January 3
106 BCE: Birthdate of Marcus Tullius, the Roman statesman and orator. From the Jewish point of view he was just one more anti-Semitic intellectual. “He denounced Judaism as a ‘barbarous superstition.’” He defended a Roman official who had stolen contributions that we supposed to be shipped to the Temple at Jerusalem. He decried the influence of Jews in Rome cautioning one group to speak quietly lest they be overheard by the Jews. Unfortunately, when I had difficulty translating Cicero in high school, my father would not accept my excuse that Cicero was an anti-Semite so how could he expect to do well in Latin class.
1322: The reign of King Phillip V, also called Phillip the Long or Phillip the Tall during which “300,000 men, headed by a deposed priest and a renegade monk began their desultory march to the Holy Land: which included ravaging the Jews of Navarre, slaying 6,000 Jews in Estella and laying siege to Verdun where the Jews took their own lives rather than the victims of this so-called “Shepherd’s Crusade” came to an end today.
1521: Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. Leo is portrayed as the epitome of Church corruption – the great seller of indulgences. But Leo also provided protection for the Jews living in the Papal States. On one occasion he defied King Louis of France by not burning Jewish texts and he actually encouraged a Christian printer to publish a complete, uncensored copy of the Talmud. Luther is portrayed as the great reformer and father of the Reformation. Jews certainly benefited from the Protestant Reformation since was in the Protestant Netherlands and protestant England that the Jews found refuge and had a chance to grow and develop. However, Luther’s version of the Protestant Reformation included a large dose of anti-Semitism that would help fuel the fires of what became the Holocaust. History is not always black or white, but can be a whole lot of gray.
1571: Joachim II Hector, the Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, who allowed the Jews to return to the Margavite after having been banished because of false accusations of host desecration, passed away.
1598: In a letter from the Sultan to the Ottoman leaders in Jerusalem, he expressed his approval of the fact that the local Muslims locked the doors of the Nachmanides (Ramban) Synagogue, since, "the noisy ceremonies of the Jews in accordance with their false rites hinder our pious devotion and divine worship." Because of this the door was locked and sealed. The Sultan approved of the closing of the building, and he then ordered the synagogue to be annexed to the Muslims.
1632(19thof Tevet, 5392): Abraham Hayyim Schor Ben Naphtali Hirsch the Galician rabbi and Talmudist passed a way today “at Belz, a small town near Lemberg.”
1676: Frederick William of Brandenburg issued a decree safeguarding the privileges of the Jews of Berlin.
1690(22ndof Tevet, 5450): Famed Lithuanian Rabbi Hillel ben Naphtali Zevi passed away. Born in 1615, he served as a Rabbi in several towns throughout Lithuania. He was an important communal leader since he was a delegate to the Council of Four Lands. He was the author of Bet Hillel which was a major commentary on the code of Jewish law known as the Shulchon Oruch.
1765(10thof Tevet, 5525): Asara B’Tevet
1769: Birthdate of Jacob Herzfeld, a native of Dessau, Germany who studied medicine at Liepzig before become an actor and theatrical manager. He passed away in 1826.
1777: Erev Shabbat, George Washington and his small, shivering band defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton, a victory that was vital to keep the Revolutionary cause which was supported by most American Jews, alive.
1796: Seventy-six year old “Naphtali Hirtz be Feivel” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”
1780: Birthdate of Bavarian native Fanny Reiling, the wife of Michael Baerl Lilienthal with whom she had eight children.
1784: In Newport, RI, Rachel Mears and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Richa Isaacks.
1797: “The Treaty of Tripoli, first treaty between the United States and Tripoli (now Libya) to secure commercial shipping rights and protect American ships” which included Article 11 stating that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" was signed for a second time today at Algiers after having been originally signed in Tripoli in November of 1796.
1804: In Warrenton, NC, Rebecca Mears Myers and Jacob Mordecai gave birth to West Point graduate Alfred Mordecai, the commander of the arsenal at Washington, DC during the war with Mexico and husband of Sarah Ann Hays with whom he had seven children including West Point Graduate and Civil War hero Alfred Mordecai, Jr who rose to the rank of Brigadier General.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1958_10_02_00_falk.pdf
1811(7thof Tevet, 5571): Esther Lopez, the daughter of Aaron Lopez and the wife of Mordecai Gomez passed away today in New York city.
1811: In New Orleans, Pierre Brugman who was from Curaçao and of Dutch–Jewish Sephardic ancestry and Puerto Rican Isabel Duliebre gave birth to businessman and leader in the movement for Puerto Rico’s independence Mathias Brugman
1816(2ndof Tevet, 5576): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1821(29thof Tevet, 5581): While serving in his 50th year as the “Chief Cantor of the Jewish Congregation of Berlin, Aaron Beer passed away today.
1822: Rachel and Moses Joseph Cashmore gave birth to Esther Cashmore who had three children --James, Adolph and Rosalie – with her second husband Samuel Adolph Jonas
1823: In Charleston, SC, this evening, Rabbi Peixotto officiated at the wedding of N.H. Hart and Sara Moses, the daughter of the late Joseph Moses.
1824(3rdof Shevat, 5584): Parashat Vaera
1824(3rdof Shevat, 5584): Fifty-seven-year-old Montreal merchant Samuel David, the son of Lazarus David and the husband of Sarah Hart who reached the rank of Lt. Colonel while serving during the War of 1812 passed away today.
1825: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first engineering college in the U.S. is opened in Troy, New York. Today its 4,000 undergrad student body includes approximately 500 Jewish students.
1826: In Berlin, “a public school with four classes” was today under the direction of Leopold Zunz.
1827: Judah Joseph Moryoseph married Luna de Raphael Meldola today.
1830: Jacob Barrow Montefiore and Justina Lydia Montefiore gave birth to Eliezer / Leslie Jacob Montefiore.
1832: In London, Ellen Alice Jacobs and Gabriel Simmons gave birth to Fanny Simmons.
1832: Schiee Jaffé and his first wife Ernestine gave birth to Moritz Jaffe.
1834: Birthdate of Leon Judah Galipoliti.
1835(2ndof Tevet, 5595): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah
1844: Rabbi Rosenfelt officiated at the wedding of Mr. Abrahams and Miss Elizabeth F. Joseph of Charleston.
1844: In London, Rebecca Crawcour and Aaron Hart gave birth to Phoebe Hart.
1846: In London, Hannah Isaacs and David Piza gave birth to Judah Piza.
1848: In Châlons-en-Champagne, France, Mayes and Henriette Neumark gave birth to Alfred Neymark, the husband of Jeanne Neymark and “editor of the Revue Contemporaine and founder of Le Rentier an economic and financial paper.”
1853: “The Affairs in Europe” column published today reported that Parisians are amused at the “Protestant rigors in Germany against the Jews” in reaction to “the event of December 2, 1851…” The “event of December 2, 1851” is a reference to the overthrow of the Second French Republic by Louis Napoleon who had himself crowned Emperor on December 2, 1852.
1854: Sir George Grey, who hired Samuel Joseph, an Anglo-Jew from London as his interpreter” today completed his service as the third Governor of New Zealand
1855(13th of Tevet, 5615): Forty-two year old Henry Edward Goldsmid passed away today in Cairo. Born in London in 1812, he spent most of his career serving in India in various positions with the East India Company.
1858: Judah Touro’s fourth Yahrzeit was observed this afternoon at the Green Street Synagogue in NYC.
1858: As she grew weaker, Rachel Felix completed a final letter to her father around 11 in the morning. At 8 o'clock a dozen Jews arrived from Nice to be with Rachel Felix in her last hours. Sometime after 10 pm, two women and one man approached Rachel's bed and and began chanting prayers for the dying Jewess.
1858 (17th of Tevet, 5618): Elisabeth Rachel Felix, known simply as “Rachel,” the French actress and singer passed away at the age of 36. “Élisabeth Rachel Félix was the second of the six children of Alsatian Jewish peddlers, Jacob (Jacques) and Esther Hayyah (Thérèse) Félix, and a French citizen under the Civic Emancipation, Rachel always remained profoundly in phase with the Jews’ entry into and participation in modernity. Although singular, her career was characteristic of the collective experience of the second generation of Jews born after the Emancipation and who participated fully in French social, economic, political and cultural life. Furthermore, for many French people, Rachel personified the great allegorical figures of Tragedy, History and the Republic. Her example illustrates the extent to which an often passionate but at any rate profound and intimate adhesion to French culture was an essential component in the construction of emancipated French Judaism. In Rachel we find all the cultural and political paradoxes and contradictions of her time. She was a symbol of legitimist and republican virtue in equal measure. Her performance as La Marseillaise had the public in raptures in 1848. But if she exercised such fascination it was also because she personified the social ascension of the lower classes, and was proud of it. Never hiding her humble origins and always asserting the importance of her family ties, she worked furiously at educating and cultivating herself and modeling her image. But despite her aspiration to affluence and respectability, she could never avoid details of her private life fuelling the whiff of scandal that clung to her name. Although never developing a critical awareness of the condition of women in the society of her time, she was loath to espouse the model of the bourgeois, cultivated woman defined by the notables of her time – married, a mother, either discreet or ceasing to appear on stage – and constantly asserted her desire to remain independent in order to devote herself fully to her art.
The Rachel phenomenon in many ways transcends that of the successful actress. Many biographies of her were written, and she became one of the most famous women of her century. Other artists, men and women, may also have left their mark on their time, but Rachel forged a new model of the actress and woman.” As one reads this entry, one gets a sense of how “French” French Jews felt themselves which provides understanding to the depth of shock and dismay felt at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
1862: In Paddington, English businessman Jonah Nathan and Miriam Jacob Nathan gave birth to Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Matthew Nathan, the brother of Major F.L. Nathan and Sir Nathaniel Nathan.
1863(12th of Tevet, 5623): Parsashat Vayechi
1863: Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington and went to meet with Cincinnati congressman John Addison Gurley to get his help in arranging a meeting with President Lincoln.
1864: Four days after she had passed away, Jamaica born Rosetta Micholls, the wife of Edward Emanuel Micholls with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1865: Today, Herman Bendell, the Albany, NY born on of Elias Bendell and the former Hannah Stern, who had served as volunteer in the Union Army in 1861 before going back to graduate from Albany Medical College, was made a surgeon the Volunteer Infantry which led to his being brevetted as a Lt. Col.
1866: Sir Saul Samuel completed his first term as Treasurer of New South Wales.
1868: According to today’s issue of “The Jewish Sentinel,” an eight page weekly published in Philadelphia, Maimonides College has been operating in Philadelphia since November 4, 1867 “under a charter of the Hebrew Education Society” led by Rabbi Isaac Lesser who is the school’s Provost or President.
1868: Philadelphian Myer Asch, who had reached the rank of Colonel while serving with the Union Army during the Civil War was elected Senior Vice Commander of the George G. Meade Post, Number 1, Grand Army of the Republic.
1871(10th of Tevet, 5631): Asara B’Tevet
1871: Jakob Löwith was elected unanimously to the community board in Pilsen.
1873: Eide and Ephraim Leib Moshewitz gave birth to Jacob Moshewitz.
1873: In Philadelphia, Celia Racuher Goldfinger and Charles Ignatz Goldfinger gave birth to Sallie Goldfinger who became Sallie Kahan when she married Max B. Kahane in 1889.
1876(6th of Tevet, 5636): Sixty-five year old Sir Anthony de Rothschild, 1st Baronet, the second son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, passed away today. He took on much of the responsibility for the family’s banking business, was the first President of the United Synagogue and was known as an art collector and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He died without a male heir, so his title transferred to his nephew Nathan Mayer Rothschild.
1877: Today Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the Rome, NY born son of Benjamin Bloomngdale and Hanna Weil married Adele Bernheimer as he continued a career that included serving President of the Retail Dry Good Association, Republican presidential elector and director of the “Jewish Proectory.
1879: It was reported today that a commission appointed at the recent convention of American Hebrew Congregations to consider plans to establish one central college to train Rabbis in the United States is meeting in Philadelphia. The commission includes Rabbis Gottheil and Einhorn from New York and L.M. Demibtz of Louisville, KY. Currently there are at least three such colleges located in New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, Ohio.
1879: In Berlin, “theatre conductor Paul Abarbanell and Marie Abarbanell” gave birth to opera star Lina Abarbanell
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Abarbanell-Lina
1880: Birthdate of Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the Central Asian musician Ari Babakhanov served as “court vocalist”.
1882: In Milwaukee, WI, Isaac David Adler, a prosperous wholesale manufacturer of men's clothing, and Therese Hyman Adler gave birth to their only son David Adler, the noted American architect
1882: In Shanghia, Isaac “Ned” Ezra, the merchant whose name was given to Ezra Road and his wife gave birth to the first of the nine children, Edward Isaac Ezra.
1883(24thof Tevet, 5643): Barrister and Jewish communal leader Morris Simeon Oppenheim, the son of a London merchant who was called to the Bar in 1858 and served as “Secretary of the Great Synagogue for nearly 25 years” passed away today.
1883: Birthdate of British political leader Clement Attlee, a member of the Labor Party who served as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951. He replaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister shortly after VE Day when the Laborites defeated the Conservatives in the first Parliamentary elections since the start of World War II. Talk about ingratitude. In what seemed like unnecessary cruelty, the Atlee Government continued to bar Jews from immigrating to Palestine. The government pursued an active war of suppression against the Zionists and made it clear that the Laborites had no intention in honoring the promise of the Balfour Declaration. Faced with financial bankruptcy and war weariness, Atlee began dismember the British Empire which meant surrendering the Palestine Mandate as well as the colony of India.
1886: In San Francisco, Henrietta and William Schwartz gave birth to investment banker and broker Sidney Leopold “Leo” Schwartz, husband of Alice R. Schwartz and father of Marie Louise an Elizabeth Schwartz who was also President of the Sidney L and Alice Schwartz Foundation.
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/C0258855
1887: Twenty-four-year-old Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the Rome, NY born n son of Benjamin and Hannah (Weil) Bloomingdale and Republican Party member married Adele Bernheimer today.
1887: In San Francisco, Marcus Schiller and others formally established the Beth Israel congregation with forty male members.
1888: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Abraham Hurwitz, the editor of the Reading (PA) Times and columnist for the Miami Herald.
1888: Opening of the 111th New York State Legislature in which Jacob Cantor served as a member of the York State Senate.
1890: Two days after he had passed away, 37 year old David Lehman, the German born “walking stick maker” who was the husband of Annie Lehmann and the father of Marcus, Sophia and Nathan Lehman, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1890: “Trouble Over A School” published today described the opposition of Jewish citizens on the Lower East Side to the establishment of a school by Reverend Morgan of St. Mark’s which some of them “regard as movement to undermined the Jewish faith.”
1891: Birthdate of poet and author Osip E Mandelstam. A native of Warsaw, Mandelstam grew up in the comfortable middle class Jewish home that was described as not being very religious. The ups and downs of his career and posthumous honor mirrored the fate of many other intellectuals living in the Soviet Union. He died in the Gulag in 1938.
1891: Among the charities that the Brooklyn Board of Estimate said would be receiving public funds were the Eastern District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($155.86); Western District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($88.96) and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum ($319.06).
1892: It was reported today that among the forty Europeans being held as prisoners by the Mahdists are eight Jews.
1892(3rd of Tevet, 5652): Sixty-six year old Julius Gerson Brooks, the husband of Fanny Brooks and the father of George, Eveline, Edgar and Milton Brooks passed away today in San Remo, Italy after which he was buried at the B’Nai Israel Cemetery in Salt Lake City, UT.
https://jwa.org/westernpioneers/brooks-fanny
1893: In Alliance, NJ, Anna Saprho and George Sergius Seldes gave birth to Gilbert Vivian Seldes the writer and American “social critic.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10948007009489469?journalCode=hcbq19
1893: It was reported today that Henry Mazinsky, the young boy who had contracted typhus, had been at The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory for four months “under the constant care of the attendants” and how he contracted the disease remains a mystery.
1893: It was reported today that The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory is currently caring for 150 boys.
1894: In New York City, Joseph and Henriette (Schwab) Altenberg gave birth to Columbia University trained Chemical Engineer, who began serving as Treasurer and General Manager of the Gaskill Chemical Corporation in 1923 and who married May J. Shapiro in 1918.
1894: A meeting was held this evening at the Jewish Theological Seminary “for the purpose of founding a society” that will improve the observance of Shabbat.
1894(25th of Tevet, 5654): Adolph L. Sanger, a native of Baton Rouge, LA who graduated from Columbia Law School in 1864 following which he forged a successful career as an attorney, politician and leader of the Jewish community passed away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C12FC345D15738DDDAD0894D9405B8485F0D3
1894: The Footlight Club provided the entertainment for a fundraiser held at the Berkley Lyceum for the benefit of the Louis Downtown Sabbath and Daily School.
1895: Birthdate of British born Protestant archaeologist James Leslie Starkey who was “the chief excavator of the first archaeological expedition at Lachish.
1895: It was reported today that Aaron Leiman was at work at cloak factory when a fire broke out in his apartment killing his wife and two children.
1895: It was reported today that the tenement house at 25 Pitt Street that burned yesterday “was inhabited entirely by the families of” Jewish “cloakmakers and tailors” most of whom are suffering financially due to the cloakmakers’ strike.
1895: Colonel David S. Brown who will be leaving on trip that will take him to Egypt and Palestine was the guest of honor at a dinner at the Colonial Club.
1895: Herzl personally witnessed Colonel Dreyfus being “drummed out of the army in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire as huge crowds outside shouted, ‘” ‘Death to the Jews!’”
1896: In New York gave birth to Felix Moritz Warburg and Frieda Fanny Warburg, the daughter of Jacob and Therese Schiff gave birth to Carola Warburg who became Carola Rothschild when she married Walter Rothschild.
1897: Dr. Maurice Harris of Temple Israel in Harlem delivered the sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El.
1897:Twenty-nine year old Joseph Maurice Weber, one of the of the vaudeville comedy act of Weber and Fields and the New York born son of Abraham and Gertrude (Enoch) Weber married Lillian Friedman today.
1897: Adolph Sutro completed his service as the 24th Mayor of San Francisco.
1897: “Maspero On The East Again” provides a detailed review of The Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria and Assyria by Gaston Maspero in which “he records the exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the founding…of David’s kingdom, the building of the reservoirs ascribed to Solomon, and of Solomon’s temple.”
1898: It was reported today that Julius D. Eisenstein has been chosen as president of “The American Congregation, the Pride of Jerusalem” – a new organization to provide aid for the indigent Jews living in Jerusalem.
1898: Gratz College is scheduled to open its doors today in Philadelphia. A teachers’ and general college, it is the third Jewish institution of higher-learning in the United States. Faculty members include Rabbi Henry M Speaker (Jewish literature), Arthur A. Dembitz (Jewish history) and Isaac Husik (Hebrew). The course of study lasts three years and “under certain conditions” students who cannot afford the tuition “will be admitted free of charge.”
1898: In Baltimore, founding of Gemilath Chassodim (Hebrew Free Loan Association) which lent “money in small sums to needy people on promissory notes with one or two endorsers without interest to be paid in weekly installments of 50 cents.”
