Noah


2014: When James Levine lifts his baton and gives the downbeat to begin Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” tonight at the Metropolitan Opera, it will be his 2,500th performance with the company — a conducting record unmatched, and never even approached, in the history of the Met. (As reported by Michael Cooper)



2015:Steven Nadler the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin- Madison whose books include Spinoza: A Lifewhich won the Koret Jewish Book Award is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated?” at Agudas Achim Congregation in Coralville, IA.


2015:The America-Israel Cultural Foundation is scheduled to honor the best of Israeli culture at its 76th Anniversary Celebration!


2015: “The grand mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, the Muslim cleric in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque said in an Arabic interview with Israel’s Channel 2 “that there has never been a Jewish temple atop the Temple Mount and that the site has been home to a mosque since the creation of the world.” (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)


2015(12th of Cheshvan, 5776): Fifty-eight year old historian David Cesarani passed away today. (As reported by Margalit Fox)



2015: In Jerusalem, the JDC Archives is scheduled to host “Matzo Wars: Jews, Communism and Ethnicity in 1946 Hungary.”


2015: Dr. Melvin Urofsky, the author of Louis D. Brandeis: A Life was the featured speaker at luncheon sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society “celebrating the Centennial of the appointment of the first Jewish Justice to the Supreme Court.”


2015: Rainstorms and thunderstorms struck most parts of Israel forcing the closure of Sde Dov Airport in Tel Aviv and resulting in at least one fatality when when a wall collapsed at construction site in Padres Hanna killing a 20 year old worker


2015: “The Jewish Thought of Emil L. Fackenheim: Judaism, Zionism, Holocaust, Israel” is the topic for Beth Tikvah Conference scheduled to take place today in Toronto, Canada.


2015: The Center for Jewish History in partnership with the International Center of Photography; co-sponsored by American Jewish Historical Society, Leo Baeck Institute, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research are scheduled to host a symposium on the life and work of photographer Roman Visniac.


2015(12th of Cheshvan, 5776): Seventy-one year old British historian Lisa Anne Jardine passed away today.



2015: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry by Paul Goldberger, Doom To Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship From Truman to Obama by Dennis Ross, America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein and The Courage To Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath by Ben S. Bernake


2016(23rd of Tishrei, 5777): Simchat Torah


2016: Nimer Basssem Abu Amar, a 15 year old from Lakiya, a predominately Bedouin village in southern Israel, was shot and killed near Mount Harif while working on the border fence with Egypt.


2016: It was announced today that Shawn Levy would be the director “Uncharted” a movie version the game that is a project of Avi Arad.


2016: A meeting held today in the House of Lord “at which a member of the audience won applause for claiming that Jews were to blame for the Holocaust” marked the start of a campaign by Baroness Jenny Tonge who demanded “that the UK government apologize for the Balfour Declaration


2016: Eightieth anniversary of the birth historian Sir Martin Gilbert Z"L whose memory is cherished by so many, but none so much as Lady Esther Gilbert.



2016: As the stars come out marking the end of Simchat Torah, The World Series which was a creation of Barney Dreyfuss and will provide an opportunity for Theo Epstein to break a second “jinx” and World Series drought is scheduled to start in Cleveland.


2017: The Leo Baeck Institute is scheduled to host Jack Jacobs (CUNY), Jonathon Catlin (Princeton), and Liliane Weissberg (Penn) discussing how the Frankfurt School’s analysis of antisemitism illuminates contemporary racism as part of the series on “German-Jewish History in the Now: The Contemporary Relevance of German-Jewish History.”


2017: Yeshiva University Museum and the American Sephardi Federation are scheduled to host a lecture by Daniel Leisawitz, Muhlenberg College in which he will seek to answer the question “What language did the Jews of Rome speak before Judeo-Roman?”


2017: In Des Moines, IA, Gail Richards is scheduled to receive the first Woman of Honor Award from the Jewish Federation.


2017: The Sydney Jewish Museum is scheduled to host “Music in the Camps” during which Andy Bromberger will examine the role of music in the Nazi Concentration Camps where for example “Yiddish songs were sung in Eastern European camps, classical and Jewish music was performed at Theresienstadt and specific orchestras, like the ‘Girls Orchestra’ in Auschwitz and the Jazz Big Band in Buchenwald were established.”


2017: The Oxford University Jewish Society is scheduled to host Rabbi Daniel Lichman lecturing on “What, or Who is Torah in Progressive Judaism?” where he “the impact that late twentieth-century critiques of enlightenment thinking might have on the Progressive Jewish approach to Torah.”


2017: In New Orleans Chabad and Hadassah are scheduled to join forces for the Mega Women’s Challah Bake 200.


2017: At the Bard Graduate Center, Andrea M Berlin is scheduled to present “Material Culture and Rabbinic Isolation: A Cultural Ecology Perspective” which is part of the Leon Levy Foundation Lectures.


2018: In London, JW3 is scheduled to host the last two screenings of “The Wife.”


2018: Shalom Hanoch is scheduled to perform at the Sherover Theatre on the second day of the Jerusalem Theatre Piano Festival.


2018: Eva Schloss, the “stepsister of Anne Frank” is scheduled to speak tonight “at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts” this evening.


2018: The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is scheduled to host “Winston Churchill and the Jews” in “Ambassador Ido Aharoni” and “Edwina Sandys, Churchill’s 79-year old granddaughter” will discuss the relationship of the Prime Minister with the Jewish people.


2018: Coe College is scheduled to host the final session of “Tragedy and Heroism: Three Historical Novels of Leon Uris” presented by Steve Feller, B.D. Silliman Professor of Physics.


2018: In Des Moines, IA, Beaverdale Books is scheduled to host a book signing for Barbara Feller, the Hebrew teacher par excellence, author of the newly released Road to Waubeek: Discovering Jay G. Sigmund


2018: The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “the Immigration Crisis: How We Can Make A Difference” this evening


2018: 82nd anniversary of the birth of historian Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill and a patient correspondent who wrote over 80 books, but left us with “one more still to go.” (Editor’s note – best way to celebrate his birthday is treat yourself to reading one of his volumes)



 


 


 


 


 


 

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