1899: In New York City, Mary and John Yehuda Margaretten gave birth New Law School trained attorney and supporter of the New Jersey Federation of YM and YWHAs Morris Margaretten the husband of Pauline Margaretten
1899:Columbia Law School graduate and investment banker Louis F. Rothschild, the New York born son of Frank and Amanda (Blum) Rothschild, married Cora Guggenheim today after which they had three children – Louis, Muriel and Gwendolyn.
1900: Birthdate of Viennese native and WW I veteran Ernst Neubach the songwriter and screenwriter who spent the war in Switzerland and who wrote “In Heaven There Is No Beer” “a rendition of the song “the Hawkeye Victory Polka” “is played by the University of Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band after Iowa Hawkeyes football victories and has been a tradition since the 1960s.”
1901: Birthdate of George W.F. Hallgarten, the German born American historian who was the grandson of Charles Hallgarten and great grandson of Lazarus Hallgarten.
1902: Today, Erev Shabbat, Miss Alice Roosevelt, the oldest daughter of philo-Semitic U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was "formally presented to Washington society" at a ball at the White House,
1903(4th of Tevet, 5663): Parashat Vayigash
1903: First version of “Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen" ("To Grow Accustomed to Thy Gaze"), for Voice and Piano by Arnold Schönberg
1904: “A largely attended meeting under the auspices of the Jewish League of America was held in the Synagogue B'nai Abraham” in Philadelphia “today, at which it was decided to hold a National Convention in this city of all the societies of Jews interested in the condition of their coreligionists in Russia.:
1905: At the Academy of Music in New York, William Brady presented a revival of “Bartley Campbell’s melodrama ‘Siberia’” which is set in Kishinev and centers a tale of “the ill-treatment of the Jews by the Russian officers and their blind allies, the mob.”
1906: “An Advisory board of teachers, of which Gustave Straubenmuller was Chairman decided at meeting held” today “at the City College to add the money” collected by schoolteachers in December “for the relief of the sufferers from the Jewish massacres in Russia” to the National Relief Fund.
1906 (6th of Tevet, 5666): Dr. Otto A. Moses passed away at the age of 72. Born in 1846, the South Carolina native “had a worldwide reputation as a geologist and chemist.” He was also the founder of the Hebrew Technical Institute, a New York “institution for the education of poor boys” and was an active supporter of other Jewish charities including the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home.
1906: Birthdate of San Francisco native and University of California, Berkley alum Frederick L. Ehrman, the Chairman of the Board of Lehman Brothers and philanthropist who was the husband of “the former Edith Koshland” with whom he raised “a daughter, Edith.”
1906: “Ignoramus” wrote from Buffalo, NY questioning the information in The Jewish Spectre by George H. Warner which states on page 288 “that Jews are neither soldier or college men” and on page 290 that “the newspaper reports of the last few years full of accounts of Jewish crimes” but does not mention which newspapers.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Spectre-George-H-Warner/dp/1289890250
1907: Israel Zangwill reported that in November of 1906, 133,764 Jews entered New York City and remained there
1908: If the demands for a reduction in tenement rents by two dollars is not met, a rent strike will begin tomorrow in Chicago which means, among other things that the Jewish tenants will refuse to pay rent and will “submit to eviction by the landlords.”
1908: “New Drain Now On United Charities” published today described the dire financial conditions of the United Hebrew Charities which according to its manager Dr. Lee K. Frankel needed at least $25,000 to meet the monthly needs of its clients before the current economic downturn and actually only has $20,000 on hand to meet the needs of the needy.
1909(10th of Tevet, 5669): Asara B'Tevet
1909: Professor R.J. J. Gottheil presided over a meeting of “the Judeans” at the Hostel Astor during which George Hellman lectured on Treaty of Berlin and “prominent part played in it by Benjamin Disraeli” who he said “was more of a Jews than an Englishman and more a Disraeli than a Jews” and Reverend John Peters who “discussed the note of remonstrance Secretary of State Hay addressed to Roumania on its persecution of the Jews.
1910: “Would Thin Crowded Areas” published today described the belief of Abraham Abraham, of Abraham and Strauss “that too much money is being expended by the city for small parks at the expense of traction facilities” and that more money should be spent on “providing cheap transportation to the city’s outlying districts.”
1911: Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the Central Asian musician Ari Babakhanov served as “court vocalist” began his reign today.
1911: Birthdate of Warsaw artist Josef Herman who fled Poland in the 1930’s because of the virulent anti-Semitism in Poland and finally settling in the United Kingdom after the German invasion of Belgium and France.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/22/guardianobituaries
1912: Birthdate of New York native and NYU trained attorney Irving Robert Feinberg, who became known as I. Robert Feinberg, “a leading labor lawyer and arbittartion” who served as counsel of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the UJA and the Hebrew Home for the Aged” while raising two children – Richard and Jean – with his wife Lucille.
1913: The corresponded of the Daily News in St. Petersburg reported today that “a commercial panic with many failures has been precipitated by the ukase expelling the remaining Jews from the city of Kiev.”
1914: In New York, Morris Meltsner and Rose Klarman gave birth to Martin Meltsner
1915: The Memphis Commercial Appeal “printed a long review of the Leo Frank case from a Georgia newspaper man who argued that the evidence in the case warranted the verdict” rendered.
1915: British synagogues joined other houses of worship in holding special services on behalf of the empire as requested by the King.
1915: Birthdate of Marian Pollock the wife of Louis Pollock.
1915: In St. Louis at the 18thannual convention of the Knights of Zion, Louis D. Brandeis declared “Responsibility for preserving Jewish customs and ideals now rests almost wholly with the American Jews.”
1915: Birthdate of Jack Levine the Boston born American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.
1916: It was reported today, that due to the effects of the World War, in Palestine, “30,000 workmen were in great distress.”
1916: Joseph Leonard wrote today from New York that “the English community rejoices” at the “devotion and heroism” its members are showing on the battlefield which apparently comes at surprise to those who do not know the history of the “virile and romantic race” but Jews always identify themselves with their adopted countries and respond with “patriotic devotion.”
1916: “The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America” in New York “received a telegram today from its representative, Jacob R. Fain saying that a branch had just been organized in Seattle, Washington, where it will undertake to care for Jewish refugees from the war zones of Europe as well as other Jewish immigrants.”
1916: “If We Joined the Entente” published today lists Isaac Don Levine’s reasons for the United States entering the war on the side of England and France including the fact that the United States would be able to protect the rights of oppressed nationalities including the Jews.
1916: It was reported today that President Woodrow Wilson has sent a telegram to a group meeting in Baltimore, MD to raise money for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe expressing his “profound sympathy with the object of the meeting and sincere hope that there will be a great outpouring for the relief of these distressed people.”
1916: In Chicago, this morning’s business session of the Knights of Zion Convention is scheduled to be followed by a kosher banquet for 600 delegates and guests.
1916: It was reported today that Rabbi Samuel Schulman of Temple Beth-El has said that “there must be less talk of Judaism and more silent, honest, consistent living of Judaism.”
1916: It was reported today that in Russia “all concessions made to the Jews by Prince Cherbatoff, the former Minister of the Interior, have been cancelled
1916: Birthdate of Newark, NJ, native and world class cellist Bernard Greenhouse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/music/bernard-greenhouse-cellist-dies-at-95.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
1917: In New York City wealthy heiress Gladys Guggenheim and Roger Williams Straus, Sr whose family owned Macy’s gave birth to Roger Williams Straus, Jr.
1918(19th of Tevet, 5678): Mrs. Emily M. Marcuse, an attorney passed away today in Oakland, CA.
1918: “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Chairman of the Provision Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs announced” tonight “that more than one-fourth of the first million dollars of the Palestine restoration fund to be devoted to the immediate needs for re-establishing a Jewish state in Palestine after the war had been raised” in just three days, even while the commission headed by Eugene Meyer, Jr. was still in its formative state.
1918: A meeting was held today “at the Fifth Avenue home of Adolph Lewisohn” where the “directors and trustees of local Jewish institutions” met to discuss plans for the drive to raise four million dollars by the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies” which is scheduled to begin on January 14.
1919: Birthdate of South African journalist turned political activist Colin Legum.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/colin-legum-36609.html
1919: Simon Petlyura, "hetman" of Russia and the Ruthenian Republic, a Ukrainian nationalist and commander of the Zaporog Cossacks and Haidamaks, began his attack against the Jews. He accused them of being supporters of the communist regime. In Berdichev, Uma, Zhitomir and other cities about seventy thousand were killed and an equal number wounded. Altogether 372 cities and towns were attacked in 998 major and 349 minor pogroms. This took placed during the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. The civil war was loosely described as fight between the Reds (the communists) and the Whites (all of the various groups opposed to the communists). The Jews were caught in the middle and suffered at the hands of both sides.
1919: The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 settling disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. Weizmann first met Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an impromptu "Zionist Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern Transjordan for the meeting. The intended purpose was to forge an agreement between Faisal and the Zionist movement to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support dense Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish. Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon afterwards at the Paris peace conference. In their first meeting in June 1918 Weizmann had assured Faisal that "the Jews did not propose to set up a government of their own but wished to work under British protection, to colonize and develop Palestine without encroaching on any legitimate interests". The day after they signed the written agreement, which bears their names, Weizmann arrived in Paris to head the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference. It was a triumphal moment for Weizmann; it was an accord that climaxed years of negotiations and ceaseless shuttles between the Middle East and the capitals of Western Europe and that promised to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between the two principal ethnic groups of Palestine: Arabs and Jews. The maipoints of the agreement were:
- The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
- The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy.
- The boundaries between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
- The parties committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
- Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Weizmann signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.
Two weeks prior to signing the agreement, Faisal stated:
The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one another, and I hope that as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas. Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists and the local peasants, but the mutual understanding of the aims of Arabs and Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness, which, indeed, had already practically disappeared before the war by the work of the Arab Secret Revolutionary Committee, which in Syria and elsewhere laid the foundation of the Arab military successes of the past two years.The areas discussed were detailed in a letter to Felix Frankfurter, President of the Zionist Organization of America, on March 3, 1919, when Faisal wrote :
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway; in the East a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba; in the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government; in the West the Mediterranean Sea. The details of the delimitations, or any necessary adjustments of detail, shall be settled by a Special Commission on which there shall be Jewish representation. Faisal conditioned his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime promises to the Arabs, who had hoped for independence in a vast part of the Ottoman Empire. He appended to the typed document a hand-written statement:
"Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever." The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months. The outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab state that Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had struck their own secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the Middle East between their own spheres of influence, and soon Faisal began to express doubts about cooperation with the Zionist movement. After Faisal was expelled from Syria and given the Kingdom of Iraq, he contended that the conditions he appended were not fulfilled and the treaty therefore moot. St. John Philby, a British representative in Palestine, later stated that Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and King of Hejaz, on whose behalf Faisal was acting, had refused to recognize the agreement as soon as it was brought to his notice. However, Sharif Hussein formally endorsed the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August, 1920, along with the other Allied Powers, as King of Hedjaz. The United Nations Special Committee On Palestine did not regard the agreement as ever being validwhile Weizmann continued to maintain that the treaty was still binding. In 1947 Weizmann explained:"A postscript was also included in this treaty. This postscript relates to a reservation by King Feisal that he would carry out all the promises in this treaty if and when he would obtain his demands, namely, independence for the Arab countries. I submit that these requirements of King Feisal have at present been realized. The Arab countries are all independent, and therefore the condition on which depended the fulfillment of this treaty, has come into effect. Therefore, this treaty, to all intents and purposes, should today be a valid document". According to C.D. Smith the Syrian National Congress had forced Faisal to back away from his tentative support of Zionist goals
1920: Viola Flannery married Elie Nadelman, the Polish born American-Jewish sculptor, in New York City.
1921:In Brooklyn, insurance salesman Paul Gold and Rose (Sachs) Gold gave birth to William “Bill” Gold the creator of untold number of movie posters the most famous of which may have been for the classic “Casablanca.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/obituaries/bill-gold-dead-movie-posters.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
1921: Simon Bamberger, the German born Jew completed his term as Governor of Utah – a position which he was the first non-Mormon to hold.
1922: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Isaac Schulman the husband of the former Rebecca Rosenthal and the father of Nathan, Harry, Benjamin and Sam Schulman
1922: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Kornfeld of Columbus OH “the recently appointed Minister to Persia” who will be “sailing to his new post” tomorrow was honored at banquet hosted by the Association of Reformed Rabbis and the New York Board of Jewish Ministers at the West End Synagogue.
1923: The New York State convened today in which Philip M. Kleinfeld served as a member from the 4th District.
1924: While his brother George was playing billiards at the Ambassador Billiard Parlor, Ira Gershing was reading an article entitled “What is America Music?” which including the claim he was “at work on a jazz concerto and Irving Berlin was a writing a syncopated tone poem.”
1924: Birthdate of Israeli Admiral Mordechai Limon, the man who would mastermind and execute the Cherbourg Project in 1969.
1925: Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist, who enjoyed support among Italian Jews, announced that he was assuming dictatorial powers. According to Alexander Stille, by 1938 one third of adult Italian Jews belonged to Fascist Party. “This amounted to 10,000 Jews out of Italy's small Jewish population of 47,000.” But according to Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938, the Italian dictator “was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's and vowed to ‘destroy them all.’”
1925: Today Cornell University graduate and President of the Chicago Board of Trade Richard Frederick Uhlmann, married Rosamond Goldman with whom he had three children – Audrey, Janis and Frederick
1925: In London, Aileen Freda Leatherman and Michael Balcon gave birth to English actress Jill Balcon.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/20/jill-balcon-obituary
1926(17thof Tevet, 5686): Forty-year old Leopold “Leo” Sulzberger, “the son of Cyrus Leopold Sulzberger and Rachel Peixotto Sulzberger”, the husband of Beatrice Sulzberger and the father of awarding foreign correspondent C.L. Sulzberger, passed away today in New York Coty.
1927: At Cooper Union, the United Palestine Appeal held its kickoff event designed to raise $100,000. During the meeting it was announced that $15,000 had already been raised with $2,500 having been donated by Morris Eisenman.
1927: During a meeting of the United Palestine Appeal held at Cooper Union in New York City, tribute was paid to the memory of Asher Ginsberg who was better known by his pen name, Achad Ha’am. Ginsberg who was living in Tel Aviv when he passed away, was described as “one of the most creative forces in world Zionism.”
1928: “Rumania Assailed By King” published today described Utah’s Senator William King speech at the Sixth Annual Region Conference of the United Palestine Appeal where he said “that the treatment accorded by the government of Rmania to the Jewish inhabitants was in direct defiance of the Minority Rights Treaty” and that he was planning on introducing a resolution in the Senate expressing the “disfavor” with which these “activities” are viewed. (Editor’s note – Why King took the lead on this is a mystery to me. There certainly was not much of “Jewish vote” to court in Utah.”
1929: At the tender age of 27 William S. Paley became President of CBS.
1930(3rd of Tevet, 5690): The first Chanukah to be observed during The Great Depression comes to an end today on the 8thday of the festival.
1932: Laborite Ian Mikardo married Mary Rosette today.
1933: In Germany, an attempt to assassinate journalist Ezriel Carlebach failed when “the gunshot cut through his hat” but missed his head.
1934: It was reported today that the seventeen graduates of the Hebrew University included a father and son duo – 43 year old Ephraim Duvshani and 23 year old Levi Duvshani.
1934(16th of Tevet, 5694): Today, at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, Central Synagogue Rabbi Jonah B. Wise officiated at the funeral of sixty-eight year old New York native Henry Harris, the “manager of the loan and jewelry firm of I. Harlem on 8th Avenue” and the husband of the Addie Harris which was followed by burial at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens.
1935(28rh of Tevet, 5695): Seventy-two year old advocate for woman’s suffrage Mrs. Jane Braz Fischel, the wife of “real estate dealer and philanthropist Harry Ficshel” with whom she had four daughters and who was active in a number of Jewish organizations including the Daughters of Jacob, the Federaton of Jewish Women’s Organizations and H.I.A.S. suffered a fatal heart attack today.
1936: The Manchester Guardian published an article disproving Hitler’s claims that the Jews had a “stranglehold or monopoly” on German cultural and professional life. The percentages were based on official German statistics.
1937: James Waterman Wise, the son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to speak at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall on “Some of my Best Friends Are Jews.”
1937: Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon today at Temple B’nai Jeshurun.
1937: Rabbi Lichtenstein is scheduled to talk about “The Miracle of Healing” this morning at the Jewish Science Society.”
1937: The New York Timesreports that Mrs. Yetka Levy-Stein the wife of a Berlin Rabbi arrived here last week on the Cunard White Star liner Berengaria to make a three-month tour of the United States on behalf of the Youth Aliyah movement, which is concerned with the settlement of German-Jewish children in the cooperative colonies of Palestine.
1937:California Congresswomen Florence Prag Kahn completed her fifth and final term in office.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that it was no coincidence that most of the arms found on Arab terrorists were of German manufacture. They were smuggled in from Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. British troops, assisted by police, fought a bloody battle with a band of arms smugglers near the Sahla village in Galilee.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that settlers at Kibbutz Neveh Ya'acov, north of Jerusalem, repelled another heavy Arab attack.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that a forest was planted at the Ma'aleh Hahamisha hill in memory of the five pioneers who were murdered there while preparing land for this new settlement.
1938: New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore A. Cotillo signed a writ of reasonable doubt today which allowed the release of convicted felons Samuel "Sammy" Weiss and David Goldberg. The two had been convicted by Thomas E. Dewey for filing false tax returns. Weiss was a notorious racketeer and mobster.
1938: The National Zeitung, the paper controlled by Goering today “ridiculed the idea of any return of Germany to democracy – a though which ‘even emigrant Jews and Marxists already have shelved.’”
1939(12thof Tevet, 5699): Eighty-eight year old Isidor Lewi, the Albany, NY, born son of Joseph and Bertha Lewi and the husband of Emita Peninnah Wolff May Lewi passed away today after which he was buried in Brooklyn, NY.
1939: The announcement from London, received today in Berlin that Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, was making a “private” visit to see Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank where “he is expected to insist that the Reich cease persecuting the Jews and make some effort to help evacuate them in an orderly fashion” instead of just using them as “ransom to increase foreign trade for Germany” has “raised large hopes in Jewish circles.”
1939: Illinois Congressman Adolph J. Sabath began serving as Chairman of the House Rules Committee for the first time.
1939: “Invitations were issued today for a meeting of the Inter-governmental Refugee Committee” which will include all thirty two nations that had taken part in the Evian Conference, the sham meeting that pretended to address the refugee question which really meant what to do about the Jews of Germany in the wake of the Nazi rise to power.
1939: In Tel Aviv, actor Yaakov Einstein and his wife gave birth to Israeli entertainer Arik Einstein.
1940: Germany’s Ministry of Agriculture denied German Jews food ration cards.
1941: Samuel Arthur Weiss, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, began serving his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1941: During World War II, German bombers dropped some of their payload on Greenville Hall Synagogue. The building was damaged but not destroyed in the raid.
1941: William H. King, the Senator from Utah who in 1927 “declared…that he favored the United States severing diplomatic relations with any country which failed because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals” and “expressed the belief that eventually Palestine would be able to support a population of a million Jews” completed his services as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.
1942(14thof Tevet, 5702): Parashat Vayehci
1942(14thof Tevet, 5702): Sixty-two year old Pinchas Ruttenberg, a long-time leader in the Zionist movement died today in Jerusalem.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pinchas-rutenberg
1943: Today, Heinrich “Himmler received one of many ‘therapeutic massages’ from his doctor, took part in meetings, called his wife and daughter and then ordered…the killing of several Polish families.”
1943: Polish President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz requested that Pope Pius XII publicly denounce German atrocities against the Jews. Pius remained silent concerning both the German slaughter of the Polish Jews as well as the German attacks against Polish Catholics.
1944(7thof Tevet, 5704): Eighty year old Prussian born mining engineer turned Zionist leader Leopold Kessler passed away in New York where he had been visited by his grandchildren Gabriel and Annette Kessler, the children of his oldest son Jack Kessler.
http://access.cjh.org/subjects.php?t=Qm90c3dhbmE6IERlc2NyaXB0aW9uIGFuZCB0cmF2ZWw=#1
1945: Benjamin Rabin assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district
1946: During an interview given today, Reuben B. Resnick, the director in Italy of the Joint Distribution Committee said that “native Italian Jews and thousands of other displace Jewish person who fled to Italy from the anti-Semitism in Poland face sickness and disease as well as a feeling of futility unless the doors of Palestine are opened to immigration.”
1947: Jimmy Ernst, the Cologne, Germany born son of “painter Max Ernst and Luise Straus, a well-known art historian, journalist and a victim of the Nazis at Auschwitz” today married “Edith Dallas Bauman Brody, a talent court for Warner Brothers.”
http://jimmyernst.net/pages/chronicle.html
1947: The USCGC Northland the last cruising cutter built for the Coast Guard equipped with a sailing rig was sold for scrap today after which she was renamed the Jewish State and used to transport Jewish refugees and renamed Eilat in 1948 so that she could be the flagship of the newly created Israeli navy.
1947: Jacob Javits begins serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 21st congressional district.
1948: The Palmach received orders concerning the attack on Salama.
1949(2nd of Tevet, 5709): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1949: Fifty-one year old Lewis Browne, the London born, American trained Reform Rabbi turned author whose first book was Stranger Than Fiction: A Short History of the Jews from Earliest Times to the Present Day passed away today in Santa Monica, CA.
http://www.jta.org/1949/01/05/archive/lewis-browne-author-on-jewish-subjects-dies-by-his-own-hand-in-california-was-51
https://www.questia.com/library/724730/stranger-than-fiction-a-short-history-of-the-jews
http://lewisbrowne.org/
http://lewisbrowne.org/documents/quotes.html
1949: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 1stdistrict.
1949: Illinois U.S Congressman began serving as Chair of the House Rules Committee for a second time.
1949: Lyndon Johnson whose visit to the Nazi death camps was one of the most powerful experience in his life and who helped to rescue Jews during the 1930’s, completed his 12 years of service representing Texas’ 10th Congressional District.
1949: Lyndon Johnson who would prove to be a great friend of Israel during the 1967 war began serving as U.S. Senator from Texas.
1949: Leo Isaacson, a member of the American Labor Party, finished his term as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 24thcongressional district
1949: As part of Operation Horev, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptians at Rafah in an attempt to encircle the Arab force.
1951: Sydney A. Fine assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 23rd district.
1951: Rabbi Naftali Landau, “the son of a Hungarian rabbi and a graduate of Kehilath Jacob Seminary in Antwerp who served Shomre Hadas Congregation in Chicago and Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation today married nineteen year old Minnie Finkelstein
1952: A revival of “Pal Joey”, the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical opened today for the first of 540 performances.
1953: Isidore Dollinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 23rd district
1953: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 1st district.
1954: In Manhattan, small business owner Samuel and Ruth (Rosenkrantz) Solomon gave birth to experimental film director and University of Colorado Professor Phillip Stewart Solomon. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/obituaries/phil-solomon-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Obituaries
1955(9th of Tevet, 5715): Seventy-nine year old Carl Morris Loeb, the Frankfurt, Germany born son of Minna and Adolf Loeb and the husband of Adeline Moses whom he married in 1896 and with whom he had four children – John, Margaret, Carl and Hanry – passed away today in New York City.
1955: Richard L. Neuberger began serving as a United States Senator from Oregon.
1956: More than 600 leaders of Hadassah from all over the United States met at New York’s Plaza Hotel to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of Youth Aliyah, the worldwide child rescue and rehabilitation organization.
1957: NYU Law School Professor and U.S. Navy veteran Ludwig Teller began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1957: Jacob K. Javits began serving as a United States from New York.
1959(23rdof Tevet, 5719): Parashat Shemot
1959: Seymour Halpern assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district. Unlike most New York Jewish politicians, Halpern was a Republican.
1959: Alaska became the 49th state to join the Union. For more about Alaska, the final Jewish Frontier you may go to http://www.joyfulnoise.net/JoyAlaska5.html, featuring “Alaskan Jewry – An Historical Overview.”
1959: Ernest Gruening began serving as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1961: Forty-nine year old Ludwig Teller, a former member of the New York State Legislature, completed his second and final term in office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ludwig-teller
1962: After opening in the United Kingdom, “The Young Ones” with music by Stanley Black and choreographed by Harold Ross was released in the United States today.1963: Tel Aviv University opened. Although its antecedents go back to the early 1950's the university became an independent entity on this date. Today it is the largest University in the country with over 100 departments and over 75 research facilities.1963: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff began serving as United States from Connecticut.
1964(18th of Tevet, 5724): Forty-four year old Rabbi Walter Plaut, the brother of Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, the spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel and “Freedom Rider” passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/04/rabbi-walter-plaut-44-dead.html
1965: James H. Scheuer began assumed office as member of the House of Representatives from New York’s 21st District.
1965(29th of Tevet, 5725): Semyon Ariyevich Kosberg, the Jewish-Soviet engineer born in 1903 who developed an expertise in aircraft and rocket engines who won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and was named a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1961 passed away today.
1965(29th of Tevet, 5725): Eighty four year old comedian and actor Julius Tannen whose fifty year career ran from vaudeville to Hollywood and whose two sons William Tannen and Charles Tannen followed in his footsteps passed away today.
1965: Lester L. Wolff began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 3rd District.
1965: Richard Ottinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 25th district
1966(11th of Tevet, 5726): Fifty-four year old Byalistok born Yiddish poet Pesach Binetzki who made Aliyah in 1949 passed away today.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/01/peysekh-binetski-pesach-binetzki.html
1967(21st of Tevet, 5727): Jack Ruby, the man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jack-ruby-dies-before-second-trial
1967: Joshua Eilberg began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district.
1968(2ndof Tevet, 5728): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1968(2ndof Tevet, 5728): Seventy-five year old J. Max Weiss, the HUC trained Rabbi who led Temple Adas Emuno and the Washington Heights Free Synagogue while also teaching at the Academy for Higher Jewish Learning and who was the husband of Estelle M. Sternberger Weis, the mother of their daughter Minnetta passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/01/04/79931025.html?pageNumber=34
1968: It was reported today that “the second patient to undergo a hearts transplant operation” in South Africa was 58-year-old Dr. Philip Blaiberg, a Jewish dentist one of whose patients while he was serving in the South African Medical Corps during WW II was Louis Washkansky, the Jew who was the first heart transplant patient and whose daughter Jill is working as a volunteer on a kibbutz on Israel.
1969: Ernest Gruening, one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution completed his service as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1969: Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 17th District.
1969: Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1970(25thof Tevet, 5730): Parashat Shemot
1970(25th of Tevet, 5730): Fifty-seven-year-old Lester Francis Avnet, the oldest child of Celia Avnet and Russian born American businessman Charles Avnet and husband of the former Joan Grossman with whom head two daughters and a son, who helped to make “Avnet, Inc. into one of the country’s major electronic corporations” while serving as “a trustee of Brandeis University and of the Ameri can Federation of Arts, an overseer of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a governor of the Hebrew Union College ‐Jewish Institute of Religion and a former general chairman for the Metropolitan New York area of the United Jewish Appeal” passed away today.
1970: Jerry Herman’s musical “Mame” closed on Broadway after 1,508 performances.
1971: A funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the “Temple Israel meeting house” for eighty-year-old Lithuanian native and MIT graduate Joseph H. Cohen who was the “founder of the Atlantic Gelatin division of General Foods Corporation, the husband of the former Rose Stone with whom he had two sons and a daughter and an active member of the Jewish community was could be seen by his service as President of Temple Israel and a director of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
1973: Ed Koch completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 17th District.
1973: Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 18th District.
1973: Abner J. Mikva completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1973: Lester L. Wolf completed his services as Member of the U.S. of House of Representatives from New York’s 3rd District and began serving as a Member of the House from New York’s 6th District.
1973: Having lost in the Democratic primary, Emanuel Celler, one of the deans of the House of Representatives whose decade long career was a valiant fight for civil liberties and human dignity and against oppression from the Left and the Right completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1973: Elizabeth Holtzman began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1973: James Scheuer completed his service in Congress from New York’s 21stDistrict.
1973: Seymour Halpern finishes his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district.
1975: Stephen J. Solarz began serving in the United States House of Representatives as the Congressman from New York’s 13th District, a post he would hold until 1993.
1975: James Scheuer began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Congressman from New York’s 11th District.
1975: Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 10th Congressional District of Illinois.
1975: President Gerald Ford signed the Trade Reform Act which contained the Jackson-Vanik-Mills Amendment. The Amendment required any nation that wanted “most favored nation status” had to grant its citizens the right immigrate to the country of their choice. The Amendment was intended as a way of forcing the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave the USSR and was part of the campaign to “Free Russian Jews.”
1976(1stof Shevat, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1976(1stof Shevat, 5763): Eighty-five year old recording artist Irving Kaufman who began his career in 1914 passed away today.
http://www.gracyk.com/kaufman.shtml
1977: Ted Weiss assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 20th district
1977: Stan Lee and his partner “launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip today.
http://www.stanleefoundation.org/
1977(13th of Tevet, 5737): Avraham Ofer, Minister of Housing the cabinet of Yitzchak Rabin, passed away
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was seeking to establish a bloc of moderate Arab and Muslim states, like Turkey, that would accept Israel's self-rule proposal for the West Bank and Gaza as a transitional phase, leading eventually to these areas' fuller independence, preferably in close linkage to Jordan. Gush Emunim members settled at Karnei Shomron, on the Kalkilya-Nablus road. The Gush rejected Prime Minister Menachem Begin's assurances that his new peace plan would not affect the safety of the existing Jewish settlements in administered areas.
1978: “In a special government meeting called by Ariel Sharon, the government decides to authorize the establishment of three new settlements in Judea and Samaria and to further develop the exiting settlements in the northern Sinai by increasing the number of settlers and expanding the agricultural lands.”
1978: Birthdate of San Antonio, TX, native Brian Natkin the all-star tigh-end at UTEP who went on to play professionally for the Tennessee Titans and the St. Louis Rams.
1979: Joshua Eilberg completed his services a member of the U.S. House Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 4th district.
1981(27thof Tevet, 5741): Parashat Vaera
1981: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed his service as United States from Connecticut.
1981(27th of Tevet, 5741): Sixty-six year old University of Michigan and Columbia University trained anthropologist and social psychologist Marvin Opler, the Buffalo, NY born son of Arthur A. Opler and Fanny Coleman-Hass and the brother of anthropologist Morris Edward Opler passed away.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marvin-kaufman-opler
1981: Chuck Schumer began servicing in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1981: Jacob Javits completed his career as a member of the U.S. Senator from New York.
1981: Elizabeth Holtzman completed her service as a Member of the U.S. Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1981: Lester L. Wolfe finished his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district
1983(18th of Tevet, 5743): Forty-six year old Susan Stein Shiva, the daughter of Dr. Jules Stein and Doris Stein, the husband of Gil Shiva and the mother of Alexandra and Andrew Shiva passed away after losing her battle with breast cancer, the same malady that claimed her mother’s life two years earlier.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/05/obituaries/susan-stein-shiva.html
1983: James Scheuer completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House from New York’s 11th Congressional District and began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from New York’s 8th Congressional District.
1983: Jerry Nadler completed his service as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 69th district and began serving as the member from the 67thDistrict.
1984: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring female impersonator Danny La Rue as Dolly opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
1985(10thof Tevet, 5745): Asara B’Tevet
1985: The government of Israel confirmed the resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews. In a world where revisionists condemn the Zionist dream or at least pronounce it dead, this rescue operation served as poignant, pressing reminder of one of the reasons the Jewish state must continue to exist.
1987(2nd of Tevet): Shabbat Shel Chanukah – 8thday of Chanukah
1987(2nd of Tevet): Fifty-five year old David Maysles who along with his brother Albert formed a noted American documentary filmmaking team, passed away today.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151102045401/http://articles.latimes.com/1987-01-05/news/mn-2382_1_documentary-film
1987: The original production of “Smile,” a Marvin Hamlisch musical closed today after 48 performances.
1988: As part of the war against terrorists, Israel ordered 9 Palestinian "instigators" deported from West Beirut.
1988: The Reagan Administration, through an announcement by its State Department, withheld comment today on the Israeli air strikes into southern Lebanon. A State Department official said Administration officials monitoring weekend developments in the Middle East would assess the information about the air strike
1988(13th of Tevet, 5748): Rose Ausländer a Jewish German- and English language poet passed away.
1989: Steven Schiff assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.
1989: Eliot L. Engel assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 17th district.
1989: Nita Lowey assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 18th district.
1989: Joe Lieberman completed his service as the 21st Attorney General of Connecticut.
1989: Joe Lieberman began serving as the U.S. Senator from Connecticut.
1990: Ezer Weizmann is scheduled to leave today for Moscow, a visit that is a further sign of warming relations between the Soviet Union and Israel. Shimon Peres is planning a Soviet trip at the end of January or beginning of February.
1991: Israel reopened its consulate in the USSR after 23 years. The Soviets had broken off relations with Israel after the Six Day War. The Soviets alternately used its Jewish population as pawns or prisoners depending upon the vagaries of the Cold War. The cry of “Free Soviet Jewry” now seems like something out of the distant past.
1991: Pan American World Airways announced today that it was suspending flights to Tel Aviv and to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, because of surging insurance rates, a result of the crisis in the Middle East.
1992: Yasar Arafat demanded that the United States vote for a U.N. resolution that would “strongly deplore” Israel’s decision to deport a dozen Palestinians described as “inciters to violence.” The Israeli action followed the murder of four Israeli settlers by P.L.O. hit men over the past ten weeks.
1992: In the State Department office of Assistant Secretary Edward Djerejian, at the instigation of Director of Policy Planning Dennis Ross and with the concurrence of Richard Haass, a national security aide, the decision was made to unload on Israel as never before. PLO hit men had murdered four Israeli settlers in the past 10 weeks, provoking Israel to expel a dozen Palestinian inciters to violence. No Yasser Arafat was sending word that Arabs would boycott the peace talks unless the U.S. voted in the U.N. to strongly deplore the deportations.
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753): Asara B'Tevet
1993: Nita Lowey completed her term representing New York’s 20th Congressional District and began representing New York’s 18th Congressional District.
1993: Oregon political leader Vera Katz, the successful escapee from Hitler’s Europe and Brooklyn College grad who after marrying Mel Katz and giving birth to her son, journalist Jesse Katz began a creer that led to her starting to serve as the 49thMayor of Portland, OR.
1993: Stephen J. Solarz’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: James Haas Scheuer’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: Jerry Nadler stopped serving as a House Member from New York’s 17th Congressional District and began serving as a House Member from New York’s 8thCongressional District.
1993: Tammy Baldiwn began serving as a “Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from the 78thDistrict.
1993:"Catskills on Broadway" closes at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City after 452 performances
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753): An agent of the Shin Bet security service was stabbed and bludgeoned to death today, apparently by an Arab assailant, in a rare attack on a member of Israel's secretive internal intelligence agency. The body of Haim Nahmani, 25, was found in the stairwell of an apartment building in a Jewish neighborhood in West Jerusalem. A police statement said Mr. Nahmani had been "on active duty" when an assailant known to the security forces stabbed him repeatedly and battered him with a hammer. No further details were released.
1993: Bob Filner completed his service on the San Diego City Council and began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from California’s 50th District.
1993: At a building site in Holon, near Tel Aviv, attackers slashed the throat of a Jewish man, seriously wounding him. The police said they were searching for an Arab laborer from the West Bank who had fled the scene.
1993: The Associated Press reported that a pipe bomb exploded in the baggage hold of an Israeli bus outside Tel Aviv today. The police said no one had been injured on the bus, which was taking at least 40 people to Jerusalem from Haifa
1993: Junk bond king Michael Milkin was released from jail after 22 months.
1993: Herb Klein began serving as a member of the U.S. House Representatives from New Jersey’s 8thDistrict.
1993: Jane Harman began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 36thdistrict.
1993: The New York Times describes the Israeli Folk Dancing classes taught by Uri Aqua at the Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. of Mid-Westchester in Scarsdale and at Congregation Kneses in Port Chester, NY. Mr. Aqua, a Sabra, or native Israeli, came to this country in 1983, is a cantor at Beth Israel Synagogue in New Rochelle. But now he says he has a mission: to teach Israeli folk dancing, which he studied in Jerusalem.
1994: Sophie Masloff completed her service as the 56th Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA.
1995: Herb Klein completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 8th District.
1995: Howard Metzenbaum completed his second round of service as U.S. Senator from Ohio.
1997: Steve Rothman is sworn in to serve his first term in the House of Representatives representing New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District.
1998(5th of Tevet, 5758): Howard Gilman, the chairman of the Gilman Paper Company, who was a philanthropist and a collector of photographs and other art, died today on an estate near Jacksonville, Fla. Among the beneficiaries of his largess were Tel Aviv University, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
1999: Anthony Weiner began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 9thcongressional district.
1999: After six years, Jane Harman completed her service in the U.S. House of Representatives
1999: Israel detains, and later expels, 14 members of Concerned Christians. Concerned Christians is described as apocalyptic Christian cult that believed the Al-Aqsa mosque has to be destroyed to facilitate the Second Coming.
1999: Chuck Schumer began serving as a Senator from New York.
1999: The New York Times features a review of Life of the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Realityby Jewish critic Neal Gabler.
1999: Tammy Baldwin began serving as a “Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd Disrict.
2000: Israeli and Syrian leaders meet today as they resume American-brokered negotiations ambitiously aimed at reaching a peace accord by this summer.
2001: Frank Lautenberg completed a career in the U.S. from New Jersey that had begun in 1982.
2001(8th of Tevet, 5761: Sports broadcaster and youthful track & field star, Marty Glickman passed away at the age of 83.
2001: Jane Harman returned to Congress as a Representative from California’s 36thdistrict.
2001: Representative Shelley Berkley begins her second term as the 107th Congress holds its first sessions. Berkley is the first Jewish woman to represent Nevada in the U.S. House of Representatives.
2001: Eric Cantor began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s 7thDistrict.
2001: Nita Lowey began serving as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
2002: Operation’s Noah’s Ark began this morning when Israeli naval commandos boarded a Palestinian freighter during the second intifada loaded with tons of arms including Katyusha rockets, and anti-tank weapons without firing a shot.
2002: “The world press eulogized Julia Phillips, the first woman to win an Academy Award as a producer, following her death on January 1, 2002”
http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/03/2002/julia-phillips
2003(29th of Tevet, 5763): College and professional football coaching great Sid Gillman passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/obituaries/04GILL.html
2003: Fundtech Ltd., whose software helps banks transfer money electronically, said today that it would cut jobs as it combined units that handle development, professional services and customer services. Fundtech, has headquarters in Ramat Gan, Israel, and Jersey City. Shares of Fundtech, controlled by Clal Industries and Investments, which is based in Tel Aviv, have dropped 19 percent in the last year as reduced demand forced the company to sell its software for less.
2003: Jerry Abramson began serving as the first May of Louisville Metro, a governmental created by the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County, KY.
2003: Nita Lowey completed her term as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
2003: Bob Filner began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from California’s 51stCongressional District.
2003: Norma Coleman began serving as United States from Minnesota.
2003: Frank Lautenberg as is sworn in as U.S. Senator from New Jersey.
2004: Four Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Army here today in Nablus which has been a center of militant activity since the current cycle of violence started in September 2000. An army spokesman said the operation, the largest now under way, was intended to dismantle a terrorist network in Nablus, after 18 attempted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians originated in the city over the last month.
2005 (22nd of Tevet, 5765): Eighty-seven year old Will Eisner passed away. Born in 1917, Eisner first knew fame from The Spirit, a weekly comic strip appearing in newspapers from 1940-1945, where he nurtured a young Jules Feiffer. After being drafted in 1945, he created the Joe Dope series of instructional comics for soldiers. He is generally credited with the creation of the graphic novel when he published A Contract with God in 1978. He also wrote Comics & Sequential Artin 1985, a groundbreaking academic overview of those subjects. (As reported by Sarah Boxer)
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2005/01/13/will-eisner
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/will-eisner-a-pioneer-of-comic-books-dies-at-87.html
2005: Vera Katz completed twelve years of service as the Mayor of Portland, Oregon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/obituaries/vera-katz-mayor-who-oversaw-portlands-flowering-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
2005: Chuck Schumer began serving as the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.
2006: Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to three criminal felony counts related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials, in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
2007: Chuck Schumer began serving as Vice Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
2008: “Psalm Song: Healing through the Art of Carol Hamoy” opens at the Jewish Museum of Florida.
2008: The Rabbinical Court of Appeals is scheduled to convene for a meeting that will decide whether or not Rabbi Yona Metzgeer resigns as Israel’s Ashkenazi Rabbi in the wake of a recommendation by Justice Minister Daniel Friedman that the chief rabbi be impeached for alleged breach of trust and fraud.
2008: A Katyusha is fired from Gaza at the city of Ashkelon, ten miles away. For the first time this major Israeli city has been attacked by Palestinians using a rocket.
2009: In Cedar Rapids, The traditional Saturday Morning Minyan at Temple Judah enters its eighth year with 19 people in attendance (an amazing turn-out for such a small congregation)!
2009: As the stain of the Madoff financial scandal spreads the New York Times reported that the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Madoff’s trading firm has made an urgent request to the court for unusually broad authority to subpoena witnesses and documents because of the “vast scale” of this self-described record Ponzi scheme.
2009: Israeli ground troops entered Gaza tonight, following a week of aerial strikes aimed at ending rocket fire on Israel's southern communities.
2009: Three New York office holders - Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, U.S. Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Mayor Bloomberg - boarded a plane bound for Israel late Saturday night for a trip designed to show support and concern for the citizens of Israel who are under missile attack from Gaza.
2009: An Israeli film, “Waltz with Bashir,” was named the best picture of 2008 by The National Society of Film Critics at its annual meeting in New York.
2009: The Des Moines Register reports on the work of Colorado playwright Don Fried to create a stage drama based on events at Postville, Iowa.
2009: Jared Polis assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
2009: Norman Coleman completed his term as U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
2009: John Adler completed his service as a member of the New Jersey Senate from the 6thdistrict
2009: John Adler began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 3rddistrict.
2009: Eric Cantor began serving as the Minority Whip in the House of Representatives.
2009: A photographic record was created of the synagogue at Kfar Baram which had inspired architect Arnold W. Brunner’s plans for the Frank Memorial synagogue named in honor of philanthropist Henry S. Frank and located on the grounds of what is now the Albert Einstein Synagogue in Philadelphia, PA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S._Frank_Memorial_Synagogue#/media/File:Ruins_of_the_Ancient_Synagogue_at_Bar%27am.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S._Frank_Memorial_Synagogue#/media/File:Frank_Synogue_Philly.JPG
2010: An exhibition styled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by the Yeshiva University Museum comes to a close. Born in 1912, Braginsky was a self-taught craftsman who carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mizrach plates, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks, spice containers, many of which are on display as part of this exhibit. Braginsky passed away in 1999.
2010: The Washington Post included 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 the recently released paperback edition of Sashenka by Simon Montefiore.
2010: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including A Literary Bible: An Original Translation by David Rosenberg.
2011: Steve Grossman began serving as the 57th Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts.
2011: MesorahDC which provides young, single professionals with exciting opportunities in Jewish enrichment is scheduled to present Cafe Nite at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.
2011: A romantic play entitled “Apples from the Desert” is scheduled to be performed tonight at the Jerusalem Theatre at 20 Rehov Marcus.
2011:University of Minnesota graduate and future U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Richard Nides, the Duluth, MN born son of Shirley Gavronsky and Arnold Richard Nides began serving as 2ndUnited States Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
2011: Dozens of English-speaking Bar-Ilan University students demonstrated in front of the university administration building today, demanding rights promised to them as new olim. Wielding signs with slogans like "We left our families, what more do you want?" and "What? I don't understand you," the students rallied after the administration raised the price of translating exams into English to NIS 285, and limited the translations to first-year students alone.
2011: Despite last-minute efforts by President Shimon Peres, Russian President Dimitri Medvedev canceled his planned visit to Israel in February, Beit Hanassi announced this afternoon.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): Israeli actor Yosef Shiloach passed away today at the age of 69 after a long battle with cancer. Shiloach was known for Israeli comedy film classics such as Alex Holeh Ahava, Sapiches, and Hagiga B'Snuker. A year ago, Shiloach was awared a life-time achievement award in at Jerusalem Film Festival. Shiloach was born in Kurdistan in 1941 and moved to Israel at the age of 9. He was one of the first graduates of the Beit Zvi acting school, and in 1964 he appeared in his first film - Mishpachat Simchon. Shiloach went on to star in dozens of films and television shows, mostly portraying comic characters, among them caricatures of a Mizrahi man with a heavy accent. He also participated in a number of American films, including Rambo III and The Mummy Lives. He was considered a left-wing activist, and has called for Arab-Jewish coexistence as well as equal rights for Mizrahi Israelis.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): Dorothy Silk, a professional leader of volunteers and a volunteer until her last years, died today in East Lansing, Mich., at 90. In 2008, at age 88, Silk was named one of "Eight Over Eighty," an annual event sponsored by Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit recognizing people over 80 whose efforts showed dedication to "tikkun olam," or "repair of the world."
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lsj/obituary.aspx?n=dorothy-m-silk&pid=147608432#fbLoggedOut
2011: The Jewish community of St. Martin opened its first synagogue since the 18th century. The synagogue, part of a new Chabad Center operated by Rabbi Moshe and Sara Chanowitz, is based in a 1,200-square-foot office space that once housed a church. Opening ceremonies were held today. The Chanowitzes moved to the Dutch-owned Caribbean island in 2009 to serve its 300 Jewish residents. The Jewish population swells to 1,000 or so during the tourist season. Jews first came to the island as refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and the community grew during the 16th and 17th centuries. The lone synagogue was abandoned in 1781 and later destroyed by a hurricane. A historic Jewish cemetery also was recently discovered, according to chabad.org.
2011: Dr. Stephen Katz, a veterinarian and a Republican began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 94th District,
2011: Jerry Abramson completed his term as the Mayor of Louisville Metro, KY.
2011: John Adler completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 3rd district.
2011: Thanks to a change in political fortunes, Eric Cantor went from being Minority Whip to Majority Whip.
2012: Grace Hannah is scheduled to appear at the Blaze Bar at 23 Rechov Hillel.
2012: Geraldo “Rivera began hosting a weekday radio talk show on 77 WABC in New York.
2012: Yair Lehman and Inbal Lori are scheduled to perform “The Slaughter Cow,” a comedic show about all topics from politics to the Torah, at Bet Avi Chai.
2012: On the night of the Iowa Caucuses, Stephen G. Bloom did not appear on The Colbert Report as he said he would possibly because of the negative response to his article “Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life” which apparently was a continuation of his negative view of the state that provided him with an academic home.
2012: European rabbis told MKs today that laws prohibiting kosher slaughter will lead to banning circumcision.
2012: Josh Shapiro completed his services a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 153rd district and began serving as a member of the Montgomery Country Board of Commissioners.
2012: Israel and Palestinian negotiators meeting in Amman today for the first direct talks in 16 months agreed to continuing talking, with another round of talks scheduled in Jordan next week.
2013: “A Hole in the Moon and Three Shorts” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.
2013: Jerry Nadler completed his service a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 8th district.
2013: Jerry Nadler assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New York’s 10th district.
2013: Beth Jacob Congregation is scheduled to host a debate between the L.A. Mayoral candidates.
2013: Nita Lowry began serving as the Representative from New York’s 17thCongressional District.
2013: Today “Israel’s National Library unveiled the cache of recently purchased documents that run the gamut of life experiences, including biblical commentaries, personal letters and financial records.” (As reported by Aron Heller)
2013: Steve Rothman completed his services as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 9th district.
2013: Approximately 3,000 haredim were enlisted into the IDF and will begin active service by August 2013, Maj.-Gen. Orna Barbivai told Israel Radio today.
2013: Israeli doctors have developed a portable device which they say can detect strokes, the third biggest killer in the western world. The prototype, worn on patients' heads, monitors brain waves and identifies any discrepancies in their pattern.
2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “Excellence-The Future Generation” featuring outstanding composers and performers from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
2014: “Copying Beethoven” and “Vivre sa vie” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival
2014: “Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3 interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency, and said that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society.”
2014(2nd of Shevat, 5774): Ninety-two year old Oscar winning producer Saul Zaentz passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/us/saul-zaentz-producer-of-oscar-winning-movies-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0
2014(2nd of Shevat, 5774): Seventy-eight year old publisher Tom Rosenthal passed away today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10590405/Tom-Rosenthal-obituary.html
2014: The body of Menachem “Max” Stark “was found smoldering in a dumpster outside a Getty station on Cutter Mill Road in Great Neck, New York” today.
http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/burned-body-in-dumpster-might-be-kidnapped-hasid-cops/
2014: A Wall Street Journal report published today stated that U.S. officials believe members of Hezbollah are smuggling” “components of the Yahkont advanced guided missiles” which the terror group could use to attack Haifa and Ashdod into their bases in Syria or Lebanon. (As reported by Yoav Zitun)
2014: “Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3 interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency, and said that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society. “
2015: Republican Lee Zeldin began serving as member of the U.S. House Representatives from New York’s 1st Congressional District.
2015: “The Imitation Game” is scheduled to be shown in Jerusalem today.
2015: Chuck Schumer completed his service as Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present "The Glorious Sound of Two Pianos" --The Jerusalem Piano Duo: Shir Semmel- Dror Semmel
2015: Under the leadership of Lena Gilbert, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the third annual Cedar Rapids Opera Recital featuring six principal singers from Don Giovanni
2015: Andre Pshenichnikov who was arrested in the Sinai Peninsula in January 2013 after crossing into Egypt with no identification “was released from prison and repatriated” in Israel today.
2015: As a cold front hit Israel today “the first substantial snowfall descended on Mt. Hermon and rain fell in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. (As reported by Justin Jalil)
2016: “Violins of Hope,” an exhibition “created by the Maltz Museum, featured violins that survived the Holocaust and were restored by Amnon Weinstein” came to an end today.
2016: Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in an interview with Army Radio today said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to provide security for the citizens of Israel. “I felt as though the man who was standing in front of me was frustrated that his thesis has blown up in his face and he has no idea how to solve security problems,” said Huldai referring to Netanyahu. (As reported by JP Staff)
2016: A the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Abandoned at Srebrenica: Photographs From the Aftermath” is scheduled to close today
2016: An Israeli man in his 20’s was wounded tonight “in a shooting attack in the Har Hevron region of Judea” just two hours after and “Arab terrorist” stabbed a man waiting for a bus in southeast Jerusalem.
2016: Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, of Jerusalem and “a minor, who cannot be named because of his age” were today “indicted in the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma.”
2016: “YiddishSchool Florida” is scheduled to open today at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL.
2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers including Abba Eban: A Biography by Asaf Siniver and an interview “Jewish Deportee on Persecution, Past and Present” in which 87 year old Marceline Loridan-Ivens who had been deported to Birkenau at the age of 15 expresses her belief “that the lessons of World War II are not being forgotten because ‘these lessons were never learned.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/books/a-french-deportee-life-at-auschwitz-and-history-repeating.html?ref=books
2017: Dr. Alyssa Quint the Vilna Collections Scholar-in-Residence at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to teach the first session of “Modern Yiddish Theatre.”
2017: Harvard trained attorney and American University professor of law Jamie Raskin, the Washington, DC born son of former JFK aide Marcus Raskin and author Barbara (Bellman) Raskin began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s 8thdistrict.
2017: Josh Karlip is scheduled to teach the first session of “At the Edge of the Abyss: Jewish Intellectual Responses to Nazism, 1933-1940.”
2017: Steven Smith is scheduled to teach the first session of “What Kind of Jew Was Spinoza?”
2017: The Palm Beach Synagogue was scheduled to host a screening of “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah” which “explores the arduous 12-year journey that led to the creation of the French iconoclast’s “Shoah,” a nine-hour-plus examination of the Holocaust.”
2017: Republican David Frank Kustoff began serving as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District.
2017: Tammy Baldwin, the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin began serving as Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference.
2017: As Congress convenes, Chuck Schumer began serving as Senate Minority Leader.
2017: “The 115th US Congress, which convened for the first time today, is 5.6 percent Jewish, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Of the Democrats’ 28 Jewish members, 20 are serving in the House, and eight in the Senate. Jews thus make up a higher proportion of the upper chamber than the lower, holding 8% of the Senate versus 5% of the House. Out of the 293 Republicans who make up the new Congress, two are Jewish.” (As reported by Eric Corellessa)
2017: “Israeli spelunkers stumbled across a menorah and a cross etched into the limestone walls of an ancient cistern, both of which are believed to date back centuries, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement today.
2018: Following allegations of sexual harassment Showtime followed in the footsteps of NBC and MSNBC, Showtime replaced Mark Halperin
2018: In Memphis, at Temple Israel, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to examine the life of Sigmund Freud as part of the series on “Great Jewish Renegades.”
2018(16thof Tevet, 5778): Eighty-nine year old Fred Bass, the son Pelican Book shop owner Benjamin Bass and Shirley Vogel, who made the Strand Bookstore into a New York Institution passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/obituaries/fred-bass-strand-bookstore-dies-at-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
2019: Adam Schiff began serving as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
2019: In Arlington, VA, at Congregation Etz Hayim, Rabbi Lia Bass is scheduled to lead a learn-over- lunch study of the Book of Joshua.
2019: Harvard trained attorney Andrew “Andy” Saul Levin, the nephew of Senator Carol Levin and the so Sander Levin and Vicki Schalfter began serving as a Member of the U.S Representatives from Michigan’s 9th District, a position that had been held by his father.
2019: In Pittsburgh, PA, the home of the Steelers who “just donated $70,000 to help the Jewish community” in the wake of the slaughter at the synagogue, Chabad of the South Hills is scheduled to host a lecture on “Tip to Authentic Happiness” as part of their Torah and Teach Study Group.
2020: “The Song of Names,” the movie version of the novel by Norman Lebrecht with a score by Howard Shore is scheduled to open today at the Clay Theatre in San Francisco.
2020: Ira Strizhevska is scheduled to be interred this morning at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in New York.
2020: It was reported today that Israel, Greece and Cyprus have agreed to build pipelines that would that would transport gas from Israel’s Levantine Basin offshore fields to Cyprus, Crete, the Greek mainland and ultimately to Italy.
2020: As the United States sends in additional troops to protect American facilities in Baghdad from what are reported to be Iranian backed proxy forces, other nations in the region, including Israel, are wondering today if this represents what could be a major military confrontation.
2020: “The exhibition, titled “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.,” is scheduled to come to an end today at the museum of Jewish Heritage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/arts/design/auschwitz-museum-of-jewish-heritage.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Strongman: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and the recently released paperback edition of This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (and Me) by Marisa Meltzer.
2021: Jewish LearningWorks is scheduled to present a Jewish Genealogy Cline with “Experts from the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society answering questions online about researching your roots.
2021: Temple Sinai of Marblehead is schedule to present online “Rabbinic Responses to Past Pandemics with Dr. Levi Cooper.”
2021: “Tamar Branitzky, “a textile designer who is mainly engaged in the research of new surfaces and prints which are created by exposing various materials such as silk, cotton, linen, paper and leather to various chemical processes causing the material exposed to become something special and yet remain a flexible fabric for various uses is scheduled to discuss online “Israeli Tech: Style – Using Unique Materials.”
2022: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to present online “The Barry Sisters and Yiddish Swing during which “broadcaster and music writer Andy Muchin explores the career of Clara and Minnie Bagelman and the music they helped popularize.”
2022: Congregation Beth Elohim is scheduled to present online “Simcha Circles: New Beginnings in January.”
2022: Based on announcement made yesterday, as of today people over the age of sixty and medical workers will be able to receive a 4th dose of COVID vaccine.
2022: The holiday closing of The Breman, including the Cuba Family Archive, the Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education and the galleries is scheduled to come to an end today.
2022: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's governing coalition is scheduled to face a challenge tonight when it will attempt to pass the controversial electricity law which would “enable tens of thousands of illegally built homes to be hooked up to the national electricity grid, as well as to water and to telephone lines.” (As reported by Gil Hoffman)
January 3
106 BCE: Birthdate of Marcus Tullius, the Roman statesman and orator. From the Jewish point of view he was just one more anti-Semitic intellectual. “He denounced Judaism as a ‘barbarous superstition.’” He defended a Roman official who had stolen contributions that we supposed to be shipped to the Temple at Jerusalem. He decried the influence of Jews in Rome cautioning one group to speak quietly lest they be overheard by the Jews. Unfortunately, when I had difficulty translating Cicero in high school, my father would not accept my excuse that Cicero was an anti-Semite so how could he expect to do well in Latin class.
1322: The reign of King Phillip V, also called Phillip the Long or Phillip the Tall during which “300,000 men, headed by a deposed priest and a renegade monk began their desultory march to the Holy Land: which included ravaging the Jews of Navarre, slaying 6,000 Jews in Estella and laying siege to Verdun where the Jews took their own lives rather than the victims of this so-called “Shepherd’s Crusade” came to an end today.
1521: Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. Leo is portrayed as the epitome of Church corruption – the great seller of indulgences. But Leo also provided protection for the Jews living in the Papal States. On one occasion he defied King Louis of France by not burning Jewish texts and he actually encouraged a Christian printer to publish a complete, uncensored copy of the Talmud. Luther is portrayed as the great reformer and father of the Reformation. Jews certainly benefited from the Protestant Reformation since was in the Protestant Netherlands and protestant England that the Jews found refuge and had a chance to grow and develop. However, Luther’s version of the Protestant Reformation included a large dose of anti-Semitism that would help fuel the fires of what became the Holocaust. History is not always black or white, but can be a whole lot of gray.
1571: Joachim II Hector, the Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, who allowed the Jews to return to the Margavite after having been banished because of false accusations of host desecration, passed away.
1598: In a letter from the Sultan to the Ottoman leaders in Jerusalem, he expressed his approval of the fact that the local Muslims locked the doors of the Nachmanides (Ramban) Synagogue, since, "the noisy ceremonies of the Jews in accordance with their false rites hinder our pious devotion and divine worship." Because of this the door was locked and sealed. The Sultan approved of the closing of the building, and he then ordered the synagogue to be annexed to the Muslims.
1632(19thof Tevet, 5392): Abraham Hayyim Schor Ben Naphtali Hirsch the Galician rabbi and Talmudist passed a way today “at Belz, a small town near Lemberg.”
1676: Frederick William of Brandenburg issued a decree safeguarding the privileges of the Jews of Berlin.
1690(22ndof Tevet, 5450): Famed Lithuanian Rabbi Hillel ben Naphtali Zevi passed away. Born in 1615, he served as a Rabbi in several towns throughout Lithuania. He was an important communal leader since he was a delegate to the Council of Four Lands. He was the author of Bet Hillel which was a major commentary on the code of Jewish law known as the Shulchon Oruch.
1765(10thof Tevet, 5525): Asara B’Tevet
1769: Birthdate of Jacob Herzfeld, a native of Dessau, Germany who studied medicine at Liepzig before become an actor and theatrical manager. He passed away in 1826.
1777: Erev Shabbat, George Washington and his small, shivering band defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton, a victory that was vital to keep the Revolutionary cause which was supported by most American Jews, alive.
1796: Seventy-six year old “Naphtali Hirtz be Feivel” was buried today at the “Alderney Road (Globe Rd) Jewish Cemetery.”
1780: Birthdate of Bavarian native Fanny Reiling, the wife of Michael Baerl Lilienthal with whom she had eight children.
1784: In Newport, RI, Rachel Mears and Moses Isaacks gave birth to Richa Isaacks.
1797: “The Treaty of Tripoli, first treaty between the United States and Tripoli (now Libya) to secure commercial shipping rights and protect American ships” which included Article 11 stating that "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" was signed for a second time today at Algiers after having been originally signed in Tripoli in November of 1796.
1804: In Warrenton, NC, Rebecca Mears Myers and Jacob Mordecai gave birth to West Point graduate Alfred Mordecai, the commander of the arsenal at Washington, DC during the war with Mexico and husband of Sarah Ann Hays with whom he had seven children including West Point Graduate and Civil War hero Alfred Mordecai, Jr who rose to the rank of Brigadier General.
http://americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/PDF/1958_10_02_00_falk.pdf
1811(7thof Tevet, 5571): Esther Lopez, the daughter of Aaron Lopez and the wife of Mordecai Gomez passed away today in New York city.
1811: In New Orleans, Pierre Brugman who was from Curaçao and of Dutch–Jewish Sephardic ancestry and Puerto Rican Isabel Duliebre gave birth to businessman and leader in the movement for Puerto Rico’s independence Mathias Brugman
1816(2ndof Tevet, 5576): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1821(29thof Tevet, 5581): While serving in his 50th year as the “Chief Cantor of the Jewish Congregation of Berlin, Aaron Beer passed away today.
1822: Rachel and Moses Joseph Cashmore gave birth to Esther Cashmore who had three children --James, Adolph and Rosalie – with her second husband Samuel Adolph Jonas
1823: In Charleston, SC, this evening, Rabbi Peixotto officiated at the wedding of N.H. Hart and Sara Moses, the daughter of the late Joseph Moses.
1824(3rdof Shevat, 5584): Parashat Vaera
1824(3rdof Shevat, 5584): Fifty-seven-year-old Montreal merchant Samuel David, the son of Lazarus David and the husband of Sarah Hart who reached the rank of Lt. Colonel while serving during the War of 1812 passed away today.
1825: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first engineering college in the U.S. is opened in Troy, New York. Today its 4,000 undergrad student body includes approximately 500 Jewish students.
1826: In Berlin, “a public school with four classes” was today under the direction of Leopold Zunz.
1827: Judah Joseph Moryoseph married Luna de Raphael Meldola today.
1830: Jacob Barrow Montefiore and Justina Lydia Montefiore gave birth to Eliezer / Leslie Jacob Montefiore.
1832: In London, Ellen Alice Jacobs and Gabriel Simmons gave birth to Fanny Simmons.
1832: Schiee Jaffé and his first wife Ernestine gave birth to Moritz Jaffe.
1834: Birthdate of Leon Judah Galipoliti.
1835(2ndof Tevet, 5595): Parashat Miketz; Eighth Day of Chanukah
1844: Rabbi Rosenfelt officiated at the wedding of Mr. Abrahams and Miss Elizabeth F. Joseph of Charleston.
1844: In London, Rebecca Crawcour and Aaron Hart gave birth to Phoebe Hart.
1846: In London, Hannah Isaacs and David Piza gave birth to Judah Piza.
1848: In Châlons-en-Champagne, France, Mayes and Henriette Neumark gave birth to Alfred Neymark, the husband of Jeanne Neymark and “editor of the Revue Contemporaine and founder of Le Rentier an economic and financial paper.”
1853: “The Affairs in Europe” column published today reported that Parisians are amused at the “Protestant rigors in Germany against the Jews” in reaction to “the event of December 2, 1851…” The “event of December 2, 1851” is a reference to the overthrow of the Second French Republic by Louis Napoleon who had himself crowned Emperor on December 2, 1852.
1854: Sir George Grey, who hired Samuel Joseph, an Anglo-Jew from London as his interpreter” today completed his service as the third Governor of New Zealand
1855(13th of Tevet, 5615): Forty-two year old Henry Edward Goldsmid passed away today in Cairo. Born in London in 1812, he spent most of his career serving in India in various positions with the East India Company.
1858: Judah Touro’s fourth Yahrzeit was observed this afternoon at the Green Street Synagogue in NYC.
1858: As she grew weaker, Rachel Felix completed a final letter to her father around 11 in the morning. At 8 o'clock a dozen Jews arrived from Nice to be with Rachel Felix in her last hours. Sometime after 10 pm, two women and one man approached Rachel's bed and and began chanting prayers for the dying Jewess.
1858 (17th of Tevet, 5618): Elisabeth Rachel Felix, known simply as “Rachel,” the French actress and singer passed away at the age of 36. “Élisabeth Rachel Félix was the second of the six children of Alsatian Jewish peddlers, Jacob (Jacques) and Esther Hayyah (Thérèse) Félix, and a French citizen under the Civic Emancipation, Rachel always remained profoundly in phase with the Jews’ entry into and participation in modernity. Although singular, her career was characteristic of the collective experience of the second generation of Jews born after the Emancipation and who participated fully in French social, economic, political and cultural life. Furthermore, for many French people, Rachel personified the great allegorical figures of Tragedy, History and the Republic. Her example illustrates the extent to which an often passionate but at any rate profound and intimate adhesion to French culture was an essential component in the construction of emancipated French Judaism. In Rachel we find all the cultural and political paradoxes and contradictions of her time. She was a symbol of legitimist and republican virtue in equal measure. Her performance as La Marseillaise had the public in raptures in 1848. But if she exercised such fascination it was also because she personified the social ascension of the lower classes, and was proud of it. Never hiding her humble origins and always asserting the importance of her family ties, she worked furiously at educating and cultivating herself and modeling her image. But despite her aspiration to affluence and respectability, she could never avoid details of her private life fuelling the whiff of scandal that clung to her name. Although never developing a critical awareness of the condition of women in the society of her time, she was loath to espouse the model of the bourgeois, cultivated woman defined by the notables of her time – married, a mother, either discreet or ceasing to appear on stage – and constantly asserted her desire to remain independent in order to devote herself fully to her art.
The Rachel phenomenon in many ways transcends that of the successful actress. Many biographies of her were written, and she became one of the most famous women of her century. Other artists, men and women, may also have left their mark on their time, but Rachel forged a new model of the actress and woman.” As one reads this entry, one gets a sense of how “French” French Jews felt themselves which provides understanding to the depth of shock and dismay felt at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
1862: In Paddington, English businessman Jonah Nathan and Miriam Jacob Nathan gave birth to Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Matthew Nathan, the brother of Major F.L. Nathan and Sir Nathaniel Nathan.
1863(12th of Tevet, 5623): Parsashat Vayechi
1863: Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington and went to meet with Cincinnati congressman John Addison Gurley to get his help in arranging a meeting with President Lincoln.
1864: Four days after she had passed away, Jamaica born Rosetta Micholls, the wife of Edward Emanuel Micholls with whom she had had eight children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1865: Today, Herman Bendell, the Albany, NY born on of Elias Bendell and the former Hannah Stern, who had served as volunteer in the Union Army in 1861 before going back to graduate from Albany Medical College, was made a surgeon the Volunteer Infantry which led to his being brevetted as a Lt. Col.
1866: Sir Saul Samuel completed his first term as Treasurer of New South Wales.
1868: According to today’s issue of “The Jewish Sentinel,” an eight page weekly published in Philadelphia, Maimonides College has been operating in Philadelphia since November 4, 1867 “under a charter of the Hebrew Education Society” led by Rabbi Isaac Lesser who is the school’s Provost or President.
1868: Philadelphian Myer Asch, who had reached the rank of Colonel while serving with the Union Army during the Civil War was elected Senior Vice Commander of the George G. Meade Post, Number 1, Grand Army of the Republic.
1871(10th of Tevet, 5631): Asara B’Tevet
1871: Jakob Löwith was elected unanimously to the community board in Pilsen.
1873: Eide and Ephraim Leib Moshewitz gave birth to Jacob Moshewitz.
1873: In Philadelphia, Celia Racuher Goldfinger and Charles Ignatz Goldfinger gave birth to Sallie Goldfinger who became Sallie Kahan when she married Max B. Kahane in 1889.
1876(6th of Tevet, 5636): Sixty-five year old Sir Anthony de Rothschild, 1st Baronet, the second son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, passed away today. He took on much of the responsibility for the family’s banking business, was the first President of the United Synagogue and was known as an art collector and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He died without a male heir, so his title transferred to his nephew Nathan Mayer Rothschild.
1877: Today Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the Rome, NY born son of Benjamin Bloomngdale and Hanna Weil married Adele Bernheimer as he continued a career that included serving President of the Retail Dry Good Association, Republican presidential elector and director of the “Jewish Proectory.
1879: It was reported today that a commission appointed at the recent convention of American Hebrew Congregations to consider plans to establish one central college to train Rabbis in the United States is meeting in Philadelphia. The commission includes Rabbis Gottheil and Einhorn from New York and L.M. Demibtz of Louisville, KY. Currently there are at least three such colleges located in New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, Ohio.
1879: In Berlin, “theatre conductor Paul Abarbanell and Marie Abarbanell” gave birth to opera star Lina Abarbanell
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Abarbanell-Lina
1880: Birthdate of Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the Central Asian musician Ari Babakhanov served as “court vocalist”.
1882: In Milwaukee, WI, Isaac David Adler, a prosperous wholesale manufacturer of men's clothing, and Therese Hyman Adler gave birth to their only son David Adler, the noted American architect
1882: In Shanghia, Isaac “Ned” Ezra, the merchant whose name was given to Ezra Road and his wife gave birth to the first of the nine children, Edward Isaac Ezra.
1883(24thof Tevet, 5643): Barrister and Jewish communal leader Morris Simeon Oppenheim, the son of a London merchant who was called to the Bar in 1858 and served as “Secretary of the Great Synagogue for nearly 25 years” passed away today.
1883: Birthdate of British political leader Clement Attlee, a member of the Labor Party who served as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951. He replaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister shortly after VE Day when the Laborites defeated the Conservatives in the first Parliamentary elections since the start of World War II. Talk about ingratitude. In what seemed like unnecessary cruelty, the Atlee Government continued to bar Jews from immigrating to Palestine. The government pursued an active war of suppression against the Zionists and made it clear that the Laborites had no intention in honoring the promise of the Balfour Declaration. Faced with financial bankruptcy and war weariness, Atlee began dismember the British Empire which meant surrendering the Palestine Mandate as well as the colony of India.
1886: In San Francisco, Henrietta and William Schwartz gave birth to investment banker and broker Sidney Leopold “Leo” Schwartz, husband of Alice R. Schwartz and father of Marie Louise an Elizabeth Schwartz who was also President of the Sidney L and Alice Schwartz Foundation.
https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/C0258855
1887: Twenty-four-year-old Columbia trained attorney Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, the Rome, NY born n son of Benjamin and Hannah (Weil) Bloomingdale and Republican Party member married Adele Bernheimer today.
1887: In San Francisco, Marcus Schiller and others formally established the Beth Israel congregation with forty male members.
1888: Birthdate of Brooklyn native Abraham Hurwitz, the editor of the Reading (PA) Times and columnist for the Miami Herald.
1888: Opening of the 111th New York State Legislature in which Jacob Cantor served as a member of the York State Senate.
1890: Two days after he had passed away, 37 year old David Lehman, the German born “walking stick maker” who was the husband of Annie Lehmann and the father of Marcus, Sophia and Nathan Lehman, was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.”
1890: “Trouble Over A School” published today described the opposition of Jewish citizens on the Lower East Side to the establishment of a school by Reverend Morgan of St. Mark’s which some of them “regard as movement to undermined the Jewish faith.”
1891: Birthdate of poet and author Osip E Mandelstam. A native of Warsaw, Mandelstam grew up in the comfortable middle class Jewish home that was described as not being very religious. The ups and downs of his career and posthumous honor mirrored the fate of many other intellectuals living in the Soviet Union. He died in the Gulag in 1938.
1891: Among the charities that the Brooklyn Board of Estimate said would be receiving public funds were the Eastern District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($155.86); Western District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($88.96) and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum ($319.06).
1892: It was reported today that among the forty Europeans being held as prisoners by the Mahdists are eight Jews.
1892(3rd of Tevet, 5652): Sixty-six year old Julius Gerson Brooks, the husband of Fanny Brooks and the father of George, Eveline, Edgar and Milton Brooks passed away today in San Remo, Italy after which he was buried at the B’Nai Israel Cemetery in Salt Lake City, UT.
https://jwa.org/westernpioneers/brooks-fanny
1893: In Alliance, NJ, Anna Saprho and George Sergius Seldes gave birth to Gilbert Vivian Seldes the writer and American “social critic.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10948007009489469?journalCode=hcbq19
1893: It was reported today that Henry Mazinsky, the young boy who had contracted typhus, had been at The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory for four months “under the constant care of the attendants” and how he contracted the disease remains a mystery.
1893: It was reported today that The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory is currently caring for 150 boys.
1894: In New York City, Joseph and Henriette (Schwab) Altenberg gave birth to Columbia University trained Chemical Engineer, who began serving as Treasurer and General Manager of the Gaskill Chemical Corporation in 1923 and who married May J. Shapiro in 1918.
1894: A meeting was held this evening at the Jewish Theological Seminary “for the purpose of founding a society” that will improve the observance of Shabbat.
1894(25th of Tevet, 5654): Adolph L. Sanger, a native of Baton Rouge, LA who graduated from Columbia Law School in 1864 following which he forged a successful career as an attorney, politician and leader of the Jewish community passed away today.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C12FC345D15738DDDAD0894D9405B8485F0D3
1894: The Footlight Club provided the entertainment for a fundraiser held at the Berkley Lyceum for the benefit of the Louis Downtown Sabbath and Daily School.
1895: Birthdate of British born Protestant archaeologist James Leslie Starkey who was “the chief excavator of the first archaeological expedition at Lachish.
1895: It was reported today that Aaron Leiman was at work at cloak factory when a fire broke out in his apartment killing his wife and two children.
1895: It was reported today that the tenement house at 25 Pitt Street that burned yesterday “was inhabited entirely by the families of” Jewish “cloakmakers and tailors” most of whom are suffering financially due to the cloakmakers’ strike.
1895: Colonel David S. Brown who will be leaving on trip that will take him to Egypt and Palestine was the guest of honor at a dinner at the Colonial Club.
1895: Herzl personally witnessed Colonel Dreyfus being “drummed out of the army in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire as huge crowds outside shouted, ‘” ‘Death to the Jews!’”
1896: In New York gave birth to Felix Moritz Warburg and Frieda Fanny Warburg, the daughter of Jacob and Therese Schiff gave birth to Carola Warburg who became Carola Rothschild when she married Walter Rothschild.
1897: Dr. Maurice Harris of Temple Israel in Harlem delivered the sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El.
1897:Twenty-nine year old Joseph Maurice Weber, one of the of the vaudeville comedy act of Weber and Fields and the New York born son of Abraham and Gertrude (Enoch) Weber married Lillian Friedman today.
1897: Adolph Sutro completed his service as the 24th Mayor of San Francisco.
1897: “Maspero On The East Again” provides a detailed review of The Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria and Assyria by Gaston Maspero in which “he records the exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the founding…of David’s kingdom, the building of the reservoirs ascribed to Solomon, and of Solomon’s temple.”
1898: It was reported today that Julius D. Eisenstein has been chosen as president of “The American Congregation, the Pride of Jerusalem” – a new organization to provide aid for the indigent Jews living in Jerusalem.
1898: Gratz College is scheduled to open its doors today in Philadelphia. A teachers’ and general college, it is the third Jewish institution of higher-learning in the United States. Faculty members include Rabbi Henry M Speaker (Jewish literature), Arthur A. Dembitz (Jewish history) and Isaac Husik (Hebrew). The course of study lasts three years and “under certain conditions” students who cannot afford the tuition “will be admitted free of charge.”
1898: In Baltimore, founding of Gemilath Chassodim (Hebrew Free Loan Association) which lent “money in small sums to needy people on promissory notes with one or two endorsers without interest to be paid in weekly installments of 50 cents.”
1899: In New York City, Mary and John Yehuda Margaretten gave birth New Law School trained attorney and supporter of the New Jersey Federation of YM and YWHAs Morris Margaretten the husband of Pauline Margaretten
1899:Columbia Law School graduate and investment banker Louis F. Rothschild, the New York born son of Frank and Amanda (Blum) Rothschild, married Cora Guggenheim today after which they had three children – Louis, Muriel and Gwendolyn.
1900: Birthdate of Viennese native and WW I veteran Ernst Neubach the songwriter and screenwriter who spent the war in Switzerland and who wrote “In Heaven There Is No Beer” “a rendition of the song “the Hawkeye Victory Polka” “is played by the University of Iowa Hawkeye Marching Band after Iowa Hawkeyes football victories and has been a tradition since the 1960s.”
1901: Birthdate of George W.F. Hallgarten, the German born American historian who was the grandson of Charles Hallgarten and great grandson of Lazarus Hallgarten.
1902: Today, Erev Shabbat, Miss Alice Roosevelt, the oldest daughter of philo-Semitic U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was "formally presented to Washington society" at a ball at the White House,
1903(4th of Tevet, 5663): Parashat Vayigash
1903: First version of “Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen" ("To Grow Accustomed to Thy Gaze"), for Voice and Piano by Arnold Schönberg
1904: “A largely attended meeting under the auspices of the Jewish League of America was held in the Synagogue B'nai Abraham” in Philadelphia “today, at which it was decided to hold a National Convention in this city of all the societies of Jews interested in the condition of their coreligionists in Russia.:
1905: At the Academy of Music in New York, William Brady presented a revival of “Bartley Campbell’s melodrama ‘Siberia’” which is set in Kishinev and centers a tale of “the ill-treatment of the Jews by the Russian officers and their blind allies, the mob.”
1906: “An Advisory board of teachers, of which Gustave Straubenmuller was Chairman decided at meeting held” today “at the City College to add the money” collected by schoolteachers in December “for the relief of the sufferers from the Jewish massacres in Russia” to the National Relief Fund.
1906 (6th of Tevet, 5666): Dr. Otto A. Moses passed away at the age of 72. Born in 1846, the South Carolina native “had a worldwide reputation as a geologist and chemist.” He was also the founder of the Hebrew Technical Institute, a New York “institution for the education of poor boys” and was an active supporter of other Jewish charities including the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home.
1906: Birthdate of San Francisco native and University of California, Berkley alum Frederick L. Ehrman, the Chairman of the Board of Lehman Brothers and philanthropist who was the husband of “the former Edith Koshland” with whom he raised “a daughter, Edith.”
1906: “Ignoramus” wrote from Buffalo, NY questioning the information in The Jewish Spectre by George H. Warner which states on page 288 “that Jews are neither soldier or college men” and on page 290 that “the newspaper reports of the last few years full of accounts of Jewish crimes” but does not mention which newspapers.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Spectre-George-H-Warner/dp/1289890250
1907: Israel Zangwill reported that in November of 1906, 133,764 Jews entered New York City and remained there
1908: If the demands for a reduction in tenement rents by two dollars is not met, a rent strike will begin tomorrow in Chicago which means, among other things that the Jewish tenants will refuse to pay rent and will “submit to eviction by the landlords.”
1908: “New Drain Now On United Charities” published today described the dire financial conditions of the United Hebrew Charities which according to its manager Dr. Lee K. Frankel needed at least $25,000 to meet the monthly needs of its clients before the current economic downturn and actually only has $20,000 on hand to meet the needs of the needy.
1909(10th of Tevet, 5669): Asara B'Tevet
1909: Professor R.J. J. Gottheil presided over a meeting of “the Judeans” at the Hostel Astor during which George Hellman lectured on Treaty of Berlin and “prominent part played in it by Benjamin Disraeli” who he said “was more of a Jews than an Englishman and more a Disraeli than a Jews” and Reverend John Peters who “discussed the note of remonstrance Secretary of State Hay addressed to Roumania on its persecution of the Jews.
1910: “Would Thin Crowded Areas” published today described the belief of Abraham Abraham, of Abraham and Strauss “that too much money is being expended by the city for small parks at the expense of traction facilities” and that more money should be spent on “providing cheap transportation to the city’s outlying districts.”
1911: Emir Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan for whom Levi Babakahn the grandfather of the Central Asian musician Ari Babakhanov served as “court vocalist” began his reign today.
1911: Birthdate of Warsaw artist Josef Herman who fled Poland in the 1930’s because of the virulent anti-Semitism in Poland and finally settling in the United Kingdom after the German invasion of Belgium and France.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/feb/22/guardianobituaries
1912: Birthdate of New York native and NYU trained attorney Irving Robert Feinberg, who became known as I. Robert Feinberg, “a leading labor lawyer and arbittartion” who served as counsel of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, the UJA and the Hebrew Home for the Aged” while raising two children – Richard and Jean – with his wife Lucille.
1913: The corresponded of the Daily News in St. Petersburg reported today that “a commercial panic with many failures has been precipitated by the ukase expelling the remaining Jews from the city of Kiev.”
1914: In New York, Morris Meltsner and Rose Klarman gave birth to Martin Meltsner
1915: The Memphis Commercial Appeal “printed a long review of the Leo Frank case from a Georgia newspaper man who argued that the evidence in the case warranted the verdict” rendered.
1915: British synagogues joined other houses of worship in holding special services on behalf of the empire as requested by the King.
1915: Birthdate of Marian Pollock the wife of Louis Pollock.
1915: In St. Louis at the 18thannual convention of the Knights of Zion, Louis D. Brandeis declared “Responsibility for preserving Jewish customs and ideals now rests almost wholly with the American Jews.”
1915:Birthdate of Jack Levine the Boston born American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.
1916: It was reported today, that due to the effects of the World War, in Palestine, “30,000 workmen were in great distress.”
1916: Joseph Leonard wrote today from New York that “the English community rejoices” at the “devotion and heroism” its members are showing on the battlefield which apparently comes at surprise to those who do not know the history of the “virile and romantic race” but Jews always identify themselves with their adopted countries and respond with “patriotic devotion.”
1916: “The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society of America” in New York “received a telegram today from its representative, Jacob R. Fain saying that a branch had just been organized in Seattle, Washington, where it will undertake to care for Jewish refugees from the war zones of Europe as well as other Jewish immigrants.”
1916: “If We Joined the Entente” published today lists Isaac Don Levine’s reasons for the United States entering the war on the side of England and France including the fact that the United States would be able to protect the rights of oppressed nationalities including the Jews.
1916: It was reported today that President Woodrow Wilson has sent a telegram to a group meeting in Baltimore, MD to raise money for the relief of Jews in war-torn Europe expressing his “profound sympathy with the object of the meeting and sincere hope that there will be a great outpouring for the relief of these distressed people.”
1916: In Chicago, this morning’s business session of the Knights of Zion Convention is scheduled to be followed by a kosher banquet for 600 delegates and guests.
1916: It was reported today that Rabbi Samuel Schulman of Temple Beth-El has said that “there must be less talk of Judaism and more silent, honest, consistent living of Judaism.”
1916: It was reported today that in Russia “all concessions made to the Jews by Prince Cherbatoff, the former Minister of the Interior, have been cancelled
1916: Birthdate of Newark, NJ, native and world class cellist Bernard Greenhouse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/arts/music/bernard-greenhouse-cellist-dies-at-95.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
1917: In New York City wealthy heiress Gladys Guggenheim and Roger Williams Straus, Sr whose family owned Macy’s gave birth to Roger Williams Straus, Jr.
1918(19th of Tevet, 5678): Mrs. Emily M. Marcuse, an attorney passed away today in Oakland, CA.
1918: “Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Chairman of the Provision Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs announced” tonight “that more than one-fourth of the first million dollars of the Palestine restoration fund to be devoted to the immediate needs for re-establishing a Jewish state in Palestine after the war had been raised” in just three days, even while the commission headed by Eugene Meyer, Jr. was still in its formative state.
1918: A meeting was held today “at the Fifth Avenue home of Adolph Lewisohn” where the “directors and trustees of local Jewish institutions” met to discuss plans for the drive to raise four million dollars by the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies” which is scheduled to begin on January 14.
1919: Birthdate of South African journalist turned political activist Colin Legum.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/colin-legum-36609.html
1919: Simon Petlyura, "hetman" of Russia and the Ruthenian Republic, a Ukrainian nationalist and commander of the Zaporog Cossacks and Haidamaks, began his attack against the Jews. He accused them of being supporters of the communist regime. In Berdichev, Uma, Zhitomir and other cities about seventy thousand were killed and an equal number wounded. Altogether 372 cities and towns were attacked in 998 major and 349 minor pogroms. This took placed during the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. The civil war was loosely described as fight between the Reds (the communists) and the Whites (all of the various groups opposed to the communists). The Jews were caught in the middle and suffered at the hands of both sides.
1919: The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 settling disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. Weizmann first met Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an impromptu "Zionist Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern Transjordan for the meeting. The intended purpose was to forge an agreement between Faisal and the Zionist movement to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support dense Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish. Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon afterwards at the Paris peace conference. In their first meeting in June 1918 Weizmann had assured Faisal that "the Jews did not propose to set up a government of their own but wished to work under British protection, to colonize and develop Palestine without encroaching on any legitimate interests". The day after they signed the written agreement, which bears their names, Weizmann arrived in Paris to head the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference. It was a triumphal moment for Weizmann; it was an accord that climaxed years of negotiations and ceaseless shuttles between the Middle East and the capitals of Western Europe and that promised to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between the two principal ethnic groups of Palestine: Arabs and Jews. The maipoints of the agreement were:
- The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
- The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy.
- The boundaries between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
- The parties committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
- Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Weizmann signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.
Two weeks prior to signing the agreement, Faisal stated:
The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one another, and I hope that as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas. Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists and the local peasants, but the mutual understanding of the aims of Arabs and Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness, which, indeed, had already practically disappeared before the war by the work of the Arab Secret Revolutionary Committee, which in Syria and elsewhere laid the foundation of the Arab military successes of the past two years.The areas discussed were detailed in a letter to Felix Frankfurter, President of the Zionist Organization of America, on March 3, 1919, when Faisal wrote :
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway; in the East a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba; in the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government; in the West the Mediterranean Sea. The details of the delimitations, or any necessary adjustments of detail, shall be settled by a Special Commission on which there shall be Jewish representation. Faisal conditioned his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime promises to the Arabs, who had hoped for independence in a vast part of the Ottoman Empire. He appended to the typed document a hand-written statement:
"Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever." The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months. The outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab state that Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had struck their own secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the Middle East between their own spheres of influence, and soon Faisal began to express doubts about cooperation with the Zionist movement. After Faisal was expelled from Syria and given the Kingdom of Iraq, he contended that the conditions he appended were not fulfilled and the treaty therefore moot. St. John Philby, a British representative in Palestine, later stated that Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and King of Hejaz, on whose behalf Faisal was acting, had refused to recognize the agreement as soon as it was brought to his notice. However, Sharif Hussein formally endorsed the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August, 1920, along with the other Allied Powers, as King of Hedjaz. The United Nations Special Committee On Palestine did not regard the agreement as ever being validwhile Weizmann continued to maintain that the treaty was still binding. In 1947 Weizmann explained:"A postscript was also included in this treaty. This postscript relates to a reservation by King Feisal that he would carry out all the promises in this treaty if and when he would obtain his demands, namely, independence for the Arab countries. I submit that these requirements of King Feisal have at present been realized. The Arab countries are all independent, and therefore the condition on which depended the fulfillment of this treaty, has come into effect. Therefore, this treaty, to all intents and purposes, should today be a valid document". According to C.D. Smith the Syrian National Congress had forced Faisal to back away from his tentative support of Zionist goals
1920: Viola Flannery married Elie Nadelman, the Polish born American-Jewish sculptor, in New York City.
1921:In Brooklyn, insurance salesman Paul Gold and Rose (Sachs) Gold gave birth to William “Bill” Gold the creator of untold number of movie posters the most famous of which may have been for the classic “Casablanca.” (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/obituaries/bill-gold-dead-movie-posters.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
1921: Simon Bamberger, the German born Jew completed his term as Governor of Utah – a position which he was the first non-Mormon to hold.
1922: Funeral services are scheduled to be held today for Isaac Schulman the husband of the former Rebecca Rosenthal and the father of Nathan, Harry, Benjamin and Sam Schulman
1922: It was reported today that Rabbi Joseph Kornfeld of Columbus OH “the recently appointed Minister to Persia” who will be “sailing to his new post” tomorrow was honored at banquet hosted by the Association of Reformed Rabbis and the New York Board of Jewish Ministers at the West End Synagogue.
1923: The New York State convened today in which Philip M. Kleinfeld served as a member from the 4th District.
1924: While his brother George was playing billiards at the Ambassador Billiard Parlor, Ira Gershing was reading an article entitled “What is America Music?” which including the claim he was “at work on a jazz concerto and Irving Berlin was a writing a syncopated tone poem.”
1924: Birthdate of Israeli Admiral Mordechai Limon, the man who would mastermind and execute the Cherbourg Project in 1969.
1925: Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist, who enjoyed support among Italian Jews, announced that he was assuming dictatorial powers. According to Alexander Stille, by 1938 one third of adult Italian Jews belonged to Fascist Party. “This amounted to 10,000 Jews out of Italy's small Jewish population of 47,000.” But according to Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938, the Italian dictator “was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's and vowed to ‘destroy them all.’”
1925: Today Cornell University graduate and President of the Chicago Board of Trade Richard Frederick Uhlmann, married Rosamond Goldman with whom he had three children – Audrey, Janis and Frederick
1925: In London, Aileen Freda Leatherman and Michael Balcon gave birth to English actress Jill Balcon.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/20/jill-balcon-obituary
1926(17thof Tevet, 5686): Forty-year old Leopold “Leo” Sulzberger, “the son of Cyrus Leopold Sulzberger and Rachel Peixotto Sulzberger”, the husband of Beatrice Sulzberger and the father of awarding foreign correspondent C.L. Sulzberger, passed away today in New York Coty.
1927: At Cooper Union, the United Palestine Appeal held its kickoff event designed to raise $100,000. During the meeting it was announced that $15,000 had already been raised with $2,500 having been donated by Morris Eisenman.
1927: During a meeting of the United Palestine Appeal held at Cooper Union in New York City, tribute was paid to the memory of Asher Ginsberg who was better known by his pen name, Achad Ha’am. Ginsberg who was living in Tel Aviv when he passed away, was described as “one of the most creative forces in world Zionism.”
1928: “Rumania Assailed By King” published today described Utah’s Senator William King speech at the Sixth Annual Region Conference of the United Palestine Appeal where he said “that the treatment accorded by the government of Rmania to the Jewish inhabitants was in direct defiance of the Minority Rights Treaty” and that he was planning on introducing a resolution in the Senate expressing the “disfavor” with which these “activities” are viewed. (Editor’s note – Why King took the lead on this is a mystery to me. There certainly was not much of “Jewish vote” to court in Utah.”
1929: At the tender age of 27 William S. Paley became President of CBS.
1930(3rd of Tevet, 5690): The first Chanukah to be observed during The Great Depression comes to an end today on the 8thday of the festival.
1932: Laborite Ian Mikardo married Mary Rosette today.
1933: In Germany, an attempt to assassinate journalist Ezriel Carlebach failed when “the gunshot cut through his hat” but missed his head.
1934: It was reported today that the seventeen graduates of the Hebrew University included a father and son duo – 43 year old Ephraim Duvshani and 23 year old Levi Duvshani.
1934(16th of Tevet, 5694): Today, at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, Central Synagogue Rabbi Jonah B. Wise officiated at the funeral of sixty-eight year old New York native Henry Harris, the “manager of the loan and jewelry firm of I. Harlem on 8th Avenue” and the husband of the Addie Harris which was followed by burial at the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens.
1935(28rh of Tevet, 5695): Seventy-two year old advocate for woman’s suffrage Mrs. Jane Braz Fischel, the wife of “real estate dealer and philanthropist Harry Ficshel” with whom she had four daughters and who was active in a number of Jewish organizations including the Daughters of Jacob, the Federaton of Jewish Women’s Organizations and H.I.A.S. suffered a fatal heart attack today.
1936: The Manchester Guardian published an article disproving Hitler’s claims that the Jews had a “stranglehold or monopoly” on German cultural and professional life. The percentages were based on official German statistics.
1937: James Waterman Wise, the son of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise is scheduled to speak at the Free Synagogue in Carnegie Hall on “Some of my Best Friends Are Jews.”
1937: Rabbi Israel Goldstein is scheduled to deliver a sermon today at Temple B’nai Jeshurun.
1937: Rabbi Lichtenstein is scheduled to talk about “The Miracle of Healing” this morning at the Jewish Science Society.”
1937: The New York Timesreports that Mrs. Yetka Levy-Stein the wife of a Berlin Rabbi arrived here last week on the Cunard White Star liner Berengaria to make a three-month tour of the United States on behalf of the Youth Aliyah movement, which is concerned with the settlement of German-Jewish children in the cooperative colonies of Palestine.
1937:California Congresswomen Florence Prag Kahn completed her fifth and final term in office.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that it was no coincidence that most of the arms found on Arab terrorists were of German manufacture. They were smuggled in from Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. British troops, assisted by police, fought a bloody battle with a band of arms smugglers near the Sahla village in Galilee.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that settlers at Kibbutz Neveh Ya'acov, north of Jerusalem, repelled another heavy Arab attack.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that a forest was planted at the Ma'aleh Hahamisha hill in memory of the five pioneers who were murdered there while preparing land for this new settlement.
1938: New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore A. Cotillo signed a writ of reasonable doubt today which allowed the release of convicted felons Samuel "Sammy" Weiss and David Goldberg. The two had been convicted by Thomas E. Dewey for filing false tax returns. Weiss was a notorious racketeer and mobster.
1938: The National Zeitung, the paper controlled by Goering today “ridiculed the idea of any return of Germany to democracy – a though which ‘even emigrant Jews and Marxists already have shelved.’”
1939(12thof Tevet, 5699): Eighty-eight year old Isidor Lewi, the Albany, NY, born son of Joseph and Bertha Lewi and the husband of Emita Peninnah Wolff May Lewi passed away today after which he was buried in Brooklyn, NY.
1939: The announcement from London, received today in Berlin that Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, was making a “private” visit to see Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the President of the Reichsbank where “he is expected to insist that the Reich cease persecuting the Jews and make some effort to help evacuate them in an orderly fashion” instead of just using them as “ransom to increase foreign trade for Germany” has “raised large hopes in Jewish circles.”
1939: Illinois Congressman Adolph J. Sabath began serving as Chairman of the House Rules Committee for the first time.
1939: “Invitations were issued today for a meeting of the Inter-governmental Refugee Committee” which will include all thirty two nations that had taken part in the Evian Conference, the sham meeting that pretended to address the refugee question which really meant what to do about the Jews of Germany in the wake of the Nazi rise to power.
1939: In Tel Aviv, actor Yaakov Einstein and his wife gave birth to Israeli entertainer Arik Einstein.
1940: Germany’s Ministry of Agriculture denied German Jews food ration cards.
1941: Samuel Arthur Weiss, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, began serving his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1941: During World War II, German bombers dropped some of their payload on Greenville Hall Synagogue. The building was damaged but not destroyed in the raid.
1941: William H. King, the Senator from Utah who in 1927 “declared…that he favored the United States severing diplomatic relations with any country which failed because of anti-Semitism to protect its Jewish nationals” and “expressed the belief that eventually Palestine would be able to support a population of a million Jews” completed his services as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.
1942(14thof Tevet, 5702): Parashat Vayehci
1942(14thof Tevet, 5702): Sixty-two year old Pinchas Ruttenberg, a long-time leader in the Zionist movement died today in Jerusalem.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pinchas-rutenberg
1943: Today, Heinrich “Himmler received one of many ‘therapeutic massages’ from his doctor, took part in meetings, called his wife and daughter and then ordered…the killing of several Polish families.”
1943: Polish President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz requested that Pope Pius XII publicly denounce German atrocities against the Jews. Pius remained silent concerning both the German slaughter of the Polish Jews as well as the German attacks against Polish Catholics.
1944(7thof Tevet, 5704): Eighty year old Prussian born mining engineer turned Zionist leader Leopold Kessler passed away in New York where he had been visited by his grandchildren Gabriel and Annette Kessler, the children of his oldest son Jack Kessler.
http://access.cjh.org/subjects.php?t=Qm90c3dhbmE6IERlc2NyaXB0aW9uIGFuZCB0cmF2ZWw=#1
1945: Benjamin Rabin assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district
1946: During an interview given today, Reuben B. Resnick, the director in Italy of the Joint Distribution Committee said that “native Italian Jews and thousands of other displace Jewish person who fled to Italy from the anti-Semitism in Poland face sickness and disease as well as a feeling of futility unless the doors of Palestine are opened to immigration.”
1947: Jimmy Ernst, the Cologne, Germany born son of “painter Max Ernst and Luise Straus, a well-known art historian, journalist and a victim of the Nazis at Auschwitz” today married “Edith Dallas Bauman Brody, a talent court for Warner Brothers.”
http://jimmyernst.net/pages/chronicle.html
1947: The USCGC Northland the last cruising cutter built for the Coast Guard equipped with a sailing rig was sold for scrap today after which she was renamed the Jewish State and used to transport Jewish refugees and renamed Eilat in 1948 so that she could be the flagship of the newly created Israeli navy.
1947: Jacob Javits begins serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 21st congressional district.
1948: The Palmach received orders concerning the attack on Salama.
1949(2nd of Tevet, 5709): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1949: Fifty-one year old Lewis Browne, the London born, American trained Reform Rabbi turned author whose first book was Stranger Than Fiction: A Short History of the Jews from Earliest Times to the Present Day passed away today in Santa Monica, CA.
http://www.jta.org/1949/01/05/archive/lewis-browne-author-on-jewish-subjects-dies-by-his-own-hand-in-california-was-51
https://www.questia.com/library/724730/stranger-than-fiction-a-short-history-of-the-jews
http://lewisbrowne.org/
http://lewisbrowne.org/documents/quotes.html
1949: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 1stdistrict.
1949: Illinois U.S Congressman began serving as Chair of the House Rules Committee for a second time.
1949: Lyndon Johnson whose visit to the Nazi death camps was one of the most powerful experience in his life and who helped to rescue Jews during the 1930’s, completed his 12 years of service representing Texas’ 10th Congressional District.
1949: Lyndon Johnson who would prove to be a great friend of Israel during the 1967 war began serving as U.S. Senator from Texas.
1949: Leo Isaacson, a member of the American Labor Party, finished his term as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 24thcongressional district
1949: As part of Operation Horev, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptians at Rafah in an attempt to encircle the Arab force.
1951: Sydney A. Fine assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 23rd district.
1951: Rabbi Naftali Landau, “the son of a Hungarian rabbi and a graduate of Kehilath Jacob Seminary in Antwerp who served Shomre Hadas Congregation in Chicago and Agudas Achim North Shore Congregation today married nineteen year old Minnie Finkelstein
1952: A revival of “Pal Joey”, the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical opened today for the first of 540 performances.
1953: Isidore Dollinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 23rd district
1953: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s 1st district.
1954: In Manhattan, small business owner Samuel and Ruth (Rosenkrantz) Solomon gave birth to experimental film director and University of Colorado Professor Phillip Stewart Solomon. (As reported by Neil Genzlinger)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/obituaries/phil-solomon-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Obituaries
1955(9th of Tevet, 5715): Seventy-nine year old Carl Morris Loeb, the Frankfurt, Germany born son of Minna and Adolf Loeb and the husband of Adeline Moses whom he married in 1896 and with whom he had four children – John, Margaret, Carl and Hanry – passed away today in New York City.
1955: Richard L. Neuberger began serving as a United States Senator from Oregon.
1956: More than 600 leaders of Hadassah from all over the United States met at New York’s Plaza Hotel to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of Youth Aliyah, the worldwide child rescue and rehabilitation organization.
1957: NYU Law School Professor and U.S. Navy veteran Ludwig Teller began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1957: Jacob K. Javits began serving as a United States from New York.
1959(23rdof Tevet, 5719): Parashat Shemot
1959: Seymour Halpern assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district. Unlike most New York Jewish politicians, Halpern was a Republican.
1959: Alaska became the 49th state to join the Union. For more about Alaska, the final Jewish Frontier you may go to http://www.joyfulnoise.net/JoyAlaska5.html, featuring “Alaskan Jewry – An Historical Overview.”
1959: Ernest Gruening began serving as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1961: Forty-nine year old Ludwig Teller, a former member of the New York State Legislature, completed his second and final term in office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ludwig-teller
1962: After opening in the United Kingdom, “The Young Ones” with music by Stanley Black and choreographed by Harold Ross was released in the United States today.1963: Tel Aviv University opened. Although its antecedents go back to the early 1950's the university became an independent entity on this date. Today it is the largest University in the country with over 100 departments and over 75 research facilities.1963: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff began serving as United States from Connecticut.
1964(18th of Tevet, 5724): Forty-four year old Rabbi Walter Plaut, the brother of Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, the spiritual leader of Temple Emanuel and “Freedom Rider” passed away today.
http://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/04/rabbi-walter-plaut-44-dead.html
1965: James H. Scheuer began assumed office as member of the House of Representatives from New York’s 21st District.
1965(29th of Tevet, 5725): Semyon Ariyevich Kosberg, the Jewish-Soviet engineer born in 1903 who developed an expertise in aircraft and rocket engines who won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and was named a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1961 passed away today.
1965(29th of Tevet, 5725): Eighty four year old comedian and actor Julius Tannen whose fifty year career ran from vaudeville to Hollywood and whose two sons William Tannen and Charles Tannen followed in his footsteps passed away today.
1965: Lester L. Wolff began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 3rd District.
1965: Richard Ottinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 25th district
1966(11th of Tevet, 5726): Fifty-four year old Byalistok born Yiddish poet Pesach Binetzki who made Aliyah in 1949 passed away today.
http://yleksikon.blogspot.com/2015/01/peysekh-binetski-pesach-binetzki.html
1967(21st of Tevet, 5727): Jack Ruby, the man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jack-ruby-dies-before-second-trial
1967: Joshua Eilberg began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district.
1968(2ndof Tevet, 5728): Eighth Day of Chanukah
1968(2ndof Tevet, 5728): Seventy-five year old J. Max Weiss, the HUC trained Rabbi who led Temple Adas Emuno and the Washington Heights Free Synagogue while also teaching at the Academy for Higher Jewish Learning and who was the husband of Estelle M. Sternberger Weis, the mother of their daughter Minnetta passed away today.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/01/04/79931025.html?pageNumber=34
1968: It was reported today that “the second patient to undergo a hearts transplant operation” in South Africa was 58-year-old Dr. Philip Blaiberg, a Jewish dentist one of whose patients while he was serving in the South African Medical Corps during WW II was Louis Washkansky, the Jew who was the first heart transplant patient and whose daughter Jill is working as a volunteer on a kibbutz on Israel.
1969: Ernest Gruening, one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution completed his service as U.S. Senator from Alaska.
1969: Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 17th District.
1969: Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1970(25thof Tevet, 5730): Parashat Shemot
1970(25th of Tevet, 5730): Fifty-seven-year-old Lester Francis Avnet, the oldest child of Celia Avnet and Russian born American businessman Charles Avnet and husband of the former Joan Grossman with whom head two daughters and a son, who helped to make “Avnet, Inc. into one of the country’s major electronic corporations” while serving as “a trustee of Brandeis University and of the Ameri can Federation of Arts, an overseer of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a governor of the Hebrew Union College ‐Jewish Institute of Religion and a former general chairman for the Metropolitan New York area of the United Jewish Appeal” passed away today.
1970: Jerry Herman’s musical “Mame” closed on Broadway after 1,508 performances.
1971: A funeral service is scheduled to be held this afternoon at the “Temple Israel meeting house” for eighty-year-old Lithuanian native and MIT graduate Joseph H. Cohen who was the “founder of the Atlantic Gelatin division of General Foods Corporation, the husband of the former Rose Stone with whom he had two sons and a daughter and an active member of the Jewish community was could be seen by his service as President of Temple Israel and a director of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
1973: Ed Koch completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 17th District.
1973: Ed Koch began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 18th District.
1973: Abner J. Mikva completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 2nd Congressional District of Illinois.
1973: Lester L. Wolf completed his services as Member of the U.S. of House of Representatives from New York’s 3rd District and began serving as a Member of the House from New York’s 6th District.
1973: Having lost in the Democratic primary, Emanuel Celler, one of the deans of the House of Representatives whose decade long career was a valiant fight for civil liberties and human dignity and against oppression from the Left and the Right completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1973: Elizabeth Holtzman began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1973: James Scheuer completed his service in Congress from New York’s 21stDistrict.
1973: Seymour Halpern finishes his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district.
1975: Stephen J. Solarz began serving in the United States House of Representatives as the Congressman from New York’s 13th District, a post he would hold until 1993.
1975: James Scheuer began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Congressman from New York’s 11th District.
1975: Abner J. Mikva began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 10th Congressional District of Illinois.
1975: President Gerald Ford signed the Trade Reform Act which contained the Jackson-Vanik-Mills Amendment. The Amendment required any nation that wanted “most favored nation status” had to grant its citizens the right immigrate to the country of their choice. The Amendment was intended as a way of forcing the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave the USSR and was part of the campaign to “Free Russian Jews.”
1976(1stof Shevat, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
1976(1stof Shevat, 5763): Eighty-five year old recording artist Irving Kaufman who began his career in 1914 passed away today.
http://www.gracyk.com/kaufman.shtml
1977: Ted Weiss assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 20th district
1977: Stan Lee and his partner “launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip today.
http://www.stanleefoundation.org/
1977(13th of Tevet, 5737): Avraham Ofer, Minister of Housing the cabinet of Yitzchak Rabin, passed away
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was seeking to establish a bloc of moderate Arab and Muslim states, like Turkey, that would accept Israel's self-rule proposal for the West Bank and Gaza as a transitional phase, leading eventually to these areas' fuller independence, preferably in close linkage to Jordan. Gush Emunim members settled at Karnei Shomron, on the Kalkilya-Nablus road. The Gush rejected Prime Minister Menachem Begin's assurances that his new peace plan would not affect the safety of the existing Jewish settlements in administered areas.
1978: “In a special government meeting called by Ariel Sharon, the government decides to authorize the establishment of three new settlements in Judea and Samaria and to further develop the exiting settlements in the northern Sinai by increasing the number of settlers and expanding the agricultural lands.”
1978: Birthdate of San Antonio, TX, native Brian Natkin the all-star tigh-end at UTEP who went on to play professionally for the Tennessee Titans and the St. Louis Rams.
1979: Joshua Eilberg completed his services a member of the U.S. House Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 4th district.
1981(27thof Tevet, 5741): Parashat Vaera
1981: Abraham “Abe” Ribicoff completed his service as United States from Connecticut.
1981(27th of Tevet, 5741): Sixty-six year old University of Michigan and Columbia University trained anthropologist and social psychologist Marvin Opler, the Buffalo, NY born son of Arthur A. Opler and Fanny Coleman-Hass and the brother of anthropologist Morris Edward Opler passed away.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/marvin-kaufman-opler
1981: Chuck Schumer began servicing in the U.S. House of Representatives today.
1981: Jacob Javits completed his career as a member of the U.S. Senator from New York.
1981: Elizabeth Holtzman completed her service as a Member of the U.S. Representatives from New York’s 16th District.
1981: Lester L. Wolfe finished his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district
1983(18th of Tevet, 5743): Forty-six year old Susan Stein Shiva, the daughter of Dr. Jules Stein and Doris Stein, the husband of Gil Shiva and the mother of Alexandra and Andrew Shiva passed away after losing her battle with breast cancer, the same malady that claimed her mother’s life two years earlier.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/05/obituaries/susan-stein-shiva.html
1983: James Scheuer completed his service as a Member of the U.S. House from New York’s 11th Congressional District and began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from New York’s 8th Congressional District.
1983: Jerry Nadler completed his service as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 69th district and began serving as the member from the 67thDistrict.
1984: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring female impersonator Danny La Rue as Dolly opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
1985(10thof Tevet, 5745): Asara B’Tevet
1985: The government of Israel confirmed the resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews. In a world where revisionists condemn the Zionist dream or at least pronounce it dead, this rescue operation served as poignant, pressing reminder of one of the reasons the Jewish state must continue to exist.
1987(2nd of Tevet): Shabbat Shel Chanukah – 8thday of Chanukah
1987(2nd of Tevet): Fifty-five year old David Maysles who along with his brother Albert formed a noted American documentary filmmaking team, passed away today.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151102045401/http://articles.latimes.com/1987-01-05/news/mn-2382_1_documentary-film
1987: The original production of “Smile,” a Marvin Hamlisch musical closed today after 48 performances.
1988: As part of the war against terrorists, Israel ordered 9 Palestinian "instigators" deported from West Beirut.
1988: The Reagan Administration, through an announcement by its State Department, withheld comment today on the Israeli air strikes into southern Lebanon. A State Department official said Administration officials monitoring weekend developments in the Middle East would assess the information about the air strike
1988(13th of Tevet, 5748):Rose Ausländer a Jewish German- and English language poet passed away.
1989: Steven Schiff assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District.
1989: Eliot L. Engel assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 17th district.
1989: Nita Lowey assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 18th district.
1989: Joe Lieberman completed his service as the 21st Attorney General of Connecticut.
1989: Joe Lieberman began serving as the U.S. Senator from Connecticut.
1990:Ezer Weizmann is scheduled to leave today for Moscow, a visit that is a further sign of warming relations between the Soviet Union and Israel. Shimon Peres is planning a Soviet trip at the end of January or beginning of February.
1991: Israel reopened its consulate in the USSR after 23 years. The Soviets had broken off relations with Israel after the Six Day War. The Soviets alternately used its Jewish population as pawns or prisoners depending upon the vagaries of the Cold War. The cry of “Free Soviet Jewry” now seems like something out of the distant past.
1991: Pan American World Airways announced today that it was suspending flights to Tel Aviv and to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, because of surging insurance rates, a result of the crisis in the Middle East.
1992: Yasar Arafat demanded that the United States vote for a U.N. resolution that would “strongly deplore” Israel’s decision to deport a dozen Palestinians described as “inciters to violence.” The Israeli action followed the murder of four Israeli settlers by P.L.O. hit men over the past ten weeks.
1992: In the State Department office of Assistant Secretary Edward Djerejian, at the instigation of Director of Policy Planning Dennis Ross and with the concurrence of Richard Haass, a national security aide, the decision was made to unload on Israel as never before. PLO hit men had murdered four Israeli settlers in the past 10 weeks, provoking Israel to expel a dozen Palestinian inciters to violence. No Yasser Arafat was sending word that Arabs would boycott the peace talks unless the U.S. voted in the U.N. to strongly deplore the deportations.
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753): Asara B'Tevet
1993: Nita Lowey completed her term representing New York’s 20th Congressional District and began representing New York’s 18th Congressional District.
1993: Oregon political leader Vera Katz, the successful escapee from Hitler’s Europe and Brooklyn College grad who after marrying Mel Katz and giving birth to her son, journalist Jesse Katz began a creer that led to her starting to serve as the 49thMayor of Portland, OR.
1993: Stephen J. Solarz’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: James Haas Scheuer’s career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: Jerry Nadler stopped serving as a House Member from New York’s 17th Congressional District and began serving as a House Member from New York’s 8thCongressional District.
1993: Tammy Baldiwn began serving as a “Member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from the 78thDistrict.
1993:"Catskills on Broadway" closes at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City after 452 performances
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753): An agent of the Shin Bet security service was stabbed and bludgeoned to death today, apparently by an Arab assailant, in a rare attack on a member of Israel's secretive internal intelligence agency. The body of Haim Nahmani, 25, was found in the stairwell of an apartment building in a Jewish neighborhood in West Jerusalem. A police statement said Mr. Nahmani had been "on active duty" when an assailant known to the security forces stabbed him repeatedly and battered him with a hammer. No further details were released.
1993: Bob Filner completed his service on the San Diego City Council and began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from California’s 50th District.
1993: At a building site in Holon, near Tel Aviv, attackers slashed the throat of a Jewish man, seriously wounding him. The police said they were searching for an Arab laborer from the West Bank who had fled the scene.
1993: The Associated Press reported that a pipe bomb exploded in the baggage hold of an Israeli bus outside Tel Aviv today. The police said no one had been injured on the bus, which was taking at least 40 people to Jerusalem from Haifa
1993: Junk bond king Michael Milkin was released from jail after 22 months.
1993: Herb Klein began serving as a member of the U.S. House Representatives from New Jersey’s 8thDistrict.
1993: Jane Harman began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 36thdistrict.
1993: The New York Times describes the Israeli Folk Dancing classes taught by Uri Aqua at the Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. of Mid-Westchester in Scarsdale and at Congregation Kneses in Port Chester, NY. Mr. Aqua, a Sabra, or native Israeli, came to this country in 1983, is a cantor at Beth Israel Synagogue in New Rochelle. But now he says he has a mission: to teach Israeli folk dancing, which he studied in Jerusalem.
1994: Sophie Masloff completed her service as the 56th Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA.
1995: Herb Klein completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 8th District.
1995: Howard Metzenbaum completed his second round of service as U.S. Senator from Ohio.
1997: Steve Rothman is sworn in to serve his first term in the House of Representatives representing New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District.
1998(5th of Tevet, 5758): Howard Gilman, the chairman of the Gilman Paper Company, who was a philanthropist and a collector of photographs and other art, died today on an estate near Jacksonville, Fla. Among the beneficiaries of his largess were Tel Aviv University, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
1999: Anthony Weiner began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 9thcongressional district.
1999: After six years, Jane Harman completed her service in the U.S. House of Representatives
1999: Israel detains, and later expels, 14 members of Concerned Christians. Concerned Christians is described as apocalyptic Christian cult that believed the Al-Aqsa mosque has to be destroyed to facilitate the Second Coming.
1999: Chuck Schumer began serving as a Senator from New York.
1999: The New York Times features a review of Life of the Movie:How Entertainment Conquered Realityby Jewish critic Neal Gabler.
1999: Tammy Baldwin began serving as a “Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd Disrict.
2000: Israeli and Syrian leaders meet today as they resume American-brokered negotiations ambitiously aimed at reaching a peace accord by this summer.
2001: Frank Lautenberg completed a career in the U.S. from New Jersey that had begun in 1982.
2001(8th of Tevet, 5761: Sports broadcaster and youthful track & field star, Marty Glickman passed away at the age of 83.
2001: Jane Harman returned to Congress as a Representative from California’s 36thdistrict.
2001: Representative Shelley Berkley begins her second term as the 107th Congress holds its first sessions. Berkley is the first Jewish woman to represent Nevada in the U.S. House of Representatives.
2001: Eric Cantor began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s 7thDistrict.
2001: Nita Lowey began serving as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
2002: Operation’s Noah’s Ark began this morning when Israeli naval commandos boarded a Palestinian freighter during the second intifada loaded with tons of arms including Katyusha rockets, and anti-tank weapons without firing a shot.
2002: “The world press eulogized Julia Phillips, the first woman to win an Academy Award as a producer, following her death on January 1, 2002”
http://jwa.org/thisweek/jan/03/2002/julia-phillips
2003(29th of Tevet, 5763): College and professional football coaching great Sid Gillman passed away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/obituaries/04GILL.html
2003: Fundtech Ltd., whose software helps banks transfer money electronically, said today that it would cut jobs as it combined units that handle development, professional services and customer services. Fundtech, has headquarters in Ramat Gan, Israel, and Jersey City. Shares of Fundtech, controlled by Clal Industries and Investments, which is based in Tel Aviv, have dropped 19 percent in the last year as reduced demand forced the company to sell its software for less.
2003: Jerry Abramson began serving as the first May of Louisville Metro, a governmental created by the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County, KY.
2003: Nita Lowey completed her term as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
2003: Bob Filner began serving as a Member of the U.S. House from California’s 51stCongressional District.
2003: Norma Coleman began serving as United States from Minnesota.
2003: Frank Lautenberg as is sworn in as U.S. Senator from New Jersey.
2004: Four Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Army here today in Nablus which has been a center of militant activity since the current cycle of violence started in September 2000. An army spokesman said the operation, the largest now under way, was intended to dismantle a terrorist network in Nablus, after 18 attempted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians originated in the city over the last month.
2005 (22nd of Tevet, 5765): Eighty-seven year old Will Eisner passed away. Born in 1917, Eisner first knew fame from The Spirit, a weekly comic strip appearing in newspapers from 1940-1945, where he nurtured a young Jules Feiffer. After being drafted in 1945, he created the Joe Dope series of instructional comics for soldiers. He is generally credited with the creation of the graphic novel when he published A Contract with God in 1978. He also wrote Comics & Sequential Artin 1985, a groundbreaking academic overview of those subjects. (As reported by Sarah Boxer)
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2005/01/13/will-eisner
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/will-eisner-a-pioneer-of-comic-books-dies-at-87.html
2005: Vera Katz completed twelve years of service as the Mayor of Portland, Oregon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/obituaries/vera-katz-mayor-who-oversaw-portlands-flowering-dies-at-84.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
2005: Chuck Schumer began serving as the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Committee.
2006: Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to three criminal felony counts related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials, in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
2007: Chuck Schumer began serving as Vice Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
2008: “Psalm Song: Healing through the Art of Carol Hamoy” opens at the Jewish Museum of Florida.
2008: The Rabbinical Court of Appeals is scheduled to convene for a meeting that will decide whether or not Rabbi Yona Metzgeer resigns as Israel’s Ashkenazi Rabbi in the wake of a recommendation by Justice Minister Daniel Friedman that the chief rabbi be impeached for alleged breach of trust and fraud.
2008: A Katyusha is fired from Gaza at the city of Ashkelon, ten miles away. For the first time this major Israeli city has been attacked by Palestinians using a rocket.
2009: In Cedar Rapids, The traditional Saturday Morning Minyan at Temple Judah enters its eighth year with 19 people in attendance (an amazing turn-out for such a small congregation)!
2009: As the stain of the Madoff financial scandal spreads the New York Times reported that the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Madoff’s trading firm has made an urgent request to the court for unusually broad authority to subpoena witnesses and documents because of the “vast scale” of this self-described record Ponzi scheme.
2009: Israeli ground troops entered Gaza tonight, following a week of aerial strikes aimed at ending rocket fire on Israel's southern communities.
2009: Three New York office holders - Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, U.S. Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Mayor Bloomberg - boarded a plane bound for Israel late Saturday night for a trip designed to show support and concern for the citizens of Israel who are under missile attack from Gaza.
2009: An Israeli film, “Waltz with Bashir,” was named the best picture of 2008 by The National Society of Film Critics at its annual meeting in New York.
2009: The Des Moines Register reports on the work of Colorado playwright Don Fried to create a stage drama based on events at Postville, Iowa.
2009: Jared Polis assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
2009: Norman Coleman completed his term as U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
2009: John Adler completed his service as a member of the New Jersey Senate from the 6thdistrict
2009: John Adler began serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 3rddistrict.
2009: Eric Cantor began serving as the Minority Whip in the House of Representatives.
2009: A photographic record was created of the synagogue at Kfar Baram which had inspired architect Arnold W. Brunner’s plans for the Frank Memorial synagogue named in honor of philanthropist Henry S. Frank and located on the grounds of what is now the Albert Einstein Synagogue in Philadelphia, PA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S._Frank_Memorial_Synagogue#/media/File:Ruins_of_the_Ancient_Synagogue_at_Bar%27am.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_S._Frank_Memorial_Synagogue#/media/File:Frank_Synogue_Philly.JPG
2010: An exhibition styled “Folk Art Judaica by Herman Braginsky” presented by the Yeshiva University Museum comes to a close. Born in 1912, Braginsky was a self-taught craftsman who carved ritual objects made of fine and aged woods, including tzedakah boxes, Torah pointers, mizrach plates, mezuzot, dreidels, Torah arks, spice containers, many of which are on display as part of this exhibit. Braginsky passed away in 1999.
2010: The Washington Post included 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 the recently released paperback edition of Sashenka by Simon Montefiore.
2010: The New York Times included reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including A Literary Bible: An Original Translation by David Rosenberg.
2011: Steve Grossman began serving as the 57th Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts.
2011: MesorahDC which provides young, single professionals with exciting opportunities in Jewish enrichment is scheduled to present Cafe Nite at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC.
2011: A romantic play entitled “Apples from the Desert” is scheduled to be performed tonight at the Jerusalem Theatre at 20 Rehov Marcus.
2011:University of Minnesota graduate and future U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Richard Nides, the Duluth, MN born son of Shirley Gavronsky and Arnold Richard Nides began serving as 2ndUnited States Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): On the Jewish calendar, Yahrzeit of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
2011: Dozens of English-speaking Bar-Ilan University students demonstrated in front of the university administration building today, demanding rights promised to them as new olim. Wielding signs with slogans like "We left our families, what more do you want?" and "What? I don't understand you," the students rallied after the administration raised the price of translating exams into English to NIS 285, and limited the translations to first-year students alone.
2011: Despite last-minute efforts by President Shimon Peres, Russian President Dimitri Medvedev canceled his planned visit to Israel in February, Beit Hanassi announced this afternoon.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): Israeli actor Yosef Shiloach passed away today at the age of 69 after a long battle with cancer. Shiloach was known for Israeli comedy film classics such as Alex Holeh Ahava, Sapiches, and Hagiga B'Snuker. A year ago, Shiloach was awared a life-time achievement award in at Jerusalem Film Festival. Shiloach was born in Kurdistan in 1941 and moved to Israel at the age of 9. He was one of the first graduates of the Beit Zvi acting school, and in 1964 he appeared in his first film - Mishpachat Simchon. Shiloach went on to star in dozens of films and television shows, mostly portraying comic characters, among them caricatures of a Mizrahi man with a heavy accent. He also participated in a number of American films, including Rambo III and The Mummy Lives. He was considered a left-wing activist, and has called for Arab-Jewish coexistence as well as equal rights for Mizrahi Israelis.
2011(27th of Tevet, 5771): Dorothy Silk, a professional leader of volunteers and a volunteer until her last years, died today in East Lansing, Mich., at 90. In 2008, at age 88, Silk was named one of "Eight Over Eighty," an annual event sponsored by Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit recognizing people over 80 whose efforts showed dedication to "tikkun olam," or "repair of the world."
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lsj/obituary.aspx?n=dorothy-m-silk&pid=147608432#fbLoggedOut
2011: The Jewish community of St. Martin opened its first synagogue since the 18th century. The synagogue, part of a new Chabad Center operated by Rabbi Moshe and Sara Chanowitz, is based in a 1,200-square-foot office space that once housed a church. Opening ceremonies were held today. The Chanowitzes moved to the Dutch-owned Caribbean island in 2009 to serve its 300 Jewish residents. The Jewish population swells to 1,000 or so during the tourist season. Jews first came to the island as refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, and the community grew during the 16th and 17th centuries. The lone synagogue was abandoned in 1781 and later destroyed by a hurricane. A historic Jewish cemetery also was recently discovered, according to chabad.org.
2011: Dr. Stephen Katz, a veterinarian and a Republican began serving as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 94th District,
2011: Jerry Abramson completed his term as the Mayor of Louisville Metro, KY.
2011: John Adler completed his service as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 3rd district.
2011: Thanks to a change in political fortunes, Eric Cantor went from being Minority Whip to Majority Whip.
2012: Grace Hannah is scheduled to appear at the Blaze Bar at 23 Rechov Hillel.
2012: Geraldo “Rivera began hosting a weekday radio talk show on 77 WABC in New York.
2012: Yair Lehman and Inbal Lori are scheduled to perform “The Slaughter Cow,” a comedic show about all topics from politics to the Torah, at Bet Avi Chai.
2012: On the night of the Iowa Caucuses, Stephen G. Bloom did not appear on The Colbert Report as he said he would possibly because of the negative response to his article “Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life” which apparently was a continuation of his negative view of the state that provided him with an academic home.
2012: European rabbis told MKs today that laws prohibiting kosher slaughter will lead to banning circumcision.
2012: Josh Shapiro completed his services a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 153rd district and began serving as a member of the Montgomery Country Board of Commissioners.
2012: Israel and Palestinian negotiators meeting in Amman today for the first direct talks in 16 months agreed to continuing talking, with another round of talks scheduled in Jordan next week.
2013: “A Hole in the Moon and Three Shorts” is scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival.
2013: Jerry Nadler completed his service a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 8th district.
2013: Jerry Nadler assumed office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New York’s 10th district.
2013: Beth Jacob Congregation is scheduled to host a debate between the L.A. Mayoral candidates.
2013: Nita Lowry began serving as the Representative from New York’s 17thCongressional District.
2013: Today “Israel’s National Library unveiled the cache of recently purchased documents that run the gamut of life experiences, including biblical commentaries, personal letters and financial records.” (As reported by Aron Heller)
2013: Steve Rothman completed his services as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey’s 9th district.
2013: Approximately 3,000 haredim were enlisted into the IDF and will begin active service by August 2013, Maj.-Gen. Orna Barbivai told Israel Radio today.
2013: Israeli doctors have developed a portable device which they say can detect strokes, the third biggest killer in the western world. The prototype, worn on patients' heads, monitors brain waves and identifies any discrepancies in their pattern.
2014: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to host “Excellence-The Future Generation” featuring outstanding composers and performers from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
2014: “Copying Beethoven” and “Vivre sa vie” are scheduled to be shown at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival
2014: “Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3 interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency, and said that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society.”
2014(2nd of Shevat, 5774): Ninety-two year old Oscar winning producer Saul Zaentz passed away today. (As reported by Robert D. McFadden)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/us/saul-zaentz-producer-of-oscar-winning-movies-dies-at-92.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0
2014(2nd of Shevat, 5774): Seventy-eight year old publisher Tom Rosenthal passed away today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10590405/Tom-Rosenthal-obituary.html
2014: The body of Menachem “Max” Stark “was found smoldering in a dumpster outside a Getty station on Cutter Mill Road in Great Neck, New York” today.
http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/burned-body-in-dumpster-might-be-kidnapped-hasid-cops/
2014: A Wall Street Journal report published today stated that U.S. officials believe members of Hezbollah are smuggling” “components of the Yahkont advanced guided missiles” which the terror group could use to attack Haifa and Ashdod into their bases in Syria or Lebanon. (As reported by Yoav Zitun)
2014: “Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon addressed the IDF’s successful test flight of the Arrow 3 interceptor missile, which was conducted today in a joint operation by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency, and said that the missile would prove a major asset to Israeli society. “
2015: Republican Lee Zeldin began serving as member of the U.S. House Representatives from New York’s 1st Congressional District.
2015: “The Imitation Game” is scheduled to be shown in Jerusalem today.
2015: Chuck Schumer completed his service as Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee.
2015: The Eden-Tamir Music Center is scheduled to present "The Glorious Sound of Two Pianos" --The Jerusalem Piano Duo: Shir Semmel- Dror Semmel
2015: Under the leadership of Lena Gilbert, Temple Judah is scheduled to host the third annual Cedar Rapids Opera Recital featuring six principal singers from Don Giovanni
2015: Andre Pshenichnikov who was arrested in the Sinai Peninsula in January 2013 after crossing into Egypt with no identification “was released from prison and repatriated” in Israel today.
2015: As a cold front hit Israel today “the first substantial snowfall descended on Mt. Hermon and rain fell in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. (As reported by Justin Jalil)
2016: “Violins of Hope,” an exhibition “created by the Maltz Museum, featured violins that survived the Holocaust and were restored by Amnon Weinstein” came to an end today.
2016: Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in an interview with Army Radio today said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to provide security for the citizens of Israel. “I felt as though the man who was standing in front of me was frustrated that his thesis has blown up in his face and he has no idea how to solve security problems,” said Huldai referring to Netanyahu. (As reported by JP Staff)
2016: A the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Abandoned at Srebrenica: Photographs From the Aftermath” is scheduled to close today
2016: An Israeli man in his 20’s was wounded tonight “in a shooting attack in the Har Hevron region of Judea” just two hours after and “Arab terrorist” stabbed a man waiting for a bus in southeast Jerusalem.
2016: Amiram Ben-Uliel, 21, of Jerusalem and “a minor, who cannot be named because of his age” were today “indicted in the deadly firebombing of a Palestinian family’s home in the West Bank village of Duma.”
2016: “YiddishSchool Florida” is scheduled to open today at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL.
2016: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and or of special interest to Jewish readers including Abba Eban: A Biography by Asaf Siniver and an interview “Jewish Deportee on Persecution, Past and Present” in which 87 year old Marceline Loridan-Ivens who had been deported to Birkenau at the age of 15 expresses her belief “that the lessons of World War II are not being forgotten because ‘these lessons were never learned.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/books/a-french-deportee-life-at-auschwitz-and-history-repeating.html?ref=books
2017: Dr. Alyssa Quint the Vilna Collections Scholar-in-Residence at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is scheduled to teach the first session of “Modern Yiddish Theatre.”
2017: Harvard trained attorney and American University professor of law Jamie Raskin, the Washington, DC born son of former JFK aide Marcus Raskin and author Barbara (Bellman) Raskin began serving as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s 8thdistrict.
2017: Josh Karlip is scheduled to teach the first session of “At the Edge of the Abyss: Jewish Intellectual Responses to Nazism, 1933-1940.”
2017: Steven Smith is scheduled to teach the first session of “What Kind of Jew Was Spinoza?”
2017: The Palm Beach Synagogue was scheduled to host a screening of “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah” which “explores the arduous 12-year journey that led to the creation of the French iconoclast’s “Shoah,” a nine-hour-plus examination of the Holocaust.”
2017: Republican David Frank Kustoff began serving as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District.
2017: Tammy Baldwin, the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin began serving as Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference.
2017: As Congress convenes, Chuck Schumer began serving as Senate Minority Leader.
2017: “The 115th US Congress, which convened for the first time today, is 5.6 percent Jewish, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Of the Democrats’ 28 Jewish members, 20 are serving in the House, and eight in the Senate. Jews thus make up a higher proportion of the upper chamber than the lower, holding 8% of the Senate versus 5% of the House. Out of the 293 Republicans who make up the new Congress, two are Jewish.” (As reported by Eric Corellessa)
2017: “Israeli spelunkers stumbled across a menorah and a cross etched into the limestone walls of an ancient cistern, both of which are believed to date back centuries, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement today.
2018: Following allegations of sexual harassment Showtime followed in the footsteps of NBC and MSNBC, Showtime replaced Mark Halperin
2018: In Memphis, at Temple Israel, Rabbi Feivel Strauss is scheduled to examine the life of Sigmund Freud as part of the series on “Great Jewish Renegades.”
2018(16thof Tevet, 5778): Eighty-nine year old Fred Bass, the son Pelican Book shop owner Benjamin Bass and Shirley Vogel, who made the Strand Bookstore into a New York Institution passed away today. (As reported by William Grimes)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/obituaries/fred-bass-strand-bookstore-dies-at-89.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
2019: Adam Schiff began serving as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
2019: In Arlington, VA, at Congregation Etz Hayim, Rabbi Lia Bass is scheduled to lead a learn-over- lunch study of the Book of Joshua.
2019: Harvard trained attorney Andrew “Andy” Saul Levin, the nephew of Senator Carol Levin and the so Sander Levin and Vicki Schalfter began serving as a Member of the U.S Representatives from Michigan’s 9th District, a position that had been held by his father.
2019: In Pittsburgh, PA, the home of the Steelers who “just donated $70,000 to help the Jewish community” in the wake of the slaughter at the synagogue, Chabad of the South Hills is scheduled to host a lecture on “Tip to Authentic Happiness” as part of their Torah and Teach Study Group.
2020: “The Song of Names,” the movie version of the novel by Norman Lebrecht with a score by Howard Shore is scheduled to open today at the Clay Theatre in San Francisco.
2020: Ira Strizhevska is scheduled to be interred this morning at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in New York.
2020: It was reported today that Israel, Greece and Cyprus have agreed to build pipelines that would that would transport gas from Israel’s Levantine Basin offshore fields to Cyprus, Crete, the Greek mainland and ultimately to Italy.
2020: As the United States sends in additional troops to protect American facilities in Baghdad from what are reported to be Iranian backed proxy forces, other nations in the region, including Israel, are wondering today if this represents what could be a major military confrontation.
2020: “The exhibition, titled “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.,” is scheduled to come to an end today at the museum of Jewish Heritage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/arts/design/auschwitz-museum-of-jewish-heritage.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
2021: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Strongman: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and the recently released paperback edition of This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (and Me) by Marisa Meltzer.
2021: Jewish LearningWorks is scheduled to present a Jewish Genealogy Cline with “Experts from the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society answering questions online about researching your roots.
2021: Temple Sinai of Marblehead is schedule to present online “Rabbinic Responses to Past Pandemics with Dr. Levi Cooper.”
2021: “Tamar Branitzky, “a textile designer who is mainly engaged in the research of new surfaces and prints which are created by exposing various materials such as silk, cotton, linen, paper and leather to various chemical processes causing the material exposed to become something special and yet remain a flexible fabric for various uses is scheduled to discuss online “Israeli Tech: Style – Using Unique Materials.”
2022: KlezCalifornia is scheduled to present online “The Barry Sisters and Yiddish Swing during which “broadcaster and music writer Andy Muchin explores the career of Clara and Minnie Bagelman and the music they helped popularize.”
2022: Congregation Beth Elohim is scheduled to present online “Simcha Circles: New Beginnings in January.”
2022: Based on announcement made yesterday, as of today people over the age of sixty and medical workers will be able to receive a 4th dose of COVID vaccine.
2022: The holiday closing of The Breman, including the Cuba Family Archive, the Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education and the galleries is scheduled to come to an end today.
2022: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's governing coalition is scheduled to face a challenge tonight when it will attempt to pass the controversial electricity law which would “enable tens of thousands of illegally built homes to be hooked up to the national electricity grid, as well as to water and to telephone lines.” (As reported by Gil Hoffman)
2022(1st of Shevat, 5782): Rosh Chodesh Shevat
